Month: January 2013

Tennessean op-ed: Catholic Bishops must contribute more; consult communities

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update January 26th:  The Nashville Scene doesn’t like Barnett’s commentary, attacks Barnett Alinsky-style.  They are so predictable.

On the heels of my post yesterday about the US Conference of Catholic Bishops “National Migration Week” comes this zinger of an opinion piece from longtime observer of the federal government’s refugee resettlement program, Don Barnett, published in The Tennessean also yesterday (highlights are mine):

Refugee resettlement was once the work of self-supporting charities that invested their own resources and were directly responsible for outcomes. Today, it is the work of federal contractors who spend public resources and have no responsibility three months after the refugee has been “resettled.”

A July Government Accountability Office report, “Refugee Resettlement — Greater Consultation With Community Stakeholders Could Strengthen Program,” is critical of refugee contractors and how they place refugees in local communities across the U.S. In particular, the report cites lack of adequate consultation with local “stakeholders” before placing refugees in a community. The agencies that resettle refugees are compensated from 17 different federal programs tailored to refugee resettlement, as well as from numerous nonspecific grants and programs at the federal and state levels.

The largest resettlement contractor is the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), which resettles refugees through its affiliate, Catholic Charities.

As the GAO report notes, a network of contractors, known as “voluntary agencies,” “selects the communities where refugees will live. … Voluntary agencies consider various factors when determining where refugees will be placed, but few agencies we visited consulted relevant local stakeholders, which posed challenges for service providers.”

The report found that “… most public entities such as public schools and health departments generally said that agencies notified them of the number of refugees expected to arrive in the coming year, but did not consult them regarding the number of refugees they could serve before proposals were submitted to the (U.S. State Department).”

Since striking a deal in 2008 to manage the federal dollars for other, smaller refugee contractors in the state, Catholic Charities of Tennessee effectively runs refugee resettlement in Tennessee. Today, only 35 percent of its annual budget is dedicated to nonrefugee social services. As the GAO report notes, for organizations such as Catholic Charities, “funding is based on the number of refugees they serve, so affiliates have an incentive to maintain or increase the number of refugees they resettle each year rather than allowing the number to decrease.”

Sure enough, resettlement in Tennessee went up dramatically after 2008. In fact, since 2009, Tennessee has taken an average of about 1,450 refugees per year, a 62 percent increase over the average number resettled from 2004 to 2008. The total number of refugees resettled to the U.S. actually went down at the same time that Tennessee’s number of resettled refugees went up.

More refugees mean more government services, since the contractors assist the refugees for only three months or less in the vast majority of cases. Most refugees go into TennCare for varying periods of time. TennCare and other welfare programs such as Families First are used by refugees at much higher than average rates and are partially supported by state taxpayer dollars.

Refugee resettlement is very profitable for the nonprofits. There is a reason why refugee resettlement is Tennessee Catholic Charities’ biggest mission. All of its non-refugee social services are smaller, less lucrative and almost all are shrinking from year to year. Ironically, its national motto is: Working to Reduce Poverty in America.

USCCB took in an astonishing $72.1 million in revenue from refugee resettlement alone in 2011, 97 percent of which came from government contracts, grants and earnings from federal refugee programs. A significant portion of this money does not have to be shown as having been spent on refugees. In other words, millions flow to the contracting agency with no strings attached. (My personal favorite in this money racket: USCCB received $3.7 million in 2011 as a commission for collecting on the loans made by the U.S. government to refugees for airline tickets to the U.S. USCCB is under no obligation to spend any of this money on refugees.

Federal contractors will always act like federal contractors. But is it too much to ask refugee contractors to cover at least a portion of the costs borne by Tennessee taxpayers today? Is it too much to ask for more of a voice for the taxpayer who, after all, is the main stakeholder in this program?

Egypt women’s rights group: Egyptian men must not marry Syrian refugee girls

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

If I’m reading this news correctly, one might conclude that Muslim men are following their new Shariah Constitution and must be taking child brides (something Mohammad himself did).   The women’s rights group objects.   What do you want to bet the women’s group isn’t going to survive the new Egypt.

Here is the story from bikya.news:

CAIRO: The Egyptian National Council for Women Rights (NCWR) condemned on Wednesday the phenomenon of Egyptian men marrying Syrian refugees.

Many Syrians have been recently displaced to Egypt due to the civil unrest in their home country, the number of registered Syrian refugees has reached 8, 858 according to the most recent updated data at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

The council said in a statement that these marriages are “crimes committed against women under the guise of religion, as some of the Islamic preachers encourage young Egyptian men to marry Syrian refugees.”

They justify these marriages as an altruistic gesture to save Syrian girls from their refugee status though in fact they are using their need for money, the dowry for these marriages usually does not exceed 500 Egyptian pounds.

A local newspaper published a story on Tuesday under the title “Hidden tragedies of Syrian marriages in Egypt” which reported that the phenomenon produced “brokers” for such marriages.

According to Syria’s personal status law the minimum age of marriage for girls is 16, whereas the law does not regulate this matter under Egypt’s new charter.  [Big surprise! No restrictions  on child brides—did you see that Hillary? Obama?—that Arab Spring sure was great!]

[…..]

The council stressed that this behavior represents human trafficking, adding that “it conflicts with international conventions and human rights.”  [But apparently not with the Muslim Brotherhood Constitution—ed]

Here is what Pamela Geller said yesterday in a post about the flicker of recognition by the New York Times about what the “Arab Spring” really is—an Islamic revolution!

…. two years after I warned of the fall of Qaddafi, the Times is finally reporting on the catastrophic consequences of Obama’s epic failed policy in Libya. They still use the the comical “Arab Spring.” It was never that. It was always an “Islamic revolution.” Always.

And of course, despite my dead-on reportage and prediction for Egypt and Libya and Israel, these useful idiots will never admit how terribly wrong they were and how right we were/are.

This is Obama’s chaos. He won’t own it, but he owns it. Party, on, Prez! Africa is burning, Infidels are dying and Michelle Antoinette is changing dresses.

And, Muslim men are free to marry little girls.

CIS: Denaturalize US citizens who’ve committed certain crimes

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The Center for Immigration Studies has released a new study by WD Reasoner which says we are not stripping US citizenship from convicted immigrant citizens who pose a national security threat to the US.

Here is what CIS Director Mark Krikorian says in a press release today:

WASHINGTON, D.C. (January 24, 2013) – In light of the discussions of a “path to citizenship” for illegal immigrants, it’s important to note that in extraordinary cases, the path to citizenship can be run in reverse. Naturalized citizens who acquire their citizenship through fraud, especially those involved in terrorism or espionage, can and should be subject to denaturalization.

The Center for Immigration Studies today released a new report by, “Upholding the Value of our Citizenship: National Security Threats Should Be Denaturalized”, that discusses the danger of allowing naturalized U.S. citizens who have been charged with serious national security-related offenses to retain their citizenship. Even immigrants who fraudulently conceal material facts in order to be granted citizenship remain citizens and receive all the benefits, including sponsorship of family members for immigration and traveling abroad using a U.S. passport. The report also reveals that the Department of Homeland Security has no method in place for reviewing such cases, which ensures there will not be any future improvement of the vetting process.

See the full report here.

The Somalis

The appendix lists two Somalis that should be stripped of citizenship.  One is deceased because he blew himself up in Somalia.   Remember him!  In 2008, the US government brought his body parts back to give him a decent burial because he and his family are US citizens.   The other is the Christmas Tree bomber whose trial began just last week, here.

How about all those we’ve sent to prison lately for either terror funding or who have gone back to Africa for Jihad training?   I think they should be on the list!

Darn! We missed the Catholic Bishops’ National Migration Week

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Your tax dollars

January 6th to the 12th was the big week when the US Conference of Catholic Bishops ginned up its pro-amnesty political indoctrination campaign with National Migration Week.

Mind you, the Bishops can pressure the Catholic flock however they wish, it’s a free country (for now!), but it’s when they take taxpayer money to do their “charitable” and political work then it becomes every taxpayer’s business.

Before you read the excellent discussion of their latest parishioner indoctrination campaign by Dominique Peridans at the Center for Immigration Studies please visit this comprehensive review of the Bishops finances by Thomas Allen at VDARE.

Allen:

….in fact USCCB independently raises only about 2% (two percent) of its $72.1 million total revenues. The rest comes from contracts, grants and earnings from federal programs.

Also, we have written extensively here (see our archive!) over the years about the USCCB as one of the top nine federal contractors resettling refugees to your towns (and their lobbying for other issues as well, including global warming) while feeding from the federal trough.

Peridans at CIS:

Ecclesiastes offers a rather honest and blunt appraisal of human life, and seeks to articulate basic human truths. Chapter 1, verse 9 of the book in the Hebrew Bible reads “What has been, that will be; what has been done, that will be done. Nothing is new under the sun!” Now, human truth, if indeed truth, is trans-situational, that is to say, can be applied to host of situations.

The situation in this case to which this truth can be applied is that of National Migration Week (January 6-12), sponsored by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops through its Migration and Refugee Services Offices. I perused the promotional materials, almost naively hoping to find a few nuggets of newness, some refreshing insight, a slightly more holistic perspective being put forth. “Nothing is new under the sun” here.

In fact, it is striking to read how the American Catholic Church’s pastoral proposals regarding immigrants display how hardened the Church’s “official position” is becoming: presented as a given. There is no acknowledgment whatsoever that the issue is complex and there is no margin of freedom granted to the laity to discern varying responses to the issue.

Against the spiritually magnificent, yet concretely vague backdrop of “welcoming Christ in the stranger” (drawn from Christ’s own exhortation in Matthew 25:35), the document restates the American Catholic Church’s presumption that any perspective different from that which it articulates is characterized by in-hospitality. The document then invites the reader to labor for a “conversion of hearts and minds” in those who hold these differing perspectives.

To what one must convert? Comprehensive immigration reform. In this campaign (and beyond it), the bishops hope to help Catholics at the parochial level to enact local expressions of such reform and to incite Catholics at the national level to promote such reform.

Bishops:  Border enforcement is “meanness.”

Not only are the bishops very concrete and very specific in their proposals, they are unabashedly political. They are in the business of a “broad legalization program”. In their minds, charity can only and must work this way. An enforcement-only approach (which no one is really proposing, but which they confuse with an enforcement-first approach) they decry as antithetical to charity – and, according to their expertise, a failure. So much money is being devoted to meanness!

There is more!  Read it all.

Kenya trying to save itself from being overrun, labeled “xenophobic”

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

What do you expect.   If you want to save your country from being wiped out by Islamists and hordes of migrants you are “xenophobic” in the eyes of “human rights” agitators and the Washington Post.   By the way “xenophobic” is their choice of words in Africa when they can’t use the word “racist” (duh! everyone involved is black)!

After many violent attacks on Kenyans by militant Islamists, the Kenyan government ordered all Somali “refugees” and illegal aliens back to camps and out of Kenyan cities.   I told you what Kenya had done last month, here.

Here is the latest from AP at the WaPo (headline!  “Xenophobic attacks increasing“):

NAIROBI, Kenya — Human rights activists say Somalis in Kenya are facing increased attacks from gangs and harassment from the police since the government issued an order that all Somali refugees should return to a camp.

Ten rights groups Tuesday said in a statement that since the December 18 announcement criminal gangs have aggravated xenophobic attitudes toward genuine Somali refugees and asylum seekers seeking protection from persecution and conflict in their home country.

Kenya announced the new, more stringent controls aimed primarily at Somali refugees inside its borders after enduring months of explosive attacks blamed on the Somali Islamist extremist group al-Shabab.

Of course no mention of the fact that SOMALIA’S NEW PRESIDENT TOLD ALL SOMALIS TO COME HOME!  There should no longer be any reason for Somalis to run to Kenya or anywhere else (Obama and Hillary have given their blessings to the new government in Somalia!).