Not surprisingly, here is the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) out with its action alert e-mail minutes after today’s Trump Administration press conference asking the Leftwing open borders gang to call the White House to oppose more vetting and to do more for refugees (HIAS’s paying clients).
See my post earlier today about how HIAS supports a religious test for refugees—the ones they want admitted to the US!
See the phone numbers HIAS has kindly supplied for us. Call the White House and thank the President for keeping us safe and for slowing the flow of expensive refugees to your towns and cities.
300 refugees living in the US suspected of having Islamic terror connections!
For me, that is the biggest news that came out of the press conference this morning.
Here is the brief story atBreitbart:
Washington (AFP) – The Federal Bureau of Investigation is investigating around 300 refugees admitted into the United States for suspected terror-linked activities, US officials said Monday.
The officials gave the figure as justification for a just-announced 120-day halt on admitting refugees from any country to review security vetting procedures.
“Today more than 300 people, according to the FBI, who came here as refugees are under an FBI investigation today for potential terrorism-related activities,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said.
Unnamed spokesman at DHS:
“The salient fact here is that there are 300 individuals admitted and welcomed to the United States in the refugee admissions program who either infiltrated with hostile intent or who radicalized after admission to the United States,” he said.
Full text of the order is here. I don’t have time to look at it now.
We need to figure out if the 120 days starts when this EO goes in to effect on March 16th, or are they counting the 120 days back to the earlier January date. If it is the January date, then that stinks because there has been no halt for over a month now. If you find out let me know!
This was an interesting little nugget buried in an otherwise mundane news report.
It seems that some of those migrants from the Middle East and Africa, trying to get in to Canada across our northern border, actually intended to get to Canada anyway by first obtaining visas to travel to the US.
Here is the story at Arab News:
The recent wave of migrants to Canada originated mostly from East Africa and war-torn nations such as Syria.
[….]
Federal police and immigration officials said some refugees appeared to have intended from the start to come to Canada after flying to the US on a visitor visa.
Failed asylum seekers are illegal aliens!
Others decided to come only after they were denied asylum south of the border, or because they feared deportation amid the current US crackdown. [Trump should be able to bring those numbers down by DETAINING those who failed to be granted asylum! They shouldn’t be wandering loose around the US anyway!—ed]
From Jan. 1 to Feb. 21, a total of about 4,000 people filed refugee claims in Canada, up from 2,500 during the same period last year.
The figure includes border jumpers and those arriving from the US at border checkpoints.
Local officials say at least 180 asylum-seekers have crossed the border near Emerson since January.
So, if Trump’s expected new EO does ban travel for a time from 6 or 7 mostly Muslim countries, less should be getting in to the US on a false pretense, and consequently less would be heading to Canada from here. Right?
Here are a few of our previous postson the latest buzz on the Canadian border. Hereis another one.
Who is Lautenberg? You will see below. First the news that CNN is reporting this morning (that the new EO will likely come today).
And, the Wall Street Journal was suggesting last evening also that the newly revised Executive Order (the so-called travel ban) could come today.
Here are a few highlights that involve the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program, from the Wall Street Journal:
The new version is expected to still ban travel from several Muslim-majority nations, but unlike the original, it will leave Iraq off the list, several people familiar with the planning said. [The irony is that the refugee terrorists we have caught in the US were mostly Iraqis!—ed]
No preference for Christians?
The new order is expected to remove a provision giving preference to refugees who are members of religious minorities, which was expected to benefit Christians coming from Muslim nations, several people said. It is unclear if this or possibly other changes would be enough to address those concerns.
The revised order is expected to again temporarily suspend the admission of refugees to the U.S., but unlike the original, it is likely to treat Syrian refugees the same way as those from other countries, people familiar with the planning said. The original executive order suspended the entire refugee program for four months and indefinitely suspended admission of Syrian refugees.
Let’s talk about this issue of a religious test!
We have had a religious test for certain special groups since 1990!
You will hear representatives of the federal resettlement contractors scream that we can’t possibly favor Christians because our Muslim friends will get mad at us, but……. We have been giving special treatment and admitting certain religious minorities AS REFUGEES for decades under a law commonly referred to as the Lautenberg Amendment!
How do you think we justified admitting religious minorities from Russia including since FY03, 1,965 Jews and 11,410 Russian Muslimsknown as Meskhetians (out of a total of 19,440 ‘refugees’ from Russia)! (Numbers from Wrapsnet) What on earth made them “refugees?”
Lautenberg was later extended to include Iranian religious minorities.
Our old pals at the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society have been patting themselves on the back for decades for their work under Lautenberg!
From their website (emphasis mine):
The Lautenberg Amendment, first enacted in 1990 as part of the U.S. foreign operations budget to facilitate resettlement of Jews from the former Soviet Union, allowed HIAS to bring tens of thousands to safety. As the worldwide refugee situation changed, the Lautenberg Amendment was expanded to include persecuted religious minorities in other countries, such as Jews, Christians, and Baha’is from Iran.
Despite being a crucial part of U.S. refugee policy, it expires each year and must be reauthorized.
They then direct readers to a pdf, here.
This is a screenshot of the opening page of the document:
I had a quick look at Wrapsnet for just this fiscal year (10/1/2016 to today) and learned that we admitted 1,637 ‘refugees’ from Iran (635 processed through Vienna, Austria as of January 31, 2017, data not yet available through February). Of those only 122 were Muslims, so the remainder (1,515) were religious minorities including 26 Jews.
We have a religious test!
We processed from Russia from the first day of fiscal year ’17 (October 1, 2016) to January 31, 2017, 251 so-called ‘refugees.’ 29 were Russian Jews.
We have a religious test!
I’m not a lawyer, but if the courts don’t allow a Trump Executive Order to give preference to African and Middle Eastern Christians, how is it that the Lautenberg Amendment (recently extended by Congress) is legal? And, has been legal and Constitutional for going on 27 years?
Can we rightly expect HIAS to stand in support of Trump’s original concept of a religious test that would allow Christians in majority Muslim countries to have access to the US Refugee Admissions Program? Don’t hold your breath!