Melissa Ross
Former South Florida Congressman and Fox News contributor Allen West is sounding the alarm about Muslim immigrants, saying the U.S. is absorbing about 100,000 eannually and that the State Department “has a ‘secret’ list of 190 cities ‘selected’ for refugee settlement.”
The claims appear on West’s website in a piece written by Editor-in-Chief Michele Hickford.
Writes Hickford, “Between 1992 and 2012, a total of about 1.7 million Muslims entered the U.S. as legal permanent residents. That constitutes a large portion of the overall U.S. Muslim population (estimated at 2.75 million as of 2011). In other words, a large portion of the Muslims in the U.S. arrived here after 1992.”
Jacksonville-based immigration attorney Susan Pai calls the claim “preposterous.” Pai is a nationally recognized speaker and author on immigration issues.
“The author is combining the numbers of all presumed Muslims becoming lawful permanent residents every year; however, there is no such metric available as the religion of anyone who becomes a resident of the United States is required to be disclosed only upon a claim of religious persecution,” Pai said. “It appears Mr. West has presumed all permanent residents who were born in Muslim countries are Muslim, when quite often the opposite is true.”
West was an outspoken critic of Islam throughout his tenure in Congress, at one point tweeting that the religion is defined by “honor killings, beheadings, suicide bombings.”
After a redistricting process, West lost his seat in 2012 by just 2,146 votes to Democrat Patrick Murphy in what would turn out to be the most expensive congressional race in U.S. history. Murphy recently announced he’s giving up the seat to run for Senate.
According to Pai, “The total number of refugees admitted to the U.S. in 2012 is closer to half the number Mr. West cites — 58,238 to be exact. Close to half of all worldwide refugees are minors.” (Source: Refugee Processing Center.)
Pai also disputes the notion of a “secret list” for the placement of refugees across the U.S.
“With respect to placement of refugees, the Office of Refugee Resettlement is required by law to “consult regularly … with state and local governments and private nonprofit voluntary agencies concerning … the intended distribution of refugees among the states and localities,” she said.
As to the FBI claim that the agency can’t screen out terrorists from the pool of refugees: “What Mr. West fails to mention is the Department of State, Department of Homeland Security & Health and Human Services all acknowledge this is the case, and it is precisely for this reason these agencies collectively reported they are unable to process such refugees into the United States: ‘In Iraq, Lebanon, and Kenya, security concerns have hampered our ability to process applicants.’”
Anxiety over the nation’s security and the ongoing immigration debate remain potent campaign issues. West is hardly the first Republican to lambast Islam. It’s not a sphere belonging exclusively to the right. HBO host Bill Maher has repeatedly criticized Islamic extremism, calling the faith “the motherlode of bad ideas.”
