Federal grants go to religious groups to help immigrants become citizens

Your tax dollars:

What did I tell you a few hours ago, the reason religious organizations don’t listen to logical arguments from people like Roy Beck about how excessive immigration hurts Americans is because they receive enormous amounts of federal money.   And, they have a political agenda—getting more voters for the Far Left.  Here is an AP story that illustrates my point beautifully:

DALLAS — Federal immigration officials on Thursday awarded a Dallas group and 12 other organizations around the country $1.2 million in grants to help legal residents become U.S. citizens.

Citizenship and Immigration Services awarded $100,000 to Catholic Charities Immigration and Legal Services. It wasn’t immediately clear how much money was awarded to the other groups, but the agency said they could apply for up to $100,000.

If good Christian and Jewish people want to help immigrants become citizens couldn’t they do it on a voluntary basis?   Silly me! Not much chance of that once they have gotten on the taxpayer funded gravy train there is no incentive to do what once was truly an act of charity—giving one’s time for free.

The agency said the money goes to increase the number of people served by programs that help green card holders improve their English skills, learn about U.S. history and government, and prepare for the naturalization process.

The funds can only be used to provide direct services to immigrants with legal status in the country.

Other recipients include the Association House of Chicago; Central American Resource Center in Los Angeles; Federation Employment and Guidance Service Inc. in New York; International Institute of St. Louis; and the International Rescue Committee Inc. in San Diego.

Grants also went to the Jewish Family and Children’s Services in San Francisco; Jewish Vocational Service of MetroWest Inc. in New Jersey; Lutheran Family Services in the Carolinas, based in North Carolina; OneAmerica in Seattle; Progreso Latino in Rhode Island; Saint Mark Roman Catholic Parish in Massachusetts; and Young Women’s Christian Association in Oklahoma.

More on the strategy of flooding America with welfare recipients

While I was away this past week, reader Paul sent this link to a piece by John Fund in the Wall Street Journal.  I was reminded of it when I wrote the previous post in which I touched on this topic.   It looks like we all might have to get Wade Rathke’s new book—“Citizen Wealth.”   This is what Fund said:

Mr. Rathke now the chief organizer of a New Orleans-based local of the SEIU, a key Acorn ally is out with a new book, “Citizen Wealth,” in which he touts a vision of “maximum eligible participation” by Americans in welfare programs as a way to force radical social change.

Bring in the immigrants!  The more  the merrier when it comes to people on welfare.

See Rathke’s bio here.  See more juicy details here at Discover the Networks.

To Roy Beck: it is money and power driving the Religious Left

Update:  Here is an article I found shortly after writing this post that makes my point about money and political power ie. voters.

 

I just came across this article by Roy Beck at NumbersUSA from a few days ago. Beck says in his post that he has tried to reach out to the Religious Left (my label, not his) about his and his group’s perspective on immigration, but to no avail.

This week the Open Borders religious groups held a political event, calling it a prayer vigil to protest in support of amnesty for illegal aliens and to encourage more immigration to the US and to apparently denigrate opponents.

Here is what Mr. Beck said:

The immigration debate often brings out the worst in people, but it still is disappointing to see the sad display by a number of bishops and other religious leaders yesterday outside the Capitol. They used their prayer vigil to spew hatred at their fellow Christians and other Americans working to reduce immigration in order to help the most vulnerable members of our society. 

[…..]

I have tried for years to meet with the national religious leaders to discuss the principles involved in the immigration debate — and maybe even to find some common ground. But I have been continually rebuffed. Most of these national religious bodies have now passed resolutions supporting “comprehensive immigration reform” (amnesty and green card increases) without ever allowing themselves to hear our side of the issue. 

And now they have decided to accept the hateful rhetoric and smears of the Southern Poverty Law Center as gospel truth. It is clear that these religious leaders regard all of us immigration-reductionists as their enemy. But while Jesus taught that people should love their enemies, these religious leaders have decided to bear false witness against us.

Mr. Beck, I respectfully urge you to watch Glenn Beck if you aren’t already.  Just as ACORN* hid its corruption and political power agenda under a patina of humanitarianism, so too do most of the groups on the Religious Left.   Immigrants serve several purposes for organizations such as the US Conference of Catholic Bishops; they are a source of enormous federal funding for these “religious” groups and the immigrants  (something we have demonstrated many times on these pages) can generally be counted on to vote for far left candidates.  It is all about money and political power and that is why they don’t listen to your logical arguments about how their agenda shows no regard or charitable concern for Americans they hurt.

Far left (communist, socialist, statist, whatever you want to call them) political activists involved with foundations have long since infiltrated and indoctrinated religious groups.  I saw it years ago when for instance the Pew Charitable Trusts created its “Greening of the Churches” initiative.  It was a cynincal ploy to reach people using an issue that those with goals to change America and make it a socialist country knew would appeal to decent caring church-going people.  They use the same strategy with the immigration issue.

Glenn Beck has been bit by bit unraveling the deep tentacles of the Far Left.  One basic tenant of their agenda involves the flooding of America with welfare recipients in order to bring down our present form of government.  The thinking for this mechanism for ‘changing’ America comes from Columbia University sociology professors Cloward and Piven.  We recently discussed their strategy here.

My suggestion Mr. Beck is to stop worrying about reaching religious leaders on the Left.  You need to get past the phony Christian charity image they have carefully crafted, and you might better be able to reach their parishoners and the general public with your message by working to expose how taxpayer funds are going to promote the political agenda of these supposedly charitable religious groups.

*Follow-up post here.

Note on the Southern Poverty Law Center:  I’m told that yesterday Rush Limbaugh again mentioned Mark Potok of the SPLC and as a result we were flooded with visitors to this old post of mine from February about how Potok uses Alinsky’s rules to smear people.

Second anniversary of Hagerstown public meeting on refugees

Two years ago today a public meeting on refugees was held in our county seat, Hagerstown, MD.  We actually have a whole category for posts about it entitled September forum here (you may also need to use our search function for ‘Hagerstown’ to get the full story).    It was the culmination, as it turned out, of about a year of political turmoil about refugees brought to Hagerstown.   I’ve been thinking about that meeting recently as I prepare to give a talk about it at an upcoming meeting in Washington.

I’m not going to rehash the story except to say that the Virginia Council of Churches (VCC)  had quietly begun resettling refugees in our rural county, and our local political leaders had no clue about what was going on.  Some of us were initially open-minded, but wanted to understand how the program worked.  How was it that a non-profit group (from another state!) could just decide to add more poverty to the poverty we already had?  Who was going to take care of the refugees?  Where would they work?  Would the cost of adding to the schools fall on the county (unfunded mandates issue)?  Those were the sorts of questions we wanted to have answered.  So we supported the idea of holding a public meeting so that officials from Washington, the state of Maryland and the non-profit groups could explain it all.

The public meeting happened on September 19th, 2007.  The US State Department sent two women who run the program in DC, the Maryland office that handles refugee issues participated as did Church World Service (one of the top ten government contractors) as well as its subcontractor Virginia Council of Churches—a group almost entirely funded with tax dollars.  A couple hundred residents of Washington County attended.

You can read all about what happened in the posts in the September forum category, but the gist of what happened is that many of us felt we did not hear straight answers and the worst part was that the citizens were treated to a condescending tone from several speakers who felt the need to waste time and remind us that we were all immigrants once.   The sort of questions I wanted answered are listed in this post.  These questions were ones I wanted our local paper, the Herald Mail, to answer for the public.  They didn’t, so we have been writing this blog ever since.

The refugee resettlement program of the US State Department needs to be reformed.  We will just keep hammering away until it is.  I’m not saying there is corruption in the program as deep and profound as the one now being exposed with ACORN, but I believe very strongly that when non-profit groups continue to reach into the pockets of taxpayers there is a very real possibility that waste, fraud and abuse (abuse possibly even of the refugees themselves) is going to happen. 

I encourage all of you in communities receiving refugees or about to receive refugees to do research, ask questions and demand a public meeting so that officials can inform everyone of what is happening to your community.  If it’s a good program it will stand up to public scrutiny!

So, what happened in Hagerstown after that public meeting where many citizens went away even more annoyed?  Ten days later the announcement was made that the Virginia Council of Churches would be returning to Virginia and more refugees would not be brought to Hagerstown.  Their parting shot to our city was that we were “unwelcoming.”    But, there was a lot more to the story and it’s my contention that the State Department and Church World Service were unhappy with how VCC didn’t take very good care of the refugees they brought to Hagerstown in the first place and that they had royally screwed up the public relations aspect of the program.

Again, the moral of the story is, if refugee resettlement is good for your town or city those promoting it must tell the public ALL THE FACTS and then let the citizens decide, afterall that is how good government is supposed to work!