Day: March 27, 2017

Australia plans to take mostly Syrian Christians for resettlement…

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Okay, that sounds reasonable and sensible except for one thing!

Australia is pawning off over 1,000 mostly Muslim asylum seekers presently housed in offshore detention centers on to the US.  What are we nuts!
Here is the news (at Christian Daily) about Australia’s magnanimous gesture toward Christian Syrians:

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turbull’s government has prioritized persecuted Syrian Christian refugees over their Muslim counterparts in a program that provides homes to 10,000 asylum seekers who have passed a stringent screening process.

So Prime Minister Turnbull is going to prioritize Christian refugees and hand off THEIR rejected Muslims to us? Come on Donald get back to why we elected you!

The Australian government has now issued the 12,000 visas previously promised to Syrian refugees and is set to resettle the asylum seekers mostly in New South Wales. Although it seems Prime Minister Turnbull has not yet revealed the religious composition of the resettled refugees, the Daily Telegraph has learned that around three quarters of the migrants who were processed were persecuted Christians.

The refugees in the resettlement program had to go through a strict security screening process to make sure that no radicalized foreign fighters make their way into Australia. The program, which was first announced by former prime minister Tony Abbott, was previously met with opposition by those who are against prioritizing refugees of any religion.

[….]

In December, The Australian columnist Angela Shanahan called on the Australian government to take in more Christian refugees fleeing persecution in the Middle East. She said many refugees who are merely fleeing war have the chance to return to their homeland, but these Christians can never return.

Shanahan also highlighted the potential eradication of Christianity in the faith’s cradle in the Middle East. For her, not taking into account a refugee’s religion is “blind” obedience to Australia’s immigration policy, and added that their country cannot ignore religion when processing resettlement of asylum seekers because these people fled their country because of religious persecution.

This post is filed in our Australia category, here.  And, Trump Watch! here.

No statutory authority underpinning refugee program in so-called Wilson-Fish states

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The Refugee Act of 1980 does permit a state to withdraw from the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program, but here is the catch: Back in 1984 Congress passed an amendment to the act that was then completely abused by the bureaucrats in the federal government who did not want to stop sending refugees to those states.  They came up with a program (created through regulations with no backing in the law) to pass the responsibility off to non-profit groups.
Here James Simpson writing at the Daily Caller tells us more about the illegal program.

The Thomas More Law Center has initiated a lawsuit on behalf of the Tennessee General Assembly. The suit charges that the government is violating both the U.S. Constitution’s Spending Clause and the 10th Amendment by forcing Tennessee to cover the costs of refugee resettlement in the state even though Tennessee dropped out of the program in 2008.

Under the 1980 Refugee Act, the federal government promised to provide 100 percent of the state share of refugee cash and medical welfare costs for the first 36 months of their resettlement. That constituted a significant savings for participating states, especially considering that refugees use welfare at very high rates. However, by 1991 the feds had stopped reimbursing states altogether. The refugee program has become an unfunded mandate.

Adding insult to injury, starting in 1995, the Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), began assigning a private refugee resettlement contractor (called Voluntary Agency or VOLAG) to keep the resettlement program running in states that drop out. This would ensure a continual flow of refugees to the state.

In addition to welfare, refugees bring significant other costs, including interpreters, English classes for students, medical and other services. For example, in 2016, Amarillo, Texas Mayor Paul Harpole complained, “We have 660 (refugee) kids who don’t speak English and the U.S. Department of Education says they have to be at grade level within one year. It’s a ludicrous requirement — they don’t even know how to use the bathroom.”

Simpson then points out that states which withdrew, and which then were turned over to a non-profit group to run, received many more refugees after the non-profit (VOLAG) began calling the shots along with the feds. His table  at right shows the dramatic jump in numbers when unelected non-profit group leaders placed refugees in unwilling states and effectively began spending state tax dollars.
Continue reading to learn more about the illegal placement of refugees in states that have wished to not participate in the program.
BTW, Texas recently dropped out of the USRAP—will the governor join Tennessee lawsuit???  Will Maine’s governor join the suit? How about Christie in NJ or Brownback in Kansas? See here.
More on Simpson, here.