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Counterterrorism?
Obama Administration Uses Honor System to Vet Immigrants
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Originally published under the title "The Shocking Truth
About How Obama's 'Rigorous Vetting Process' For Syrian Refugees Actually Works."
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Honesty
boxes from around the world.
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As the US Congress looks into the refugee vetting process, news that two
more "refugees" from Iraq have been arrested for plotting attacks in Texas and California
casts further doubt on our ability to detect Jihadists among the masses
seeking entrance to the USA. Obama administration officials often talk
about the "rigorous and robust vetting process" for those fleeing
ISIS-controlled territory, but the process is neither rigorous nor robust.
It more closely resembles what in rural communities is called the honesty
box.
Though the honesty box has disappeared from all but the most rural
American communities, the tradition lives on in Britain where parking lots,
vegetable stands and even bookstalls sell goods and render services to the
public without attendants — all on the honor system. Drop your money in the
metal box and buy a dozen eggs, park for an hour, even cross over a river
on a bridge that runs through private property.
Like the estate owner in Chipping Norton who trusts visitors to pay for
parking while touring his ancestral home, so too the US government trusts
that those applying for admission to the USA will simply declare their
dubious affiliations and proclivities upon request.
The US government trusts that those
applying for admission to the USA will simply declare their dubious
affiliations.
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So why do Obama officials keep on insisting that they are engaged in
"a very rigorous, robust vetting process?" The phrase (likely originating in the wit of Ben Rhodes, Obama's Deputy
National Security Advisor) has become an Obama administration mainstay. But
their system is no more rigorous than an honesty box. Call it honesty box
vetting.
In spite of these claims, it's clear that there is no real plan. State
Dept. spokeswoman Elizabeth Kennedy Trudeau side-steps the fact that there are no regular
procedures to follow by asserting that "every visa case is unique and
the interview questions are tailored to the circumstances of each
applicant."
CBS News quotes "senior State Department officials" who claim
that:
The process for any refugee begins with the processing of biographic
information (such as an applicant's name and date of birth) and biometric
information (such as fingerprints). The information is checked against
databases in several different U.S. agencies including the FBI, the State
Department and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Rhodes too assures reporters that we have "broad access to
terrorism databases."
Former Congressman Pete Hoekstra, however, is not buying it. "The
guy's lying," Hoekstra says of Rhodes. "If we can't vet the
people there...who we're giving weapons to, how do we think that we're
going to be able to vet the people coming out of that region and that we're
going to know who they are, what they've done in the last five years during
the civil war?"
As Rhodes said repeatedly at a White House press briefing on
November 19, "it takes up to 18 to 24 months for a refugee to be
admitted into the United States after the exhaustive screening."
However, most of the initial "face-to-face interviewers" are not
US officials but rather employees of either the UN or a variety of other
"resettlement agencies" contracted by the State Department. And they too seem
to rely on honesty box vetting.
Unlike the State Department, the United Nations High Commission for
Refugees (UNHCR) actually has a set of consistent procedures. According to
an IPT White Paper, the UNHCR's Handbook "instructs
interviewers to give refugees 'the benefit of the doubt.'" So when an
applicant whose name does not appear on any of the alleged terrorist databases
is asked if he has connections with ISIS, his "no" answer is
deemed credible, and the UN vetting ends.
The State Department doesn't look
into applicants' social media presence before granting visas.
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This should be particularly alarming amid the discovery of ISIS documents instructing jihadists to pretend that
they are Christians.
Recent disclosures tell us that the State Department doesn't even look
into applicants' social network presence before granting visas. DHS Chief
Jeh Johnson says that doing so would violate their privacy.
Instead of hiring hundreds of additional background checkers at the BATFE
and thousands of accountants at the IRS, maybe the federal government
should hire hundreds of social media analysts and thousands of computer
security specialists to scour the Internet for clues that Johnson doesn't
want to look for.
The honesty box depends on honesty. It shouldn't take a jaded
misanthrope to realize that this is a bad system for implementing national
security.
A.J. Caschetta is a senior lecturer at the Rochester
Institute of Technology and a Shillman-Ginsburg fellow at the Middle East
Forum.
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