The immigration thread: American Melting Pot or Get off my Lawn

[visionary]

http://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczynski/roanoke-mayor-off-clinton-virginia-leadership-council?utm_term=.sdbJ223EL#.bezG99Wk5

Roanoke Mayor Off Clinton Campaign’s Leadership Team After Refugee Remarks

 

Following comments that his city should reject refugees in the way the U.S. interned Japanese-American citizens during World War II the mayor of Roanoke, Virginia, has lost his spot on Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s Virginia Leadership Council.

 

Davis Bowers had been on the Virginia committee since early October, but a Clinton source confirmed he is no longer on the committee.
A Clinton campaign spokesman slammed Bowers’ comments in a statement.

 

“The internment of people of Japanese descent is a dark cloud on our nation’s history and to suggest that it is anything but a horrible moment in our past is outrageous,” said Josh Schwerin, a Clinton campaign spokesman.

Edited November 18, 2015 by visionary

[The 12th Commandment]

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/us-government-turned-away-thousands-jewish-refugees-fearing-they-were-nazi-spies-180957324/

 

 

In the summer of 1942, the SS Drottningholm carrying hundreds of desperate Jewish refugees, en route to New York City from Sweden. Among them was Herbert Karl Friedrich Bahr, a 28-year-old from Germany, who was also seeking entry to the United States. When he arrived, the told the same story as his fellow passengers: As a victim of persecution, he wanted asylum from Nazi violence.

 

But during a meticulous interview process that involved five separate government agencies, Bahr's story began to unravel. Days later, the FBI accused Bahr of being a Nazi spy. They said the Gestapo had given him $7,000 to steal American industrial secrets—and that he'd posed as a refugee in order to sneak into the country unnoticed. His case was rushed to trial, and the prosecution called for the death penalty.

 

What Bahr didn’t know, or perhaps didn’t mind, was that his story would be used as an excuse to deny visas to thousands of Jews fleeing the horrors of the Nazi regime.

 

World War II prompted the largest displacement of human beings the world has ever seen—although today's refugee crisis is starting to approach its unprecedented scale. But even with millions of European Jews displaced from their homes, the United States had a poor track record offering asylum. Most notoriously, in June 1939, the German ocean liner St. Louis and its 937 passengers, almost all Jewish, were turned away from the port of Miami, forcing the ship to return to Europe; more than a quarter died in the Holocaust.

 

Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/us-government-turned-away-thousands-jewish-refugees-fearing-they-were-nazi-spies-180957324/#doCdE1UMCoMQKdcI.99
Give the gift of Smithsonian magazine for only $12! http://bit.ly/1cGUiGv
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[TradeTheBeal!]

I'm not sure I've ever heard anyone refer to Japanese Internment in a positive light.

[visionary]

http://www.haaretz.com/jewish/news/1.686976?v=8CDB87FF2F016573CBFB118F0DD563B7

Ten Jewish Groups Urge Congress to Allow Syrian Refugees Into U.S.

 

Ten Jewish groups have sent a letter to Congress members on Tuesday urging them not to roll back plans to accept Syrian refugees into the United States.

 

“To turn our back on refugees would be to betray our nation’s core values,” said the letter, as Congress began considering measures that would put a stop to the Obama administration’s plans to bring in 10,000 Syrian refugees over the next year.

 

“It would send a demoralizing and dangerous message to the world that the United States makes judgments about people based on the country they come from and their religion.”

 

Among the Jewish groups signing are the Union for Reform Judaism, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, the National Council of Jewish Women, the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee.

Edited November 18, 2015 by visionary

[Redskins Diehard]

Our refugee vetting process is good. I had my doubts about it, but the more I've read, the more it's obvious that we won't just let any jagoff enter our country. We have the ability to help these people escape a horrible situation and we should. You can be critical of the faith they follow, but still have the humanity in you to recognize that they are in need of help and it's better that you are able to reason and dialogue with them in a secular society instead of letting them die at the hands of barbarians.

Maybe our refugee vetting process is too stringent?

What kind of numbers are actually coming at this point? What percentage of the potential refugees are we sheltering?

[Predicto]

I'm not sure I've ever heard anyone refer to Japanese Internment in a positive light.

 

 

Michelle Malkin wrote an entire book about it.  Published by Regnery Press of course.  It was a massive bestseller in the conservative market.

 

http://www.amazon.com/In-Defense-Internment-Racial-Profiling/dp/0895260514

 

Of course, every single factual claim in that book has been debunked by real historians, but she has not budged from her views. 

 

She's not the only one.  I think General Wesley Clark has said similar things. 

Edited November 19, 2015 by Predicto

[visionary]

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/11/house-set-to-pass-bill-limiting-syrian-refugees-216035

House showdown set over Syrian refugees

 

The fallout from the Paris terrorist attacks will begin to play out on the House floor Thursday as the chamber is set to approve a bill to block any refugees from Syria or Iraq from entering the country unless they pass a strict background check and receive government certification.

 

The bill, which was crafted by Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas) and Rep. Richard Hudson (R-N.C.), is expected to pass with a big bipartisan margin. A sizable number of Democrats are likely to cross the aisle and vote for it, despite White House opposition, said lawmakers in both parties. Some rank-and-file Democrats are concerned about looking soft on national security even as French authorities continue to track down suspects from last week's deadly attacks.
 

Democratic insiders predicted that anywhere between 40 to 60 Democrats could vote "yes" on the bill, though estimates are very fluid and the final tally could be far higher unless the White House can move some votes. The Democratic Blue Dog Coalition, which has 15 members, announced that it would support the bill.

 

Some Democrats privately griped that the Obama administration has been too slow in responding to the GOP proposal. A senior Democrat complained that there is "frustration that the White House is not giving them a good enough reason" to oppose the measure.

 

Democratic Rep. Patrick Murphy (Fla.), who is running for Senate, said he was "leaning yes" on the measure.

 

"At the end of the day, I don’t think anybody wants anything national security-related, whether it's refugees or terrorism, to become a partisan issue," Murphy said. "It's about protecting America. We should be coming together to say, 'How can we protect the homeland?'"

 

The legislation, formally known as the American Security Against Foreign Enemies Act, would require the FBI, Homeland Security Department and Director of National Intelligence to certify to Congress that any refugee from Syria or Iraq is "not a threat to the security of the United States" before being allowed to settle in United States.

 

https://twitter.com/RamiJarrah/status/667147262238281728

Syrian refugees split Democratic Party

Edited November 19, 2015 by visionary

[DogofWar1]

Obama should troll everyone by signing the bill, and then changing nothing, except maybe adding a new rubber stamp box for a State Dept. official to "certify" at the end of the process.

 

Which would likely be 100% consistent with the law.

 

He could be like "we implemented your bill so well, that your standards traveled into the past and were implemented many years ago."  *does the exploding head hand motion*

[Hersh]

I did see some of Obama's comments and he should have stayed above the fray while still advocating for the refugees coming here. He did not do a good job and I bet he would like that one back.

[visionary]

http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/18/politics/donald-trump-syrian-refugees-christian/index.html?sr=twCNN111915donald-trump-syrian-refugees-christian0133AMVODtopPhoto&linkId=18866273

Trump: Difficult to prove refugees are Christian

 

Donald Trump on Wednesday questioned the idea of requiring Syrian refugees to prove they are Christian before allowing them into the United States, saying, "I don't know if you can prove that they're Christian."

 

"You have to prove it. How are they proving it?" Trump said at a press conference here. "I have a real concern that the people who are coming into this country are coming in, some for very bad purposes."

 

The New York real estate mogul's comments came on the heels of a series of coordinated terrorist attacks in Paris last week that killed more than 120 people and which ISIS has claimed responsibility for. In the aftermath of the horrific events, some Republican presidential candidates have toughened their rhetoric and raised alarm about Syrian refugees seeking to enter the United States.

 

Some of Trump's rivals have suggested that the country should selectively accept Christian Syrians. Allowing tens of thousands of Syrian Muslims into the country was "nothing short of lunacy," said Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, adding that it's a "different situation" altogether with Middle Eastern Christians.

 

Jeb Bush, meanwhile, said the country should take in "people like orphans and people who are clearly not going to be terrorists. Or Christians."

Trump told reporters Wednesday that he would have had no problem taking Jewish refugees fleeing the Holocaust during World War II because they wouldn't be terrorists.

 

"They weren't gonna knock down the World Trade Center. They weren't gonna do damage. They weren't gonna do what happened in Paris. Much different story," Trump said.

 

Trump, who has not held a press conference in several weeks, answered a wide range of questions from reporters before taking the stage at a campaign rally here Wednesday. The majority of questions centered on national security and foreign policy issues, as news coverage continues to focus on last week's massacre that jolted Paris.

 

Trump reiterated his controversial statement that he would consider closing down mosques, calling it "common sense."

 

"There's tremendous hatred," he said. "Radical Islamic terrorism is a fact. ... It's a very gruesome fact. It's a very, very serious problem."

 

https://twitter.com/scottwongDC

Now hearing that 50 Democrats may back House GOP SyrianRefugees bill tomorrow, acc to one Dem supporter. Earlier that person said 10-30
9:36 PM

 

 

 

https://twitter.com/RandPaul/

My amendment will end housing assistance to refugees. It sends a clear message to the president. We have control of the power of the purse!
4:20 PM

Edited November 19, 2015 by visionary

[twa]

What if we let them in and they turn out to be violent religious fanatics?

 

 

 

What will your opinion be if our religious fanatics start working with their religious fanatics?

[Popeman38]

This makes me sick. Utterly sick. There are hundreds of thousands of innocent people fleeing a half a decade of civil war, and we are worried about a handful of hideaway jihadis? Newsflash-if ISIS wanted to get jihadis into the US they would use the Al Qaeda playbook and send legit visitors with valid visas to live among us and then inflict damage. What is a jihadi hiding among refugees going to actually do? No weapon, no explosives, no contacts, no communication.

[Redskins Diehard]

This makes me sick. Utterly sick. There are hundreds of thousands of innocent people fleeing a half a decade of civil war, and we are worried about a handful of hideaway jihadis? Newsflash-if ISIS wanted to get jihadis into the US they would use the Al Qaeda playbook and send legit visitors with valid visas to live among us and then inflict damage. What is a jihadi hiding among refugees going to actually do? No weapon, no explosives, no contacts, no communication.

I mean not that i support changing the refugee program but I suspect anyone wishing to do us harm would not rule out any method of entry. Folks that enter on a regular visa are doing it without weapons and explosives also.

It would be beneficial if we could have discussions around here that actually discussed the issue instead of yelling how wrong a person who we would never consider voting into office is.

What should our immigration policy towards a war torn country be?

[pjfootballer]

Tom Petty approves this thread.

Edited November 19, 2015 by pjfootballer

[Alaskins]

I did see some of Obama's comments and he should have stayed above the fray while still advocating for the refugees coming here. He did not do a good job and I bet he would like that one back.

Fully agreed.  Especially given the PR disaster today on the Widows comment (with the French female "suicide" bomber) and the Syrians caught at the TX border trying to sneak in.   This is an issue where even "blueblood" Democrats are opposing him.

 

Sometimes I think, "C'mon man, everything doesn't have to be used as an Attack on Republicans."

I mean not that i support changing the refugee program but I suspect anyone wishing to do us harm would not rule out any method of entry. Folks that enter on a regular visa are doing it without weapons and explosives also.

It would be beneficial if we could have discussions around here that actually discussed the issue instead of yelling how wrong a person who we would never consider voting into office is.

What should our immigration policy towards a war torn country be?

A war-torn country?  Or a war-torn country that has a fair number of it's population as sworn enemies of the U.S.?  There is a difference, and I don't trust our current powers-that-be to be able to determine the difference.

Edited November 19, 2015 by Alaskins

[TradeTheBeal!]

Fully agreed.  Especially given the PR disaster today on the Widows comment (with the French female "suicide" bomber) and the Syrians caught at the TX border trying to sneak in.   This is an issue where even "blueblood" Democrats are opposing him.

 

Sometimes I think, "C'mon man, everything doesn't have to be used as an Attack on Republicans.".

Syrians at the Texas border, huh? Link please.

[DogofWar1]

I mean not that i support changing the refugee program but I suspect anyone wishing to do us harm would not rule out any method of entry. Folks that enter on a regular visa are doing it without weapons and explosives also.

 

Perhaps, but it's probably unlikely.

 

While ISIS isn't exactly without resources, their resources aren't unlimited, and become thinner and thinner the farther away from their pseudo-caliphate semi-state they go, especially once they hop the Atlantic.  Any infiltration of the US from the Middle East is likely a low percentage proposition, and each attempt takes resources.

 

The refugee process is probably the lowest probability option that uses official channels, and is probably lower probability than many unofficial channels.  It's risky and slow; if an ISIS infiltrator started the process now, they probably wouldn't even be in the United States for a year, at a minimum, and would be vetted extensively though the whole process.  There's no guarantee ISIS would even exist in anything but decentralized marginalized scattered form in a year with the stepped up anger and activity by the West.  If that happens, coordination problems happen; even if the attacks are unsophisticated, a refugee infiltrator would need some measure of coordination.

 

Multiply those issues by however many times over for each person you're trying to sneak in, and it's likely much easier and efficient to go another route.  Most of the attackers in Paris were European Nationals probably because utilizing homegrown, radicalized on-site fighters is probably easier than exporting them from Iraq/Syria.

 

 

Syrians at the Texas border, huh? Link please.

 

Google searched it, seems it came from a Breitbart report which said two CBP officers contacted BB and said they got 8 Syrians attempting to cross on Monday.  Official word when they contacted CBP officials is the standard "can neither confirm nor deny" line.  Did not see any major news outlet reporting it.

[Alaskins]

Syrians at the Texas border, huh? Link please.

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/11/18/report-8-syrians-caught-at-texas-border-in-laredo/

 

http://www.wnd.com/2015/11/report-8-syrians-caught-at-texas-border/

 

http://www.newsmax.com/US/syrian-refugees-apprehended-southern/2015/11/18/id/702770/

 

There you go Beal...

 

Some other sites reporting more caught in S. America heading to US before being caught due to Intel sharing:

 

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2015/11/18/report-us-bound-syrians-arrested-honduras-fake-passports/76016812/

 

http://news.yahoo.com/honduras-arrests-five-syrians-headed-us-stolen-passports-204536480.html

Edited November 19, 2015 by Alaskins

[Hersh]

Fully agreed.  Especially given the PR disaster today on the Widows comment (with the French female "suicide" bomber) and the Syrians caught at the TX border trying to sneak in.   This is an issue where even "blueblood" Democrats are opposing him.

 

Sometimes I think, "C'mon man, everything doesn't have to be used as an Attack on Republicans."

A war-torn country?  Or a war-torn country that has a fair number of it's population as sworn enemies of the U.S.?  There is a difference, and I don't trust our current powers-that-be to be able to determine the difference.

 

Watch the PBS special on the rise of ISIS. You will understand the widows comment a lot more when you see huge groups of men being marched out and shot in the head. To say, well see, there is one female bomber or x number is foolish at best. These are men that will force people to be suicide bombers so there is no context cause there was one female.

 

Second, the fact that 5 Syrians tried to get into the US through Central or South America proves what? Terrorists from all nations are trying to get into different countries around the world. Do we not allow anyone from any country to come into the US now? You should come out against all immigration cause other visas have a lot less scrutiny then the refugee review.

 

Edited November 19, 2015 by Hersh

[Hersh]

This makes me sick. Utterly sick. There are hundreds of thousands of innocent people fleeing a half a decade of civil war, and we are worried about a handful of hideaway jihadis? Newsflash-if ISIS wanted to get jihadis into the US they would use the Al Qaeda playbook and send legit visitors with valid visas to live among us and then inflict damage. What is a jihadi hiding among refugees going to actually do? No weapon, no explosives, no contacts, no communication.

 

Well said. I might have to steal this when talking to other people. It really doesn't make a lot of sense for a terrorist to attempt to come in through this process. It's 18-24 months long, there is a vigorous background check and all your information is now on record with the authorities. Plus, the likelihood of getting monitored once you got here is probably fairly high now.

Edited November 19, 2015 by Hersh

[twa]

Syrians at the Texas border, huh? Link please.

 

Everyone wants to live in Texas....except LKB

 

probably just visiting kinfolk.

[visionary]

http://www.buzzfeed.com/joshuahersh/germany-comes-together#.roq47710P

As Refugee Issue Divides U.S., Germans Come Together

 

On the day after a vicious series of terrorist attacks struck Paris, sparking outrage and renewing a debate over the wisdom of letting massive numbers of Syrian refugees stream across Europe, Thomas de Maizière, the German interior minister, had a meeting with the press.

 

A career politician with a long and close association with Angela Merkel, the chancellor, De Maizière had recently emerged as something of a domestic provocateur, boldly challenging Merkel’s refugee policies, and proposing steps — some evidently without her foreknowledge — that would significantly restrict the refugee inflow.

 

But when he was asked on Saturday about a possible link between terrorism and the refugee issue, de Maizière offered a surprising sentiment: don’t connect the two. “I would like to make this urgent plea to avoid drawing such swift links to the situation surrounding refugees,” he said.

 

It’s a posture that has emerged as the political consensus in Germany in the days after the attacks, and one that has at least nominally unified Germany’s leaders at a time when the rest of the world seems to be growing only more acrimonious. While France veers toward anti-immigration right-wing parties, and mostly Republican governors in the United States seek to block the resettlement of refugees in their states, German officials, at least for the moment, seem to have found a common cause.

 

“These two aspects — terrorism on the one hand, migration on the other hand — are very complex subjects, and what you will see is the government and the politicians will very seriously try not to combine them,” said Werner Weidenfeld, a professor of politics at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich. “I understand that from an American background one might be expecting that, but the political culture here is different.” (Germany’s hyper-vigilance about repeating its own history may be a factor.)

Edited November 19, 2015 by visionary

[Elessar78]

It's not about keeping refugees out in my opinion, the biggest argument I see made is that we are allowing these refugees in without assisting our own. There's tens of thousands of homeless vets or homeless children and families in our own country. Why not take the resources given to the refugees to come here and distribute to our own?

Not to mention, it's already been found that ISIS is sneaking/attempting to sneak in to other countries as refugees.

Now if we are talking about bringing in children refugees, that's a different story. Bring all of the children over that you want.

Well, in "better" times you realize how hard it's been to raise funding to support programs like you are describing. Do you think it's not been tried at the state and federal levels.

When you say "children" where do you draw the line? What age? And these children should become wards of the state?

So the humane thing is to separate these kids who have lost their homes from their parents?

What would Jesus want you to do with refugees?

[TradeTheBeal!]

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/11/18/report-8-syrians-caught-at-texas-border-in-laredo/

 

http://www.wnd.com/2015/11/report-8-syrians-caught-at-texas-border/

 

http://www.newsmax.com/US/syrian-refugees-apprehended-southern/2015/11/18/id/702770/

 

There you go Beal...

 

Some other sites reporting more caught in S. America heading to US before being caught due to Intel sharing:

 

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2015/11/18/report-us-bound-syrians-arrested-honduras-fake-passports/76016812/

 

http://news.yahoo.com/honduras-arrests-five-syrians-headed-us-stolen-passports-204536480.html

The first three links are trash. The second two do not remotely refer to Syrians at the Mexican border.

[MattFancy]

Maybe our refugee vetting process is too stringent?

What kind of numbers are actually coming at this point? What percentage of the potential refugees are we sheltering?

 

Since 2012, we've let in 2,144 Syrian refugees. In that time, there's been about 4 million Syrian refugees. So we've brought in .000536% of the total Syrian refugees.

 

Another perspective, just last year, we brought in 70,000 refugees from all different countries.

 

What you need to know about Syrian refugees