Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) is warning Americans that under newly minted House Speaker Paul Ryan’s and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s planned government funding bill, President Barack Obama will be “allowed” to bring in 10,000 Syrian refugees and place them in American communities.
Session said in a statement released this morning:
As currently written, this year’s appropriations bills – which will be combined into a catch-all ‘omnibus’ by December 11th – amount to a blank check for the President to carry out his refugee resettlement plans.
Not only will the President be allowed to bring in the 85,000 refugees he has announced on top of current record immigration levels, but this will include at least 10,000 refugees from Syria who will subsequently be able to bring in their foreign relatives. All refugees are eligible for lifetime government benefits and Social Security and Medicare access, and are on a fast-track to becoming voting U.S. citizens. More than 90 percent of recent Middle Eastern refugees are on welfare.
Technically, the bill hasn’t yet been released–likely, it won’t be released until mere hours before the vote–but it’s pretty clear at this point, from the public statements of the GOP leadership, that the plan in Congress is to pave the way for Obama.
Sessions is also raising concerns about Muslim immigration to the United States, saying he’s worried about the lack of enough law enforcement resources to ensure that they’re not terrorists. Sessions said:
Altogether, we can expect to issue nearly 700,000 green cards – or lifetime residency cards – to migrants from Muslim nations over the next five years (as we did over the last five years). Terror groups have demonstrated that they will recruit from among this inflow.
We have already identified nearly 30 foreign-born individuals charged or convicted of terrorism offenses in the last year – investigations which required the deployment of vast manpower, financial and legal resources.
Sessions warns that unless GOP leaders in Congress—the party controls both chambers, the House and the Senate—do something to pull back on Obama’s “blank checks” for potentially-ISIS-connected Syrian refugees, there’s no way to stop Obama from bringing them in.
“The Obama Administration has additionally said it may admit up to 30,000 Syrian refugees into our nation next fiscal year,” Sessions said.
There is, however, no limit on the number that the President can admit this year or any year under current law, if Congress continues to write blank checks. It is also expected that the omnibus bill will fund the Office of Refugee Resettlement’s continued placement of illegal aliens from Central America into U.S. communities – instead of deporting them – on top of the enormous green card flow.
Sessions also warns that Ryan’s and McConnell’s plans to pump American tax dollars into funding sanctuary cities nationwide would lead to Americans being less safe because of the GOP majority’s unwillingness to govern from Congress. Technically, the most important role of the federal government is to protect the country’s national security, and GOP leaders standing down on issues like this could put Americans in grave danger when they don’t need to be. Sessions went on to say:
It is further expected that the omnibus will continue federal funding for ‘sanctuary cities’ and allow for the continued operation of the President’s 2012 executive amnesty program, which provides work authorizations and government benefits to some 700,000 illegal aliens under the age of 30. And, shockingly, the omnibus may also include a huge expansion of the H-2B foreign worker visa program, used to fill blue collar jobs such as truck driving, landscaping, construction work, and hotel service. This action would further replace and reduce wages of American workers during a time of record immigration and historically low workforce participation rates.
Sessions noted that there is no reason that Ryan or McConnell needs to give Obama this money to place Syrians in American cities and towns or continue sanctuary city lawlessness. The only way Americans’ tax dollars get spent on these matters is because Republican leadership in Congress decides to spend them there. In fact, Rep. Brian Babin (R-TX) and 73 of his House GOP colleagues have pressed the leadership team to actually do something to stop the refugee flow from ISIS-connected areas into America–and laid out a pathway to do just that in the government funding legislation. Sessions said:
The President’s annual funding requests are just that: requests. It is the exclusive and sole constitutional prerogative of Congress whether or not to accept his requests, reject them, or impose whatever conditions Congress deems proper on behalf of taxpaying Americans. Now is the hour of choosing for Congress; will we surrender – funding Obama’s entire immigration agenda – or will we assert Congress’s power on behalf of the interests of the American people, and declare by appropriations what programs are worthy and what are not?
This is not only Ryan’s first test as Speaker of the House as to whether he can govern effectively by keeping Americans safe from potentially-ISIS-connected Syrians that Obama wants to place in communities across America. This is also a divisive issue on the 2016 GOP presidential campaign trail. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), the new establishment-backed candidate for the GOP nomination now that former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush has all but fallen apart on the trail, told Sean Hannity he’d “hate” to fight to defund the president’s use of tax dollars on these programs. That being said, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)—through a spokeswoman—has previously confirmed to Breitbart News that Cruz would be delighted to use the power of the purse in Congress to actually block Obama’s plans. Frontrunner Donald Trump, meanwhile, has said it would be “unwise” for Speaker Ryan to move forward with spending Americans’ tax dollars on Syrian refugee resettlement in America.
In addition to funding all those things that Sessions warned about, the other things this forthcoming bill is almost certainly going to spend Americans’ tax dollars on include Obamacare, Planned Parenthood, and many other aspects of Obama’s agenda.