Day: July 30, 2014

Pittsburgh at “tipping point” as refugee population mushrooms

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Could we be seeing a new “pocket of resistance” growing, this time in Pennsylvania?

UH-OH!  Last year at the Lancaster, PA refugee pow-wow I attended, the ORR speaker assured the audience that there were no pockets in PA.

From the Pittsburgh Tribune (hat tip: Paul):

World Refugee Day celebrated in Pittsburgh. https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2013/06/25/pittsburgh-world-refugee-day-brought-out-the-diversity-but-few-americans/

Pittsburgh and surrounding communities have reached a “tipping point” and need to plan for a rapidly rising and diverse foreign population, immigration experts tell the Tribune-Review.

“The changes we’re seeing today, which we’ve been seeing for years now and are building, are not merely anecdotal. We’ve reached the tipping point,” said Barbara Murock, manager of the Allegheny County Department of Human Services’ Immigrants and Internationals Initiative.

Murock said that means social welfare agencies, public service nonprofits and religious groups should expand literacy training, career counseling and health care programs for foreign families.

I guess they couldn’t find any local critics willing to speak on the record to a reporter, but they did get Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington to say a few words near the end of the article:

Critics voice concern about how the U.S. refugee resettlement program has morphed over the past decade, arguing that for every success story such as Pittsburgh’s Bhutanese there are others, such as Somali farmers, who struggle in 21st-century urban America.

They want the government to slash refugee quotas.

“The State Department should look at refugee resettlement in the United States as an absolute last resort, not the first. That’s been my problem with the policies. They took the easy way out and sent them here,” said Mark Krikorian, who directs the Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies.

Read it all here.  Don’t miss the LIVELY comments (do I detect resistance?).

This is how the State Department rolls. They find a community that by its silence is deemed “welcoming” and then they don’t know when to stop delivering more refugees.  I’ll be keeping an eye on Pittsburgh and report back when we see the first real local push-back make the news.

By the way, the reporter never quite explains what happens when the “tipping point” is reached.

We did earlier this year report on refugee mental health problems in Pittsburgh, in addition to the World Refugee Day no-show article last year.

VDARE has an amusing analysis of this news items and Pittsburgh’s plight, here (refugees “enriching” Pittsburgh) yesterday.

Majority of Americans say US has no moral obligation to offer asylum

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment
Somali refugees, like these in Kenya, are looking for a chance to get to the US. 53% of Americans say we don’t have an obligation to bring them, or any “persecuted” people, here.

 

Truth-be-told, it would be an overwhelming majority (not 53%) if the general public had any knowledge (as you do, as readers of RRW) about how the process works and who is getting paid to ‘help’ the mostly economic migrants (not refugees!) get here.  This poll and our previous post should send a message to Republican candidates this fall!

Here is the AP story (hat tip: Judy).  Emphasis is mine:

Americans are wary of granting refugee status to children crossing the U.S. border to flee strife-torn countries in Central America, and most in an Associated Press-GfK poll say the U.S. does not have a moral obligation to accept asylum seekers generally.

The new poll found 53 percent of Americans believe the United States has no moral obligation to offer asylum to people who escape violence or political persecution, while 44 percent believe it has that responsibility.

And more than half, 52 percent, say children who say they are fleeing gang violence in Central America should not be treated as refugees, while 46 percent say they should.

The responses expose a partisan rift, with 70 percent of Republicans saying Central American children should not be treated as refugees compared with 62 percent of Democrats who believe they should. On whether the United States has an obligation to accept people fleeing violence or political persecution, 66 percent of Republicans say it does not and 57 percent of Democrats say it does. [Republican primary candidates challenging the establishment, take note!—ed]

So that would mean that a whopping 43% of Democrats also believe we have no obligation even in the case of political persecution—wow!

AP goes on to define the word “refugee:”

To qualify for asylum, applicants must prove they suffered persecution or have a well-founded fear of persecution on grounds of race, religion, nationality, membership in a social group or political opinion. A refugee must demonstrate the same but, unlike an asylum seeker, seeks protection while still outside the United States.

Note there is not one word in that largely correct definition that says anything about “fleeing violence.”

About the photo:  Just so you know, we have resettled 6,080 Somalis to the US this fiscal year and 2,414 came here through Kenya supposedly fleeing violence.  If Obama keeps this up, he will soon catch up to George W. Bush in the number of Somalis brought to your home towns!

Check the FY2014 stats here.

 

VDARE writer summarizes important message for Republicans from over-looked report

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Back in February, the Eagle Forum produced a report that could serve as a blueprint for any Republican running for office about how campaigning on the issue of  reducing immigration numbers (yes, even LEGAL immigration) is a winner.

And, it isn’t just about winning the election, but saving the Republic.

The report went largely unnoticed by the establishment Republican Party (they probably actually panned it, but I haven’t the time to search).

In fact, the hard core establishment Republicans are largely influenced by the likes of Grover Norquist and his ilk (here and here) who are in the business of promoting the idea of needing laborers (cheap labor) for their big business clients.  It is about the almighty dollar for many of the so-called leaders of the Republican Party.  (The Democrats too, it’s just that they have that humanitarian white hat firmly planted on their heads and they have another interest as well—reliably leftwing voters***.)

Now to make it easier for all of us to get the salient points from the report, Paul Nachman at VDARE has a post today on the main messages in the report (even more timely now than when it was released in February) and has taken the time to select key bullet points for us.

Here is Nachman and a bit from the report—

To impress obdurately clueless Republican candidates and supporters of what’s at stake, here’s the concluding thought in both the full report and the two-page excerpt from it:

The GOP faces a choice: It can either change its position on legal immigration or it can change its position on almost every other issue.

And then this from the excerpts:

A comprehensive review of surveys in immigrant communities showing their support for big government

A large volume of survey data show that, in general, immigrants and their adult children are significantly more liberal than the average American voter on a host of policy issues, including the size of government, Obamacare, affirmative action, gun control, greater environmental regulation, and other issues championed by the Left …

Because immigrants and their adult children overwhelmingly favor big government, there is no issue more important for conservatives than reducing the future number of legal immigrants allowed into the country each year. Otherwise, legal immigration will continue to add millions of liberal voters every decade, making it extremely unlikely that conservatives will be successful on all the issues they care about.

Read it all!

Going to a political campaign event in August?

So the next time you hear someone, especially a Republican candidate for public office say, ‘I’m all for legal immigration, it’s illegal that I oppose,’  I want you to remember this report (new immigrants vote for Democrats who promise them stuff!) and remind them that most of those illegal aliens streaming across our border at this very moment will soon be LEGAL immigrants one way or another—quickly through an executive amnesty or more slowly in the legal asylum process. 

Ask:  are you for that too?

***  We have said it time and again—for Democrats, immigration (legal and illegal) is about turning red states blue.