More from Accuracy in Media about the tangled immigration role of the USCCB

11/15/2009 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I guess the evidence is mounting that the USCCB, probably the largest refugee resettlement federal contractor, has gone to bed with far leftwing operatives on the immigration issue. AIM is reporting now that George Soros is funding Catholic progressives and groups near and dear to the Bishops. You might want to see my earlier post on this subject where a reader swears up and down that the Bishops are politically conservative!

My contention is that any non-profit or church group that takes taxpayer funding is by definition not conservative and is in fact participating in the expansion of the role of the federal government.

The latest from AIM begins:

The critical role of the Catholic Church in passing national health care reform legislation is coming under serious media scrutiny. But the story has taken a strange turn. It has now been revealed that George Soros, the billionaire hedge fund operator and well-known atheist, has been pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into “progressive” Catholic groups that are significant players in the national debates over health care and immigration.　

[…]

An AIM investigation also finds, however, that Soros money has gone into the Catholic Legal Immigration Network (CLINIC), an organization established by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops back in 1988. It has received at least $530,000 from the Open Society Institute. [See my post on CLINIC, here]

The two issues merge in the fact that the Catholic Bishops are demanding that national health care legislation cover illegal aliens.

Read on, this article contains all the usual players we have been writing about this last year, including SEIU. See our Community destabilization category for more, here.

Then at the same time I came across AIM’s latest, I also found this article listing all the Far Left grantees of the Archdiocese of Chicago, here. More later on this, I’ve written about some groups listed here too, but gotta go for now.

Asst. Secretary for refugees says Iraq needs to do more for refugees

11/15/2009 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update November 20th: Schwartz confirms in Syria that we are taking at least 17,000 Iraqis this fiscal year. Mr. Schwartz, where will they work?

But, he also says we are planning on taking another 17,000 this fiscal year as well!

From AP:

BAGHDAD — The Iraqi government has taken strides to help refugees displaced by the violence in the country over recent years return home, but still “needs to do a heck of a lot more,” a U.S. official said Saturday.

Eric Schwartz, the assistant secretary of state for refugees, said Baghdad has proposed a 250 percent increase to the budget to assist refugees and plans to appoint a coordinator to help people move back home.

That we are helping to encourage Iraqis go home is good news. Schwartz is likely very well aware of the many Iraqis who have come to the US over the last year only to find they must live in substandard housing and go without meaningful work—in many cases no work at all. The Iraqi refugees have a different personality than say the Burmese we have been learning about in Bowling Green, because the Iraqis are willing to complain loudly to the press that they feel neglected. Some have even returned to the Middle East. See our Iraqi refugee category with 437 posts on the subject!

Nevertheless, Schwartz confirms that we are taking another whopping 17,000 Iraqis in FY2010 which began October 1st.

According to the United Nations, as of January 2009 there were an estimated 2 million Iraqi refugees in neighboring Jordan and Syria, and some 2.6 million people displaced within Iraq.

The U.S. was heavily criticized by those who felt it was taking in too few Iraqi refugees uprooted by the sectarian bloodletting that followed the U.S.-led 2003 invasion and ouster of Saddam Hussein.

But more than 30,000 Iraqis have moved to the U.S. since in the last two years as part of a United Nations resettlement program that started in 2007

Schwartz, who was in Baghdad for meetings with his Iraqi counterparts Saturday, said the U.S. plans to allow some 17,000 Iraqis refugees to settle in the U.S. next year. That number is roughly on par with the number resettled in 2009.

Iraqi boy, wise beyond his years!

We can’t save all the refugees in the world, so let me remind readers of what a wise Iraqi boy told a Tucson paper last year:

It is better to have 10 Iraqi refugees who are satisfied with their lives than having 100 angry ones with no life at all.

Got a refugee problem? Write to Eric Schwartz, here.

Won’t amnesty for illegal aliens hurt legal refugees?

11/15/2009 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

That is a question that has been bothering me for some time. We know for a fact (the IRC told us in ‘Refugee Horrors in Houston’) as few as 20% of the legal refugees entering the US are finding work in some areas of the country. So, if 12 million, or whatever the number is these days, workers are legalized overnight won’t that just add to an already huge pressure on legal immigrants (and Americans!) finding work? So why do the NON-PROFIT refugee resettlement agencies continue to lobby for amnesty?

An article about Homeland Security head honcho Janet Napolitano saying the Administration was ready to push Comprehensive Immigration Reform (Amnesty) on Friday got me thinking about this again.

The Obama administration expects Congress to begin moving to overhaul the nation’s immigration laws early next year, while improved border security and a drop in migration caused by the economic downturn make passage “far more attainable” than in 2007, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Friday.

“When Congress is ready to act, we will be ready to support them,” said Napolitano, President Obama’s “point-person” on immigration policy issues. “The first part of 2010, we will see legislation beginning to move,” she said.

Napolitano’s speech, delivered Friday morning at the liberal-leaning Center for American Progress, was aimed at Latino advocates who have bridled at her rhetorical emphasis on enforcement in her first 10 months in office, and expressed skepticism that Obama would fulfill a campaign pledge to push for a “comprehensive” package.

LOL! To learn more about he “liberal-leaning Center for American Progress” go here.

Huh? She says this is the time to work on this legislation because the job market is tight! So, we legalize overnight 12 million people and add more to the unemployment numbers? That’s a good plan? Makes me think that she too is an admirer of the Cloward-Piven strategy.

“We will never have fully effective law enforcement or national security as long as so many millions remain in the shadows,” Napolitano said.

At the same time, Napolitano sought to reframe the debate from past years, saying lawmakers’ earlier demands that the government improve “enforcement first” have been met, and arguing that the time to work on immigration issues is when a sluggish economy is dampening illegal migration, not when rapid job growth is fueling it.

Refugee resettlement contractors lobbying for Amnesty, why?

Now how can the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, perhaps the largest refugee resettlement contractor in the United States, be lobbying for more employment competition for the thousands of refugees they are contracted to care for who are living unemployed and in squalor in some cases. It makes no sense!

“The president and his administration need to make it clear that immigration reform is a priority and must be acted upon during this Congress,” said John Wester, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and bishop of the diocese of Salt Lake City. “Hopefully this is the beginning of a campaign by the administration to get legislation moving.”

I want to remind readers that the Obama Administration has taken the lead in pushing Amnesty, they are just making it look like they are leaving it to Congress (just as they did with health reform). Please note that in August Ms. Napolitano called all of the open borders groups and big businesses together at the White House to give them marching orders. Why are the USCCB, World Relief, and Church World Service to name a few, lobbying with big businesses that surely want to keep labor costs low by having a huge pool of workers available? Are they helping immigrants, especially refugees, or helping big business and big labor?

So what about groups like the Bowling Green International Center? In, without a doubt, the most read and inflamed debate we have had for awhile, here, I wonder how it is that this obviously ‘over-its-head’ refugee contractor could have justified organizing a demonstration and lobbying campaign in Bowling Green in 2006 to push for Amnesty.

… have a look at this Form 990 for 2006 where 87% of this group (whatever its name is) was funded by taxpayers. Yet, here they are involved in lobbying for an Amnesty for illegal aliens bill before Congress that year!

I honestly do not get the logic in this. The only thing that makes sense is that these supposedly non-profit, but largely funded by taxpayers (that includes the USCCB) groups, see this as a way of expanding their “businesses” supplying labor to big businesses (like the meatpackers!) and supposedly services to immigrants hidden from public scrutiny by a presumption of good intentions.

From homeless in Rochester to Somali jihad financier

11/14/2009 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update November 16th: More insight on this story from Jerry Gordon at New English Review, here.

Today comes news that the Somali arrested in the Netherlands this week and believed to be the recruiter and financier of the twenty-plus American Somali former refugees who returned to the Horn of Africa for Jihad training lived penniless in Rochester, MN. Really?

The arrest in the Netherlands of a Somali man with a Rochester connection is “heart-breaking” for local Somalis, said a local Somali community leader.

“It gives a bad image to our community,” said Abdifattah Abdinur of Rochester. “As American Somalis, we don’t condone any kind of violence or extremism, whether it’s here or in our country or back home. It’s heartbreaking to hear about these kinds of people.”

The Somali man arrested in the Netherlands, Mohamud Said Omar, 43, is accused of financing Islamic terrorists. One of his brothers, Mohamed Osman, 51, lives in Rochester.

Another brother, Abdullahi Said Omar of Minneapolis, said Mohamud Said Omar was so poor he couldn’t afford to bring his new wife from Somalia to the U.S.

Mohamed Osman said Mohamud Said Omar worked low-paying jobs to make ends meet and didn’t have enough money to send to terrorists.

“He was homeless, he didn’t even have a place to stay,” said Mohamed Osman. Both brothers said they feel Omar is innocent.

Investigators claim he bankrolled the purchase of weapons and recruited the youths. Guess he had a stash of cash from somewhere.

Mohamud Said Omar was arrested Sunday at an asylum seeker’s center near Amsterdam and is being held at the request of American authorities.

The arrest is related to the FBI’s investigation into the disappearance of up to 20 young Somali men who left the Twin Cities over the last two years for Somalia, presumed to have joined the terror group al-Shabaab.

Dutch prosecutors said U.S. investigators suspect him of bankrolling the purchase of weapons for Islamic militants and helping other Somalis travel to Somalia in 2007 and 2008.

I wrote about Rochester, MN a few weeks ago and predicted I would be hearing more from this “welcoming” city, here, and sure enough! Oh, by the way, I wonder if that nice lady promoting refugees for Catholic Charities in Rochester resettled this Somali “family?”

Note to new readers:

The US State Department has admitted over 80,000 Somali refugees to the US in the last 25 years and then last year had to suspend family reunification because widespread immigration fraud was revealed through DNA testing. That specific program has not yet been reopened, but thousands of Somalis continue to be resettled as I write this.

A reminder, how refugee resettlement should be done….

11/14/2009 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

….one family at a time!

Coincidentally I just came across a new post at Jeffrey Kirk’s blog, Refugee Resettlement Support, where his group is moving their Burmese refugee family again. I say coincidentally because one should contrast how Kirk’s folks in Wisconsin are caring for their family to this mass resettlement in Bowling Green, KY that has caused a furor here on RRW. In Bowling Green, hundreds of Burmese are unhappily living in apartment buildings under questionable conditions, resettled there by a government contractor—the Bowling Green International Center.