-By Warner Todd Huston
As President Obama continues his push to wildly expand his plans to bring in hundreds of thousands of Syrian “refugees” into the U.S. despite what happened in Paris only a week ago, he is attacking anyone who opposes his dangerous policy. In particular he said that requiring a “religious test” for refugees is “un-American.” Yet, U.S. law does have a religious test in its refugee laws and in one case that test was put in place by a Democrat.
In a November 16 press conference held in Antalya, Turkey, Obama viciously attacked those opposing his desire to flood the U.S. with Muslims any number of whom will be–not might be–ISIS supporters. During his conference Obama called opponents “shameful” and “not American” for standing against him.
“When I hear folks say that, ‘Maybe we should just admit the Christians but not the Muslims,’ when I hear political leaders suggesting that there would be a religious test for which person who’s fleeing from a war-torn country is admitted, when some of those folks themselves come from families who benefitted from protection when they were fleeing political persecution, that’s shameful,” Obama said.
“That’s not American,” Obama blurted out. “That’s not who we are. We don’t have religious tests to our compassion.”
Continuing to push his dangerous expansion of his Syrian refugee policy, later in the week Obama outrageously said that Syrian refugees are no more dangerous than any other “tourist” who visits the U.S.
Obama’s desire to warp our famed principle of freedom of religion as cover for his desire to flood the nation with dangerous Muslims is as galling as it is cynical because U.S. law really does have several instances of a “religious test” for refugees.
As Andrew McCarthy noted at National Review, federal law already requires a “religious test” of sorts when assessing the suitability of a refugee.
McCarthy points out that under Section 1101(a)(42)(A) of Title 8, U.S. Code the term “refugee” is clearly defined and applicants for asylum into the U.S. must meet the terms of that definition to be eligible for acceptance. Religion is part of that definition.
The term “refugee” means (A) any person who is outside any country of such person’s nationality … and who is unable or unwilling to return to … that country because of persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of … religion [among other things] …[.]
McCarthy goes on to make some very important points saying:
The law requires a “religious test.” And the reason for that is obvious. Asylum law is not a reflection of the incumbent president’s personal (and rather eccentric) sense of compassion. Asylum is a discretionary national act of compassion that is directed, by law not whim, to address persecution.
There is no right to immigrate to the United States. And the fact that one comes from a country or territory ravaged by war does not, by itself, make one an asylum candidate. War, regrettably, is a staple of the human condition. Civil wars are generally about power. That often makes them violent and, for many, tragic; but it does not necessarily make them wars in which one side is persecuting the other side.
There is another place in law where there is a religious test, too. And in fact, this whole “religious test” requirement is what one major Democrat Senator thought of as his own personal legacy. Democrat Senator from New Jersey Frank Lautenberg was a chief proponent of making sure religion is a criterion for refugees and it has been ensconced in U.S. law for over 25 years.
The 1989 “Lautenberg Amendment” was chiefly concerned with allowing Jews oppressed by the Soviet Union or former Soviet Union satellite countries to come to the U.S. without as many restrictions as other immigrants. Later the amendment was expanded to cover refugees of other oppressed religions and from Indochinese regions, too. Then, with the “Specter Amendment” it was again expanded to include refugees from Iran.
But this amendment was specifically concerned with religion, so a “religious test” was certainly its central point.
Now even though neither the Lautenberg nor the Specter amendments would necessarily affect refugees from Syria unless the law was again expanded, the point here is that there is, indeed, a “religious test” in U.S. immigration law and it was one that Obama should know about because he would have been tasked with voting to extend it when he was himself a Senator.
So, among the hundreds of other outright lies Obama has disgorged during his two destructive terms in the White House, we can add this claim that there is “no religious test” in our immigration/refugee laws to that growing list of his lies.
Finally, in an effort to further ridicule anyone who opposes his policy to import ISIS terrorists into the U.S., Obama ribbed Republicans saying that they were afraid of “widows and orphans.”
Well, below is a nice photo of some of Obama’s “orphans.”
What ever could we be worried about?
____________
“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing news, opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that wrote articles on U.S. history for several American history magazines. Huston is a featured writer for Andrew Breitbart’s Breitbart News, and he appears on such sites as RightWingNews.com, CanadaFreePress.com, Wizbang.com, and many, many others. Huston has also appeared on Fox News, Fox Business Network, CNN, and many local TV shows as well as numerous talk radio shows throughout the country.
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