What We Need To Know

The Center for Security Policy recently posted an article listing the things all Americans need to know about the current wave of Syrian refugees.

The list is a as follows:

  1. Many are not from Syria. They are not refugees–they are migrants. That would be fine if they were willing to assimilate rather than trying to recreate the mess that they left.
  2. Most of them are not widowed women or orphaned children. According to a Pew Research Center review of Eurostat data, 72 percent of asylum applicants are male, and over half are men under the age of 40.
  3. Those in charge of ensuring our security don’t think that the refugees can be properly vetted.
  4. Most are not from the minority groups ISIS targets for persecution.
  5. Some have ISIS sympathies.According to the article: Some 16 to 23 percent of the estimated 3 million Syrian refugees who have fled the country are Christians. Even though ISIS has specifically targeted religious minorities (notably Christians and Yazidis) for persecution, less than 3 percent of the Syrian refugees admitted to the United States so far are Christian, and 96 percent are Muslim.
  6. It costs more money to resettle refugees in the U.S. than in countries that neighbor Syria.
  7. The wealthy Arab-Islamic countries surrounding Syria aren’t taking refugees because of security concerns.

The article concludes:

Critics of President Obama’s plan for resettling Syrian refugees in the U.S. are labeled xenophobic bigots by those seeking warm fuzzy feelings and accolades for doing the supposed “right thing.”  It’s time for the president to stop demonizing his opponents, take a look at the facts, realize that they run counter to his narrative, and change course before we’re placed in a dangerous situation similar to the one Europe now faces.

It is time to mix common sense with compassion, something the Obama Administration seems reluctant to do.

Getting Past The Rhetoric

There is a lot being said right now about what to do with the Syrian refugees fleeing their country. The Center for Security Policy posted an article yesterday that shines a different light on the situation.

The article reports:

President Obama made headlines today in reaction to a question from the press regarding the possibility of taking in Syrian Christian and other religious minorities ahead or in place of Syrian Muslims (Syria is majority Sunni Muslim.) The President responded aggressively claiming such a policy was, “… not American. That’s not who we are. We don’t have religious tests to our compassion.”

The reality however is that the Refugee Resettlement system already has “a religious test of their compassion”, to quote the president. And that’s a test which actively disfavors Christians, according to figures released by the State Department:

Of 2,184 Syrian refugees admitted into the U.S. since the Syrian civil war erupted in 2011, only 53 (2.4 percent) have been Christians while 2098 (or 96 percent) have been Muslims, according to State Department statistics updated on Monday. The remaining 33 include 1 Yazidi, 8 Jehovah Witnesses, 2 Baha’i, 6 Zoroastrians, 6 of “other religion,” 7 of “no religion,” and 3 atheists.

According to the CIA Factbook, Syria has a Christian population of 10%. Approximately between 500,000 and 700,000 Christians have fled Syria–about 16% to 23% of the estimated 3 million Syrians who have fled. Since Christians are one of the main targets of the Islamists, this figure makes sense.

So what is going on here? America does not get to choose her refugees.

The article reports:

As Nina Shea highlights at National Review, The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is typically the deciding agency, and recommends to the United States which refugees will be resettled. So the selection process hits several snags. Firstly, Christian refugees almost overwhelmingly avoid United Nations refugee camps out of legitimate fears of possible violence against them. Reports of attacks on Christians refugees by their Muslim counterparts have been reported, such as when Christian refugees on a boat in the Mediterranean were thrown overboard, and German police have openly urged publicly separating Christian and Muslim refugees, due to attacks. In one case a Christian convert was beaten unconscious by a metal baton.

The second part of the problem is the fact that the United Nations is very much controlled by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). The OIC comprises the largest voting block in the United Nations. The OIC is headquartered in Saudi Arabia, where the practice of Christianity is illegal.

The article explains the third part of the problem:

Thirdly, and perhaps most largely problematic, is the appearance of overt anti-Christian bias by the State Department itself. As good friend of the Center, Institute for Religion and Democracy’s Faith McDonnell notes in her recent piece on the state of Christian refugees, the State Department has explicitly declared they, “would not support a special category to bring Assyrian Christians into the United States,” in response to a plan by a private aid group to fund, entirely free of taxpayer dollars, the transport of Assyrian Christians facing extermination by Islamic State.

In other words, even when its free, no cost to them, the State Department has preferred to snub Christians rather than save them.

There is a religious test for refugees. Unfortunately that test is not only against the best interests of America, it discriminates against a persecuted group of refugees.

Hopefully There Is A Harmless Explanation For This

WBRZ is an ABC affiliate in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The station posted the following on its Facebook page:

SyrianRefugeeMissingToday The Gateway Pundit also posted an article about the situation.

The Gateway Pundit states:

The news may seem alarming that neither state government nor the federal government track newly-arrived refugees who have just entered the country, but it is actually not uncommon at all.

So let’s get this straight–the government is bringing these people into the country, there is no real way of thoroughly vetting them, and neither the state or the federal government is tracking the refugees after they arrive.

Have we totally departed our senses?

 

As The Debate On Refugees Continues…

Joe Fitzgerald posted a commentary in the Boston Herald yesterday about the current state of affairs in America. The title of the article was, “In desperate times, deception destroys.”

Here are a few very cogent points from the article:

In circles of recovery it’s sometimes referred to as “the gift of desperation,” that moment when it becomes crystal clear to an addict that a change must be made, that returning to the old ways is simply not an option anymore.

…Even the pope — who represents the Prince of Peace on Earth — seems to have embraced the spirit of the Old Testament’s “eye for an eye” credo, as if to suggest there are limits on how often we should turn the other cheek, because it’s obvious the barbarians at our gates view kindness as weakness.

It’s not complicated. If we’re not going to love them into the family of civilization, then we need to crush them into oblivion, and soon.

Immigration is as American as the bald eagle. Ellis Island bore witness to that.

But now it’s no longer a conversation about our hospitality; it’s clearly become the Achilles heel of our nation’s security as millions take refuge in our populace without learning our history, speaking our language or giving any indication of affection for this country.

Mr. Fitzgerald reminds us that asking who the refugees are and why they are coming here is not ‘hateful, prejudiced, or xenophobic’–it is common sense. We are responsible for preserving the country our Founding Fathers left us.

It would do us well to remember what Ben Franklin said after the close of the Continental Congress in 1787 when he was asked the following:

“Well, Doctor, what have we got—a Republic or a Monarchy?”

  “A Republic, if you can keep it.”

We need to welcome people who want to live in that Republic and send those who don’t want to live in that Republic somewhere where they will be more comfortable.

The Challenge Of Balancing Compassion And Safety

We are faced with a flood of refugees coming out of the civil war in Syria and the advance of ISIS in other parts of the Middle East. These people need a safe place to go, but the situation is complicated. The nations where they would most easily assimilate are not willing to give them refuge. It is doubtful whether they would be willing to assimilate into western nations, and that fact comes with its own set of problems and concerns.

In evaluating this situation, we need to look at some of our history. The opening paragraph of the United States Constitution states:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Our government is charged with providing for the common defense. Our Constitution is the Law of the Land. We are not open to another law. The people who have come here in the past have understood that and been willing to live under American law. I fear that the Syrian refugees, even those with totally peaceful motives, will want to establish Sharia Law. That is the history of Muslim immigrants. Also, the fact that we cannot vet these refugees because Syria is a failed state means that by admitting these refugees we are putting Americans at risk. That goes against our Constitution. It is also noteworthy that many of these refugees are military-age young men–not families.

Today’s U.K. Daily Mail posted an article about President Obama’s plan to bring Syrian refugees to America. The article reports that so far twenty-five Republican governors and one Democratic governor have stated that they do not want the Syrian refugees in their states.

There are enough stable Middle Eastern countries that could easily take in these refugees. One wonders why they have not stepped up to the plate. Meanwhile, the American President is responsible for the safety of the American people.

Where Some Of The Terrorists Came From

Yahoo News is reporting today that one of the men involved in the Paris attacks registered as a refugee with Greek authorities in October. Another man involved had registered as a refugee in Greece in August.

This is the danger of taking in Syrian refugees. Syria is a failed state–there is no way to vet the refugees. Also, the number of refugees seeking asylum makes it very difficult to check anyone thoroughly. This is a terrorist network’s dream.

Meanwhile, last week CBC News reported that President Obama is seeking to speed up the vetting process of allowing Syrian refugees into the United States. I hope what happened in Paris last night will cause him to reconsider.

All Muslims are not terrorists, but given the current state of things, it would be much safer to allow the Christian refugees from the Middle East to enter America. They would be much more adaptable to our customs and much more likely to assimilate. I think the time has come for the peaceful Islamic countries in the Middle East to take in the Islamic refugees from Syria. It would be a much more comfortable fit. The refugees would assimilate easily into the Muslim culture in Saudi Arabia, U.A.E., etc. It is time those countries stepped up to help their fellow Muslims.

This Should Make Us All Feel Very Secure

Yesterday Investor’s Business Daily posted an article about the Syrian refugees coming to the United States. The article brings up a rather obvious but somehow unmentioned fact–Homeland Security has no way to vet the refugees because Syria has no police or intelligence databases to check the backgrounds of incoming refugees against criminal and terrorist records. Syria is a failed state at this point. There is not enough order to keep a reliable database.

The article reports:

Senior FBI officials recently testified that they have no idea who these people are, and they can’t find out what type of backgrounds they have — criminal, terrorist or otherwise — because there are no vetting opportunities in those war-torn countries.

Syria and Iraq, along with Somalia and Sudan, are failed states where police records aren’t even kept. Agents can’t vet somebody if they don’t have documentation and don’t even have the criminal databases to screen applicants.

So the truth is, we are not vetting these Muslim refugees at all. And as GOP presidential front-runners duly note, it’s a huge gamble to let people from hostile nations enter the U.S. without any meaningful background check. It’s a safer bet just to limit, if not stop, their immigration.

“If I win, they’re going back,” Donald Trump vowed. “They could be ISIS. This (mass Syrian immigration) could be one of the great tactical ploys of all time.”

Ben Carson, for his part, said that he would bar refugees from Syria because they are “infiltrated” with terrorists seeking to harm America. “To bring into this country groups infiltrated with jihadists makes no sense,” Carson asserted. “Why would you do something like that?”

The Obama regime claims to have no evidence of terrorist or even extremist infiltration. But Sessions made public a list of 72 recent Muslim immigrants arrested just over the past year who were charged with terrorist activity.

This seems to be a rather large gamble for a national security issue. The other untold part of the story is the unwillingness of the stable Muslim countries in the Middle East and elsewhere to take in these refugees. Saudi Arabia offered to build mosques in Germany for the refugees; why didn’t they offer to build them houses in Saudi Arabia?

There is a political element in the Middle East that thrives on using refugees as pawns. The Palestinians were not Palestinians until 1967. They have never been able to settle in the lands they actually came from–they have been kept in refugee camps and blocked from forming a viable non-terrorist state.

The following quote tells it all:

Walid Shoebat Quote

One wonders what purpose the political forces in the Middle East have in releasing all of these Muslims to western countries.