Month: March 2013

Menendez: ‘Temporary refugees’ should have a path to citizenship

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Yes, that is from the beleaguered New Jersey Senator, Robert  Menendez now facing corruption charges.  Could that Gang of Eight soon become the Gang of Seven?

Democrat Senator Robert Menendez, member of the Gang of Eight, under fire in NJ. Photo: Star Ledger

The story about immigrants with Temporary Protected Status wanting to become citizens (because honestly they are already permanent!) needs some clarification before you read it.

A migrant with TPS status can do anything a legal American citizen can do except vote.

Those with TPS status (El Salvador leads the pack) first got into the US illegally—they were first illegal aliens!   Then as a result of something going on in their home country—a civil war, a big storm, an earthquake—the benevolent US crafted this program so that they wouldn’t be immediately returned to a country that was struggling to recover at that moment.

We understood that at some point they would go home!  That is not to be, every year one or or the other of the eight nationalities gets an extension and this has gone on for decades.   (You can see the eight favored groups, here).  We recently added Syrians to TPS, but heck, why is Somalia still on there when we are told it’s safe to go home?

Remittances are a driving force behind keeping this program going as we knew, but was brought home recently with comments from Maryland Delegate Ana Sol Gutierrez here at my other blog.   American money sent abroad props up governments.

And, by the way, CASA de Maryland was born out of the so-called ‘sanctuary movement’ when Quakers (among other “religious” people) broke the law by bringing Salvadorans across the border in the early 1980’s here (scroll down to second half of the post, links to Betty “rainbow” Hoover no longer work).

With that background, here then is the story from ABC yesterday (emphasis mine):

 An immigration reform bill being drafted in the Senate may offer an expedited path to citizenship to nearly 300,000 people who are currently in the U.S. under a temporary program designed to protect people who face physical danger in their own country.   [Faced physical danger maybe in the past—ed]

The program in question is called Temporary Protected Status (TPS), and it allows people to live and work in the U.S. without fear of deportation if they follow the law. But the status offers no formal pathway to citizenship, and some immigrants have been here for decades without being able to apply for a green card.

Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), a member of a bipartisan group working on a Senate immigration bill, told the Spanish-language newspaper La Opinión on Tuesday that the details still weren’t finalized, but that such a pathway should be considered as part of reform.

“I think that it’s expected that these people, that have been here under a legal avenue, should have some possibility to change their status in a quicker manner,” Menendez said. “[We] haven’t reach a final agreement in respect to that.”

The program, which was part of a large-scale immigration law passed in 1990, gives certain immigrants who are already in the U.S. a way to remain in the country if they face imminent dangers in their home country, such as a civil war or a natural disaster. Temporary Protected Status was born because existing refugee and asylum programs weren’t adequately addressing the needs of immigrants fleeing countries like El Salvador, which was enmeshed in civil war in the 1980s and early ’90s, according to Anwen Hughes, senior counsel at Human Rights First, a nonpartisan group that works on immigration issues. Two-thirds of people living in the country under TPS are Salvadorean.

[…..]

Some conservative critics have said that the program is problematic because it isn’t actually temporary. Salvadorans, for example, were re-authorized for TPS after a series of earthquakes in 2001, and have been eligible for the status ever since. At this point, many Salvadorans with TPS have established roots in the U.S., so if that status was suddenly revoked, it could mean expelling residents who have been living and working in the country for decades.

Type ‘temporary protected status’ into our search function to learn more about this racket.

Diversity is beautiful alert! Female Genital Mutilation alive and increasing in America

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Frankly, the refugees (and other immigrants) bring the brutal practice with them.  We know this is a problem in certain ethnic groups from Africa and the Middle East, and although those who don’t want it discussed will say that other people (of other religions) cut their daughters’ clitorises too, but it’s mostly practiced today by Muslims.

Creeping Sharia brought us two stories this week on the issue.

First from Trust Law:

NEW YORK (TrustLaw) – The ancient, brutal practice of female genital mutilation (FGM), once considered primarily a problem of the developing world, is a growing threat to girls and women in the United States, according to a new report.

The United States has longstanding laws against the practice of FGM on U.S. soil and in January, passed a federal law against sending young women outside the country for so-called “vacation cutting”. However, girls living in America increasingly are at risk of the procedure both at home and abroad, according to research by Sanctuary for Families.

The New York City-based non-profit organisation, which specialises in gender-based violence, said up to 200,000 girls and women in the United States are at risk of FGM and that the number is growing.

“People in the United States think that FGM only happens to people outside of the United States, but in all actuality, people here all over the country have been through FGM,” said Jaha, 23, formerly from Gambia and now a survivor and advocate against FGM.

“Kids that were born in this country are taken back home every summer and undergo this procedure,” she was quoted as saying in the report.

The study cited analysis of data from the 2000 census that found between 1990 and 2000 the number of girls and women in the United States at risk of the procedure – which involves the partial or total removal of external female genitalia – increased by 35 percent.  [Surely this is based on census data about the increasing population of immigrants from certain countries, not on a specific question about the intactness of respondents’ genitalia—ed]

Read the whole news story (and follow links).

Not an African issue, an America issue!

The New York Daily News also reported on the new study from Sanctuary for Families:

 New York’s metropolitan area is home to more women and girls who have been mutilated in female circumcision ceremonies — or are at risk — than any other U.S. city, experts estimate.

The global practice is a local issue, thanks to illegal surgeries performed here — but immigrant girls are often sent back to their parents’ homelands to undergo mutilation.

More than a dozen cases are documented in a new report to be released Friday by Sanctuary for Families.

One city teen’s father sent her and her little sister to his Gambian hometown for what they thought was just a visit to see their grandmother.

But Grandma had another agenda.

“She warned us that if we refused to undergo female genital mutilation, she would be disappointed in us, and that the entire village would find out and force (it) upon us against our will,” the woman, now 27, told Sanctuary researchers.

The centuries-old practice, based on beliefs about premarital “cleanliness,” has immigrated to the U.S. along with families from parts of West Africa, the Middle East and South Asia. The surgery is most widely done on infants and teens. It severely reduces sexual pleasure and can cause major health complications.

Like most Americans I wasn’t even aware of this horrible business until I read the discussion of it (in great detail) in Ayan Hirsi Ali’s must-read biography—‘Infidel’—when it came out 5 years ago.

Graphic (above) is posted here and is from the Woman Stats Project.  If you can’t read it, the darkest color on the map is where more than half of the country’s women undergo the procedure.  Immigrants are bringing the practice to Canada, the US, the EU, and Australia—all primary resettlement countries.

VDARE writer tells us about CPAC immigration panel

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

CPAC for those not following Conservatism Inc. is the Conservative Political Action Conference going on in Washington this week.   It’s become a beauty contest of sorts for the Republican ruling class where movers and shakers, like ACU board member Grover Norquist (slayer of loud bullfrogs), try to get the minds right of the youthful “conservative” grassroots.

VDARE writer James Kirkpatrick pens an insightful summary of CPAC’s tepid Immigration Panel (VDARE’s title:  CPAC’s Immigration Panel—Wishful Thinking, Lies, And Attacking The Base) made up of squishes on the issue of amnesty and CITIZENSHIP for illegal aliens.

Moratorium on immigration! Or, what comes after America?

Here is Kirkpatrick’s wrap-up (emphasis mine), but please read the whole thing.  He says that getting cheap labor for businesses was an overriding theme (But, remember we told you only recently that the unemployment rate among LEGAL refugees was already at 50%, here.)  There is no shortage of immigrant labor!

Ideally, Conservatism Inc. wants cheap labor for their masters, positive press for opposing “racism,” and as few Hispanic voters in the electorate as possible. It cannot do all three, but it prefers cognitive dissonance to systematic (and politically incorrect) thought.

Near the beginning of the panel, Dr. Ayres condemned the belief that Hispanics tend to vote Democratic no matter what. He didn’t rebut it (of course) and simply gloated that whites will soon be a minority in the country their ancestors built. To those opposed to amnesty, he challenged: “What’s your plan?”

The plan is simple: an immigration moratorium, attrition through enforcement, abolishing birthright citizenship, attacking multiculturalism and rebuilding the national core.

If this fails, then immigration patriots have to ask what comes after America. As outlandish as that sounds, it bears a closer resemblance to reality than anything discussed during the immigration panel.

The tragedy of the so called “thoughtful” voices on immigration reform is not that they are liberal, or moderate, or “post-national.” It’s that these self-proclaimed sophisticates are guilty of a willful refusal to think seriously, And it shows.

Jordan: Crime plagues refugee camp for Syrians

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Just keeping up with the news about Syrian refugees, so we have an archive developed when the day comes that the UN/US announces we are moving Syrians out of camps to your American (Canadian, Australian and European) towns.

Angelina Jolie toured Zaatari last fall so that the UNHCR could get the media’s attention properly focused on the Syrian refugee crisis. Photo from the International Business Times

From Fox News:

AMMAN, Jordan –  The U.N. refugee chief says his agency is working with Jordan to bolster security at a camp for Syrian refugees where reports of drug trafficking, prostitution and other crimes have emerged.

Antonio Guterres says the Zaatari camp near the Jordanian-Syrian border now is de facto Jordan’s fourth-largest city, with a “complex” environment.

He told reporters in Amman on Wednesday that security will be “very strongly increased” and special measures will be undertaken to stop criminal activities.

Guterres spoke after meeting Prime Minister Abdullah Ensour to discuss mechanisms to ensure that the rule of law is carried out in the camp. He provided no details.

Remember Guterres doesn’t want to establish UN camps within Syria and on the border of Turkey and Jordan because he wants the Syrians to have the “right” to ask for asylum in the West.  If they are within their own borders they don’t fit the definition of asylum seeker.  Now with the criminal element growing, it’s all the more reason to begin the resettlement clamor.

Coincidentally, this popped up just this a.m.  One of the top nine US Refugee contractors, the IRC, is looking to fill a position for a driver to get their workers back and forth SAFELY from Amman to Zarqa and Zaatari camps.

Recipe to save dying counties: Get a meatpacking plant!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

And,  immigrant workers to go with it!

Honest to goodness, that is part of the prescription offered by AP reporter cum opinion writer, Hope Yen, in a story headlined: ‘Census shows record 1 in 3 US counties now dying.’

And, the only way to save them is to increase the population and pour in the immigrants as the baby boomers start leaving this life.   But, she offers not one shred of evidence that pouring in the immigrants brings economic recovery.  Frankly, the only economic boost poor and uneducated immigrants might bring a city or county is because with them come FEDERAL WELFARE dollars!

Muslim employees have clashed with the JBS Swift & Co. meatpacking plant in Greeley, Colo., over taking breaks to offer prayers, as called for by their religion. Here, some of the employees are seen gathering at Lincoln Park in Greeley. Photo by Sara Loven, Daily Tribune via AP

Longtime readers here know what meatpackers have brought to some towns in the Midwest and South—demands for religious accommodation for Muslims, ethnic squabbles, crime, Section 8 housing, overstressed school systems, food stamp fraud and the list goes on.

So, to Ms Yen and her comrades—population increases will not save a county or city when the population is an economic drain and causes social upheaval—-just ask France (Moroccans), Germany (Turks), Greece (Afghans) and the UK (Pakis) if the immigrant hordes have brought an overall benefit to their economies.   Heck, we recently learned that Germany was sending its elderly pensioners to Eastern Europe and Asia for their nursing home care because the Germans couldn’t afford their old people.

Here is the AP story, but first read about how immigration is killing Dekalb County, Georgia (here yesterday).  Why do these pro-immigration news(?) reports never bother to mention the downside?   And, you might also re-visit Professor Kotkin who also jumps to the conclusion that more diversity brings positive change here.

 WASHINGTON (AP) — A record number of U.S. counties – more than 1 in 3 – are now dying off, hit by an aging population and weakened local economies that are spurring young adults to seek jobs and build families elsewhere.

New 2012 census estimates released Thursday highlight the population shifts as the U.S. encounters its most sluggish growth levels since the Great Depression.

The findings also reflect the increasing economic importance of foreign-born residents as the U.S. ponders an overhaul of a major 1965 federal immigration law. Without new immigrants, many metropolitan areas such as New York, Chicago, Detroit, Pittsburgh and St. Louis would have posted flat or negative population growth in the last year.  [Why the assumption that population growth means economic growth, unless we are counting state and federal welfare dollars?—ed]

“Immigrants are innovators, entrepreneurs, they’re making things happen. They create jobs,” said Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, a Republican, at an immigration conference in his state last week. Saying Michigan should be a top destination for legal immigrants to come and boost Detroit and other struggling areas, Snyder made a special appeal: “Please come here.”

Frankly, Governor Snyder that is gobbledegook!  MOST immigrants starting businesses could never get the business off the ground without government support like the micro-loans supported by taxpayer dollars we are distributing like Pez candy!   Just look around your own local city—how many immigrant-run restaurants survive more than a year or so?  Now, convenience stores might survive a little longer as they are scamming SNAP (food stamp) programs to keep themselves afloat.

Again, this scribe at AP reports as a good thing for (we presume) the economy that the US population is growing thanks to immigrants.  But, let me ask, is there some point when population has grown enough?  Is it just possible that some towns and counties are going to decline in population?  Or, is there no upper limit?

….the U.S. population as a whole continues to grow, boosted by immigration from abroad and relatively higher births among the mostly younger migrants from Mexico, Latin America and Asia.

Quoting a sociology professor at the Univ. of New Hampshire:  solve your economic woes with something dramatic—get a meatpacking plant!

Unless something dramatic changes – for instance, new development such as a meatpacking plant to attract young Hispanics – these areas are likely to have more and more natural decrease.”

It’s not the immigrants, it is the federal money!

Near the very end of this pro-open borders pitch, comes one line that is really closer to the truth about how some cities are surviving and some aren’t—-those surviving are at the receiving end of a federal money pipeline!

Since 2010, many of the fastest-growing U.S. metro areas have also been those that historically received a lot of federal dollars…

So what happens when the federal flow begins to slow?  Get ready for chaos as all the minority and immigrant groups, used to surviving on ‘social welfare’, see the money dry up.  This can’t go on forever.  We all know that.

About the photo:  We reported this news from Colorado back in 2008.   LOL!  See Greeley 2012 trying to get money out of the meatpackers for the educational costs associated with immigrant kids!

For new readers:  If you would like to know more about the multi-culti joys of meatpacking towns, visit our Greeley/Swift/Somali controversy category (86 posts!).    Or, for other places in the US where the refugee program via the US State Department supplies meatpacking labor, just type ‘meatpacker’ into our search function.