Recently the Cuban people did an almost unheard-of thing. Risking life and limb, they took to the streets to protest their horrific treatment under the Communist regime that has kept the nation in slavery since the putsch that put the Castro brothers in power in 1959. Today, the Cuban people have had enough as the failed Communist economy denies them even life’s most basic necessities. “There’s no food, no medicine, there is no freedom. They do not let us live,” one protester told the BBC.
While this was happening, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas made a stunning statement. Directly addressing the Cuban people, he said, “Allow me to be clear: If you take to the sea, you will not come to the United States.”
What makes this even more amazing is that Mayorkas himself is a Cuban immigrant. He knows, or should know, just how bad the Cuban people have it. And while he overtly denies entry to Cubans that may consider fleeing that nation for their own survival, the Biden administration has flung the borders wide open to all but those with a clearly legitimate reason to seek asylum in the U.S.
In another astonishing statement to the House Homeland Security Committee earlier this year, Mayorkas claimed that “the border is secure and the border is not open.” Meanwhile, we have learned that not only is the border surge unprecedented in numbers, with the administration doing nothing to stop it, but Tucker Carlson recently cited irrefutable evidence that, with the explicit complicity of the U.S. military, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is utilizing Laughlin Air Force base in Texas to covertly fly illegal aliens to communities throughout the U.S. in the dead of night.
Most, if not all of these illegals are not legitimate asylum seekers; they are economic migrants. In an interview with Dinesh D’Souza, TV commentator Steve Cortes stated, “They are coming from troubled countries, yes. Places like Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras; but those countries, while they are tough neighborhoods, they are not places of systemic political persecution.”
He is exactly right. Refugees and asylum seekers fit under a very specific definition that requires “a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.” Few, if any, Central American migrants meet this standard. The government’s own statistics prove it. For the first nine months of Fiscal Year 2021 (which started October 1, 2020), a total of 191 refugees have been admitted from Latin America and the Caribbean under the State Department’s refugee admittance program.
Even that doesn’t tell the whole story. The State Department no longer provides access to its daily refugee tracking statistics, which provided up-to-the-minute resettlement statistics, including refugee religion and other useful information. Why did they stop?
The Trump administration reduced annual refugee numbers to a trickle. In FY 2020, that total was 11,814, the lowest in the program’s history. Yet despite the Trump ban on immigration from countries of terrorism concern, 25 percent of all refugees came from Islamic countries known to harbor terrorists, as shown in the table below.
| Refugee Resettlement |
| Muslim Nations 2020 |
| Afghanistan |
604 |
| Eritrea |
475 |
| Ethiopia |
116 |
| Iran |
137 |
| Iraq |
537 |
| Pakistan |
169 |
| Somalia |
149 |
| Sudan |
254 |
| Syria |
481 |
| Subtotal |
2,922 |
| Total Refugees |
11,814 |
| Muslim Nations |
25% |
The table may not paint a complete picture. A portion of the 2,115 refugees from Burma (Myanmar) resettled in 2020 were likely Rohingya Muslims. While they represent less than two percent of Burma’s population, they comprise 42.7 percent of the population of Myanmar’s Rakhine State. They are considered pariahs throughout the nation and are not recognized by the government. The Rohingya joined the pan-Islamic movement in the 1970s, but have engaged in an insurgency since Myanmar declared independence in 1948.
Increasing numbers of Rohingya Muslims have been resettled to the United States in recent years — about 15,000 since 2009. The State Department formerly banned resettlement of Rohingya Muslims, but today, State seems intent on resettling the most problematic populations throughout the world. And because State no longer provides real-time tracking statistics, it is impossible to know the demographic breakdown of Burmese refugees — there is little doubt, however, that it is substantial number.
The Biden administration lifted President Trump’s FY 2021 refugee cap from 15,000 to 62,500 and promises to raise that number to 125,000 in the next fiscal year, but so far has been unable to replicate the massive refugee program pushed by President Obama. Through June 30, 2021, a total of 4,780 refugees have been admitted for FY 2021. This, however, excludes the Special Immigrant Visa program (SIV), which provides resettlement to Iraqi and Afghan interpreters and others who worked with the U.S. military and other agencies during the conflicts in those nations.
On its face, the SIV program would seem appropriate. Those who assist the U.S. military risk death at the hands of our enemies. During the Vietnam War, we left millions to fend for themselves after we abandoned South Vietnam in 1975. The Vietnamese Communists persecuted many and continue persecuting Vietnam’s indigenous Montagnards because of their assistance to U.S. forces during that war.
Following the Biden administration’s abrupt exit from Afghanistan in the middle of the night, fears mounted, justifiably, that Biden would leave many behind to face firing squads or worse at the hands of the Taliban. Biden has now promised to resettle Afghans (and their families) who worked for the U.S. military — as many as 50,000 or more.
Refugee resettlement expert Ann Corcoran has pointed out however, that 70,000 SIVs have already been admitted to the U.S. “How many interpreters can there be?” she asks.
Over the past four years alone, 43,523 Afghanis have been come to the U.S. under the SIV program.
According to Mary Doetsch, a former State Department employee who worked the refugee program for many years, much of the refugee resettlement program, including the SIV program, is fraught with fraud. Authorities are currently reviewing over 104,000 cases of possible Iraqi refugee and SIV fraud.
Never mind the question of how many actually qualify as “interpreters,” it is impossible to know how many of these may have terrorist intentions, or pose some other security risk. In 2011, two Iraqi nationals granted refugee status were discovered trying to supply terrorists. They were also implicated in IED explosions in Iraq that claimed American lives. That discovery slowed down the SIV program until vetting was improved.
But more generally, European nations have begun to discover the problem with the large Afghan populations now living there. Rampant crime and especially rape have become epidemic, forcing some municipalities to stop accepting any refugees. The mayor of the Austrian city of Tulln, who initially supported the influx of refugees, said, “We’ve had it.”
In 2020, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service processed 706,000 naturalization applications of 970,900 received. This was down from 2019 due to COVID, but the U.S. has been granting legal permanent residence to approximately one million people every year. So our nation is being inundated with refugees and immigrants, some of whom have questionable motives at best.
Yet it is still not enough. The Biden administration wants to import as many illegals as possible. In a little-reported development on this front, the Democrats intend to insert an amnesty provision in the latest budget reconciliation proposal that would fund government operations for the coming year. If successful, that change would provide a path to citizenship and voting for 22 million or more illegal aliens currently residing in the U.S. This is twice the number touted by the Census Bureau for the past decade. Because most would likely vote Democrat, this would guarantee Democrats a monopoly of political power for the foreseeable future. If you think what is happening in Cuba is bad, just wait to see how bad it will become here.
The Democrats earlier attempted to pass H.R. 1, the horribly misnamed “For the People Act,” which would have federalized elections and outlawed most efforts, like voter ID, to prevent vote fraud. Because current Senate rules require a 60/40 vote to overcome a filibuster, this bill fortunately did not pass. But never to be discouraged, Democrats are now proposing H.R. 4, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. This proposal, named after civil rights icon John Lewis, is yet another example of the Democrats misleading use of language.
The kind of support it is receiving tells you all you need to know about what they hope to achieve. It was recently touted on the Indivisible website. Indivisible is the extremist group initiated with a manual written by Democrat Congressional staffers calling for people to resist the newly elected Trump administration. Indivisible personified the #RESIST movement during President Trump’s term. Like most overtly partisan leftist groups, Indivisible was granted tax-exempt status by the IRS in 2017 and received millions from the radical Left Tides Foundation and others.
Democrats continue to raise the specter of abolishing the filibuster — which is one of the few arrows in our quiver preventing Democrats from ramming through such unethical, and clearly self-serving legislation. Without a clear path forward for this legislation as long as the filibuster remains in place, Democrats are now looking to amnesty to deliver them the totalitarian power they seek. This is the primary reason Biden has flung the borders open, and why despite almost universal opposition to this nationwide crisis, they will not lift a finger to stem the flow.
Budget reconciliation only requires a simple majority vote. However, it also has some stops that can prevent amnesty from sneaking through. The current Parliamentarian issued a restrictive ruling before, keeping a federal minimum wage out of a previous reconciliation bill. The Byrd Rule prohibits extraneous matters from being included in reconciliation bills. Senators can raise a point of order to enforce the Byrd Rule. It’s up to us to make sure they do. The reconciliation bill includes $126 billion to create a pathway to citizenship for certain categories of illegal aliens. We need to make sure the GOP Senate does its job by preventing this from getting through.
The endless trickery, lies and misinformation peddled by the Biden administration, Democratic legislators and their media propagandists, coupled with their radically destructive agenda, are enough to make one’s head explode. But as I explained in my latest book, Who Was Karl Marx?, this is their intention. The Left has pulled out the stops in its latest power grab. Part of the strategy is to make life intolerable, while at the same time marginalizing anyone who expresses any kind of opposition. The purpose is to push citizens to two extremes, revolt or submit. Neither are acceptable.
Revolt, as the Cubans have now found, will result in a crushing response. Yes, even here in the U.S. The January 6 “insurrection” which was almost certainly set up by the Democrats, as Rep. Louie Gohmert claimed at CPAC Texas this week, is the canary in the coal mine. It demonstrates how viciously the institutional Left are willing to treat opponents under the thinnest of pretexts. Hundreds remain jailed without charge, almost all of whom did little more than enter the Capitol once the doors were open.
A Daily Mail report listed the abuses faced, including solitary confinement, assaults and degrading treatment by jail guards and other abuse. One attorney was quoted as saying, “The DC Central Detention Facility has become Guantanamo Bay for American citizens.”
One claimed to have been “savagely beaten” by guards.
Violence has never been an option. To suspect Trump supporters of engaging in it defies reality. The only organized violence witnessed in this country over the past year has been instigated by the Left, often with the concurrence of Democrat leaders. Submission, however, is not an option either. It would simply grant Democrats the absolute power they seek. And that would not end the pressure. Americans would find that the pressure only increases, as the Left used its newfound power to fleece our nation of every resource we have and ruthlessly punish anyone who objects.
While our eyes are averted, this theft has already been occurring. Much of the trillions in spending already authorized for COVID has actually gone to bail out Democrat spendthrift states and line the pockets of Democrat allies. But other sleazy maneuvers have accomplished similar outcomes.
As of June, 23 states have joined a law suit targeting Biden’s cancellation of the Keystone pipeline. Biden did this as part of the effort to reverse the Trump administration’s success in making America energy independent. It has cost thousands of jobs. Most people are unaware, however, that Biden did not cancel the competing “Line 3” pipeline being constructed by Canadian oil and gas firm Enbridge that traverses indigenous lands in Minnesota. Domestic policy advisor Susan Rice owns millions in shares of Enbridge and convinced Biden to keep that one open, despite broad opposition from the Left. This kind of bottomless corruption and hypocrisy is endemic within the Democrat Party.
Democrats seek absolute power and the wealth that goes with it. The only viable alternative to this overt power grab is overwhelming victory at the polls in 2022 and 2024. We are already seeing a building momentum as citizens across the nation respond to public education’s efforts to indoctrinate our children to the divisive Critical Race Theory and horrifically destructive transgender agenda. Governors in Florida, South Dakota, Texas and other red states are taking action, offering attractive alternatives.
Citizens are voting with their feet to find these islands of sanity, and as this has shown, the Left’s destructive agenda is wildly unpopular. Yet with most media, the education establishment and other institutions of culture in their grip, too many people remain ignorant. Our only option is to fight at every level to maintain the freedom that has made America a lantern to the world for centuries. We cannot go silent into this good night.
COLUMN BY
James Simpson is a bestselling author, investigative journalist, businessman and economist. His latest book is Who Was Karl Marx? The Men, the Motives and the Menace Behind Today’s Rampaging American Left.
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