No they haven’t taken refugees. They may have tens of thousands of foreign workers there on a temporary basis, but they are not resettling any ‘refugees’ on a permanent basis. And, I doubt the number of Syrians is in the millions. In 2013, Saudi Arabia loaded up tens of thousands of Somali and Ethiopian asylum seekers and shipped them back to Africa said HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH. http://en.alalam.ir/news/1567298 In this photo Africans board buses to the airport for deportation flights to Addis Ababa. Go here andhereto see how this controversy began. Where is the UN High Commissioner for Refugees confirming or denying these claims?
Here is Alarabia:
Saudi Arabia’s King Salman on Monday chaired a cabinet session in which “false and misleading accusations” over the Kingdom’s response to the Syrian refugee crisis were addressed.
Almost 2.5 million Syrians have been received by Saudi Arabia since the start of the civil war, state news agency SPA reported.
We have been chronicling Saudi Arabia’s mean-spiritedness toward its fellow Muslims for years. Go herefor our complete archive on S.A.’s treatment of refugees.
And, I just found a post here from 2008 ,written by blog partner Judy, in which she reports that S.A. takes no refugees on a permanent basis because they don’t want them to have any voting power in the future.
Just a reminder that you will be hearing from western advocates for refugee resettlement that the countries of Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon have an “unfair” burden because they have millions of Syrians in camps there. Always remember that those ‘refugees’ are there on a temporary basis and that when we take in refugees they will be here PERMANENTLY (and we will admit their family members) after the Syrian civil war is long forgotten. The comparison is not a legitimate one.
I think my head is going to explode!
Why do big news outlets like the Washington Post republish such biased news from lazy reporters?
Here is an article written by Jacob Wirtschafter for Religion News Service (whatever that is) and published at the Washington Postthat leaves one very large piece of the story unreported. And, that is that HIAS (Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society), as one of nine major federal resettlement contractors, has a financial stake in the decision to admit large numbers of Syrian (mostly Muslim) refugees. Doing well by doing good! More than half of their $31 million dollar budget*** is from the federal government (you!) which pays them (BY THE HEAD) to resettle refugees.
They have every incentive to increase the number! HIAS doesn’t focus attention on persecuted Jews and Christians/other minorities as a first priority, they help bring Somali, Iraqi and soon Syrian Muslims to your towns and cities. And, how dare CEO Mark Hetfield now feign concern for Israel when he has been bashing Israel for years over the illegal alien problem Israel has been trying to cope with! See here and here.
Here is the “news” about how happy Syrian Americans are that HIAS is helping get their people into America.
At theWashington Post:
LOS ANGELES — Advocates for Syrian refugee resettlement found unexpected allies as major Jewish groups have called on President Obama to open America’s gates to 100,000 asylum seekers from the war-torn Arab nation.
The American Jewish resettlement agency HIAS has launched a petition drive calling on Obama to resettle 100,000 Syrians in the U.S., and Reform rabbis pledged to make refugee assistance a key theme for High Holiday sermons and congregational activism.
Jewish American groups, saying they can’t be bystanders as the worst refugee crisis since World War II unfolds, are joining Arab-American leaders in a critique of existing policies, which have sharply limited the numbers of refugees settled in the United States.
The nerve of Hetfield now saying we should bring Syrian Muslims to America to ensure Israel’s safety! Why? Presumably just to pander to the American pro-Israel community when Hetfield has been a leading critic of Israel on the immigration issue urging them to let in more ‘refugees’ which anyone in their right mind knows will kill Israel.
HIAS President and CEO Mark Hetfield said the request for additional Syrian refugees is also a matter of ensuring Israel’s safety.
“The crisis in Syria threatens to destabilize Jordan, Lebanon, and perhaps even Turkey and Egypt,” he said. “This cannot be good for Israel.”
[….]
“HIAS has consistently called for more resettlement and pushed back against discriminatory rhetoric opposing the opening of doors to Syrian refugees,” said Omar Hossino, public relations director for the Syrian American Council in Washington, D.C.
It took 5 seconds to find this linking the Syrian American Council to the Muslim Brotherhood.
And, btw, HIAS was a leading activist group pushing the ‘Gang of Eight’ amnesty billin the Senate (we have many posts on their lobbying activities on these pages over the years).
If the US brings in 100,000 Syrian Muslims as HIAS is demanding, they will be rolling in the green stuff! So come on lazy reporters, do your homework!
*** Have a look at the most recent Form 990 for HIAS (which re-branded itself and dropped the word Hebrew from its name awhile back). It is a $31 million dollar a year supposed ‘non-profit’ group that receives 55% of its funding from the US taxpayer. Federal grants total just over $16 million and that is to resettle refugees! And they receive other funds related to their refugee resettlement efforts including over $500,000 in processing fees for loans (refugee air fare loan collections).
Hetfield pulls down a salary (and related income) of just over $300,000 per year and there are 5 other employees in the six-figure range. Go hereto see if HIAS is working in your city.
Borders open? Borders closed? Who knows how I’ll be feeling tomorrow.
Invasion of Europe news…..
That phrase I believe is being echoed around the world and most assuredly in the countries of Eastern Europe that are having to cope with German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s insane decision to allow unregistered refugees to flow in to Germany by the tens of thousands and who must naturally cross other sovereign nations to get to Merkel’s welcome.
That phrase is also near the very end of a detailed story about Merkel’s flip-flopping over first opening, then closing and now (maybe?) opening German borders to the swarming mass of humanity she has surely unleashed.
I’m running out of time now, but want to bring this latest news at The Guardian from earlier this afternoon. Go here to learn more about Germany and the mess “Mama” Merkel has created.
A reader reminded me of this: Do you remember Merkel saying that “multiculturalism has failed” in Germany? Here in 2010.
Here is another 2016 Presidential candidate suggesting that the resettlement of 10,000 (65,000 or 100,000) Syrians to American towns represents a security threat. Ben Carson: No brainer! ISIS wants to infiltrate refugee flow!
Strong positions have already been taken by Donald Trump and Scott Walker in the run-up to the CNN Presidential debate scheduled for tomorrow evening.
Carson: If we are doing such great screening how did the Tsarnaev Brothers get in? From CNN:
Washington (CNN) Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson on Monday recalled the men who orchestrated the bombing at the Boston Marathon to argue that the U.S. should not accept emergency refugees fleeing Syria.
The retired neurosurgeon, who is recently earning silver medals in national opinion polls, raised the specter of Tamerlan and Dzokhar Tsarnaev***, the immigrant brothers who came to the United States in 2002 and a decade later organized the attack. Carson said the U.S. had not substantively improved how immigrants those like the brothers were vetted when they came as refugees from Kyrgyzstan.
“How did that screening process work for the Tsarnaev Brothers?” Carson told CNN’s John Berman on “The Lead.” “We don’t know whose those people are, and the majority of them are young males, and they could easily be people who could be infiltrated by terrorists.”
Carson said it was all too easy for Islamic militants to take advantage of the relaxed standards for refugees.
“If I was ISIS, if I were the global jihadists, and I knew the United States was about to take in 10,000 or 65,000 or 100,00 people from my region, I would infiltrate them with my people,” he said.
[….]
Carson also characterized his position on immigration as “probably not that far away” from Trump’s, despite having disagreed with Trump on the viability of deportations of undocumented immigrants.
Mr. Carson might be advised to question all those who will now dump hate-filled vitriol on him over his lack of humanitarian concern and ask them how many Syrian Christians are they planning to help since the vast majority of Syrian refugees (95%) taken in by the US now are UN-chosen Syrian Muslims.
Our security concerns might be dramatically lessened if Christians were the recipients of our generosity (they aren’t after all the ones doing the terrorizing!).
***The Tsarnaev brothers may not be the best example because they came in as children, and as asylum seekers. We did not select them abroad with or without the help of the UN. Better examples would be the Iraqi refugee terroriststhat we did select and who did go through our security screening process which failed miserably.
However, the Tsarnaev brothers do exemplify a more serious problem in my view and that is what we are seeing with many next generation refugees, most notably the Somalis from Minnesota some of whom are not assimilating and are becoming radicalized in America cities (probably in radical mosques).
Those young men who left to join Al-Shabaab and ISIS over the last 8 years or so, could not have been screened against and their parents might have been fine people. The point is, that even if the Syrian Muslims, or any other Muslims, being admitted to the US now are perfectly decent and peaceful, their children may not stay that way. Let’s consider Frank Gaffney’s proposal today—a moratorium on Muslim colonization of America! That seems to offer us the safest choice wouldn’t you say?
Citizens critical of refugee resettlement on-going in Twin Falls, Idaho were hoping to get all of their many questions answered when a panel of “experts” come together at 6:30 p.m. on September 22nd. But, unless the meeting is fair and open to any and all questions, the opportunity to fully inform the community will be squandered by the Twin Falls Times-News.
I sure hope the organizers aren’t planning on using one of many manipulative techniques (Delphicomes to mind) that would steer the outcome to a predetermined conclusion and that is that everything is just fine and dandy, so let’s ‘welcome’ the Syrians to Idaho. Larry Bartlett For new readers, this latest round of controversy started brewing when the resettlement contractor, affiliated with the College of Southern Idaho and the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, began bragging about Syrians being on the way to Twin Falls.
By the way, Syrians have already begun arriving in Boise according to State Department data.
Here is themake-up of the panelthat will answer attendees questions on the 22nd:
The panelists are:
Larry Bartlett, director of the U.S. State Department’s Office on Refugee Admissions, Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration
Ken Tota, deputy director of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement
ZeZe Rwasama, director of the College of Southern Idaho Refugee Programs
Brian Pike, Twin Falls deputy city manager of public safety
Ken Tota
Mike Mason, CSI’s vice president of finance
Dr. Steven Kohtz, with St. Luke’s Magic Valley Regional Medical Center
Wiley Dobbs, superintendent of the Twin Falls School District.
And, the discussion is being moderated by Times-News editor Matt Christensen who is hardly unbiased. Readers may remember that he actually editorialized calling me a “thief” here in June when he said I snipped too many paragraphs of a news story they had published.
Here then is how this meeting should be held to allow for the free and fair flow of information
~The moderator should not be affiliated with the newspaper. Christensen must be replaced. Perhaps find a respected former judge or someone not presumed to have a bias.
~The program must be videotapedfor future use and available to those who can’t be there.
~Panelists are there to answer questions, not to give speeches or lectures (we are nation of immigrants, blah! blah!). There is no need to hear opening statements that will only serve to drag out the meeting. If the organizers wish, they could provide written short opening remarks by panelists to be distributed as audience members arrive.
~Everyone present who wishes to ask a question should be allowed to do so. No one should be sending in questions for pre-screening by the moderator (as the paper is presently urging people to do). Only those present should be allowed to ask a question (or more than one question). No advance screening of questions should be permitted even at the meeting itself.
~Questions should be permitted to be asked if the meeting goes half the night. Everyone there who has a question, should get an answer. Cutting it off prematurely will only appear to shortchange one side or the other.
~Perhaps to be fair and orderly everyone who wants to ask a question must put his or her name in a hat—a hat which can be added to as the evening progresses. Names would be drawn randomly to determine speaker order.
~Questioners should be permitted to ask more than one question if during the course of the evening something needs further clarification, or something said prompts a new question.
~If someone on the panel is unable to provide the needed information on that evening, they should agree to promptly supply itand the paper should agree to publish it expeditiously.
~Any attempts to name-call, or otherwise make personal attacks, should be promptly shut down by the moderator.
Those are just suggestions off the top of my head, but the point is that no one should come away from the meeting shortchanged in any way. I feel sure that both Mr. Bartlett and Mr. Tota do not want to be associated with charges that they participated in a meeting that was somehow less than fair and open. And, to all involved—be sure to invite your US Representatives and Senators as well as Idaho legislatorsto this very important opportunity to get answers about how the US State Department and the Office of Refugee Resettlement run the program in Idaho (along with a resettlement agency) and how they can assure you that refugees will not financially strap the community or risk its security.
By the way, Idaho legislators should be especially interested because at this time Idaho is a Wilson-Fish statewhich means the Mr. Bartlett, Mr. Tota and the primary contractor—the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (with another non-profit, Jannus Inc.,which I forgot earlier)—call all the shots for Idaho and elected officials have virtually no say about who comes, how many and what state social services are used for refugees. Click herefor everything we have ever written on Twin Falls. Go here for more on Lawrence Bartlett, and herefor Ken Tota.
