I told youthe other day, I’m a one issue voter. If we don’t get immigration (how many and who we allow to become permanent residents) slowed (stopped!) nothing else matters. Carly Fiorina happy to support Dream Act and Gang of Eight!
So, just thought you should see what Daniel Horowitz writing at Conservative Reviewyesterday tells us about Carly Fiorina on the issue of immigration (among many other issues). Here is the immigration portion, but please go read the rest of his good analysis.
By the way, it sure looks and sounds like Fox News is doing a Carly coronation these days! I’m thinking that Rupert Murdoch would love to see a Rubio/Fiorina ticket because they could be controlled and move his open-borders agenda forward!
From Conservative Review:
In 2010, while running for Senate in California against Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer, Carly affirmed her support for the DREAM Act amnesty, noting “I would support the DREAM Act because I do not believe that we can punish children who through no fault of their own are here trying to live the American dream.” The DREAM Act has served as the foundation for Obama’s cycle of amnesty and Fiorina’s defense is the heart and soul of the arguments Hillary can and will use during the general election. Don’t we need a candidate who will be able to throw what is perhaps our biggest punch with full force?
Carly also opposed fixing the birthright citizenship loophole for illegal aliens and referred to it as an “emotional distraction.” She also accused some opponents of amnesty as taking on a racist tone. Again, that is exactly what Hillary says. How can she throw the immigration punch with such vulnerabilities?
In February 2013, when the Gang of 8 released the worst comprehensive amnesty bill of our time, Carly was one of its biggest cheerleaders on the Sunday shows. Appearing on Meet the Press, she said “I applaud and salute the Gang of Eight`s proposal. Let`s move forward and vote on that.” She appeared on This Week on February 3 praising the bill as a “carefully crafted” balance and a “good first step,” while expressing hope that the Democrats would not oppose it. This bill was the embodiment of what is wrong with the very political class she now inveighs against in her well-honed stump speech. Yet, when people like Cruz and Sessions were fighting to stop this bill, which emboldened Obama to expand his executive amnesty and create a new wave of illegal immigration, Carly was cheering the armpit of the political class. This is unbelievable. Hillary can eat her alive.
The other day we told you about how Lutheran Social Services seemed to be gleefully announcing that a big batch of new refugees was on the way to town, see here. I wondered if Fargo had any resisters (see ‘Pockets of Resistance’) and now it seems they do. This articlejust popped up in my alerts. Doing well by doing good! LSS North Dakota is paid by the head to resettle refugees and they have a brand spanking new building to pay for! http://www.inforum.com/business/3766264-new-home-lss-aims-welcome-clients-workers Note to our readers in Australia, Canada, and Europe: some of this information may be pretty ‘inside baseball’ for you, but in some ways it should also be useful information for you to know that there are Americans who are raising red flags about the resettlement of refugees in their towns and cities. They are trying to figure out how the secretive program works, digging into documents, asking public questions, informing their neighbors and hounding elected officials.
From WDAY-TV where we learn that an on-line petition has sprung up in opposition to more refugees being placed in North Dakota.
Fargo, ND (WDAY TV)-Hundreds of people have signed an online petition to send a message about the increased number of refugees expected in Cass County.
Many we spoke with said they think the petition is irresponsible and unfair.
[….]
But hundreds disagree, according to the list of signatures on the Change.org petition titled, “Stop Lutheran Social Services in Fargo!”
The document was created earlier this week and calls for an end to the flow of refugees into Cass County without a vote, as well as for information on the refugees already placed here.
Many wrote reasons for their support, including messages like:
“How can we afford to bring more people in to live off what we have, when we don’t have enough for the ones that are already here?” – James Williams, Fargo.
Mr. Williams’ comment is a common refrain we hear everywhere—why are we bringing in more poor people when we can’t take care of those already here?
Then get this! LSS CEO Jessica Thomasson says her organization has no say about how many come—the federal government is doing the picking—it is a decision made by Congress, she says! This exactly illustrates what Don Barnett said in our previous post. The media has no clue how this is all done and they simply parrot the local contractor. WDAY-TVcontinues….
But the thing is, Lutheran Social Services*** CEO Jessica Thomasson says, beyond a conversation once a year about how many refugees the organizations staff can handle, they don’t have much of a say in how many people are sent here or where they’re sent from.
That’s all up to the Federal Government.
Jessica Thomasson/CEO, Lutheran Social Services: “Lutheran Social Services really just facilitates resettlement in this community, this is a decision that’s made by Congress every year that is affecting the work across the entire United States.”
Go here for more and to see the petition.
She is right that Washington is making the decisions for North Dakota (and every other state) receiving the UN-chosen refugees, but her parent organization—Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service—takes her suggestions that arrive in that R & P Abstractfor how many her local subcontracting office can handle and where they will come from!
Every week or so, her parent organization sits down with US State Department employees and they divvy up the refugees partially dependent on what amenities your town has to offer the refugees in the form of subsidized housing, jobs for low-skilled people and so forth. They even take into consideration the presence of a mosque or two. Maybe Congress should have a role, but they don’t (mostly because they have abrogated their responsibility!).
This is all done at the Administration level as the President sets the agenda every year for how many will be resettled and from what countries. He then sends his “determination letter” (2015 is here) to Congress for “consultation”where historicallymembers of Congress responsible for this program merrily rubber stamp whatever the President says!
***LSS of North Dakota is an over $40 million a year operation with $10 million coming from government grants, see here.
Warning!
By the way, on this Presidential determination letter, the Obama Administration is working on that right now for FY2016. They will send it to Congress around Sept. 30th since FY2016 begins on October 1. I am very concerned that instead of the usual 70,000 refugees the Obama Administration has been bringing in each year, that they will dramatically increase the number for 2016 to accommodate the 65,000 (mostly Muslim) Syrians that the United Nations wants us to take. The reason I suspect a rat is that it has been very very quiet ever since the Jihad Caucus wrote to Obama. I’m guessing Obama/Kerry told them to hush-up for now because something is in the works! Watch for it!
Editor: From time to time we post guest columns and other notable comments from readers. This one is from someone who knows the US Refugee Admissions Program better than anyone else on the outside (LOL! maybe better than some on the inside!). Don Barnett has been following the refugee industry for over 25 years and is a fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies.I’m happy to call him a longtime colleague and friend.
Below, Mr. Barnett addresses some of the ridiculous ‘studies’ being promoted around the US which posit that resettling impoverished third worlders will bring economic boom times to states losing population, or that refugee-run ‘businesses’ can rescue financially strapped cities.
The refugee resettlement program is perhaps the federal government’s most advanced case of politicized, Orwellian speech.
Don Barnett (See also: Time for the refugee program to come out of the shadows!) https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2014/03/24/wyoming-op-ed-time-for-the-refugee-program-to-come-out-of-the-shadows/
Are refugees too dependent on government hand-outs? Simply re-define the term “self-sufficiency” so that those dependent on government hand-outs are declared officially “self-sufficient”. According to the feds, a refugee can be on every welfare program except TANF and still be considered “self-sufficient”. Thus the media dutifully report the absurd claims of the refugee contractors about refugee “self-sufficiency” for individuals who may be in public housing, receiving Food Stamps, cash assistance from SSI and on Medicaid.
So much ignorance abounds that a “task force” recently formed to study the possibility of introducing refugee resettlement in Wyoming allowed itself to be assured by U. of Wyoming College of professor and immigration law specialist, Noah Novogrodsky, that the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement and the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees ‘pay 100 percent of the costs of refugee resettlement for many years. It’s not like we’re going to get stuck with an unfunded mandate’.
Of course it is a massive unfunded obligation placed upon states and localities by a federal program. Most refugees are placed into one or more public assistance programs by the refugee resettlement contractors. In recent weeks Congressional Research Services provided data about welfare usage among refugees. Among refugees who had arrived in a recent 5-year period, 56 percent were receiving Medicaid or Refugee Medical Assistance, 74.2 percent were on food stamps, and 22.8 percent were in public housing. 47.1 percent were on some form of cash assistance. (1)
State tax payers fund a portion of some federal programs such as Medicaid. When the 1980 act was passed the federal government promised to reimburse states for their cost share of refugee usage of SSI, AFDC (today TANF) and Medicaid at 100% for 3 full years. Even 3 years of coverage was acknowledged to be inadequate, but was better than nothing. By 1991 the states were getting nothing: all reimbursements for state refugee costs were eliminated.
Newspeak and Newthought permeate the cottage industry of studies “proving” the net positive economic benefits of refugee resettlement. A look at 2 past studies shows just how willing the media is to be spoon fed information rather than seeking, finding and questioning.
According to Tennessee’s state refugee coordinator – an employee of Catholic Charities, the state’s largest refugee resettlement contractor – a “comprehensive” study by the Tennessee legislature “found …that refugees pay more in taxes than they consume in benefits — in fact, twice as much.”
The 2013 study made no such finding. In assessing the cost of publicly funded benefits for refugees, the study looked at just 2 programs – public education (including ELL) and Tenncare (Tennessee’s version of Medicaid). It ignored a whole range of programs which refugees use and which Tennessee tax payers fund both with state tax dollars and as federal tax payers.
The study assumed that refugees were using Medicaid at the same rate as average Tennesseans even though up to 59% of refugees have been placed into Medicaid upon arrival in recent years.
Also, the report assumed refugees pay state taxes at the same rate as average Tennesseans while federal studies find very high usage of welfare, high unemployment and low wages among those refugees with jobs.
The study authors themselves concluded “The information necessary to complete a comprehensive study on the possible cost shifting from the federal government to the state for the resettlement of refugees is not available.” Nevertheless, The Tennessean and other media reported more or less as fact the “take away” that refugees bring in twice as much in taxes as they use in benefits.
The study’s outcome – more accurately, lack of outcome – was likely foreordained by a Chamber of Commerce/left wing coalition that had hijacked other supposedly objective fiscal reviews of state operations.
Another study of refugee economic impact sponsored by an amorphous, shape-shifting Chamber of Commerce/left wing coalition calling itself The Refugee Services Collaborative of Cleveland got more traction than the embarrassing Tennessee study. It found, according to an article in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, that “Three resettlement agencies spend about $4.8 million a year helping refugees to start new lives in the Cleveland area. From that investment of mostly federal dollars comes an annual economic impact of nearly $50 million.”
Now the tax dollars invested are paying back 10 to 1!
The study looked at 3 areas where refugees make an economic contribution in the Cleveland area: refugee service organizations, refugee-owned businesses and household spending of refugee families.
Speaking of refugee service organizations, the study notes that the “preponderance of funding for these organizations is derived from federal sources”. That is not a negative finding for the authors of the study; after all it still represents a net inflow of money into the Cleveland area and employment for 95. I assume most of the employees are refugees or immigrants, but the study does not say. An interesting question for a study is why an area which in the year of the study resettled 598 refugees and resettled less than 400 per year in the previous 12 years needs 95 federal taxpayer funded employees focused exclusively on serving refugees.
The next category of economic contribution comes from refugee-owned businesses of which the study reports: “The Chmura survey indicated that over the last ten years, at least 38 businesses were started by refugees in the Cleveland area with a total of 141 employees (including owners). In addition, it is estimated that almost all of those employed by refugee-owned businesses are refugees themselves. Though the survey did not gather information of the types of businesses that were started, estimates were made based upon studies conducted elsewhere. The assumed mix of industries for the refugee-owned businesses includes the following: restaurants, retail, health and beauty, transportation and automotive services, and child care.” (my emphasis)
In other words, over a period of 10 years just 141 refugees found employment in 38 refugee-started businesses – average size less than 4 employees. The job-creation miracle yielded 141 jobs for the 4,000 or so who were resettled in the area at that time. And we have no idea what the businesses are – foodcarts, in-home day care centers, one man and a lawn mower, consultants on how to work the system? It is more than amazing that having located and counted all the businesses opened by refugees they didn’t ask “oh, by the way, just what does your business do?”
The third category of economic vitality is household spending of refugee families.
Offering no real supporting evidence the study assumes Cleveland area refugees use welfare at less than the national average for refugees. (See above for an idea of welfare usage for refugees nationally.) It doesn’t matter anyway: a dollar provided by the federal taxpayer via a welfare program is a net plus in this study as it is assumed that this dollar will be spent in a Cleveland business.
The study is filled with findings such as “refugee services will purchase goods and services from other local businesses to support their organizations” and there are “benefits to local consumer-oriented businesses (such as retail and restaurants) that make sales to workers of the refugee services”.
Remember “refugee services” purchase goods and pay salaries with federal taxpayer dollars. But the dollars keep going round and round with positive ‘direct impacts’, ‘indirect impact’ and ‘induced impacts’. (No mention is made that some of these dollars are going directly back to the home country.)
The fog of ignorance and misinformation around this program is largely thanks to the inattention, if not active collusion of the media.
The facts are out there if the media would but investigate and report them. Until that happens we will ever be in the twilight zone when it comes to this topic.
…..they say that ISIL (ISIS) is a functioning government.
This story is a few days old (trying to catch up quickly this morning on lots of news). Four of seven Somali ‘youths:’ “In April, six of the seven defendants in the case were arrested by FBI agents following a 10-month investigation. No trial date has been set. A hearing on motions is scheduled Sept. 2 in front of U.S. District Judge Michael Davis.”
From the Minneapolis Star Tribune:
In one of several motions filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis, the attorneys argued that despite its reputation for brutality, ISIL carries many characteristics of a government that tends to day-to-day business and that therefore criminal charges against the defendants are too broad.
“While the group has adopted harshly violent and repressive tactics, and engages in military and insurgency attacks against the Syrian and Iraqi armies, it has also embarked on a systematic process of civilian governance over the eight to 10 million people with the territory it controls,” attorneys said.
Continue reading the argument, then check out this motion. Large amounts of security will taint the jury pool say lawyers for the ‘youths.’
Other motions included a request to dial back a heavy security presence at the trial because the attorneys said it could negatively influence a jury. Current hearings have a large contingent of police and Homeland Security officers, and at least one bomb-sniffing dog.
“If allowed, this extraordinary display of security would be present from the moment jurors arrive at the courthouse until after they leave, serving as a constant reminder, not just of the fact that Defendants are accused of a crime, but of the fact that they are accused of a crime related to terrorism,” the motion stated. “ … The security appears not to be designed to protect against potential danger posed by the accused but, rather, perceived danger from members of the Somali community who are not accused of any crime.”
We have been writing since 2008 about ‘Somali youths’(media never refers to them as ‘Somali refugees!’) leaving (or wanting to leave the good life you paid for) and returning either to Africa to get jihad training from Al-Shabaab or now to go to Syria/Iraq and join ISIS.
Someone should figure out how much all of these refugee trials and incarcerations are costing the US taxpayer. Local and state courts should bill the US State Department! We have 1,840 posts in our ‘crimes’ category, of course some are abroad, but you can be sure a big chunk of those crime reports are from the US.
