Authors: Dick Morris,Eileen McGann
Tags: #POL040010 Political Science / American Government / Executive Branch
How many more of these examples do we need until we all see the need to restrict immigration from terror-harboring countries? Notice how geographically spread out these threats areâno longer concentrated in New York City, but spread to all parts of our nation. How did that happen? How did we export terrorists to formerly calm and loyal parts of America? Our own government did. In the refugee resettlement program, the federal government decides who to send where and makes an effort to spread the refugees out across the nation to hasten their integration into our population. Instead, we have enabled their infiltration!
Democrats, including Hillary Clinton, have lined up to oppose restrictions on immigrants and in favor of opening our arms to refugees even if there is a risk that they are terrorists in disguise. But Muslim immigrants keep pouring into the United States.
Breitbart.com
reported that, according to the Department of Homeland Security, the United States has issued green cards (i.e., permanent resettlement documents) to “more than 1.5Â million [migrants] from majority Muslim nations” since 9/11.
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The United States has awarded 11,000 green cards to immigrants from Afghanistan (mostly Muslim) from 2009 to 2013. We have also given green cards to 83,000 Iraqis and the same number of Pakistanis in the same time period. Turks got 22,000 green cards and Kazaks got 7,000.
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Hillary conditions her support for ongoing Muslim immigration by saying that we can vet those who want to come here. Vet? What nonsense! How on Earth can we vet people coming in from Syria? We can't just call up their high school guidance counselor or pull up
their Social Security employment history. We have no way of separating real refugees from terrorists posing as refugees.
Former Homeland Security Administrator Tom Ridge made clear in a radio interview last December just how absurd Hillary's claim that we will vet Syrian refugees really is. He said, “I'm just not sure that we've got the background information. . . . They talk about screening. They talk about being able to review everybody in a timely way. I'm just not confident they have sufficient information for law enforcement, the intelligence community, to do effective screening. . . . A pause for refugees from that part of the world is very appropriate at this time.”
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And the FBI warned Congress on October 21, 2015, that “admitting people displaced by the Syrian civil war into the U.S. is a highly dubious venture, fraught with risks that terrorist fighters could slip in posing as ârefugees.'”
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There is a vast difference between immigrants and refugees. Immigrants are admitted to the United States legally, pursuant to legislation adopted by Congress and administered by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Many evade ICE and enter illegally, but they are still immigrants, subject to deportation if they are apprehended. Refugees come here as a result, not of congressional legislation, but under agreements between the administration and the United Nations, not subject to congressional approval. And refugees are eligible to become citizens while illegal immigrants are, of course, not. Obama and Hillary are using refugees to circumvent congressional restrictions on immigration to get more Muslims into America.
Why would they want to do that? Pew Research has found the answer: 70% of Muslims, in their survey, said they mainly vote Democrat while only 11% sided with the Republicans.
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Of course, Hillary cannot change her record. But she can try to change her positions. During the primaries, Hillary was obliged to toe the Obama line on terror and immigration. With Bernie Sanders crawling up her left flank, she could not move to the center. But what about the general election? Will she change her support for immigration or her refusal to send ground troops to fight ISIS?
She'll want to. But it will be tough. Will Hillary seek to maximize the enthusiasm and turnout of her liberal base, as Obama did, or pivot to the center as her husband did in 1996?
If she hopes to move to the center on issues like ISIS, terror, and immigration, she will pay the price in liberal voter turnout. Many on the Leftâa notoriously picky bunchâwill feel that they have nobody to vote for and stay home. She can't mount an Obama-like crusade by standing in the middle. Even if she chooses to modify her position, her past record of repeated flip-flops undermines her credibility. Those who had agreed with her before she changed are likely to be disenchanted as she moves to the center. And those who used to disagree with her will find themselves very skeptical of her newfound centrism.
Now that terrorism has resurfaced with a close nexus to the immigration issue, the combination of the two will work even more strongly on behalf of the Republicans in 2016. The Democratic Party and Hillary have gone over a cliff and are articulating ideas and policies so totally out of sync with the average American that it is hard to conceive of their winning an election on that platform. Americans do not feel a duty to open their borders to possible terrorists and will not vote for anyone who does.
No issue cuts across all racial, class, gender, income, and ethnic lines more than terrorism. Obama's inept response to terrorism and his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's failures make the Democrats extremely vulnerable on the issue. Obama's strategy of dividing the electorate along race, gender, age, and ethnicity falls in the face of the terrorism issue. As random as the terror attacks have become, they reach everyone equally. People of all races, ages, and both genders are vulnerable. It is the transcendent issue of our times. We are in danger not because we are white or black, Anglo or Latino, men or women, gay or straight, young or old, but because we are Americans. But the terror threat is growing on both the macro and micro level. Even as ISIS shows the potential for awful destruction from
lone wolves or small groups with rudimentary weapons, Iran speeds toward the development of nuclear weapons, impelled by both Obama's and Hillary's policies of appeasement.
The horrible giveaway Obama negotiated with Iran will be one of the Republican Party's best issues in 2016. Voters don't trust Iran. They see Iran as still intent on backing and funding terrorism and focused on developing a nuclear weapon. They feel Obama's deal is predicated on a level of trust in Iran's government that they do not share and feel the procedures to verify it and detect cheating are inadequate. Few issues unite Americans more than their skepticism of Iran.
Rasmussen reported that, by a margin of 62 to 35, American voters do not think it is likely that Iran will “uphold its end of the deal that ends some economic sanctions on that country in exchange for cutbacks in the Iranian nuclear weapons program.” Indeed, 39% say it's “not at all likely” that Iran will abide by its word.
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So in the Rasmussen poll, taken in December 2015, only the diehard Democratic Party base believes Iran will keep its word. A strong majority of Independents and almost all Republicans think Iran will cheat.
Hillary has tied herself to the Iran deal, giving it what the
New York Times
called her “strong endorsement.” As usual, she hedged, saying that it could only work as part of “a larger strategy toward Iran” that contained Tehran's power in the region as sanctions are lifted.
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Since Iran has no intention of abiding by the deal, Hillary will need all the wiggle room she can get on the issue. But Trump can cut her off and pin her down by listing all the ways in which Iran has already violated the deal even before the ink was dry.
In the nine months after the deal was signed, Iran has conducted a series of ballistic missile tests that could be used to perfect nuclear weapons technology. Iran was barred from any ballistic missile development by UN resolution 1929, which read, “Iran
shall not
undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles capable of delivering
nuclear weapons.”
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But the final deal with Iran on nuclear weapons watered down the prohibition into a mere request. The new UN resolution 2231, adopted July 20, 2015, superseded the old resolution 1929 and says, “Iran
is called upon not
to undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons.”
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And even this resolution is slated to expire in eight years, leaving Iran free to do whatever it wants.
To celebrate its liberation from UN controls, in March 2016 Iran launched multiple 800 km and 2,000 km missiles from silos across the country. What did the United States do? Nothing. If the UN does anything, it will likely pass a toothless Security Council resolution critical of Iran. Meanwhile, the torrent of money released to Iran by the US government continues to flow unabated.
As Donald Trump said “we give them $150Â billion. We get nothing.”
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Senators Mark Kirk (R-IL) and Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) demanded that the administration take concrete action to address Iran's violations of the agreement. They said that the administration is “inviting” Iran to continue breaking international agreements. Obama claims that the issue of ballistic missiles is separate from the deal on nuclear weapons. He says one has nothing to do with the other. He implies that Iran can develop all the missiles it wants as long as it doesn't build a bomb. But Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told Congress that “Iran is developing [intercontinental ballistic missile] capabilities and the sole purpose of an Iranian ICBM is to enable delivery of a nuclear weapon to the United States.”
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Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN), chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, also cited Iran's violations. “Iran violates U.N. Security Council resolutions because it knows neither this administration nor the U.N. Security Council is likely to take any action,” Corker said in a statement. “Instead,” he added, “the administration remains paralyzed and responds to Iran's violations with empty words of condemnation and concern.”
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“If we cannot respond to a clear violation of a U.N. Security Council resolution, I have no faith that the U.N.
and the Obama administration will implement any form of snapback in response to Iranian violations of the nuclear agreement,” Corker said. The Obama administration, he added, “has the authority to penalize” Iran and its allies, but is refusing to exercise it.
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During the winter and spring of 2015â2016, in the run up to the elections, the Iranian violations received scant notice in American media. But during the fall campaign, Trump must hammer away at the violations, let Hillary have it, and demand action from Obama. Hillary, who endorsed the Iran deal after it was signed and urged Senate approval, must be held to account both for the flaws in the deal and for Iran's violations of it.
And the money keeps on flowing to Iran. The Ayatollah has gotten $11.9Â billion from the United States since the nuclear talks began. How much does that mean to Iran? Life and death.
Before the sanctions relief, Iran's inflation rate was north of 30%, the government had to curtail subsidies for food and fuel, and political instability threatened. Now all is calm and all is good.
Iran's GDP is $416Â billion. Proportionately, getting $12Â billion in cash is like America getting a grant of over $500Â billionâenough to pay for all defense spending for a year or enough to pay for Social Security and Medicare. And the funds we are sending them are not mainly going to their domestic economy and certainly not to their impoverished people, but to Iranian terrorists bent on destroying us.
But the Iranians claim it is their money that the United States is giving back to them. Yes, it is Iranian money, but it was amassed by the Shah in the days before the Ayatollah took over. For the current regime, in power since 1978, it is an undeserved and unearned windfall.
Hillary the Hypocrite claims credit for the tough sanctions on Iran that forced it to the bargaining table. But the truth is the exact opposite. She, in fact, moved heaven and earth to block the sanctions from passing Congress. Hillary pretends that she and Congress worked hand-in-glove to get sanctions passed. “With the help of Congress,” she said, “the Obama administration imposed some
of the most stringent crippling sanctions on top of the international ones . . . our goal was to put so much financial pressure on Iran's leaders that they would have no choice but to come back to the negotiating table with a serious offer.”
She continued, “We went after Iran's oil industry, banks, and weapons programs, enlisted insurance firms, shipping lines, energy companies, financial institutions and others to cut Iran off from global commerce.”
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All true. But she omits one part of the story: That she was against the sanctions and did her best to defeat them. Yet, as Ronald Reagan (and President John Adams) said, “Facts are stubborn things.”
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Republican Senator Mark Kirk (R-IL), who worked closely with former chairman of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee Bob Menendez (D-NJ), says that Hillary's claim to have supported the Iran sanctions are “a blatant revision of history.” The senator added, “The fact is, the Obama administration has opposed [the effort to impose] sanctions against Iran led by Senator Menendez and me every step of the way, as was thoroughly documented at the time.”
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In late 2011, for example, Hillary sent a key aide, Undersecretary of State Wendy Sherman, to Capitol Hill to express the administration's “strong opposition” to the amendment sponsored by Kirk and Menendez to sanction the Central Bank of Iran, one of the key measures that Congress imposed. Sherman argued that the action would “anger [our] allies by opening them up for punishment if they did not significantly reduce their imports of Iranian oil.”
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When the senators refused to back off their amendment, Hillary upped the ante by sending her number two at the State Department, Bill Burns, to an “emergency” meeting with top senators to try to kill the amendment. He and Hillary failed and the Senate passed the bill 100â0. Commenting on the battle over the amendment, Menendez told Hillary and Obama, “At your request we engaged in an effort to come to a bipartisan agreement that I
believe is fair and balanced. And now you come here and vitiate that agreement. . . . You should have said [that you] want no amendment.”
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