Comment worth noting: Hey, Grover Norquist, Reagan did not sign Refugee Act into law

02/25/2014 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Norquist and Republican friends should have been praising Jimmy Carter in their recent letter!

Update March 1: Even the head of Human Rights First accepts Grover’s rewrite of history, here.

I should have noticed this myself!

Yesterday when we wrote about Georgia and Jimmy Carter, reader ‘tomasrose’ sent us this comment (below). ‘Tomasrose’ is referring to the letter that has the earmarks of a Grover Norquist project written all over it, signed by Norquist’s sidekick Suhail Khan and 8 other Republican open-borders agitators asking for more refugee resettlement.

We reported the story here, and here is the letter itself.

We know about Reagan’s 1986 amnesty (which must have made Norquist happy, or maybe he was behind it!), but let’s not ‘credit’ him with the Refugee Act of 1980 as well!

‘Tomasrose:’

According to Grover Norquist, Jason Carter needn’t feel any family kinship with the 1980 refugee act since it was Ronald Reagan who signed it into law, not Jimmy Carter. The reason the Refugee industry is so robust is because of general ignorance about the program. Exhibit A of this ignorance is found in Grover’s letter to Republicans asking them to let more questionable refugees in.

In the letter he states:
“President Reagan’s belief in America’s role as a refuge for the persecuted went
beyond his words. Thirty three years ago, he signed into law the Refugee Act of 1980…”

To set the historical record straight, here is Carter’s signing statement on March 18th, 1980 (the bill had been spearheaded by Ted Kennedy and Joe Biden in the Senate):

It gives me great pleasure to sign into law S. 643, the Refugee Act of 1980, which revises provisions for refugee admissions and assistance. This legislation is an important contribution to our efforts to strengthen U.S. refugee policies and programs.

The Refugee Act reflects our long tradition as a haven for people uprooted by persecution and political turmoil. In recent years, the number of refugees has increased greatly. Their suffering touches all and challenges us to help them, often under difficult circumstances.

The Refugee Act improves procedures and coordination to respond to the often massive and rapidly changing refugee problems that have developed recently.

It establishes a new admissions policy that will permit fair and equitable treatment of refugees in the United States, regardless of their country of origin. It allows us to change annual admissions levels in response to conditions overseas, policy considerations, and resources available for resettlement. The new procedures will also ensure thorough consideration of admissions questions by both the Congress and the administration.

Moreover, the Refugee Act will help refugees in this country become self-sufficient and contributing members of society. Until now, resettlement has been done primarily by private persons and organizations. They have done an admirable job, but the large numbers of refugees arriving now create new strains and problems. Clearly, the Federal Government must play an expanded role in refugee programs.

The Refugee Act is the result of close cooperation between the administration and the Congress, with important support from those who work directly with refugees in State and local governments and private groups. Everyone who worked so long on its passage can be proud of this contribution to improved international and domestic refugee programs and to our humanitarian traditions.

Note: As enacted, S. 643 is Public Law 96-212, approved March 17.

Poll: Majority of Evangelical Christians want LEGAL immigration numbers reduced

02/24/2014 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

NumbersUSA is reporting on a poll released in Nashville today at the National Religious Broadcasters Convention. (Hat tip: Robin)

A brand new national poll of only evangelical Christians finds that they are deeply compassionate when it comes to immigration policy but not in the way the news media have been reporting because of a well-funded public relations campaign by a few dozen pro-amnesty religious leaders. [Some of those pro-amnesty religious leaders are included in this list of refugee contractors.—ed]

Released today here in Nashville at the National Religious Broadcasters giant annual convention, the poll found that most evangelicals are deeply concerned about unemployed and struggling low-paid American workers, particularly Black and Hispanic Americans who have the highest jobless and poverty rates. And most evangelicals want an immigration system that protects their ability to work and support themselves.

Read the results on illegal immigration, and then this is what interested me the most.

The poll [Pulse Opinion Survey] found even less support for increasing legal immigration:

* only 8% of evangelicals supported doubling legal immigration and 14% favored keeping it at the current 1 million a year,

* 64% said immigration should be cut at least to 500,000 a year, with half of all evangelicals supporting a limit of no more than 100,000 a year,

* 29% said legal immigration should be reduced to zero.

If you have never watched NumbersUSA’s youtube presentation —Immigration by the numbers—take ten minutes and watch it now by clicking here.

Georgia a “pocket of resistance” in the land of Jimmy Carter

02/24/2014 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update: Website for Refugee Resettlement Relief is here.

Last week we told you about Amarillo, TX and the mayor’s plea to STOP THE FLOW OF REFUGEES! Now, here is an op-ed from Joe Newton of ‘Citizens for Refugee Resettlement Relief’ in Georgia. From the Marietta Daily Journal:

Joe Newton, chairman, Citizens for Refugee Resettlement Relief in Georgia

Thirty-four years ago, President Jimmy Carter — grandfather of Georgia Democrat gubernatorial candidate Jason Carter — signed into law the Refugee Resettlement Act. This well-intentioned and costly law, however, is outdated and must be drastically overhauled.

According to Newton, 66,000 refugees have been resettled in Georgia. Wyoming are you listening!

In 2010 the welfare cost to Georgians was $17 million, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. Counties chipped in $4 million of your money — most of which came from your property taxes. The federal government pays most of the cost for 90 days, and then Georgians absorb the welfare cost in perpetuity. Estimates show that the Georgia welfare cost is now approaching $40 million annually and rising exponentially.

Because of this program, DeKalb County schools must provide costly instruction in over 100 languages. Cobb schools also have to grapple with this growing language burden.

To his credit, Gov. Nathan Deal asked the State Department to stop sending more refugees to Georgia — and it has so far complied. But that is only a temporary solution.

The bottom line: Georgia does not have to participate. It doesn’t have to accept the federal money. Research shows that if a state legislature cuts off the money, these people move to another state. [Wyoming!–ed]

We have long suspected that the employment numbers the contractors supply for refugees are bogus. Because the contractor is expected to find employment for the refugees it resettles by a certain date, they find anything they can possibly find for the poor refugee even if he/she quits it a few months down the road. Here is what Newton says:

Also, according to HHS, of the Georgia refugees who do want to work only 40 percent are still working after 90 days. At the end of a year, only 18 percent still work and there is a rapid drop-off soon thereafter.

This is an entirely new welfare class we are creating to the detriment of our state and culture.

Jason Carter—it is granddaddy’s legacy:

It is noteworthy, by the way, that state Sen. Jason Carter has never made any effort to try to reduce or eliminate this program even though it is overburdening his DeKalb County constituency. In fact, he supports it as part of his grandfather’s “legacy.”

Democrats joined the Republican governor to temporarily stem this refugee tide into our state. But why doesn’t the General Assembly just simply end this refugee racket by cutting off the money flow?

I wonder if the Republican Governor of Georgia could have a chat with the Republican Governor of Wyoming who wrote to Washington to ask for refugees!

Just a reminder: If it were true that refugees brought economic prosperity to cities, as David Lubell and his “Welcoming America” PR campaign says, then DeKalb County and the state of Georgia would be begging for more, not less!

Folks, the US State Department is running out of “welcoming” places to drop-off the thousands of refugees and the new asylum seekers/asylees entering the US each month.

More from Gates of Vienna on still unexplained Minneapolis Somali explosion/fire

02/24/2014 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

And, LOL!, a question for the Minnesota Republican Party? Do you know who your neighbors are?

MN GOP moved to be in the “middle of every day Minnesotans!”

From GOV (which has continued to investigate the suspicious explosion/fire on New Years Day and might be considered the lead ‘agency’ on the investigation!):

On New Year’s Day 2014 a powerful explosion and fire occurred at 514 Cedar Avenue South in Minneapolis, in a predominantly Somali neighborhood of the city.

The building was gutted by the blaze. Two bodies were found in the rubble, and fourteen people were hospitalized, one of whom died later. Within 72 hours, the building had been pulled down into a heap of rubble by a backhoe.

Two days after the blast, before any real investigation occurred — which could never be conducted, anyway, with the potential crime scene destroyed — Greg Boosalis, the supervisory special agent with the FBI in Minneapolis, told the press that there was “no evidence of terrorist activity”.

Ever since that day I have been asking the question: How did the FBI know there was no terrorist activity without examining the scene of the explosion?

The question becomes even more urgent with the emergence of the latest wrinkle in the case.

Read the incredible paper trail from Europe, to the Middle East, to Somalia and back involving Somali Garad K. Nor.

Then this! Republicans move into office suite down the hall from Nor’s Tawakal Money Express and the “every day Minnesotans!”

Since being listed as a terrorism-associate by the U.S. Treasury and the European Commission, Garad K. Nor has managed to clear his name. A press release issued in 2012 says the President and CEO of Tawakal Money Express successfully completed a four-day training workshop (teleconferenced from Somalia) for its staff and agents regarding procedures for complying with anti-money laundering regulations in the USA. Tawakal Money Express, a franchise of the Tawakal Express global enterprise, is located at… 2200 E Franklin Ave, #204.

To reiterate: that’s the same location as the offices of Wadani Properties, the company that owned and managed the exploded building at 514 Cedar Avenue South.

As a final irony, the Minnesota Republican Party has just moved its headquarters to the same address, 2200 E Franklin, Suite #201.

Hmmmm!

All of our previous posts on the Somali fire/explosion may be found by clicking here.

Be sure to read ‘Why so many Somalis in Minneapolis’ where a reader tells us about the Seward neighborhood.

NYT: “Asylum Fraud in Chinatown: Industry of Lies”

02/23/2014 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Can you believe that headline at the New York Times of all places! Earlier this morning, we reported on the Wall Street Journal story about questionable asylum-seekers (Syrians), and now this! Are we reaching a tipping point—when even the NEW YORK TIMES writes about asylum fraud? Hat tip: ‘pungentpeppers.’

Just make it up!

Emphasis below is mine:

A Chinese woman walked into a law office in New York’s Chinatown and asked to see her lawyer. She had applied for asylum, claiming that she had been forced to get an abortion in China to comply with the country’s family-planning laws, and she was anxious about her coming interview with immigration officials.

She had good reason to be worried: Her claim, invented by her lawyer’s associates, was false.

But the lawyer, John Wang, told her to relax. The process, he said, was straightforward, and as long as she memorized a few details, everything would be fine. “You are making yourself nervous,” he said in Mandarin. “All you would be asked is the same few rubbish questions.”

“Just make it up,” the lawyer added.

The conversation, in December 2010, was secretly recorded by federal officials conducting a wide investigation of immigration fraud in New York’s Chinese population. The inquiry has led to the prosecution of at least 30 people — lawyers (including Mr. Wang), paralegals, interpreters and even an employee of a church, who is on trial, accused of coaching asylum applicants in basic tenets of Christianity to prop up their claims of religious persecution. [Do-gooder-itis!—ed] All were charged with helping hundreds of Chinese immigrants apply for asylum using false tales of persecution.

The transcript of the conversation in Mr. Wang’s office, which was disclosed in a recent court filing, offered a rare look at the hidden side of the Chinese asylum industry in New York.

To asylum-seekers it’s not an issue of right or wrong:

Though the prevalence of fraud is unknown, federal officials appear to regard the applicant pool in New York with considerable suspicion. In fiscal year 2013, asylum officers around the country granted 40 percent of all Chinese asylum requests, according to government data. In New York City, asylum officers approved only 15 percent.

Peter Kwong, a professor at the City University of New York and an expert on the Chinese population in New York, said it was an open secret in the Chinese community that most asylum applications were at least partly false, from fabricated narratives of persecution to counterfeit supporting documents and invented witness testimony.

To asylum-seekers, he said, “it’s not an issue of right or wrong. It’s an issue about whether they can get it and their means to get it.”

In my post on Syrians coming across the Mexican border, I mentioned an AP story that blames the backlog of cases in the immigration courts on the government shutdown (blame the Republicans), but here the NYT report says that the sheer volume of fraudulent cases is to blame.

The volume of petitions has clogged the federal bureaucratic machinery, overwhelming asylum officers and judges. The deputy director of the New York asylum office blamed fraud, in part, for the deluge, and said she had tripled her team of asylum officers to dig out of a two-year backlog of cases.

The schemes “wreaked havoc on the asylum system as a whole,” the official, Ashley B. Caudill-Mirillo, wrote in a letter to a federal judge in November.

Asylum fraud cuts across all immigrant groups (I still can’t believe this is the NYT reporting this!).

False asylum petitions are among the most common forms of immigration fraud, in part because they are difficult to detect, experts said. Since many claims are based on events that took place amid armed conflict or political turmoil, the narratives and supporting documents can be hard for the American authorities to verify.

And while the Chinese asylum pool has drawn increasing scrutiny in recent years, asylum fraud cuts across all immigrant groups, officials say, cropping up among populations from societies in turmoil such as Guineans seeking refuge from political upheaval, Afghans fleeing war, Russians looking for sanctuary from homophobia and Mexicans running from drug violence.

There is much more, so much more that I didn’t know where to stop excerpting! Read it all.

From a post here at RRW last month:

Chinese make up the largest percentage of asylum seekers granted permission to stay in the US

Go to Table 6, page 6 of the Department of Homeland Securities 2012 Annual Flow Report. Here are the stats for Chinese given refugee status (after arriving in the US on their own either illegally or as visa overstays).

2010: 6,693 Chinese granted asylum (31% of the total)

2011: 8,585 (34%)

2012: 10,151 (34%)

Remember! Once granted asylum, the asylee is then able to access all of the welfare programs open to refugees who were brought in by the US State Department. Fact sheet here.