I laughed this morning when I saw last week’s news—that those in charge of national security have discovered an important chink in our “humanitarian” refugee program as it relates to Syrians (and frankly Iraqis and Somalis as well!)—how do you screen someone who has no paper trail?
And, how do you keep them from being radicalized once we let them in?
This story (from last week) is this morning’s headline story under the banner (Obama letting ISIS in?) at Drudge.
(ABC News)US Officials Admit Concern Over Syrian Refugee Effort.
Readers: Consider yourselves more educated on this national security issue than most of Washington!
For any new readers in the national media—be sure to see the State Department obfuscating here and know that Syrian refugees are already arriving!
Here is news from just a few days ago where Syrians are arriving in the home state of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and 2016 Presidential contender Senator Rand Paul.
This story is a few weeks old, so who knows what the latest is, but we will post it to keep our archives on the ‘Invasion of Europe’ comprehensive and as complete as possible. Gee, I hope they have an agency better than ourFBI to screen the Sunni Muslims which make up the majority of the UN program’s flow. (Our FBI says they can’t be screened!)
Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness says it would send an important message! What, that No. Ireland is foolish?
The Stormont Executive has approached the Home Office over the potential of resettling a number of Syrian refugees in Northern Ireland, Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness has told the Assembly.
Mr McGuinness said he felt the region should “respond positively” to a call from the United Nations refugee agency – UNHCR – to help some of the more than three million displaced as a consequence of Syria’s bloody internal conflict.
The UK Government has not signed up to the UN programme but has accommodated around 100 refugees under its own Vulnerable Persons Relocation initiative.
Mr McGuinness noted that other European nations were making a much greater contribution to the resettlement efforts through the UN scheme.
He said despite the UK’s government stance he believed Northern Ireland should be allowed to relocate a number of refugees.
Just as we have been discussing the testimony this past week by the FBI to the House Homeland Security Committee and how difficult it is to vet the thousands of Syrians in the UN’s pipeline to America, news is coming that the first Syrians are arriving.
This information about a Muslim charity giving grants for refugee resettlement is the first I have seen of this practice.
Head quartered in Alexandria, VA, Islamic Relief USA is not a rinkey-dink charity—in a recent Form 990 they reported $65 million in income in one year.
***Update***Ryan Mauro writing at the Clarion Project says that Islamic Relief USA is linked to the Muslim Brotherhood (here).
“We all came as refugees and now it’s about time for us to give back,” said Semsudin Haseljic.
Syrian refugees arriving in Louisville, KY on Friday. Looks like nutritional deprivation was not a concern for this family
He arrived in Louisville to get treatment when he lost both legs in the Bosnian war. “It was difficult at the beginning because I was here by myself,” Haseljic said. “I didn’t have any money, any clothes, any family members.”
Today, he’s a caseworker with Kentucky Refugee Ministries. The organization with the help of the Bosnian American Islamic Center, and thanks to a grant from Islamic Relief USA, is bringing a family fleeing civil war in Syria. “This is a young couple, a husband and wife, and two young children,” Haseljic said.
Mohammed Masmoom and his family have had a long journey, stretching many months and miles, but when asked about his emotions today, all he could talk about was his welcome.
“He feels great that he saw all these people welcome him in the airport,” said Miriam Jaleel, who translated for the family.
The family was taken to the apartment that’s been rented in their name for a welcome meal, and then a weekend to adjust and decompress.
On Monday, Kentucky Refugee Ministries will begin explaining the services [including welfare—ed] they can expect, the English classes they’ll take and the help they’ll get finding jobs. The goal is for them to be self-sufficient in five to eight months and then help other families that Refugee Ministries expects to arrive in [from?] Syria.
By the way, Louisville is a preferred resettlement site for the federal government. And, Kentucky is a Wilson-Fish state which means that Kentucky elected officials at the local and state level have no say in any of this—it is all done with federal contractors like Kentucky Refugee Ministries.
But….Mitch and Rand could say a whole lot about this if they wanted to!
We told you about recent FBI testimony (here) that Homeland Security is not capable of properly screening prospective Syrian refugees that the UN has chosen for us because there is no way to get any data from a “failed state.” As a result, the State Department’s plan to bring in 9,000-10,000 this year has hit a roadblock.
Eleven months ago, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society was calling for the US to admit 75,000 Syrian refugees over a 5 year period. I wonder have they modified their demands? https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2014/03/29/hebrew-immigrant-aid-society-us-should-bring-75000-syrians-to-us-over-next-5-years/
Below, Leo Hohmann, writing at World Net Daily, gives us more detail about the House Homeland Security hearing last week and the FBI testimony, but in his more indepth analysis he also tells us about those ‘Americans’ who have gone to Syria recently and returned—what were they doing in Syria and do they pose a threat to us?
Longtime readers here know that Somali ‘youths’ who we took in and cared for have thumbed their noses at the good life here and have gone to join jihadists around the world, but how many other former “refugees” have gone for jihad training?
And, do you know that there is no way to stop their return to your cities?
World Net Daily(toward the end of a detailed story). ‘Syrian refugee program called backdoor for jihadists’:
“We know that foreign fighters have gone from 15,000 to 20,000. We know that 5,000 of these foreign fighters have Western passports that could get them entrance into the United States,” McCaul said. “… There are hundreds of Americans who have traveled to the region to fight with ISIS. We know that some of them have returned, and that’s a classified number. But my first question is, for those who have returned to the United States, what assurances can you give the American people, and what are we doing about it to make sure they do not attack in the United States?”
Nicholas Rasmussen, director of the National Counter Terrorism Center, also testified Wednesday and said the numbers are far from clear.
“We know what we know, but that comes from a wide variety of sources and we have always assessed that there is likely more information out there that we have not yet been able to collect … And that is possible there are greater numbers of foreign fighters and potentially even greater numbers of individuals from Western countries who have traveled to the conflict zones.”
Steinbach agreed the numbers could be much greater than the 150 or so Americans suspected of fighting for ISIS, also called ISIL. [I will bet a large percentage of those who have gone to Syria come from the Muslim immigrant community in the US—ed]
“I would not be truthful if I told you we knew about all the returnees. We know what we know. There is a number that we don’t know about,” he told the committee. “The ones we know about, that have returned from Syria and the conflict zone. … Regardless of the intelligence that we started with, we build a case to disrupt. … And we seek to determine the root cause of their travel, what they did in Syria, and then ultimately if it was in support of a foreign terrorist organization such as ISIL we look for prosecution or some other type of disruption.”
Don’t you think it would be very simple to rescind the passports of anyone traveling to Syria and Iraq for no legitimate reason? Or, flag everyone coming back for interrogation?
About the photo: The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) was not alone among the refugee resettlement contractorsin demanding 15,000 Syrians a year—most of the nine were on board. Readers may remember that the contractors persuaded the Obama Administration to relax security screening for Syrians, here, one year ago this month.
Last October, HIAS launched a petition drive to pressure the President to raise the quota of total refugees for FY2015 from 70,000-100,000 to accommodate more Syrians.
By the way, for all of our new readers, the contractors like to refer to themselves as VOLAGS (short for Voluntary agencies) which is such a joke since they are largely funded by you—the American taxpayer.
For months, State Department spokesmen (we will bring as many as our Iraqi commitment—20,000? a year) and women(processing 5,000 now, 10,000 plus annually going forward) have been bragging that finally the US was in high gear to start resettling the thousands of mostly Muslim Syrian refugees that the UN has chosen for us.
State Department Spokeswoman Jen Psaki putting a happy face on the announcement that the US must necessarily revise downward its Syrian refugee admission predictions.
Well, this is embarrassing, they are now saying maybe 2,000 tops! this year. The UN and the resettlement contractors*** must be hopping mad!
However, to listen to State Department daily briefer Psaki, you wouldn’t know that just a couple of days ago the FBI testified in Congress that THEY CANNOT PROPERLY VET SYRIAN REFUGEES BECAUSE THEY HAVE NO INFORMATION ON THEM. See our post here yesterday.
The State Department said the number of refugees admitted from Syria is expected to increase despite concern voice in a House Homeland Security hearing this week that the program is a “huge mistake.”
Press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters that 524 Syrians have been admitted as refugeessince the uprising against Bashar Assad’s regime began in 2011.
“We’re likely to admit 1,000 to 2,000 Syrian refugees for permanent resettlement in fiscal year 2015 and a somewhat higher number that is still in the low thousands in fiscal year 2016,” she said. “I don’t have anymore details on where. There’s obviously an entire process that is undergone.”
Psaki defended the process as keeping in standing with the United States’ “long tradition of welcoming refugees, many of whom have fled unspeakable horrors and persecution.”
“There has been longstanding bipartisan support for this in Congress. And certainly I think if we look at the crisis in Syria and the unspeakable horrors that many people in that country have gone through, what many people have called for is support for more refugees, which certainly we are open to,” she added.
Refugees are admitted “in a way that is safe and consistent with our national security interests” in a process that “can take months, if not longer.”
