Displaying posts categorized under

IMMIGRATION

Importing Enemies The demand to resettle Afghan refugees brings the war home. By Michael Anton

https://americanmind.org/salvo/importing-enemies/

Perennial Democratic White House aide, congressman, Chicago mayor, and ambassador-in-waiting Rahm Emmanuel’s sole memorable utterance—his only candidate for Bartlett’s—is his cynical 2008 maxim that the good guys (i.e., his team) must “never let a serious crisis go to waste.” He was speaking of using the financial crisis to usher in sweeping changes to law, policy, the economy, and society that would otherwise not have been possible through ordinary democratic processes.

The same logic applies now to the Democrats’—and many Republicans’—insistence that America be flooded with Afghan “refugees.” Importing as many immigrants as possible, from cultures as alien to traditional America as possible, is the ruling class’s top priority, after protecting its own wealth and power. But since importing millions upon millions of foreigners is the primary tool by which the ruling class maintains that wealth and power—by suppressing wage growth and dividing the population—it can be hard to disaggregate these two priorities.

The parallels between the two crises are obvious. Just as ruling class hubris, incompetence, dishonesty, and greed created the financial crisis, so did a similar combination produce the mess in Afghanistan. There is no need to rehash the “higher” motives for the failure here. It is worth noting, however, that lower motives were not absent: a lot of people were making a lot of money off that war.

And now, just like thirteen years ago, our rulers want to use a crisis they created as justification to ram through what they always wanted to do anyway. Which, in this case, is to resettle a hundred or two hundred thousand (the number varies depending on who’s speaking) foreigners with no tradition of liberty—who are indeed from a culture deeply alien, even hostile to, Western civilizational norms—in your communities.

Bringing in Afghan Refugees with All of Their ‘Luggage’ What’s not being talked about. Dr. Stephen M. Kirby

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/09/bringing-afghan-refugees-all-their-luggage-dr-stephen-m-kirby/

Afghanistan has fallen to the Taliban and American forces are withdrawing.  As with such ventures, this has resulted in tens, if not hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees fleeing their own country.  And as night follows day, this has also resulted in calls by many American individuals and organizations to bring in as many of those refugees as possible, because we “owe” it to the Afghans.

To hear such claims, one would think that these many thousands of refugees will immediately become part of America, sharing our values and ideas, and contributing to our communities.

What is not being talked about are the values, ideas, and culture those refugees are bringing with them.

In order to better understand the people many are calling to be brought in by the tens of thousands, let’s look at some considerations about the society from which these refugees are coming.

National Security

There are two national security issues that must be acknowledged.

First, a 2019 study found that 13% of Afghans had a lot of (4%) or a little (9%) sympathy for the Taliban.[1]  This means that for every 100,000 Afghan refugees brought into the United States, we could expect about 13,000 of them to have varying degrees of sympathy for the Taliban.

Then we need to take into consideration that 39% of Afghans think that “suicide bombing” in defense of Islam is often or sometimes justified.[2]  If we use the 4% number for those with a lot of sympathy for the Taliban, this means that out of every 100,000 Afghans we could have up to about 1,560 Afghans believing that “suicide bombing” could often be justified.[3]

Combining these two issues means we could be bringing in a potentially significant base of support for a jihadist group; and that base of support could include a large number willing to engage in jihadist attacks in the United States using explosives.

Mayorkas called border crisis ‘unsustainable,’ but swift response is lacking by Anna Giaritelli

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/mayorkas-border-crisis-unsustainable-swift-action-fix-lacking

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas may have called the level of illegal immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border “unsustainable,” but he is not taking immediate action to respond to the crisis, according to immigration experts.

In a surprising admission, the Biden administration’s top border official admitted earlier this month in private talks that “if our borders are the first line of defense, we’re going to lose, and this is unsustainable.”

The comment contradicted what Mayorkas said a day earlier in public — that the growing surge of people from around the world was “not new.”

“There’s a lot of frustration, and with reason,” said Monica Weisberg-Stewart, the chairwoman of the Texas Border Coalition’s Committee on Border Security and Immigration.

The Texas Border Coalition, an organization comprised of mayors, county judges, corporations, and communities along the 1,250-mile state border with Mexico, is concerned that the Biden administration remains focused on its long-term policy changes that may stem the flow of people traveling to the border but has not done enough in the short-term.

TBC asked the Biden administration to pause all immigration at the southern border, which she characterized as a “drastic” move for the organization and indicative of how troubled border communities are by the daily releases of thousands of migrants onto the streets. Mayorkas did not pause immigration, but he pledged to hire 2,000 asylum officers so that migrants’ asylum claims can be decided at the border rather than years after they have been released into the United States and appear before a judge. Weisberg-Stewart said it was not enough.

“He wanted to hire 2,000 asylum officers. Get the ones that are already in our system that already know how to do this — get them down there now, yesterday. Get ‘em down there and start working on it because you don’t have anywhere to put these individuals,” she said, referring to migrants released from custody.

Theresa Cardinal Brown, the managing director of immigration and cross-border policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center think tank in Washington, said the administration’s hands are tied to the extent that they cannot control who is arriving. However, the federal response has been minimal as monthly illegal immigration levels surpassed even those seen during the 2019 humanitarian crisis.

A White House official said the government is continuing to return those who cross illegally to Mexico under a public health policy known as Title 42. However, the administration is not returning most families due to Mexico’s unwillingness to take back migrants who are not Mexican.

The Coming Afghan Migration Crisis Europe understandably fears a refugee surge like the one from Syria.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-coming-afghan-migration-crisis-europe-joe-biden-alexander-lukashenko-taliban-11629831981?mod=opinion_lead_pos4

The immediate crisis in Kabul will end when U.S. forces depart, but President Biden’s surrender to the Taliban will have deleterious effects far beyond Afghanistan. Another migration crisis in Europe could be among the most consequential.

“Migrants and refugees from Syria, Iraq and Libya will be joined by people from Afghanistan,” Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko saidMonday. “Even though they are going to end up in the West, they will be going and flying through Belarus.”

Mr. Lukashenko, isolated after his brazen theft of last year’s presidential election, has been facilitating illegal immigration into Europe. So far more than 4,000 have crossed into neighboring Lithuania this year, up from a few dozen in 2020. Poland and Latvia also have had to reinforce their borders with Belarus as they cope with thousands of illegal crossings.

The strongman has made clear that Minsk is weaponizing the migrants over the European Union’s sanctions on his government’s elites and some Belarusian industries. He told the U.S. and U.K. to “choke on your sanctions” earlier this month. Mr. Lukashenko has plenty of reason to believe he can behave with impunity.

The International Monetary Fund this week granted the regime a nearly $1 billion lifeline through “special drawing rights.” (See nearby.) Mr. Biden and his European counterparts, overwhelmed in Afghanistan, never organized effective opposition to the move despite their influence at the IMF.

Supreme Court Orders Reinstatement of ‘Remain in Mexico’ Policy in Blow to Biden Admin By Brittany Bernstein

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/supreme-court-orders-reinstatement-of-remain-in-mexico-policy-in-blow-to-biden-admin/

The Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to block a lower-court ruling that will require the Biden administration to reinstate the Trump-era “Remain in Mexico” policy for asylum seekers at the U.S. border.

The court’s three liberal justices dissented, saying they would have granted the administration’s request to halt the lower court’s order.

The administration had sought to end the policy, formally known as Migrant Protection Protocols, which forces migrants to await their U.S. immigration court dates in Mexico. The program was first suspended when Biden took office and was later formally terminated.

However, Texas and Missouri sued to challenge the Biden administration’s decision to end the program.

U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk ruled earlier this month that the administration had violated the Administrative Procedure Act when it moved to end the program.

The lower court ruled that the administration must make a “good faith effort” to reimplement the program.

Last week, the Biden administration argued in a petition it filed with the Supreme Court that reinstating the program would result in “irreparable harm.”

Suspected terrorists crossing border ‘at a level we have never seen before,’ outgoing Border Patrol chief says by Anna Giaritelli

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/border-patrol-chief-suspected-terrorists-coming-across-southern-border

Unprecedented numbers of known or suspected terrorists have crossed the southern border in recent months, the outgoing Border Patrol chief said.

The head of the Border Patrol, Rodney Scott, told his 19,000 agents before retiring on Aug. 14 that their national security mission is paramount right now despite the Biden administration’s focus on migrant families and children who are coming across the United States-Mexico boundary at record rates.

“Over and over again, I see other people talk about our mission, your mission, and the context of it being immigration or the current crisis today being an immigration crisis,” Scott said in a video message to agents, obtained by the Washington Examiner. “I firmly believe that it is a national security crisis. Immigration is just a subcomponent of it, and right now, it’s just a cover for massive amounts of smuggling going across the southwest border — to include TSDBs at a level we have never seen before. That’s a real threat.”

TSDB refers to known or suspected terrorists, as identified in the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Database.

“Your peers or you are taking criminals, pedophiles, rapists, murderers, and like I said before, even TSDB alerts off the streets and keeping them safe from America,” Scott said. “Even if we processed several thousand migrants that day and even if thousands of them were allowed into the U.S., you still took those threats off the street, and I think that’s worth it. So please don’t ever undersell how important your mission is.”

The surge of migrants from mostly Central American countries has prompted Border Patrol to pull more than 40% of agents from the field to help transport, process, and care for people in custody, meaning fewer agents are able to patrol for national security threats. Often, smugglers send over large groups of families and children to divert agents to one area and then run other contraband or people over the border where agents are not present.

Shortly after taking office in January, CBP told members of Congress that federal law enforcement had stopped four people on the terror watchlist. A CBP news release about these specific encounters was taken down from the government agency’s website hours after going up, prompting complaints from Republicans about the Department of Homeland Security’s transparency.

The congressional briefing confirmed what House Republicans had said during a border tour in Texas in March. House Homeland Security Committee ranking member John Katko, a former federal prosecutor who was based in El Paso, Texas, during his time as a lawyer, said the international cartels were “masterfully” exploiting the border due to an easing of Trump-era border restrictions.

“People they’ve caught in the last few days [in Border Patrol’s El Paso sector] have been under the terror watchlist,” Katko said. “Individuals that they have on the watchlist for terrorism are now starting to exploit the southern border.”

The four terror watchlist matches represented a greater number than the average total seen in recent years. Although several thousand people are denied entry to the U.S. at airports each year as a result of being on the list, it is unusual for people to be encountered trying to get into the U.S. between land border crossings. The four matches were citizens of Serbia and Yemen.

Border Patrol Chief: Suspected Terrorists Crossing U.S. Border At Levels ‘Never Seen Before’ By Gabe Kaminsky

https://thefederalist.com/2021/08/16/border-patrol-chief-suspected-terrorists-are-crossing-u-s-border-at-levels-never-seen-before/

Amid a massive surge of migrants at the United States-Mexico border, the outgoing Border Patrol chief told his 19,000 agents prior to retiring over the weekend that known or suspected terrorists are coming into America “at a level we have never seen before.”

“Over and over again, I see other people talk about our mission, your mission, and the context of it being immigration or the current crisis today being an immigration crisis,” Rodney Scott, who retired Saturday, said in a video to employees.

“I firmly believe that it is a national security crisis. Immigration is just a subcomponent of it, and right, now it’s just a cover for massive amounts of smuggling going across the southwest border — to include TSDBs at a level we have never seen before. That’s a real threat,” he said.

The term “TSDB” is a reference to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) Terrorist Screening Center Database. The database is used by government agencies and launched after the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Scott’s comments come days after U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data from July showed a 20-year record in arrests, more than 212,000, and a 13 percent increase from June. Due to migrants coming into the U.S. from Central America, the Biden administration has yanked over 40 percent of federal agents to assist in processing, custody care, and transport needs.

Biden Administration’s Dangerous Immigration Policies Demonstrate Orwellian “Doublethink” By Michael W. Cutler

https://usinc.org/biden-administrations-dangerous-immigration-policies-demonstrate-orwellian-doublethink/

George Orwell defined doublethink as, “The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.”

Politicians traditionally put a “spin” on what they say, and how they say it. This is why most folks look askance at politicians and the promises that they make.

George Orwell, in point of fact, said, “Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

For quite some time these linguistic gymnastics were written off as being examples of “political correctness.” I have consistently resisted the use of the term political correctness (PC), because it creates the deceptive appearance that misleading language is used out of a desire to be considerate.

In reality, such misuse of language generally has a far more sinister motivation, to mislead folks by manipulating language to create propaganda and misinformation. Because people think with words, control of language is actually thought control. Consequently the so-called “PC Police” should be properly referred to as the “Thought Police,” another of Orwell’s creations.

This tactic is unacceptable and incongruous for freedom-loving Americans.

Eleven Senate Democrats Vote Against COVID Tests For Illegal Immigrants at the Southern Border By Debra Heine

https://amgreatness.com/2021/08/12/eleven-senate-democrats-vote-against-covid-tests-for-illegal-immigrants-at-the-southern-border/

Eleven Senate Democrats on Thursday voted against a modest and commonsense amendment to the Senate Budget Resolution that requires illegal migrants apprehended on the southern border to be tested for COVID-19 before they are transported into the country.

The amendment, introduced by Senator Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), a physician, establishes “a deficit-neutral reserve fund relating to protecting migrants and local communities against COVID-19.”  Under the provision, migrants will be quarantined and not transported from the border until they tested negative.

This minor impediment to the Regime’s goal of fundamentally transforming the nation through mass immigration was supported by Majority Whip Dick Durbin, and Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.  The majority leaders urged the eleven radical Dems to switch their votes to be in favor of the amendment “to create the illusion of a united front on the issue of public health at our southern border within the Democrat Party,” according to Marshall in a statement Thursday.

In the end, the amendment passed with a final vote of 88-11.

The eleven far-left Democrats who voted against the amendment are Sens. Cory Booker (N.J.), Martin Heinrich (N.M.), Maisie Hirono (Hawaii), Ben Ray Lujan (N.M.), Ed Markey (Mass.), Bob Menendez (N.J.), Chris Murphy (Conn.), John Ossoff (Ga.), Bernie Sanders (Vt.), Tina Smith (Minn.), Liz Warren (Mass.).

How Much Worse Can It Get? By Mark Krikorian

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/how-much-worse-can-it-get/

I thought for sure the arrest numbers at the border would go down a little in July, if only because of the brutal summer heat.

I was wrong.

Border “encounters” continued their climb under the Biden administration, reaching about 213,000, up 13 percent from June. Of those, about 200,000 were Border Patrol arrests (the rest were illegals at ports of entry).

Perhaps most alarming is that the illegal surge continues to globalize. The share of Border Patrol arrests of illegals not from Mexico or the Northern Triangle countries of Central America (Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador) has doubled over the past six months, from about 15 percent in March to 29 percent in July. (See all the numbers here and here.) 

In fact, the focus on the “Northern Triangle” might have to be modified. While Guatemala and Honduras are still major sources of illegals, El Salvador has been pushed out of fourth place among source countries of illegals; of the 57,000 arrests of non-Mexican/NTCA aliens, 17,000 were from Ecuador, 1,000 miles further south, far more than the 12,000 from El Salvador. Is Vice President Harris going to fix the “root causes” in Ecuador, too?

None of this should be a surprise. My colleague Todd Bensman recently visited a smuggling hub on the Costa Rica-Nicaragua border and published a series of posts under the heading “A United Nations of Illegal Immigration,” in which he described the open transit of people from Mauretania, Cuba, Senegal, Eritrea, and elsewhere. Many are Haitians who were firmly settled in Chile and Brazil, but who are taking Biden up on his invitation to, as Bensman put it, “apply for asylum and secure an economic upgrade.” Of course, resettlement in another country makes them ineligible for asylum, meaning that all of them will lie to U.S. authorities and pretend to have come straight from Haiti.

Even as the total number of arrests rose, the number expelled under the Title 42 public-health order dropped 9 percent, to account for less than half of total arrests. This means that, with a few exceptions, the majority of illegal aliens arrested in July by the Border Patrol were released into the United States, unlikely ever to be made to leave. Of those released, perhaps half won’t even bother to apply for asylum, having successfully used a claim of fear as a gambit for release; of those who do apply, most will be rejected, but stay anyway. That means in July, the Biden border crisis will have been responsible for at least, say, 75,000 new illegal aliens (not counting the got-aways, whose numbers are documented (by remote cameras and other means) to have been increasing as the Border Patrol is overwhelmed with caring for the families and teens Biden’s policies have attracted).