California’s horrific terror attack has laid bare the Obama administration’s implicit failures in securing the homeland. Instead of seriously addressing America’s woeful lack of border security, overstayed visas and a refugee program which all but ignores the potential for jihadist infiltration, the president’s knee-jerk reaction to the latest mass shooting is to invoke once again the old Democratic shibboleth that more gun-control solves crime.
Forget for a moment that California already has the strictest gun-control laws in the nation — the evidence on gun control and mass shootings is in fact all over the map. For example, the United States has a lower rate of mass shooting fatalities per 100,000 people than Norway, Finland and Switzerland.*
It’s not even the administration’s reluctance to put more troops in Syria that has Americans worried. Our military men and woman are already stretched too thin and even the architect of the Iraqi surge, Gen. David Petraeus, has come out against more boots on the ground (citing the lack of moderate Sunni forces to partner with in the region). Robert Gates, the former defense secretary under Bush 43 as well as Obama, has also come down squarely against the idea, declaring, “Putting tens of thousands of U.S. of troops in there is not a near-term solution.”
Indeed, it’s hard to see how battling Shia strongholds in Syria or even Iran will have little effect on Sunni extremism, which accounts for the bulk of international jihadism, including the attack in San Bernardino As Sen. Ted Cruz — no shrinking violet in the war on terror — points out, the ouster of Saddam Hussein, Hosni Mubarak and Moammar Gaddafi left geopolitical vacuums that the Islamic State and al Qaeda gladly filled. The same is true is Syria — only more so as rebel forces there appear synonymous with the Islamic State.
The point is there are indigenous counterweights to the Islamic State, including the Kurds, that we ought not be shunning. Blindly defending Turkey while it seeks to wipe out Kurdish resistance to the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq may prove to be counterproductive. Regardless, no matter what we do abroad, there are no guarantees.
No, the president loses most Americans because he refuses to do the one thing that might actually make us safer at home — control who gets in this country and who doesn’t.
In October, the House Homeland Security Committee released it’s report on domestic terror recruitment and found the largest number of American Islamic State recruits came from Minnesota, with California and New York tied for second. And now, Democrats, led by Gov. Mark Dayton and Sens. Franken & Klobuchar, are demanding that Minnesota take its fair share of the 10,000 (or more) Syrian refugees the Obama administration wants to resettle in America.
This despite admissions from Director of National Intelligence James Clapper that “we don’t obviously put it past the likes of ISIL to infiltrate operatives among these refugees.”
It’s tempting to cite our refugee program as a case of misguided charity. It’s unfair to transplant tens of thousands of people unfamiliar with America’s customs and expect them to assimilate. But it’s worse than that. Our refugee program since the 1980 Refugee Act — which Joe Biden co-sponsored — amounts to a moral hazard writ large, “rife with fraud, profitable for hundreds of nonprofit [VOLAGs] organizations, and is a potential channel for terrorism into American communities,” according to Don Barrett of the Center for Immigration Studies.
UN referrals to the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program or USRAP sets the process in motion for any applicant whose political or social group has a “well-founded fear of persecution.” From there the State Department (among other involved bureaucracies) hands off the refugee to voluntary agencies and NGOs for resettlement in America.
What most people don’t realize is the cost of “hiring” these resettlement contractors, such as Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (which in turn have more than 300 affiliates, e.g., Lutheran Social Services and Catholic Charities in Minnesota), is very high.
These “charities” get taxpayer dollars in exchange for “finding safe and affordable housing and providing a variety of services” which translates into getting the newly arrived on public assistance as quickly as possible. But even excluding public housing, Medicaid and food stamps — the cost to resettle hundreds of thousands of foreigners in America is pegged at over $1 billion per year.
That’s why Rep. Brian Babin, R-Texas, has authored legislation to suspend refugee resettlement until the GAO can study the costs. In fact, the cost of resettling Syrian refugees much closer to their home in the Arabian Peninsula would be a fraction of what it costs here — but most of our wealthiest allies in the region have so far refused to take in their Sunni brethren.
Due to budget and safety concerns, over half the nation’s governors have publicly opposed the Obama administration’s Syrian resettlement plans — a few even threaten to block federal monies to the above mentioned non-profit organizations.
It’s time the president listens to them.
*(Wash Post: State University of New York-Oswego public justice professor Jaclyn Schildkraut and Texas State University researcher H. Jaymi Elsass have been tracking mass shooting incidents in 14 countries from 2000 to 2014. They compared the United States to 11 other countries (Canada, Finland, China, Britain, Australia, France, Germany, Mexico, Norway and Switzerland), and found the United States had a lower rate of mass shooting fatalities per 100,000 people than Norway, Finland and Switzerland.)
Jason Lewis is a Republican candidate for Congress in Minnesota’s 2nd congressional district. Thinking of submitting an op-ed to the Washington Examiner? Be sure to read our guidelines on submissions.
