House Homeland Security Chairman: Syrian refugees could be "jihadi pipeline" to America

05/21/2015 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Well, we didn’t get the House Homeland Security Subcommittee hearing we were hoping for today, but the Chairman of the full committee, Rep. Michael McCaul, made news answering questions at a press breakfast this morning.

McCaul: Resettling Syrians now is a serious mistake.

From The Hill (hat tip: The Flying Camel):

The head of the House Homeland Security Committee says an Obama administration plan to resettle Syrian refugees in the U.S. is a “serious mistake” and should be stopped until safeguards are in place.

“We have no way… to know who these people are and so I think bringing them in is a serious mistake,” Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas) said during a Christian Science Monitor breakfast on Thursday.

McCaul said the U.S. has “no intelligence footprint or capability” inside Syria to ensure refugees mean no harm.

“We don’t have databases on these individuals so we can’t properly vet them,” he added, “to know where they came from, to know what threat they pose, because we don’t have the data to cross-reference them with.”

McCaul, who has visited Syrian refugee camps overseas, said that while there are “a lot of mothers and kids, there are [also] a lot of males of the age that could conduct terrorist operations.”

“That concerns me,” he added.

The U.S. could resettle around 2,000 Syrian refugees this fiscal year and potentially thousands more in fiscal 2016 under the State Department-led effort. The Department of Homeland Security has authority to approve the admissions.

McCaul first raised concerns about the effort in January during a panel hearing, saying the administration is creating a “federally funded jihadi pipeline” into the U.S.

U.S. intelligence officials have expressed reservations about the program and lawmakers, including Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), whose district could absorb some of the refugees, are pressing to have the effort halted.

McCaul said the program has created a “split” in the administration between the State Department and others agencies like the FBI, which is “saying this is a really bad idea from a security standpoint.”

Apparently McCaul went on to say that he couldn’t imagine any community would want to welcome this right now.

However….

…..does the Congressman know that, as the number one resettlement state in the country, Texas has received 100 of them as of May first, trailing only California by three (CA received 103).

And, just remember readers! one of the leading US refugee resettlement contractor CEO’s (Brit David Miliband, brother to ‘Red Ed’) is demanding that Obama admit 65,000 Syrians by the end of his term in office.
Be sure to let your member of Congress know how you feel about Syrian refugees coming to your town!

Diversity Visa Lottery: LEGAL immigration program allows 50,000 into US each year because we don't have enough diversity!

05/21/2015 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We have written a little bit over the years about the truly outrageous ‘Diversity Visa Lottery,’ sometimes referred to as the ‘Green card lottery.’
I’m writing about it now so that our many new readers understand that it isn’t just the Refugee Admissions Program that is allowing immigrants into the US who could potentially threaten our security in addition to competing with Americans for limited job opportunities.

Obama with Texas Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee. “The Green Card Lottery has really been the African Green Card Lottery.” In 2009 Lee attempted to change the Diversity lottery by adding another 50,000 which would have brought 100,000 annual “winners” to America. http://newafricanmagazine.com/will-green-card-lottery-get-red-card/

The program, like the Refugee resettlement program, is the brainchild of Senator Ted Kennedy and was signed into law by President George H.W. Bush in 1990.
Beginning in 1996 we began offering 50,000 slots (it can be confusing because some reports say 55,000) for legal immigration to the US in a lottery system that is shocking when you begin to examine it. It’s primary purpose is to increase our diversity!
We sure did increase our diversity as 1 million LEGAL immigrants entered the US in the last 20 years as a result of the Kennedy/Bush lottery.

The lottery aims to diversify the immigrant population in the United States, by selecting applicants mostly from countries with low rates of immigration to the United States in the previous five years.

Unsuccessful efforts have been made in recent years to kill it, but among the programs great supporters are the very same federal refugee resettlement contractors we write about every day. Every time Congress has advanced bills to cut the lottery or cut its funding, who pops up to defend it? The VOLAGS!
One would think they might be concerned about increasing competition from the lottery winners for the scarce jobs that their refugees desperately need! Guess not!

If you would like to check it out yourselves, just type in one of the contractor’s names along with ‘diversity visa lottery’ and you will get lots of testimony and lots of lobbying by the contractors to keep the lottery alive.

New York Uzbek’s largely here thanks to Diversity Visa Lottery

What got me thinking about it this morning was a New York Times piece about ten days ago entitled:

Accusations of Terrorism Worry Brooklyn’s Uzbek Community

We learned that a large number of New York City’s Uzbek (mostly Muslim) immigrants came in through the lottery. However, we have also admitted Uzbek’s as refugees and have had some terror busts involving those. Here is one in Idaho.

Immigrants from Uzbekistan have been arriving in New York with help from a diversity visa lottery program, which the United States government created in 1990 to foster immigration from countries with previously low rates. The State Department issues 55,000 green cards every year through its diversity visa program and for the 2014-15 year, 4,368 were allotted to Uzbek lottery winners, the department said. [It was 5,101 in 2013, see below—-ed]

In my quick search I couldn’t find the 2014 “winners,” but here are the 2013 lucky ducks! I’ve selected some of the countries (those with the largest number of winners) from which “enrichment” has arrived on our shores. (See this commentary about the US Conference of Catholic Bishops going to bat for the lottery in Congressional testimony). Remember this line when you look at the list!

….a diverse pool of immigrants makes our nation a culturally richer place. [Who says so?—ed]

Selected entrants—2013

Here (and below) are the largest ethnic groups given green cards after winning the lottery in 2013:
Africa:

Algeria (2,161)

Cameroon (3,858)

DR Congo (3,924)

Egypt (5,015)

Ethiopia (4,910)

Ghana (5,105)

Kenya (4,410)

Morocco (2,068)

Nigeria (6,218)

Sierra Leone (2,516)

Togo (1,065)

Asia:

Iran (6,029)

Nepal (4,370)

Europe:

Albania (1,520)

Armenia (1,174)

Belarus (1,195)

Bulgaria (1,299)

Poland (2,038)

Russia (2,846)

Turkey (1,807)

Ukraine (6,424)

Uzbekistan (5,101)

The next time you hear an elected official mouth this foolish line know that he or she doesn’t know what the heck they are talking about!

I’m o.k. with legal immigration, but it is illegal immigration I have a problem with!

To learn more, we have a category on the ‘Diversity Visa Lottery’ here.

Michigan: Overloaded with Iraqi refugees, keeps state in top five resettlement states in the nation

05/21/2015 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Two nights ago I spoke with a group in Michigan—Southeast Michigan 912 Tea Party— and in advance did some digging into the data bases to see how the state was doing. I was shocked to discover that over 18,000 Iraqis (among other refugees) have been resettled there since 2005.

Global Nation map — Note that these stats are from 2014. At this rate of resettlement, Michigan will get 40,000 refugees in the next ten years compared to the 29,000 it received in the last ten years.

Indeed in the last ten years, 29,141 refugees were resettled in Michigan and 18,505 were Iraqis.
I wondered what had happened to the US State Department’s 2008 ‘decision’ to slow the flow to Michigan?
Here is a headline and story from the Detroit News in October of 2008:

Iraqi refugees overwhelm Michigan relief program

Michigan’s economy is so bad that the State Department is sending fewer Iraqi refugees to the area because of concerns that their future would not be bright. [Never mind your future!—ed]

After a request by relief workers, the policy of bringing Iraqis to metro Detroit if relatives or friends live in the area was changed to allow only those with immediate family to settle here, according to the State Department.

“The State Department has taken the measure of things and decided it would be better to send them somewhere else, where they might be self-sufficient, instead of coming to Michigan, because the economy is very bad here, and we have the highest unemployment in the country,” Belmin Pinjic of Lutheran Social Services of Michigan said.

[….]

State Department officials said the policy change was implemented in late June partly because relief workers were having difficulty finding the refugees jobs.

But, see here, just a couple of months ago—despite high unemployment, refugees are still being poured into the state. And, then most recently of course we reported that a dumb idea was floated by the New York Times to resettle 50,000 Syrians (mostly Muslim) refugees in Detroit. How did we go from (2008) too many refugees would strain the economy, to 2015—refugees will cause the economy to recover?
Kentucky Iraqi terrorist bust slowed the flow slightly in 2011
As I searched the data bases I noted that there was never actually any slow down in the number of refugees resettled in Michigan despite the 2008 promise by the US State Department to do so.
There was a noticeable drop in Iraqis in 2011, but LOL! that was because the US State Department and Homeland Security discovered they had admitted at least two Iraqi refugee terrorists (caught in Kentucky—oopsy!) and thus security re-screening slowed the flow that year.

Here is what I learned about the number of refugees arriving in Michigan.

Of the total refugee load since 2005 (29,141), Iraqis topped the list by far at 18,505. Previous research concludes that about 3/4th of all Iraqis entering the US are Muslims. Religious minorities make up the other 1/4th.
After the Iraqis, the next too ethnic groups are Burmese (4,261) and Somalis (1,431). Of the 800 or so Syrians resettled so far in the US, 49 went to Michigan. The Somalis were mostly resettled in Lansing and Grand Rapids.
Then this really surprised me—Iraqis were resettled (“seeded”) in 98 towns in Michigan!
Here are the top ten Iraqi resettlement cities in the state (since 2005):

Southfield (4,427)

Sterling Heights (3,860)

Troy (1,998)

Warren (1,355)

Madison Heights (947)

Lansing (720)

Dearborn (626)

West Bloomfield (554)

Ann Arbor (297)

Detroit (289)

Six of the top nine federal resettlement contractors are operating in Michigan (falling all over themselves!). They are: Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (we bring only a tiny handful of Jews to the US as refugees, so they are resettling large numbers of Muslims, go figure!), Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, US Conference of Catholic Bishops, Church World Service, Episcopal Migration Ministries, and the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants. Find their office contact information here.
Readers, remember two things. First there is “secondary migration” (here page nine) which means that in refugee resettlement lingo, refugees move within states and from state to state after initial resettlement. And, secondly, there are other LEGAL immigration programs that are bringing refugees from the third-world, and from terror hotspots, to America. I’m going to write about one of those this morning—the Diversity Visa lottery. So, it becomes very difficult to get a really good idea of who is living next door!
Want to write a book? We have 660 previous posts on Iraqi refugees, click here to begin your research! Go here for everything we have said about Michigan.