Speech #1140059165

This is why I have introduced H.R. 3314. the Resettlement Accountability National Security Act of 2015. My bill places an immediate moratorium on the U.S. Refugee Resettlement Program until the Government Accountability Office conducts a study to determine the economic costs to the American taxpayer and until Congress analyzes the risks to our national security. According to the U.S. Refugee Admissions database. nearly 500.000 new refugees have come into the United States under the Refugee Resettlement Program since President Obama first took office. As a firstterm Representative from Texas. I immediately began to investigate this issue because the State of Texas and its taxpayers have been asked to take in more refugees than any other State. I found out that no one was askingmuch less answeringthe questions of who. how. when. where. and how much regarding these refugees. I also found out that aspects of this program are very hard to determine even by the government agencies supposedly overseeing it. mainly because these agencies contract and provide funding to nongovernmental organizations to administer the program and because the United Nations gets to choose the majority of the refugees who enter the United States. Since the Resettlement Act was signed into law by thenPresident Jimmy Carter in 1980. more than 3 million refugees from Third World countries have been permanently resettled in the United States. and as I said earlier. nearly 500.000 refugees in just the last 61/2 years of the Obama administration have been resettled by private Federal contractors across this country in over 190 towns and communities whose local citizens have little to no say in the matter. The private governmentcontracted organizations that administer the Refugee Resettlement Program and choose the locations of resettlement within the United States are nonprofit groups. However. these nonprofits are paid. literally. millions of Federal dollars. I am very troubled by the Refugee Resettlement Acts cost to America. The stark financial problems of our nearly $19 trillion national debt argue against asking the American taxpayer to take on the further financial burden of tens of billions of dollars for refugee resettlement. According to official statistics published by the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement. or ORR. more than 90 percent of recent refugees from the Middle East are on welfare. This is alarming from a budgetary standpoint alone. The Congressional Research Services memo that was issued to the Senate Judiciary Committee on the Office of Refugee Resettlement Admissions from the Department of Health and Human Services revealed that 74.2 percent of all refugees up until the year 2013 received food stamps while 56 percent received some sort of medical assistance. The very next year. in 2014. the ORR reported that 92 percent of Middle Eastern refugees were on food stamps. and over 68 percent received direct cash assistance. According to the ORRs annual report to Congress for fiscal year 2013. the majority of the refugees who enter the United States are without any income or assets to support themselves and are given benefits paid for by Stateadministered programs. Families who have children under the age of 18 are eligible for the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. or TANF. program. Refugees who are older. blind. or disabled are eligible for Medicaid benefits and Supplemental Security Income. or SSI. whose trust fund right now is nearing insolvency. The Federal Government does not reimburse States for the costs or for Medicaid programs. which places a huge economic drain on the State governments. As a former mayor and local school board member. I know of the strain this places on local municipalities and school systems as well. Refugees in certain States who do not meet the specifications listed above. such as single adults. childless couples. and twoparent families. are still eligible to receive benefits under the Refugee Cash Assistance. or RCA. and Refugee Medical Assistance. or RMA. programs for up to the first 8 months that a refugee is in the United States. While the States are reimbursed for these programs. they cost U.S. taxpayers about $302.4 million each year. For 2013. the Office of Refugee Resettlement allocated $400 million for transitional and medical services. $150 million for social services. and nearly $50 million in targeted assistance. Along with several other allotments. the total refugee appropriation was over $620 million. What many Americans do not realize is that refugees are eligible for lawful permanent residence. or LPR. status and for all Federal benefits after being here 1 year in the United States. In addition. if they have children born here in the United States. they are eligible for benefits as well. Robert Rector of the respected Heritage Foundation puts the cost of accepting just 10.000 Syrian refugees at more than $6.5 billion for a lifetime of costs. Again. I ask: Is this wise for a country that is nearly $19 trillion in debt? It sounds noble for the Obama administration to propose bringing in more refugees next year. yet there is no full accounting or transparency over what this will cost the taxpayers at the Federal. State. or local level. In a critical time when we must be economically responsible and prioritize our finite resources accordingly. allocating over a half a billion dollars for a program with unknown consequences is not the best use of our government resources. The question at the end of the day is: Can we really afford not to take a further look at the resettlement program? Lets also take a few minutes to examine the national security threats of this. Perhaps even more disconcerting than the enormous costs are the numerous security risks posed by accepting refugees without properly screening or vetting them. As entire regions of the Middle East dissolve into chaos. the ability to conduct the proper vetting of refugees by verifying places of origin. political orientations. criminal records. or sometimes even basic identities is. all too often. simply nonexistent. Already. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. FBI Director James Comey. and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson have testified under oath that they cannot properly screen the refugees who are streaming out of these wartorn areas of the Middle East. FBI Director James Comey said he had serious concerns about bringing in refugees from conflict zones. We cannot just call up the Damascus or Libyan police department and run background checks on these refugees from conflict zones. There is already a very good chance that. of the 70.000 refugees per year coming into the United States. terrorists and ISIS followers who are posing as refugees may have slipped through the gaps. ISIS has promised that it will exploit this refugee crisis. and it has already. indeed. been caught attempting to do so. According to a senior Lebanese official. at least 20.000 jihadists have already infiltrated the Syrian refugee camps and are plotting to enter Western Europe. According to the Council on Foreign Relations. jihadist groups typically target European countries that have generous and liberal immigration policies and that are allies of the United States. In line with this. the Hurriyet Daily News. in Turkey. stated this past February that the Turkish intelligence service had warned police that 3.000 trained jihadists were attempting to cross into Turkey from Syria and Iraq and then make their way into Western Europe to target countries involved in the U.S.-led antiIslamic State coalition. What is even more alarming is that the news publication reports that some of the members of the group. including their leaders. have already entered Turkey and have already established cells of terrorist operation. Palestinians and citizens from Syria who are between the ages of 17 to 25 have entered Turkey as refugees and plan to travel to Europe through Bulgaria in order to attack antiISIS coalitionmember countries. In fact. one ISIS operative has claimed more than 4.000 covert ISIS gunmen have been smuggled into Western nations and are currently hiding amongst innocent refugees. He then warned "just wait." according to the International Business Times. In May. the International Business Times also cited Libyan Government adviser Abdul Basit Haroun. who warned that ISIS operatives were being smuggled into Europe by boat. Haroun said that ISIS militants are taking advantage of the crisis by using boats for their own operatives whom they want to send to Europe. and the European authorities cant differentiate between those from ISIS and the actual refugees. If this is not disturbing. then I dont know what is. There are also thousands of former refugees who have settled in Europe over the past several decades now going to join ISIS in the Middle East. According to Gilles de Kerchove. the European Unions counterterrorism chief. nearly 4.000 Europeans are estimated to have left Western Europe and gone and joined ISIS. We have even seen this in the United States refugee settlement communities as well. In Minneapolis. Minnesota. there have been 22 young Somali men that we know of since 2007 that left their new refugee home in the United States to join the terrorist organization al Shabaab. In Somalia. they are fighting against U.S. allies and U.S.-trained troops. There are 27.000 Somali refugees in the Minneapolis area. and President Obamas plans call for thousands more. In Texas. 37yearold Bilal Abood is an Iraqi American who is suspected to have come to the United States as a refugee or an asylum seeker in the year 2009. When the FBI went to his home. they found evidence of ties with ISIS. including pledging an oath to its leader. Abu Bakr alBaghdadi. A former cab driver in Virginia. Liban Haji Mohamed. who came to the United States as a Somali refugee. is on the FBIs Most Wanted Terrorist list for providing material support to al Qaeda and al Shabaab. He is considered particularly dangerous because he worked to recruit other U.S. terrorists for these terrorist organizations. He lived in Alexandria. Virginia. just a few miles across the river from where I am standing right now. According to Mike Mauro. a professor of homeland security and national security analyst at the Clarion Project. a poll was conducted in November of 2014 of 900 Syrian refugees. In this poll of recent refugees. 13 percent. or roughly one out of seven. claim to have sympathies toward ISIS. Alarmingly and incredibly. that amounts to a potential 130 ISIS sympathizers. The Immigration and Nationality Act. known as the INA. specifies that applicants for the resettlement program be subject to various grounds of inadmissibility. including criminal. security. and public health grounds. The grounds of inadmissibility applying to refugee applicants include the broad terrorismrelated inadmissibility grounds. or TRIG. in section 212 of the INA. the Immigration and Nationality Act. Very disturbing is the fact that. beginning in 2005. the Department of Homeland Security. the State Department. and the Department of Justice began exercising their discretionary authority to waive these categories of inadmissibility for refugee applicants. Then. in 2015. the Department of Homeland Security began implementing new additional exemptions for individuals if they only provided insignificant or certain limited material support to terroriststhis includes routine commercial and social transactionsor provided humanitarian assistance to undesignated terrorist organizations. As of this past June. the United States Government has granted more than 15.560 TRIG exemptions to refugee applicants. That is right. More than 15.000 times the Government of the United States has waived past participation with terrorist organizations so that refugees could come and enter into the United States. This must stop. The warning signs are everywhere of the potential of terrorist suspects posing as refugees while President Obama redoubles his efforts to bring these people in the United States and put at risk the lives and safety of the American people. We have recently had two terrorist gunmen in Garland. Texas. who linked themselves to ISIS. the shooter in Chattanooga. Tennessee. who killed five U.S. servicemembers. recruiters. and the Tsarnaev brothers in the Boston Marathon bombing. who killed three spectators and injured an estimated 260 others. What we need to ask ourselves is: How did the Federal Government fail the American people with respect to vetting these refugees? Of course. not all refugees are Islamic jihadists. Indeed. most are not. But the few that are pose a very real threat to the safety and security of the American people. The 9111 terrorist attackers numbered 19. the Boston terrorists only 2. As elected representatives. our responsibility to the American citizens and our communities should be our number one priority. The Refugee Resettlement Program has long operated under the radar of most Americans. The average American has no idea that this resettlement program is a U.N. plan that chooses which refugees come to the United States and that the United States taxpayer foots the bill. But as it has grown over the last few years and its implementation has become a threat to small communities. saddling them with the problems that refugee resettlement brings without their sayso and often even without their knowledge. residents in several States. including Texas. are starting to ask hard questions. No longer satisfied with past answers. they are showing up at townhall meetings. starting blogs and email lists. digging up information and informing their friends and neighbors of what is really going on with refugee resettlement in such diverse American communities as MinneapolisSt. Paul. Minnesota.