Maine Senator Angus King: We want more immigrants in Maine!

06/26/2013 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We want more immigrants in Maine and in America because Thomas Jefferson said that’s good for America! (Or I think he did! Well, sort of!). King opened a floor speech last week with words from Jefferson that frankly I read three or four times and couldn’t figure out how the words fit today’s immigration situation, especially when one considers the large number of Muslim immigrants entering the US and Maine.

Indeed Jefferson, of all people, knew what violence Muslims were capable of. He would never have ‘welcomed’ Muslims to America, but maybe King doesn’t know about the Barbary Wars.

Here are a couple of excerpts from King’s speech on S.744:

Vibrant refugee? Portland Somali convicted of rape after breaking into woman’s home while she slept. King: Immigrants are a little scary!

Does this discussion affect the State of Maine? Well, yes, it does. We have migrants and immigrants picking our crops in northern Maine, blueberries and potatoes and broccoli. We have a vibrant refugee and asylum-seeking community in Portland, ME, and in Lewiston. Many of those from Africa come here with very different cultures. We have 52 languages spoken in the Portland public schools. Yes, we have strains and difficulties adjusting one culture to another. But we are making it work and it is making our State richer spiritually, culturally, intellectually, and, yes, financially. It is working. [Readers: Type Lewiston into our search function to see how it’s working!—ed]

King: We need more immigrants because the white birthrate is declining, and so we need to speed up the decline of America as we know it by allowing the Third World to enter in a speedier manner! Heck! Might as well get it over with sooner than later!

We are living in a negative demographic time bomb. Last year, I believe for the first time in American history, we had more deaths than births of White Americans. One doesn’t have to be a mathematician to know if that continues, we will shrink and shrivel as a society. We need immigration to add to our population, to add to the ideas and creativity.

[…..]

Immigrants are always going to be different and a little scary, and that has been true throughout American history.

Read the whole speech. It is the usual blah, blah, blah….but read it anyway! By the way, King says this is the job he has been preparing for throughout his entire life, here.

Then below is a report from some readers of Refugee Resettlement Watch who visited a staff member in King’s office the following day.

We need to take in Syrian refugees!

The speech was on Thursday. On Friday we visited with a Senator King aide who is paid $73,000 per year and who works on immigration issues. We were there to discuss the 24-pound Immigration bill, S. 744. The aide did give us a lot of time and we discussed many points. The below points may be of particular interest to readers of Refugee Resettlement Watch and to those in Maine.

The aide, on his own, blurted out, without any question or provocation from us, that whenever “we [America] invade a country or create a war and chaos, we need to take in refugees from that country. We need to take in Syrian refugees. We need to take in Iraqi and Afghan refugees.”

[I didn’t think we had gone to war in Syria yet, but I guess I’m quibbling! We did send arms through Benghazi earlier and we are promising more weapons to the rebels real soon, so I guess that means, at least in the mind of King’s staffer, that the refugees are ours!—ed]

Later, in response to one of our group suggesting that her experiences in the Middle East indicated that Muslim and Arabic culture are just too different and should not be allowed into the USA, the aide responded “that is exactly the same argument that was used against the Catholics 100 years ago.” One assumes that the aide does not foresee within the Muslim refugee and immigrant population the possibility of an embedded catastrophic problem. The aide had no response when recent events in Boston, the World Trade center and other places were mentioned.

Go here to learn more about the Portland Somali rapist.

The problem King has here (was the speech written by this staffer?), by using emotional arguments and platitudes to make his point, is that for every appealing “creative” blueberry picking immigrant, I can find him an immigrant criminal, a terrorist or a welfare mooch, or an immigration advocate in the Chamber of Commerce looking for cheap blueberry-picking labor!

Syrian refugees leaving Jordan and returning to Syria

06/26/2013 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

That’s a bit of news you won’t see in Western media where all the news is that millions of Syrians are fleeing and suffering.

9000 Syrians left the troubled Zaatari refugee camp near the Syria/Jordan border in just one month!

Here is the story from Lebanon’s Daily Star:

AMMAN: Nearly 9,000 Syrian refugees staying in Jordan left the kingdom for home this month, bringing the number of returnees to more than 68,000 in the past two years, a government official said Tuesday.

“Some 8,974 Syrian refugees voluntarily returned to their country in June, mostly from the northern refugee camp of Zaatari,” Anmar Hmud, the government spokesman for Syrian refugee affairs, told AFP.

“This brings the total number of those who returned in the past two years to 68,373 people.”

But Hmud said refugees are still streaming across the border to Jordan.

“More refugees continue to flee to Jordan. Around 12,200 Syrians sought refuge in Jordan this month,” he added.

Jordan says it is hosting more than 540,000 Syrian refugees, 150,000 of whom are housed in Zaatari camp, near the border with Syria.

In April, the UN refugee agency UNHCR reported that more Syrians were opting to return home from Jordan for a number of reasons, including reports of improved security in a number of border villages, and to protect their property.

The net flow is still going out of Syria, but some feel it’s safe enough in some parts of the country to return to take care of their stuff. We see this over and over again, there is a rush to resettle “refugees” in the West when in fact conflicts generally resolve themselves over time and it would be cheaper for America to support them in camps then to bring them to America!

So, I guess this means there is no big rush to resettle Syrians in your American towns and cities.

Is illegal “sanctuary movement” back in operation in anticipation of amnesty?

06/25/2013 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

It sure looks like it! And, this time it may be sanctioned by an emboldened Obama Administration and its cheerleaders in the human rights industrial complex!

Last night a reader sent me this dynamite post from the ever-vigilant Debbie Schlussel entitled: EXCLUSIVE: Obama Sends ICE Agents to Southern Border to Pick Up “Youths” Awaiting Amnesty, Deliver Them to Northern “Sanctuary” Churches.

Our reader wanted my opinion on whether this was plausible. You bet it is!

Sanctuary Memorabilia: Former Sister Darlene Nicgorski went on trial for her role in the illegal immigration trafficking racket known as the “sanctuary movement.” At its height just before the 1986 Reagan amnesty there were 350 American churches harboring the illegal aliens.

If you are unfamiliar with the original “Sanctuary movement” you might want to visit some posts I wrote after reading an incredible book entitled, God and Caesar at the Rio Grande by Hillary Cunningham.

Here is one post in which I spelled out how in the early 1980s the “religious Left” helped thousands and thousands of Salvadorans and Guatemalans get across our Southern border. The illegal aliens with communist leanings were taken on what they called the ‘underground railroad’ to churches in the North were they were sheltered and eventually released into your towns.

One such church was the Takoma Park Presbyterian Church in Tom Perez’s hometown in Maryland and it is there where CASA de Maryland was born.

That all happened as a lead-up to the Reagan amnesty.

Fast forward to today and Debbie Schlussel’s bomb-shell post which begins with these opening paragraphs (emphasis mine):

I’ve learned a new term created by the immigration amnesty bill currently before the U.S. Senate: “Reverse Escorting.” If you want a preview of what “border security” will entail under Senators Boobio’s and Corkbrain’s amnesty bill, you should become familiar with reverse escorting.

DebbieSchlussel.com has exclusively learned from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents based in Michigan–and confirmed from ICE agents around the country–that the Obama administration is spending gazillions of your money to “reverse escort” illegal aliens caught at the border into the interior of the United States to await amnesty, rather than deporting them. ICE agents from northern border and interior states are being sent to southern border states like Texas to pick up “juvenile” illegal aliens caught sneaking into the border. Instead of deporting them, taxpayers are funding the escort of the illegal aliens to interior and northern border states to seek sanctuary in churches and other such locations while awaiting the passage of amnesty. Again, the practice is called, “reverse escorting.”

Outraged ICE agents in Grand Rapids, Michigan, for example, say that ICE’s “Enforcement and Removal Operations” (ERO) is sending each of their immigration agents down to Brownsville, Texas at least once or twice a week to pick up the illegal alien juveniles that have been caught because–the excuse goes–”there is no place to house them down there” (when they shouldn’t be “housed,” they should be DEPORTED). The ICE agents say that there is currently a huge influx of unaccompanied juveniles on the Southwest border because they think amnesty is coming. The ICE immigration agents are ordered to bring the illegal aliens up to Grand Rapids and to other American cities far north of the Texas border, so that the aliens can be lodged with charities while they await the passage of immigration amnesty. As one disgusted ICE agent said, “Our tax dollars at work again.”

There is more, read it all!

The Office of Refugee Resettlement is responsible for unaccompanied minors which is something we have written about many times on these pages. The “kids” either cross the border alone or are abandoned by parents who know the feds (you!) will be paying for the care of their children, and guess what, when the youths turn 18, they are simply released into America and become a “dreamer.” The whole process is on fast forward now, and Debbie’s report confirms it.

And, they sure don’t want those kids in Texas. Here is one report from Galveston last year where ORR ward ‘George’ was set free at 18 and went on a sex crime spree. Then later that same spring, Texas Governor Perry ripped the feds for encouraging the surge in kids coming across the border into Texas.

Now it’s even worse!

Nearly two weeks ago I was in Lancaster, where the ORR representative predicted the number of unaccompanied kids would sky rocket this year and I wondered how they were making that prediction. Here is what I said in a post twelve days ago:

On top of the 124,400 [refugee and asylees for 2013] is an expected jump in unaccompanied minors that ORR is responsible for. In 2012, 14,700 kids arrived in the US without parents and in 2013 the number is expected to be 20,000. Prior to 2012 the numbers were dramatically lower. Sounds like an incredible scam on America as probably parents from south of the border are abandoning their children to the government in advance of the amnesty legislation.

I assumed at the time I wrote the above that the Mexicans and Central Americans were following the news and dropping off the kids, but I didn’t dream we were actually helping make it possible for this enormous number of youths to come under the care of US taxpayers!

I bet if you stopped by the Takoma Park Presbyterian Church right now you might find that some “dreamers” have taken up residence, and the ORR is passing out grant money like Pez candy to refugee contractors in MD!

For more on the 1980’s sanctuary movement and Sister Nicgorski, go here.

Then call your Senators (again!) and tell them NO on the Gang’s bill.

Pittsburgh: World Refugee Day brought out the diversity, but few Americans

06/25/2013 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Here is an article at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, it’s the kind of article that Refugee activists wanted to come out of the PR event we told you about last week—World Refugee Day, except for a little twist at the end.

Cute Bhutanese/Nepali girls dancing in Pittsburgh. Recently I heard that the Nepalis in PA don’t want to live near African Americans and do not want African refugees in their neighborhoods—guess they haven’t completely bought into the ‘diversity is beautiful and America is a melting pot’ mythology! Photo:Pam Panchak

After introductory paragraphs about music and dancing and how refugees are opening shops (with government supported micro-loans—NO they didn’t mention the micro-loans), and how Pittsburgh is such a magnet for refugees (because the State Department and contractors have tagged it—NO they didn’t mention that either), just that prosperous Pittsburgh is on the lips of refugees worldwide (or so we are led to believe).

Below is the section of the Post-Gazette story I want to bring to your attention because it contains some interesting facts (well, sort of facts) that might be useful in case any “pockets of resistance” might be interested in getting a start in Pennsylvania (we learned here in Lancaster that there was no resistance in welcoming PA):

According to the latest statistics from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, there are approximately 15.4 million refugees in the world. Fewer than 1 percent of all refugees are resettled outside of the country to which they fled, according to the State Department.

From the small number who are approved for resettlement, the United States accepts more than half of these refugees. Then, nine national nongovernmental organizations work to resettle them. Of those nine, 350 affiliated offices around the country assist refugees during their first few months in the country, relying on a small amount of money from the U.S. government. [When originally designed in 1980 this was supposed to be a public-private partnership but over decades the public share has grown to sometimes 90% of the cost of resettling the refugees.—-ed]

But soon, refugees are on their own. [Basically they are pushed out on their own because their contractors only get paid to help them for a few months and want to move on to the next batch of paying clients—ed]

“When refugees come to the United States, they actually have to pay back their airfare to the U.S. government,” Ms. Rudiak said. “They’re expected to be self-sustaining in a period of six or seven months.” [This airfare business is an outrage! They aren’t all paying it back and those that do are helping fund the collection agency—the contractor who settled them—which gets to keep a portion of the money they wring out of refugees. It does not all go back to the federal treasury! So far the State Department refuses to release the exact numbers—ed]

Refugees often prefer Pittsburgh to other U.S. cities, said Kheir Mugwaneza, director of Community Assistance and Resettlement for the Northern Area Multi-Service Center, one of the four Pittsburgh NGOs that do resettlement. The others include Jewish Family & Children’s Services, Catholic Charities and Acculturation for Justice, Access & Peace Outreach, each of which has national affiliates in Washington, D.C. [Any citizens forming pockets of resistance must become familiar with the workings of the contractors—ed]

Mr. Mugwaneza said NAMS resettles about 200 people each year. The city’s decent job market and affordable housing help refugees become self-sustaining more quickly than elsewhere, he said. And many choose Pittsburgh as a second resettlement location, moving here from different U.S. cities once they hear about the opportunities, he said.

Then get this! Native Pittsburghers did not come out to celebrate diversity!

From hip-hop lyrics rapped in Swahili to native Bhutanese dances, Saturday’s celebration shed light on a few of Pittsburgh’s cultural offerings.

But a look around the room revealed a dearth of native Pittsburghers, which as Mr. Mugwaneza pointed out, hampered a main goal of the event: connecting Pittsburghers to the refugee community. He’s hopeful the event’s scope will expand next year.

Haji Muya, 21, a Somali refugee who grew up in Kenya in Kakuma, the world’s largest refugee camp, performed a few original raps for the second year at the event. He’s president of the music label LKF Entertainment, which stands for “Lil Kiziguwaz Family.” While he supports the diversity celebrated at the event, he agrees with Mr. Mugwaneza.

“If we’re promoting cultures, we need to have American culture next year,” he said. “It would be more diverse if the Americans came, too.”

Celebrate American culture too! What a novel idea!

For new readers, we have an archive on refugee problems in Pittsburgh here.

UNHCR discriminates against Iraqi refugees in Pakistan

06/25/2013 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The United Nations is working overtime to figure out what the heck to do with millions of Afghans that Pakistan wants out of their country NOW! (see ‘Why can’t Muslim countries keep them?’) so they have apparently been ignoring a small group of Iraqi Kurds that want out of Pakistan.

Here is the whole short story from Dawn.com:

ISLAMABAD, June 24: Iraqi refugees who came to Pakistan during the Gulf war about 23 years back held a protest demonstration against the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) here on Monday.

The protesters said because of the double standards of UNHCR, the Iraqi Kurd refugees could no be settled in any country.

They chanted slogans against the UNHCR during the protest outside the National Press Club and said it was only giving preference to Afghan refugees and ignoring the Iraqis. Adnan Noori, one of the refugees, said there were only 25 registered Iraqi refugees in Pakistan.

“We want to be settled in any country in which we can get protection and secured future,” he said.

The refugees said they cannot be settled in Pakistan as Islamabad was not a signatory to the international convention relating to the status of refugees.

“But we can be settled in any other country. However, no one is willing to resolve our grievances.”

Younus Mehmood said they had been facing lots of discrimination at the hands of the UNHCR staff in Islamabad. Local NGOs have been dealing with the Iraqi refugees but because of lack of interest they never bother to resolve their issues.

They also requested the government of Pakistan to help the Iraqi Kurd refugees.

Watch for it! The next thing you know they will be sending them to ‘Little Kurdistan’—Nashville, TN!