Last Wednesday, May 15, the State Department held its annual meeting of refugee resettlement leaders and citizens to allow for input into the refugee program. The invaluable Refugee Resettlement Watch website encouraged patriots to attend or send written comments, as did VDARE.com.. Subsequently RRW’s Ann Corcoran reported: “You did it! Your testimony flooded State Department hearing yesterday.”

RRW has complied some of the citizen statements: Archive for the ‘Testimony for 5/15/2013 State Dept. meeting’ Category. Check it out!

The refugee issue gets little attention because the numbers are less dramatic than the million or so legal immigrants already coming in every year. But since extreme diversity is apparently a goal of the program, refugees tend to cause disproportionate trouble. For FY 2012, the US government admitted some 76,000 refugees. (But remember they will be starting their own migration chains under the family reunification provisions of current law).

Nevertheless, this tiny corner of Washington’s broad foreigner importation agenda has not been ignored in the Gang of Eight’s proposed Amnesty/ Immigration Surge bill. This is Super Bowl for those who make their living by destroying America, so they are out in force. The Refugee Industry is lobbying hard for continued access to new foreign bodies to keep professional resettlers fully employed.

One item which has Refugee Industry’s attention is the money: the bill contains slush funds amounting to $150 million for starters to go to NGO-type groups like refugee resettlers. The thing is a special interest Christmas tree, as Senator Jeff Sessions has noted. [Sessions Special Interest, Extremist Groups Wrote Immigration Bill., By Matthew Boyle, Breitbart.com, May 6, 2013]

This despite the Boston Bombings, a huge embarrassment for the refugee pushers. How come the “refugee” parents moved back to Russia where they had claimed they were persecuted? How come Tamerlan popped in and out of the US despite security warnings from the Russians? How come the family on welfare?

But any security-tightening regulations that might slow the flow (and protect Americans) are seen as a threat by refugee racketeers. Public safety for Americans has never been a priority for them.

Thus the May 9 letter from Erol Kekic, the Chair of Refugee Council USA to members of the Senate Judiciary Committee opposes Graham amendment 1, terminating asylee and refugee status for individuals who return to their homelands as the Boston Bomber family did, even though the amendment allows waivers to be issued. Who cares if the applications were fraudulent?

Four other sensible amendments from Senator Grassley aimed at tightening up the loose nuts of the refugee program are also opposed by Refugee Council. (See all amendments at the Senate S.744 page.)

A particularly interesting set-aside in the bill: a stack of visas for Afghans and Iraqis who helped American troops during the wars. That item sounds generous, but earlier welcomes for wartime helpers did not include proper vetting and there have been cases of terrorists being admitted—details and other atrocities provided in my own written comments to the State Department meeting, reproduced with hyperlinks below

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It is incomprehensible to many citizens like myself that Washington continues to admit tens of thousands of unskilled illiterate third-world refugees during a jobs depression of four-plus years duration when more than 20 million Americans are jobless.

In addition, numerous refugees come from violent backgrounds, which bodes poorly for their assimilation into this country and whether they will present a danger to the citizens who are forced to deal with them. Aside from those who have not personally experienced violence, tribal people like Somalis have been a stupendous failure at acculturation, leaving a trail of gang crime, sexual assault and support for jihad in the homeland.

For example, the refugee industry and media have sung the praises of the Lost Boys of Sudan and their heroic trek across Africa, some number of whom ended up in the United States. It is hard to criticize such a heart-warming story, but an estimated 80 to 90 percent of Lost Boys suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, according to a 2008 report in the Arizona Republic [Stress issues still plague ‘Lost Boys’ of Sudan, By Lindsey Collom, April 7, 2008].

It's a sad result, but not unexpected to anyone familiar with the effects of war trauma on children.

Abused or traumatized children often grow into violent disturbed adults. It's basic psychology that no one questions, except in the immigration/refugee milieu. War-affected kids commonly experience anger and post-traumatic stress disorder as they grow older. Those symptoms may be expressed in crime and violence.

It's hugely irresponsible of refugee agencies to deposit these human time bombs into American communities with no psychological counseling and expect everything will work out somehow. It doesn't, and only a fool would expect a positive result. The neighborhood schools do not have the resources to cope with deep-seated trauma, but they are stuck with severely troubled refugee kids in addition to the citizen children who should be their primary focus.

In addition to psychologically damaged individuals, it is inappropriate to import people whose cultural norms include behaviors which our society considers criminal. Those include polygamy, female genital mutilation, honor killing, bride kidnapping, animal sacrifice, child marriage and other repellant practices. America is not enriched by diversity of this sort.

Immigration is a very stressful enterprise even under the best of circumstances. Establishing oneself economically in a new country while also trying to adjust to an unfamiliar culture can be very difficult. The possibility of failure is real. When the new resident cannot meet his own possibly unrealistic goals of success, violence may occur.

Following are some examples of real harm done to (mostly) Americans by a refugee policy based on extremist multiculturalism which is fundamentally flawed as an ideology and execution vis-a-vis refugee policy. All cultures are not equal, and not all foreigners assimilate—because their home culture remains dominant, or they simply do not want to become Americans.

• A young Sudanese, Gareng Deng, murdered Marilyn Bethell in 2005 in Aurora, Illinois. As a child in war-torn Sudan, he witnessed atrocities and genocide. He came with his family to America, where he participated in increasingly violent crimes, culminating in the murder of Bethell, 47, a substance abuse counselor.
•  In Roanoke, Virginia, three refugees—Luke Musa Elbino (age 19, from Sudan), Joshua Kasongo (19, from Rwanda) and Mohammed Hussein Guhad (19, from Somalia)—decided they could make some money by kidnapping wives of wealthy American men and holding them for ransom. Kidnapping has been a popular criminal activity in chaotic Somalia and may have been an inspiration for the young African men. Their attempt to kidnap the wife of dental insurance company CEO quickly fell apart when they failed to force their way into the home and police arrested them soon thereafter. All three were students with no previous sign of maladjustment.
•  Sulejman Talovic, an 18-year-old refugee from Bosnia, killed six people at a Salt Lake mall in an apparent act of jihad against non-Muslims in 2007. He was shot and killed by an off-duty policeman at the crime scene.
•  Somali refugee Said Biyad was settled with his wife and four kids in Louisville by Catholic Charities. In 2006, he beat and raped his wife, then slit the throats of his children, the oldest of whom was eight. He was found guilty of the crime and sentenced to life without parole in 2011.
•  Ali Mohamad Mohamud, a refugee from Somalia residing in Buffalo, beat his 10-year-old stepson to death for not doing his homework, striking him more than 70 times with a rolling pin. The 40-year-old stepdad worked as a security guard at the local newspaper, where he got positive reviews from the reporters.
•  Ethiopian refugee Ahmed Sule sexually assaulted a legally blind 84-year-old man weak from cancer. At sentencing in 2011, Sule’s lawyer said she had hoped the judge would cut the criminal some slack in prison time because he grew up in Ethiopia while it was in a state of conflict, saying he was psychologically damaged. Perhaps so: but why then does the government inflict persons like him on the unsuspecting American public?
•  Iraqi refugees Waad Ramadan Alwan and Mohanad Shareef Hammadi used their location in the United States to provide material support for jihadists in their homeland. They are poster boys for poor vetting, because Alwan was a soldier in the Iraqi army who fought against Americans as a sniper and bomb maker. In fact, his fingerprint was on an IED in Iraq—yet he was admitted as a refugee. One would think that young Iraqi men would get more extensive examination, but appropriate caution was not used in this case.
•  Ali Abdi, a Somali refugee and "leader" among local Bantus, raped a 9-year-old girl in Burlington, Vermont, for which he was sentenced to 20 years to life. The rape victim was reportedly "ostracized" in the community, indicating she was a Somali as well. Females are routinely disrespected in Somali culture, as evidenced by the stoning to death of a 13-year-old rape victim in that country, as reported by the BBC in 2008.
•  Girls are apparently scorned in Liberian culture as well, judging by the 2009 gang rape of an eight-year-old in Phoenix by four Liberian refugee boys, aged 9-14. The victim was placed in child protective services because the Liberian parents felt shamed by her being raped and didn't want her back.

Some may argue that there are criminals in every large group and it is unfair to blame refugee policy for this mayhem.

On the contrary, the preceding cases indicate a willful ignorance about the limited ability of normal humans to adjust to a different culture. All foreigners bring the baggage of their home societies, and criminal diversity is simply not acceptable to American values.

It is a very bad public policy to import psychologically damaged or dangerous people and deposit them into a culture which they may find objectionable according to their traditional beliefs or religion. Many Muslims regard women as sub-human beings who must submit to men. It is no kindness to admit primitive people whose only skills are herding and fire-building into a highly complex 21st century culture. Endangering Americans to pursue a misguided do-gooder agenda is a wrong use of government power.

The refugee program is made to sound noble and humanitarian on the surface, but what often happens is that a trade is going on: the U.S. agrees to accept some members of an unwanted tribe from a foreign country and, in return, the country in question does something that Washington desires.

As a result, Washington takes on the interior tribal problems of countries around the world. The United States 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.

The State Department may believe that removing troublesome diversity from foreign nations is helpful in diplomacy, but the agency is not entitled to crush American communities by its arrogant wheeling and dealing.

Plus, the more diverse the refugees, the more they require expensive expert help, provided by or siphoned through the resettlement organizations, providing a high level of job security. Indeed, the resettlement professionals appear to prefer backwards people, the sort who have never seen a light switch before.

This country belongs to its people. The United States is not a flophouse for the unhappy of the world, desirous of financial assistance. No sane person writes a check to a charity when his own family is in serious straits. In the same way, Washington must look to the well-being of its own citizenry instead of focusing on worldwide handouts.

The refugee program is poorly administered and endangers American citizens. It should be ended for the good of the nation.

Brenda Walker lives in northern California and blogs about immigration and culture in LimitsToGrowth.org. She thinks the refugee program is wrong in philosophy and execution, and Somalis should stay home.