Month: June 2011

Did they tell Michelle about the “xenophobic” attacks in South Africa?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Yesterday Michelle Obama and the girls (literally wrapped in the South African flag) arrived in South Africa to get a first hand look and to pay tribute to the legacy of Nelson Mandela, here.

Saying that throwing off the white oppressors was President Obama’s first political cause, they paid homage to Mandela.

“After leaving here, she proceeded to make a brief courtesy call on former president Mandela,” said Achmat Dangor, the head of the foundation, calling the first lady “a lovely woman without any airs”.

Their visit added to the symbolism surrounding Obama’s journey, with America’s first black family in the White House meeting South Africa’s first black president.

President Barack Obama has called the anti-apartheid struggle his first political cause, and US officials say he has had periodic telephone contact with Mandela, who led the struggle against white-minority rule.

I bet they never told Michelle about the black on black and black on Asian crimes against immigrants to South Africa, here, just days before her arrival.  But, of course that wouldn’t fit into the media (and socialist) narrative about the “rainbow” nation.

Several Somali-owned shops in the South African town of Rothenberg have been attacked by local gangs, looting the properties and stealing cash, witnesses said Saturday.

Dahir Mohamed, a Somali trader and merchant, said that at least 10 shops were looted while three of them were set on fire after all the valuables and cash were taken.

“Fortunately, no Somali refugee was killed or hurt during Friday’s looting related incidents” Mohamed told Radio Mogadishu on Saturday morning, saying that all Somali shop owners and workers fled, fearing being killed or burned alive in their businesses.

He estimated that at least $2 million was taken. The shop owners called local police, Mohamed said, but did not receive any response.

He said that a Chinese businessman whose shop came under attack received an urgent response from the police. China has a diplomatic mission in South Africa while Somalia does not, Mohamed noted.

It is the second such attack in less than month. On May 11, more than 50 Somali-owned shops in the South African city of Port Elizabeth were destroyed and looted by local residents.

Type South Africa into our search function for lots more posts on the “xenophobic” South African majority population.

US Conference of Catholic Bishops push new refugee bill too

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Yesterday, I told you about Lutherans pushing a new refugee bill, today it’s the Catholics.  But, you see, if they don’t keep the refugees coming they will collapse financially—those lobby groups, the social justice gang, are nothing if they don’t have taxpayer funding.

From Catholic Culture:

The executive director of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Migration and Refugee Services is urging lawmakers to the support the Refugee Protection Act, which was recently introduced in the Senate.

“Without US leadership, the situation for the world’s 15 million refugees would be much worse,” said Johnny Young, who served as US ambassador to Sierra Leone (1989-92), Togo (1994-97), Bahrain (1997-2001), and Slovenia (2001-04). “A large number of refugees rescued by our nation are themselves victims of terror and are in need of protection from such threats.

One commenter chastised the Bishops for blurring the distinction between illegal aliens and refugees.  But what the commenter doesn’t know is that the USCCB and its various affiliates are also supporting illegal immigration and open borders.  No sense making a distinction when there isn’t one!

From unum:

It would be helpful if Mr. Young and the bishops would distinguish between their positions on refugees, those fleeing persecution, and illegal immigrants, those merely seeking to cross national borders for other reasons. By blurring the distinction between refugees and illegal immigrants, the USCCB is undermining the efforts of civil authorities to protect national borders. These are the same civil authorities that are supported by Church teaching.

‘unum’ might want to check out a couple of links:  here on the USCCB behind the ‘amnesty’ march in DC,  here on the USCCB at my other blog, here (the Religious Left Exposed) and here is an interesting report on how “progressive Marxists” have infiltrated the Catholic Church.

It’s time for good Lutherans and good Catholics to begin questioning their so-called “leadership!”

Lutheran Immigration will trot refugees to Washington tomorrow to lobby….

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

….for more goodies from the taxpayer!

I wonder who is paying all the airfare and hotel bills?  Could it be the US taxpayer (again)?

Here is the whole press release from the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services.*  (Sorry no time today to give you my thoughts on this.)

In honor of World Refugee Day, former refugees advocate on behalf of those in need of protection

WASHINGTON, June 20, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — In honor of World Refugee Day, a delegation of former refugees from across the country will gather this Wednesday, June 22 at the Nation’s capital to call on Congress and the Administration to remember the plight of the millions on the run from violence and persecution worldwide.

(Logo:  http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20110620/DC22416LOGO )

The delegation will urge members of Congress to pass the Refugee Protection Act of 2011. Introduced last week by Senator Leahy (D-VT) and Representative Lofgren (D-CA-16), this legislation would ensure that the United States continues the deeply-rooted tradition of protecting refugees, asylum seekers, children and other vulnerable newcomers. [It is all about bringing in more refugees and getting more money for it—ed]

“The U.S. refugee program is a critical component of our nation’s foreign policy and humanitarian response to the millions of vulnerable migrants worldwide who cannot return home,” said LIRS President and CEO Linda Hartke. “As the United States celebrates the 60th anniversary of the Refugee Convention, this year is a particularly opportune time to renew and improve the U.S. commitment to people fleeing persecution. There are no better voices to advocate for this renewal than former refugees who have experienced the healing, welcome, and protection of the U.S. resettlement program and are now community leaders.”

The Refugee Protection Act of 2011 would:

  • Help preserve family unity for children separated from their parents
  • Eliminate the unnecessary one-year filing deadline for asylum seekers to file their asylum applications
  • Update the U.S. refugee resettlement program and direct a study on its effectiveness at helping refugees achieve self-sufficiency.

(For more information on the Refugee Protection Act of 2011 click here.)

The delegation, comprised of former refugees from Eritrea, Liberia, Sudan, Cuba, Sierra Leone and Afghanistan, will be meeting with the Administration and members of Congress from 12:00pm-5pm. Audiovisual media of the visits will be available.

About Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service

LIRS welcomes refugees and migrants on behalf of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod and the Latvian Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. LIRS is nationally recognized for its leadership advocating with and on behalf of refugees, asylum seekers, unaccompanied children, immigrants in detention, families fractured by migration and other vulnerable populations, and for providing services to migrants through over 60 grassroots legal and social service partners across the United States.

Press Contact: Fabio Lomelino, Assistant Director for Media Relations, 410-230-2721, 443-478-6022.

* LIRS is one of the top federal government refugee contractors.  We have written much about them in recent years, please use our search function for more.  Here is just one recent post about LIRS putting refugees in slum apartments.

Readers:   Send this post to your Senators and Representatives so they know about LIRS!

Canada’s commitment to refugee protection waning (gee, I wonder why)

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

So says Canadian refugee activist and executive director of the Canadian Council for Refugees, Janet Dench, in response to the re-emergence of a bill to get at the problem of human smuggling—a reflection of a much enhanced concern among Canadians to slow the open door policies of former Canadian governments.  Bottomline, this story (this bill)  just highlights the growing angst western citizens have about what they see as a flood of needy and often unwilling or unable to assimilate third world immigrants to their neighborhoods.  The Canadian Council, by the way, is just one more NGO political activist group.

From the Ottawa Citizen:

One worlders always point to the “international legal obligations.”  But what about a country’s right to protect its sovereignty?

This week, the Conservatives made good on one of their election promises: to bring back Bill C-49, and to bring it back virtually unchanged.

The Preventing Human Smugglers from Abusing Canada’s Immigration System Act was first introduced in October, but didn’t make it to second reading before Parliament was dissolved for the spring election. At the time, what Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney called “strong but fair” remedies to reduce the number of people landing on Canada’s shores to claim refugee status were harshly criticized by opposition MPs and refugee advocates, who denounced the bill as an attack on refugee rights.

In particular, critics say the bill -now known as C-4 -contravenes the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and Canada’s obligations under the UN Convention on Refugees.

“It’s difficult to understand why the government would be proposing to bring this legislation back without change when it has been so widely condemned by legal experts as clearly in violation of our Charter and clearly in violation of international standards of human rights,” says Janet Dench, executive director of the Canadian Council for Refugees. “There’s no ambiguity about this. It does not conform to our international legal obligations.”

Preventing abuse of a generous immigration system!

“Canadians gave us a strong mandate to prevent the abuse of our generous immigration system,” Kenney said on re-introducing the bill Thursday. “Canadians have told us this abuse of our generosity is a real problem that must be stopped.”

Refugee advocates say it goes too far, and that the detention without judicial review for a year contravenes the Charter right -which applies to refugee claimants -to see a judge within 24 hours.

“The government describes it as being anti-smuggler, but the people who would suffer most are the refugees,” says Dench. “They would be detained for up to a year, and even those accepted as refugees would be held in suspended animation for five years without any right to travel, to reunify with family or get on with their lives.”  [In fact, the prospect of detention might well discourage the whole business of human smuggling—ed]

We are being taken for a ride and the refugee lobby is the driver!

Those objections [go back to the story, here, for those] don’t hold water with immigration system critics such as Martin Collacott, a former ambassador to Sri Lanka and one of the principals behind the new Centre for Immigration Policy Reform. Collacott sees Bill C-4 as a balanced effort to get at a real problem, and he’d like to see more of it.

“The problem is the people who use the services of smugglers are doing an end-run on the Canadian immigration system,” says Collacott. “We’re being taken for a ride and we’ve allowed it to happen because of a fairly active refugee lobby that argues we should keep our doors wide open.”

Dench says Canada’s commitment to refugee protection seems to be waning.

Readers, especially Canadian readers, check out the Centre for Immigration Policy Reform here.  Be sure to see this recent commentary:

A mawkish view of immigration overlooks the facts
By Patrick Grady and Herbert Grubel, Vancouver Sun
June 6, 2011

Related story perhaps:   According to CBC News, here, the City of Ottawa is putting in place a new plan to try to integrate immigrants (they know they have a problem!).

For more on refugee problems in Canada, visit our category on Canada, here, where we have 68 posts archived.

Tennessee refugee agency running out of your money on eve of World Refugee Day

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

World Refugee Day is tomorrow in case you didn’t catch those expensive-looking advertisements from the UNHCR on TV.

It’s a useful news hook for a story about Bridge Resettlement Services in Tennessee and a charity event they are putting on because they are running out of taxpayer money as the ponzi scheme that is refugee resettlement collapses.

What do I mean by that?  The agencies,  like Bridge (a subcontractor of a big kahoona federal contractor–Church World Service) are paid by the head to resettle refugees and when the flow is slowed as it is right now, and they still have previously resettled refugees to care for (while new money isn’t coming in) the ponzi scheme collapses.  Remember how Bernie Madoff paid off his older clients with the new clients money, but never really invested anything, well that is sort of how this works.

So here is the story from Metro Pulse in Knoxville:

Since 1982, the unusual organization, which combines federal grants with mostly church-based volunteer efforts, has resettled hundreds of approved refugees in the Knoxville area. Most who are granted asylum by the U.S. government are victims of war or severe oppression. The majority of the immigrants Bridge has worked with lately are Iraqis, but the organization has also established colonies of Burmese, Rwandans, Ethiopians, Cubans, and others. Knoxville has recently welcomed a significant population of refugees from the tiny, extremely poor African nation of Burundi.

Paid by the head?  Yes! You see, they say so right here:

Bridge’s federal grant money is tied to the number of refugees allocated to Knoxville. That number had been growing until recently, but because of a new security protocol instituted this year, the paperwork involved in approving refugees has slowed—and so, temporarily, has the organization’s revenue. Bridge got only 14 refugees to process this past April, just under a third as many as arrived the previous April, and therefore much less federal funding allocated. Though Bridge has fewer incoming refugees this summer, they’re still dealing with the settlers they’ve taken on. They still have administrative costs to keep up with, and need to make up for what they believe to be a temporary gap.

When the refugee program was first debated, passed Congress and signed into law (Ted Kennedy/Joe Biden/Jimmy Carter) in 1980 it was envisioned that these non-profit groups would be in a public-private partnership with governement, but as it is freely admitted below, Bridge gets 95% of its funding from you!

Jennifer Cornwell is director of the organization, based on Middlebrook Pike in West Knoxville. It employs a staff of eight but relies heavily on as many as 100 local volunteers, who teach English or help with critical transportation. Local churches help sponsor some refugee families, Cornwell says, but about 95 percent of their funding comes from the federal refugee-resettlement programs.

So next time you think, aren’t these church folks so nice to do this, remember you foot the bill!

Founded in 1982, Bridge works with both the government and Church World Service and Episcopal Migration Ministries. Local churches involved also include Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian congregations.

Bridge:  we especially like Iraqis!

Decisions on who comes to Knoxville are made by federal refugee-resettlement programs, and are based on factors including cost of living and employment opportunities, but especially on the populations already here. Knoxville is already home to a large enough population of Iraqis that new refugees can make connections with them and find their way around; with Bridge’s help, 153 more Iraqis joined them last year.

Filing a lawsuit and blocking the FBI

We know how much Bridge likes Iraqis!  One of the earliest posts I wrote at RRW in 2007 was about how Bridge joined a lawsuit with CAIR and the ACLU to stop the FBI from interviewing some Iraqis the feds were concerned about, here.    In light of what just happened in neighboring Kentucky (Iraqi refugee terror suspects arrested) wouldn’t you like to know the feds were interviewing Iraqis from time to time?

And, come to think of it, I wonder if they used your money for the lawsuit?

Bridge’s financial position

Have a look at some of Bridge’s finances by checking out their most recent Form 990 (2009) here.

They had $687,085 in gross income for the year.

Of that, $641,801 came from federal taxpayers (government grants).

Other contributions in their public-private partnership amounted to $39,781 (about 6%).

They had salaries of $268,769 and benefits of $69,737, board compensation $51,497 and payroll taxes at $27,942 which comes to a total of $417,945 in salaries and benefits.  They spent $10,339 on conferences, conventions and meetings and a whopping $32,022 on travel.   And, there is a bunch of other stuff!   Looks like we are approaching a half a million $ just keeping their office open—sure doesn’t look like there is much left for the refugees!

Here is an idea, get more volunteers for the office, find more sponsors for refugees, forget conventions/meetings and travel.  And, tell me, why does the board need compensation? Isn’t this supposed to be charitable work?