Harry Reid pressured DHS to grant visas to shady investors in order to benefit his son

  I wanted to write about this story a couple of days ago but it has been a busy week and I simply did not have the time.

  Harry Reid has been pressuring the Department of Homeland Security to grant visas to a certain group of people in his home state:

Senate Majority Leader Sen. Harry Reid took an intense interest in pushing through visas for dozens of shady Asian investors for a Las Vegas casino represented by his son, Rory Reid, documents and reports show.

The investors, who were flagged for “suspicious financial activity,” had initially been denied visas by the Department of Homeland Security in a process that usually does not allow for appeals.

In a Dec. 5, 2012 email to officials at the Department of Homeland Security obtained by The Washington Times, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Legislative Affairs official Miguel Rodriguez wrote, “This one is going to be a major headache for us all because Sen. Reid’s office/staff is pushing hard and I just had a long yelling match on the phone.”

  You may be wondering why Harry Reid showed such an interest in getting visas for this shady group. Well, he had his reasons:

The investors were interested in renovating the SLS Hotel — which was once the Sahara. SLS is represented by Sen. Reid’s son, Rory Reid, who works at the law firm Lionel, Sawyer & Collins. In their 2012 “Year in Review,” the Nevada firm hyped “the benefit of working with Rory Reid of Lionel Sawyer & Collins.”

  It appears as if he was using his position for personal benefit, or this this just yet another stunning and unbelievable coincidence?

  On the heals of this story comes news that while Harry Reid was trying to expedite visas to shady characters a program known as EB-5 was being used to expedite visas for certain investors without a background check. Needless to say this program was exploited by “foreign intelligence services, terrorist networks and technology proliferators,”  many of them Iranians.

  So while it was known for at least two years that there were security concerns about granting such visas Harry Reid pushed ahead anyway. It is obvious to me that Harry Reid was using his position to help his son make money and was not concerned whatsoever with the national security risks involved.