Category: Iraqi refugees

Update: Iraqi refugee flow to US slow now under Obama

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

There is not a whole lot we don’t already know in this story from USA Today about how the flow of Iraqi refugees into the US has slowed because of stepped-up security checks in the wake of the Kentucky terror arrests last summer.  Of course, the average American is saying “what the hell are we bringing Muslim Iraqis here in the first place—we gave them their own Islamic government!”

Predictably, the open borders crowd wants to spin this as a story about how we need to help those Iraqis who helped us, but those two arrested in Kentucky were “humanitarian” refugees and not US government employees.

Here is the gist of the story:

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration has dramatically slowed the resettlement of Iraqi refugees — including former U.S. military translators and embassy workers — in the midst of growing concerns about al-Qaeda’s potential ties with some asylum seekers, an administration official says.

Two Iraqi refugees who resettled in the United States in 2009 were arrested in May in Bowling Green, Ky., and are accused of plotting to send weapons and cash to al-Qaeda in Iraq.

The senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, says that intelligence indicates the threat is much broader than the two refugees.

Authorities learned of the Kentucky plot through intelligence gleaned in late 2010, the official said.

“That threat stream led us to re-examine our vetting process for this population and really all of the refugee population,” the official said.

FBI Director Robert Mueller noted last year before the Kentucky arrests that a potential threat rested with “individuals who may have been resettled here in the United States that have had some association with al-Qaeda in Iraq.”

After more than 36,000 Iraqi refugees were resettled in the USA between October 2008 and September 2010, only 9,400 refugees were resettled here the following year. In the last three months of 2011, only 826 Iraqi refugees have been resettled in the United States, according to the State Department.

Fingerprints of one of the Kentucky suspects, Waad Ramadan Alwan, were found on a component of a roadside bomb discovered by U.S. troops in Iraq before he arrived in the United States. But the prints were not in any of the databases that visa applicants were automatically checked against. Alwan pleaded guilty in federal court in December to conspiring to attack U.S. troops in Iraq, conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction and attempting to provide material support to terrorists.

Neither man had worked for U.S. organizations in Iraq. Both received refugee status for humanitarian reasons.

Note that Alwan pleaded guilty.  I’m guessing that there was huge pressure on him to do so because you can bet-your-booties that no one, especially the Obama State Department, wanted a big public trial in Kentucky with Senator Rand Paul on their case!

By the way, Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) was quaking in his boots when this story broke because I am sure he has been an enabler of refugee resettlement in Kentucky because big businesses in his state need the cheap labor.  When a Kentucky citizen activist went to his office for help with the neglect of refugees in Bowling Green a few years ago, he rebuffed her.

Also, I remember so well the beating the Bush Administration got in 2007 and 2008 from the “human rights” (ha-ha) activists with the help of AP’s reporter Matthew Lee about the slow and careful way the Bush homeland security people were screening Iraqis.  Once Obama was elected the spigot would be opened—or so they thought.

USA Today (continues):

The slowdown also puts President Obama, who during his run for the White House blasted the George W. Bush administration for doing too little to protect Iraqis who assisted the U.S. mission in Iraq, in an awkward position.

The article goes on to tell us about White House meetings on the security problem but with no mention of Obama Iraqi refugee czar, Samantha Power.  Guess she is too busy these days coping with the new “refugee” problems her “responsibility to protect” has caused in Egypt and Libya.

Millions of Iraqis “abandoned” by US

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

You can’t win with these Leftists.  They screamed and hollered that we had to get out of Iraq.  In fact, they played a huge role in getting Obama elected because he promised just that—he would get us out of Iraq and Afghanistan.  So, Obama yanks all of our troops out of Iraq (at once) and headlines (from Leftwing publications) like our title above are everywhere.

Below is how a story from New America Media begins.  But, read about NAM first—started in 1996 they say this in their ‘about:‘

NAM is dedicated to bringing the voices of the marginalized – ethnic minorities, immigrants, young people, elderly – into the national discourse. The communities of the New America will then be better informed, better connected to one another, and better able to influence policy makers.

NAM on the Iraqis (likening them to the Vietnamese where the actions of the political Left/antiwar movement caused their abandonment).  We can argue about whether getting into both Vietnam and Iraq was a good idea, but in both cases we should have stayed to win and help stabilize the country.   Maybe the political Left (the Communists and Socialists) wants this “abandonment” story (US is bad story!).  Gee, could the refugees just be their pawns in a larger game?

Each time Uncle Sam ventures abroad he leaves an unfinished story, and nowhere is it most unfinished than the story of Iraq, where despite flowery speeches regarding freedom and sovereignty by the Obama administration, despite assurances that tyranny has been “cast aside,” the tragedy caused by the United States invasion, occupation and inevitable abandonment is on an epic proportion.

Read it all.

So where was the political Left condemning Obama for getting us involved in Egypt and Libya for instance?  Watch for it, we will soon hear calls for us to take Egyptian and Libyan refugees (maybe they have already begun!).

Iraqis to Idaho; Christian convert tells his story

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

A lot of refugees are placed in Idaho.  We have many many posts on the topic of Idaho and refugees over the years.  At one point, it was (maybe still is) one of those immigrant overloaded cities begging for a respite.  Since I mentioned the Special Immigrant Visas last week available to people who worked in Iraq for the US government, this article in the Idaho Statesman caught my eye.

Idaho Statesman today:

In the past year, more than 9,000 of the 56,000 refugees who came to the U.S. came from Iraq. Iraqis now represent one of the largest groups of refugees in Idaho.

In the past five years, 912 Iraqi refugees have arrived in the state — 93 in the last year. Thousands more Iraqi men and women who worked for the U.S. military are in the country on special immigrant visas.

According to the Idaho Office for Refugees, the number of refugees from the Near East/South Asia (Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan) will continue to grow as post-war resettlement efforts continue.

Like any population, immigrants are mobile, moving for job opportunities or to be closer to family members in other cities. Officials don’t know how many Iraqis have stayed in Idaho over the years, said Kara Fink, communications specialist with the IOR.

Michael Paul’s, a convert from Islam to Christianity, was the profile, of three reported in this article, that interested me most.

He converted from Islam to Christianity in 1993.

He practiced his new religion quietly for a decade, waiting for the day he could practice in the open. His first goal after walking onto a U.S. base in 2003 was to meet the American chaplain and get baptized.

He wanted to come to the U.S. to study with biblical scholars. And he could not stay in Iraq; his religion and his work put him in double jeopardy.

His family rejected him because of his conversion.

Grateful for Americans

He was kidnapped three times while working for the Americans. He describes his kidnappers as “masked militia men” whom he heard say, “We caught that traitor. He has no loyalty to his country.”

American soldiers rescued him after each kidnapping. He saw their humanity in other ways, such as when an army medic found an injured donkey in the street and dressed its wounds.

“I received a lot from Americans in Iraq. I want to give back in the way God allows me,” Paul said.

He told the mother of one fallen American soldier—we were “fighting evil.”

The US left Iraq too soon

As much as he believes in the sacrifices made by Americans, he says it will be a long time before life is better in Iraq.

He listens to Iraqi radio online, and knows Christians must still hide their beliefs. He wishes America could keep a heavy presence in Iraq: Iraqis will need guidance to learn the tenets of democracy after decades under a dictator.

“I wish more than anything that one day Iraq will be like any state in America,” he said.

Read it all.

As the Muslim Brotherhood continues its expansion in the US,  people like Paul should spot the danger first and sound the alarm for naive Americans.

Special Immigrant Visas not forthcoming for Iraqi interpreters

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I remember it like it was yesterday, in 2007 and 2008 the refugee lobby hounded George Bush on the slow flow of Iraqis into the US.  Every month like clockwork AP reporter Matthew Lee reported what the refugee activists deemed too small a number of Iraqis entering the US and Bush was soooo bad!  And, the next month, Bush is bad!  Did you hear that!  Bush is so bad!

Now that President Obama has pulled all of our troops out of Iraq and the violence is on the uptick (no military to protect Iraqis who helped us) and the flow is very slow—especially the flow of interpreters—there is one word missing in this lengthy article about those now in danger in Iraq—OBAMA.   His name is completely absent from the Los Angeles Times story as if what is happening in Iraq is completely disconnected from who is in the White House now that Obama occupies it!

And, by the way, where is Ms. Samantha Powers and her “responsibility to protect.”   She is the White House Iraqi refugee czar after all!   The US State Department is getting the heat in this story, but gee, aren’t she and Obama responsible?  How come the Left isn’t going after them?

From the Los Angeles Times featuring Iraqi ‘Tariq’ who would like to get here, but the process has been slowed after the Kentucky Iraqi terror bust (a story which has disappeared into a black hole in the media!):

The visa process, always slow and cumbersome, has bogged down further since two Iraqi refugees were arrested in Kentucky in May on federal terrorism charges that included providing material support in the U.S. for Al Qaeda.

We reported on the “passage” of the ‘Refugee Crisis in Iraq Act’ back when it was snuck on to a Defense authorization bill (literally at night) by the now deceased Senator Ted Kennedy.  There were no hearings nor debate and it was attached to a bill that Bush had to sign.   So wouldn’t this (below) be a point in the story where the LA Times reporter could tell us how bad Obama is—that he  is not honoring the legacy of the “lion” of the Senate.

Three words from U.S. legislation are imprinted on his brain: “special immigrant visa.” The Refugee Crisis in Iraq Act, passed in 2008, provided fast-track status for Iraqis who had worked for the U.S. government or military.

The law authorized 5,000 special visas per year — 20,000 through 2011. But through October, just 3,415 had been issued to Iraqis, according to the Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project.

The State Department says 7,362 Iraqis who worked for the U.S. have received special visas over that period, but that total includes family members.

Through July, 62,500 Iraqis had applied through the special visa program, though many have given up and dropped out.

You might want to read the whole story.

More on Special Immigrant visas here at USCIS.

Norway returning gay asylum seekers to Iraq

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I don’t get it.  Norway, a self-proclaimed progressive nation that lets anyone in, is now returning gay men to Iraq, and if this article is correct, so are Sweden, Denmark and Finland.

The piece from a publication for gays says that gay men (Lesbians too I presume) will be killed for being homosexuals, but not one word about why that would happen—it’s Sharia Law—the Islamic faith prohibits homosexuality and I have a difficult time understanding why Leftists, running countries like Norway don’t get it.  Why are conservatives vilified when opposing gay marriage but homosexual political activists don’t vilify Islamists who want to kill them?

Here is the story:

Life is brutal for LGBTs living in Iraq: there’s the familial “honor killings,” police raids on gay parties, the secret police who will burn down your house and slash your throat, the murderers who stalk gay chat rooms for fresh victims, militia groups willing to gang rape and execute the gay out of you, and last but not least, the vigilante groups that will kill you by gluing your anus shut and feeding you laxatives.

So when Norway’s High Court refused asylum to gay Iraqi refugee Azad Hassan Rasol and suggested he “go home and be discrete,” they basically told him that if he acts less fruity, he might have a chance of actually surviving there—hardly a reassuring plan in a hellhole where every day could be his last.

Since Rasol hails from the Kurdish region of Iraq, Norwegian Immigration authorities said that the risk for gay men in that region “differs greatly” from the rest of Iraq and that he can seek protection from the regional authorities.

Uh, yeah… good plan.

Unless Norway or another country grants Rasol asylum, he and his Norwegian boyfriend will return to Iraq where Rasol says that his clan will gladly kill them.

Of course, the way Europe is going, gay men/women won’t be safe from Islamic persecution there either.  Check out this article (Hat tip: Judy) entitled ‘Sharia Law already devouring the UK.’