Month: January 2008

UN wants $261 million from US in 2008 for Iraqi refugees

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Your tax dollars: 

I guess Will can call me an evil and stingy person, but we send our men and women to fight and die for Iraq’s freedom, and their people run and hide in surrounding countries and then we pay for that too.   Except for the truly persecuted Christians, the rest should just go home and tell the insurgents to get out.   As a matter of fact, I wonder how many would flee if it weren’t for the United Nations holding out to them the alluring possibility of life in the West through resettlement.

GENEVA, January 8 (UNHCR) – The UN refugee agency on Tuesday launched an appeal for US$261 million to fund its operations this year on behalf of hundreds of thousands of those uprooted by the conflict in Iraq.

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Chief UNHCR spokesman Ron Redmond told journalists in Geneva that the Iraq Situation Supplementary Appeal covered programmes for many of the 2.2 million Iraqis displaced within Iraq, as well as the 2 million who have fled to other countries in the region, including Syria, Jordan, Iran, Egypt, Lebanon, Turkey and several of the Gulf States. The agency also cares for some 41,000 non-Iraqi refugees in Iraq, including Palestinians, Iranians, Turks and others.

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Redmond also noted that UNHCR, which is funded primarily through voluntary contributions from governments, now has nearly 350 staff directly engaged in operations for Iraq and the surrounding region.

350 UN employees!  I wonder how much gravy is sloshing around in those salaries?    And then there are the Palestinians:

The appeal also makes special mention of the dire situation facing some 13,000 Palestinian refugees in Iraq, many of whom have been targeted by armed groups and who have been unable to find sanctuary in other countries. “UNHCR will continue to seek solutions for the Palestinians, including the possibility of resettlement for the most vulnerable,” Redmond stressed.

Back in October I posted on a Brookings Institution Study that said the Palestinians were in Iraq because they were favored by Saddam Hussein.  Could their association with Saddam be the reason they are targeted?  If you go back to that October report you will see there is a lot more to the story than poor suffering Iraqis running from violence.  Some of those Iraqis in Syria have been there for years, long before our arrival in Iraq, others are men who got out of Iraq when the surge began.

Steps to create a movement–#1 research

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Yesterday in a comment here in response to something Infinicat said, I said I would start putting some ideas out on what we need to do to bring about reform of legal immigration.  Our biggest handicap is that unfettered immigration has become such an entrenched part of American public policy, involving loads of money, paid lobbyists, volags (voluntary organizations), politicians on both sides of the aisle, big business benefits, politically correct media,  but not much for the ordinary citizen who pays for it in more ways than one; and, who must work on reforming it as volunteers who don’t have the luxury of spending whole days at it.

The first step in creating a successful movement is research and education.  We are well on our way with education thanks to the internet and blog proliferation.   But, now we need some hardcore research.   We need people to really begin documenting the problems with legal immigration and that means research on a very deep level using State Public Information laws and the Federal Freedom of Information Act and other types of document gathering.  Some national groups do a good job researching statistics etc. on a national level, Center for Immigration Studies comes to mind, but we need local documentation.  

And, then I’m asking all of you to start your own blogs.  Infinicat this means you too!   Don’t just rehash stuff in the news all the time, but start posting hardcore data—the kind of thing good investigative reporters used to do but don’t anymore except for a few exceptions like those at the Shelbyville Times-Gazette.   Just pick some aspect of this monstrous issue and start working on it!  Become an expert!

Believe me, blogs are free and easy to do!  If you don’t want to do it on your own then help us research and we’ll post it.  But, if you had your own blog it will have greater impact.  Contact me, I have loads of ideas on what needs to be researched!   Help move blogging to another level!   You will be absolutely amazed about how much you can move the political process with publication of documented facts.

P.S. to infinicat, I look forward to visiting your blog sometime soon!

Sauerbrey gets warm send off

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Asst. Sec. of State for Population, Refugees and Migration Ellen Sauerbrey was feted today with a good-bye party at the US State Department.    The ceremony included high praise from Sec. of State Condolezza Rice and Sauerbrey’s lobbying friends in the refugee industry.   Here Ken Bacon of Refugees International writes in glowing terms about the conservative MD Republican who ran a billion dollar (and growing!) agency of the Federal government.

Mrs. Sauerbrey held the post for two years and during that time worked hard to increase admission during a period of increased security screening and new laws that complicated refugee resettlement in the United States. A major accomplishment was increasing the number of refugees resettled in the U.S. to 48,000 in fiscal year 2007, which ended last Sept. 30, from 41,000 the year before.

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To do this, Mrs. Sauerbrey had to overcome an obstacle in new anti-terrorist laws–the USA Patriot Act and the REAL ID Act– called material support.

Kind of makes you shake your head, how did we get to the point of praising a conservative for bringing more refugees to America while lessening the security procedures? 

Iraqi refugee admissions down again

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Last week when the AP reported (and every news outlet in the world picked it up) that the Iraqi refugee admissions were down for the third straight month we didn’t  report on it.    Frankly, the news was ho-hum.  However, for readers at American Renaissance the news prompted some provacative comments.  Here is a sampling from three differant people (bracketed comments are mine!):

what a clever way to get your jihadi’s into america. have them pose as refugees. buy conveience stores [Hagerstown?]. send money back home and bring in family. i wonder how many white south africans we allow. [last I checked they aren’t among the refugees allowed in the U.S. Don’t you know white Christians are the persecutors not the persecuted.]

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The Iraqi refugees are arriving in Detroit, thanks to the U.N., the State Department and the Lutheran Church (refugee contracts get big taxpayers money, and the refugees get to bring over thousands of their distant relatives. The newspaper article states some Iraqi’s brought two wives. [those would not be the Christians]

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Lastly I do oppose relocating Iraqis in The USA because there are probably suicide bombers among those arriving. They should stay in their own country and rebuild it instead of coming here. [Thats what I’ve been saying all along]. If they come to The USA it’s just a matter of time before they bomb malls or burn synagogues. It only takes one idiot to destroy things.

I get the distinct impression that this issue is catching on.    Check out our Iraqi refugee category here, we have posted 72 times on this!

More thoughts on Lewiston “mad dog poster”

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

A few days ago I posted on the Mohammed poster in Lewiston, ME and I’m seeing this morning that it is quite a hot topic on other blogs.   Despite some criticism I got for saying people of good will should condemn this act, I’m sticking with that.  

Obviously, I see the enormous frustration building in small and medium sized American cities that are frankly being inundated with refugees and are not able to cope.  Either in some cases the new immigrants are bringing disease, or are unemployed and reaping welfare benefits, or are Muslims who are not attempting to assimilate, or there are just too many at once for communities that have no experience with immigration,  whatever the reason some citizens are being driven to take extreme measures to vent their frustration.

The fault for this lies with our federal government, the State Department, so-called “progressive” legislators like Sen. Ted Kennedy and others, Republicans in name only, and the volags (voluntary agencies) who benefit financially while breaking their arms patting themselves on the back for doing good.  The blame does not fall on the individual refugee who took advantage of this lax federal program and only gets guidance on how to be an American from some civil rights group or the local interfaith council, where demanding one’s rights seems to take precedence over blending in.

I don’t have a solution for the refugees already here, except to advise their handlers to start paying attention to the concerns of the local residents.     However, for those not yet here….. No one has ever really challenged the legal immigration industry so the waves will keep coming unless we get smart and get organized to reform immigration policy.  We must organize within our democratic process, not sit by and watch individual frustrated and angry citizens inflame already very tense cities.  Concerned citizens need to be given an alternative to counter-productive methods (like this mad dog poster) of getting the attention of elected officials.

Finally we must stop yakking on blogs, dissecting every word and having behind the scenes pseudo- intellectual debates and actually do something.  We must organize a political movement.   More later…