Obama’s Surge — It’s Not Against Jihadis

Obama’s Surge — It’s Not Against Jihadis

American Spectator - Thursday April 14, 2016

Here comes the surge! No, not a military surge against ISIS or an increase in the number of security personnel guarding our mass transportation hubs. Here comes the surge in Syrian refugees.

And if you live in a preferred community, as I do in Walnut Creek, California, over the next year you are going to feel its impact.

There is an obvious and shameful reason that the federal government does not bother to make communities aware of what’s coming. It knows there will be resistance. Dumping refugees into the institutional structure of a community can have dire consequences for that community.

Many of these refugees will not be English speakers and they will not possess the skills to navigate in a post-industrial, highly technological economy. Their children will weigh on the educational system. They will have medical needs — physical, psychological, and emotional — that will weigh on the medical infrastructure.

The federal government will give them 180 days of various kinds of support and then the processing organization will enroll them in the local welfare system.

The processing organization — voluntary agencies or “volags” as they call themselves — will deny that there is a relationship between the preferred community and any geographical entity. The preferred community, it will insist, exists as a program, not as an actual community. One is to assume that the organization’s location has nothing to do with where refugees are processed or settled. All of that undoubtedly occurs in cyberspace.

The surge is worrisome for several reasons. First, it is a rapid expansion to meet the president’s proclaimed goal of 10,000 Syrian refugees. Second, that number is a floor, not a ceiling, according to Gina Kassem, the refugee coordinator at our embassy in Amman. Third, the vetting time is reduced from an 18- to 24-month period to just three months.

Of course, maybe that doesn’t make a difference since the vetting was a hoax anyway. Our security agencies have already noted that it is impossible to vet people from a failed state.

It is, however, possible to go to the Department of State website and be reassured that our vetting processes are as rigorous as they are extensive. Just ask the victims of the San Bernardino massacre how extensive our vetting processes are. San Bernardino butcher Tashfeen Malik was given a visa in just weeks despite giving a non-existent address in Pakistan. The approval was just plain sloppy on a number of issues.

If you live in one of the 82 preferred communities, the normal, expected number for absorption is a floor of 100. Since Obama’s focus on an additional 10,000, preferred communities have been asked to absorb additional refugees. My local refugee contractor denies that, which leads me to believe that nothing about refugee resettlement is to be believed until it is denied.

Obama started with 10,000, but John Kerry went to Congress and spoke of our taking 30,000 refugees. And then there is the omnibus agreement, as Breitbart notes, that funds 300,000 visas to migrants from Muslim countries in the next year alone. As anyone remotely acquainted with immigration policy knows, visa allocations are generally interchangeable across categories. Besides, overstaying a legitimate visa is a common way to stay in this country as an illegal immigrant.

In Paris, one of the jihadists shot dead at the concert venue was in possession of a fake Syrian passport, prompting a debate whether refugees or more commonly Muslims born in Europe were more likely to be responsible for acts of violence on European soil. So far, the numbers seem to stack up in favor of those born in Europe.

This seems to suggest that we have only to await the maturation of the children of refugees before we experience the violence visited upon Europe.

Our primary responsibility as a nation and a civilization is to the safety of our people and to the transmission of the best of our culture to succeeding generations. Neither the president nor those organizations cashing in on the business of refugee resettlement has the moral authority to violate that responsibility.

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