Month: January 2018

Hungary's Orban has the international Left in panic mode

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Invasion of Europe News….

And, you can tell by this article at HuffPo that paints him as an “authoritarian” that they are very very afraid of him and his growing “nationalist” power in Eastern Europe. They also see him exporting his views (about especially Muslim migration) to other European countries like Italy, Austria and (gasp!) even Germany.

orban and family
Orban and family (protecting their futures!)

One of Hungarian Prime Minister Orban’s greatest strengths is his willingness to speak (as Trump did yesterday) straightforwardly. Muslim refugees are invaders.
I’m still waiting for President Trump to invite Orban to the White House. If he wants to push the Left (and CNN) over the cliff (into a mental breakdown) now, that would do it. 
Here is the Huffington Post on Orban (the truth-teller):

In a January 8th interview with Germany’s Bild newspaper, Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orban, said “we don’t see these people as Muslim refugees. We see them as invaders.” Multi-culturalism, he said, is an illusion. Muslim culture, he continued, is so different from Europe’s that parallel societies are being created.

Orban’s anti-migrant campaign is resonating beyond central Europe into Austria, Italy and even Germany. Earlier this month he was welcomed at a conference of Bavaria’s Christian Socialists, whose leader Horst Seehofer is critical of chancellor Angela Merkel’s immigration policies. In 2015 over 1 million mostly Muslim refugees were resettled in Germany. About 150,000 of those refugees transited Hungary. Few wanted to stay in Hungary.

Orban has made common cause with neighboring Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic where public opinion opposes refugee resettlement. Hungary and Poland are being targeted by the European Union Commission for refusing a quota of 10,000 refugees under a burden sharing measure agreed to three years ago. The case is before the European Court of Justice. Since the 2015 migration crisis Poland has accepted no refugees while Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Austria have each taken fewer than twenty.

The Fidesz Party that Orban founded holds a two-thirds majority in parliament and is favored to win new elections set for April 8th. Orban has ruled Hungary with an increasingly authoritarian hand since 2010.

HuffPo writer Barry Wood throws everything at Orban he can think of that would paint the man as a monster (eg. “flame-thrower” with close ties to Russia), and then goes on to say this below, as if we would all be shocked, that Orban doesn’t like that nice old man—George Soros (I bet HuffPo gets a bit of moola from Budapest-born, György Schwartz).
 

Soros poster Hungary
On the streets of Budapest:  “Letʼs not let Soros have the last laugh!

 
Wood continues:

During a visit to Budapest in November I was startled to see posters bearing the image of billionaire Hungarian-born investor and philanthropist George Soros all over the city. Paid for by Fidesz, these ubiquitous posters tell Hungarians not to let Soros have the last laugh. Soros is the favorite target of Orban, representing everything he opposes—multiculturalism, diversity, globalization, and tolerance. Soros is accused of wanting to Muslimize Europe. Some Jewish groups see the campaign as anti-Semitic, others do not.

More here.
Come on Donald! Give us some more fun! Welcome Viktor Orban to the White House and give him a lavish State Dinner!  (Stick it to Soros too! You know he hates you!)
Looking for something to do? Write to the White House and tell the Prez you want to see Orban invited to the White House (and have him bring his lovely family)!
Go here for my complete ‘Invasion of Europe’ archive.

President Trump gives us permission to speak!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

With all the hullabaloo since yesterday about the President’s question about why we needed to import so many people from certain s***hole countries, I’m thinking that the great fear the PC crowd (pulling out the smelling salts) has is that when the President speaks straightforwardly (on anything), it gives permission for masses of Americans to do the same.  Speaking freely about critical issues facing our country could be the death of the hard Left and they know it.

Graham and Durbin chuckle
So who leaked the comment to the Washington Post? Some speculate it was someone connected to these two unhappy participants—Senator Dick Durbin and Senate pal Lindsey Graham

I’m expecting that half of America was laughing in the privacy of their homes when they heard the President voice something that they themselves dare not say.
I didn’t look around for what might be the best discussion about what exactly happened, but this one at the American Spectator by Scott McKay seems on point and brings up the Somali issue something we know a good bit about.
Here are a few snips (emphasis is mine):

A quote attributed to President Trump horrifies our snowflake intellectuals, but accurately reflects the sentiments of much of America.

Thursday saw a media firestorm erupt over a Washington Post report that amid a White House meeting with several members of Congress working on a compromise having to do with the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, President Trump asked why America should have to take in so many immigrants from “s***hole countries” rather than people from places like Norway.

The Post article isn’t exactly the finest example of American journalism, identifying as its source no one actually in the room to confirm what Trump supposedly said but instead naming two anonymous people who were “briefed on the meeting.”

Those anonymous second-hand sources claimed that the offending statement came amid a discussion over a proposal to eliminate the diversity visa lottery program and use the 50,000 visas per year tied up in it to offer protection to “vulnerable populations” living in the United States under Temporary Protected Status. Trump became irritated at this, according to the Post, and asked about Haitians, and when the conversation turned to Africa Trump supposedly said, “Why are we having all these people from s***hole countries come here?” and suggested that maybe instead America should be taking in more people from Norway — whose prime minister visited the White House the day before.

[…..]

The Post reported that the Senators attempting to come to a DACA solution, most prominently Illinois Democrat Dick Durbin (whose track record indicates a lack of reliability where it comes to good faith in negotiations) and South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham (no more need be said) were upset over, upon arriving at the meeting, being joined by immigration hard-liners Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) and Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Virginia), among others. Durbin and Graham thought they’d have the president more or less to themselves. And when the meeting devolved into disagreement, with Trump showing no interest in a DACA deal, it’s pretty obvious someone on one or both of their staffs rushed to the Post to offer up a juicy second-hand Trump quote which might or might not have been reported in proper context.

Author McKay then goes through a list of dysfunctional countries whose nationals are here in large numbers, including from Somalia:

Abukar Ibrahim
The most recent Somali machete attacker in Vermont last week (at a hotel for the homeless). A reader tells me he came as a refugee in 2004. If so, what has he contributed to America in those 13 years?

How about Somalia? Who’s up for more mass immigration from Somalia? Is there any argument Somalia is a s***hole, or do we need a national screening of Black Hawk Down to remind us what that country is like? If you’d like a more recent depiction of what Somalia has to offer the world we could all watch Captain Phillips, the 2013 Tom Hanks vehicle about the true story of the Maersk Alabama, set upon by one of the multitudinous hordes of pirates — yes, actual pirates — sloughing off from Somali shores in search of fat from international commerce.

Somalia is such a s***hole that its stench infects nearby countries like Kenya — viz., the Westgate Shopping Mall attack in Nairobi in 2013 — and Uganda, where Al-Shabaab, Somalia’s home-grown jihadist terror group, set off a series of bombs in the capital of Kampala to slaughter 76 people as they watched the 2010 World Cup soccer final.

What has America derived from mass immigration from Somalia? Machete attacks on street corners in Columbus and mall stabbings in suburban Minneapolis. And if you like, you can ask the current and former residents of Lewiston, Maine, what a boon Somali immigration has been to that town. [See machete attack in Shelburne, VT in the last week.—ed]

The last thing the open-borders Left wants is for you to talk openly about immigration and who should be permitted to live here.

The open-borders crowd doesn’t want to talk about that, though, and it wants to call you racist if you’re opposed to a deluge of immigrants from the worst places on earth. That’s why Trump’s “s***holes” objection is big news rather than the fact there are so-called political leaders who can’t agree to reorient our immigration policy toward taking people who can successfully assimilate here.

Between the two, the crude man who tells the truth and looks out for his own citizens is preferable to the genteel man who sells us out for cheap labor or ballot-box fuel for a political machine. If Trump is the former, so be it.

Much more here.
 

US News and World Report takes notice of South Dakota refugee controversy

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

“Refugee resettlements and interfaith dialogue is a part of a war.”

(State Senator Neal Tapio)

If you missed it, please visit my previous post on South Dakota, here.
Update January 12th: See what happened at the ‘Interfaith’ rally, here.  Also, see this incredible research on Taneeza Islam, here.
In preparation for reading this you might also visit the work of Islam expert Steve Coughlin on how “Interfaith” groups came to be used by the Muslim Brotherhood in their work to promote Islam in America.  See my 2016 post here.

Screenshot (142)_LI
Here in November of last year (after Taneeza Islam shut down several speakers she disagreed with in SD, denying them of their First Amendment rights) she was granted a forum at the University of South Dakota for HER free speech and she said this: “Islamophobia and anti-immigrant, refugee bigotry has been rampant and largely unnoticed by South Dakotans until this past year.” http://www.usd.edu/news/2017/human-rights-advocate-and-immigration-lawyer-to-speak-on-usd-campus#

Members of South Dakota’s “Interfaith” community descended on the capital in Pierre to protest any possible consideration of a plan to study the cost of refugee resettlement in the state being proposed by State Senator Neil Tapio.
See how clever they are to immediately spin the issue of the economic impact of refugees on the state’s economy as one of a threat to freedom of religion.  I suspect that is the work of Taneeza Islam, a clearly well-trained community agitator.
Islam was formerly the CAIR-MN Civil Rights Director and one can get an insight on her previous work by clicking here.
LOL! I wonder if hard core Leftists hold training programs for promising Islamic supremacist activists on how to sucker the mainstream media and the average citizen.
Oh, and by the way, since there aren’t enough people converting to Islam in America, in order to build their population (and increase their political power) they need high birth rates and immigration (thus the huge attention Muslim activists are paying to President Trump and the roll back on the refugee program). See my Pew Research post here.
Here are a few snips from the AP story at US News:

PIERRE, S.D. (AP) — Clergy and members of several religions gathered Wednesday at the South Dakota Capitol to meet lawmakers and urge them not to denigrate people of faiths different than their own.

Screenshot (140)
Lutheran Bishop Zellmer leading his South Dakota sheep.

The prayer and outreach come after some state lawmakers last year pushed measures targeting refugee resettlement in South Dakota. David Zellmer, bishop of the South Dakota Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, said the gathering was about “lifting up” that the freedom of religion guaranteed in the First Amendment is for everyone.

[….]

Taneeza Islam, executive director of the nonprofit South Dakota Voices for Peace, said she hopes lawmakers recognize the diversity in the state. She said it’s important they understand the decisions made at the Capitol affect everyone in South Dakota.

[….]

Tapio, who is preparing to run for U.S. House, called the interfaith group a “political movement.” Tapio has said he will form an unofficial legislative work group to examine state immigration and refugee resettlement programs in South Dakota.

[….]

“We have a domestic threat that’s going on right here in our country,” Tapio said after the prayers. “Refugee resettlements and interfaith dialogue is a part of a war. It’s a silent part. It’s a part about taking away the Christian fabric of our nation. Now, some people are OK with that. That’s their prerogative, but there’s American patriots that want to fight.”

Continue here.
Just like when the US Catholic Bishops talk about their charitable good works for refugees and never mention their pecuniary interest, so too do the Lutheran Bishops never mention that there is federal boodle involved with refugee resettlement.
So what can you do? Wherever you live, pay attention to your local “Interfaith” group promoting Islam as somehow special and in need of protection.  If you are brave, infiltrate the group. Then figure out what is the best way to expose their agenda to the general public.
Concerned South Dakotans need to immediately check out Islam’s group, South Dakota Voices for Peace. Find out if it is properly incorporated. Find out who is on its Board of Directors. Find out who funds it, etc. Is it just CAIR with a squishy sounding name?
Unfortunately we have to learn to fight like the Left!
See my ‘What you can do’ category for a whole bunch of ideas!
 

Lawrence Bartlett, State Department refugee chieftain sidelined?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The federal refugee contractors, that altogether receive over a half a billion a year of your money to place refugees in your towns and cities, must be using reporters at Reuters to get their messages out to the public.

Screenshot (1242)
I laughed when I saw that Reuters used a shot from when Bartlett headlined the Heritage Foundation ‘educational’ panel discussion on the US Refugee program last September. I had planned to do the same thing (use a shot from the panel discussion). When Heritage held this event, with inside the beltway types, I knew they had no clue about what was really happening with refugees in your towns and cities.   https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2017/09/14/is-the-heritage-foundation-selling-you-out-on-unus-refugee-admissions-policy/

 
Here we have news that Lawrence Bartlett, some of you have seen his advocacy for more refugees (and antipathy to local citizens) first hand, has been sidelined at the US State Department.  Later in the Reuters story he says, not so fast!
 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A U.S. official who has been a defender of refugees has been sidelined within the State Department in what some advocates and former officials fear is part of the Trump administration’s goal of limiting refugee resettlement in the United States.

Lawrence Bartlett, head of refugee admissions at the State Department’s Population, Refugees and Migration bureau, is now on a temporary assignment at another office, a State Department spokeswoman said.

Bartlett’s future leadership of the refugee office has been in doubt for months. He is now a temporary senior adviser at the State Department office that handles requests for information under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

Sending a civil servant of his experience and rank to that office is unusual, according to current and former U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.

A current official described such a re-assignment as a form of internal exile like being sent “to Siberia.” 

Really! Is that why the State Department has an abysmal record and reputation for not answering FOIA requests?  Either they do nothing there or they work really hard to figure out what not to tell you. When they do tell you, it is YEARS later! Is that why it is like Siberia?
Bartlett says he has “NOT been permanently reassigned.”

Yeganeh Torbati
The Reuters go-to gal for Hans?   https://twitter.com/yjtorbati

Bartlett did not respond to a range of questions about his new role, but did say he has not been told the assignment is permanent.

“I can assure you that I have NOT been permanently reassigned from my position with the refugee program,” Bartlett wrote in an e-mail to Reuters.

Refugee advocates say Bartlett was a strong and effective advocate for the resettlement program inside the Trump administration.

I found this little nugget (below) interesting. Here we learn that the State Department Bureau of Population Refugees and Migration bureaucrats chit-chat via e-mail regularly with their contractors.  Hey! what about us! We pay for all this, why can’t we see those e-mails.
Gee maybe we could FOIA them!

Since approximately November, Bartlett has not been included on communications between the State Department and outside refugee agencies that he normally would have been, one person involved in refugee resettlement said.

Keep reading here.
Reuters quotes Hans (again). So is Hans Van de Weerd the conduit for getting anti-Trump messages out of the DOS and Homeland Security and to Reuters?
See my complete Lawrence Bartlett archive here. Prior to being assigned to the FOIA office, Bartlett was in Puerto Rico for a month, here.

Federal refugee resettlement contractors blast Trump for ending 'temporary' status for Salvadorans

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The Temporary Protected Status (legal!) program is designed to give a break (usually 18 months) for nationals, from another country who are already in the US when the natural disaster or civil war happens, to stay here until the country is on its feet again.
In March, Salvadorans (and El Salvador), will have had a 17 YEAR break.
For 17 years hundreds of thousands have had time to produce nearly 200,000 more children, get jobs, drivers licenses (and I will bet vote!).  See USCIS on TPS for El Salvador here.
Calling the program ‘temporary’ is a joke.
It has to end sometime and the Trump Administration has decided that September 2019 is it!
The Leftwing Open Borders activists, including obviously refugee resettlement contractors***, have been working toward amnesty for a decade or more and the Salvadorans would have been a recipient of such an amnesty.

Matthew Soerens
Matthew Soerens of World Relief says El Salvador will be destabilized when they lose all of those US dollars Salvadorans send home—US dollars that leave the US economy! 

In the Gang of Eight bill they would have been essentially hired by the feds to do for the newly amnestied what they do for refugees—get them signed up for their services (aka welfare). And, it would have expanded their Left-leaning political power through their immigrant dependents.
So it is no surprise to see them complaining now!
Here is the Christian Post reporting on our old pals:

Christian leaders and organizations are speaking out against the Trump administration move on Monday to terminate protected status for thousands of El-Salvadoran immigrants who have been allowed to live and work in the United States for over a decade. [For over a decade, you mean nearly two decades!—ed]

Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen on Monday made a decision to terminate “Temporary Protected Status” that has allowed El-Salvadoran immigrants to legally work and live in the U.S. since two earthquakes struck the Central American country in 2001. The move could affect up to nearly 200,000 people and it’s a move that prominent evangelical leaders pressured the Trump administration not to make.

The administration claims the decision, which takes effect in September 2019 after an 18-month transition period, was made after an “inter-agency consultation process” determined that “the original conditions caused by the 2001 earthquakes no longer exist.” Yet, human rights advocates are warning that El Salvador is not economically able to sustain a massive return.

“But the reality is that El Salvador is among most violent countries in the world & among poorest in Western Hemisphere,” Matthew Soerens, the director of church mobilization for the evangelical refugee resettlement organization World Relief, tweeted on Monday. “It will be significantly destabilized by sudden insertion of so many returnees & by sudden halt of remittance money sent home by workers in US.”

Bishop Joe S. Vásquez
Bishop Joe S. Vásquez

So how long must we be blackmailed by threats of a destablized El Salvador? How long must we watch US dollars leave the US economy in the form of remittances? And why should refugee contractor World Relief care?  These are NOT refugees.
But, if they do care so much, World Relief (and the US Bishops) could do the really brave thing and instead of living in comfort/collecting handsome salaries and bullying Americans into ‘welcoming’ the stranger, go to El Salvador and help the people where they live!

And, of course the US Bishops whine! (See that they got $95 million from taxpayers in 2016 for their Christian charity for migrants, here.)

“The decision to terminate TPS for El Salvador is heartbreaking. As detailed in our recent delegation trip report to the region, El Salvador is currently not in a position to adequately handle the return of the roughly 200,000 Salvadoran TPS recipients,” Bishop Joe S. Vásquez, chairman of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ committee on migration, said in a statement, adding that the decision will “fragment American families.

Fragment American families! The families could go together to their homeland!
For my Evangelical readers, you may not know that there is a Leftwing Open Borders Evangelical consortium.  You need to do a little research to see if your church is involved.

The Evangelical Immigration Table, a coalition evangelical organizations that represent millions of believers across multiple denominations, also pressured the Trump administration to extend the TPS program for El Salvador until a permanent legislative fix can be enacted through Congress.

More here.
***These are the nine federal contractors who are paid by you to place refugees in your towns. If there were millions given amnesty in the coming years those groups listed below would be hired by the feds to help them get settled and get their taxpayer-supplied stuff.

There can be no immigration reform as long as taxpayers finance these political agitation groups masquerading as humanitarian charities: