MESSAGE
| DATE | 2017-02-01 |
| FROM | Rick Moen
|
| SUBJECT | Re: [Hangout-NYLXS] The lessons of Roosevelt???s failures
|
Quoting Caroline B. Glick:
> The first thing that is important to understand about Trump’s order is
> that it did not come out of nowhere. It is based on the policies of his
> predecessor Barack Obama.
Fact Checker
Trump’s facile claim that his refugee policy is similar to Obama’s in 2011
By Glenn Kessler January 29
In justifying his controversial executive order halting travelers from
seven majority-Muslim countries, President Trump claimed that President
Barack Obama did the same thing in 2011. But the comparison is a bit
facile.
Here’s what happened in 2011.
The Facts
The only news report that we could find that referred to a six-month ban
was a 2013 ABC News article that included this line: “As a result of the
Kentucky case, the State Department stopped processing Iraq refugees for
six months in 2011, federal officials told ABC News — even for many who
had heroically helped U.S. forces as interpreters and intelligence
assets.”
The “Kentucky case” refers to two Iraqis in Kentucky who in May 2011
were arrested and faced federal terrorism charges after officials
discovered from an informant that Waad Ramadan Alwan, before he had been
granted asylum in the United States, had constructed improvised roadside
bombs in Iraq. The FBI, after examining fragments from thousands of bomb
parts, found Alwan’s fingerprints on a cordless phone that had been
wired to detonate an improvised bomb in 2005.
The arrests caused an uproar in Congress, and the Obama administration
pledged to reexamine the records of 58,000 Iraqis who had been settled
in the United States. The administration also imposed new, more
extensive background checks on Iraqi refugees. Media reports at the time
focused on how the new screening procedures had delayed visa approvals,
even as the United States was preparing to end its involvement in the
Iraq War.
“The enhanced screening procedures have caused a logjam in regular visa
admissions from Iraq, even for those who risked their lives to aid
American troops and who now fear reprisals as the Obama administration
winds down the U.S. military presence,” the Baltimore Sun reported.
The Los Angeles Times reported that U.S. officials acknowledged delays
but were trying to speed up the process:
A U.S. Embassy official in Baghdad, speaking on condition he not be
identified, acknowledged “unfortunate delays” in issuing special visas,
the result of enhanced security clearance procedures, some instituted
after the Kentucky arrests. But he said recent changes would speed the
process.
The State Department’s National Visa Center has been ordered to flag
special visa applications for expedited action, the official said. And a
requirement that Iraqi applicants provide an original signature on
certain forms sent to the U.S. has been dropped after Iraqis complained
of logistical difficulties.
“We are making changes, ordered at the very highest levels, that will
help shave time off the application process,” the official said.
At a September 2011 congressional hearing, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine)
asked Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano if a hold had been
placed on Iraqi visa applications.
COLLINS: “So my question is, is there a hold on that population until
they can be more stringently vetted to ensure that we’re not letting
into this country, people who would do us harm?”
NAPOLITANO: “Yep. Let me, if I might, answer your question two parts.
First part, with respect to the 56, 57,000 who were resettled pursuant
to the original resettlement program, they have all been revetted
against all of the DHS databases, all of the NCTC [National Counter
Terrorism Center] databases and the Department of Defense’s biometric
databases and so that work has now been done and focused.”
COLLINS: “That’s completed?”
NAPOLITANO: “That is completed. Moving forward, no one will be resettled
without going through the same sort of vet. Now I don’t know if that
equates to a hold, as you say, but I can say that having done the
already resettled population moving forward, they will all be reviewed
against those kinds of databases.”
The new rules were stringent, the Economist reported, and resulted in
some turmoil.
“Immigration authorities soon began rechecking all Iraqi refugees in
America, reportedly comparing fingerprints and other records with
military and intelligence documents in dusty archives. About 1,000
soon-to-be immigrants in Iraq were told that they would not be allowed
to board flights already booked. Some were removed from planes.
Thousands more Iraqi applicants had to restart the immigration process,
because their security clearances expired when the program stalled. Men
must now pass five separate checks, women four, and children three.”
State Department records show there was a significant drop in refugee
arrivals from Iraq in 2011. There were 18,251 in 2010, 6,339 in 2011 and
16,369 in 2012. But it’s unclear that equates to an actual six-month
pause in visa processing, rather than a dramatic slowdown in approvals
as new rules were put in place. One news report said “pace of visa
approvals having slowed to a crawl,” indicating some were still being
approved.
Update: Former Obama administration official Jon Finer denied that any
ban in Iraqi refugee admissions was put in place under Obama. “While the
flow of Iraqi refugees slowed significantly during the Obama
administration’s review, refugees continued to be admitted to the United
States during that time, and there was not a single month in which no
Iraqis arrived here,” he wrote in Foreign Policy. “In other words, while
there were delays in processing, there was no outright ban.”
Another former official, Eric P. Schwartz, the assistant secretary of
state for population, refugees and migration at the time, also told The
Fact Checker that Trump’s statement is false:
“President Obama never imposed a six-month ban on Iraqi processing. For
several months in 2011, there was a lower level of Iraqi resettlement,
as the government implemented certain security enhancements. Indeed, as
we identified new and valuable opportunities to enhance screening, we
did so. Nobody should object to a continual effort to identify
legitimate enhancements, but it is disreputable to use that as a pretext
to effectively shut down a program that is overwhelmingly safe and has
enabled the United States to exercise world leadership. In any event,
there was never a point during that period in which Iraqi resettlement
was stopped, or banned.”
The Pinocchio Test
So what’s the difference with Trump’s action?
First, Obama responded to an actual threat — the discovery that two
Iraqi refugees had been implicated in bombmaking in Iraq that had
targeted U.S. troops. (Iraq, after all, was a war zone.) Under
congressional pressure, officials decided to reexamine all previous
refugees and impose new screening procedures, which led to a slowdown in
processing new applications. Trump, by contrast, issued his executive
order without any known triggering threat. (His staff has pointed to
attacks unrelated to the countries named in his order.)
Second, Obama did not announce a ban on visa applications. In fact, as
seen in Napolitano’s answer to Collins, administration officials danced
around that question. There was certainly a lot of news reporting that
visa applications had slowed to a trickle. But the Obama administration
never said it had a policy to halt all applications. Indeed, it is now
clear that no ban was put in place. Even so, the delays did not go
unnoticed, so there was a lot of critical news reporting at the time
about the angst of Iraqis waiting for approval.
Third, Obama’s policy did not prevent all citizens of that country,
including green-card holders, from traveling to the United States.
Trump’s policy is much more sweeping, though officials have appeared to
pull back from barring permanent U.S. residents.
We have sought comment from the White House and from Obama
administration officials and so may update this if more information
becomes available. But so far this is worthy of at least Two Pinocchios.
Update: In light of the response from Obama administration officials
that there never was a point when Iraqi resettlement was stopped or
banned, we are updating this ruling to Three Pinocchios. Iraqi refugee
processing was slowed, in response to a specific threat, but it was not
halted. The Trump White House, meanwhile, has failed to provide any
evidence for its statement.
Three Pinocchios
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2017/01/29/trumps-facile-claim-that-his-refugee-policy-is-similar-to-obama-in-2011/
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