Update April 3, 2008:   Here is link for the program tomorrow.   And, also read this excellent discussion of the Refugee Resettlement program at Frontpage magazine where national refugee expert, Don Barnett,  discusses reforms proposed by David Martin and others.

The Matthew J. Ryan Public Policy Forum will bring together on Friday in Washington, DC a group of important people to discuss how bad the US has been about helping Iraqi refugees.   No, they don’t actually say that last part,  but you can tell by the line-up of speakers and the questions they plan to address that this will hardly be the “bipartisan” forum organizers claim.

Here are the questions they plan to address:

More than two million people have fled Iraq and hundreds of thousands more are internally displaced within Iraq. Who are the refugees? Why are they fleeing? What is their status under the law? What conditions and obstacles are the refugees facing in host countries? What ethical and moral considerations are posed by the refugee flow? What are the ramifications of the flow? What challenges does the refugee flow present to neighboring countries and to relations in the Middle East? What has the United States government done to offer refugees protection? What role should the United States and other countries play in the refugee crisis?

Notice there isn’t one question involving national security or the difficulties Christians face due to real persecution by Muslim extremists.   In the list of speakers there isn’t one from Homeland Security, nor a single speaker like Congressman Rohrabacher who would question a wholesale airlift of tens of thousands of Iraqis to America if one should be proposed. 

The list includes Ambassadors from Syria and Jordan.  Do you think anyone will ask the Syrian ambassador what his country could do to help stablize Iraq so the refugees could go home?  Or, do you think he will just be there with a hand out looking for US taxpayers to send some cool millions to Syria.

Human Rights Watch, which plans a big lobbying campaign on Iraqi refugees in mid-April, will be there.    Then there are friendly reporters (where is Matthew Lee?) and pro bono lawyers who have been running back and forth to the Middle East to work their legal magic, and of course the volags who need a flow of refugees to keep collecting their government-funded salaries.

Another speaker is David Martin, Warner-Booker Distinguished Professor of International Law, University of Virginia School of Law.  I’ve been meaning for some time to direct you to his work “United States Refugee Admissions Program: Reforms for a new era of refugee resettlement”  in which he lays out his ideas for reforming refugee resettlement.   It’s all about bringing more refugees, sooner, faster and with less security screening.  

Martin wants to do away with the concept of a ceiling for refugee admissions and turn that number into a goal that would be mandated.   And, his really scary proposal is to open refugee resettlement to whole classes of people (hankering for the glory days of Vietnamese masses flowing here) and doing away with any requirement for individuals to have to prove they are persecuted.    In other words, someone could just say “I am an Iraqi” and it would be understood they were persecuted and would be allowed to enter the US. 

Professor Martin never addresses reforms that involve impacts of refugee resettlement on communities in America; he doesn’t address reforms of the system that allows volags to collect government money and not take good care of the refugees they are paid to care for.  Not once does he address whether there are certain cultures that are not going to assimilate well into American society.   He never discusses whether refugee resettlement is an employment service for big businesses in America that serves to keep wages low for all workers.  And, of course, he never once addresses whether the lack of oversight by the State Department and the Office of Refugee Resettlement allows taxpayer money to be wasted and occasionally stolen.

So, what do you think this auspicious gathering will conclude?

This is how it works, how regular American citizens have so little say in momentous decisions in Washington.   These groups, often extensively funded by taxpayers and left-leaning foundations get a publicity campaign going by getting news stories planted with the help of friendly reporters in the mainstream media.  This softening up of the public has been going on for months and months now.  

Then they have events like this one on Friday.   They already know what they will conclude because Human Rights Watch has its lobbying campaign set to begin about 10 days later.   They will move Congress to act and before you know it our doors will be flung open because anyone who has questions, or thinks we need to go slow has no organized campaign to counter balance them. 

We have 118 posts in our Iraqi refugee category for new ambitious readers!