By Paul Nachman
05/07/2013
Americans have two days to intervene in their own affairs — specifically, to protest the refugee/ asylee scandal that, among other atrocities, produced the Boston Bombers.
If asked to describe VDARE.com’s theme and purpose in one sentence, I'd say: "The site exists to document, vividly, that every aspect of the U.S. immigration regime amounts to a victimization of the American people … and to press for immigration sanity in the national interest."
Our refugee and asylum programs constitute a major element in that victimization. This particular, long-running scandal finally received a massive surge of publicly beneficial exposure from the April 15 Boston Marathon bombings and the subsequent revelation that the perps were beneficiaries, via their parents, of asylum — and, of course, generous public benefits.
But VDARE.com has been covering the abuse of asylum and refuge since at least 2002. That August, in EOIR Immigration Court — Implementing the permanent amnesty, Juan Mann wrote:
International alien smuggling enables virtually anyone in the world without legal documents to bypass the system of U.S. consular refugee processing abroad. Aliens who simply appear without documents at any U.S. land border or airport on American soil can request asylum through the "credible fear" process, be released from custody, travel on to another city, and perhaps later appear for a hearing to be awarded asylum by an EOIR immigration judge. The potential for abuse of the current system is so great that the INS "credible fear" and EOIR asylum process has the potential to become the greatest back-door amnesty program of all.
Over the years, VDARE.com’s Thomas Allen, who specializes in this subfield, has written some twenty articles and blogs about the wide spectrum of outrages. And our prolific Brenda Walker has frequently focused on this area, including, most recently, Burmese Refugees Flood Iowa Town to Fill Tyson Jobs.
My own "favorite" refugee/asylee story is of the Kurd who fled his native Iraq, landed first in Iran, stowed away on a ship to Brazil, lived in Brazil for a while, then stowed away again on a ship to New York. Only upon reaching the U.S. did he apply for asylum, which was granted — at least provisionally, a year later.[ Tortured Iraqi Fugitive Given U.S. Sanctuary, By Mark Fritz, LA Times, April 17, 1998]
(The "abuse of asylum and refuge" was the theme for the Summer 1997 issue of The Social Contract quarterly. Articles by Norman Matloff, James Walsh, James Robb, Jack Martin, and Don Barnett should be helpful antidotes if you have low blood pressure. The PDF versions are more readable than the HTMLs.)
So how is this obnoxious topic going to warm you up for the Amnesty/ Immigration Surge death match that’s just ahead?
Well, 5 p.m. Eastern Time, Wednesday, May 8 is the deadline for your emailed and faxed public comments regarding the Fiscal Year 2014 refugee admissions program to the State Department’s Delicia Spruell ( or fax (202) 453-9393).
That’s also the deadline — if you live in the Washington, DC area and could attend the May 15 meeting itself to glower at the bureaucrats — for reserving a seat, by contacting Ms. Spruell. Details are in this brief announcement.
On Sunday, May 5, I emailed Ms. Spruell my observations and questions about the program. The questions are implicitly criticisms that the public isn’t being provided with essential and internally-consistent data about the program’s burden on taxpayers. My note to Ms. Spruell is appended to this article, as an example, but your input doesn’t need to be anywhere near as long as mine.
Beyond the niggling numerical points I focused upon in my email, here are several possible themes — courtesy of Don Barnett, who’s a real expert on refuge and asylum abuses — that you could choose from to incorporate in your input, recasting the ideas into your own words:
As the redoubtable Ann Corcoran, hyper-productive proprietress of the Refugee Resettlement Watch blog wrote recently:
Do not be silent! The US State Department holds a hearing, usually in May, largely populated by the refugee contractors telling sob stories and looking to boost the number and variety of refugees (not to mention the contractor’s income) to be admitted to the US in the upcoming fiscal year. … Your testimony can be long or short, detailed or general, but get something in by the deadline of 5 p.m. May 8th!
So come on, VDARE readers! Let’s flood 'em with (polite) outrage, perhaps keying on the Boston Marathon events!
Below is the email I sent to the State Department. I've added the links for their possible benefit to VDARE.com’s readers. Note that I’m sending copies of my letter to my senators and representative, along with a cover letter.
This is important because it lets the bureaucracy know that their proprietary subject is becoming visible. And it should be done by snail mail or fax (instead of easily-deletable emails). For timely receipt, it’s best that snail mail be sent to district offices instead of Washington, DC because of the security-induced delays in getting physical mail through to Capitol Hill offices.
[my street address]
Bozeman, MT 59715
5 May, 2013
To Delicia Spruell:
I’m writing to comment on the FY 2014 U.S. Refugee Admissions Program.
What I say here is heavily informed by an encounter I had in early 2003. At a conference on immigration and assimilation hosted by the Claremont Institute and held at Chapman College in Orange, CA, I met Professor Jan Ting, then and now a law professor at Temple University and formerly the Assistant Commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service under President George H. W.. Bush. Learning of his pedigree, I asked Professor Ting, "Is it true what I've heard, that 90% of refugee and asylum cases are fraudulent?" He instantly replied, "95%."
In other words, most "refugees" and "asylees" weren’t endangered in their home countries. They simply want to live in the U.S., because it’s a better deal for them economically.
This basic fact — that asylees and refugees frequently take cynical advantage of the American public’s goodwill — has finally received widespread and much needed public exposure via the bombing of the Boston Marathon. The two young men responsible were present in the U.S. only because their parents had received LPR status as asylees. Notably, and consistent with what Professor Ting had said, the parents have, in the meantime, returned to whence they came, strongly implying that their request for asylum had been fraudulent.
This is not an isolated case nor a new phenomenon: For example, in 1995, former State Department (U.S.I.A.) employee Don Barnett wrote in The Social Contract quarterly, "At any given time about 20,000 of the all-expenses-paid refugee visas have been awarded to former Soviets who have decided they don’t want to leave just now. The visas remain in effect indefinitely allowing the holder to leave at his or her convenience." People who choose to leave their domiciles “at their convenience” are clearly not being persecuted and are at no hazard to life or limb!
Following are two specific questions spurred by reading and comparing several documents found online: the DoS/HHS(ORR)/DHS Proposed Refugee Admissions for Fiscal Year 2013 (henceforth, "the three-agencies report")[PDF link], the DHS Yearbook of Immigration Statistics 2012: Legal Permanent Residents (Tables 6 and 7) [link; tables, linked within, are Excel spreadsheets], and the DoS Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration’s [PRM] Summary of Refugee Admissions as of 30 April, 2013 [link, an Excel spreadsheet]. (I assume that the proposed-admissions document for FY2014 will be similar in scope and content to that FY2013 document.)
— Refugee numbers are grossly inconsistent among these documents. Take FY2011 as an example. According to both the three-agencies report (Table II) and the PRM summary, the total count was 56,224. But the DHS yearbook gives the refugee total as 113,045 (Table 6) and 105,528 (Table 7). Yet the DHS has also signed onto the three-agencies report! Nor is this gross discrepancy unique to FY2011.
Therefore, Question #1: Why are the numbers of humanitarian admissions tabulated by the different departments so disparate?
— The footnote on page "i" of the three-agencies report says "Detailed discussion of the anticipated social and economic impact, including secondary migration, of the admission of refugees to the United States is being provided in the Report to the Congress of the Refugee Resettlement Program, Office of Refugee Resettlement, Department of Health and Human Services." [Emphasis added.] But my careful online search failed to turn up such a document.
A footnote on page 58 of that report says "[The 'refugee resettlement'] category … does not include costs associated with the … Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Medicaid, or Supplemental Security Income programs," thus reinforcing the point that major costs of refugee resettlement — indeed, probably the dominant costs — aren’t being revealed to the public.
Getting the refugee numbers correct (see my Question #1) has an obvious bearing on the costs burden. I see from that same footnote on page 58 that the Office of Refugee Resettlement [ORR] also serves "asylees, Cuban and Haitian entrants." Thus even if those DHS refugee numbers are grossly high, the PRM and the three-agencies-report numbers may actually be lowball, since the combined numbers of refugees and asylees are in the same numerical territory as DHS’s refugee-only numbers.
Putting these points together leads to Question #2: Why is the taxpaying American public systematically denied information revealing the true cost to us of the humanitarian-admissions programs?
Sincerely,
Paul Nachman
Copies by U.S. mail to:
- Senator Max Baucus
- Senator Jon Tester
- Representative Steve Daines
- US Senate Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on Immigration, Refugees and Border Security
- US House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security
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