Homeland Security chief reiterates: Syrian and Iraqi refugees pose security threat

They must really be seeing something they aren’t telling us about for Homeland Security Director Jeh Johnson to be so forthcoming at a Congressional hearing yesterday.
And, it isn’t just the Syrians and Iraqis we should worry about!

jeh johnson
Johnson: Refugee stream does present potential for terrorist attacks. At least someone is being honest in the Obama Administration.

From The Hill:

The head of the Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday said that the United States’s acceptance of Syrian refugees could pose a national security threat.

Even as President Obama has called for the U.S. to welcome 10,000 Syrian refugees this year, Secretary Jeh Johnson maintained during a hearing on Capitol Hill that the initiative is not risk-free.

“In all candor, I do agree that the refugee flow coming out of Iraq and Syria represents a potential opportunity for terrorist organizations to move its members into other nations for potential attacks,” Johnson testified before the House Homeland Security Committee. “So I agree that there is that potential, which is why just within the last several months we have enhanced our vetting for refugees.”

The claim hints at the problems vexing the Obama administration as it seeks to ramp up the number of refugees brought into the country.

The administration is so far falling far behind Obama’s pledge to bring in 10,000 new Syrian refugees this fiscal year. Since October, the U.S. has brought in just 1,115 of the refugees.

Meanwhile, during this same time period, Canada has admitted 25,000 Syrians with apparently little concern for thorough vetting.

Rohingya at sea
It isn’t just Syrians we should worry about. Rescued Rohingya are being resettled in the US by the thousands. They can’t possibly be screened any better than Syrians! https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2016/02/27/european-ship-headed-to-asia-to-help-rescue-rohingya-why-you-should-care/

How about security threats from other countries? What do the numbers look like?

(The 2016 fiscal year began on Oct. 1, 2016, numbers below are through February 29th—5 months).
Truth be told:  they can’t screen the others below any better than the Syrians!

Syria: 955 (with 946 of those being Muslims).   Not sure where The Hill got the 1,115.

Iraq: 3,476 (2,856 are Muslims)

Somalia: 3,036 (3,034 are Muslims)

Burma: 4,774 (1,135 are Muslims)  Yikes! We must be making a big push to get those Rohingya Muslims in to the US before Obama leaves office. I had no idea the number of Burmese Muslims would be this high!

Be sure to see our whole category on the Rohingya of Burma/Bangladesh.  Scary!
If you missed it, see the New York Times on terror threat posed by refugee program, here.

Israel to raise the height of its border fence

The latest wave of Africans trying to break into Israel via Egypt are bringing ladders.
 

Israels wall
Photo: http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/middle-east/131204/israel-new-border-wall-egypt-terrorism-immigration-project-hourglass

 
For new readers we have a category here at RRW entitled, ‘Israel and refugees,‘ although there has been so much news from the ‘Invasion of Europe’ lately we haven’t said much about the smaller invasion of Israel.
Here is news from Breitbart that could be used for guidance for Trump’s wall:

TEL AVIV – Israel is set to raise the height of its fence along the Egyptian border in an effort to keep out migrants, defense officials said Tuesday.

The fence will be raised an additional meter, making it six meters (19.7 feet) high. This follows an increase in African migrants entering the country over the past year.

The army said that a series of additional prevention methods will be put in place to reduce the number of illegal border crossings.

The current fence, which was built between 2010-2014, has been largely successful in preventing migrant incursions, the IDF said. In 2014, only 14 people made it across the border, compared with 12,000 in 2010. However, in 2015, some 200 migrants made it over the fence, often with the use of ladders.

Learn about Saudi Arabia’s ‘anti-ISIS’ barrier, here.  Walls do work.

Islamic State lists 36 Minnesota police officers on "kill list"

So, this is one of the joys that diversity brings “welcoming” communities.

Minnesota man ISIS
Take heart, this one is dead. (But he left 9 kids and several wives here for you to take care of!)

Of course, readers here know that Minnesota is the top resettlement state for Somali Muslims.
And now, we learn here at the Washington Times, that one in four “Americans” who have gone to join jihadists elsewhere in the world hail from refugee-rich Minnesota.
We raised these Somali ‘youths’ with our money (taxpayer dollars) and this is what we get!
Washington Times:

A group of hackers loyal to the Islamic State terrorist group have reportedly posted a “kill list” with the names and personal details of 36 policemen in Minnesota.

The list, published by the “Caliphate Cyber Army” on the encrypted mobile app Telegram, includes full names, home addresses, email addresses and phone numbers of all the policemen, according to Vocativ.

The cops reportedly live in cities across Minnesota, but the majority are located in and around the Twin Cities.

Minnesota has a large population of Somali immigrants, with the Cedar Riverside community in Minneapolis housing the largest Somali community in the country. Since 2007, two dozen men from the Cedar Riverside community have left to join extremist groups.

A congressional report from last November said one in four Americans who has attempted to join the Islamic State group is from Minnesota.

We have a gigantic archive of posts on Somalis and Minnesota, use our search function to find them.  But, be sure to see this one—10,000 Somalis resettled in Minnesota in ten years.

Refugee Resettlement contractors find new House bill "offensive" (blah, blah, blah)

Of course, what else do you expect.  They will never admit that the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program is flawed and should be reformed because their whole livelihoods depend on it continuing exactly like it is with their phony non-profit organizations almost completely funded by you, the taxpayer.
They want you to keep paying for their ‘religious’ charity, but leave them alone to run their ‘businesses’ and their ‘clients’ their way—the way they have been since their hero Teddy Kennedy pushed the bill that became the Refugee Act of 1980 through Congress.

mccullough-cws (1)
I find it “offensive” that as a taxpayer I pay McCullough’s salary! CWS CEO Rev. John L. McCullough arrested at the White House in 2014 while protesting for amnesty for illegal aliens. These are not ‘churches’ but are Leftwing community organizers. McCullough pulls down a handsome six-figure salary partially funded by US taxpayers to do his NO borders political activities. Photo at Sojourners: https://sojo.net/articles/faith-leaders-arrested-white-house-calling-immigration-reform

I told you about the bill they are all worked up about here, yesterday, but it’s hard for me to get excited about it because it strikes me as window dressing too late in the legislative calendar to be meaningful.
And, with Obama in the White House there is no way it will ever become law.  If by a miracle it passed both the House and the Senate, would the leadership even have the guts to send it to Obama, I doubt it.
It will be interesting to see if these same Congressional leaders push any measure to reform the refugee program if Donald Trump should be in the White House in 2017.  And, at that point, do we want the pro-cheap labor pushers, the water-carriers for the Chamber of Commerce, Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell, ‘reforming’ it when Trump will have the power to cut it back himself?
All that said, it is always fun to watch the contractors whine and moan as they did in a conference call with reporters as we learned from CNS News (emphasis is mine):

…..during a conference call with reporters on Tuesday, opponents of the legislation called it “punitive” and “mean-spirited”, and claimed it would “dismantle the U.S. refugee program.”

“It ties the hands of the U.S. government to respond to humanitarian crises,” said Melanie Nezer, vice president for policy and advocacy at HIAS (formerly the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society), who criticized provisions in the bill that would strip refugee status from those who return to their home country and extends by two years the time period for refugees to be eligible to apply for permanent resident status “for no legitimate reason,” she said.

Melanie Nezer Syrians
I find it “mean-spirited” that Melanie Nezer wants to subject your community to refugees from countries that hate us—she was among the first to demand Obama admit 100,000 Syrians this year in spite of an FBI warning.

Nezer also objected to prioritizing “certain religious minorities” which, she said, would “hinder our ability to take in anybody.”

The bill “clearly discriminates against Muslims as the intended target,” said Rev. John McCullough, a United Methodist minister from New Jersey and president of Church World Service, which resettled 14,228 refugees from sub-Saharan Africa in the U.S. in FY2014, according to its website.

Church World Service head honcho, THE Reverend John McCullough finds it “offensive” that you, citizens in towns across America, should have any say in who they seed into your towns.

CNS continues…..

McCullough told reporters that he finds it “offensive” that under the bill, states and localities would be allowed to “determine who is welcome” instead of the federal government.

“This is very contrary to everything our country represents,” he said. “We have to call on the moral courage of Congress to reject this anti-refugee legislative proposal.”

Continue reading here.
More here on Church World Service.

P.S. Melanie Nezer authored a report, here, which urged the Southern Poverty Law Center to go after this blog (and me!) to try to expose us and silence us for disagreeing with her.

United Nations and US State Department have close working relationship when deciding who comes to America….

…..and thus who comes to your towns.
I just saw this photo on Twitter (right).  Anne Richard Asst. Secretary of State signs a so-called ‘Framework for Cooperation‘ agreement with the new UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

Richard and Grandi
Anne Richard, Asst. Sec. of State for PRM signing cooperation agreement with new UNHCR Filippo Grandi.

It seems that we began this ‘Framework for Cooperation’ with the UNHCR in the year 2000 (Madeleine Albright’s reign in Clinton’s last year in office and obviously continued through Bush and Obama).
I had always wondered when we began to rely almost completely on the UN for direction on who is resettled in America.

The Framework for Cooperation is a policy document that defines the priorities and commitments of the UN refugee agency and the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration (BPRM) for cooperation and collaboration throughout the year. The annual accord also acts as a guide to measure impact and performance.

The first such framework cooperation agreement between UNHCR and PRM was signed in 2000, and the practice has continued as a testament to the mutual confidence and commitment that the two sides have in each other as partners. The US Government continues to be UNHCR’s biggest donor.

So one way of looking at this is that we give UNHCR most of their money and then we let them tell us what to do.  Huh? 

And, who said we must have shared objectives and priorities with the UN in the first place?  Calling President Trump, let’s fix this ASAP in January 2017.
After all, it is the UN that is picking mostly Muslim Syrians for resettlement to the US (as they are the Iraqis and Somalis!).
You know that refugee ‘reform’ bill being marked up tomorrow in the House Judiciary Committee, if they are serious about reform, how about an amendment to sever these ties.  I’ll bet there was never a law in the first place that required us to cooperate in this formal manner with the UN refugee agency!
I didn’t have the patience to search for this year’s agreement (if it’s even available), but here is one for 2012-2013.