Why we need to pause immigration from some countries

Why we need to pause immigration from some countries. Here are statements from President Obama's top security people while testifying before congress last year (from the House Homeland Security Committee):

 

Nicholas J. Rasmussen, Director, National Counterterrorism Center, Office of the Director of National Intelligence: “The intelligence picture we’ve had of this [Syrian] conflict zone isn’t what we’d like it to be…you can only review [refugees’ submitted background data] against what you have.” (10/8/15)

 

James B. Comey, Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation, U.S. Department of Justice: “There is risk associated with bringing anybody in from the outside, but especially from a conflict zone like [Syria]… My concern there [about bringing Syrian refugees into the United States] is that there are certain gaps I don’t want to talk about publicly in the data available to us.” (10/8/15)

 

Jeh C. Johnson, Secretary, U.S. Department of Homeland Security: “But [the Syrian refugees are] a population of people that we’re not going to know a whole lot about.” (10/8/15)

 

Gen. (ret.) John Allen, Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL, State Department: “We should be conscious of the potential that [ISIS] may attempt to embed agents within that [Syrian refugee] population.” (9/11/15)

 

Gen. (ret.) James Clapper, Director, Director of National Intelligence: “As [Syrian refugees] descend on Europe, one of the obvious issues that we worry about, and in turn as we bring refugees into this country, is exactly what’s their background? We don’t obviously put it past the likes of ISIL to infiltrate operatives among these refugees…That is a huge concern of ours.” (9/9/15)

 

Michael Steinbach, Assistant Director for the Federal Bureau of Investigation: “Yes, I’m concerned [about bringing Syrian refugees into the United States]…We’ll have to go take a look at those lists and go through all of those intelligence holdings and be very careful to try and identify connections to foreign terrorist groups…in Iraq, we were there on the ground collecting [intelligence], so we had databases to use…You have to have information to vet, so the concern is in Syria is that we don’t have the systems in places on the ground to collect the information.” (2/12/15)