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Name: “Sword of Islam”? Let Him In! by Douglas Murray

By on November 11th, 2017

Even the craziest immigration systems dreamed up by European officials have not yet come up with something like America’s “diversity visa” lottery, by which someone named “Sword of Islam” is promptly let into the country — only then to mow people down in a New York bicycle lane.

Nearly 56,000 foreign nationals have disappeared from the radar of the British authorities after being told that they were required to leave the country.

Instead of looking warm and big-hearted, you begin to look as if you were just unforgivably lax with the security of your own citizens. So an entire political class has been.

It is only eight weeks since an 18-year old Iraqi-born man walked onto the London Underground and left a bomb on the District line. Fortunately for the rush-hour commuters and school children on that train, the detonating device went off without managing to set off the bomb itself. Had the device worked, the many passengers who suffered life-changing burns would instead have been among many other people taken away in body bags. Ahmed Hassan came to the UK illegally in 2015 and was subsequently provided with foster care by the British government. He has now been charged, and is awaiting trial, for causing an explosion and attempted murder.

As stories like that of Mr. Hassan emerge, there are varying reactions. Some people say that this act is not indicative of anything, and that we must accept that such things happen — like the weather. Others suggest that anyone might leave a bomb on the District line in the morning, and that there is no more reason to alter your border policy because of it than there is to alter your meteorological policy because of it.

As poll after poll shows, however, the majority of the public in Britain — as in every other European country — think something else. They think that a country that has lost a grip on its immigration policy is very likely to lose control of its security policy, and that one may indeed follow the other.

So the British public were not at all reassured by the news this month that the country’s Home Office has lost track of tens of thousands of foreign nationals who were due to be removed from the country. Nor that there is no evidence of any effort to find the people in question.

Figures revealed in two new reviews by the Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration showed that nearly 56,000 foreign nationals have disappeared from the radar of the British authorities after being told that they were required to leave the country. This figure includes over 700 foreign national offenders (FNOs) who went missing after being released into the community from prison. It also revealed that around 80,000 foreign nationals are required to check in on a regular basis at police stations and immigration centres while authorities prepare for them to leave the country. By the end of 2016, just under 56,000 of them had failed to keep appointments and had become persons “whose whereabouts are unknown and all mandatory procedures to re-establish contact with the migrant have failed.”

Nevertheless, with a straight face, Brandon Lewis, the immigration minister for the present Conservative government, declared that “People who have no right to live in this country should be in no doubt of our determination to remove them.” Yet he still admitted that “Elements of these reports make for difficult reading.”

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Diversity Visa Lottery: A Game Of “Russian Roulette” American sovereignty and security dismantled under the guise of “diversity.” Michael Cutler

By on November 10th, 2017

On Tuesday, October 31, 2017 New York City suffered a deadly terror attack on a well-known and heavily used bike path in lower Manhattan, just blocks from what, in the wake of the terror attacks of 9/11, had come to be known as “Ground Zero.”

The perpetrator of this heinous savage attack is a 29-year-old citizen of Uzbekistan, Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov, who reportedly legally immigrated to the United States in 2010 subsequent to winning the Diversity Visa Lottery.

Consequently, attention immediately turned to the Diversity Visa Program that annually enables approximately 50,000 aliens annually to enter the United States as lawful immigrants.

Aliens who participate in this visa lottery are citizens of countries that send the United States the smallest number of lawful immigrants. These aliens do not need to possess any special skills or abilities and do not need to have any family ties to the United States.

There is no application fee for this category of immigrant visa. Under this program apparently being “diverse” is all that matters. This does absolutely nothing to benefit America or Americans and therefore must be terminated.

The State Department provides a table for Fiscal Years 2007-2016 for “Immigrant Number Use for Visa Issuances and Adjustments of Status in the Diversity Immigrant Category.”

Clearly, more than 16 years after the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, the “All Clear” has not sounded and the “War on Terror” continues on as more innocent victims are slaughtered. Nevertheless, there are members of Congress who have recently questioned the legal authority known as AUMF (Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists) being used by President Trump to deploy members of the U.S. Armed Forces to wage war against ISIS, Al Qaeda and related deadly terrorist organizations. AUMF was passed by Congress just days after the attacks of 9/11.

Ironically, the latest deadly terror attack in New York City was carried out even as some members of Congress were publicly questioning AUMF, incredibly complaining that it gives President Trump too much discretion to deploy our armed forces to fight terrorist organizations that seek to kill as many Americans as possible, especially within our own borders.

Those politicians must not have gotten the memo that wars and armed conflicts do not end because leaders unilaterally wish that the wars or conflicts would end. Wars only end when both sides agree to a cease-fire or a more permanent solution is reached. Peace can only be achieved when the aggressors are forced to cease hostile actions. Invariably, this requires the demonstration of unwavering resolve. This requires the use, or threat of use, of overwhelming force.

The United States has no alternative.

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Your Papers, Please: How a Muslim Arab Became an Irishman By Michael Walsh

By on November 10th, 2017

The case of Ibrahim Halawa has not attracted much attention in the United States, but as the shape of things to come in Europe, if the cultural Marxists have their way, attention must be paid. This headline from the New York Times says it all: “After 4 Years in Jail, Release Looms for Irishman in Egypt.”https://amgreatness.com/2017/11/09/your-papers-please-how-a-muslim-arab-became-an-irishman/

Banish the thought of good ol’ Paddy, who tied one on during a visit to the pyramids, punched out one of the local cops, and did some time in the slammer for excessive Hibernian exuberance and unwelcome cultural diversity. This “Irishman” is quite different:

A young Irish prisoner punched the air and wept with relief at a prison courthouse near Cairo on Monday, as a judge acquitted him on all charges relating to a 2013 political protest that turned violent.

The acquittal brought a likely conclusion to a four-year jail ordeal that turned the Irishman, Ibrahim Halawa, 21, into one of the most prominent foreigners trapped in Egypt’s harsh judicial system.

Mr. Halawa’s plight drew broad public sympathy in Ireland and sharp criticism from human rights groups that described his trial, along with that of at least 480 other people, as a travesty, not least because Mr. Halawa was 17 when arrested.

In Britain, the Independent took a similar tack: “Irishman cleared of charges in Egypt after four years in prison.” From the story:

Mr Halawa was born in Ireland and grew up in Firhouse, a suburb of Dublin. His family would travel to Egypt regularly to see relatives and they were in Cairo on holiday in August 2013. A month earlier Egypt’s military had overthrown Mohammed Morsi, the country’s democratically-elected Muslim Brotherhood president, and thousands of people took to the streets against the coup.

Three days after the massacre, Mr Halawa and his three sisters — Omaima, Fatima and Somaia — joined another protest but took shelter in a mosque when the situation became violent. All four were arrested when security forces stormed the mosque.

Mr Halawa was just 17 when he was arrested. His sisters were released on bail three months after their arrests and quickly fled the country but Mr Halawa was held in prison. He was charged with murder, arson and illegal possession of weapons and put on trial alongside nearly 500 other people. His sisters were tried in absentia in the same court.

In other words, some high-spirited Irish siblings were out for a lark when they just so happened to wander into a violent protest and had to “take shelter” in a handy mosque. That’s the way the media—including the Irish media—tells it, anyway. In fact, the Halawas are the children of Ireland’s most prominent Muslim cleric, sheikh Hussein Halawa of the Clonskeagh mosque in Dublin; according to reports, the imam is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, although he denies it.

In other words, the only thing “Irish” about the Halawas is an accident of birth.

Today, however, Ireland is being consumed by the notion—heavily promoted by its mainstream media—that it’s “too white,” that what the Land of Saints and Scholars needs is more “immigration” from the non-Christian Third World, the better to reduce its whiteness and further weaken the influence of the Catholic Church. And what better way to promote that meme than to call an Egyptian Muslim an “Irishman”?

This is what happens when nationality—especially the ethnic nationalities of the European nation-states—is confused with citizenship. The first is intrinsic: say the word “German” or “Swede” or “Italian” and we all have an image in our mind’s eye; it may be a “stereotype” of a fat man in lederhosen, or a blue-eyed Viking, or Marcello Mastroianni, but we know immediately what is meant.

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The Migrant Crisis Upended Europe by Giulio Meotti

By on November 6th, 2017

“The migrant crisis is the 9/11 of the European Union… That day in 2001, everything changed in the US. In a minute, America discovered its vulnerability. Migrants had the same effect in Europe… The migration crisis profoundly undermines the ideas of democracy, tolerance and… the liberal principles that constitute our ideological landscape.” — Ivan Kratsev, Chairman of the Center for Liberal Strategies in Sofia and a member of the Institute of Humanities in Vienna, Le Figaro.

The European public now looks at EU institutions with contempt. They perceive them — under multiculturalism and immigration — not only as indifferent to their own problems, but as adding to them.

“We are a cultural community, which doesn’t mean that we are better or worse — we are simply different from the outside world… our openness and tolerance cannot mean walking away from protecting our heritage”. — Donald Tusk, President of the European Council.

A few weeks after Germany opened its borders to over a million refugees from the Middle East, Africa and Asia, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said that the migration crisis would “destabilize democracies”. He was labelled a demagogue and a xenophobe. Two years later, Orbán has been vindicated. As Politico now explains, “[M]ost EU leaders echo the Hungarian prime minister” and the Hungarian PM can now claim that “our position is slowly becoming the majority position”.

Many in Europe seem to have understood what Ivan Krastev, the Chairman of the Center for Liberal Strategies in Sofia and a member of the Institute of Humanities in Vienna, recently explained to Le Figaro:

“The migrant crisis is the 9/11 of the European Union… That day in 2001, everything changed in the US. In a minute, America discovered its vulnerability. Migrants had the same effect in Europe. It is not their number that destabilizes the continent… The migration crisis profoundly undermines the ideas of democracy, tolerance and progress as well as the liberal principles that constitute our ideological landscape. It is a turning point in the political dynamics of the European project”.

Thousands of migrants arrive on foot at a railway station in Tovarnik, Croatia, September 17, 2015. (Photo by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

Migration is having a significant impact, for instance, on Europe’s public finances. Take the two countries most affected by it. Germany’s federal government spent 21.7 billion euros in 2016 to deal with it. Also reported was that Germany’s budget for security this year will grow by at least a third, from 6.1 billion to 8.3 billion euros.

In Italy, the Minister of Economy and Finance recently announced that the country will spend 4.2 billion in 2017 on migrants (one-seventh of Italy’s entire budget for 2016). Spain recently announced that in North Africa, the fence around its enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla, which keeps migrants out of the Spanish territory, will be funded through a further infusion of 12 million euros. Everywhere in Europe, states are allocating extra resources to deal with the migrant crisis, which has also changed Europe’s political landscape.

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Language Wars: The Road to Tyranny Is Paved with Language Censorship By Michael W. Cutler

By on November 4th, 2017

The AP Stylebook on ‘Illegal Immigrants’

Anyone following the immigration debate over the years has noticed the mass media’s increased usage of “undocumented workers” in reference to illegal aliens. TSC contributor Michael Cutler draws attention to the influence of political correctness on language and rhetoric when it comes to the topic of illegal immigration. Accuracy in language usage and the stifling impact of euphemistic uniformity are legitimate concerns.

The Associate Press Stylebook and Briefing on Media Law* is the standard reference guide for journalists. It contains useful information on capitalization, abbreviation, spelling, numerals and usage, punctuation, privacy, access to government information, defamation, and libel.

The AP Stylebook uses the term “illegal immigrant” (not “illegal alien” or “undocumented worker”). It states that illegal immigrant is “used to describe someone who has entered the country illegally or who resides in the country illegally. It is the preferred term, notillegal alien or undocumented worker. Do not use the shortened term an illegal or illegals.”

Immigration and ethnic activists have pushed sympathetic journalists to use “undocumented worker” in their reportage over the years. In December 2010, on NPR’s “Talk of the Nation,”Washington Post columnist Esther Cepeda, mentioned the negative reaction that engulfed one newspaper in California when it used “illegal immigrant.”

“The Fresno Bee in California wrote this eight-day series, this beautifully reported series about all the issues surrounding illegal immigration in California’s Central Valley. And they’re talking about it from an economic perspective, a personal perspective, a bureaucratic perspective, political perspective. And yet what garnered the headlines is that some of the people reading the pieces were just inflamed because the newspaper took the Associated Press Stylebook’s standard of calling illegal immigrants illegal immigrants. And they were just inflamed. It was like the entire conversation went off of how this issue affects a particular community. And it became all about language.”

Truth and factual accuracy should be the benchmark standard when it comes to the use of language, not political pressure from organized interest groups.

– The Editors

We often hear that we are living in a “Politically Correct” era. This is treated as an annoyance when, in reality, the ever-accelerating widespread effort to expunge words and terminology from the vernacular should sound alarm bells.

“Political Correctness” has been viewed as a well-intentioned way of combating bigotry by eliminating words of hatred and politely expunging words that are defamatory, insulting, humiliating, or denigrating. Certainly the desire to be compassionate, fair, and considerate is laudable.

It is important to be clear, the true “curse words” are words that insult or humiliate other people. Decent and compassionate people want to be considerate and respectful in their interactions with others.

Reasonable individuals avoid hurtful language to describe other people.

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Stop the “Diversity” Visa Lottery, Gateway for Jihadists by Majid Rafizadeh

By on November 2nd, 2017

Among the heaviest users of the US Diversity Visa lottery are people in countries known to have terrorism problems. Entering the Diversity Visa program, Islamists openly felt, was their opportunity to access the US and cause destruction to the country and its people, which they viewed as their enemy.

In this lottery, not just the winner gains access. When a foreign person wins the lottery, the US gives out visas to his or her family as well — no matter where they were born. As a result, the number of people that come into the US thanks to the lottery program is actually much larger than 50,000 a year.

The terrorists, who share the goal of devastating everything we value, do not care about political correctness, or what the true purpose of the lottery might be. They see only the opportunity to take advantage of a hole in our immigration security.

The US immigration system is significantly flawed; it paves the way for terrorists to enter the country. Since 9/11, no serious actions have been taken to address this fundamental problem. Mercifully, President Donald Trump announced yesterday that he wants the Diversity Visa Program terminated.

As the world now knows, on October 31, in a jihadi vehicular attack, a terrorist, Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov, drove a rented pickup-truck onto a crowded bicycle path in lower Manhattan. He murdered at least eight innocent people — including students, school staff and tourists celebrating a reunion — and wounded eleven people. He celebrated by shouting “Allahu Akbar” (“Allah is the greatest”). After police stopped his rampage by shooting and wounding him, he asked for an ISIS flag to be brought to his hospital room.

While politicians avoid the truth that “lone wolves” among terrorists effectively do not exist and, along with many in the mainstream media, refuse to tackle the underlying cause of this terror act and refrain from fully reporting on terrorism, we all badly need an open discussion about it.

The mainstream media would doubtless prefer to hide from you that Saipov, an Uzbek national, came to the US thanks to Senator Chuck Schumer’s “Diversity Program,” and that there are many flaws in the US immigration system. The Diversity Visa lottery is high among them.

Sayfullo Saipov (left), the Uzbek terrorist who carried out the October 31 attack in Manhattan, moved to the US thanks to the Diversity Visa Program.

The program accepts 50,000 people a year, totally at random. Citizens from some countries that are US-friendly, such as Canada and the United Kingdom, are not even allowed to apply. Other countries, known to be epicenters of jihadists and Islamist ideologies, are permitted to participate. The applicant does not even need to have a high school education. Among the heaviest users of this lottery are people in countries known to have terrorism problems — specifically Middle Eastern, North African and Central Asian countries, including Afghanistan, Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Syria, Turkey, Yemen, and Uzbekistan.

If you had grown up, as I did, in Syria and Iran, you would have seen Islamists gathering in groups to further their goals. You would also have seen them encouraging and informing their affiliate groups through various means, including social media, to enter the US Diversity Visa program. This, they openly felt, was their opportunity to access the US and cause destruction to the country and its people, which they viewed as their enemy.

Worse in this lottery is, not just the winner gains access. When a foreign person wins the lottery, the US gives out visas to his or her family as well — no matter where they were born. As a result, the number of people that come into the US thanks to the lottery program is actually far larger than 50,000 a year.

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America’s Terrorist Lottery Is it time to stop using games of chance to pick future Americans? Matthew Vadum

By on November 2nd, 2017

After a boastful, giddy Muslim jihadist from Central Asia gleefully mowed down eight innocents with a rented truck in a Manhattan park on Tuesday, President Trump called for an end to the “diversity visa lottery” program that brought him to America.

“We’re so politically correct that we’re afraid to do anything” about the Muslim terrorist threat, the president said at a meeting of his cabinet yesterday.

“I am going to ask Congress to immediately initiate work to get rid of this program … Diversity lottery. Sounds nice, it is not nice, it is not good. It hasn’t been good and we have been against it.”

Trump took to social media to fire a broadside at Democrats.

“The terrorist came into our country through what is called the ‘Diversity Visa Lottery Program,’ a Charles Schumer beauty. I want merit based,” Trump tweeted Wednesday at 7:24 a.m. Six minutes later he followed up with, “We are fighting hard for Merit Based immigration, no more Democrat Lottery Systems. We must get MUCH tougher (and smarter).”

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-New York), who co-sponsored legislation establishing the visa lottery when he was a member of the House of Representatives, deflected in a typically whiny response.

“President Trump where is your leadership? The contrast between President Bush’s actions after 9/11 and President Trump’s actions this morning could not be starker,” Schumer said on the floor of the Senate.

The United States has been awarding green cards through random games of chance for 20 years.

Perhaps spinning a roulette wheel for Supreme Court appointments would ease partisan acrimony in Congress. Maybe the craps table is the logical place to find the nation’s next treasury secretary.

It is a fact that the U.S. Department of State has been distributing green cards through visa lotteries since at least 1987. The current Diversity Immigrant Visa (DV) Program, was established by the Immigration Act of 1990, and took full effect in 1995. Like other applicants seeking permanent resident status, a DV applicant must meet national security-related and eligibility criteria to be issued a green card, which entitles the holder to live and work in the U.S. permanently. At a minimum, DV applicants must have a high school education and two years of work experience or work training within the previous five years, and pass an in-person interview.

Like other lawful permanent residents of the U.S., individuals admitted under the DV program are eligible to seek U.S. citizenship after a waiting period. Any permanent resident may voluntarily abandon this sought-after legal status by, for example, remaining outside the U.S. for a prolonged period of time, failing to file income tax returns while living outside the U.S., or declaring oneself a “nonimmigrant” on U.S. tax returns. Permanent resident status can be rescinded if the person concerned is found to have committed fraud in the immigration process or is convicted of a serious crime or crimes.

Up to 50,000 visas are issued under the DV program annually.

According to CNN:

Visas are awarded by random selection in select countries to promote immigration from places that don’t otherwise send many immigrants to the U.S. Roughly 1 million green cards are issued by the U.S. per year. In 2016, 45,664 diversity visas were issued. The vast majority of green cards are based on family connections, and other categories include employment-based visas and refugees or asylees.

One of the chief defenders of the DV program is the Congressional Black Caucus, which favors it because a lot of people come here from sub-Saharan Africa, explained Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies. At one time, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) wanted to double the quota for the program to 100,000, he said.

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After the West Side Highway Jihad: What Does ‘Extreme Vetting’ Mean? Our immigration system needs to take Islam into account, to distinguish pro-American Muslims from sharia supremacists. By Andrew C. McCarthy

By on November 1st, 2017

To the surprise of exactly no one, it turns out that the Uzbek-born jihadist who murdered eight people on the streets of New York City on Tuesday was invited into the United States under the cockamamie “Diversity Visa Program.” (Paul Mirengoff has the details at Powerline.) Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov, a sharia supremacist and Islamic State supporter, came to our shores seven years ago, as a young Muslim man of 21.

I wrote about the Diversity Visa Program in The Grand Jihad, my book about the sharia supremacist strategy for infiltrating and “destroying the West” (to quote the Muslim Brotherhood). As detailed there:

Since the Bush 41 administration, the State Department has also been running a “Diversity Visa” program, the very purpose of which is to promote immigration from countries whose citizens resist coming to the United States — i.e., to encourage our cultural disintegration. It is a hare-brained scheme, concocted by hard-Left Senator Ted Kennedy, because the Irish (yes, the Irish!) were purportedly underrepresented in our gorgeous mosaic. Mark Krikorian, the director of the Center for Immigration Studies, describes the consequences: Fully one-third of the annual diversity-visa lottery winners now come from Islamic countries, which means that the program has become a disproportionately important immigration vehicle for Muslims.

Thanks to [this and other federal immigration] policies, another million or so Muslims reside in the United States (i.e., in addition to the roughly million-and-a-half American Muslims). It is impossible to say for sure what the precise number is because our crack Homeland Security Department keeps track only of immigrant entries into the U.S. — not whether these aliens leave, much less whether, once here, they adhere to their stated purpose for coming. It bears repeating, however, that these aliens are not American Muslims. They are legal and illegal immigrants whose fealty is to some other country, or, more realistically, to the ummah [(i.e., the notional worldwide Islamic community)]. This is a matter of no small importance when we are well aware of the supremacist Islamist design: Immigration not to pursue the American dream but to become the American nightmare — a jihad to transform the United States.

It has been nearly a decade since I wrote that passage. In the interim, it has become only clearer that the jihadists are only the tip of the spear. We are dealing with an ideological enemy whose aim — they are quite explicit about this — is to supplant Western culture and law with sharia’s repressive societal system and legal code. This is the objective of all jihadism. These violent attacks cannot happen, at least not with regularity, unless the militants have a support system: ideological enclaves that foster incitement, recruitment, training, fund-raising, and moral support.

As night follows day, we learn that, in the years leading up to yesterday’s attack, Saipov gravitated to the Omar Mosque in Paterson, N.J. Sharia supremacism’s inroads have made the community the object of counterterrorism investigations for over a dozen years.

Because of the centrality of immigration issues to the Trump campaign and presidency, we have been debating visa and refugee policy. I’ve thus tried to point out, any number of times: While the potential that trained jihadists could enter the country by masquerading as good-faith immigrants is serious, it is not the primary danger. The overarching threat is self-created: an immigration policy that promotes assimilation-resistant enclaves in which sharia supremacism embeds. Though we worry about the jihadist of today, we must be at least as concerned about the ten-, twelve-, 15-year-old kid who settles into a sharia-supremacist enclave and, like Saipov, is a jihadist seven years from now.

Ever quick with a tweet, President Trump reacted last night by asserting (among other things): “I have just ordered Homeland Security to step up our already Extreme Vetting Program. Being politically correct is fine, but not for this.”

But he is being politically correct. After all, what is it that “Extreme Vetting” is vetting for? No one wants to say. Why? Because, as we’ve been contending here for months, the ill-considered, ineffectual “travel bans” have pushed the Trump administration into a posture that makes screening for sharia supremacism much more difficult.

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A Bad Deal For the U.S. Generous plea bargain for serious human trafficker bodes poorly for national security. Michael Cutler

By on October 30th, 2017

The threat of attacks posed by international terrorist organizations requires a multifaceted response that includes US officials working in close coordination with their foreign counterparts to develop strategies and share sources of reliable intelligence. In point of fact, as an INS agent, I frequently worked with law enforcement agencies of other countries to combat transnational crimes, narcotics trafficking and terrorism, and frequently found that our investigations could not have gone forward without the assistance of our allies.

Clearly the administration recognizes the threats to national security and public safety posed by international terrorists. However, a recent ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) news release titled Foreign National Sentenced to 31 Months in Prison for Leadership Role in Human Smuggling Conspiracy left me frustrated and befuddled. The defendant in this case, a Pakistani national by the name of Sharafat Ali Khan, admitted that he smuggled dozens of illegal aliens into the United States, yet was permitted to plead guilty to a single count of alien smuggling.

There is, as you will see shortly, far more to his crimes then simply facilitating the uninspected entry of a significant number of illegal aliens into the United States.

To be fair, most criminal prosecutions are concluded by plea bargains, not by trials. If all cases were resolved by a trial, the judicial system on all levels would collapse in a matter of weeks. Plea bargains are commonplace and are supposed to make sense for all involved.

Sometimes defendants become cooperators who provide vital information against other members of the criminal conspiracies in which they participated so that those above them in the criminal “food chain” can be identified and evidence vital to the successful prosecution of these criminals can be gathered. In such instances the benefits to such plea bargains are generally fairly obvious.

Sometimes prosecutors decide that it is simply easier to offer a plea deal to dispose of a criminal prosecution with the expenditure of minimal resources. Trials are often time and resources consuming, making appropriate plea bargains cost-effective and therefore advantageous. However, there are times when a plea bargain is not a “bargain” for law enforcement nor for the public interest.

Plea bargains are compromises but our national security should never be compromised. Although I am reluctant to second-guess the prosecutors, today I am compelled to disagree with the the plea bargain that will set Khan free in just 31 months.

According to the ICE press release, a plea bargain agreement was reached between federal prosecutors and Khan in which he agreed to plead guilty to a single count of alien smuggling in exchange for a 31-month prison sentence. In reality, he smuggled dozens of illegal aliens into the United States.

Khan’s crimes endangered the lives of the aliens he smuggled, but, first and foremost, his crimes created a significant threat to U.S. national security and public safety. The illegal aliens he smuggled in were citizens of countries that are associated with terrorism, specifically, Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan. According to evidence and intelligence gathered by a group of U.S. law enforcement agencies including Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), a division of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE); the Joint Terrorism Task Force; FBI-Miami; and the U.S. Department of State’s Diplomatic Security Service (DSS), at least one of the smuggled aliens had a direct nexus to terrorism. That individual was a citizen of Afghanistan who authorities said was involved in a plot to conduct an attack in the U.S. or Canada and had family ties to members of the Taliban.

To conduct his scheme, Kahn acquired immigrant status in Brazil, the country through which he smuggled those aliens and in which he created “safe houses” along with additional holding sites in other Latin American countries. Of extreme significance is face that the Tri-Border Region of Brazil is notorious for its terror training camps. This threat is laid out in an important paper, Islamist Terrorist Threat in the Tri-Border Region, that was published by Jeffrey Fields a research associate for the Center for Nonproliferation Studies.

Furthermore, as reported by the Washington Times, when Khan stood before the federal judge to plead guilty plea to the single count of alien smuggling, Khan demonstrated the unmitigated chutzpah to ask the judge to grant him political asylum, claiming he was a “poor person.” In asking for political asylum, a request summarily dismissed by the judge, Khan was simply following the same advice he gave to the aliens he smuggled, telling them to claim political asylum if they were caught by the Border Patrol.

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Sending Mixed Messages in Sweden Inviting immigrants with one hand, expelling them with the other. Bruce Bawer

By on October 23rd, 2017

Even before the so-called refugee crisis began in 2015, immigrants formed a larger percentage of Sweden’s population than of any other country in Europe. During this current wave, Sweden, with under ten million inhabitants, has taken in hundreds of thousands more. Though most of them claim to be in need of asylum, the majority actually aren’t. Many claim to be children, but they look as if they’re twenties or even older.

Sweden has been an easy touch for a generation or more, but the Swedes have never looked more like a bunch of self-destructive suckers than they do now.

At the same time, a growing number of these formerly docile folks are finding their voices. They’re openly expressing support for the non-establishment Sweden Democrat Party, which demands severe limits on immigration. Even the mainstream Moderates, who can feel the Sweden Democrats breathing down their necks, are now talking about imposing serious restrictions. At a conference weekend before last, the Moderates actually voted to challenge the current EU system, whereby asylum seekers are admitted into the superstate before their applications are approved. The Moderates would rather set up “safe places” outside the EU where those asylum seekers can cool their heels while those applications are reviewed. Finally!

And that’s not all. Today Sweden takes in heaven knows how many people from the Muslim world – some as refugees, others through “family reunification” – and hands them permanent residency right off, permitting them to go straight onto the welfare rolls and stay there for a lifetime. The Moderates now want to issue temporary residency to these people, who would only be awarded permanent status – and, eventually, citizenship – after proving their ability to support themselves and their families. In addition, the Moderates have proposed several other reforms, such as language tests and limits on social-service disbursements per household. Again: finally!

A bit more good news: already, of the hundreds of thousands of self-styled asylum seekers who’ve come to Sweden since 2015, over sixty thousand have seen their asylum applications rejected – and about half of that sixty thousand have already left the country voluntarily. But what about the other half? The numbers are so overwhelming that the chief of the border police, Patrick Engström, confessed the other day that he has neither the resources nor the legal authority to carry out all the necessary deportations.

Part of the problem is that many of these rejected asylum seekers are nowhere to be found. Where are they? They’ve likely disappeared into Sweden’s sprawling urban Muslim enclaves and are being sheltered by relatives or other coreligionists. Many gave fake names when they entered the country in the first place (a common practice) and are now presumably living under their real names or other fake ones. Doubtless many of them are already raking in welfare benefits.

OK, you say, but at least there’s a degree of reform. True – but not everybody working for the Swedish government, alas, has gotten the memo. Even as the country’s citizens are calling for limits on immigration – especially from the Muslim world – its embassies in Arab capitals have done something that seems borderline nuts: namely, they’ve packed their websites with material designed to encourage Arab immigration to Sweden. In delectable detail, they explain to residents of Arab countries how much money may well be poured into their pockets if they pack up their tents and head north. (For example, the website of the embassy in Amman explains to potential migrants that if they move to Sweden they’ll get “free school,” “free health care,” even “free public transport” if they’re pushing a baby carriage. If they have, say, six kids, they’ll get $1285 a month, free and clear.)

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