Immigration union leader says terrorists are crossing U.S. borders

by Sam Rolley / Personal Liberty Digest

 

  The head of one of the nation’s largest immigration-related employee unions warned Americans this week that President Barack Obama’s lax immigration policies are opening the nation up to a terror attack on par with 9/11.

According to United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) head Kenneth Palinkas, the inability of immigration officials to thoroughly vet each of the thousands of new immigrants to the U.S. under Obama’s policies could help potential terrorists set the stage for “an even more catastrophic event then what occurred on Sept. 11, 2001.”

Palinkas has long criticized lax immigration policies. He joined the heads of several other employee unions whose members deal with immigration back in 2013 to speak out against the bipartisan Gang of Eight immigration plan, which he said would turn his employees into rubber stampers.

“It compels the officer to go on this assembly line, much like Lucille Ball back in the day with those chocolates,” he told NPR at the time. “[It’s] just, ‘Go get this job done.’ You’re not given enough time to adjudicate. We don’t have the manpower. People [are] not properly trained. So we’re not really even ready to take over the responsibility.”

With Obama’s unilateral immigration overhaul, Palinkas’ fears have become reality without the Gang of Eight bill passing.

At a recent Senate hearing Donald Neufeld, the associate director of Service Center Operations for USCIS, said that employees in his union handle “the world’s largest immigration system that includes more than 100 immigrant and nonimmigrant classifications and more than 200 different forms and applications.”

In 2014, USCIS employees handled immigration paperwork for about 7 million immigration petitions and requests. At that volume, immigration officials are increasingly unable to conduct face-to-face interviews with immigrants during the vetting process.

And according to Palinkas, it’s likely that terrorists have already exploited the overburdened immigration system.

“Our current immigration system leaves us vulnerable to terrorist threats and terrorism in general by providing entry avenues for people sworn to destroy America… We must remain diligent and not continue lessening our guard against extremists who seek to destroy this nation,” he said.

“We must not govern based on politically correct clichés about relaxed immigration that only serve to weaken the country."

Grading the Rubio-Lee Tax Reform Plan

Daniel J. Mitchell / Townhall Columnist

 

In my 2012 primer on fundamental tax reform, I explained that the three biggest warts in the current system.

1. High tax rates that penalize productive behavior.

2. Pervasive double taxation that discourages saving and investment.

3. Corrupt loopholes and cronyism that bribe people to make less productive choices.

These problems all need to be addressed, but I also acknowledged additional concerns with the internal revenue code, such as worldwide taxation and erosion ofconstitutional freedoms an civil liberties.

In a perfect world, we would shrink government to such a small size that there was no need for any sort of broad-based tax (remember, the United States prospered greatly for most of our history when there was no income tax).

In a good world, we could at least replace the corrupt internal revenue code with asimple and fair flat tax.

In today’s Washington, the best we can hope for is incremental reform.

But some incremental reforms can be very positive, and that’s the best way of describing the “Economic Growth and Family Fairness Tax Reform Plan” unveiled today by Senator Marco Rubio of Florida and Senator Mike Lee of Utah.

The two GOP senators have a column in today’s Wall Street Journal, and you can read a more detailed description of their plan by clicking here.

But here are the relevant details.

White House Refuses To Say They Trust Hillary On Emails

Conn Carroll / Townhall Tipsheet

 

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest refused to say Wednesday whether or not he or the president trusts Hillary Clinton's claims that she followed the law when choosing to use a personal email account to conduct official State Department business.

"I haven't seen any evidence to indicate that they didn't do what they said they did," Earnest said when asked if he had confidence in Clinton's claims that she and her employees have turned over all of her personal emails relating to official government business. "But I also just want to be crystal clear abut the fact that this is a responsibility that they assumed," Earnest continued, "to review her personal email and make sure that it was properly transmitted to the Department of State so that it could preserved and maintained."

The Obama White House has walked a fine political line on the issue since The New York Times first reveled Monday that Clinton did not use an official government email address, and instead used a personal email account to conduct all of her business as Secretary of State.

Federal law requires all federal officials to give their employing government agencies all personal emails relating to official government business. It is then the job of the federal agency to make sure those emails are preserved and maintained.

A follow up Associated Press story Wednesday reveled that Clinton not only used a private email, but that she and her employees created and maintained their own email server in Clinton's private residence in New York.

Clinton and her employees claim that they have reviewed all of the emails on Clinton's private server and have given the State Department all of the emails pertaining to official government business.

But since Clinton's email server is privately maintained, there is no independent party that can verify whether or not Clinton has turned over every email she used to conduct official State Department business. The American people just have to take Clinton's word for it.

Earnest has been careful to stress that while he can say that the State Department has properly preserved all the emails Clinton has provided them, he cannot confirm whether or not Clinton has provided all the relevant emails as required by law.

"I don't mean to suggest that I somehow think they are not being honest," Earnest said, "I'm just making it clear that it is not something that, that it was not a task that was preformed an Obama administration official. It was a task the was performed by Secretary Clinton or someone on her team."

State Dept tweets speech by Muslim cleric who blames Mideast unrest on “world Zionism”

By Robert Spencer  / Jihad Watch

 

The people at State who are responsible for this probably didn’t see anything amiss. They probably believe much the same thing, even if they wouldn’t state it in the same lurid terms: they likely think that if Israel would just go away, peace would prevail in the Middle East. “State Department Tweets Speech by Cleric […]

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Mayor De Blasio to Close NYC Schools for Muslim Holidays

Pamela Geller / Atlas Shrugs

Fourteen years after 911, Mayor Bill de Blasio, nee Warren Wilhelm, caved to Islamic supremacist demands and added Muslim holidays to the school calender. The only Muslim holiday that should have been added was September 11th.

The city is far too diverse for schools to observe every holiday. NYC has a huge Hindu population. Why weren’t the Hindu holidays added?

The education is sub-par as it is; the last thing NYC kids need is more time off from school.

This is but another device in which Islam is imposed on the public school. The Islamic curriculum in the public schools do not include the 1,400 years of jihadi wars, land appropriations, cultural annihilations and enslavements.

CNN quotes people like Islamic supremacist...

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