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IMMIGRATION

The Failure of Open Borders in Germany and Sweden Chancellor Merkel finally admits the obvious connection between refugee flows and increased security concerns. April 14, 2017 Joseph Klein

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has just woken up to the fact that terrorists have been entering her country under the guise of would-be asylum seekers. “There is no doubt that among the so many people who have sought shelter in our country were also persons who have become the focus of the security authorities,” Chancellor Merkel acknowledged. However, as if to exculpate herself from any responsibility, she added, “we should not forget that our country was already in the sights of Islamic terrorism before the many refugees came to us.” Her latter observation begs the question as to why she was so reckless in opening up Germany’s borders to a veritable flood of refugees, without any careful screening, in the first place.

With the upcoming election in mind as she seeks a fourth term, Chancellor Merkel was most likely trying to appear strong in reacting to the latest in a string of radical Islamic terrorist attacks in her country. Terrorists linked to ISIS are suspected of having detonated three bombs on Tuesday, next to a German soccer team bus in the town of Dortmund, which the chancellor called a “repugnant act.”

In September 2015, Chancellor Merkel boasted of how welcoming Germany was to the self-proclaimed refugees pouring in from the Middle East, Afghanistan and North Africa. “The right to political asylum has no limits on the number of asylum seekers,” she said. “As a strong, economically healthy country we have the strength to do what is necessary.” She opened Germany’s borders to nearly a million migrants and refugees from the world’s most terrorist ridden regions.

In 2016, Germany began to reap the horrors of the seeds of radical Islam and jihad that Chancellor Merkel had so enthusiastically planted. For example, ISIS claimed responsibility for the deadly December 19th truck assault on an outdoor Christmas market near a landmark church in Berlin, which killed 12 people and injured nearly 50 other victims. The individual who had allegedly carried out the attack was a 24-year-old Tunisian man whom had traveled to Italy from Tunisia in 2011 and spent time in an Italian jail before arriving in Germany in 2015. Last summer, there were four violent attacks in Germany within just a week’s time, which resulted in deaths and serious injuries. Two of them were committed by Syrian migrants. A third was committed by an Afghan asylum seeker. The fourth, a mass shooting in Munich, was committed by the German-born son of Iranian asylum-seekers.

Will Trump’s reversal on Syrian refugees make him a one-term President? By Ed Straker

Supporters of Donald Trump, many of whom prominently campaigned for his election, are outraged by all the campaign promises he has reversed himself on — NATO, military action in Syria, the Federal Reserve, and the repeal of Obamacare, to name a few. But the straw that may break the camel’s back is the issue of immigration and border security.

Trump campaigned against letting more Syrian refugees in; in fact, he was so firmly against them, he said he would deport the ones already here. But what has happened now is that not only is Trump letting in more Syrian refugees, he is admitting them at twice the rate that Obama did. On this issue, Trump is the political equivalent of not one, but two Barack Obamas.

President Donald Trump called Syrian refugees a “great Trojan horse” during the 2016 campaign, but his administration has resettled them in a quicker pace than President Barack Obama did.

Since Trump was inaugurated, 1,401 Syrian refugees have been resettled, State Department figures as of Wednesday reveal. This is more than double the 625 Syrian refugees resettled under President Obama in the same time frame last year.

“Bad, bad things are gonna happen,” Trump said about Syrian refugee resettlement at an August rally.

But not so bad as to stop Trump from accelerating the admission of Syrian immigrants.

Let’s be very clear about two points:

1) The judicial stay on Trump’s entry ban has nothing to do with this. A federal judge may have prevented a blanket ban on Syrians entering the country, but only the Trump Administration could grant refugee status to individual Syrians. President Trump has the power to deny admission simply by not granting refugee status.

2) These refugees are unvettable. There is no reliable government to check up on these refugees.

Trump has already left many supporters feeling betrayed by his failure to repeal the illegal “Dreamers” program.

Sessions Gets Serious About Border Enforcement The Obama-era lawlessness, failure to enforce our immigration laws, is over. Matthew Vadum

The Obama administration’s hands-off approach to border security is a thing of the past, Attorney General Jeff Sessions dramatically declared at a border crossing as he vowed to bring felony charges against those who unlawfully enter the U.S. multiple times.

Enforcement action against criminal aliens will now be given the highest priority. President Obama said much the same thing over his years in office, promising to deport the worst members of the illegal alien community. He did little to carry out his pledge.

The announcement by Sessions comes two weeks after he said the Trump administration was moving forward with cutting off federal law enforcement grants to local governments that shield illegal aliens, especially violent felons, from federal immigration authorities.

Sessions is hoping that with more than $4.1 billion in U.S. Department of Justice grants at stake in the current federal fiscal year ending Sept. 30, sanctuary jurisdictions won’t be able to afford to continue flaunting federal immigration law. The U.S. government is also threatening to rescind monies already granted from such governmental units.

The so-called sanctuary city movement is a key component of today’s left-wing activist repertoire. Its supporters are the soft-headed souls who carry protest signs emblazoned with the red-herring of a slogan “no human being is illegal” and who apply all the usual smear-adjectives – including racist, xenophobic, and Islamophobic – to anyone who supports having secure borders.

Sessions is pressing ahead with plans to make it easier to hire new immigration judges to hear cases at the border and to keep those individuals accused of violating immigration laws detained in facilities at the border, presumably for the sake of efficiency.

Sessions said 25 judges have already been deployed to detention centers on the U.S.-Mexico border, according to Politico. Another 50 judges will be “on the bench” later this year. A separate 75 judges will be added in fiscal 2018 at a cost of $80 million.

AG Sessions Unveils New ‘Get Tough’ Approach to Immigration Enforcement By Debra Heine

Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Tuesday unveiled what he called a new “get tough” approach to immigration enforcement during his first visit to the U.S.-Mexico border in Nogales, Ariz., Tuesday. The nation’s top law enforcement officer vowed to confront the gangs and cartels plaguing the region and said the administration will bring more felony prosecutions against immigrants entering the country illegally.

“Where an alien has entered the country — which is a misdemeanor — that alien will now be charged with a felony if they unlawfully enter, or attempt to enter a second time, and certain aggravating circumstances are present,” Sessions said.

The attorney general credited Trump for a steep decline of border apprehensions this year, and declared that “the lawlessness, the abdication of the duty to enforce our immigration laws, and the catch and release practices of old are over.” The attorney general proclaimed that we are living in a new era — “the Trump era.”

Via Fox News:

Sessions met with law enforcement, members of the military and border agents in Nogales, Ariz., urging their confidence in the administration as they push to implement policies boosting agents working to secure the southern border. The tone of his comments at times echoed the explicit rhetoric President Trump himself used when discussing illegal immigration and cartels during the campaign.

He said, “when we talk about MS-13 and the cartels, what do we mean? We mean international criminal organizations that turn cities and suburbs into war zones, that rape and kill innocent civilians, and who profit by smuggling poison and other human beings across our borders. Depravity and violence are their calling cards, including brutal machete attacks and beheadings. It is here on this very sliver of land—on this border—that we take our stand. It is a direct threat to our legal system, peace, and prosperity.”

The Wall Street Journal’s transcript of the speech included a slightly different version of the above line, saying: “it is here on this very sliver of land where we take our stand against this filth.” That gave the mainstream media an opening to grossly misinterpret what he said.

Via the Washington Free Beacon:

Politico reporter Josh Dawsey took a partial quote from a Wall Street Journal story on Sessions’ speech out of context, tweeting that Sessions described illegal immigrants as filth. From there, it caught the eye of Tufts professor and writer of the Washington Post‘s Spoiler Alerts blog Daniel Drezner, and the misinterpretation spread throughout Twitter.

The Case Against Legalizing Unknown Millions of Illegal Aliens A supposed “solution” that would be catastrophic for America. April 10, 2017 Michael Cutler

At least as far back as the administration of Jimmy Carter, the immigration debate has been waged by globalists who have, over time, succeeded in hijacking the language and terminology applied to immigration.

Consider that Jimmy Carter: Orignator of the Orwellian Term “Undocumented Immigrant,” understood that by removing the term “alien” from discussions about immigration he could, over time, subvert the debate by confounding the public’s understanding about the entire immigration issue.

Carter insisted that INS employees immediately stop using the term “Illegal Alien” to describe aliens who were illegally present in the United States but refer to them as being “undocumented aliens.”

Today many politicians and journalists claim that illegal aliens who run America’s borders, thereby evading the inspections process conducted at ports of entry, have entered the United States “undocumented.”

In actuality, aliens who evade the inspections process enter the United States without inspection. This creates a huge threat to national security and public safety, after all, Entry Without Inspection = Entry Without Vetting.

Additionally, aliens who enter the United States through ports of entry but then go on to violate the terms of their admission, depending on the category of visa they used to enter the United States, certainly are not making “undocumented” entries.

However, to the globalists and immigration anarchists, these facts are merely speed bumps that need to be overcome so that they can craft their false narrative.

One of America’s most cherished symbols is the Statue of Liberty that is equated with America’s rich and diverse immigrant heritage. Over time his strategy of altering the terminology succeeded in convincing huge numbers of Americans that anyone who would interfere with the flow of “immigrants” into the United States was acting against America’s culture and traditions.

The media was quick to jump on the bandwagon and identified to immigration anarchists who oppose secure borders and effective immigration law enforcement as being “Pro-Immigrant” while branding advocates for effective immigration law enforcement as “Anti-Immigrant.”

Of course if honest and accurate nomenclature was used the two sides should be referred as as “Immigration Anarchists” vs “Pro “Immigration Law Enforcement.”

However the agenda is to eradicate America’s borders which, to the globalists, are impediment to their wealth and political power.

Tensions Rise Between U.S. and EU Officials Over Visa-Free Travel Transatlantic spat comes as Trump administration seeks to ramp up security checks at U.S. borders By Valentina Pop

BRUSSELS—Tensions between senior U.S. and European Union officials escalated over the prospect of limiting visa-free travel for EU citizens due to U.S. security concerns.

European Migration and Home Affairs Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos on Thursday rebuffed comments made by Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly about possibly reconsidering visa-free travel for EU citizens. The transatlantic spat comes as the Trump administration is seeking to ramp up security checks at U.S. borders, while the EU has just expanded its visa-free regime to Ukraine and its 45 million people.

Testifying before the U.S. Senate on Wednesday, Mr. Kelly suggested that the so-called Visa Waiver program allowing citizens from nearly all EU countries to travel to the U.S. without a visa could be reconsidered because of the potential risk that terrorists with EU passports could enter the U.S. unchecked.

He said that some 10,000 European citizens are fighting for Islamic State and could hop on a plane and travel visa-free to the U.S., because of borderless travel in Europe and the fact that “in many cases the countries where they’re citizens don’t know that they’ve been out of the country fighting in Syria.”

“That doesn’t keep me up at night too much but it does keep me up, so we’re looking at Visa Waiver,” Mr. Kelly said.

Mr. Avramopoulos, who recently met Mr. Kelly to discuss moving in the opposite direction and extending visa-free travel to all EU countries, reacted with surprise to this statement.

“We should be careful when using numbers. We estimate that around 5,000 EU citizens traveled to Syria and Iraq—not 10,000. But not all will come back: We estimate that about half of them are still there, many have died in fighting, some of those have returned to Europe,” Mr. Avramopoulos said. “We know who is back, and they are under very close scrutiny by national security services, flagged in security databases and monitored.”

He added that as of April 7, all travelers, be they EU citizens or not, will have their passports checked against security databases upon entering and leaving the bloc. Until now, EU citizens were exempt from such checks at the borders.CONTINUE AT SITE

Texas Gov. Lays Down The Law Against Sanctuary City Sheriffs The guardians of sanctuary cities may soon be facing jail-time in the Lone Star State. Matthew Vadum

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said he’s itching to sign state legislation that could imprison county sheriffs in the Lone Star State if they refuse to cooperate with federal immigration law enforcement authorities.

Abbott is an avowed foe of the so-called sanctuary movement, which is a key component of today’s left-wing activist repertoire. Its supporters are the soft-headed souls who carry protest signs emblazoned with the red-herring of a slogan “no human being is illegal” and who apply all the usual smear-adjectives – including racist, xenophobic, and Islamophobic – to anyone who supports having secure borders. The movement gave illegal aliens permission to rob, rape, and murder Americans by, among other things, stigmatizing immigration enforcement.

Some left-wingers use the dreadful euphemism “civil liberties safe zones” to describe sanctuary jurisdictions. The phrase blurs the distinction between citizens and non-citizens by implying illegal aliens somehow possess a civil right to be present in the U.S.

Abbott, a Republican, is fed up with local governments refusing to hand over illegal aliens to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

One of the worst offenders is Travis County, home to the state capitol in Austin.

Citing a recent ICE report, Abbott has noted “there were 206 instances nationally during the first week of February where law enforcement agencies had declined ICE detainers, with 70 percent of the declines coming from Travis County,” according to Texas Monthly. This means Travis County Sheriff Sally Hernandez (D) refused to honor ICE detainers issued for 142 illegal aliens, whom the liberal magazine quite predictably describes as “unauthorized immigrants.”

The ICE report “is deeply disturbing and highlights the urgent need for a statewide sanctuary city ban in Texas,” Abbott said, adding:

The Travis County Sheriff’s decision to deny ICE detainer requests and release back into our communities criminals charged with heinous crimes—including sexual offenses against children, domestic violence and kidnapping—is dangerous and should be criminal in itself. Texas will act to put an end to sanctuary policies that put the lives of our citizens at risk.

A few days ago Abbott elaborated.

“We have been pushing a piece of legislation in Texas that is going to pass that I will be signing into law that imposes even sterner penalties on counties,” Abbott said on “The Steve Malzberg Show” on Newsmax TV.

It will include things such as further defunding them. It will impose fines. And it could impose jail time for these sheriffs to enforce the laws. Oddly enough these sheriffs could wind up behind the very bars they are releasing these criminals from.

Pat Condell on Immigration in Europe

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qm-scpNaoVk

“The Immigration Dodge” by Mark Krikorian

Today’s bitter divides focus too narrowly on enforcement. All sides need to be clearer about what immigration policy is meant to achieve

The immigration debate in the U.S. has been contentious for decades, but Donald Trump’s candidacy and election have taken it to a new level of polarized animosity. Politicians and the public have focused, understandably, on Mr. Trump’s promise to build a “big, beautiful” wall on the U.S.-Mexico border and on what should be done with the millions of illegal immigrants currently in the country.

These are certainly important issues. But they are enforcement issues. They are less fundamental than a question that too often goes unaddressed in our debates: Why limit immigration at all? Almost everyone at least pays lip service to the need for limits of some kind, but we don’t often enough challenge each other to explain what limits we support and why.

If we are ever to have a rational debate about immigration—rather than a screaming match among combatants mostly intent on signaling their own moral virtue or ideological purity—the starting point has to be a candid acknowledgment of our goals and preferences. Politicians and ordinary voters shouldn’t be allowed to get away with saying “Of course there should be limits on immigration, but…” without explaining what they mean.

Almost all of the arguments for limiting immigration share a common theme: protection. Even those advocating much more liberal immigration policies acknowledge the need to protect Americans from terrorists, foreign criminals and people who pose a threat to public health. Supporters of stricter limits, such as me, seek wider protections: protection for less-skilled workers, protection for the social safety net, and protection for the civic and cultural foundations of American society.

Sanctuary Cities: Where Hypocrisy Rules NYC’s Mayor Bill DeBlasio blocks the deportation of criminal aliens by ICE. March 31, 2017 Michael Cutler

It should be commonsense that a nation’s security begins and ends at its borders.

The primary mission of the military is to keep America’s enemies as far from its shores as possible.

There is a stirring Navy commercial “America’s Navy – The Shield” in which numerous members of the United States Navy from a wide array of divisions appear on screen and a voice says, “To get to you they’d have to get past us.”

Indeed, the valiant members of our armed forces from all five branches routinely go in harm’s way to defend America and Americans.

However, as we saw all too clearly on September 11, 2001, in this era of asymmetrical warfare, America’s enemies are likely to not come to our country in a warship but on an airliner.

Indeed, on that horrific day more than 15 years ago, 19 men from the Middle East carried out the deadliest terror attack ever mounted on American soil. The casualties of 9/11 surpassed the number of casualties that the Japanese fleet inflicted on the United States at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

The 9/11 Commission was convened to determine the vulnerabilities that the terrorists successfully exploited to attack the United States. Among the most fundamental vulnerabilities were those that pertain to the various components of the immigration system.