Tag Archives: immigration

Refugee resettlement whistleblower calls for moratorium

In a must-read letter to the US State Department a 25-year veteran of the International Rescue Committee (one of the largest of the top nine federal contractors) calls for a moratorium on refugee resettlement until the ORR (Office of Refugee Resettlement) and the volags (contractors) get their act together.

Boston on our minds. The IRC closed its Boston office in 2009. But, several other refugee contractors are still doing business there.

Consider this long-time Boston resident’s comments about fraud and lax security screening in the light of two posts we have written in the last two days, here and here.  It all rings true.

Editor:  This is one more, but, by far the most damning, of the testimony we have been publishing in advance of this Wednesday’s hearing at the US State Department.  All other testimonies we have received are archived here.

(Emphasis below is mine)

Ms. Anne Richard
Asst. Secretary of State for Population, Refugees and Migration
US State Department
Washington, DC. 20520

April 27, 2013

Re: Federal Register Public Notice 8241 Comment Request

Dear Ms Richard:

I worked for the IRC in several capacities from 1980 until 2004 (caseworker, deputy director of the Boston office). In 2004, amid increasing budget constraints, I volunteered for a lay off. At the time, my heart was still into the work I loved and I continued to volunteer for two additional years, spending 3 days a week working on the family reunification program, in which I was considered an “expert.”

Early on, I grew familiar with the fraud that was rampant throughout the program, from the refugees themselves (sometimes forgivable), the overseas OPE’s (not forgivable) and on up to the UN (most unforgivable). Most of my colleagues were also aware of it, and while they often joked about it, almost no one did anything to change or challenge it.

In our work, it was all about “getting the numbers,” often at the expense of legitimate screening for “real“ refugees.

To be honest, I never turned a blind eye to obvious fraud, but had been instructed to give all refugee applicants “the benefit of the doubt.” Yet there were many applications about which I had serious reservations. Some of them were classically laughable ( “I don’t remember my mother’s name… let me make a phone call..”). There were more than a few applicants that I rejected (or referred to another Volag that might not have had the same concerns).

Being directly “in the field,” it’s often difficult to objectively see outside the perimeters of our day to day work.

My major concern was helping people re-unite with close and legitimate family members whose relationship I believed to exist in fact. I can’t tell you how many times, after resettlement that those relationships were revealed to be fraudulent. Sometimes the reasons were understandable from a human kindness point of view ( claiming an orphaned niece as a sister), but often those “relationships” were simple financial transactions.

In my long years at the IRC, I assisted many ethnic groups. I can say without reservation that the Somalis were among the most duplicitous. There was a time when I suggested that they swear on the Quran before signing the affidavit of relationship. Most of the time they would flee and not return. That practice was discontinued, being deemed politically incorrect.

All of us in the field know just how weak the “security screening” was. It’s mostly a very poor and ineffective system of simple name checks from countries that for the most part keep no records.

I personally had some concerns about some Iraqi refugees admitted in the mid 90’s.

One of them went on to become implicated in the Oklahoma City bombings. Being a volag worker, I was very protective of him but, having spent hours with him in the emergency room of a mental hospital.  I still have not been able to say to myself that he was not involved.

It is time for a moratorium on refugee resettlement until ORR and the volags get their act together.

Refugee resettlement affects every community it touches, from Lewiston ME, Minneapolis MN,  to Kansas City KS.

The Volags hide behind their time frame responsibility fences. While I agree that they do not have funding to do much beyond initial basic placement, this is hardly adequate for a successful program, when most refugees end up being on long term public assistance.

The present program is really a “resettle and dump on the community” thing. This is not fair to the communities, the refugees or the volags.

ORR has yet to release long overdue federally mandated reports that show welfare dependency rates or employment figures. Some people say that ORR may have something to hide. I tend to agree.

Refugees are not assimilating for the most part. (some argue that refugees should not “assimilate” but “integrate” but , to me, it‘s all the same, since the majority do neither.). The State Dept continues to fund MAA’s (ethnic based organizations) which only keep immigrant and refugee communities separate and ghettoized.

As someone who spent most of my adult lifetime working in this field, I ask for a serious second look at the current program.

After 9/11, I was, as always, very vocal in defense of refugees and the US refugee program , convinced that no one admitted under the program could possibly be or become a terrorist. Regrettably, my mind has changed.

I now believe that we need a moratorium on continued resettlement until such time as ORR can get its house in order and present a restructured program that can provide safe haven for those truly in need and at the same time guarantee that this currently flawed program does not admit persons unworthy of our kind-heartedness or who are unwilling to become a positive part of our national fabric.

I do think the US should continue to receive some refugees, but it needs to be a much smaller and very carefully monitored program. The current one is a huge mess and a danger to our security and a detriment to our economy and society.

Respectfully,

Michael Sirois

No need for me to say anything further, except maybe to remind readers that S.744 (the Gang of Eight bill in the Senate) provides more funding for resettlement contractors and makes it easier for a greater number and variety of refugees/asylum seekers to gain admission to the US.

Whose side is he on?

In the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing, the investigation into its perpetrators has been marred by a series of bizarre and even alarming actions by President Obama and his administration. Unfortunately, these increasingly suggest a pattern that is at odds with our national and homeland security. The question must be occurring to many Americans: Whose side is he on?

Consider just a few of the recent examples suggesting the ominous answer is “Not ours”:

  • Team Obama decided precipitously to charge the alleged surviving bomber, Dzokhar Tsarnaev, in civilian court. This action resulted inevitably in his being read Miranda rights and obtaining a lawyer, prompting Tsarnaev to refuse further to answer investigators’ questions. Former federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy observed (http://www.nationalreview.com/article/346785/obama%E2%80%99s-national-security-fraud), “Obama was determined to end the public debate over whether the jihadist is a wartime enemy combatant or a mere criminal defendant.”  Mr. McCarthy theorizes that what is going on here is that: “[We] are being softened up. Steered by its Gitmo Bar veterans and Lawyer Left compass, the Obama administration is executing a massive national-security fraud: the farce that the jihad against America can be judicialized, that civilian-court processes are a better answer to enemy warfare than are combat protocols.”
  • Then there is the peculiar case of the Saudi “student,” Abdul Rahman al-Harbi. Glenn Beck and syndicated columnist Diana West have done yeoman’s work connecting the proverbial dots on this young man starting with his detention at the scene of the bombing (where he was wounded) and initial designation as a “person of interest” in the investigation. The FBI reportedly spent seven hours searching his apartment but, following an in-person and unscheduled intervention with Mr. Obama by the Saudi Foreign Minister, al-Harbi ceased to be classified as even a witness to the jihadist attack.  Still more bizarre is what happened next. The Saudi press reported that First Lady Michelle Obama paid a visit to al-Harbi in the Boston hospital where he was recuperating, even as federal agencies sought to deport him on the grounds that he was a national security threat. That would, needless to say, put him safely beyond the reach of U.S. law enforcement. At this writing, Team Obama seems to be resisting congressional efforts to establish al-Harbi’s whereabouts and true status. Neither has there been any explanation to date for why a man who, according to Immigrations and Customs Enforcement records made public by Mr. Beck, is ineligible on terrorist-ties grounds to be in the United States was admitted to the White House on numerous occasions.
  • Meanwhile, the evidence continues to accumulate that the FBI failed to appreciate the nature of the threat posed by Dzokhar’s Islamist elder brother, Tamerlan, because it has had to operate for years under guidance that obscures the direct connection between the supremacist Islamic doctrine he practiced, known as shariah, and the terrifying form of jihad it compels its adherents to wage. The Center for Security Policy is helping Americans who believe we cannot afford such shackling of our first line of defense against domestic threats to express their concerns directly to President Obama with a web-based campaign at www.FreetheFBI.com.
  • A corollary to this insanity has been the administration’s effort to portray other communities as equivalent threats to that posed by Islamists. This notion is inherent in Team Obama’s adoption of the euphemism “violent extremism.” and in an Army Reserve unit’s equal opportunity training materials that identified evangelical Christians, Catholics and Islamophobes as on a par with al Qaeda and similar shariah-adherent terrorist organizations in terms of readiness to engage in such extremism.
  • One of the chief architects of the Obama administration’s efforts to pander to the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists and to use selective enforcement of the law to promote divisiveness among Americans is the President’s choice to become the next Secretary of Labor, Thomas Perez. Perez’s recent confirmation hearing barely scratched the surface of the unsuitability for such a post of a man whose views and conduct align him with such other radical post-American Friends of Obama as Van Jones, Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn. We know whose side they are on.
  • No less worrying is the President’s commitment to so-called “comprehensive immigration reform” that clearly will perpetuate the unsecured borders that have contributed to the present crisis of millions of illegal aliens in our country. He seems indifferent to the fact that millions more are headed our way, confident that he will get them amnesty and a “path to citizenship,” too.
  • Last but hardly least, we have the wrecking operation Mr. Obama is engaged in with respect to the U.S. military. While furloughs of air traffic controllers and meat inspectors are prompting measures to mitigate the damage, the hollowing out of our armed forces and the industrial base is going forward apace. Ditto the President’s efforts to denuclearize this country and to negotiate new restrictions on our ability to defend it against missile attack.

Unfortunately, we are likely to learn just how harmful sequestration and the other Obama-induced rounds of cuts have been on the only military we have only after the myriad international crises of the moment – including, notably, Syria, the Senkakus, the Iranian nuclear program and Korean peninsula – rocket out of control in ways that threaten our vital interests.

At that point, the question of whose side the President is on will be self-evident. By then, we may even regard his malfeasance as constituting high crimes and misdemeanors.