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Vetting Syrian Refugees
The argument against letting them in is that the government, being completely incompetent, can’t possibly sort through ten thousand people and pick out the terrorists. Syria is just too chaotic, and you never really know what’s in someone’s heart and mind.
But if we look back to the discussion on our government’s programs that applied waterboarding, EIT, and indefinite detention, we were also told that the government only applied these things to known, dangerous terrorists.
So when and how did our government lose the ability to determine who was who?
Published in General, Islamist Terrorism
True this, can’t like again so I’ll just repeat it.
On the torture spectrum waterboarding is on the mild end. But it still meets the definition of torture. Also what do you mean to gain compliance?
Every year the major cities in the United States hold mass grave ceremonies for the people who have died whose remains were not claimed by family members. Most of the people buried in this way are unknown to anyone.
It is impossible to expect that once the refugees are brought to the United States that if they are “off the grid” that we would be able to monitor their activities and relationships.
Picture the unemployed refugee three years from now living in the slums around our major cities who becomes obsessed with his or her anger toward the America that failed to provide the fortune at the end of the yellow brick road.
Any public library with Internet access would provide that person with access to radicalizing jihadists.
We would barely know the person existed, let alone that he or she had become a terrorist.
Of course, all of that is true of people already here. But it becomes a more likely scenario when the numbers of unemployed, disaffected, alienated refugees swamp our states’ and national intelligence agencies’ meager abilities to keep track of people.
It may meet your definition of torture. That doesn’t mean it meets “the” definition of torture.
Well, by the international definition so does Pres. Obamas gift of his speeches to the Queen of England, assuming she actually listened to any of them.
This is what is meant by compliance (oh and the results of waterboarding)
TPTB ought to invite Jim Hansen (or Uncle Jimbo as he is known on the interwebs) to the podcast.
Why does one preclude the other? Of course it’s a disgrace that we haven’t brought our terps back. Is the way to rectify this disgrace with further disgrace? No, it’s to stop being disgraceful, period.
I agree wholeheartedly with the main counterargument here, which is that the two situations are different kinds of problems.
I’d also like to offer a secondary point, which is that not all bureaucracies are created equal. The government is too big to treat it as a monolith. I trust the accuracy and professionalism of BLS much more than the Census Bureau; I trust the knowledge and professionalism of the DOJ’s Criminal Division much more than its Civil Rights Division; and I trust the capabilities and professionalism of DoD and CIA much more than the INS.
True and concur. Previously I would have said the same of the Secret Service.
That said – the remarkable lack of oversight or consequences within the IRS or DOJ Civil Rights division only means that the professionalism within the federal bureaucracy is being encouraged to regress to the mean.
The next big test is the DOJ criminal division vs the Clinton email scandal.
Part of the problem might be the interview techniques being used by the Obama Administration.
Homeland Security Agent: Are you one of those, umm…
Refugee: Islamic terrorists?
HSA: No, no. We don’t recognize the existence of Islamic terrorists.
R: You don’t? What do you think all these people are fleeing from?
HSA: From extremism. And workplace violence.
R: Workplace violence? Nobody in Syria has had a job for years.
HSA: Well, we don’t want to insult followers of the religion of peace.
R: Peace? You’re kidding, right? Have you seen Syria?
HSA: Okay, let me try this another way. If we let you in, do you promise to vote for Hillary Clinton? Don’t worry, you don’t need to show any ID.
R: Sure, whatever you say.
HSA: Okay, you’re in.
@ Claire,
I find the two cases very different. We owe a debt to translators who worked with us at risk of death during the war. We do NOT owe a similar debt to Syrians.
That said, I do not agree with the outright moratorium on Iraqi or Syrian immigration. But I do believe we should give preference to Yezidis and Christians. And my great concern with the populist House bill that passed is that it might further delay the Special Immigrant Visas for translators.
This is the critical point, and it ultimately doesn’t have anything to do with competence. Even if you have exactly the same level of confidence, the results will be very different. If you’re 99% sure of each decision, and you waterboard 3 terrorists, you have a 97% confidence that you didn’t waterboard anyone innocent. If you also admit 10,000 refugees, you probably let in 100 terrorists.
In fact, though, those who were waterboarded received a much higher level of scrutiny than the mass review of refugees will allow. If, before being admitted, each refugee were going to be as thoroughly investigated as those who were waterboarded, you’d see much less opposition.
Nidal Hassan was vetted to the point that he had (at least) a Secret security clearance. You’ll forgive me if I’m skeptical of the ability to check the backgrounds of people coming here from a war-torn country like Syria.
When we elected an incompetent.
Faced with an elite demand that America accept refugees of a war 5,000 miles away that we deliberately took no part in, many conservatives have engaged in a foolish debate about the efficacy of our vetting capacities.
They immediately made what was an unacceptable and tyrannical directive an argument instead about procedure and practicality – one that the lawyers, logic-choppers and liars on the other side of the argument were sure to win.
So console yourself now with the impotent state governors who say “Not in my state!” while the state next door swings its gates open.
Celebrate Speaker Ryan, as he cobbles together “ironclad” new rules which will vet not only this 10,000, but also the 250,000 still to come.
And pay no attention to Ann Corcoran’s “Top Ten List of Amnesty Traitors” as they go about re-colonizing the backward United States of America. You may not care if this country is predominantly white or not, but they sure as Hell do! And they’re working day and night for what they want, while you argue about stupid “vetting procedures.”
Be consoled, celebrate and pay no attention, Ricochetti. Don’t think about what is really happening to your country and its culture. After all that’s much more comfortable than standing up and saying “No!” to any more immigrants, asylees or refugees.
You don’t want Emma Lazarus to be mad at you.
Just for the record, I don’t care if America is predominantly white.
Kate Braestrup
“Just for the record I don’t care if America is predominantly white.”
When one side in a struggle wants something and the other side doesn’t care, the former will always get its way.
Get ready to be a minority.
Excuse me, but does anybody expect the Obama administration to find Islamist terrorists among refugees when they can’t even bring themselves to utter the words “Islamist terrorists”? These are the people who had Nidal Hassan’s emails to Al-Alwaki months before the Ft. Hood Attack and did exactly nothing about it. Couldn’t even recognize it as terrorism after the fact. They called it “workplace violence”.
Bingo!
Regards,
Jim
Nobody expects our minority occupation government to find the terrorists among the so-called Syrian so-called migrants – not the partisans of this administration nor its ostensible opponents. This entire debate is a Kabuki drama to distract folks like you from the ongoing, by-any-means-necessary, non-negotiable fundamental transformation of this country.
Come on, folks! Do you really think that Paul Ryan, an immigration enthusiast for years, has suddenly seen the light and now believes that potential refugees need to be carefully vetted, and that he knows how to do it and whom to entrust with the job? Get ready for “show” hearings and special funding requests in order to clear the entry of a new, more tractable American people.
The first generation is the camel’s nose under the tent. The second and third generations are the camel. Get it?
This isn’t about vetting and it’s not about terrorism. It’s about replacement.
Replacing you and your kids.
You see, in contradiction to the Founders and you, our elite actually do believe that some men were born with saddles on their backs and others were born with spurs on their heels. The elite see themselves as the ones with the spurs; unhappy with your independence, they’re now importing more subjects with saddles.