Day: December 22, 2013

Refugees lobby Congress for more refugees/a more “welcoming” America

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (which selects refugees for the US) and the US State Department partnered to bring refugees to Washington, DC earlier this month to lobby Congress (you probably paid their expenses!).  To tell you the truth it’s not exactly clear what they told Members of Congress as they traveled around the Hill on “Advocacy Day.”   I’m guessing they want more stuff from taxpayers and more of their people to be admitted to the US.

Amnesty lobbyist Frank Sharry, pal of Grover Norquist, told the gathering to “hurry up and take over.”

From Reuters (a submitted opinion piece?) thanks to reader Joanne:

WASHINGTON, DC, United States, December 13 (UNHCR) – Refugees and asylum-seekers from Syria, Sudan and 20 other nations took steps this week in Washington, DC, to ensure their voices become an integral part of United States policy discussion on how best to protect people fleeing violence and persecution around the world.

At the end of the 2013 Refugee Congress, organized by UNHCR on Monday and Tuesday, the 48 delegates each signed a letter calling on the US authorities to “invite refugees and other affected persons to participate meaningfully in discussions” on refugee and asylum policy issues.   [I sure hope that Congress also invites the other “stakeholders”—the US taxpayer!—ed]

The letter was handed by the delegates to their representatives in the US Congress during meetings on the “Advocacy Day” that followed the gathering, an action that participants said underscored the drive to push refugee advocacy forward from the conceptual to the practical.

“UNHCR supports the Refugee Congress as a way for refugees and asylum-seekers in the United States to help themselves and to develop a credible voice for advocacy,” said Shelly Pitterman, UNHCR’s regional representative. “I think that this year’s Refugee Congress took an important step in the right direction,” he added.

“You belong here!”

Assistant Secretary of State Richard, in an address to the gathering, said the refugee story of courage and resilience was quintessentially American. “You are not strangers. You belong here!” she stressed.

The congress participants agreed that fortifying that fact of belonging must be central to their future work. This meant not just feeling confident of their status as full-fledged members of American society but of exercising that status in practical ways to advocate for an issue they know better than anyone.  [In other words just living and blending in isn’t enough, they must become political activists.—ed]

Then long-time amnesty activist Frank Sharry told the gathering it was time for them to “hurry up and take over.”  Now what the heck does that mean?  The charming Mr. Sharry made news recently when he teamed up with Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform to say they where cooking up a scheme for REVENGE against Speaker Boehner and any Republicans who did not want to go to conference with the Senate-passed S.744.

In a rousing address on the first day of the congress, Frank Sharry, executive director of the America’s Voice immigration reform advocacy organization, stressed the need for all people in the United States to understand that refugees and asylum-seekers are as much a part of the fabric of American society as any other group in the country.

“My vision of an America that I love and that I will fight for is an America that is welcoming to refugees,” Sharry said, before calling on refugees and asylum-seekers to take the lead in that cause: “Hurry up and take over!” he said.

I continue to be amazed that the federal refugee contractors and the refugee “activists” themselves don’t get it that if the so-called Comprehensive Immigration Reform bill should become law, there will be FEWER jobs for legal refugees because the millions of newly legalized Hispanics, who are increasingly conversant in English, will be first in line for the jobs at places like Marriott hotels (one of the financial backers of the amnesty lobbying push).

Frankly, for Sharry (America’s Voice) and Norquist and even the federal contractors it’s all about the $$$$ (while changing America!).

An appeal!  As of this writing we are only 4 short of 1000 subscribers/followers of RRW.  Help us find 4 more before the end of the year so we can reach a new milestone!  It may not seem like a large number compared to the big blogs, but because our subject is a narrow one, we are thrilled with the growing number of readers!

UNRWA: Maybe the worst organization in the world

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

In case you doubt that Israel is singled out by the United Nations, read this paragraph from Jordan Schachtel at American Thinker:

Since World War II, over 50 million people worldwide have been displaced as a result of armed conflict, yet the only group of refugees anointed by the United Nations for specific attention is the one composed of Palestinians.  On their behalf, the U.N. created an exclusive agency, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).

Most of the world believes the Palestinians are uniquely oppressed above all peoples.  In actual fact, it is their eternal refugee status and their own behavior that have doomed them to such sorry lives.  The article points out:

The Jewish population forced out of Arab countries was nearly double that of the number of Arabs who left after the 1948 Arab-Israeli War of Independence.

Most of these Jews went to Israel and were never classified as refugees by the UN.  They were simply absorbed into the population.  At the same time, Arab countries refused to take in the Palestinians who were called refugees.  They didn’t want them.  And strategic thinkers like the KGB realized that a continuing population of pathetic refugees would be a terrific weapon against Israel.  And they were right.

So the UN created UNRWA.  Here’s what Schachtel says about that:

UNRWA is currently the largest agency-subdivision of the United Nations, employing a staff of 30,000, most of whom are Palestinians.  From its creation in 1949 to the present day, the number of refugees recognized by the UNRWA has grown from roughly 750,000 to 5,000,000.

The agency now considers “refugees” to include not only the first generation of Palestinians who were displaced in the 1948 Israeli-Arab War, but also their progeny, the children and grandchildren of the initially displaced population.  Given the U.N.’s liberality in designating refugees, it would not defy expectations if the next generation of Palestinians were similarly designated as such, or even if the policy continued in perpetuity.

Despite its purported mission, UNRWA has drawn attention for its ties to radical Islam, rather than its humanitarian relief efforts.  Credible information has surfaced linking UNRWA-funded sites to keeping suspected terrorists on payroll and unreported surrendering of ambulances and supplies to Hamas.

In addition to the refugee agency, the UN has created a number of committees and other entities to promote the Palestinian cause.  And the flow of money to UNRWA has funded all kinds of things of no benefit to the Palestinians, like Yasser Arafat’ Swiss bank account and the terrorist group Hamas.  All of this effort has certainly borne fruit.  Israel is hated more than ever before and more people are openly admitting that it’s not just Israel, it’s “the Jews” that they would like to get rid of.

University of Wisconsin hosts conference on discrimination against Muslim Rohingya

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment
Nigerian woman carried from church which had been attacked by Muslims

And, they claim the Rohingya of Burma are the “most persecuted people in our time.” 

I suspect the Christians of the Middle East (Syria, Iraq) and Africa (Egypt, Nigeria, Central African Republic) might beg to differ.

Here is the story at Eurasia Review:

The first international conference in the USA on the plight of the Rohingya people of Myanmar – “Stop Genocide and Restore Rohingya’s Citizenship Rights in Myanmar” – was held in the campus of University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee on December 14, 2013. It was jointly hosted by the Burmese Rohingya American Friendship Association (BRAFA) and the Rohingya Concern International (RCI). The conference opened with a welcome speech from BRAFA’s chairman – Mr. Shaukhat Kyaw Soe Aung (MSK Jilani) and Dr. Chia Vang of the Ethnic Studies program at the university. The program was conducted by Mr. Mohiuddin Yosuf, President of the RCI and Chief Coordinator of the conference organizing committee. I was invited as a speaker. Amongst others, the speakers included – Professor Greg Stanton of the Genocide Watch (George Mason University), Mr. Nurul Islam of ARNO (UK), Sheikh Ziad Hamdan of Islamic Society of Milwaukee….

[….]

The Rohingya people, who mostly live in the western Rakhine state of Myanmar, are the most persecuted people in our time.

The conference called upon the government of Burma (aka Myanmar) to do the following:

 The Government of Myanmar to stop persecution, discrimination and dehumanizing of Muslims, including repealing laws and policies that enact or contribute to the persecution of Muslims and other targeted groups within Myanmar.

The Government of Myanmar to crack down on anti-Muslim violence against Rohingya and other Muslims.

I sure hope the University’s ethnic studies department will soon host a program on Muslim violence toward Christians on several continents!

For new readers who might ask why do we follow the Rohingya issue so closely?   We have been following the drum beat (the PR campaign!) for over five years now as we have watched the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and other of the federal resettlement contractors pushing to resettle Rohingya in your towns and cities.  So far the number is small, and we only know from news accounts that Muslim Burmese are mixed in with the thousands of other religious groups from Burma.   The US State Department does not release to the public the religious breakdown of refugees resettled in the US, although they do track those statistics.

See our extensive Rohingya Reports category, here.

Photo is posted at ACT for America Houston, some other photos are more gruesome.