Lying Refugees Exposed

In another astonishing example of liberal "humanitarian" idealism gone insane, the U.S. has, for some years, been inviting refugees from war-torn African nations to come and live in the U.S. with relatives already here. Thousands of Africans - aliens to American and Western culture - have taken advantage of this policy and come to the U.S., thus furthering the ethnic balkanization of the U.S. and diluting America's traditional Western culture. But now, officials at the State Department has discovered, apparently to their astonishment, that (surprise, surprise) many of these refugees were lying about having relatives in the U.S. at all and were simply using the program as a convenient way to enter the U.S.

The State Department has suspended a humanitarian program to reunite thousands of African refugees with relatives in the U.S. after unprecedented DNA testing by the government revealed widespread fraud.

The U.S. has halted refugee arrivals from East Africa, where hundreds of thousands of people have been stranded since civil war erupted in the 1990s.

The freeze affects refugees in Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda, Guinea and Ghana, many of whom have been waiting years to emigrate. The State Department says it began DNA testing with a pilot program launched in February to verify blood ties among African refugees. Tests found some applicants lied about belonging to the same family to gain a better chance at legal entry.

The U.S. has responded by halting refugee arrivals from East Africa, where hundreds of thousands of people have been stranded in precarious conditions since civil war erupted in the early 1990s. The temporary suspension has generated panic in African communities in the U.S., where thousands wait to be joined by relatives.

The only surprising thing about this story is that the U.S. actually halted the program when it discovered the fraud, as opposed to making mealy-mouthed excuses for the perpetrators and continuing to let the refugees flow into the country. Of course, the program has only been halted thus far, not cancelled. If Barack Obama is elected in November, not only won't it be cancelled, it will likely be expanded (though John McCain is every bit as capable of ordering the same insanity).

Suspicion that the program was being abused began to surface earlier this year. DNA testing, beginning with refugees from Kenya, was eventually expanded to all refugees from East Africa:

Laboratory analysis of the samples indicated a large portion of applicants weren't blood relations, as they claimed. "The results were dismaying," says Ms. Strack. "This told us we had a problem with the program."

The results prompted expansion of the testing to other countries. "We had high rates of fraud everywhere, except the Ivory Coast," says a State Department official.

In late April, the government decided to temporarily halt the family reunification resettlement program for East Africans. A government official confirms that "many thousands of people" are affected by the suspension, particularly Somalis and Ethiopians.

Refugee resettlement agencies report that arrivals have slowed to a trickle.

In Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minn., home to the country's largest East African population, Catholic Charities hasn't handled a single family reunification case since March 19. The agency has resettled 35 East African families this year, compared with more than 450 last year and about 1,300 in 2006. "Everyone is calling or walking in here and asking what is going on," says Angela Fox, a resettlement worker at Catholic Charities.

Why should the U.S., which has enough ethnic tensions with its current demography, be importing non-Westerners into its heartland? What good can that do for the U.S.? The answer is that the U.S. shouldn't be doing it, and that it can do exactly nothing positive for the U.S. But the officials in Washington who started this program don't care. They are blinded to the reality of the situation by the ideological blinders of multiculturalism and political correctness that all government officials are apparently required to wear. Those blinders require them to see all peoples and cultures as equal, and every Somali, Iraqi, Russian, Indonesian, Mongolian, and Algerian as being interchangeable with any America, albeit with funny accents and habits. The fact that East Africa is a morass of blinding poverty, internecine warfare, economic collapse marked by a singular lack of cultural, technological or educational achievement apparently says nothing to American leaders about the quality of the people who live there - and whom the U.S. is not importing to its own shores.

Naturally, the usual PC suspects are crying foul.

"No one condones people gaining entry by false means; the integrity of the program must be ensured," says Bob Carey, chair of Refugee Council USA, a coalition of U.S. agencies that work on refugee issues, and vice president of resettlement for the International Rescue Committee. However, he adds, "DNA is not the only means to assess family relationships."

Refugee advocates say the definition of family among Africans extends beyond blood relatives, especially when families fleeing persecution are scattered. "Some families are raising children who aren't their own but whom they call son or daughter," says Ms. Fox of Catholic Charities.

Yeah, right. That's it. How stupid do these "advocates" think their fellow Americans are?

Refugee slots are precious. The world's uprooted people are estimated to number 37 million; only about 1% are resettled. As the largest recipient, the U.S. absorbs about half of all refugees who are resettled.

That makes the U.S. just about the stupidest nation on Earth. One doesn't see Japan, China or Korea doing this. No, they are too busy gobbling up the last remnants of America's industrial base (you know, the thing that made the U.S. wealthy in the first place). Nor are those countries blinded by racial self-hatred. Quite the opposite, actually.