Day: August 20, 2009

It’s baaaack! White House prepping for Comprehensive Immigration Reform (aka Amnesty)

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update August 29th:  More from Immigration Daily here.  LOL!  The Hill had an article here, on this meeting as well.

Hoping I suppose for some “political manna,” the starving Obama White House hasn’t even nailed down Health Care Reform and they are moving briskly ahead, lining up their immigration industry lobbyists, for the next big push on Amnesty.

Here are the twentysomethings at the Immigration Daily running their mouths and gloating about the big players invited to the White House today for a preparatory meeting with Ms. Janet Rino (oops!  Napolitano).

At the invitation of the Obama administration, 130 representatives of law enforcement, business, labor, religious and advocacy groups were at the White House today. The meeting was addressed by DHS Secretary Napolitano (the full list of invitees and government representatives can be seen here). Notably absent were the rightwing Republican racist rabble rousers (sorry, we could not resist the alliteration). 

In the long view of history [from a twentysomething with a short view, sorry I couldn’t resist], immigration reform will likely be a more profound political milestone than health care reform, so if those in charge in the Obama administration deftly handle the immigration issue in the weeks and months to come, they should expect political manna for their side. The immigration community continues to await the beginning of markups, while realizing that a swift legislative process may require a short delay before the start.

Since they have so conveniently pointed out that no “Rightwing Republican racist rabble rousers” were present, the list provided by the Department of Homeland Security for the meeting clearly tells us who will be working FOR Amnesty for illegals and against average Americans during this deep recession.

Janet Napolitano tells us she looks forward to working with the “stakeholders.”  I guess that would be the businesses that want cheap labor and unions that want members. 

“Today’s meeting on comprehensive immigration reform was an important opportunity to hear from stakeholders and build on the significant time I’ve spent on the Hill meeting with members of Congress on this critical subject. I look forward to working with President Obama, my colleagues in Congress and representatives from law enforcement, business, labor organizations, the interfaith community, advocacy groups and others as we work on this important issue.”

I’m going to post the whole list just in case they have second thoughts about making themselves such easy targets and DHS takes this down.  Know your enemy!

AFL CIO, Paul Almeida
AFL CIO, Ana Avendano
AFL CIO, Arlene Baker
Agriculture Coalition for Immigration Reform, Monte Lake
American Civil Liberties Union, Chris Calabrese
America’s Voice, Frank Sharry
American Farm Bureau, Ron Gaskill
American Federation of Government Employees, AFL-CIO, T.J. Donner
American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, Paul Booth
American Immigration Lawyers Association, Crystal Williams
American Jewish Committee, Chelsea Hanson
American Meat Institute, J. Patrick Boyle
Arizona Latino Commission, Eve Nunez
Asian American Justice Center, Karen Narasaki
Associated General Contractors, Katherine Knott
Building and Construction Trades Department, AFL-CIO, Robert Pleasure
Casa de Maryland, Gustavo Andrade
Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Mark Franken
Cato Institute, Dan Griswold
Center for American Progress, Angela Kelley
Center for Community Change, Gabe Gonzalez
Change to Win, Anna Burger
Christians for Comprehensive Immigration Reform, Allison Johnson
*Church World Service, Jen Smyers
Citigroup, Paul Thornell
Compete America, Rebecca Peters
Compete America, Bo Cooper
Esperanza USA, Mary Clark
Essential Worker Coalition, Laura Reiff
Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, Jon Adler
*Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society/Interfaith Immigration Coalition, Mark Hetfield
Hewlett Packard, Gina Bancroft
Immigration Equality, Julie Kruse
Immigration Policy Center, Mary Giovagnoli
Information Technology Industry Council, Dean Garfield
Intel, Ryan Triplette
Interfaith Worker Justice, Kristin Kumpf
International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Terry Yellig
International Brotherhood of Teamsters, John Coli
International Chiefs of Police, Russell Laine
International Federation of Professional & Technical Engineers, Paul Shearon
International Union of Bricklayers and Allied Craft workers, James Boland
Irish Apostolate, Geri Garvey
Jesuit Refugee Service, Shaina Aber
Laborers’ International Union of North America, Bevin Albertani
League of United Latin American Citizens, Rosa Rosales
Legal Momentum, Lisalyn Raquel Jacobs
*Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services, Leslie Velez
Major City Chiefs, Dean Keuter
McDonalds, Bo Bryant
Mennonite Central Committee, Tammy Alexander
Mexican American Legal Defense Fund, Dini Karasik
Microsoft, Bill Kamela
Migration Policy Institute, Marc Rosenblum
National Association of Asian Law Enforcement Commanders, John Lee
National Association of Evangelicals, Galen Carey
National Association of Homebuilders, Jenna Hamilton
National Association of Police Organizations, Andrea Mournighan
National Baptist Convention, Rev. L.B. West
National Council of Jewish Women, Elissa Froman
National Council of La Raza, Clarissa Martinez
National Day Laborers Network, Chris Newman
National Electrical Contractors of America, John Grau
National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, Rev. Dr. Angel Nunez
National Immigration Forum, Jeanne Butterfield
National Immigration Forum, Ali Noorani
National Immigration Law Center, Marielena Hincapie
National Korean American Service & Educational Consortium, Eun Sook Lee
National Latino Peace Officers Association, Arturo Venegas
National League of Cities, Ricardo Gambetta
National Restaurant Association, Beth Johnson
National Sheriffs Association, Ann Yom
National Urban League, Valerie Wilson
New Democratic Network, Simon Rosenberg
Oracle, Dejan Pavlovic
PICO National Network, Jared Rivera
Police Executive Research Foundation, Chuck Wexler
Police Foundation, Hubert Williams
Presbyterian Church USA, Julia Thorne
Rights Working Group, Jumana Musa
Service Employees International Union, Eliseo Medina
Sheet Metal Workers International Association, Marc Norberg
Sisters of Mercy, Regina McKillip
Society for Human Resource Management, Mike Aitken
Sojourners, Rev. Jim Wallis
South Asian American Leading Together, Deepa Iyer
Southeast Asia Resource Action Center, Helly Lee
Tech America, Jeff Lande
Tyson, Nora Venegas
U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Angelo Amador
*U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Ryan Dwyer
U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, David Ferreira
UNITE HERE, Brenda Carter
United Farm Workers, Arturo Rodriguez
United Food and Commercial Workers, Joe Hansen
University of Texas, Dr. Ray Marshall
Wal-Mart, Adam Hemphill
*World Relief, Jenny Hwang

* Those marked with an asterisk are government contractors that resettle refugees.  Since legal refugees are having such a difficult time finding employment I continue to be amazed that these resettlement agencies persist in lobbying for amnesty which will only make it harder for refugees to find work.

Caldwell’s book might not be worth reading afterall

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update:  Reader Paul tells  me I messed up!   I misread Taylor’s article and apparently he meant there was only a “pamphlet’s worth” of material on how Muslim immigration to Europe is applicable to the US.   I still draw the same conclusion. I have read so much about the problems in Europe over the last few years, I don’t really need to read about how it doesn’t apply to the US with the implication then that we will be just fine.

Jared Taylor, writing at VDARE tells us to read the “insightful” book that everyone is talking about by Christopher Caldwell ( “Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam and the West”),  but not to read the pamphlet (there was no actual pamphlet, I stand corrected).

Christopher Caldwell, who writes for The Weekly Standard and The Financial Times, has written Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West, a marvelously insightful and even courageous book about Muslim immigration to Europe. Unfortunately, Mr. Caldwell did not stop there. He included a pamphlet’s worth of foolish optimism about immigration to the United States—so foolish that it is hard to believe the same man who so neatly dissects the delusions and weaknesses of Europeans does not realize he is also describing American policy-makers.

Read the book—ignore the pamphlet. 

As his title itself makes clear, Caldwell believes Europe is in a revolution in which nothing less that the survival of the West is at stake. In what is the book’s most memorable passage, he asks “whether you can have the same Europe with different people” and tells us “the answer is no”.

What good is it to write about the horrors of  uncontrolled Muslim immigration in Europe and then write that, well, the US is different, it won’t happen to us!   It will if we don’t acknowledge it!  That is what I was trying to say at this post a couple of days ago when I noted the criticism of Mark Steyn, an important  and respected conservative voice, who writes about European Islamic immigration and the religious supremacism that follows in its wake, and then never says how we can deal with the same thing happening to America, except to make more babies (funny, but a rather useless admonition).

I, for one, have no interest in an intellectual exercise about Europe’s demise if it has no applicability to us.   That’s what is wrong with most conservatives–especially the inside the beltway variety.  They want to yak and intellectualize and seem to be loathe to take action—that’s why these Tea Party people are such a breath of fresh air!

Bringing on the war of the titans! Center for Immigration Studies will address environment vs. immigration next week

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

As a political junky, to me this is one of the most interesting coming political clashes (war really!) that I look forward to watching.  It is inevitable that honest environmentalists (as opposed to leftwing Soros-style-control-freak environmentalists) are headed to a major clash with Leftwing (use the immigrants as pawns to bring about socialism) open borders advocates.   The Left will be fighting the Left—I love it!

I’m a Yale-educated (Yale School of Forestry) environmentalist by training , something I don’t often admit because some time along about in the 1970’s people who really cared about the environment and open space and preserving nature were run out of the movement by powerful people and foundations with big bucks who saw the environment as one more way to gain control over people’s lives, to use the environment and people’s love for it as a stick to bring about greater consolidation and government control primarily at the federal level.   I wanted nothing to do with it.  By the way, the historical roots of environmentalism were not firmly planted in the Left until the late 1960’s and early 70’s.

About the same time, those very Leftwing foundations and funders, people like Soros, and foundations like the Tides Foundation, and a whole host of others figured out that they needed to get more federal control by importing millions of immigrants—that would be the poor and angry needed to fuel the war of the “Have-nots” vs. the “Haves” that Saul Alinsky told them were needed to bring about change.

Those two goals, protecting the enviroment and flooding the country with poor people are mutually exclusive and will one day, hopefully soon, bring about a war of the titans within the American Left.

The Center for Immigration Studies appears to be itching for the conflict to commence with its panel discussion next week in Washington, DC. entitled “Immigration, Population, and the Environment: Experts to Debate Impact of Current Policies.”

WASHINGTON (August 19, 2009) – It is well-documented that current U.S. immigration policies will increase America’s population by about 100 million people over the next half-century. Past attempts to restructure the federal immigration program have often included debates on education, assimilation, health care, labor, and many other issues. But the environmental impact of immigration-driven population growth is usually missing from the discussion, despite the fact that environmental concerns are high on the Obama Administration’s priority list.

Be sure to check out all the information on who will speak and especially read this report  (The Environmental Argument for Reducing Immigration) put out by CIS in June.

I’ve thought for a long time that there needs to be a new kind of environmental movement, not corrupted by the far Left and not geared to top-down control from the Federal government.   Maybe the time has come.

As for the question of where Obama will be, if he had to make a choice, I’ll wager he will pick continuing high immigration over environmental protection because the immigrants are needed for the Alinsky strategy to work and to bring us closer to a borderless world.  Up until now he hasn’t had to choose because mainstream environmental groups have been scared into silence (or their silence was bought) on the whole immigration issue.

Wouldn’t it be fun to see Obama lose the environmentalists along with those senior citizens he is losing over government health care.

More on Iraqi Palestinians and how Arab countries don’t help them

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I have so much backed up to write about, I’m just going to have to put up a few posts and not say much (maybe that is a good thing!).  Here is one from a blog called ‘Elder of Ziyon’ about how the UNRWA (UN Relief and Works Agency), the special agency set up just to oversee Palestinian refugees, isn’t doing its job.  This post is entitled, “UNHCR decreases real refugees, UNRWA increases fake ones.” 

Incidentally we might argue that UNHCR (UN High Commissioner for Refugees) isn’t doing such a hot job either.

Here is an archive for all of our previous posts on UNRWA.

More information literally moments later!  I had just posted this when this appeared in my in-box, it’s an economic analysis of the lives of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza showing that they are better off there than in most any other country in the Arab world!

How many Iraqi refugees will come to the US in FY 2010?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Duhhhh!  We don’t know, so says Eric P. Schwartz at the US State Department.    As we speak, the Office of Population Refugees and Migration (PRM) in the US State Department is haggling, probably with Ms  Power in the White House, and trying to decide just how many refugees President Obama will be putting in his FY2010 Determination Letter  to Congress due out by October 1st.  

Because the press is so fixated on the Iraqi refugee numbers and how many will be resettled in the US, here is an exchange between the head honcho of PRM and a reporter dancing around the subject.  Either Schwartz really doesn’t know because it is now out of the State Department’s hands and in the black hole at the White House, or he is determined not to tell the press where they stand on bringing more Iraqis to the US who can then complain about how the US treats them badly.

From a press conference at the US State Department on the newly created World Humanitarian Day (LOL) yesterday:

QUESTION: The 30,000 figure you mentioned for Iraq by the end of the fiscal year, that is since the war began, correct? Are you going to bring 30,000 in this year?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY SCHWARTZ: No, no, no. I think the numbers for fiscal year 2008 and 2009 probably get us around 30,000, but the overwhelming numbers who have come in through our resettlement program will have come in during that period. So if you take since the war began, we’re going to be, I think, over 30,000. How much higher than 30,000 I can’t tell you. We could come back to you on that.

QUESTION: Well, how about –

ASSISTANT SECRETARY SCHWARTZ: The numbers – let me – I think I may answer your next question. The numbers for fiscal year 2008, I think are on the order of about 13,000. I’m looking to my team here. And the numbers for fiscal year 2009 will get us – will probably be up to about 20,000. So you do the math. And that’s for those two years. In terms of prior years, the numbers are much, much lower, but I don’t have the specifics.

QUESTION: Sorry, do you have more?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY SCHWARTZ: No, no, I’ll just say if what I’ve told you —

QUESTION: I think that’s right. I mean, last – the – last year, they were looking at – I think the number was about 17 for this – for the fiscal year that ends on September 30th.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY SCHWARTZ: That’s right. We don’t have a final number, but we’re going to be at – we’ll be in that neighborhood and probably – I’m pretty confident we’ll be higher than 17. I don’t know whether we’ll be at 20, but we’ll be in that neighborhood.

QUESTION: Just to follow up – just – thanks. Just to follow up on Iraq, I think one of the complaints about – from refugee advocates and groups is that there hasn’t been enough done. I mean, it’s nice that you’ve resettled 30,000, but there’s still, you know, upwards of hundreds of thousands of displaced.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY SCHWARTZ: Absolutely.

QUESTION: And I’m wondering why, when you give this extra 160 million in support for humanitarian assistance, why there is no extra assistance for Iraq, and if you could talk about the scope of your programs that are going on right now.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY SCHWARTZ: Sure. First of all, I’ll have to get back to you to see whether any of this new announcement includes Iraq. But what I will say is in this fiscal year, we will have done by the end of this year over $350 million of support from – again, I’m going to have to double-check those numbers. If those numbers are very different than what I’ve just told you, we’ll get back to you. But I think that is the number, and it is a huge amount of support. And it’s both on – the vast majority of that is not directed toward resettlement, but rather assistance in place, because as I said before, resettlement in a large-scale displacement crisis, third-country resettlement will never be the answer for the majority of those who are suffering. So it has to be focused on assistance. And what we’ve done, oh, about a week or so ago, we announced the appointment of Samantha Power at the White House, who is going to coordinate – serve as a coordinator for our assistance to Iraq and our resettlement programs. And part of the reason that announcement was made was as a communication to the Government of Iraq how critically important this issue is to us.

The other “part of the reason” is that Ms. Czarina Power* will be making the decisions, not the State Department.   “Communication  to the Govt. of Iraq!”  What a joke!  It’s called consolidation of power in the White House and a slap-down to Hillary.

* I guess technically you can’t call her a czarina, but what is the female name for czar (just czar)?