Thursday, November 19, 2015

Will Congress Ban Refugees

Ryan plotting 'meaningless show vote' on refugees, New speaker talks tough but won't pull trigger on crucial weapon, by Leo Hohmann, 11/18/15, WND

House Speaker Paul Ryan is lining up a showdown vote for Thursday on President Obama’s plan to resettle 10,000 Syrian refugees in the United States.

But conservatives on Capitol Hill who want to see the refugee program halted are warning that Ryan’s plan is nothing but a smokescreen designed to give lip-service while refusing to defund the program.

Ryan likely has no intention of cutting off the flow of Muslim refugees into the U.S., nor does he plan to ensure Syria’s persecuted Christian minority gets rescued from the clutches of ISIS, sources told WND.

The issue of ISIS terrorists infiltrating the West by sneaking in among the ranks of Syrian refugees has come to the fore in the wake of last Friday’s ISIS attack on Paris in which 132 innocent civilians were murdered by eight ISIS terrorists, at least two of which entered Europe as “refugees.”


So far, the Syrian refugee program has brought 2,184 Syrians to the U.S. – and 2,098 of them, or 97 percent, have been Muslims. Only 53 of the Syrian refugees, or 2.4 percent, have been Christians despite the fact that Christians are the most persecuted people in the path of ISIS. They are hunted down and forced to convert under threat of death, according to numerous independent bodies such as Voice of the Martyrs and 21st Century Wilberforce Initiative.

Ryan’s strategy is also ignoring the fact that Syria is only a small part of the overall United Nations refugee program that sends approximately 40,000 Muslims to America every year from some of the most notorious jihadist hotbeds such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Bangladesh, Sudan, Somalia and Burma.

Watch Paul Ryan’s comments at press conference Tuesday:

But WND has learned from insiders on Capitol Hill that Ryan's end objective is not to close down a program that has delivered more than 1.5 million Muslim refugees to American cities and towns since 1990 under a law authored in 1980 by then-Sen. Joe Biden and the late Teddy Kennedy.

A conservative Capitol Hill aide told WND, "Paul Ryan is setting us up for a meaningless show vote on Syrian refugees so the White House can continue the influx of Muslim refugees this year and all the years to follow as it always has.

“Putting Ryan in charge of a fight to block refugees would be like putting (Nancy) Pelosi in charge of fight to repeal Obamacare," the staffer said. "No one loves mass immigration more than Ryan, so how exactly is he going to make a public argument against it? He can’t and won’t, leaving Democrats unharmed, unscathed and unafraid."

Members of the House Intelligence, Armed Services and Homeland Security panels will meet this week to come up with legislation the House will vote on by Thursday.

The "show vote" will likely occur on North Carolina Rep. Richard Hudson's American SAFE Act of 2105, the source said, a toothless bill that would allow Obama to continue the transfer of Middle Eastern refugees to the U.S. with certain assurances that they are being "certified" as having no connections to terrorism.

Babin bill has more teeth
A much stronger bill, the Resettlement Accountability National Security Act introduced by Rep. Brian Babin, R-Texas, is not being moved to a vote by Ryan. The Texas congressman's bill would halt all resettlements until a full accounting of the program's cost and risks to national security can be fully assessed.

Babin's bill is gaining momentum with 74 co-sponsors. It had only 46 co-sponsors on Friday before the Paris attacks.
"What we want to do is include the language of our bill in the upcoming omnibus spending bill and cut off all funding," Babin's press secretary, Jimmy Milstead, told WND.
Ann Corcoran, author of the Refugee Resettlement blog, has followed the issue closely since 2007. She said funding is the key issue. Any other action is mere window dressing meant to appease the Republican base and fool it into thinking a tough stance is being taken against refugee resettlement.

The program costs taxpayers $1.2 billion a year, and that does not include the cost of heavy welfare use by the refugees. Nor does it include the cost of educating their children.

"The power of the purse is the only power that Congress has constitutionally to stop this," Corcoran said. "Some little bill on security assurances from Obama, how are they going to know that's really happening? They're just avoiding using the power of the purse. We saw it with Planned Parenthood and over and over again where the one big power they have they refuse to use."

The whole issue of "vetting" the refugees is a distraction, Corcoran said. "We can vet these people all we want but their children are going to grow up and be ISIS radicals," she said.In fact that has already been happening. WND earlier this week documented nearly two dozen cases of Muslim immigrants and sons of immigrants who became radicalized after arriving in the U.S.

Sens. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., and Richard Shelby, R-Ala., issued a joint statement Tuesday afternoon saying that any strategy to eliminate the infiltration of terrorists posing as refugees must terminate funding for the entire $1.2 billion refugee program.

“As chairmen of subcommittees on both the appropriations and judiciary committees, we believe it is essential that any government funding bill cancel the President's blank check for refugee resettlement," the senators said.

Their statement continued: "Long before the barbaric attacks in Paris, government officials and investigators have stated that we do not have the capacity to effectively screen Syrian refugees," they added. "The bloody assaults on the streets of France add new urgency to an already dangerous situation. Right now, our refugee program – like all of our visa programs – runs on autopilot. Each year, millions of visas go out the door without any input or action from Congress. We would not accept this policy for the federal budget, and we should not accept it for immigration. We therefore urge the inclusion of a provision in any omnibus spending bill that makes it absolutely clear that no refugee resettlement will take place without a separate, affirmative congressional vote to authorize any resettlement and offset its huge costs."

"To carry out his plans, the president needs the annual appropriation for the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement and other budget items. Congress therefore, through its spending power, can block the president’s plans. Absent such restrictions, the omnibus spending bill will give the president all the funds he needs to carry out the resettlement of nearly 100,000 refugees this year alone. First and foremost, this is a question of appropriations."

Sessions grilled a refugee fraud investigator on the question of whether Syrian refugees can be adequately vetted during a hearing last month, WND reported.

Testifying was Matthew Emrich, associate director for Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services within the Department of Homeland Security.

Sessions asked if Emrich’s department had access to even a single database in Syria that could provide solid background records on refugees to confirm whether a refugee is who he says he is.

"Can you name a single computer database, outside of maybe some of our own very small but valuable intelligence databases for Syria that you can check against? Does Syria have any?" Sessions asked. "The government does not. No, Sir," Emrich answered.

Resettlement industry getting nervous
Sensing that a movement is afoot to stop the flow of Islamic refugees into the U.S. from just one of a dozen or so pipeline countries, Syria, the refugee resettlement agencies called an emergency conference call Tuesday.

The nine resettlement agencies – several of which are affiliated with church groups such as the U.S. Catholic Bishops, the Lutheran, Episcopal and evangelical churches – get paid by the head to import refugees from United Nations camps into 180 U.S. cities and towns.


Other pro-immigrant groups also put out desperate action alerts to supporters Tuesday in light of the crescendo of criticism for the refugee resettlement program.

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination League sent out the following statement: "The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) is deeply troubled that many American politicians have used the tragic terror attacks in Paris, France, as a justification to promote xenophobia against Syrian refugees.

"ADC condemns the lack of moral fortitude of the U.S. governors who announced their opposition to accepting Syrian refugees in the wake of the tragic terrorist attacks in Paris, France. ADC urges elected officials to remember that the vast majority of Americans are the descendants of immigrants and refugees."

Sessions said the American people should not be asked to fund a population shift of Muslims from the Middle East and Africa into the U.S.

"Under our nation’s current policy, the president simply brings in as many refugees as he wants," he said in a statement. "Refugees are entitled to access all major welfare programs, and they can also draw benefits directly from the Medicare and Social Security disability and retirement trust funds – taking those funds straight from the pockets of American retirees who paid into these troubled funds all of their lives.

"Our immigration and refugee policies must serve the interests of our nation and protect the security of the American people. After admitting 1.5 million migrants from Muslim countries on lifetime visas since 9/11, it is time to assist in relocating Muslim migrants within their home region rather than relocating large numbers to the United States. It simply cannot be our policy to encourage a mass migration of entire populations from their homelands, a strategy that will only further destabilize the region and bring threats of terrorism deep inside our shores."

http://www.wnd.com/2015/11/ryan-plotting-meaningless-show-vote-on-refugees/


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