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Trump’s Executive Order on Refugees — Separating Fact from Hysteria

The liberal news media, which is ever more resembling a communications arm of the Democratic Party, has been determined to portray President Donald Trump’s immigration Executive Order as over-reach, inhumane, and anti-Muslim.

It is not new that American consumers of the news media should be wary of the daily narrative, but the need for it increases daily as nearly every step taken by the Trump Administration is going to be picked apart and pilloried on a daily basis.

The good news is that new media outlets are growing their reach, and old stalwarts like the National Review Online continue to produce a ton of material correcting the record whenever it is necessary. And since President Trump took office just weeks ago, a lot of correcting has been needed.

There is no better example of a need to correct the record is President Trump’s Executive Order ordering a 90-day halt to immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. Why those seven and not the other 44 other Muslim-majority countries and territories? Because they are hotbeds of militant Islam, as even Obama conceded labeling them “countries of concern.”

What is in the Executive Order and why is being portrayed as almost a crime against humanity? We all know the answer to the second question — it is because many Democrats and Leftists and supporters of open borders see any limits as problematic.

What about the first question — what is in the Executive Order? Here is David French writing at National Review:

First, the order temporarily halts refugee admissions for 120 days to improve the vetting process, then caps refugee admissions at 50,000 per year. Outrageous, right? Not so fast. Before 2016, when Obama dramatically rampedup refugee admissions, Trump’s 50,000 stands roughly in between a typical year of refugee admissions in George W. Bush’s two terms and a typical year in Obama’s two terms.

. . .

Second, the order imposes a temporary, 90-day ban on people entering the U.S. from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen. These are countries either torn apart by jihadist violence or under the control of hostile, jihadist governments.

The ban, French writes, “is in place while the Department of Homeland Security determines the ‘information needed from any country to adjudicate any visa, admission, or other benefit under the INA (adjudications) in order to determine that the individual seeking the benefit is who the individual claims to be and is not a security or public-safety threat.’”

French notes that the ban has an “important exception”:

‘Secretaries of State and Homeland Security may, on a case-by-case basis, and when in the national interest, issue visas or other immigration benefits to nationals of countries for which visas and benefits are otherwise blocked.’ In other words, the secretaries can make exceptions — a provision that would, one hopes, fully allow interpreters and other proven allies to enter the U.S. during the 90-day period.

David French, noted for his role as a “Never Trumper,” also writes:

To the extent this ban applies to new immigrant and non-immigrant entry, this temporary halt (with exceptions) is wise. We know that terrorists are trying to infiltrate the ranks of refugees and other visitors.

“Unless we want to simply accept Muslim immigrant terror as a fact of American life,” French adds, “a short-term ban on entry from problematic countries combined with a systematic review of our security procedures is both reasonable and prudent.”

Reasonable and prudent? Seems so when even Syria’s brutal dictator Bashar Assad says that there are “definitely” some terrorists among the refugees.

A final note of interest. Thomas Gallatin writing at Patriot Post in an article titled, “Behind the Immigration Ban Hysterics: Trump’s travel ban on foreigners is not what the Left claims it is,” writes:

[T]he order will seek to revamp the refugee processing in order to prioritize those of minority religious groups fleeing the persecution of radical Islamists. This will specifically help Christians but also other minorities who have suffered from rising persecution over the last few years. This is a significant change from Obama’s policy that did not favor minority religions in the refugee processing.

Here are a few related articles:

First up is Dr. Michael Brown answering the question “”Is Trump’s executive order on the refugees fundamentally unChristian, or is it being misreported by the media?

Next, for information on the legal challenge to the Executive Order, read Hans von Spakovsky’s article
Trump’s Executive Order on Immigration Is Both Legal and Constitutional” at the Heritage Foundation website.

For information about “extreme vetting,” here is Middle East expert Daniel Pipes writing at the Middle East Quarterly: “Smoking Out Islamists via Extreme Vetting.”


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A Christian Response to the Syrian Refugee Crisis

It isn’t so much that liberals are ignorant.
It’s just that they know so many things that aren’t so.

~Ronald Reagan

What was President Obama’s immediate and instinctive response to this month’s Islamic terror attacks in Paris? Did he offer prayers for the families of the slaughtered and vow to wipe out the global cancer that is Islamic Jihad? Did he pledge to come alongside France and work with our wounded European ally until every last Islamic State barbarian is wiped from the face of the earth?

No, America’s eunuch-in-chief preened like a petty peacock, mocking and berating the very Americans he’s sworn to protect and serve. He stated – vomiting the word “Christians” with sanctimonious disgust – that there will be no “religious litmus test” on Syrian refugees, while hypocritically employing a religious litmus test of his own that favors Muslims over Christians by a rate of 97 to 3 percent.

Indeed, during his post-Paris rant, this Oval Office dhimmi promised business as usual, doubling down on his failed policy of containment and appeasement, and inexplicably swearing to aid and abet our enemies by rapidly increasing his importation of Shariah-compliant Islamic refugees. As even his top security advisers warn, these refugees are marbled through with Muslim terrorist infiltrators hell-bent on doing to you and your family what they did to the people of France.

Yet the court jester continues to juggle.

To be sure, some of the Paris terrorists posed as Syrian refugees, and ISIS has pledged to do the same thing here. The question is not “if” but “when” more Americans will die as a result of Obama’s Pollyannaish response to the threat of Islam. He is either catastrophically naïve, or something far more sinister. At best, Barack Hussein Obama is weak and dangerously obtuse. At worst, he is an enemy within.

Either way, he must be stopped.

Still, the jihadist genie is, even now, out of the bottle. Nearly 70 Muslims, including refugees, have already been arrested within America’s borders in the last 18 months. In just the past week, over a dozen Syrian refugees have been caught at our borders with fake passports and bad intentions. Understandably, a majority of Americans agree that we must employee a compassionate alternative to Obama’s suicidal plan to import hundreds-of-thousands of unscreenable Syrian refuges.

But what is that “compassionate” alternative?

Well, it’s certainly not the open-borders approach pushed by America’s “progressive” left. While engaging in hollow #RefugeesWelcome hashtag bravado on Facebook and Twitter may provide a fleeting sugar rush of moral superiority, it is not an answer.

Neither is it tethered to reality.

It’s abject foolishness.

No, the compassionate response is the Christian response. We must be “wise as serpents and innocent as doves” (see Matthew 10:16). It is possible to be at once wise and compassionate. The two are not mutually exclusive. Christ modeled for us the perfect solution to this problem with His parable of the Good Samaritan:

“A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have’” (Luke 10:30-35).

There are many important metaphorical parallels here. Note that the Good Samaritan did not take this man into his own home to care for him. He administered first aid and then took him to a separate location, an inn, giving a charitable donation to the innkeeper and instructing him as to the man’s further care.

Americans, especially Christian Americans, are the most charitable people in the world. The answer to the Syrian refugee crisis is to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. Rather than taking these Shariah-compliant followers of Muhammad – many of whom, as our own intelligence has established, are either ISIS sympathizers or operatives – into our own home, we must unequivocally demand that oil-rich Islamic nations like Saudi Arabia, Iran and others open their own sealed borders to their fellow Muslims in need. They share the same value system and religion, both of which are rooted in Islamic Shariah law – a sociopolitical worldview that is anathema, indeed hostile, to America’s Judeo-Christian values and constitutional-republican form of government.

Undeniably, Saudi Arabia alone has the means to immediately house at least 3 million of these Syrian refugees in its vacant, air conditioned tent city, used only occasionally to accommodate Muslims on their pilgrimage to Mecca. America can also help subsidize, build and facilitate additional refugee camps throughout the Middle East.

Even so, and for our own national security, safety and survival, there is much we can do to help them there, without bringing them here.

And those who are here, we must move there.

The pagan left and the pagan Muslims share a common enemy. He is Christ, Who is Truth. They are both antichrist. The spiritually blind “progressive” West is being played masterfully by the burgeoning Islamic caliphate. What we are witnessing is called “Immigration Jihad,” and Obama is chief among the worldwide Muslim leadership’s dhimmi patsies. They are not only sending a Trojan Horse through our gates, but Obama is helping them to both build it and physically transport it here, with your tax dollars, next door to you and your family.

Yes, we must all have compassion for the innocent women and children suffering under this Islamo-progressive-created humanitarian crisis, but we cannot allow the Islamic State, which represents the purist form of orthodox Islam, to use them as pawns in this war between the civilized world and the demonic savagery that is Muhammadism.

Wise as a serpents, innocent as doves.


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Syrian Refugees: U.S. House Passes WEAK Bill

From Eagle Forum

In the wake of the evil and horrific events in Paris, Congress decided to react to President Obama’s promise to bring 10,000 Syrian refugees to America. The U.S. House of Representatives just passed a bill that adds an extra level of certification for refugees from Syria and Iraq. Passed by a vote of 289-107, H.R. 4038, the American SAFE Act requires additional certification – from the FBI Director, National Intelligence Director, and Secretary of Homeland Security – that each Syrian or Iraqi refugee is not a security threat before he or she is resettled in the United States.

FBI Director James Comey has testified that there is no data available to vet Syrian refugees. In the absence of this data needed to properly certify a refugee, congressional leadership argues that today’s bill effectively pauses the program. Unfortunately, this argument neglects the Obama administration’s willingness to ignore the law to accomplish its own goals. Further, this bill only pertains to individuals with documents from Iraq and Syria in spite of reports that terrorists are using forged documents for entry. Just yesterday, five Syrians were caught in Honduras attempting to enter the U.S. with stolen Greek documents.

At the end of July, U.S. Rep. Brian Babin (TX-36) introduced a bill, H.R. 3314, the Resettlement Accountability National Security Act, that would pause the Refugee Resettlement program until properly vetted for efficiency and effectiveness. The bill has gathered support from almost one-third of the Republican conference.

[Last week,] in an effort to improve the American SAFE Act, Rep. Babin and 15 of his colleagues [Brat, Brooks, Meadows, Duncan (SC), Barletta, Loudermilk, LaMalfa, Hice, DeSantis, Sanford, Gohmert, Culberson, Graves (LA), Garrett, and Walker] offered a modification of H.R. 3314 that would halt the resettlement program for 180 days and require a GAO study within 90 days on the economic impact on state and local government. Chairman Pete Sessions and Republican leadership rejected this and every other amendment, instead opting for a closed rule that enabled leadership to rush through H.R. 4038.

The most prudent and humanitarian response is to stop the refugee resettlement program and reallocate that funding to safe zones or refugee camps abroad. The Center for Immigration Studies reports that for the money spent to resettle one refugee in America, we could be helping twelve refugees abroad. Therefore, if the goal is to help as many people as possible while keeping America safe, Congress could choose to help twelve times more refugees in areas close to their home without increasing the security threats facing our nation.

Considering almost thirty governors, including liberal Republicans and a Democrat, have publicly announced their opposition to resettling Syrian refugees in their states, this is no time for surrender or show-votes. Government funding expires on December 11th. Congress has an opportunity to use the upcoming omnibus funding bill to deal with the refugee crisis in an efficient, cost-effective way that protects the American people.

Take ACTION:  Call your representative and senators and ask them to support adding Rep. Brian Babin’s bill, H.R. 3314, to the upcoming spending bill, with an added provision to have the money from refugee resettlement reallocated to helping refugees abroad.

U.S. Capitol Switchboard in D.C. (202) 224-3121