Month: August 2009

Sierra Club sounds downright gleeful about ‘global warming refugees’

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Last night I spent some time in a sort of stream of consciousness exercise that took me from the death of  Ted Kennedy (a wealthy man who liked to take your money and give it to the poor, but wasn’t interested in distributing his money directly to the poor immigrant), to the assasination of his brother by Jordanian immigrant Sirhan Sirhan, to Bill Ayers and Jeff Jones dedicating their Weatherunderground screed to Sirhan Sirhan (among others), to Jeff Jones and the Apollo Alliance funded by the Tides Foundation, to the Apollo Alliance writing the stimulus bill to help redistribute your wealth to their pet projects, to the SEIU and its connections to Apollo and Geroge Soros (who likes to create interlocking groups to fool the public), to supposed environmental organizations like the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC and its heiress president) that sit on the Apollo Alliance board, and the stream goes on.

Eventually I will tell you all those connections and how refugees and immigrants play into the whole tangled web to “change” America—really to bring down America as we know it.

This morning I just want to tell you about how the Sierra Club is in bed with unions and how they justify their open borders position and their union supporting position to members questioning what the heck they are doing.

Here is a link to a column by “Mr. Green” at Sierra magazine.  Note the first question from a reader on June 9 was about the Sierra Club in bed with unions (btw Sierra Club President, Carl Pope sits on the Apollo Alliance Board with the likes of SEIU, which I have previously told you is helping organize Somalis to disrupt work places).

Then in March another reader asks Mr. Green this question:

Hey Mr. Green,

Why does the Sierra Club refuse to take a stand on illegal migration and historically high legal immigration? The sheer number of immigrants is having a negative effect on the environment and the amount of resources consumed, not to mention the social costs. Why is the Club being politically correct when there is a clear relationship between population and environmental balance? –Michael in Ashburn, Virginia

Here is Mr. Green’s answer (non-answer!) where he tries to deflect the members attention by suggesting the member was a bad anti-immigrant person and then goes on to sound like he is actually pleased about the latest fad of the refugee industry—global warming refugees!

While some of my environmentally minded readers dread any reduction in procreation [Edit:  LOL! the Sierra Club is all about telling white people to stop having babies but I can’t wait to see them tell African immigrants, like the Somalis, to stop having 6 kids and more], which would also reduce the number of immigrants, others, like you, want to shut the immigrants out. I just hope you’re not in favor of that environmentally destructive boondoggle of a fence they’re building on our border with Mexico.

The simplest answer to your question about the Sierra Club’s immigration policy is that the Club’s members voted overwhelmingly some time ago to remain neutral on this issue. [Edit: It is a very long story about how the Sierra Club took millions of dollars in donations to shut them up on immigration, ant that is why Mr. Green isn’t telling this reader the full story.]  Many are convinced that it is more helpful in the long run to work to help change the sinister circumstances that drive so many people to immigrate, including poverty, lack of education, lack of women’s rights, and lack of family-planning options.

A less-known driver of immigration is environmental devastation, which has produced millions of refugees; they now number more than 10 million per year. By the year 2000, there were 25 million such refugees, actually higher than the number of people who had fled for political reasons. Among the environmentally related causes of displacement are floods, landslides, water shortages, and desertification caused by deforestation and overcultivation, not to mention climate change and the more intense devastation caused by the more intense storms brought on by global warming.

While most Americans have gone about their lives since the late 1960’s finding work, buying a home, raising a family and just taking care of life, a cabal of radical Leftists has been quietly putting together a new government structure that aims to wipe out borders, redistribute wealth, take large businesses (willingly it seems) under government control and to be run by a group of Ivy League so-called intellectuals who are really a bunch of  rich elitist snobs.

They’ve created a goliath!  They’ve got the Religious Left,  the mainstream media, environmental groups, open borders groups, powerful unions, businesses like Wal-mart and Microsoft, ethnic advocacy groups and the list goes on—arrayed against the so-called “mob” attending town halls and tea parties.  Have faith, just as David did, the little guy can still win in the end.

Industry news: Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services President to resign Tuesday

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Although this is probably not news for most insiders in the refugee resettlement industry, we just learned about it yesterday.    Ralston H. Deffenbaugh Jr who had been President of one of the largest of the monopolistic  Top Ten federal government contracting resettlement agencies since 1991 said back in April, here, that he was resigning with some gobbledegook about the intersection of  ‘one’s joy and the world’s need shifting.’   Huh?   Maybe he figured out that his agency has a terrible track record when it comes to caring for refugees it resettles and he wants out.  Who knows?

For whatever reason, it sounds like he is saying it stinks working at LIRS.

Ralston H. Deffenbaugh Jr., president of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIRS) since 1991, will resign from his post Sept. 1. According to an LIRS news release, Deffenbaugh, 57, said the “organization needs new gifts of leadership.”

“As LIRS president I have always understood myself as standing on the able, solid shoulders of all those who have gone before me,” Deffenbaugh said. “I believe that my gifts have been well used in my tenure at LIRS, that the agency has grown to a degree that no one could have imagined 18 years ago, and that it is now time for a new kind of imagination to light the way. I’ve long been influenced by the adage that our calling is the intersection between our joy and the world’s need. For me and for LIRS, that intersection has shifted.”

During his tenure, LIRS and its partners have resettled more than 100,000 refugees, many from Africa (including the “Lost Boys” from Sudan), Burma, and Bhutan. The organization has revived the international system of resettlement and care for unaccompanied refugee children through collaboration with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

Deffenbaugh helped form the Refugee Council USA*, which focuses on refugee protection, and served as its first chairperson from 2000 to 2001. He is the longest-serving head of LIRS since its founding in 1939.

LIRS was one of the five government contracting resettlement agencies in that White House meeting two weeks ago here.   LIRS has obviously joined up with powerful unions (SEIU among them!), big businesses looking to keep wages low, and advocacy groups wanting to wipe out our borders altogether.   Maybe this guy got a conscience. I know wishful thinking!

For more on egregious refugee care cases use our search function for ‘Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services’ and see how many times they have come up in the last couple of years.

*Refugee Council USA is a consortium of refugee industry groups that get together to multiply their power in Washington.  I wrote about them here when they sent a report to Obama asking him to double the number of refugees allowed to resettle in the US for 2010.   Of course at least half of those we are bringing now are unemployed and living on various forms of welfare.   By the way, it won’t be long before we know what the refugee ceiling for FY2010 will be when Obama sends his Presidential determinination letter to Congress.  The new fiscal year begins October 1.

No Kennedy in coming immigration battles

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Here is an article, to follow-up my post the other day, from the Christian Science Monitor that I’m posting because first it summarizes Senator Kennedy’s role in the immigration debate in this country for nearly 5 decades, something we all should know, and there are a couple of comments that I particularly agree with.

Here is how the article begins:

The next round of immigration reform promised by President Obama will be the first in more than 50 years that does not involve Sen. Edward Kennedy.

His record on the issue has quite literally changed the face of the nation.

From the 1965 overhaul that ended a system of national quotas to the failed drive launched in 2007 for comprehensive reform, Kennedy has been at the front lines making the case for a more open immigration system.

Read on and check out the comments.

Here is one from Bob I agree with.  We have written many times about how refugees are supported by the taxpayer while big businesses (like the meatpackers) employ them at wages below what they can live on.  Furthermore, I continue to be perplexed about the religious Left, eg Church World Service or the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, working hand in glove with giant corporations to deliver them cheap labor at the expense of poor American blacks and other blue collar workers.

Bob:

Open immigration policies combined with a welfare state results in corporations externalizing their costs to society. Ted Kennedy favored both. Because the costs of maintaining a new mouth to feed, cloth, shelter and education can be pushed on the taxpayer, a corporate business can be ‘profitable’ even though the inputs of their process (when you include the FULL cost of the new immigrant) exceed the value of the output, in other words, economically degenerate.

It’s no coincidence that a country that favors economically degenerate policies is going bankrupt, and has to borow more and more to keep afloat.

Ted Kennedy’s legacy is an elite smuggly patting itself on the back in gated communities like Hyanisport, while the general welfare of the average citizen slips ever toward a 3rd world existence.

Herman King, another commenter, also raises the elitism point.

Why in the world would any decent person mourn the coward of Chappaquiddick, the man who did everything he could to turn this nation into a third world country while he and his rich clan lived safely in gated communities?The fawning over Kennedy turned my stomach.

I’m wondering if it’s safe to turn the TV on yet tonight.

Immigration Daily is at it again!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Those twentysomethings over at Immigration Daily still think their old tactics work—the name calling.  What did Glenn Beck say yesterday, keep bringing out the facts and stand up to them!  Sticks and stones and so forth!

Editorials like this one just make me laugh.  The Open Borders/One Worlders can throw tantrums like this one, but it doesn’t work anymore.  Oh, it might work on a few wussy Members of Congress, but not on the millions of Americans who have had it with the big businesses/unions/and church groups working side by side to destroy our borders and exploit immigrants for their own selfish purposes and hurt regular middle and lower income Americans while they are at it.

Here is some of the rant: 

130 pro-immigration advocates were recently invited to the White House for a meeting with Secretary Napolitano, where President Obama made a surprise, albeit brief, appearance. The anti-immigrationists were not invited.

I told you about this meeting, here, a couple of weeks ago.  Immigration Daily did us a great service by saying that no one concerned with border security was in attendance, that this is the open borders lobby getting ready for the next big push.   It let us see clearly the cabal of unions, big businesses, advocacy groups and churches aligned against average Americans.

I could comment on every line of the rant, but haven’t the time.  Here is one line that really made me laugh:

And here we use the term “cutting edge” pejoratively (we do not suggest that it is politically improper to oppose a President, only that the form of opposition selected by the antis is improper).

Oh my gosh, was this writer living in a bubble for the last eight years and missed the vile attacks on George Bush.  I attended some ‘support the troops’ rallies in Washington against the Far Left (the same people working to open our borders) and it was an eye-opener to witness the meanness of the Left and their anarchist friends.  No peace and love from them.

Oh, and here we go, the big bad “R” word.  Now I am rolling on the floor laughing.

The unifying theme behind the anti-immigrationists and the anti-Obamites is the same – racism.

You know, I actually love it when someone calls names—birthers, racists, haters, and the list goes on, you know, xenophobes, islamophobes and so forth.  Keep it up!

High percentage of refugees entering Australia are sick

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This is not news to us.  Although it’s been awhile since we have posted on the issue of refugees entering the US with major diseases (see our Health issues category for lots of those stories) I suspect that refugees with communicable diseases like TB and HIV Aids are coming into the US daily.

So, for our Australian readers you might want to check out this story about a new report on the high numbers of sick, mostly Africans, entering Australia.

There is a high prevalence of treatable but asymptomatic diseases in African refugee children arriving to Australia, and few are screened despite having already had contact with primary care, new Australian research suggests.

A study of 240 newly arrived refugee children by Sydney’s Children Hospital at Westmead found a high prevalence of asymptomatic TB, schistosomiasis, malaria and hepatitis B.

Disease prevalence was highest in refugees from Africa, who now comprise three-quarters of Australia’s annual humanitarian resettlement, the study in the Journal of Paediatrics and Child Health (online 20 August) found.

[…..] 

In 2006, 40% of the 12,700 refugees granted resettlement visas in Australia settled in the Sydney metropolitan area, but it is estimated that only one in five access specialised refugee health services.

Note that the concern is not about how many are sick and possibly should be turned away, its just how many are not identified before entering the country.