So far President Obama’s attitude toward Syrian refugees is identical to the way he has approached illegal immigration. He has absolutely no concern for following established procedures for legally admitting foreign nationals into the country.

He cannot be trusted to enforce any refugee vetting procedures since he has shown contempt for the 1996 Immigration law. Even if he were to sign the House bill establishing more rigorous procedures there is no guarantee that he will conform to them, that he will not issue secret administrative orders and directives to allow Syrian refugees to bypass any scrutiny. He will say the Syrian refugee vetting procedures are broken and we need refugee vetting reform. 

His treatment of Syrian refugees will be identical to the way he treats criminal illegal immigrants. This is because his scofflaw attitude toward immigration law is one of the most thoroughly established of all his domestic policy postures. He has consistently encouraged illegal immigrants to walk away from felony convictions, he expresses absolutely no concern for the violent abuse of Americans by repeat illegal immigrant felons, and not only refuses to enforce the 1996 Immigration Act but encourages and aids those who defy it.

For example, it is against Federal law for a city to be a sanctuary for illegal immigrants, yet Chicago and many other cities recently reaffirmed their sanctuary status. The current mayor of Chicago was once President Obama’s chief of staff and apparently has the complete support of the president in violating Federal immigration law.

Illegal immigrants are not only allowed to vote in states that give them State I.D.s and drivers licenses but Obama encourages this. His approach to enforcing immigration law is a combination of lack of enforcement and enabling illegal immigrants and the Democrats who run sanctuary cities to violate Federal law at every turn.  

In 2010 the National ICE Council, the union to which ICE enforcement officials belong, had a vote of no confidence in Obama’s Assistant Secretary John Morton. One of their official complaints against Morton was that “ICE officers will be prevented from searching detainees housed in ICE facilities allowing weapons, drugs and other contraband into detention centers putting detainees, ICE officers and contract guards at risk.” 

Additionally, the complaint specified that “The majority of ICE ERO Officers are prohibited from making street arrests or enforcing United States immigration laws outside of the institutional (jail) setting.” Given Obama’s track record, it is clear that this same lack of enforcement authority will be forced upon any agency tasked with enforcing Syrian refugee protocols. 

Obama issued an executive order regarding immigration in spite of the fact he has no constitutional authority to do. He never spoke out against the shooting death of Kate Steinle and refused to back the Kate Steinle law as a way of stopping the murder of innocent women in the country. While he has preached about how we are not a nation that turns its backs on women and children who are refugees, he turned his back on the Steinle issue and by implication has turned his back and refuses to acknowledge the rape and murder perpetrated upon innocent American women by the illegal immigrants he allows to stay in the country.

When he prevented deportation of those held for crimes in detention centers, he essentially enabled them to assume a new identity and return to commit another crime. The alleged murderer of Kate Steinle had been convicted of seven felonies and the Sheriff of San Francisco still defended his presence in the city. This means that if a Syrian terrorist is convicted of a felony in the U.S. he would also be allowed to stay. This is preceded by the fact that the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center buildings were overlooked by many law enforcement agencies. And this was before President Obama, the most hostile president to immigrant vetting, was in office.

In fact, President Obama’s TSA is supposed to protect Americans from those who would place a bomb or firearm on an aircraft, yet his TSA has the same rate of failing to follow Federal protocols as he does. A recent investigation by the Department of Homeland Security found that TSA passenger screeners in the top eight busiest airports in the nation allowed 95% of the firearms and bombs to get past them undetected. Fortunately, none of these were carried by real terrorists.  But if they had been, they could have brought down dozens of aircraft and killed thousands of people.

And now the Federal government wants to be left alone to vet those Syrian refugees who are coming from an area known to train terrorists in bomb making. 

One improvement to the TSA a future Republican president can make is to fire the top officials. So far President Obama refuses to fire anyone who places airline passengers in harm’s way. They are only reassigned. If they belong to a union, that union should be dismantled. Federal unions were started by JFK in 1962 by an Executive Order and the next president should end them by EO. This is because union rules make firing anybody extremely difficult and time consuming.  The U.S. Constitution does not mention government unions, since they would not only result in incompetence due to the fact that union members can’t be fired, but also make campaign contributions to keep their jobs. 

Today four of the top six campaign contributors are the public sector unions -- the SEIU, AFSCME, National Education Association, and American Federation of Teachers. And 99% of their campaign donations go to Democrats, the same party that covers up their incompetence and refuses to hold them accountable.  

President Obama is now faced with a dilemma.  If he closes down the southern border and imposes strict controls at airports he will alienate his party’s voters who support illegal immigration.  But if he does nothing and continues to allow illegal immigration he may be seen as weak in preventing terrorism.

It will be very interesting to see what President Obama does. As he has repeatedly demonstrated, he sees himself as in complete control of immigration law and its enforcement. And his reluctance to enforce immigration law has led to a tolerance of illegal immigrant felons.

Polls show that Americans already support Donald Trump’s position of restoring law and order to the immigration process. Should Obama treat Syrian and other terrorists as he does illegal immigrants, he and his party may be seen as refusing to acknowledge the seriousness of terrorism and face a devastating and long-lasting voter backlash. 

However, since promoting illegal immigration is such an important policy for his party, it is more likely than not that he will continue to practice it. This is because 11 million illegal immigrants allow his party to send 22 more Representatives to Congress and maintain their control of the big urban areas, while enabling the big public sector unions to maintain their jobs. These are the biggest players in the all-important Democratic National Machine and he has consistently acted to keep the Machine going.