- Presidential candidates looking Kingly (not a reference to Trump’s wealth)
- Safe zone concept for refugees gathering support
- Democrat who voted for Ryan’s Syrian Refugee bill did so because it will not stop any refugees
- Ryan’s bill called cynical in NetrightDaily article
- Feinstein calls for ending “no Visa required” – makes a lot of sense — but Ryan’s bill has no effect on this huge open door for terrorists
- Ridiculous analogy about 1939 refugee boat
Iowa’s Congressman King’s attempt at amending Ryan’s Syrian refugee bill to take into account religious differences actually “presidential” . . .
We previously reported that Ted Cruz and even Jeb Bush have voiced support for prioritizing Syrian Christian refugee resettlement for the United States — it makes practical and cultural sense. Predominately Muslim countries need to be primarily responsible for Muslim refugees. Religious distinctions are properly made and the bill’s failure to recognize them was part of Steve King’s opposition (one of only two Republicans) to the Ryan Syrian refugee bill, (besides it being ineffectual and arguably another abrogation of congressional powers). Now we see that candidates Carson and Santorum are talking about differentiating between Christians and Muslims as regards refugees and foreign affairs.
From CNS Carson says safe zones in Syria better than refuge in US
CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — Republican Ben Carson said Friday that creating safe zones in Syria and establishing a coalition government in the war-torn nation are better ways to deal with Syrian refugees than resettling them in the United States.
“I think it actually makes a lot more sense and we can provide them with humanitarian support,” Carson said after filing his paperwork to run in the New Hampshire presidential primary.
From Hot Air: Santorum “wants them resettled, just closer to home”
Allahpundit explains Santorum thusly (in some respects this seems the closest to Kings position yet):
Help Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE fund special “industrial zones” that employ refugees and you might solve several problems, easing the tension in the west over integrating Muslims and potentially creating better economic opportunities for refugees than they’d have as marginalized western workers. They’d also be far better positioned geographically to return home to Syria or Iraq or wherever their country of origin is if/when the region stabilizes. That’s Santorum’s point. ISIS, he notes, is engaged in sectarian cleansing of Mesopotamia; whether that’s achieved by bullets or by mass emigration by the persecuted group may be academic to them. If Arab Christians move en masse to Europe and the U.S., the odds of them returning even to a peaceful Syria will diminish. If you want the region to be safe-ish for Christianity again someday, you should think carefully before encouraging Christians to flee far abroad.
Democrats voted for Ryan’s Syrian refugee bill because they don’t think it will inhibit Obama’s plans
From the Daily Caller: Dem Explains Real Reason He Voted For House Refugee Bill
One of the 47 House Democrats who voted with Republicans for a bill Thursday imposing new rules on the intake of Syrian and Iraqi refugees said he decided to support the measure only after he concluded it wouldn’t stop President Barack Obama’s resettlement plan. . . .
But Rep. Gerry Connolly and others weren’t convinced, and apparently saw the vote as a chance to respond to the terror attacks in Paris without putting the resettlement plan in real jeopardy. “I walked in there generally a no — probably a no — and I left a decided yes,” Connolly told The Hill. “And I’m not alone.” . . .
Officials told Democrats in the meeting the already one and a half to two year process of admission could be doubled if the bill becomes law.
“No one wants that as an outcome,” Connolly told The Hill. But he was reassured when officials acknowledged in the meeting more resources and a process of delegating the certification could actually expedite the process, and concluded it wouldn’t substantially hinder the resettlement plan.
“Can’t we work [the delay] out administratively by adding resources, delegating certification, maybe even collapsing all of this into a more expedited, accelerated process across the board?” people asked officials in the meeting, according to Connolly. Rather than respond by saying that would be illegal, officials answered they don’t have the staff necessary to pull that off.
“That’s just a matter of mechanics,” Connolly told The Hill. “It’s not a matter of principle or statute. . . .
House Speaker Paul Ryan is billing the measure as a “pause” to the Syrian refugee program, although the law technically would not stipulate or require any such pause. He blocked all amendments to the bill, including a popular measure to suspend all resettlement services for six months. (bold emphasis ours)
House passes ‘cynical’ refugee bill Robert Romano at NetRightDaily
Yesterday, the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed without much consideration a proposal that would require some additional FBI scrutiny for about 10,000 refugees from the war in Syria and Iraq over concerns that they cannot be properly vetted because of inadequate intelligence on who the bad guys are.
Those concerns were emphasized earlier this week when it was revealed that at least one of the Paris bombers was carrying a passport masquerading as a refugee.
The issue itself was also presciently highlighted in October by FBI director James Comey in testimony before the House Committee on Homeland Security. “We can only query against that which we have collected,” Comey said, adding, “And so if someone has never made a ripple in the pond in Syria in a way that would get their identity or their interest reflected in our database, we can query our database until the cows come home, but there will be nothing show up because we have no record of them.”
Meaning, the intel on Syrian refugees may not even be that good. And unless the government stumbled on a hotbed of solid intel in the past month, the bill the House just passed is practically meaningless, too. It is little more than a feel-good, knee-jerk measure, akin to the rubber stamp most tourists get on their passports at the airport when they enter the U.S.
Speaking of which, the bill itself has a severe flaw, which is that it ignores the vast majority of people — hundreds of thousands — who travel to the U.S. every single year from North Africa, the Middle East and Asia with regular visas. (bold emphasis ours)
For example, in 2014, according to data compiled by the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. accepted 1,984 visas from Syria, 2,181 from Iraq, 3,858 from Jordan, 2,008 from Lebanon, 7,049 from Iran, and so forth.
The legislation that just passed the House will not include any additional scrutiny for those travelers, let alone restrict travel from the region. It only applies to the limited number of people seeking refugee status out of Iraq and Syria. That’s it.
If we don’t have adequate intel on the refugees, then how do we have adequate intel on everyone else traveling from that region?
The whole approach has an obvious loophole, said Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning in a Nov. 18 statement blasting the legislation: “Even if they make it harder to qualify as a refugee, the fact is our borders — thanks to our open-ended visa program — are still wide open. The enemy will just apply for employment, student, or basic travel visas. The 9/11 hijackers were all on legal visas, not pretending to be refugees seeking asylum.”
So, let’s back up for just a moment and consider the futility of what the House just did.
The FBI does not have adequate intelligence to vet refugees or anybody else coming out of the region. 10,000 refugees are expected in the next year, plus more than 200,000 additional travelers from the wider region on regular visas. The House passes a bill to do additional background checks on the 10,000 for which there may not be that much data to query, all the while ignoring the more than 200,000 who will pass through our airports will little trouble.
Which group is Islamic State, al Qaeda and other fighters more likely to hide amongst? The now high-profile refugees, or the walking-through-the-airports-as-we-speak tourists?
“This seems like a cynical joke rather than a serious effort to beef up security,” Manning said. (bold emphasis ours)
“That is why if Congress is truly serious about this issue they will restrict travel on the basis of region where the enemy is traveling out of until this situation is sorted, the war has ended, and the enemy is eliminated. Having open-ended immigration from countries you are at war with is exceptionally unwise,” Manning declared. . . .
The article continues, read more here.
Even Senate Democrat Feinstein sees the visa problem
US Senators Warn Terrorists Could Exploit Visa Waiver Program
The top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Feinstein has introduced legislation to block visa waivers for foreign nationals who have traveled to Syria or Iraq in the last five years.
“They can still visit,” Feinstein said, “but they need a traditional visa – a process that includes an in-person interview at a U.S. embassy or consulate.”
Syrian refugees arent 1939s Jews Ian Tuttle writing at National Review:
The tripe from liberals is exemplified by this Dana Milbank quote (referenced by Tuttle):
“This growing cry to turn away people fleeing for their lives brings to mind the SS St. Louis, the ship of Jewish refugees turned away from Florida in 1939,”
As Tuttle points out “There Are Serious, Unbigoted Reasons to Be Wary of a Flood of Syrian Refugees” and his article proceeds to identify key ones. Highly recommended in its entirety, we set forth one of the key distinctions he makes here:
The first, and most obvious, difference: There was no international conspiracy of German Jews in the 1930s attempting to carry out daily attacks on civilians on several continents. No self-identifying Jews in the early 20th century were randomly massacring European citizens in magazine offices and concert halls, and there was no “Jewish State” establishing sovereignty over tens of thousands of square miles of territory, and publicly slaughtering anyone who opposed its advance. Among Syrian Muslims, there is. The vast majority of Syrian Muslims are not party to these strains of radicalism and violence, but it would be dangerous to suggest that they do not exist, or that our refugee-resettlement program need not take account of them.
RELATED: Europe and the Refugees On a related note, the sympathies of Syrian Muslims are more diverse than those of Nazi-era German Jews. A recent Arab Opinion Index poll of 900 Syrian refugees found that one in eight hold a “to some extent”-positive view of the Islamic State (another 4 percent said that they did not know or refused to answer). A non-trivial minority of refugees who support a murderous, metastatic caliphate is a reason for serious concern. No 13 percent of Jews looked favorably upon the Nazi party.
