In September of last year the Obama Administration announced that the US would take in 10,000 Syrian refugees in the 2016 fiscal year. This fiscal year runs from October 1, 2015 until September 30, 2016.
That decision touched off a firestorm of opposition from governors and grassroots citizens concerned about security in the wake of the Paris terrorist attack and subsequent San Bernardino slaughter.
According to State Department data bases, only 841 have arrived through January 31st (4 months into the fiscal year). We can only assume that security screening is responsible for the snails pace.
Coming to a town near you!
Here is where they went (top 5 in red):
Arizona (43)
California (103)
Colorado (19)
Connecticut (33)
Florida (59)
Georgia (16)
Idaho (1)
Illinois (45)
Indiana (18)
Kansas (2)
Kentucky (50)
Maryland (10)
Massachusetts (7)
Michigan (93)
Minnesota (8)
Missouri (8)
Nevada (5)
New Jersey (18)
New York (23)
North Carolina (20)
Ohio (54)
Oregon (9)
Pennsylvania (69)
South Carolina (2)
Tennessee (6)
Texas (66)
Utah (12)
Virginia (6)
Washington (21)
Wisconsin (3)
The vast majority of 841 are Sunni Muslims!
Of the 841 admitted this fiscal year, here is the breakdown of the others: Catholic (3), Christian (1), Greek Orthodox (1), Orthodox (2), and other religion (1). They have a long way to reach Obama’s goal of 10,000 mostly Muslim Syrians by Sept. 30th!
Here is the hot news this morning. The LA Times has a more detailed account of the story that broke overnight, than some other news outlets (maybe CA is getting a little more sensitive to the terrorists living in their midst).
The two Iraqis are actually Palestinians who had been living in Iraq. By the way, we only bring a small number of Palestinians to the US as refugees. And, it is not clear to me if one or either of these actually became refugees by arriving here through some other means and then granted asylum. I guess only theirfederal resettlement contractorknows for sure! Al Hardan was arrested in Houston, TX. However, in all likelihood at least one of the two came from our special resettlement project for Palestinians when back in 2009 the US State Department agreed to bring in 1,350 Iraqi Palestinians to your neighborhoods.
It was quite big news at the time. And, the issue was that these were Palestinians Saddam Hussein had invited to live in Iraq and once the regime fell, no one wanted them.
Because of his arrival date, at least one of the two alleged Islamic terrorists could have been in that group. Here is what we said in 2009.
Now, the LA Times:
A man who came to the U.S. as an Iraqi refugee was arrested in Sacramento on Thursday on suspicion of lying about fighting alongside terrorist organizations in Syria, federal authorities said.
On the same day, federal authorities in Houston announced that an Iraqi refugee in Texas, who had been communicating online with the man in California, was charged with attempting to provide support to the militant group Islamic State.
The allegations against two men residing in the U.S. with links to foreign terrorist groups comes as the nation reels from the Dec. 2 shooting in San Bernardino, which left 14 dead. That is considered the deadliest terrorist act on U.S. soil since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
And the arrests of two refugees from Iraq, part of a wave of about 103,000*** Iraqi refugees admitted from 2006 to 2014, is likely to add fuel to the debate over whether the U.S. should welcome refugees from Syria, and if so, whether the screening process is adequate.
The man living in Sacramento, Aws Mohammed Younis Al-Jayab, 23, had reported in private messages on social media that he fought alongside various groups in Syria, including Ansar al-Islam, a Sunni terrorist group and an affiliate of Al Qaeda, according to a federal complaint filed Wednesday and unsealed Thursday.
There is much more here…..
Because of the ages at which these two must have arrived in the US (as teenagers), it shows how ludicrous the discussion about vetting refugees can be when they are obviously becoming more devoutafter they get here (I refuse to use the word radicalized!).
And, these two are not the first, remember there is another pair of Iraqi refugee terrorists in federal prison. See our complete archive on the Kentucky terrorists by clicking here.
The only way to make sure we are completely safe is to stop the migration from terror-producing Islamic countries!
*** I’ve been meaning to check out the numbers for Iraq for some time.
Using the State Department’s data base I went back to 2007 and grabbed a map from then until December 31, 2015. The Bush Administration was slow to admit Iraqi refugees, but opened the door in its last year in office. The Obama Administration has made Iraqis the largest group of refugees we admit each year since then. Here is where 127,906 Iraqis have been resettled since 2007(remember though that this does not mean they stayed where the contractors originally seeded them).
Top five states:
California (26,343)
Michigan (19,186)
Texas (12,314)
Illinois (7,336)
Massachusetts (4,322)
And, because it isn’t far behind (for my VA friends), Virginia (4,158)
Just a quick update on where we are with Obama’s promised 10,000 Syrians to be admitted to the US in FY 2016. They are off to a slow start diversifying your towns and expanding the Democrat voter base, that is for sure. Archbishop Joseph Kurtz of Kentucky is the President of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and is advocating for 100,000 Syrian, mostly Muslim, refugees to be placed in your parishes! Of the 674 Syrians so far this year, 3 are Catholics.
I’m thinking there are two factors involved: First, they can’t get them through security screening at anywhere near the numbers they need to make that 10,000 goal (and remember the resettlement contractors are still yammering for 100,000 this year).
And, two, maybe they are running into the same problem that Canada is having—they can’t find enough who want to move permanently to N. America. Why? Because they really want to go home!
The slow pace has nothing to do with grandstanding by the governors which we will tell you about shortly.
According to the US State Department data base we have admitted 674 Syrians in the first three months of the fiscal year (Oct. 1, 2015 to Dec. 31, 2015). At that rate the feds will get 2,696 here by Sept. 30th, 2016 (obviously far short of 10,000).
99% of the 674 are Muslims (660 are Sunni Muslims).
Here are the top five states “welcoming” Syrians:
Oregon Live has produced this very cool map. Please read the story to learn more.
For all of our new readers,go here, to see the federal list of refugee contractors working near you. You should also see our Frequently Asked Questions.
Now that the mainstream media and the public are waking up to the UN/US State Department Refugee Admissions Program and how it has been operating for the last 35 years, I thought it would be a good idea to re-post this testimony I gave to the US State Department (first in 2012 at its annual scoping meeting and repeated in 2013 and 2014). Anne Richard is the Asst. Secretary of State for Population Refugees and Migration. Here she testified last month at a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Syrian refugees. She needs to produce the hearing record for the 2015 ‘scoping meeting’ which we believe was held in secrecy. Photo and story about Judiciary hearing: http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/11/19/state-dept-official-syrian-refugees-less-threat-stops-tracking-3-months/
I just mentioned it in my previous poston annual reports. As far as we can tell, the US State Department did not hold a public scoping hearing in 2015 (for FY2016)because we never saw a notice for it this year. In these ‘scoping meetings/hearings’ they ostensibly seek public input on the size of the program for the upcoming year and they want to know what countries should be the focus of protection.
The ‘scoping’ meeting (like a hearing) was usually held in late spring/early summer of the preceding year. Prior to our attendance in 2012, these meetings/hearings were dominated by the resettlement contractors and their groupies. And, one more thing, the State Department does not keep and publish a hearing record for this meeting. The only way we could ever learn what others were saying was to obtain the hard copy testimony by attending in person! There ought to be a law!
Here is my testimony in 2012 (repeated in 2013 and 2014):
Ten Reasons there should be no refugees resettled in the US in FY2013—instead a moratorium should be put in place until the program is reformed and the economy completely recovers.
1) There are no jobs. The program was never meant to be simply a way to import impoverished people to the US and place them on an already overtaxed welfare system.
2) The program has become a cash cow for various “religious” organizations and other contractors who very often appear to care more about the next group of refugees coming in (and the cash that comes with each one) than the group they resettled only a few months earlier. Stories of refugees suffering throughout the US are rampant.
3) Terrorist organizations (mostly Islamic) are using the program that still clearly has many failings in the security screening system. Indeed consideration should be given to halting the resettlement of Muslims altogether. Also, the UN should have no role in choosing refugees for the US.
4) The public is not confident that screenings for potential terrorists (#3) or the incidences of other types of fraudulent entry are being properly and thoroughly investigated and stopped. When fraud is uncovered—either fraud to enter the country or illegal activity once the refugee has been resettled—punishment should be immediate deportation.
5) The agencies, specifically the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), is in complete disarray as regards its legally mandated requirement to report to Congress every year on how refugees are doing and where the millions of tax dollars are going that run the program. The last (and most recent) annual report to be sent to Congress is the 2008 report—so they are out of compliance for fiscal years 2009, 2010 and 2011. A moratorium is necessary in order for the ORR to bring its records entirely up-to-date. Additionally, there needs to be an adequate tracking system designed to gather required data—frankly some of the numbers reported for such measures of dependence on welfare as food stamp usage, cash assistance and employment status are nothing more than guesses. (The lack of reports for recent years signals either bureaucratic incompetence and disregard for the law, or, causes one to wonder if there is something ORR is hiding.)
6) The State Department and the ORR have so far failed to adequately determine and report (and track once the refugee has been admitted) the myriad communicable and costly-to-treat diseases entering the country with the refugee population.
7) Congress needs to specifically disallow the use of the refugee program for other purposes of the US Government,especially using certain refugee populations to address unrelated foreign policy objectives—Uzbeks, Kosovars, Meshketians and Bhutanese (Nepalese) people come to mind.
8) Congress needs to investigate and specifically disallow any connection between this program and big businesseslooking for cheap and captive labor. The federal government should not be acting as head-hunter for corporations.
9) The Volag system should be completely abolished and the program should be run by state agencies with accountability to the public through their state legislatures. The system as presently constituted is surely unconstitutional. (One of many benefits of turning the program over to a state agency is to break up the government/contractor revolving door that is being demonstrated now at both the State Department and ORR.) The participating state agency’s job would be to find groups, churches, or individuals who would sponsor a refugee family completely for at least a year and monitor those sponsors. Their job would include making sure refugees are assimilating. A mechanism should be established that would allow a refugee to go home if he or she is unhappy or simply can’t make it in America. Short of a complete halt to resettlement-by-contractor, taxpayers should be protected by legally requiring financial audits of contractors and subcontractors on an annual basis.
10) As part of #9, there needs to be established a process for alerting communities to the impending arrival of refugees that includes reports from the federal government (with local input) about the social and economic impact a certain new group of refugees will have on a city or town. This report would be presented to the public through public hearings and the local government would have an opportunity to say ‘no.’
For these reasons and more, the Refugee admissions program should be placed on hold and a serious effort made by Congress to either scrap the whole thing or reform it during the moratorium.Myrecommendation for 2013 is to stop the program now. The Office of the President could indeed ask for hearings to review the Refugee Resettlement Act of 1980-–three decades is time enough to see its failings and determine if reauthorization is feasible or whether a whole new law needs to be written.
Information on the three hearings we wrote about and attended are archived here, hereand here. (Those files include posts in which we referenced the hearings/meetings as well.)
By the way, Richard revolved into the State Department from her contractor job at the International Rescue Committee. She had a previous stint at the State Dept. The revolving door is alive and well between contractor and federal agency involving refugee resettlement.
