Jeff Sessions Column: A New House Bill on Syrian Refugees Doesnâ€™t Protect Americans

The current proposal being considered in the House of Representatives in response to the president's dangerous refugee plan -- the American SAFE Act -- fails to defend the interests of the American people. It is based on a flawed premise, as there is simply no way to vet Syrian refugees. Just over a month ago, officials from the Department of Homeland Security admitted before the Immigration Subcommittee that there is no database in Syria against which they can run a check. They have no way to enter Syria to verify the applicants' personal information. And we know the region is being flooded with false documents.

Moreover, when the administration was asked if Syrian refugees could end up coming to the United States and joining ISIS like Minnesota's Somali refugees, the answer was blunt: "We can't predict the future." Each year, the U.S. permanently resettles more than 100,000 Muslim migrants inside the United States. In just the past year, refugees and migrants allowed into America from Bosnia, Somalia, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Ghana, Kuwait, and Bangladesh have been implicated in terrorism. And, as we have seen, the U.S.-born children of migrants are also at risk for radicalization.

Ignoring this reality, the American SAFE Act allows the president to continue to bring in as many refugees as he wants from anywhere in the world. With respect to Syria and Iraq, the American SAFE Act requires only that the president direct his secretary of Homeland Security, director of National Intelligence, and FBI director (all his appointees) to sign off on the administration's screening process -- a process that the White House continually asserts is adequate and "ensures safety." The plain fact is that this bill transfers the prerogative from Congress to President Obama and ensures that the president's refugee resettlement initiative will continue unabated.

Of course, the president can easily veto the measure as well. There is only one true check now against the president going it alone: congressional funding. In his annual budget request, the president asked for more than $1 billion to fund the Refugee Admissions Program. All Congress has to do is make clear that the president's funding request will not be granted unless he meets certain necessary congressional requirements -- the first of which should be to make clear that Congress, not the president, has the final say on how many refugees are brought into the United States and from where.

Finally, the House plan does not offset a single penny of increased refugee resettlement costs. As currently structured, the House plan would give the president the money he wants for refugee resettlement and then leave taxpayers on the hook now and in the years to come for the tens of billions of dollars in uncapped welfare, education, and entitlement costs certain to accrue. Thus, in addition to the enormous welfare costs -- 91 percent of recent Middle Eastern refugees are on food stamps and 73 percent receive free health care -- we will also be taking money directly from Americans' Social Security and Medicare trust funds to provide retirement benefits for refugees. The real costs of this refugee expansion have not even been ascertained.

A recent analysis finds that admitting 10,000 refugees to the United States presents a net lifetime cost to taxpayers of $6.5 billion, meaning that under the current plan to admit 85,000 refugees this fiscal year, taxpayers will be on the hook for $55 billion. For the cost of resettling one refugee in America, we could successfully resettle 12 refugees in the region. Creating safe zones in Syria and the region is a vastly more effective and compassionate strategy. Such a proposal recently was put forth by former Secretary of Defense Gates and General Petraeus, among others.

By a three-to-one margin, voters want us to reduce immigration -- not increase it even further. And a majority of voters oppose resettling Syrian refugees in the U.S. rather than in a regional safe zone. Yet this bill allows the president to expand record immigration while enabling a new ongoing resettlement program for Syrian refugees opposed by a majority of voters.

With immigration at a record high, deficits surging, wages flat-lining, schools overcrowding, crime rising, and terrorism threats increasing, it is time to place priority on protecting the safety of Americans and their financial security. We face a real crisis. The administration must change its strategy to creating safe zones and to accelerating actions that can bring the fighting to a close. There is no other solution. The solution is not to have the populations of all the Middle Eastern countries move to Europe and the United States.

Another “bill” we are all paying for with our lives, fortunes. CONgre$$? $peaker of our House? States pushback?

From long ago -

If it has its defects, it is said, they can be best amended when they are experienced. But remember, when the people once part with power, they can seldom or never resume it again but by force. Many instances can be produced in which the people have voluntarily increased the powers of their rulers; but few, if any, in which rulers have willingly abridged their authority. This is a sufficient reason to induce you to be careful, in the first instance, how you deposit the powers of government.

How far the clause in the 8th section of the 1st article may operate to do away all idea of confederated states, and to effect an entire consolidation of the whole into one general government, it is impossible to say. The powers given by this article are very general and comprehensive, and it may receive a construction to justify the passing almost any law. A power to make all laws, which shall be necessary and proper, for carrying into execution, all powers vested by the constitution in the government of the United States, or any department or officer thereof, is a power very comprehensive and definite [indefinite?], and may, for ought I know, be exercised in a such manner as entirely to abolish the state legislatures. Suppose the legislature of a state should pass a law to raise money to support their government and pay the state debt, may the Congress repeal this law, because it may prevent the collection of a tax which they may think proper and necessary to lay, to provide for the general welfare of the United States? For all laws made, in pursuance of this constitution, are the supreme lay of the land, and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, any thing in the constitution or laws of the different states to the contrary notwithstanding. ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã¢â‚¬Â By such a law, the government of a particular state might be overturned at one stroke, and thereby be deprived of every means of its support.

It is not meant, by stating this case, to insinuate that the constitution would warrant a law of this kind; or unnecessarily to alarm the fears of the people, by suggesting, that the federal legislature would be more likely to pass the limits assigned them by the constitution, than that of an individual state, further than they are less responsible to the people. But what is meant is, that the legislature of the United States are vested with the great and uncontroulable powers, of laying and collecting taxes, duties, imposts, and excises; of regulating trade, raising and supporting armies, organizing, arming, and disciplining the militia, instituting courts, and other general powers. And are by this clause invested with the power of making all laws, proper and necessary, for carrying all these into execution; and they may so exercise this power as entirely to annihilate all the state governments, and reduce this country to one single government. And if they may do it, it is pretty certain they will; for it will be found that the power retained by individual states, small as it is, will be a clog upon the wheels of the government of the United States; the latter therefore will be naturally inclined to remove it out of the way. Besides, it is a truth confirmed by the unerring experience of ages, that every man, and every body of men, invested with power, are ever disposed to increase it, and to acquire a superiority over every thing that stands in their way. This disposition, which is implanted in human nature, will operate in the federal legislature to lessen and ultimately to subvert the state authority, and having such advantages, will most certainly succeed, if the federal government succeeds at all. It must be very evident then, that what this constitution wants of being a complete consolidation of the several parts of the union into one complete government, possessed of perfect legislative, judicial, and executive powers, to all intents and purposes, it will necessarily acquire in its exercise and operation.

Let us now proceed to enquire, as I at first proposed, whether it be best the thirteen United States should be reduced to one great republic, or not? It is here taken for granted, that all agree in this, that whatever government we adopt, it ought to be a free one; that it should be so framed as to secure the liberty of the citizens of America, and such an one as to admit of a full, fair, and equal representation of the people. The question then will be, whether a government thus constituted, and founded on such principles, is practicable, and can be exercised over the whole United States, reduced into one state?

Anti-federalist: Brutus #1

“Charter of negative liberties” - Obama

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