O.K. I’ve been hearing a lot of excuses about why some of you don’t want to be bothered doing this!Leo Hohmann of World Net Daily wrote a detailed account of the hearing (Leaked Memo: Refugees Vet Themselves, September 28, 2016), including one video highlight. To watch the entire hearing, which lasted about two-and-a-half hours and included the usual pomposities of preening, speech-making senators tangling with evasive bureaucrats, go to the Judiciary Committee's web page here and settle in with some popcorn. (Senators Sessions [R-AL] and David Vitter [R-LA] were welcome exceptions to the usual behavior of TV-exposure-starved politicos.)Sorry folks, but saving America is going to be hard work and this is the least you can do—spend an hour writing a proper, polite letter to Senator Sessions who held a hearing last week on Obama’s final determination as President to bring in 110,000 refugees this fiscal year (the new flow began yesterday! [i.e. On October 1, start of the federal fiscal year]). ... The security issues were front and center.
Besides her plea for citizen engagement, Ms. Corcoran rattled off nine comments about this patriotic duty. Here are four of them:
There's a practical problem: The hearing record closes this Wednesday, October 5. This probably means that the only practical way to get letters to the subcommittee in time is by faxing them. (This might be true even if the "fuse" weren't so short, as I think snail mail has a tortuous path to Capitol Hill offices because of security screening.) The fax number for Senator Sessions's Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest is 202-224-9102.
- Senator Sessions took time to hold a hearing (only the second since 9/11) and should know that you care and appreciate that by taking time to write a real letter!
- Your Senators and Member of Congress (however useless they are) must be copied on the testimony so they know that you are serious about your opposition to how the program is being administered. Attach a note to your testimony and ask that your representative respond that they received it.
- You are not expected to be an expert on the law, or sound like you are a lawyer!
- Your testimony does not need to be a monster summary of your situation and your concerns. You can pick one or two key points about why you believe the UN/US State Department program needs to be halted/reformed.*** They are spending your money for it! There is no wrong or right thing to say, just be polite. Hint! If you don’t have a problem yet where you live, then find some specific thing you’ve seen here at RRW that is particularly concerning.
So that's what I did, using my home fax, late Sunday evening (October 2). My faxed letter is below, and you're welcome to use it as a model. However, it's rather long—although it did fit on a single page, using 10-point Times New Roman font—so you might, instead, limit your writing to some subtopic. You'll find a wide range of possibilities for comment, including documentation, in the PDF version of the slides I used at a recent talk in Oregon.
That's "too much trouble," to actually draft a letter and send it via fax by, say, 2 p.m. Eastern Time this Wednesday? Ms. Corcoran is having none of that:
Many of you talk big about how angry you are, you rant and rave at Obama and Hillary, you get into squabbles on social media, you are reading news all over the net all day and sending news to me, you send me ideas on what Congress should do, and then you tell me you haven’t an hour or two to write a letter to Senator Sessions, one of the few friends you have ever had in the Senate!Added point: The subcommittee hearing was largely limited to the matter of "vetting" refugees, especially those from Syria. But refugee resettlement is a big subject, so I tersely addressed other aspects as well in my letter. Here you go:[Emphasis in the original, color by PN]
[street address]
Bozeman, Montana 59715
2 October, 2016
406-XXX-XXXX (voice)
The Honorable Jeff Sessions (Attention: Gene Hamilton)Senate Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest
US Senate
Washington, DC 20510
Fax 202-224-9102
Dear Senator Sessions,
I’m writing as follow-up to your recent hearing that reviewed the U.S. refugee program. Please include this letter in the hearing record.
In February 2003, at a conference in southern California on immigration, assimilation, and citizenship, I was introduced to Temple University law professor Jan Ting. Immediately upon learning that Prof. Ting had been Assistant INS Commissioner under Pres. G.H.W. Bush I asked him, “Is it true what I’ve heard, that 90% of refugee and asylum cases are fraudulent?” His instant reply: “95%.”
Nothing I’ve learned since—and I’ve learned a lot—has dissuaded me from the conclusion that the U.S. refugee program needs to be shut down. Besides the obvious fraud (see below), it’s become merely another feeding trough for parasites, those being the “voluntary agencies” that are, in reality, just government contractors operating under a gloss of “compassion.” They’re in it for the money!
Regarding fraud, a report in the September 29 Minneapolis Star-Tribune describes the financial hardships of Minnesota-resident Somalis who take vacation trips back to the “old country.” Since essentially all Somalis in the U.S. are “refugees” themselves (I use those quotation marks advisedly) or the offspring of “refugees,” the fraud here is screamingly obvious. And an article that appeared online in July illustrated the same point right in its headline: “Syrian refugees in Turkey return home for Eid,” Eid being an important holiday for Muslims and “home” in this instance being Syria.
Of course, your hearing focused on the related difficulties of vetting “refugees” having sketchy backgrounds. On this, the three bureaucrats before you were notable primarily for their orotund blather. When listening to such, one must keep in mind the demonstrated broad-spectrum incompetence of our federal agencies, ranging from the EPA’s flooding of the Animas River with mine waste to the 95% failure rate of TSA screeners to detect test contraband to the supposed “vetting” of the female shooter in San Bernardino.
Omitted from your hearing was any discussion of the burdens that current refugee inflows are inflicting on small cities nationwide. (This is entirely apart from their welfare loads on the federal taxpayer, something you and your staff called attention to a year ago.) Especially impacted are schools—with their herculean problems of bringing large numbers of new, non-English-speaking students up to speed—welfare agencies, and law enforcement. For example, the 911 emergency dispatch in Amarillo, Texas has to contend with calls in more than 40 languages.
We ordinary American citizens don’t deserve any of these threats or costs that are imposed on us by our feckless, faux-compassionate elites. As columnist John Hawkins wrote, “Compassion is about what you do personally, not what government programs you advocate funding with other people's money.” People with refugees and “refugees” on their minds should put up their own resources and do the work themselves.
Sincerely,
[signature]
Paul Nachman
References
Minneapolis Star-Tribune: http://www.startribune.com/housing-board-grants-rent-relief-to-tenants-on-extended-absences/395300741/
TRTWorld: http://www.trtworld.com/mea/syrian-refugees-in-turkey-return-home-for-eid-137288
