Senator Jeff Sessions came out with a list of 15 refugees who turned into jihadis. His effort, covered in great detail on Brietbart, was done to prod the GOP leaders into halting the import of Syrian refugees into America. Obama has told the American public that new refugees will be vetted. There isn’t a good system in place for American officials to determine how to vet Syrian refugees. Yet, the most significant threat to the United States comes from terrorist groups operating in a handful of Middle Eastern countries. These countries happen to be Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen and of course Syria. Yet, the Obama Administration, some democratic politicians including Clinton and the progressive media are pushing a false narrative that Syrian refugees can be vetted.
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Assistant Director Michael Steinbach stated to the Senate panel that the U.S. government has no system to properly screen Syrian refugees. He stated, “The concern in Syria is that we don’t have systems in places on the ground to collect information to vet,” He said. “That would be the concern is we would be vetting — databases don’t hold the information on those individuals. “You’re talking about a country that is a failed state, that is — does not have any infrastructure, so to speak. So all of the data sets — the police, the intel services — that normally you would go to seek information don’t exist.”
President Obama’s decision to recklessly and unilaterally change U.S. immigration law ignores the will of the American people and flouts the Constitution. The American people are deeply concerned about the direction in which our country is heading and overwhelmingly rejects the Administration’s policies. However, rather than listening to the American people and changing course, President Obama continues to ignore duly enacted laws, thereby putting the public at risk and preventing executive branch employees from doing their jobs. Such actions have a direct effect on the ability and confidence with which those employees perform.
Americans need to change course if they are unhappy with the President’s Administration, the lack of transparency on its part, and disregard for majority consesus on the matter of immigration. It’s clear to many observing the lack of security provided to our border states what kind of agenda is being pushed in our country. Americans must look at the Department of Homeland Security and see how they are running the Agency because it is a strong arm of the Administration.
One of the current major challenges for the Department of Homeland Security, and there are many challenges, is that is has become a stand-alone department; essentially an unwieldy cabinet sized agency, and must become agile in order to be effective. No easy task because the White House itself has become more centralized. Past Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta noted in his speech Nov 15th, 2014 that many newly created layers of officials and consultants creates a buffer between the information that must be shared by DHS and the action that must be taken by the Administration to mitigate threats to the nation. He had a very nice way of putting it-essentially inexperienced members, or acolytes of the Obama Administration, prevented real communication from being shared.
In fact, the bureaucracy within the DHS has become too large and the border agenda has hurt employee morale the worst. Accoring to the Office of Personnel Management’s (OPM) annual report, employee morale has dropped every year since 2010. The dissatisfaction is among the lowest levels of morale of any federal department or agency DHS employees.
Citizenship and Immigration Services , U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection union representatives have all stated that morale is at an all time low and it is getting worse. For example, Border Patrol agents felt they were being forced to stand by and watch helplessly as criminals were released into the United States; this group included known gang members who were re-released after their apprehension. It does not matter how many aliens are apprehended along the border if apprehension leads to emancipation for them.
The officers cannot enforce our immigration laws or maintain the integrity of our immigration system because the Obama Administration’s policies are in direct conflict with their congressionally-mandated jobs of securing the border. Compounding this issue even further is the DHS subordinate law enforcement component agencies, such as the FBI, CIA and smaller unit departments, do not always coordinate and cooperate well during inter-agency assignments in order to catch criminals; be they foreign or domestic. Add to this communication break-down and the changing nature of technological demands and it becomes even more difficult for the DHS to manage its agencies.
Officers and agents are having a tough time doing their job. Another major problem for the DHS is that politics exists in the form of internal and external political stakeholders who by pressure essentially reduce innovation, risk taking, information sharing and create low morale and a dysfunctional workforce within the DHS. Lastly, interoperability for the DHS is a serious technological issue and these matters prevent communications cohesion; Advancing technologies, lack of funds, infrequent training with the new tech, and too many issues to explain here create a large problem of interoperability among agencies. Data then shows a trickling down problem; DHS is too large and not agile, affected subordinate agencies that are then too reluctant to share by some means, interoperability that reduces communication even if agencies want to share, and too many unidentifiable management functions to allow discussions towards achieving milestones and meeting performance goals. It is important for the current Administration to come up with solutions, refine its measures and take corrective actions as needed.
But the Administration is instead focused on bringing in refugees who cannot be properly vetted instead of spending money properly on fixing our current DHS problems. Why is the Administration making things more difficult for everyone involved? The Syrian refugee problem is adding to the border problem as a resource issue of major proportions.
In an embarrassing meeting with Senator Sessions, DHS director Matthew Emrich admitted to the Senator that there is no reliable way to assure that individuals coming from Syria are properly checked. The DHS is just one Agency, of many, that is run in a way it wasn’t meant to be run. The video of Emrich can be seen below. Emrich is very restrained as he tries to control what he states. Emrich fails to convince anyone of his sincerity to run DHS the way it was meant to be.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQVz6seERZI&feature=youtu.be
Those who want open borders are asking America to expose itself. We can all agree that the Syrian crisis is affecting a lot of innocent people. We can likely agree that a percentage of refugees will become productive citizens instead of terrorists and some may even serve bravely in our U.S. military. There is no way to know out of the 100.000 coming into the United States who will be a friend or foe. Is that a chance Obama should be taking with the American public or should American citizens have a say in the matter? It took only 19 hijackers to destroy the Twin Towers. Think about that.
A nation without borders is a defenseless nation.