Month: March 2017

Church World Service announced yesterday that it is launching anti-Trump campaign (to raise $$$)

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Is your denomination one of 37 that will be holding demonstrations and lobbying Congress?

It is called the #GreaterAs1 campaign.  (Just my personal opinion, but I sure wouldn’t run my whole campaign around a hashtag, see what happened at #ThisIsARefugee!)

greater-as-one-t-shirt
Get your T-shirt and help pay some big salaries at Church World Service as Donald Trump turns off their flow of your money (your tax dollars!). https://greateras1.org/ACT/

Here is the news at WFYI (Indianapolis):

Religious groups around the country Friday announced a coordinated effort to fight immigration policies being pushed by the Trump administration. The campaign includes 37 Christian denominations representing 30 million Americans.

President Donald Trump’s hardline stance on immigration was made manifest in January through an executive order blocking citizens from seven countries – said to protect Americans from foreign-born terrorists. A federal judge blocked the order, but a revised version is expected soon.

The order has been divisive among faith groups. But on Friday a number of Orthodox and mainline Protestant churches announced a grassroots effort to fight any version of the ban.

[….]

The campaign also hopes to raise $1 million over the next six months to help refugees. [They have salaries to pay!—ed]

It was announced through the National Council of Churches and Church World Service, a group that helps settle refugees. [Paid by the head by American taxpayers to resettle refugees!—ed]

You can go here and see what the campaign will do.

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CWS CEO Rev. John McCullough being arrested in Washington, DC protesting in SUPPORT of Obama’s executive AMNESTY. Photo and story here: http://njfon.org/2015/04/08/faith-groups-challenge-fifth-circuit-court-on-presidents-immigration-actions/

And, I had a hard time finding a link to the 37 denominations they are bragging about, but it must be their usual list of congregations that are affiliated with Church World Service, see here (there are 37 listed).
Is one of these your church? If so, and you disagree with the anti-Trump campaign, speak up!

Member Communions

 

So those churches above will be fundraising, demonstrating and lobbying Congress against President Trump’s immigration policy.

Now, let’s look at Church World Service’s financials….
According to Charity Review, Church World Service has 241 paid staff.  Head honcho, the Rev John McCullough, CWS’s CEO, makes a shamefully high annual salary of $316,714!
 
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Here is a breakdown of their income. Besides the $50 million from the US Treasury in one year, that service fee is likely your money too!
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And holy moly!
Just for the heck of it, I checked USA Spending.gov to see how much of your money this supposed ‘religious’ charity got from you since 2008.
I am shocked! In the bidding-for-bodies racket, they have got the Lutherans beat!

They are approaching a half a billion dollars in federal money between 2008 and 2016!

 

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Here are just 5 transactions of 351! And, aren’t you wondering why the Dept. of Homeland Security is giving them payola!

 

There  should be a law! Any non-profit sucking this kind of money out of the US Treasury should be prohibited from running anti-Trump (or anti-any President) campaigns!

Where is Congress?
Go here to see if politically Leftwing Church World Service operates a refugee office in your city.  And, click here, for all of our previous posts on CWS.

Magic March 3rd was yesterday, refugee flow should now be shutting down

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I checked the numbers at Wrapsnet this morning and see that since I reported last on Wednesday (March 1) we had admitted 296 additional refugees.
 

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The UN asked the US to help clear out their camps for the DR Congolese and as of today we admitted 37,913 in just over 3 years. 50 arrived since Wednesday.

 
Readers will recall that the US State Department notified its refugee resettlement contractors to expect the flow to stop on about March 3rd.  Clearly it hasn’t stopped yet.
Of the 296 admitted since Wednesday, 105 were from four of the seven countries identified in the so-called “travel ban.”
None came in the last few days from Libya, Syria or Yemen (but readers should know that in the last few years only tiny numbers, if any, came from Libya or Yemen).  But, it was a surprise to see that Syria was down to zero in the last couple of days.

The big winner in the gang of seven countries was Somalia which sent us a whopping 77 refugees since Wednesday.

Other big winners, among the usual sending countries, were Burma (97, 12 of those were Muslims) and 50 came from the DR Congo. 

DR Congo! The UN said take 50,000 and we said yes, master!

Long time readers will remember that we promised the United Nations, here in 2013, to admit 50,000 from the DR Congo over 5 years. Only a small number of those are Muslims, but they represent some very traumatized women (with lots of children) who will require expensive mental health treatment, here. Their contribution to the US economy will surely be a negative one as we are clearly importing extreme poverty in this case.

I see that as of this morning we have admitted 37,913 from DR Congo since FY2013!

This is a prime example of a key reform we expect the Trump Administration to make. If we are going to admit some refugees….

We should decide which ‘refugees’ we take, not simply jump when the United Nations tells us to!

Did your state get Congolese?  Here is a map from Wrapsnet showing where the DR Congolese were distributed since FY13:
 
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If you can’t read Florida, it is 1,329. Alaska is 72 and Hawaii 0. A reminder: Wyoming is the only state that never started a refugee resettlement program.

 
The top three receiving states are Texas, Arizona, and North Carolina.

Tell President Trump to stop jumping when the UN tells us to help them clean out their refugee camps!

Endnote:  I suspect the delay in the new travel ban announcement is that the State Department is waiting to clear the last refugees through airports world wide.
This post is filed in our Trump Watch! category as well as ‘refugee statistics’ and ‘where to find information.’
My DR Congo archive is here.

Only Malta and Finland on target to take allocated migrants from Italy and Greece under EU 'sharing' scheme

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

“All these measures have the principle of solidarity and fair sharing of responsibility at their core – a principle that binds each member state.”

(Frans Timmermans)

 
Invasion of Europe news….
If you are a regular reader of RRW, you know that Italy and Greece have taken the brunt of the invasion of Europe as those two countries are the most easily reached from Africa and the Middle East.  You also know that a complete and shameful lack of will several years ago by the European Union to turn boats back to the African (or Turkish) coast resulted in a wave of hundreds of thousands of migrants attempting to get to Europe.

frans-timmermans
I’d like to ask the European Commissions first VP, Timmermans, what is fair about demanding that countries that wanted the boats turned back years ago are now expected to take a certain number of migrants because big, prosperous countries like Germany, France and others had no spine.

Of course Italy and Greece can’t manage the numbers, so a ‘sharing’ scheme was designed in 2015 where European Commission member states were apportioned a certain number of the mostly economic migrants to welcome to their countries.
Below is a screenshot showing how many each country was expected to take and how many each had agreed to.
Here is the latest news! Surprise! Quotas are not being met!  Only Malta and Finland are on target we are told.
If you think none of this involves us—Americans! Think again!
Most maddening to me is that Malta is getting praised for being on target when we, the US, take about 500 fake refugees off their hands each year!
See my recent post on this outrageous relocation of mostly African boat people to your towns that began in the Bush Administration.
From The Guardian:

European countries have accepted less than 10% of the 160,000 refugees they promised to move to safety from unsanitary and cramped camps in Italy and Greece, leading the European commission to warn it will “accept no more excuses”.

Only 13,546 relocations have been carried out so far – 3,936 from Italy and 9,610 from Greece – amounting to just 8% of the total the EU committed to relocate in 2015.

Just two member states, Malta and Finland, have met their resettling obligations under the relocation scheme that will close in September.

[….]

Despite February setting a monthly record with about 1,940 relocations, the pace of relocation is still well below the targets of at least 3,000 a month from Greece and at least 1,500 from Italy.

Hungary, Austria and Poland refuse to participate in the relocation scheme. The Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Croatia and Slovakia are doing so on a “very limited basis”. The UK, which can opt out on parts of European asylum policy, has chosen not to participate.

During a press conference in Brussels, the commissioner for migration, Dimitris Avramopoulos, warned that infringement proceedings against member states, including huge daily fines, could soon be levied.

Continue reading here.
As I understand it, these numbers represent migrants who have not already been approved through a normally long asylum process. If I am right about that, then The Guardian’s chart calling them “refugees” is inaccurate. They should be referred to as ‘migrants.’
This is a screenshot of the 2015 allocation goals (from The Guardian): what the European Commission expects and what countries actually agreed to.  The numbers may have changed since 2015, but you get the idea….
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Our complete ‘Invasion of Europe’ archive is here (it extends back many years). My Malta archive goes back to 2007 or 2008, see here.
President Trump supposedly stopped the flow from Malta to America in his first immigration order. It isn’t clear to me whether that survived the court challenge.  We will know more in a few days.

Germany attempting to root out refugee jihadists, watching 570

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The clincher to this story is in the last sentence.  570 “dangerous” refugees are being watched.  Surely they could get rid of them before they commit a terrorist act!
And, how many more are still unknown to them?
Invasion of Europe news….
From Newsline:

German police arrested two migrants from Syria and one from Bosnia on Thursday in Dusseldorf. The arrest was for alleged war crimes in war-torn Syria, including the mass murder of three dozen civilians back in 2013.

angela-merkel-38-what-refugees
I’m guessing that Mama Merkel is trying to look tough in the lead-up to German elections this year.

Federal prosecutors said that 35-year-old Syrian refugee, Abdalfatah H. A., a suspected member of the Al-Qaida linked Al-Nusra Front is accused of 36 counts of war crimes for executing 36 Syrian government employees in 2013.

Another Syrian refugee, 26-year-old Abdulrahman A. A., also a member of the Al-Nusra Front is accused of handling the funds, vehicles and weapons for one of the combat units of the jihadist group.

[….]

On a separate arrest, the southern state of Bavaria said that authorities have arrested a 33-year-old Bosnian, who was suspected of suppling vehicles to the Sunni militia, Janud al-Sham.

German Federal prosecutors have launched about a dozen investigations on war crimes committed in Syria and Iraq, as well as multiple cases of refugees being suspected of membership to jihadist groups.

Germany’s population of Islamic extremists has risen from 100 individuals in 2013, it had swell to 1,600 in a span of four years. The German security and intelligence agency (BfV) said that they are keeping close tabs on about 570 individuals who they consider as ‘dangerous’ and are capable of orchestrating terror attacks.

See our ‘Invasion of Europe’ archive here, and dozens of posts on Germany are here.

Why are we permanently resettling refugees who say their real wish is to go HOME?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

unhcr-firas
Is this Muslim family really in any danger? “Syrian refugee Firas al Ahmad, 30, looks out of the window at his father’s house in Irbid, Jordan, the day before he left for the United States.” © UNHCR/Houssam Hariri http://www.unhcr.org/news/latest/2017/2/58aeff094/move-offers-bittersweet-hope-struggling-syrian-family.html

That is one of the key questions you should all be asking the Trump Administration as they sort through the millions of refugees to find those they will admit to America. (Trump says his Admin. will admit a whopping 50,000 this year!)
Nayla Rush, writing at the Center for Immigration Studies asks, how is the UNHCR picking the “lucky few?”

98.6% of the Syrians entering the US now are Muslims

In the case of the Syrians, in FY15, FY16, and 5 months in to FY17 we admitted a total of 19,826 Syrians to the US. 19,562 are Muslims, mostly Sunnis.  That means that 98.6% were Syrian Muslims (via Wrapsnet). Why so few Christians?
Here is Rush at CIS:

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) recently shared on its website the story of a Syrian refugee family who was resettled from Jordan to Dallas. The 30-year-old mechanic, Firas al Ahmad, his wife Samira and their three children fled to Jordan at the end of 2013 when the fighting intensified near their home. The family struggled there for over three years due to the “lack of legal work opportunities” and welcomed UNHCR’s offer to resettle in the United States. Once their application approved, they sold their furniture and moved out from their apartment to stay with Firas’ dad in the Jordanian city of Irbid.

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The family is filmed there the day before departure. Firas explained on camera: “I’m leaving because of my kids, for their future. I hope they can get a good education, and have a better life than the one we had … The hardest thing is leaving family members behind. All of them but especially my father.” (Firas’s brothers, aunt, and father left Syria with them.)

Samira too was emotional: “Syria is everything. They say, a nation is like a mother. What’s our worth without our mother?” She then burst in tears. Firas reiterated: “Syria is everything, it is everything to me. The minute the war is over I will go back. Even now I wish it would end today, before we leave, so that we could go home.”

In the text, UNHCR underlined the following: “Resettlement programmes in the United States and other developed countries are designed to offer a lifeline to the most vulnerable refugees, including children at risk, survivors of torture and those with medical needs.”(Emphasis added)

How does this apply to Al-Ahmad’s family? As far as we can tell they do not seem to suffer from any specific vulnerability. By their own admission, they fled Syria because the fighting was getting closer; and they accepted the resettlement offer to give a better life to their children, not because they could not stay in Jordan.

As a reminder, the refugee resettlement program was set up to provide “resettlement to a third country in situations where it is impossible for a person to go back home or remain in the host country.” (Emphasis added.) Also, resettlement is one of UNHCR’s “durable solutions” – resettled refugees in the U.S. are required by law to apply for a green card (permanent residence) in the United States one year after arrival. They can apply for U.S. citizenship five years from entry.

But does the Al-Ahmad family want to stay in the U.S.? Do they wish to become American citizens, or is their loyalty first and foremost to Syria? If their true will is to go back home “the minute the war is over,” why resettle them in the U.S. to begin with?

Rush provides more cases, continue reading here.

It is not about humanitarianism!

I can answer the question about why we are permanently placing Syrian refugees (who would prefer to go home) in to your towns and cities—three reasons (have sympathy for these Syrians being used as pawns!):

~The resettlement contractors are paid by the head to drop off refugees who are essentially paying clients and they want to keep their little federally-funded fiefdoms going.

~The Libs want reliable Democrat voters (especially in red states!).

~The UNHCR is working day and night to erase borders and dilute Christian nations with Muslim migrants.

I don’t think the Syrians are going to make good meatpacking workers (cheap laborers), so I won’t list that as a reason in this case (for Somalis, Burmese yes, for Syrians probably not).
If the Trump Administration is at all serious about reforming the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program they would get the UN out of our immigration decisions and stop funding the so-called ‘religious’  (politically liberal) charities doing the resettling.
Of course, this story makes the argument for the Trump “safe zones” concept!