Syria’s Terrorist Diaspora
Rebeccah Heinrichs | August 3, 2016
Islamist terror attacks are on the rise, but this has not caused the Obama administration to waver in its goal to welcome at least 10,000 Syrian refugees into the United States by the end of this year. A report quoted a government official who stipulated that 10,000 was a “a floor, and not a ceiling.”
Those who dared to express skepticism in our ability to properly distinguish between those who wish no ill will towards the West and those who are committed to Islamism are characterized as xenophobes, racists, or on the gracious end of the spectrum… irrational worrywarts. After all, Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, reminded reporters in a press conference in 2015 that refugees went through the most careful vetting process of any kind of immigrant. That may be true, but that doesn’t mean careful vetting will be effective in a region embroiled in a civil war. One senior Federal Bureau of Investigations official, Michael Steinbach, testified that when the United States vetted Iraq refugee applicants, it still managed to let 13 terrorists slip into the country. He explained that the current Syrian crisis presents even greater vetting challenges. He said, “We learned our lessons with the Iraqi refugee population. We put in place a USIK-wide background and vetting process that we found to be effective…The difference is that in Iraq we were there on the ground collecting [information], so we had databases to use… The concern is that in Syria, the lack of our footprint on the ground in Syria, the databases won’t have the information we need. So it’s not that we have a lack of a process, it’s that there is a lack the information.”
https://providencemag.com/2016/08/syrias-terrorist-diaspora/
