Two Iraqis (apparently Sunnis) have been arrested in Kentucky for conspiring to ship weapons and money to fellow terrorists in their homeland. The two were admitted as refugees, one less than two years ago. And these weren't just blowhards, either; the fingerprints of one of these guys was found on a bomb in the Sunni Triangle, and another told the FBI's informant that he’d been arrested by Iraqi authorities after placing an IED.
How did these jokers get in? DHS says "their names were vetted against a limited number of databases available at the time for potential derogatory information," but that "today our vetting process considers a far broader range of information than it did in past years." I feel better already.
The indefatigable Ann Corcoran's post (which has a lot more on this topic) links to two complaints from just last week that security checks for refugees are too darn onerous — one from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the other from the Migration Policy Institute, the Obama administration's unofficial immigration think tank. Don't expect them to change their tune just because we admitted a few Iraqi insurgents — some things are more important than America's security.
The bigger question is why are we taking refugees from Iraq at all? Resettlement to the United States should be used only as the absolute last resort for people who will surely be killed if they stay where they are and who have nowhere else — nowhere whatsoever — to go. There are lots of Arab countries where Iraqis have been going for some time, notably Syria and Jordan, and Saudi Arabia's a big, empty place right next door. The State Department sort of followed that policy for the first few years of our Mesopotamian adventure, with fewer that 200 Iraqi refugees admitted in FY 2006 and about 1,600 in FY 2007. But the following year the number ballooned to nearly 14,000, and it's been more than 18,000 for each of the past two years. So, as things have gotten less dangerous in Iraq, we've begun importing more refugees.
