Did the U.S. Deny a Visa to an Iraqi Nun for Fear She Might Seek Sanctuary?
By Emily Zanotti on 4.30.15 | 4:25PM
Before I started this piece, I did a quick Google search using the term "ISIS Killing Christians" in order to help demonstrate a point that the Obama Administration, while licking the boots of Iranians and gleefully ignoring the forward march of radical Islamists across Iraq and Syria in order to concentrate on easier topics, has turned a blind eye to the murder of hundreds, if not thousands, of Christians in ISIS-controlled areas.
My search, which focused on news stories, turned up over 2.2 million results.
Just this week ISIS executed 30 Christians in Ethiopia and 21 in Egypt. ISIS has wiped out entire villages, sent thousands scattering to friendlier nations. This week, a delegation of Iraqi minority groups, including representatives of the Yazidi and of local Shia groups, is making its way to Washington D.C. to testify about what is happening on the ground in their home country. The State Department has approved all of their visas save one — the visa of the only Christian in the group, an Iraqi Dominican nun — because the State Department was too afraid that she would seek asylum from the atrocities she faces at home, and might intentionally overstay her visa, turning her into an illegal immigrant.
Sister Diana Momeka of the Dominican Sisters of Saint Catherine of Siena was informed on Tuesday by the U.S. consulate in Erbil that her non-immigrant-visa application has been rejected. The reason given in the denial letter, a copy of which I have obtained, is:
"You were not able to demonstrate that your intended activities in the United States would be consistent with the classification of the visa."
She told me in a phone conversation that, to her face, consular officer Christopher Patch told her she was denied because she is an “IDP” or Internally Displaced Person. “That really hurt,” she said. Essentially, the State Department was calling her a deceiver.
The State Department officials made the determination that the Catholic nun could be falsely asserting that she intends to visit Washington when secretly she could be intending to stay. That would constitute illegal immigration, and that, of course, is strictly forbidden. Once here, she could also be at risk for claiming political asylum, and the U.S. seems determined to deny ISIS’s Christian victims that status.
Obviously, when you approve one person's status as a persecuted minority, you have to approve everyone's. And while the administration has been preoccupied with legal strategy and public relations surrounding an Executive Order that would grant amnesty to tens of thousands of illegal immigrants from south of our nation's border, we just don't have any wiggle room left to move in as far as a single, potential illegal immigrant from a war torn country is concerned. Now, I'm not saying that illegal immigration of any sort is right. As Sonny Bono used to say when questioned on the subject, "it's illegal." But it's odd for the administration, which has turned a blind eye to egregious examples of illegal immigration just this year, would draw the line at a single nun whose fellow Iraqi Christians are being systematically wiped out.
As for whether she even intends to become an "IDP," well, here's the State Department comprehensive calendar of events for Sr. Momeka's entire trip: She has public meetings set up in Congress and at the State Department. She'll be speaking to USAID and several organizations at the UN. At home, her order has been holding down the same fort since around 1200 AD. She has a full time job as a professor in Kurdistan and several letters of recommendation, some from members of Congress who know her and have followed her work. As far as threats to the integrity of our immigration system, Sr. Momeka seems like she's low down on the list.
[via National Review, Patheos]
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