I just published an analysis of how immigration authorities should deal with the problem of Islamist immigrants at "Smoking Out Islamists via Extreme Vetting," Middle East Quarterly, Spring 2017. Here's news on the idea of in-depth research and interviews into those applying to enter the United States, starting with six items today, mostly in response to the MEQ article.
(1) CAIR's Florida Chapter is advising U.S. citizens who are Muslims not to answer additional questions at inspection points because the Trump administration continues to "disproportionately target American Muslim citizens." NBC News reports:
CAIR-FL says all American citizens of the Muslim faith make up 50 to 75 percent of those selected for secondary inspection when traveling – despite being just one percent of the population. The organization encourages members to comply and be truthful with officials and give basic information when asked.
(2) An employee of the U.S. Department of Defense working in a Muslim-majority countries writes me concerning the appendix that the department "worldwide uses many of the questions cited above for vetting local hires" and adds: "I personally believe this is an important tool in screening the bad guys out of US facilities overseas."
(3) One reader commented in response to the costliness of the procedure outlined above that financial burden can be shifted to applicants wishing to enter the United States.
(4) Another reader pointed out the benefit of requiring the Pledge Allegiance to the United States and all is stands for, including assimilation, no ties to other nations, their forms of government, or their leaders.
(5) The U.S. immigration questionnaire, USCIS Form N-400, already includes a number of intrusive and political questions.
(6) James R. Edwards, Jr. provides useful background on this general topic in "Keeping Extremists Out: The History of Ideological Exclusion," Center for Immigration Studies, September 1, 2005.(January 31, 2017)
Feb. 10, 2017 update: Yassine Aber, a 19-year-old kinesiology student at the University of Sherbrooke, recounts his failed attempt yesterday to enter the United States at the land border at Derby Line, Vermont. He was questioned for five hours and his smartphone was searched; on it, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection found a photo on Facebook in which he was tagged along with Samir Halilovic, who is believed to have gone in 2014 to Syria for jihad.
 Yassine Aber passing the baton. |
Details:
Aber told CBC News that he didn't know Halilovic well, but the two had friends in common and attended the same mosque. He said the group photo was taken at a wedding four years ago.
Aber was travelling to the U.S. to attend a track meet in Boston with other members of the university's track-and-field team. Aber, who was born in Canada to parents originally from Morocco, was travelling on a valid Canadian passport.
The 19-year-old was travelling in a vehicle with five other athletes and their coach. The others were made to wait five hours while he was questioned by border guards.
"They made me fill in papers and made me talk about myself, where I'm from, where I was born," Aber told CBC News. He said he was also asked about his parents and their origins, and what countries he has recently visited. Aber said he was then made to hand over his phone and its password. He was also fingerprinted.
When the border agents returned, Aber said they took him in for another round of questions, which were more pointed about his Muslim faith, the mosque he attended, and people he knew there. "They asked me, 'Do you go to the mosque?' I said, 'Yes, sometimes.' They said, 'How often? Which mosque do you go to?' They asked me about specific people," he told CBC News.
In a subsequent interview late Friday afternoon, Aber revealed that one of the people he was asked about was Halilovic. Ultimately, Aber was told he wasn't allowed to enter the U.S., but his teammates and coach were permitted entry. ...
Aber said he was refused on the pretext that he didn't have the right travel documents. "I received an official paper saying I didn't have papers, a passport or an immigration visa that was valid." But he said he was travelling on a Canadian passport that expires in 2026.
He requested more information, he said, but was not given any. "I was told it's a privilege for people from other countries to come to the United States and that privilege can be taken away at any time."
Comment: Good to see that U.S. border agents are vetting for Islamists. But this last-minute border interrogation can hardly substitute for the process I recommend above. It's vetting but not extreme vetting.
Feb. 13, 2017 update: A classified FBI document on "Indicators of Mobilization to Violence" (or IMV) was published today. It roughly follows my questioning except for the fact that it never mentions Islam, Islamism, Muslims, Shari'a, jihad, or anything else specifically having to do with the problem at hand.
Feb. 24, 2017 update: Muhammad Ali Jr., 44, son of the boxer Muhammad Ali, reports having been detained for hours by immigration officials at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport on return from speaking at a Black History Month event in Montego Bay, Jamaica. He was pulled aside while going through customs because of his Arabic-sounding names, says family friend and lawyer Chris Mancini. Quoting the Louisville Courier-Journal:
Mancini said officials held and questioned Ali Jr. for nearly two hours, repeatedly asking him, "Where did you get your name from?" and "Are you Muslim?" When Ali Jr. responded that yes, he is a Muslim, the officers kept questioning him about his religion and where he was born. Ali Jr. was born in Philadelphia in 1972 and holds a U.S. passport.
Mar. 2, 2017 update: Ahmad Amiri dislikes these questions, as he explains in "Why Is the West Afraid of Muslims" (ماذا يخيف الغربَ من المسلم؟) in the Emirates newspaper Ittihad.
Mar. 24, 2017 update: A "forensic psychiatrist with expertise in violence risk assessment" named Reena Kapoor informs us that "'Extreme Vetting' of Immigrants Won't Work," but somehow manages in the course of her presentation not once to mention Islam or Islamism, rather undercutting her argument.
Apr. 1, 2017 update: Russell A. Berman and Arno Tausch crunched numbers in "Support for Terrorism in Muslim Majority Countries and Implications for Immigration Policies in the West" and found some harrowing figures, especially that 52 percent of all Arabic-speaking adults favor terrorism against the United States.
This leads them to the conclusions that it is not
unreasonable to exercise some caution in refugee and immigration policy, be it through efforts to screen for radical sympathies, no matter how difficult such "vetting" will turn out to be, or through the establishment of safe zones, to reduce the refugee or immigrant inflow.... conclusions are not too far from Daniel Pipes, "Smoking Out Islamists via Extreme Vetting."
May 23, 2017 update: "Extreme vetting" appears to have begun at Papua New Guinea's Manus Island detention centre in the context of a complex U.S.-Australian deal, according to two refugees who went through the process. They recounted that
interviews began with an oath to God to tell the truth and then proceeded for as long as six hours, with in-depth questions on associates, family, friends and any interactions with the Islamic State militant group. "They asked about why I fled my home, why I sought asylum in Australia," said one refugee.
Aug. 28, 2017 update: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has announced a major step toward extreme vetting – or just sensible vetting. According to a report in the Washington Times, it wants to meet applicants in in-person interviews:
it wants more people to have to face in-person interviews before they're giving permanent status in the country. The first two categories to require interviews, beginning Oct. 1, are people already in the U.S. on business visas who want to apply for permanent residency, and refugees or aslyees hoping to sponsor family members to join them here.
Sep. 26, 2017 update: U.S. immigration services on Oct, 18, 2017, will start collecting social media information and run Internet searches on immigrants. The new policy covers green card holders and even naturalized citizens. The Trump administration did not announce this move but quietly amended the Federal Register with "A Notice by the Homeland Security Department on 09/18/2017." Adolfo Flores of Buzzfeed noticed the update.
The most relevant paragraphs:
(5) expand the categories of records to include the following: country of nationality; country of residence; the USCIS Online Account Number; social media handles, aliases, associated identifiable information, and search results; and the Department of Justice (DOJ), Executive Office for Immigration Review and Board of Immigration Appeals proceedings information;
(11) update record source categories to include publicly available information obtained from the internet, public records, public institutions, interviewees, commercial data providers, and information obtained and disclosed pursuant to information sharing agreements."
As Buzzfeed notes, collecting this kind of information implies that any person who interacts with immigrants will indirectly also be subject to surveillance.
Oct. 12, 2017 update: A RCMP questionnaire used at one specific crossing, Roxham Road south of Montreal, for illegal immigrants entering Canada from the United States became public today. Because some of its questions concern Islam, the 3-page French- and English-language document was immediately denounced and suspended. Questions deemed offensive asked a person's religion, religious practices, and views on uncovered women and ISIS.
 A portion of the Roxham Road crossing RCMP questionnaire. |
Comments:
(1) The questionnaire has the right goal but is amateurishly devised and poorly translated from French (e.g., "What is your opinion about terrorist attacks?").
(2) The existence of this questionnaire points to the natural inclination by immigration authorities to ask the right questions, only to have the front office interfere.
(3) The persons asked these questions are under arrest for having crossed illegally into Canada; still, the questions about values and religion are deemed too tough for their tender sensibilities.
Jan. 2, 2018 update: New documents indicate that the Obama administration looked at the social-media accounts of screening of would-be immigrants.
April 17, 2018 update: David Bier writes for the CATO Institute an article, "Extreme Vetting of Immigrants: Estimating Terrorism Vetting Failures," that ignores Islamism and focuses exclusively on terrorists. He finds that the government has done a fine job.
Nov. 27, 2018 update: Remember Trump's call three years ago for a ban on all Muslims coming into the United States? One of my many reasons to oppose this blanket exclusion was that it's easy to fake conversions out of Islam. Here's a particularly apt case coming from Canada, as reported by Stewart Bell of the National Post:
While Othman Ayed Hamdan was accepted as a refugee based on his claim that his abandonment of Islam had put him at risk at home in Jordan, the government argued his "conversion to Christianity was bogus." In its ruling, the court found it was unreasonable to conclude that Hamdan was anything other than a "Christian of convenience in order to get into Canada."
"Mr. Hamdan is an unmitigated liar. One must wonder if he has uttered one truthful word since he came to Canada in 2002," the judge, Sean Harrington, began. ...
A document obtained by Global News shows that Hamdan wrote on his refugee claim that he was raised in a conservative Sunni Muslim family that taught him to shun Christians but that he later came "to realize certain aspects of Islam that are simply not palatable to me any longer."
"I now believe Christ is the Saviour," he wrote, lamenting "the role Islam has played recently delaying and impeding much of the Arab world's political and social development." As a Christian convert, he argued, he would be viewed as an apostate and persecuted if he went back to Amman, Jordan. He feared his own family would kill him, particularly two uncles he said were "members of Hamas." ...
But when Hamdan began posting pro-ISIS propaganda on Facebook in 2014, he came under police scrutiny and was arrested for terrorism in 2015. ... At a hearing conducted behind closed doors in Vancouver in June, federal officials argued that Hamdan had obtained refugee status as a Christian convert, and since he now identified as a Muslim, he no longer needed Canada's protection. ...
Hamdan argued he was a "largely non-practising Muslim" and would still be perceived as an apostate in Jordan. He also feared persecution by the Jordanian government because of his political beliefs. But the Refugee Board agreed with the government and revoked his refugee status.
"He does not practice Christianity," the IRB wrote. "On the contrary, he has returned to Islam, aligns himself with Sunnis and practices his Islam religion. As such, there is insufficient evidence before me to establish that he will be perceived as anything more than a Muslim man in Jordan."
June 1, 2019 update: Associated Press reports on a radical increase in personal information demanded by the U.S. government:
The State Department is now requiring nearly all applicants for U.S. visas to submit their social media usernames, previous email addresses and phone numbers. It's a vast expansion of the Trump administration's enhanced screening of potential immigrants and visitors. ...
The new visa application forms list a number of social media platforms and require the applicant to provide any account names they may have had on them over the previous five years. They also give applicants the option to volunteer information about social media accounts on platforms not listed on the form.
In addition to their social media histories, visa applicants are now asked for five years of previously used telephone numbers, email addresses, international travel and deportation status, as well as whether any family members have been involved in terrorist activities.
In the past, this information was demanded of about 65,000 applicants per year; now it will apply to about 15 million. Only some applicants for diplomatic and official visas will be exempted.
June 22, 2020 update: An investigation into Second Lt. Mohammed Alshamrani of Saudi Arabia, the jihadi who killed three at a military base in Florida, finds he "was not directed by Al Qaeda, nor inspired solely by online ideology. He was a new kind of terrorist, harder to spot: an extremely enterprising freelancer."
Jan. 21, 2021 update: Tawfik Hamid has developed what he calls the Radical Islam Support Test (RIST), which questions Muslims:
- Apostates: Do you support killing them? Should leaving the faith of Islam be punishable by death?
- Barbaric treatment of women: Is beating women ever acceptable and, if not, do you reject the decrees of Islamic law that sanction the beating of women? Do you also accept stoning women to death for committing adultery?
- Calling Jews pigs and monkeys: Do you believe that Jews are in anyway subhuman and, if not, do you reject the Quranic interpretations that claim (Qur'an 5:60) they are?
- Declaring holy war: Do you support declaring war against non-Muslims to subjugate them to Islam? Do you believe it is fair and reasonable to offer non-Muslims the three options -- of conversion, paying the jizya tax or death?
- Enslavement: Do you support the enslavement of non-Muslim female prisoners and having sex with them as concubines? If not, do you reject those interpretations in Islamic law governing ma malakat aymanukum("whom you own"), which justifies such actions?
- Fighting Jews: Do you support perpetual war against Jews to exterminate them and, if not, should those Muslims who incite such war be punished?
- Killing gays: Do you believe it is acceptable to kill homosexuals and, if not, do you reject those edicts in Sharia law which claim it is permitted?
He notes three other topics as well: child marriage, considering the lives of Muslims to be more precious than the lives of non-Muslims, and accepting force or violence to impose Islamic religious values upon others.
