According to the latest release of Wikileaks information, emails from Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton say that she believes that in-depth vetting of refugees arriving in the United States is all but “impossible.”
Clinton acknowledged in one of her messages that currently, a similar situation exists for refugees arriving in Jordan. Most political observers agree that incidences of terrorism in Jordan have been on the rise for some time due to this influx of migrants.
Clinton is not alone in coming to her conclusion. James Clapper, President Obama’s Director of National Intelligence, has also stated this, as have other major figures in the Obama administration.
As another one of Clinton’s hacked emails shows, on this issue and others, she’s more than happy to present one opinion in public while offering a significantly different one privately. As she expressed in a paid speech to a bank in Brazil, Clinton’s vision of the future integrates both “open trade” and “open borders.”
Clinton and many of her Democratic allies say that GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump’s plan for denying entry to the United States of any one type of immigrant based on their national origin or religion is unconstitutional.
Further, they say that Republicans want to deny the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which they claim confers U.S. citizenship on children of anyone born in the United States, regardless of which country the parents are citizens of. For instance, if two immigrants cross the border illegally and have a child in the United States, the Democrats say the 14th Amendment guarantees their child irrevocable U.S. citizenship.
In fact, however, according to Constitutional scholars and prominent court justices such as Judge Richard Posner of the Seventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, the nation’s founding document grants no such right.
Instead, such rights are granted under the Immigration and Nationality Acts passed by Congress in 1952 and 1965, but even well-known Democrats such as current Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid wanted to usurp these citizenship rights, especially and particularly from illegal immigrants.
Besides, the 14th Amendment was originally added in 1868 and hasn’t been debated by the Supreme Court since 1993, meaning that since that year, arguments on this issue have just been that — arguments, rather than legal opinions regarding the law’s interpretation. Many argue that the Democrats only want to change the law so they can add more voters to their party’s constituency.
Those who argue against the Constitutional aspect of the law point to former Associate Justice Robert Jackson of the Supreme Court, who said that the famed document is not “a suicide pact” — meaning that, although it grants rights and protections to American citizens, it’s firstly concerned with American primacy and greatness. Its intent was to elevate America and put it first in terms of priorities. Certainly, issues of immigration and national security are and were intended to follow this line of thinking.
Liberal justices of the Supreme Court in the past have said that the Constitution limits immigration law, whereas conservative justices have said that it confers powers to make laws regarding these issues to Congress, especially as they concern who can cross the country’s borders and who can become an American citizen.
Certainly, Europeans can attest to recent problems in vetting immigrants. In fact, at least one of the ISIS bombers in the Paris terror attacks of last year was a Muslim migrant from Syria who came into Europe with the wave of refugees coming from the Middle East.
Intelligence services in Europe have warned that there will almost surely be others, and estimates are that as many as one in three migrants crossing European borders has either a fake passport or no passport at all. German authorities have admitted that because of a lack of Syrian trainees, it’s easy to fool their authorities as far as who is actually Syrian and who is not.
Some European analysts have said even U.S. plans to vet for terrorist ties are not enough; the true litmus test, they say, is testing for Islamic supremacism — the belief that Sharia law trumps national civil laws. Liberals and progressives may say that disavowing Sharia law translates to trampling on a person’s religious freedom — after all, isn’t Sharia about praying five times a day and not eating meat that hasn’t been prepared correctly?
But the truth is that religious aspects only make up a small part of Sharia law; the remainder of it is concerned with criminal codes, rules of military engagement, regulations of social and economic life and organization of states — and these other portions of the law differ wildly with the regulations of all major Western powers.
One of the big ways Sharia differs from Western laws is that it’s considered divine law — that is, it’s not susceptible to amendments or changes of any kind. Citizens are treated as “subjects” and do not have unalienable rights.
By Western standards, Sharia law denies due process, economic liberty, property rights, freedom of expression and freedom of conscience. It’s also fairly barbaric in its treatment of women, homosexuals, non-Muslims and detractors. It gives unreserved license for wars based on religion.
Turkey’s authoritarian president Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that asking Muslims to subjugate themselves legally to Western democracies is a “crime against humanity.” But it’s a fact that Muslims who believe in the supremacism of Sharia law are more susceptible to being radicalized to extreme Islam AFTER becoming new citizens, as opposed to before.
From a practical perspective, one might ask how could authorities conduct the vetting being discussed — by simply asking would-be immigrants what they believe? Obviously, that isn’t going to work for more than a few days before the “correct” answers are known and spread to all potential applicants for citizenship.
Surveys show that Muslims overwhelmingly favor Democrats and Democratic policies. The Democrats, in turn, work with the U.N. and the State Department to resettle current refugees in the U.S. without meaningfully consulting the states to which these refugees are directed.
Current vetting is handled by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), but DHS, in turn, relies on the U.N. for information or on the immigrant’s home countries, such as Sudan, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq or Syria, where fake passports are rampant and officials are highly corrupt, if they’re even cooperative.
Donald Trump is entirely correct when he says that DHS is letting in criminals and possibly worse.
All of this should be proof that a new and better approach is required before any further refugees are admitted, especially those from Middle Eastern and/or Muslim backgrounds. Trump is right in saying that we need to “figure things out” before we proceed with any plans to admit further refugees, especially from these aforementioned hotspots.
We need to develop systems and procedures that are absolutely foolproof before we let any of these people into our country, otherwise, we’re asking for more bombing and/or shooting incidents such as those that have already occurred in Boston, Massachusetts; San Bernardino, California; or Orlando, Florida.
