Human Rights Gang not happy with Senator Grassley

Senator Grassley has submitted amendments to the Gang of Eight plus Grover bill (S.744) regarding the loosening of our already pretty loose asylum system (remember Boston way back last month before all the latest crises of the Obama Administration have taken everyone’s eyes from it).  Grassley wants to dump some proposed provisions in the bill that will give more asylum seekers more time and an easier process to apply.

Human Rights First and its gang at the Refugee Council USA (lobbying arm for refugee contractors) are ginning up opposition to Grassley.

See all amendments here.

Here is the latest from the “humanitarians:”

Last week members of the Senate Judiciary Committee filed potential amendments to the bipartisan immigration bill (S. 744) negotiated by the “Gang of 8” – Senators Michael Bennet, Richard Durbin, Jeff Flake, Lindsey Graham, John McCain, Robert Menendez, Marco Rubio and Charles Schumer.  Among the proposed amendments are two sponsored by Senator Grassley (Grassley 27 and Grassley 52) that would eliminate or substantially delay two targeted reforms to the U.S. asylum system included in the bipartisan bill:  section 3401 which would eliminate a filing deadline bar that prevents genuine refugees from receiving US asylum; and section 3404 which authorizes some asylum cases to be resolved through a full asylum office interview conducted by trained Department of Homeland Security –U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (DHS-USCIS) asylum officers.

Refugee Council USA, a coalition of faith based and other organizations (including Human Rights First) ,  sent a letter on the amendments to the Senate Judiciary Committee members specifically asking them to oppose Grassley 27 and Grassley 52 as well as other amendments that would impact refugees and asylum seekers.

Grassley wants to delay changing the asylum program until he has a full accounting of what went wrong with our asylum system in Boston.  Sounds reasonable to me.  We don’t need any more murdering welfare moochers like the Tsarnaev family.

One of Senator Grassley’s amendments seeks to delay the reforms outlined in the Gang of 8 bill until a year after the Director of National Intelligence submits to Congress reports, and sub-reports, on the government’s handling of the Boston Marathon bombing.   The Boston bombing was a tragedy, and the government should certainly take steps to address and prevent another attack.  There is no reason to use the Boston tragedy to derail or delay reforms to strengthen the asylum system.

I’ll add Grassley’s office to my list of Hill visits today.  I want them to strip out all references to refugees and asylum from the Gang’s bill until there are full hearings on the whole refugee program.  Maybe we have to go back and re-write the Refugee Resettlement Act of 1980.

How bad is the fraud involved with asylum claims?

‘Asylumist’ blogger Jason Dzubow

Really bad! reports immigration lawyer and blogger Jason Dzubow (resume’ below)*.

After Boston we all became more concerned with how easy it is to defraud the US government with a phoney asylum claim.  The Tsarnaev family, with their travels back and forth to the country of their persecution, have become the poster family for asylum fraud.  Someone asked me just yesterday if I thought Mom and Dad were having welfare checks deposited in a Boston bank and transmitted to Russia.  That could be happening, I said!

Although this blog post by Dzubow is from last December, I hadn’t seen it until recently.  By the way, Dzubow seems like a fairly level-headed lawyer who works on behalf of immigrants.

LOL! And, here he had some advice for us!  Why does he join others in expressing frustration about RRW NOT being “neutral”?  Heck, the mainstream media is never neutral, rarely balanced, with its glowing gooey stories about refugees seeing their first snow; so, as I see it, I need to balance them!  That is my job!  Indeed, if the mainstream media wasn’t so biased and did some serious investigative work, there would be no need for bloggers.

I’ve digressed.

Back to Dzubow’s amazing admission in a post entitled, ‘Lawyers gone wild’ (emphasis mine):

The New York Times reports a major bust involving lawyers, paralegals, and even a church official who were allegedly helping Chinese nationals file fraudulent asylum cases. [There have been many news accounts recently about the large number of Chinese illegally coming across our borders. If caught, they ask for asylum.–ed]

The Times reports that 26 people, including six attorneys, were arrested in Chinatown and Flushing, Queens. They are accused of an elaborate scheme to help Chinese immigrants invent stories about persecution and dupe immigration officials into granting asylum. Some false stories describe persecution based on China’s one-child policy, including forced abortion. Others set forth claims based on religious persecution. Apparently, the asylum seekers aroused suspicion when Asylum Officers noticed that many of the stories were very similar.

In all, the conspiracy involves 10 law firms and as many as 1,900 asylum seekers. The conspiracy also allegedly involved at least one church official, Liying (pronounced “Lying”?) Lin. According to the Times, Ms. Lin, 29, trained asylum seekers in the basic tenets of Christianity. According to the indictment against her, Ms. Lin also helped her “clients” trick the immigration authorities and “trained asylum applicants on what questions about religious belief would be asked during an asylum interview and coached the clients on how to answer.”

This is not the first time that I’ve written about Lawyers and paralegals helping to create false cases, but it is the largest such bust that I’ve heard about.  One question is, how pervasive is this type of fraud?

A professor of Asian-American studies and urban affairs at Hunter College in New York, Peter Kwong, told the Times that he believes most Chinese asylum cases in New York City were fraudulent. “This is an industry,” said Prof. Kwong, who has written widely on Chinese immigration. “Everybody knows about it, and these violations go on all the time.” While I would not be surprised if Prof. Kwong is correct, I would also not be surprised if he is over-estimating the number of fraudulent asylum claims.

The reason for the difficulty is that there is no data on false asylum claims.

[….]

Although it is difficult to know the magnitude of the problem, it’s pretty clear that many asylum cases are fraudulent. The situation in New York is only the most recent illustration of the problem. So what’s the solution? I strongly believe that the government can do more to stop these fraudsters. I have seen enough of their work to know that they are not so smart and often not very careful (witness the Chinese case in NY where Asylum Officers detected the fraud when they noticed that many of the applications were suspiciously similar–in other words, the lawyers were too lazy and too cocky to bother making up unique stories for each asylum seeker).

Dzubow goes on to suggest that the feds send in “undercover clients” to smoke out these crooked lawyers.  Great idea! Start with whoever did the legal work for the Tsarnaevs.

There is more, visit the whole post.  And, keep this story in mind when you read an incredible first hand account of refugee fraud which I will post later today, or in the morning.

*Jason Dzubow’s practice focuses on immigration law, asylum, and appellate litigation. Mr. Dzubow is admitted to practice law in the federal and state courts of Washington, DC and Maryland, the United States Courts of Appeals for the Third, Fourth, Eleventh, and DC Circuits, all Immigration Courts in the United States, and the Board of Immigration Appeals. He is a member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) and the Capital Area Immigrant Rights (CAIR) Coalition. In June 2009, CAIR Coalition honored Mr. Dzubow for his Outstanding Commitment to Defending the Rights and Dignity of Detained Immigrants.In December 2011, Washingtonian magazine recognized Dr. Dzubow as one of the best immigration lawyers in the Washington, DC area; in March 2011, he was listed as one of the top 25 legal minds in the country in the area of immigration law. Mr. Dzubow is also an adjunct professor of law at George Mason University in Virginia.

Lindsey Graham looking for more security screening for certain aliens in S.744

Here is an amendment to S.744 that is probably sending the refugee industry into conniption-fits.  They don’t want any more security screening that slows the flow of third-worlders into the US.  If it fails to pass it will send yet another signal that S.744 will endanger our security.

Graham, Kirk, McCain and Rubio yukking it up in Libya (we did good!) one year before the murder of Americans at Benghazi. Photo perhaps unrelated to this post, but it’s here because it infuriates me!
Photo credit: AP

And, you have to laugh because, should it pass, half the countries we are importing refugees from now would have to be on the list—Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Somalia, Russia, former Soviet Union countries, even Burma (Rohingya Muslims).

Be sure to see our previous post here about Graham’s other amendment that is clearly in response to the Boston Marathon bomber brothers’ faux asylum claim.

Go here to see the list of all the amendments (hat tip: John).  The list now has a notation about which have passed/failed or been withdrawn.

Here is Graham’s amendment #3:

Purpose: To require additional security screening for certain aliens.

Additional Security Screening

The Secretary, in consultation with the Secretary of State, shall establish and maintain a list of countries or regions that, in the Secretary’s opinion based upon information related to national security, represents a threat, or contains groups or organizations that represent a threat, to the national security of the United States.

Upon determining that any alien or alien dependent  spouse or child is or was a citizen or long-term resident of any such country or region, the Secretary shall conduct an additional security screening to ensure that the alien or alien dependent spouse or child is not a member of or otherwise affiliated with any terrorist or similar group or otherwise presents a threat to the national security of the United States.

We will be watching!

FAIR has a good legal analysis of S.744 as it relates to refugees/asylum seekers

More refugees, a potentially greater variety (whole classes of people would be eligible at the discretion of Homeland Security), easier asylum rules, etc. —all with no hearings.  As we said before, Congress should strip out all of the refugee/asylum sections from the monster Gang bill.

Federation for American Immigration Reform:

Title III Subtitle D of S. 744 undermines current asylum and refugee law by eliminating preexisting requirements aliens apply for asylum within a certain time frame of entering the U.S., allowing asylum officers to bypass immigration judges before granting asylum to unlawful aliens, and giving broad authority to the Administration to create new categories of refugees and stateless persons to be admitted into the country.

Click here and then follow link to their full report.

Boston Bombing blowback: Senator Graham has an amendment or two to S.744

Who said politicians can’t learn?  Here we apparently have Senator Lindsey ‘Amnesty’ Graham attempting to fix S.744 (the Gang of Eight plus Grover bill) which as we reported addresses our refugee and asylum program right along with the kitchen sink, in response to the Tsarnaev family’s asylum fraud.

What do ya’ think, Chuckie? AP Photo

Everyone is asking, how persecuted were the Chechens if they were traveling back and forth to Russia?  Indeed!

Remember there is absolutely no need to make changes to the Refugee Resettlement Program within this “comprehensive” bill.  Don’t misunderstand what I am saying, the program needs a complete Congressional review, but it should be a review SEPARATE FROM the Gang’s bill.

Since the Gang (which includes Graham) does make it easier for more refugees to enter the US for flimsier reasons (if they belong to a particular ‘special’ group or are a certain nationality), Graham’s proposed amendments are of interest.  Thanks so much to reader John for wading into this and alerting us.

Go here for a list of amendments to S.744.

Graham’s Amendment #1

The purpose is:   To provide for termination of asylum or refugee status in cases of country return.

Then below are the guts of it.  Refugee industry advocates will go nuts!  It basically says, if you go ‘home’ (with certain exceptions), you will have your refugee status TERMINATED!  Which means that right now a very large group of “refugees” and “asylees” would presumably get the heave-ho!  (Of course, assuming we had an administration with any guts to do it!).

… any alien who is granted asylum or refugee status under this Act or the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1101 et seq.), who, without good cause as determined by the Secretary, subsequently returns to the country of such alien’s nationality or, in the case of an alien having no nationality, returns to any country in which such alien last habitually resided, and who applied for such status because of persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution in that country on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion, shall have his or her status terminated.

Of course there are exceptions.  They can seek a waiver from the Secretary of State (big potential loophole there).  And, now I am rolling on the floor laughing—it does not apply to Cubans!   We don’t want to p*** off Rubio—NO! NO! NO!

I’ll tell you about another of Graham’s amendments tomorrow.