US Bishops on their knees begging for more taxpayer dollars

Your tax dollars!

I guess they didn’t learn from the recent controversy over free birth control and Sandra Fluke‘s attack on Georgetown University (and the Catholic Church) that once you take Caesar’s money, Caesar expects payback.    Yesterday I posted at my other blog a story about how the Bishops are back lobbying Congress for your tax dollars for their “charitable” work.  (See my post on their groveling expedition last year here).

Then last night I found this interesting little nugget when re-reading that scintillating 2008 Annual Report to Congress on the Refugee Program.  Although this is a tiny drop of the millions the USCCB gets from the federal treasury, it is enlightening.

In 1988, the Bishops set up a legal clinic ostensibly for the poor IMMIGRANT (what about poor Americans?).  Fine and dandy if that is what they want to do with their parishioners’ charity, but about a half million dollars of their budget every year comes from all of you.   Here is the history of CLINIC:

In 1988, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) established CLINIC as a legally distinct 501(c)(3) organization to support a rapidly growing network of community-based immigration programs. CLINIC’s network originally comprised 17 programs. It has since increased to 201 diocesan and other affiliated immigration programs with 290 field offices in 47 states.  The network employs roughly 1,200 BIA accredited representatives and attorneys who, in turn, serve 600,000 low-income immigrants each year.

CLINIC doesn’t just help the poor IMMIGRANTS with their legal needs, it gets political.  Here, for example, they are opposing the Arizona Law.

Asylee Hotline funded by feds

For readers who don’t know about asylum, it is the other side of the refugee coin.  Refugees are screened abroad and we fly them here, asylum seekers arrive on their own steam at our borders and ask for asylum.   Refugees get all their welfare goodies almost immediately, asylum seekers must first be granted asylum then they can sign up for public assistance (subsidized housing, job training, food stamps, medical care, etc.).

Here Open Borders immigration lawyer Jason Dzubow tells us about how the number of asylum seekers is mushrooming.   When the Kennedy/Biden Refugee Act of 1980 was passed and signed by Jimmy Carter, asylum seekers were a rarity — the odd Russian ballet dancer for example.   In 2011, 74,000 asylum seekers “found their way” to our borders (top three sending countries—China, Mexico, and India).   They claimed political, religious, or sexual orientation persecution in their home countries.  In reality, most are economic migrants making up whoppers about being persecuted!   [By the way, I reported here that I think NGO’s are actually giving these “asylum seekers” guidance.]

Back to that little nugget about CLINIC and its taxpayer-funded grant in 2008.  They got a quarter of a million bucks for an asylee hotline where an asylee could call in and find out how to “access benefits and services” (where to find the local welfare office) (p. 36):

Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc., ($250,000) for an asylee hotline. The Catholic Legal
Immigration Network, Inc. (CLINIC) operated an asylum hotline, which provided outreach and
service referral to individuals granted asylum. During FY 2008, the multilingual operators
received a total of 4,131 calls from asylees who were uncertain on where to access benefits and
services. Unlike refugees who come with a direct link to the voluntary resettlement agencies,
asylum seekers have no such connection.

You paid $60 per phone call.  And, you can bet some were from asylum seekers looking for a lawyer!

Here is my question, if this is a needed service, why are we giving tax dollars to an unaccountable-to-the-taxpayer non-profit group?  This project could just as well be run from a hotline at the Dept. of Health and Human Services (where presumably our elected officials would have oversight).  Is it just to continue to keep federal government tentacles in the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, so they won’t squawk so much when the likes of Sandra Fluke insists that Georgetown University give students free birth control?

Buffalo: Somali father beats stepson to death over homework

Incidentally, Buffalo is a favorite city for the federal refugee contractors.  We know from a story two years ago that Buffalo has a big problem with domestic abuse among refugees, here.   Type ‘Buffalo’ into our search function for more posts on the troubles in that city which is trying to use its immigrant population to revitalize the city—hey!  good luck with that.

From the Buffalo News a few days ago:

Ten-year-old Abdifatah Mohamud was running for his life down Sycamore Street at about 5 p.m. Tuesday when a concerned neighbor stopped to try to help.

Seeing the boy’s stepfather chasing after him, the neighbor helped the man, Ali Mohamed Mohamud, catch up with the child.

The boy didn’t want to go home with Mohamud.

“I told the boy, ‘Daddy promises nothing is going to happen,'” the neighbor later told The Buffalo News.

“The boy said to me: ‘No, he always says that.'”

Less than six hours later, Abdifatah was dead, brutally beaten, and his stepfather, Ali Mohamed Mohamud, was under arrest.

There is more, read it all.  Be sure to check out the murderer’s places of employment.

Readers:  I just now was reading a bunch of stories at the Religion of Peace website (that is where I found this one) and you might call today’s selection “Muslim immigrants gone wild worldwide“.  There are a couple of links to stories about asylum seeker rapists—Muslim men raping women and men in Sweden and Finland for example.  You might want to put the Religion of Peace on your daily reading list!

Reminder! Two days left to weigh in on size and scope of refugee admissions program for FY2013

You have until close of business (5 p.m. Eastern time) on Tuesday, April 24th, to make a statement about the refugee program for the upcoming fiscal year.  As I told you here, in past years the May 1st consultation has been dominated by contractors and political activists with a vested interest (in many cases a financial interest) in resettling third worlders to the US.

This is your only chance to express how you feel about it.  From this meeting the State Department prepares for the President a recommendation for the program.  The President in turn sends a “determination” letter and document to Congress in September about how many refugees and from where they will come for the new fiscal year that begins on October 1.  As far as I know (we are not permitted to attend the transmittal of that letter), Congress rubber-stamps what the President wants.

If you are in the Washington, DC area you also have until the 24th to sign up to attend the meeting on May 1. (even if you plan to attend your statement for the record must be received by the 24th, Tuesday!).

See all the details in my earlier post (here).

And, one more thing, any statement that you send for the record by April 24th should also be copied to your Member of Congress and your US Senators.

Mitt (Etch A Sketch*) Romney headed to the Left on immigration

[Cross-posted from Potomac Tea Party Report]

I can emphatically say I am not surprised.

Much to my profound shock, back in January Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, a leading legal beagle on immigration and a hero to many on the immigration control side, endorsed Romney.  See my post here.  Even NumbersUSA President, Roy Beck, was sounding all warm and fuzzy for Romney. I was shocked!

In the meantime, Rick Santorum’s NumbersUSA scorecard was shown to have been better than Romney’s.  Here Santorum is an A-.  I see they have pushed the guy who previously had a C, Romney, up to a B- recently.  In light of this news, it’s time for a new score for Romney, don’t you think!

Back in January, did Kobach and Beck get snookered by the Romney gang—did they not know that the likes of Karl Rove, Grover Norquist and Ed Gillespie—the Open Borders troika—were in the wings to run things for Romney?  (Remember Norquist said all they needed was a weak President—Romney the robot— here and here, to sign things!).

Here is The Hill telling us what it means for the Romney team to have put Ed Gillespie on the payroll as a strategist (emphasis mine):

Mitt Romney’s hiring of Republican strategist Ed Gillespie is being seen as a sign the campaign will heavily court Hispanic voters — perhaps at the expense of immigration hard-liners in the party.

Gillespie, a former head of the Republican National Committee, has long advocated an aggressive outreach to the Hispanic community. He helped found the Republican State Leadership Committee, a group that recruits and trains GOP candidates for office and has emphasized finding female and minority candidates. He also heads up Resurgent Republic, an organization focused on messaging to independents, including Hispanic swing voters.

There is nothing wrong with outreach to minority voters, UNLESS they are making promises for government goodies to come!

The RNC is highly aware of this, and on Monday announced it would have state-level Hispanic outreach directors placed in Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico, Florida, Virginia and North Carolina.

Republican DREAM ACT on the way?  (Marco Rubio involved too)

Establishment members of the party praised Gillespie’s hiring.

“He’s going to be great as a key figure in the Romney campaign,” RNC Chairman Reince Priebus told The Hill on Monday. “Ed brings a pretty big background in understanding and being an effective communicator in the Hispanic community and that can only be a positive.”

Some signs of a shift in Romney’s tone have already emerged since his status as the presumptive nominee has become stronger.

The former Massachusetts governor warned during a private fundraiser this past weekend that his standing in polls with Hispanics “spells doom for us,” and that to alleviate the problem the GOP needed to offer its own policies to woo Hispanics. His suggestions included a “Republican DREAM Act,” referring to a GOP version of the Democratic plan that would give some illegal immigrants who came here as children a path to citizenship.

While he was not advocating for a specific policy, the comments were a sharp break from Romney’s rhetoric during the primary, when he said he would veto the DREAM Act and attacked Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) for backing a state law that gave illegal immigrants in-state college tuition, calling it a “magnet” for more illegal immigration.

Kobach kicked to the curb?

Gillespie’s hiring is being viewed as a counter to hard-line advisers in the Romney camp, including Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R), who wrote Arizona’s controversial immigration law.

Republican strategists predicted that Gillespie’s gravitas would make him influential within the Romney campaign, outweighing the more-conservative voices on the issue.

Is it Tea Party time yet?

*Romney the Etch A Sketch candidate, here.

Update April 21:  Alas, the Kobach endorsement of Romney and the on-again/off-again alliance may be all about money, that is assuming we can believe Think Progress (hat tip Richard Falknor at Blue Ridge Forum):

Indeed, it will be very hard for Romney, whose PAC was one of the largest donors to Kobach’s campaign for Kansas Secretary of State, to distance himself from his immigration adviser or the law in Arizona.