Brenda Walker writes: I sent the following memo was to the State Department’s annual input session from the public about its refugee program. RefugeeResettlementWatch has been urging its readers for several years to take part by sending their comments. Have a go next year!

America is in its sixth year of a jobless “recovery,” yet the State Department continues to import tens of thousands of unskilled refugees from the Third World as if the economy were bubbling along with jobs for all who want them. The entire program seems painfully out of touch with the degree of economic suffering in the country and the effect on our poorest citizens of increasing job competition.

Here in California, the unemployment rate has dropped below 8 percent for the first time in six years as of April, indicating the long difficult struggle to climb back from the recession. Child poverty is running around 22 percent this year, another sign of the state’s poor economic performance. But the State Department resettled 5,173 refugees in California in 2012 when the economy was even more dismal.

Also in 2012, it was reported that the government placed hundreds of lead-poisoning-impaired Burmese refugees in Oakland, a chronically depressed city with too much homegrown crime and poverty. The federal program of dumping poor Third World people with learning disabilities has added to an already crushing burden on the city, and seems altogether a cruel use of government power.

Why is Washington’s refugee policy so bent on harming the wellbeing of the American people, over 20 million of whom are presently unemployed? Technological advances in automation mean that fewer workers will be needed in the future in factories and offices, a situation called “increased efficiency” in business lingo.

In addition, the economy is not the only area of concern for citizens. It is hard for an attentive observer to miss the many cases of crime committed by refugees. Some appear to have been inadequately screened.

• Burmese refugee Esar Met was sentenced on May 14 in Salt Lake to life in prison for the kidnap, rape and murder of a 7-year-old neighbor girl Hser Ner Moo. The 27-year-old man had only been in this country for a month when he killed the girl.

Did he have no record of crime or questionable behavior in his home nation? It’s hard to imagine that he arrived in America and immediately became a child predator. In fact, when Salt Lake City Tribune reporter Julia Lyon investigated in her series A Missing Peace the young man was widely known to be troubled and possibly retarded:

About a mile away, people at Mae La [refugee camp] knew Esar Met was not normal. He often sat alone, talking and laughing to himself in the Muslim section of the camp where his family lived. Or he played with children years younger, shooting rubber bands in the camp’s narrow lanes, flicking marbles across the rocky, dirt patches that were his neighbors’ yards. [. . .]

As he grew older, Esar did not care about his looks and never had a girlfriend. He only changed his clothes when his mother told him to. [Stolen hope: Daughter's death comes after years of fear, running for a Burmese family, March 31, 2008]

Nevertheless, stupid-generous America offered the problematic, unemployable young man a new home in the First World. Is this country now the welfare agency and flophouse for the world? No American voted for that.

• In February, Iraqi refugee Abdullatif Aldosary was sentenced to five years in prison for illegal possession of firearms, but the justice system is not yet finished with him. He is also accused of exploding a bomb in front of an Arizona Social Security Office in November 2012 and murdering a co-worker, among other things.

Aldosary was a dangerous character, having served eight months in jail for felony aggravated harassment. If he had been deported back to Iraq after that tangle with the law, his former co-worker Orlando Requena would not have been murdered, assuming Aldosary’s guilt in that crime.

When the Iraqi tried to obtain permanent residency in 2011, his request was denied “pursuant to the terrorism-related grounds of inadmissibility” under a section of the Immigration and Nationality Act. Congressman Paul Gosar questioned why Aldosary was allowed to live in Arizona rather than deported given his “terrorism-related activity.”

Why indeed?

• Iraqi refugee Mohammed Alaboudi was sentenced in March to life in prison for running a “house of horrors” of prostitution and sex trafficking in Sioux Falls.

He lured vulnerable young women, some under age, with drugs to force them into prostitution. The judge explained her tough sentence to the convict: “You have been described by the victims as someone who is a monster. I do not think that is an unjustified characterization, based on how you treated the young women who came through your home.” [Iraqi refugee called monster gets life for sex trafficking, By Steve Young, ArgusLeader.com, March 18, 2014]

• In Boston, the lawyers are working on their presentations for the DzhokharTsarnaev murder-terror trial stemming from the Boston Marathon terror bombings.

How his sketchy Dagestan family was admitted to America should be a cautionary tale about refugee fraud and the laziness of authorities who should be looking out for this country’s safety.

The Tsarnaev family entered in 2002 and was allowed to stay on the basis of a “well-founded fear of persecution.” Yet a few years later, the parents moved back to Dagestan, so the “persecution” appears more like fraud, and America’s ability and seriousness about keeping out bad guys looks pathetically weak.

Admitting terrorists to America is another persistent problem with the refugee system and its inability to weed out dangerous people.

• After Iraqi men Waad Ramadan Alwan and Monahad Shareef were resettled as refugees In Kentucky, they were discovered to be engaging in terror-related activities against America. In addition, Alwan was admitted into the U.S. in 2009 even though his fingerprint was found in 2005 on an unexploded roadside bomb set to kill Americans, according to court records.

Were they supposed to be wartime helpers who needed to be saved from Sadam’s forces? No, they served on the enemy side.

The failure to examine the two Iraqi soldiers adequately prompted rescreening of all 58,000 Iraqis who had been admitted. After initial checks, immigration authorities gave the FBI a list of 300 who looked questionable. Last November 20, ABC News reported: Exclusive: US May Have Let ‘Dozens’ of Terrorists Into Country As Refugees.

These days, the new flavor of rescue appears to be Syria, as promoted by elite media and Hollywood do-gooders like Angelina Jolie, who recently called upon western nations to accept more Syrian refugees.

Perhaps the star is unaware that the Syrian civil war has been noteworthy for its savagery (fueled by amphetamines as well as jihadist fervor), and has included beheadings and crucifixions. The government has done a poor job of vetting earlier refugees from hostile regions, as noted here, yet it wants to import an even dicier bunch now.

Worse, the Obama administration has acted unilaterally to lower screening standards so questionable Syrians can be admitted to America. With more than two million displaced Syrians, can Washington not find 15,000 (a number proposed by resettlement boosters) who do not have terrorist associations? Apparently not. The new standard is for “limited terrorist ties” to be acceptable.

In a House hearing titled “Terrorist Exploitation of Refugee Programs” held December 4, 2012, Chairman Patrick Meehan observed in his opening remarks:

With the recent movement of AQI fighters into Syria and reports just yesterday of chemical weapons being moved, I am increasingly worried that terrorists may try to exploit various refugee resettlement programs via Turkey, Jordan or other countries where many refugees have fled to escape the bloodshed.

It is imperative that the interagency security screening process for refugees be formidable and credible.

Unfortunately for American safety, the current administration prefers even less security screening, even though our jihadist enemies are on the march from Libya to Nigeria and Afghanistan.

Furthermore, the whole refugee rescue business is poorly thought out. Displaced persons from backward cultures shouldn’t be deposited in the first world where they are often confused and unhappy because of assimilation issues. They should remain in the region of their home in a culturally compatible country, with eventual return being part of the plan whenever possible.

Plus, America has become the dumping ground for people inconveniently located where majority populations don’t want them, such as Nepalis in Bhutan, Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar and Somalis in Kenya, to name a few. Isn’t diversity supposed to be enriching, according to media and government leaders?

In fact, people normally prefer the comfort and safety of their own tribe, but Americans aren’t supposed to express that basic fact of human nature.

Refugee rescue is a game global elites play with each other to illustrate their humanitarian bona fides and general virtue. But if refugee resettlement were really so wonderful, we would see it in Georgetown and the Upper West Side. Instead, the program dumps tribal people with job skills of cow-herding and fire-building into poor American towns that cannot afford the extra services the unwanted new residents require.

American communities should not be burdened with the additional financial costs, crime, gangs and cultural discord because elites want to conduct a do-gooder program than actually has little positive effect in the larger scheme of things.

It is neither morally right nor Constitutional for the government to harm Americans so that foreigners may be helped, no matter the initial good intentions.

For that reason, the refugee resettlement program should be shut down as an improvement for the American people.

Brenda Walker [Email her] lives in northern California and publishes the blog LimitsToGrowth.org.