Cough it up: Sessions, Cruz demand immigration history of terrorists, Calif. shootersRaising concerns about Muslim immigrants to a new high, Sens. Jeff Sessions and Ted Cruz late Thursday charged that the Obama administration is concealing the immigration history of terrorists and demanded to know the immigration history of the San Bernardino attackers.
The lawmakers, on the warpath against the pending omnibus appropriations because it fully funds President Obama's immigration program,
also demanded a full explanation of how it will bring in nearly 200,000 Muslim migrants in one year through the green card program.In a letter to the administration just a day after the terrorist-linked attack in San Bernadino, Calif., Sessions and Cruz demanded that the administration cough up the immigration histories of attackers in several recent events.
"A response is not only long overdue, but urgent in light of a series of assaults, including: the heinous attacks in San Bernardino, California, the earlier attacks on the military recruiting center in Chattanooga, the Boston Bombing, and Congress' imminent consideration of government funding legislation that would include funding for myriad immigration programs that have allowed for these events to occur."
They added, "In our struggle against terrorism, we are dealing with an enemy that has shown it is not only capable of bypassing U.S. screening, but of recruiting and radicalizing Muslim migrants after their entry to the United States. The recruitment of terrorists in the U.S. is not limited to adult migrants, but to their young children and to their U.S.-born children — which is why family immigration history is necessary to understand the nature of the threat."
Sessions this week urged Republicans to stand against funding the president's immigration program in the omnibus spending bill. He had earlier warned that the president's green card program will bring in 680,000 from Muslim nations over the next five years, more than the population of Washington, D.C.
In his statement, Sessions and Cruz wrapped up his concerns this way:
"Congress is days away from consideration of an omnibus funding bill that would set the U.S. on an autopilot path to approve green cards, asylum and refugee status to nearly 200,000 migrants from Muslim countries during the next fiscal year; additional to that would then be tens of thousands of additional temporary entry and employment permits, and is additional to the rest of the autopilot green cards, asylum, refugee and foreign worker flow. The security task involved is immense, and Congress must have the requested information if lawmakers are to act as responsible stewards of American immigration policy."
Their letter followed up a previous demand to Secretary of State John Kerry and others for immigration information of 72 individuals in the U.S. linked to terrorism. In the new letter, Sessions, chairman of the Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest, and Cruz, chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight, Agency Action, Federal Rights and Federal Courts, said they never got an answer...http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/cough-it-up-sessions-cruz-demand-immigration-history-of-terrorists-calif.-shooters/article/2577594