Department of Homeland Security

Back to a Tuesday…

As this posts up, we once again pause to recall the events and immediate aftermath of the September 11 attacks in 2001.

The passage of 17 years, however, has not only seen the weekday cycle back to Tuesday for a third time (as it was in 2001) but has also seen a number of key players exit the stage – some who perished at the hands of the very nation attacked and others who passed from more natural causes. The recent news that the “cesspool of cancer” also known as Ground Zero is cutting thousands more lives short means the pain has returned for many families of survivors.

Of course, life on this earth is cyclical and doesn’t last forever. A child who would be celebrating his or her 17th birthday today is most likely a senior in high school. I mentioned last year that 27% of the U.S. population was under the age of 21, and while that percentage isn’t significantly different the group that remembers little to nothing about that day will naturally grow and the population of those of us who lived through it will dwindle. You’d have a hard time finding someone who clearly remembers Pearl Harbor now, but when I was 17 those folks were simply known as our grandparents because they were at least middle-aged and often somewhat older.

Yet while we often refer to the lives lost in 9/11 and its aftermath, we don’t often think about the aftereffects. During the Cold War, we called it Civil Defense, and I vaguely remember seeing the triangular CD logo and (moreso) the black-and-yellow “Fallout Shelter” signs in places like my school. In looking it up, I found out that Civil Defense was absorbed into FEMA in the late 1970s as their focus shifted away from nuclear holocaust and more toward other emergencies and disasters. But in the wake of the WTC attack we have an entire Department of Homeland Security, PATRIOT Act restrictions, and TSA molestation at the airports. In the seventeen years since 9/11, the federal government has placed us on a war footing for a battle which perhaps doesn’t exist anymore – not that the threat from radical Islam has completely vanished, but the rules of engagement seem to have changed from large-scale events like 9/11 and regime change among nations in the “Axis of Evil” to smaller-scale attacks such as the San Bernardino or Pulse nightclub shooting and dismantling the so-called Islamic State caliphate. (As an aside, those shootings also have the added benefit to the enemy of riling up gun control supporters.)

Instead, I think the happy medium would be to return to a more subtle vigilance without the overbearing hand of Uncle Sam. Certainly he should protect us – after all, it IS a Constitutional mandate – but I don’t think we need the nanny state anymore. The way I see it, each freedom we lose is a victory for the terrorists.

And one more thing: over 3,000 people woke up on September 11, 2001 expecting to get through their day and return to their home – but the Lord had plans to call them to His home. To me, it’s a good time to remind my readers to ask themselves: what if today were your final day? I know my debt is paid, so I invite you to enjoy that peace of mind, too.

A modest proposal: pause all immigration into the USA while we sort things out

By Cathy Keim

Due to the Paris attacks a week ago Friday, immigration is a hot topic – especially the Refugee Resettlement Program which brings in about 65,000 refugees annually Now it is being primed to bring in 10,000 Syrians or more this year.

About 30 governors have requested that Syrian refugees not be admitted to their states. Speaker Paul Ryan is bringing a proposal to the House to stop admitting Syrian refugees. This sudden light shining on the Refugee Resettlement Program caused the Volunteer Agencies (VOLAGS) to have a conference call last week to tell the press how safe the program is.

I joined in on the call and heard some interesting information. The VOLAGS were condescending, insulting, and deceptive in their information but also attempted to tug at the heartstrings with sad stories and shame anyone who questioned bringing Syrians into the USA.

Keep in mind that the VOLAGS are paid by the head to bring the refugees in and to get them settled somewhere. Several of the VOLAGS have religious names such as Church World Service and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services, but they cannot share their faith because they are supported in the 90%+ range by federal tax dollars. So one has to ask why is a “religious” organization working as a government contractor when that explicitly rules out any ability to share their religious faith with the refugee? They might as well remove the deceptive “religious” title.

I missed the first few minutes of the call, but when I joined the reporters were being assured that many refugees have been resettled for many years and we have never had an incident so our record is good. In fact, the VOLAG representative stated that their refugees are vetted much more thoroughly than other visa holders such as students, tourists, and businessmen. Hold that thought, as we will come back to it.

Addressing the governors’ moves to refuse refugees, the representative stated that the refugees are legal residents so they can move wherever they want. The governors cannot stop them once they are in the country. Later she stated that refugees must always inform Homeland Security of their new address every time they move until they become citizens, but they can move wherever they wish. (Many do migrate a second time to be closer to family or other of their countrymen. Baltimore has had a difficult time retaining the refugees that they have brought in to repopulate the inner city.)

A reporter asked if the VOLAGS keep crime statistics on the refugees. The representative cheerfully replied, “No, but I can count on one hand the crimes committed by refugees and I have worked with them for years!” This is an astonishing claim since Ann Corcoran at Refugee Resettlement Watch frequently reports on crime issues among refugees.

The spokeswoman sneered at Texas and Alabama for saying they didn’t want any Syrian refugees. She said Texas had received 238 refugees in 3 years and Alabama had received 105 refugees last year, which had an insignificant impact in her words. She compared states denying access to state services with George Wallace refusing to integrate the University of Alabama.

The reps said that the poor attitude exhibited by these governors would have a negative impact on how the refugee community interfaces with the community. Here was the example given: In Minneapolis – St. Paul where they have a huge Somali population, they have had problems with refugees trying to travel abroad to fight. The FBI meets regularly with the community and has a good rapport with them, so the families contact the FBI to stop their young men when they try to leave to fight. If the governors keep acting in an unwelcoming way, this kind of trust with be disrupted!

Wow, that is a real success story. Young men that have been raised most or all of their lives in America want to go abroad to join the jihadists, but mom calls the FBI to keep them home. Why do I not find that comforting?

In a bid for sympathy that had a threatening edge to it, the rep told how these refugees have suffered greatly due to terror and war. It is wrong to deny them the ability to join family members in the states these governors represent. Prohibiting them from joining families that are already here working, paying taxes, and being good neighbors is wrong, but these are survivors won’t be stopped. They will join their families no matter what the governors said.

The final threat was that these refugees have been through so much and have had to wait for so long in refugee camps, that if the process is delayed anymore then they may just undertake the risky trek to Europe rather than wait for America to let them in. The trek is dangerous and it will be our fault if they don’t survive it.

She also pointed out that we couldn’t deny access just to Syrians. How can you tell if they are Syrian, not Lebanese, or Jordanian? This implies that if we try, then they will just declare themselves to be from another country and who can tell? That seems to refute the thorough vetting claims, but we won’t quibble here.

Now let’s address a few points that the VOLAGS didn’t mention.

It appears that out of 2 million Christians and 80,000 Yazidis in Syria, the Refugee Resettlement Program has brought in 53 Christians and 1 Yazidi and less than 10 Druze, Baha’is and Zoroastrians combined. The reason for this is that the UN High Commissioner for Refugees decides which refugees come to the USA. The UNHCR chooses refugees from people that are in the camps that they sponsor. The minorities do not dare go to those camps because the other inhabitants will persecute them, thus they have no access to apply to the refugee program. Now you know why we are not helping the persecuted Christians.

Here is another interesting fact. If we bring a refugee to the USA, it will cost about $64,000 to take care of him for five years, but it would only cost about $5,300 for five years if he relocated in his native region, thus we could help twelve times as many people for the same cost. Since our money is limited, would it not be better to spend it more wisely?

Now back to those student visas that the rep so correctly pointed out as being dangerously unvetted. The numbers of foreign students are huge.

The Institute of International Education recently wrote regarding student visas for the academic year of 2014/2015. Here are some highlights:

974,926 foreign students were admitted for this past academic year, almost double the overall level before 9/11.
After China, India, and South Korea, the leading country of origin is Saudi Arabia with 59,945 student visas. In addition, we took in 10,724 from Turkey, 11, 338 from Iran, and 9,034 from Kuwait.
Using the 44 predominantly Muslim countries we identified in our piece on green cards from Muslim countries, I counted 156,781 student visas from those same predominantly Muslim countries. This means that Muslims likely account for 16% of the foreign students, and that doesn’t include India. Roughly 10% of the Indian population is Muslim and we bring in a whopping 138,000 students from there.

Is there any wonder why U.S. college campuses are replicas of some European countries in terms of the anti-Jewish activity and pro-Palestinian activism?

Even more amazing is that in 2010 President Obama unilaterally shut down the National Security Exit-Entry Registration System (NSEERS), which was implemented after 9/11 to properly vet and track those who come here from risky countries on a student visa.

Daniel Horowitz asks,

(W)hat is tolerant about importing an ideology that is stridently intolerant, incompatible with democracy, and promotes ethnic and religious supremacism? What is humanitarian about transforming America into Europe where Jews, ironically and tragically, are forced to flee because of the growing Islamic intolerance?

We need to pause immigration and take the time to have this discussion rather than continuing heedlessly onward with ever increasing numbers of unassimilated immigrants.

Immigration and the DHS

By Cathy Keim

I thought that we would have a one-week reprieve to fight the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) funding showdown, but Boehner and the House caved today. Boehner passed the clean funding bill with 182 Democrats and 75 Republicans voting yes and 167 Republicans voting no.

We can take a moment to look at what the struggle was about. At its most basic level we had about 50 to 55 Congressmen and a handful of Senators that were fighting to stop the illegal amnesty overreach of the President. These few are men of principle that were standing for the rule of law that is the only protection the states have against federal dereliction of duty. At PJ Media, Andy McCarthy says:

The federal usurpation of the states’ capacity to defend themselves makes Congress responsible for the security and economic welfare of the states. Toward that end, Congress has enacted laws to protect the states against the wages of illegal immigration – the threats posed to public safety, to social services underwritten by state taxpayers, to the job market, and to the rule of law. These are the kinds of laws the states would enact themselves, and would enforce in a manner consistent with local conditions and sensibilities, if the federal government had not gobbled up their powers.

Those congressional laws are the states’ only defense. Those laws are what President Obama, through his illegal executive actions, is eviscerating. Therefore, Congress not only has an obligation to protect the institution of Congress, the legislative authority of which President Obama is usurping. Congress also has an extraordinary duty to defend the security of the states, which federal law has rendered defenseless.

Republicans should stop talking about this lawless amnesty as if it is only Obama’s decree. From the point of view of the states, the offense is coming from the federal government – not just the president. Congressional Republicans are a part of that government. They have their own constitutional obligations. If they aid and abet the president’s shredding of immigration laws that are meant to protect the states, then they are betraying the states and their citizens every bit as much as the president is. (emphasis mine)

The federal government has extended its control over the immigration laws and regulations so that no state can protect itself from the effects of immigration. Notice that I said immigration, not just illegal immigration.

It is time to take note that our federal government has been bringing in thousands of immigrants legally by deeming them refugees. Since they are classified as refugees, they are entitled to all the welfare benefits immediately upon entering the USA. In addition, these refugees are placed around the country (called seeding) so that they can change the very fabric of our nation. The states are not allowed to refuse these refugees, but they are required to pay for the additional costs due to increased school enrollments, health care costs, housing, etc.

There are reports that the illegal immigrants that this amnesty covers will be deemed refugees so that they can collect the benefits that they otherwise would not be eligible for.

Many, if not most, of the current refugees are Muslims, including refugees from Syria. We are completely unable to ascertain whether these refugees are actually fleeing for their lives or whether they are coming into our country for the purpose of jihad. At this time, we have not been giving priority to Christian refugees despite the brutal persecution that is occurring in the Middle East.

The State Department assures us that the refugees are vetted to weed out any danger. This is the same State Department that cannot state that ISIS is a radical Islamist organization.

If you want to do due diligence on the refugee resettlement problem, then you must go to Refugee Resettlement Watch and start reading what Ann Corcoran has been blogging about for years.

We need to demand that our leaders stop the flow of immigrants, both legal and illegal, into our country to give us time to assess who is coming. We really do not know how many illegal and legal immigrants are here. We have no idea whether they are assimilating into our way of life. There are dangerous indicators that assimilation is not occurring as it did with previous immigrant waves due to the multi-cultural mania that pervades our schools and media.

I was told last week that some students at our local high school will not even stand to say the Pledge of Allegiance to our flag. If we cannot get our homegrown youth to exercise rudimentary allegiance, then why would we think that we can assimilate masses of people from societies that loathe our way of life?

Now, back to the DHS debacle. We needed our Republican leaders to use the power of the purse to shut down Obama’s illegal amnesty. They had the ability to do this. The House could have refused to give one penny to pay for the illegal amnesty. If the Senate continued to refuse to pass a bill that would provide funding for DHS, but not fund the illegal portions, then the House should not have budged. They should have stood their ground and let the DHS shut down.

About 200,000 of the 230,000 DHS employees are essential, so they would have shown up for work anyway. Andy McCarthy points out:

Homeland security in the United States is more than adequately provided for by the hundreds of billions of dollars that continue to be spent each year — and that Congress has already approved for this year — on the Justice Department, the FBI, the 17-agency intelligence community, the armed forces, and state and local police forces.

Boehner, Andy Harris and the other GOP congressmen should have found the courage to join the bold few men of principle that are standing up for us. You can see who voted no on the final vote on Friday by going here. These were the men that were standing on principle that Obama’s amnesty was unconstitutional.

Today Andy Harris voted no for the DHS bill, but it was too late. Boehner passed it with Democrat votes. The betrayal is complete. Andy Harris will tell us that he voted no and and that should be good enough for us. Do not fall for the final vote tally. You must look at the whole episode. The Republicans that voted no to the DHS funding bill today should now do what they should have done in January: vote John Boehner out as Speaker.

The DHS funding disaster

By Cathy Keim

This week in DC was the disaster that we all saw coming last December with the passing of the CROmnibus bill. The GOP promised that if only they passed the massive budget that gave Obama everything he wanted, they would hold the line on the illegal immigrant executive overreach when funding the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). So they gave up the momentum of the huge election win to allow the lame duck congress to vote for CROmnibus. In the outrage that followed this betrayal, conservatives begged for Boehner to not be returned as House Speaker. Despite 25 brave Congressmen voting against Boehner, the rest voted for him and the status quo.

Now the final betrayal that was set in place last December is coming to fruition. The proposition that the GOP would stand firm in a budget battle where the main leverage was a government shutdown of the DHS was already unlikely at best – then the Charlie Hebdo massacre happened in Paris and unlikely became impossible. The GOP is terrified that if the DHS were shut down, they would be blamed if a terrorist attack occurred. Never mind that of the 230,000 DHS employees, 200,000 are deemed essential and would be required to show up to work during the shutdown. (As in many of these instances, the so-called “shutdown” is more like a slowdown, and it’s almost certain they’ll be paid in the end.)

The House Republicans passed a DHS bill with a full year of funding but with amendments that addressed the illegal immigrant amnesty dictated by President Obama. The Senate has had the bill for several weeks but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was unable to get the bill passed, so he stripped the House amendments out and sent it back to them on Friday. This is where it got somewhat confusing, because When the two bodies pass different bills they have to be reconciled.

The House voted at 2:43 pm on Friday to go to reconciliation with the Senate. All the Democrats voted against reconciliation. The Senate will vote on this on Monday and it is expected that all Democrats in the Senate will vote against it. The Democrats only want a clean bill passed, so they are not willing to try and reconcile the House bill with the Senate bill.

As the deadline drew near, there was a flurry of votes, which I found difficult to follow from the press coverage. However, Congressman Thomas Massie (KY – 4th Congressional District) posted an explanation on his Facebook page.

The entire post is worth reading to understand exactly what happened on Friday, but the bottom line is:

In summary, using the power of the purse to keep the executive branch in check is a legitimate and constitutional strategy, but our republican leadership chose poorly last December when selecting security funding as a point of leverage. Having backed themselves into a corner, last night House republican leadership abandoned their own plan and struck a deal with minority leader Pelosi that gave the President what he wanted for at least another week. In my estimation, the long-term prospect of using the power of the purse to stop the President’s unilateral action is bleak now that House leadership has signaled a temporary retreat without gaining a single concession from the Senate.

Our current Republican leadership is unable and/or unwilling to stop the tide of the President’s executive overreach. The citizens that voted last November for the opposition party to use the power of the purse to stop the President are left with nothing to show for their votes. It would appear that we are in for a painful two years as an uncontrollable President is left to execute his whims on a defenseless populace.

A look ahead: 2015 on the national front

You know, it’s disgusting yet telling that I could use much of what I said last year word for word as my prediction for 2015, like these paragraphs:

We will see absolutely zero effort to reform entitlements, whether Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security. This will be another year they hurtle toward insolvency, probably going splat just in time for Generation X to reach retirement age in about 15 years. (That would be me – I’m on the cusp between Gen X and Boomer.)

Nor do I care how many articles of impeachment are drawn up: the House leadership doesn’t have the courage to pursue it, nor would they ever get the votes in the Senate to convict. They could find Barack Obama in bed with a dead girl, live boy, a bloody knife in his right hand and a signed confession in his left and the Democrats would swear the boy set him up and the girl stabbed herself thirteen times – in the back – and not convict him.

It doesn’t matter how poor the economy is, either. The government won’t dare stop priming the pump to the tune of a trillion dollars a year in debt, parceling out $80 billion or so of “quantitative easing” monthly. When the Dow and its record highs are the one factor of success apologists for Obama can point to, anything which maintains that facade will be continued despite the possibility of long-term inflationary catastrophe – again, probably in time for Generation X to retire.

Just as ineffective is our foreign policy, which has been a muddled mess as old friends are ignored and longtime enemies coddled. We may have an idea of what the hotspots may be, but events have a way of occurring at the most inopportune times and places for American interests.

Here’s the problem. We have a Republican Congress once again, for the first time since the 2006 elections. But it’s all but certain to me that they will be the do-nothing Congress, as the lame-duck session showed. Many would want me to have faith in the leadership, and I understand the political reality being what it was led us into the budget deal that enshrined the government spending for the rest of the fiscal year (except for the Department of Homeland Security, funding for which is supposed to expire in February to set up a fight over Obama’s amnesty.) But why do I think Republicans will cite some obscure (and probably push-polled) data which tells it to avoid that messy immigration fight and just fund DHS for the rest of the fiscal year so they can have the fight in September? Then they’ll tell us we’re too close to the 2016 election.

Each time Congress has been begged to act, they have kicked the can down the road.

But that leads me to another point, and it’s been gnawing at me for some time now. Unfortunately I’m not sure just how it gets resolved.

Supposedly we are the United States of America. But are we really…united?

Over the last decade, we have been continually divided – red against blue, religious against agnostic (or religion vs. religion in the case of Christians and Jews vs. Muslims), and now at its most pronounced, black against white. Some consider those who are the enforcers of law to be the criminals, as are those elected officials who create it.

There’s a deep distrust of our fellow man these days, so we all retreat inward and look suspiciously at those who we don’t know. Thousands of people are on high alert with their guns at the ready against someone…they don’t know who that Other is, but many of us are tense and on edge, almost as if we are on a war footing. I imagine my ancestors may have felt the same way about the prospect of Japs or Nazis marching into our neighborhoods during the two world wars.

The person who will have the most impact on 2015 on a national scale is someone whose role we don’t know yet, but he or she will emerge either as the healer we all need or the person who tears the fabric of our society to bits. It may be a little hyperbolic, and I’m not going to go all Book of Revelations on you or assume that Jefferson’s quote about the tree of liberty is our fate, but we are rapidly approaching a point of no return if things continue the way they are. To borrow a term favored by Radical Green, our current path is unsustainable.

Too many people have come to the way of thinking which believes there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between the Republicrats and the Demoblicans. The only clear winners seem to be the small elite which runs Washington and Wall Street, leaving the shrinking middle class to fend for itself. That’s not the way it’s supposed to be; certainly that’s not the way I want it to be. But as more and more Americans say about that perception: it is what it is.

Truly I hope I am wrong in my assessment of how things will be on a national scale, particularly when so much good can be done on the local and state levels. But it can all be undone with a single spark that lights our national tinderbox, so it seems to me the thing to do is pray for the best and prepare for the worst.