One of the funnier angles of the last week has been how so many Establishment figures are so deep into an Emma Lazarus-induced psychosis over the evils of non-open borders that they've chosen to double-down on defending the Tsarnaevs' 2002 asylum in the U.S. against mere questioning by a few Republican politicians.

As I noted recently, the editor of the NYT Editorial Page wrote,

"And when did the United States start excluding immigrants from dangerous places? Seems to me that [the Tsarnaevs] fall into the categories of “huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” not to mention “wretched refuse” of teeming shores and the “homeless, tempest-tossed.""

But, the tiny number of Chechens in the U.S. is illustrative of the fact that the Obama Administration and previous Administrations have had an aversion to letting in Chechens, who, as we have seen, have a long track record of tending to be aggrieved, volatile, and formidable. 

Moreover the elder Tsarnaevs' recent return to Russian Dagestan suggests that their asylum in the U.S. was fraudulent.

So, out of all the Chechens in the world, how did the Tsarnaevs get asylum in the U.S..?

Well, why is their Uncle Ruslan in the United States? Why does Ruslan Tsarni, the brother of Anzor Tsarnaev, live in a nice house outside Washington D.C.?

Mad Cow Morning News has been following the Ruslan Tsarni story and it's pretty interesting. The site claims Uncle Ruslan used to be married to Samantha Ankara Fuller, who, it asserts, is the daughter of Graham E. Fuller. Mr. Fuller gave a talk on Turkey at Boston U. in 2006 and his bio read:

He received his BA and MA at Harvard University in Russian and Middle Eastern studies. He served 20 years in the Foreign Service, mostly the Muslim World, working in Germany, Turkey, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, North Yemen, Afghanistan, and Hong Kong. In 1982 he was appointed the National Intelligence Officer for Near East and South Asia at CIA, and in 1986 Vice-Chairman of the National Intelligence Council at CIA, with overall responsibility for all national level strategic forecasting. 

In 1988 Mr. Fuller left government and joined the RAND Corporation where he was a Senior Political Scientist for 12 years. His research focused primarily on the Middle East, Central Asia, South and Southeast Asia, and problems of ethnicity and religion In politics. His studies for RAND include a provocative 1991 study on the geopolitical implications of the Palestinian “Intifada”; a series of studies on Islamic fundamentalism in Turkey, Sudan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Algeria; the survivability of Iraq; the “New Geopolitics of Central Asia” after the fall of the USSR; and problems of democratization and Islam.

Now, there are a lot of people named Samantha Fuller, but ... Samantha Ankara Fuller sounds like she could be the daughter of an American expert on Turkey, since Ankara is the capital of Turkey. (By the way, Sibel Edmonds made an insinuation against Mr. Fuller in her allegations of a Turkey-related corruption ring in the American government, but that's a wilderness of mirrors if there ever was one.)

Keep in mind that a lot of people have connections to the CIA. Barack Obama, for example, grew up with a lot of one-degree-of-separation connections to the CIA, but then so did I.

Uncle Ruslan is the source for the claim that a red-headed Armenian convert to Islam named Misha exercised a malign Rasputin-like influence over Tamerlan. Armenians in Boston, however, say a red-headed Armenian convert to Islam would, uh, stand out, and they can't recall any such individual.

Mad Cow points out that Uncle Ruslan is in the Central Asian energy business. A 2005 press release when he joined Big Sky Energy Corporation said:

Mr. Ruslan Tsarni, a U.S. citizen, has over 10 years of professional experience in oil and gas legislation and corporate law. Previously, Mr. Tsarni served as Corporate Counsel of Nelson Resources Limited Group of companies, as well as Managing Director of several of its operating subsidiaries, responsible for all matters relating to corporate governance and placements and filing requirements under the securities regulations of Toronto Stock Exchange and AIM. He worked with financial institutions and banks on raising funds for acquisition and development of the assets operated by Nelson's subsidiaries, as well as managed legal and administrative matters for all such subsidiaries. From 1999 to 2001, Mr. Tsarni worked as Head of Legal Affairs of Golden Eagle Partners LLC where he developed downstream and upstream oil and gas businesses in Kazakhstan and served as Managing Director of its wholly owned subsidiary Tobe LLP. From 1998 to 1999 Mr.Tsarni worked as Senior Associate with Salans Hertzfeld & Heilbronn providing legal advise to major multinational companies on different aspects of Kazakhstan legal issues on development of mineral resources, corporations, taxation, currency, customs, employment, banking, bankruptcy and trade marks. From 1994 to 1996, Mr. Tsarni served as a consultant for Financial Markets International LLC and Arthur Andersen LLP contracted by USAID for projects aimed to develop securities markets in Central Asia, where he trained corporate governance and corporate finance principals to state and private companies.

Golden Eagle Partners, where Uncle Ruslan was head of legal affairs from 1999-2001, was a contractor of Dick Cheney's Halliburton. That's interesting, but shouldn't be overblown: Halliburton does business with a lot of companies.

But, the broader point is that Uncle Ruslan is connected. Maybe I'm being cynical, but my impression is that in the Central Asian oil and gas legal affairs business, it's less what you know than who you know. And Uncle Ruslan seems to know a lot of people, both in Central Asia and in America. 

It's likely that some people who pick up on this will develop a Ch-Ch-Ch-Cheney-Chechen conspiracy theory about how the Boston bombings really were, in some extremely complicated fashion, all about an oil pipeline or something like that.

But I think the Uncle Ruslan story is most relevant to getting a better grip on how the Tsarnaevs got asylum in the U.S.: I bet Uncle Ruslan got one or more of his American Deep State connections to pull some strings for his brother's family.

In general, that's symptomatic of how our immigration system works. The American Establishment has decided that there's nothing more evil than the American people having an opinion on which would-be immigrants to let in and which to keep out (to the New York Times editorial board, that's more or less eugenics which is more or less the Holocaust). But, somebody has to decide who gets in and who doesn't, so since Americans aren't supposed to do it, the decision often winds up in the hands of immigrants themselves, often nepotistic recent immigrants such as Uncle Ruslan.

UPDATE: Ex-CIA honcho Graham E. Fuller has confirmed that his daughter was married to Uncle Ruslan in the later 1990s, but says he, personally, only met Ruslan's brother, the Demolition Dad, once, and that his daughter was the Bomb Brothers' aunt-in-law only while they were young.