Day: October 11, 2015

Redlands, CA: Citizens tell mayor—no Syrian or African refugees for us!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

One of the most difficult hurdles we have to overcome is the sheer ignorance of local elected officials about how the Refugee Admissions Program of the UN/US State Department operates.  Here we have a mayor of a California city saying he has no say about refugees being “sponsored” by a Catholic parish.
Mr. Mayor, they are not “sponsored” by the parish.  The local Catholic Charities is PAID by the US State Department to resettle refugees chosen in Washington (by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and the US State Dept) for Redlands.  The least you could do is hold a public forum so that you and the community understand exactly what will be expected of you if some of the large number of Syrian Muslims Obama is admitting to the US will be distributed there.

The US Conference of Catholic Bishops is asking Obama for 100,000 Syrians for this fiscal year. They will be looking at every town in America for future placements.

Foster_Paul
Redlands Mayor Paul Foster still think Catholic Charities “sponsors” refugees! Stuck in the Vietnam era, he apparently doesn’t know they are paid by the US State Department (by the head) to resettle refugees.

It only makes sense that Catholic Charities (USCCB) around the country are gearing up to expand their resettlement operations and I urge all of you to start paying attention.
Go here and see exactly which cities have Catholic Charities operating on behalf of the federal government. Redlands is near Los Angeles and you will find this branch of Catholic Charities listed in San Bernardino.
If you suspect a resettlement contractor, like Catholic Charities, is ramping-up where you live, let us know!

Pocket of resistance?

From Redlands Daily Facts:

REDLANDS >> Some members of Redlands Townhall and the Redlands Tea Party Patriots have called on city officials to keep Syrian and African refugees from resettling here.

They asked City Council members Tuesday what their plan will be if the city is asked to resettle some of the 85,000 refugees expected to come to the United States in 2016.

“We are researching the issue and preparing to provide information to the City Council in the near future,” said city spokesman Carl Baker in an email.

Citizens asking questions!  This is what everyone should be doing right now (even before there is a mention of impoverished third worlders being brought to town).

“Where will they be housed? How will their expenses be paid and by whom? And what will be done to ensure the safety of our community? Our biggest concern is the safety of our family, our children and our grandchildren,” Victoria Hargrave of Redlands Townhall said the council on Tuesday.

“The Obama administration would like to bring in 85,000 Syrian refugees into our country in the calendar year that just started on Oct. 1 and they have admitted that they have no database or source of information with which to vet these refugees,” she said. “There are primarily Sunni Muslims. Al-Qaida are Sunni Muslims whose culture and ideology are completely contrary to our Constitution.”

Intelligence officials and Republican lawmakers have expressed concerns that Islamic State militants could seek to slip into Europe or the U.S. posing as migrants.

[….]

Myhanh Luu, refugee resettlement service director for Catholic Charities San Bernardino and Riverside Counties, which has assisted refugees from all over the world, said they have not yet heard about the Syrian and African refugees needing resettlement in the Inland Empire.

[….]

Mayor Paul Foster said he directed City Manager N. Enrique Martinez to look into the issue. But, he said, it is not the city’s business to tell a parish not to sponsor refugees.

“They certainly would have the right, as they did years ago when we had Laotian and Vietnamese refugees and Cambodian refugees,” Foster said. “Groups all over the country brought refugees in, primarily through faith-based organizations and churches themselves and sponsored them and helped them reestablish their lives in our country.  [The mayor is 35 years behind the times! That is not how refugees are distributed today!—ed]

“I certainly don’t see that as being something local municipal governments should be out there opposing or fighting in any way or telling them what they should be doing.”

Citizens need to disabuse this mayor and others like him of this notion—it is most definitely his job to protect his community from economic, cultural and security stress!  I’m sure the federal government would be happy to run his town!
Go here for more on Pockets of Resistance (we have a relatively new category to archive your activities).

US Conference of Catholic Bishops want 100,000 Syrians admitted to US this year….

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

….invoke Pope Francis’s name in their appeal.   Does the Pope have this huge number (100,000 mostly Muslim Syrians) in mind for America?

Archbishop Kurtz
Archbishop Joseph Kurtz of Kentucky is the President of the USCCB and is advocating for 100,000 Syrian, mostly Muslim, refugees to be placed in your parishes!

We know that the Bishops are pushing for this outrageous number already, but many good Catholics may not.   A Catholic reader directed my attention to the Bishops’ website, here.
Our reader, Mark, says he received an e-mail with a link to this site, which among other things, urges faithful Catholics to write a letter to Obama to try and persuade him to admit 100,000 Syrians PLUS another 100,000 refugees in one year. 
The Bishops surely are not telling local priests and parishioners that they are raking in millions of dollars of cold hard cash from federal taxpayers for refugee resettlement activities.  And, they aren’t telling them that they are NOT advocating to save the persecuted Christians of Syria through this program.
From the USCCB:

The political and humanitarian crisis in Syria is a serious concern for the Catholic Church and the bishops of the United States. In the past five years, at least four million Syrians have fled their country as a consequence of the civil war and the rise of ISIS. Most have fled to surrounding countries, especially Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, and Turkey, and many others have moved on to Europe with the hope of finding a place of peace and safety. Pope Francis and the Catholic bishops have called on the U.S. government and the international community to provide support to both Syrian refugees fleeing violence and to countries that have been at the forefront of this humanitarian effort. These recommendations include:

*Providing 100,000 annual resettlement slots for the most vulnerable refugees fleeing the Syria conflict.

*Designating an additional 100,000 refugees to be resettled in the U.S. from other countries.

See the Archbishop’s statement here.
The USCCB needs to admit loud and clear to every Catholic in America how much money they get from the taxpayers for their “Migration Fund!”

See here, over $80 million in one recent year. This is NOT Christian charity!

And, one more thing, we are hearing rumors that various Catholic Charities are gearing up in parishes across the country to increase their refugee load to your town or city this year.  More later….

ANOTHER Minneapolis Somali in trouble with the law; another sex crime

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Every time you see a story like this one, or the one about the Somali hallway rape of a ten-year-old earlier in the week, remember no matter how often they say it—-the federal government cannot screen refugees from failed states (for Islamic terrorists, for criminals and for the mentally impaired).   Failed states include Iraq, Somalia, Afghanistan, Syria and the list goes on.
From KSTP ABC 5 News (hat tip: Randy):

MahmudAden
Mahmud Aden allegedly wanted oral sex from pregnant teen.

A Metro Transit bus driver was arrested and accused of refusing to let a pregnant teenage girl off the bus and demanding oral sex, according to a criminal complaint filed in Hennepin County District Court.

Mahmud Dabshir Aden, 32, of Minneapolis is charged with soliciting for prostitution. He was arrested Wednesday by Metro Transit Police after the 16-year-old girl filed a complaint.

According to the criminal complaint, about 10:16 p.m. the teen boarded the #7 bus driven by Aden near the 46th Street Light Rail Station in Minneapolis. The victim said although she pulled the cord indicating she wanted to get off at the next stop, Aden did not stop.

Aden continued to drive until his layover at 34th Avenue South and Highway 62. The compliant states Aden told the victim if she would “suck on his private parts” he would give her $100 and a cellphone.

The girl refused and asked Aden to take her back to where she wanted to get dropped off. According to the complaint he turned off the bus lights and exposed himself to the teen.  [I assume the teen is an infidel to Aden—-ed]

The victim said after she continued to tell Aden no, he finally turned the lights back on and drove her to her stop. The victim was then picked up by a family member around 10:36 p.m.

Lucky taxpayers!  First you ‘donated’ to bring this man to America (almost all Somali refugees in the US are ‘refugees’), paid for his early days here, and now you get to pay for his trial and likely incarceration!

Why are we bringing in more Somalis?

As the UNHCR is sending Somalis back to Somalia from its Kenyan camps we admitted 8,858 Somalis to the US in FY2015, here (many from the Kenyan camps!).  Somalis are the third largest ethnic group admitted to the US this past year.

No matter what the feds promise, they can’t screen the Somalis any better than the Syrians!

RRW Weekly roundup for week ending October 10, 2015

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I’m going to do this quickly because there is so much more juicy news to get to this morning.
***Update*** There is so much breaking news on refugees that I can’t possibly post it all! So please follow me on twitter or follow the twitter feeds in my right hand sidebar to keep up with the news!  I am @RefugeeWatcher, click here.
If you didn’t see my Frequently Asked Questions post this week, please see it here (I’ve added it as a page under our header). There is information there about media requests and speaking invitations.
The For New Readers section below is a repeat because we get new readers every day!  If you read that section below and the FAQs (mentioned above), I think many of your questions for me will be answered.
Here are the Top Three Posts of the last week.  Top Daily Posts are in the right hand sidebar.

1)World Relief targeting Northern Idaho for refugee resettlement!

2)Connecticut Senator Blumenthal wants more Syrians here faster, proposes to eliminate some screening

3)Update: Who was that man over Senator Blumenthal’s left shoulder?

Top ten countries from which we received readers (excluding the US):

Canada

UK

Australia

Germany

Norway

Netherlands

EU (again I don’t know what they mean by this since individual European Union countries are listed)

France

Austria

Sweden

For new readers!

Since we get new readers every day, here is my usual spiel with two points I need to continue to make:
First, we do screen our comments (sometimes I don’t get to them right away!) and I don’t post any that threaten any kind of violence or ones filled with foul language.  An occasional expletive might slip in if the comment is otherwise a good one.  You are always free to disagree with our point of view if you follow those two simple rules.

And the other thing I want to mention is about e-mails that come to you every time we post.  They come directly from wordpress to subscribers.  We don’t send out e-mails.  So, if we are posting too much for your e-mail inbox, then just unsubscribe and visit RRW when you have the time.  I understand completely about too many e-mails!  You might want to simply follow us on twitter or on facebook (below).
This is where you can find information (in addition to our fact sheet). We have over 7,000 posts.

*  See our categories (left hand sidebar, now a drop-down)

*  Also, we have a great search function and since the categories do not go all the way back to our first posts more than eight years ago, use the search window with a few key words.  You might want to first try your city, state, or country to see what we have reported from there over the years.

Readers from Europe should search for key words ‘Invasion of Europe’ for all of our many posts on the migration crisis on the Continent.

By the way, our category entitled ‘where to find information’ is filled with reports and documents, but with 390 posts archived there, it is pretty unwieldy now.
Past weekly roundups can be found in our category entitled ‘blogging.’
If you wish to be notified when we post, consider subscribing or follow us on twitter (@refugeewatcher) or facebook (RefugeeInfoResource).  ‘Like us’ on facebook! (We are no longer posting every story we write at RRW to facebook so as not to overload your facebook feed either.)  We also have some content on facebook that isn’t posted here first, so like us and follow us (I do have a volunteer helper at facebook—Kelly Monroe Kullberg).
I’m trying to be better about tweeting, so please follow me!  I’ve even begun displaying my twitter feed in the right hand side bar here at RRW.
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Republican Governor Snyder welcomes Syrians to Michigan; Arab activists want more welfare

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We’ve written about Gov. Snyder and his plan to re-populate Detroit with 50,000(!) Syrians, but where does he expect 50,000 (or even 5,000) to work, or will they just bring federal welfare dollars to the city?
Here is the latest from the The Detroit News (hat tip: Joanne).  Emphasis is mine.

Haifa Fakhouri
Does Ms. Fakhouri understand that the vast majority of the Syrians she is advocating (for Michigan) will be Muslims?

Michigan, already home to one of the largest communities of Syrian immigrants in the nation, can expect even more in the coming months as lawmakers warm up to the idea of welcoming more people from the war-torn country.

[….]

The prospect of accepting the migrants has support in Michigan, where about 4,000 refugees were resettled last year, with more than half of those from Iraq, according to data from the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement within the Department of Health & Human Services.

“Gov. Snyder believes Michigan should be a welcoming state,” said Dave Murray, spokesman for Gov. Rick Snyder. “We are open to working with the federal government to see if there is a role that Michigan can play with this issue.”

It’s unclear how many Syrian refugees could end up living in Michigan. Resettlement inside the U.S. is influenced by several factors, including whether the refugee has relatives living in the U.S. already, and the capacity of the resettlement agencies in local communities to handle individual or special casesand languages spoken.

“Each state also has the ability to comment on the capacity of the agencies and the communities in which they propose to place refugees,” said Danna Van Brandt, an adviser for the U.S. Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration within the State Department.

Liar, liar pants on fire!

It is absolutely NOT true Ms. Van Brandt that each state has the ability to comment on the capacity for the communities to handle more refugees, as all of you working in ‘pockets of resistance’ can attest.  If they consult at all, they consult only with ‘friendlies’ like Gov. Snyder!

More welfare please!

The Detroit News continued with, get this, they want more welfare for Michigan refugees!  This when we already know ,thanks to the work of Senator Sessions’ office, that Middle Easterners (Muslims and Christians) are gobbling welfare at a higher rate than other refugees.

Activists in Metro Detroit’s Arab community are pushing for the federal government to offer more aid to refugees from the Middle East and Africa.

“We’ve seen refugees coming here from the Middle East for the last 36 years,” said Haifa Fakhouri, president, CEO and founder of the Arab American and Chaldean Council….

[….]

The Arab American and Chaldean council is helping refugees through programs run by the United Nations, Catholic Relief Services and through efforts by churches and mosques, Fakhouri said.

Someone please do an economic study to counter the idea that refugees bring boom times to dying cities!
Logic tells us that that is simply impossible.  Leave out the welfare dollars, the special loans for start-up refugee businesses, and money for HUD housing (coming from Washington, from taxpayers!) and then do the study!  Be sure to factor in the remittances leaving the US permanently as refugees send money “home.” 
Finally a clever reporter notices!
Every time you hear about how we have to help Europe out of its crisis remember that the vast majority of our Syrian refugees are chosen by the UN from UN camps, and here we see that 15,000 are in the pipeline from UN camps (previously we were told 17,000).  Whether it’s 15,000 or 17,000 that is still over the 10,000 Obama says we will take in FY2016 (which got underway on Oct. 1).
Does Ms. Fakhouri understand that 97% of the Syrians who came through the Refugee Admissions Program so far are Muslims!
The Detroit News:

The refugees from Syria would be people who are already in the pipeline and waiting to be let into the United States, not the thousands working their way through eastern Europe and landing in Greece. It was not immediately clear how admitting a larger number of Syrian refugees who are in the processing pipeline would help alleviate the crisis that European countries are grappling with.

About 15,000 Syrians are waiting for the clearance process to conclude, according to the State Department.

There is much more including a list of Michigan elected officials for and against the Governor’s wish to bring ’em in!  Continue reading here.
By the way, back in 2008, the US State Department slowed the flow to Michigan as the state was overwhelmed with welfare-gobbling refugees, so what changed their minds?