Lexington KY: Catholic Church and Interfaith group stage refugee “pilgrimage” tomorrow

Here is what I don’t get:  Why does their love of “the other” always have to be demonstrated via a political event— a staged event to show how good they are and how bad you are?

 

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Social justice warriors: The Catholic Church and an ‘Interfaith’ group hold a political event in Lexington tomorrow.

 

Can’t these Catholics simply (quietly!) help refugees and immigrants without making a show of it?

Here is news from Lexington, KY about such an event tomorrow entitled: “Share the Journey with Migrant, Refugee, and Marginalized Sisters and Brothers” pilgrimage.

Implicit in the advertising is the political message:  in the Trump era immigrants are suffering.

Maybe the good Catholics could help them privately and quietly with food and private loving care!  (We assume that they have run out of poor and homeless Americans to care for in Lexington!)

Does it really help immigrants personally to showcase them, or is this all about the midterm elections?

From the Lexington Herald-Leader:

Show solidarity with migrants, refugees at Saturday pilgrimage, service

This is a time of great and increasing uncertainty for immigrants living among us, whatever their citizenship or country of origin. In fact, it is an extremely difficult time for the marginalized and members of minorities living among us, whether they were born in this country or not.

While immigrants from some countries have been welcomed over the years, too often refugee and immigrants from other countries have faced indifference or hostility. This has happened while we have often relied on them to do difficulty and sometimes dangerous jobs for long hours and for very low wages. [How about if the good Catholics find them work other than in low wage meat and poultry plants!—ed]

Recent changes in immigration and enforcement policies have left many of these people with very little sense of security or, sometimes, hope. Those of us in more fortunate circumstances must, in conscience, step up and offer them both expressions of solidarity and practical help.  [How about some serious practical help without the showboating!—ed]

One important chance to express solidarity is the “Share the Journey with Migrant, Refugee, and Marginalized Sisters and Brothers” pilgrimage taking place Saturday, Oct. 20, starting at 10 a.m. at the Courthouse Plaza and ending at Historic St Paul Catholic Church, where there will be a brief service, beginning with song and dance by our Congolese sisters and brothers.  [They love to bring out the refugees as props for their political message!—ed]

The intention of the event is “to promote a just and inclusive community, especially in this climate of enhanced danger for immigrants, refugees, and the marginalized. We stand together, walk together, and pray together as a public witness to the dignity of the human person and the obligation we have as companions on the journey to accompany one another and build the culture of encounter.”  [They have that social justice lingo down pat, don’t they!—ed]

This event is sponsored by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Lexington with Lexington UNITED Interfaith Encounters, Catholic Charities, The Catholic Action Center and others.

More here.

Kentucky is a ‘welcoming state’!

What do the Kentucky refugee admission numbers look like?

When I wrote this post yesterday, I learned that Kentucky ranks #14 in the list of states with the most resettled refugees.

In fact, according to Wrapsnet, since October of 2008, Kentucky ‘welcomed’ 16,901 refugees!

Here is a list of the top twelve countries whose refugees, Catholics and other ‘religious’ resettlement agencies, have added to Kentucky’s diversity (mostly chosen by the UN).

 

Syrians to KY
See first Syrians arrive in KY  in 2015 with the help of an Islamic charity.     https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2015/02/15/first-syrian-refugees-arriving-in-louisville-ky-helped-with-grant-from-islamic-charity/

Burma (3,964)

DR Congo (3,040)

Bhutan (2,592)

Iraq (2,435)

Somalia (2,171)

Cuba (827)

Syria (495)

Sudan (231)

Burundi (210)

Eritrea (127)

Afghanistan (120)

Pakistan (107)

Go here for my Kentucky archives.  Don’t miss the story about the Iraqi refugees arrested a few years ago in Bowling Green, now doing life in prison on terrorism charges.

Texas is top refugee resettlement state in the nation since 2008 (blue state here we come?)

I’m working on a post on Kentucky which sent me back to the Refugee Processing Center for some numbers.

So, I saw this data and figured it would be a useful bit of information for you especially as there is much talk these days as a result of the US Senate race there about Texas turning blue.

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Big enough for all?

Of course, refugee numbers alone aren’t going to be the deciding factor, but as refugees come in (along with all of the other migrants coming in to Texas) they help to change the political landscape by eroding the long-standing cultural cohesiveness and character of the state.

So here is a map from Wrapsnet.  I know the numbers are hard to read but below you will find the numbers for the top ten resettlement states in the US from the beginning of Obama’s term in office up to today.

 

Total refugee admissions to the US from the fall of 2008 to the present day are 634,460:

 

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Here are the top ten states with Texas at 64,198 refugees since October of 2008:

 

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For future reference this post is filed in my ‘Refugee statistics’ category and Where to find information.’

Conservative Review: Trump already has the power to stop anyone at our border

Daniel Horowitz at Conservative Review lays it out for us.  President Trump already has all the power he needs to close our borders.

Presumably inspired by all the news about a now 4,000-strong migrant caravan heading toward Mexico with the apparent aim to assault our southern border (see my post yesterday), Horowitz says this (emphasis is mine):

 

President Trump has full constitutional power to stop the border invasion – even without Congress

 

Just as President Reagan is remembered for ending the Cold War, President Trump can be remembered as the one who ended the war on our sovereignty. Will he rise to the occasion?

trump wall thumbs up
The wall will be meaningless if we continue to allow fake asylum seekers in through the gates!

Here’s the stone-cold truth about our border: We could construct a border wall as high as the stratosphere, and it won’t help much if we continue our self-destructing policies of allowing bogus asylees to come through our front door and legitimizing the opinions of sanctuary judges who “make denizens of aliens.”

President Trump publicly warned the governments of Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala that if they don’t take steps to stop the latest caravan of bogus asylum invaders, he will cut off aid to the countries. While this is a good first step, it won’t deter the invasion unless we stop admitting the invaders and implementing catch-and-release under orders from illegitimate court rulings, as we did with the previous caravan and countless tens of thousands of others coming in with less pomp. And that would hold true even with a border wall. They just come to our points of entry, surrender themselves, get released into our communities, and never show up to their hearings until and unless they wind up committing crimes.

Moreover, the caravan is already in Guatemala and headed for Mexico. Thus, the Honduran diplomacy is moot at this point. And this is much bigger than one caravan. We must first dissect what is actually happening at our border.

This is nothing short of an invasion

Earlier this week, KTAR news in Phoenix, Arizona, sat down with ICE’s Phoenix field director, Henry Lucero. What he revealed should disturb all of us:

See the revelations here.

Then this…..

Thus, it all boils down to bogus asylum and catch-and-release. Either Trump ends those, or everything else is just talk. While Trump is right to ask Congress to step in, we’ve noted before that our statute is already clear that these people do not qualify as asylees and that the unaccompanied teenagers do not qualify as refugees.

With this background in mind, it’s easy to understand why Lindsey Grahmanesty’s idea of trading amnesty for a border wall is so counterintuitive. We only have this border invasion because of the magnet of amnesty, and the magnet of amnesty allows them to come to the entry points, demand asylum, sue for rights, and never get deported. A wall only helps a country that has a strong spirit but a weak frontier; it doesn’t help a weak political system that willingly commits national suicide.

Anyone who tells you that the president doesn’t have the authority to exclude anyone for any reason doesn’t deserve to live in a sovereign nation.

Sovereignty trumps everything. There is nothing in our statutes that forces the president to admit anyone he feels is a problem. In fact, as we’ve noted before, he has inherent executive powers from Article II, as well as delegated authority from Congress under existing law, to stop taking in immigrants at the border or through visas for as much time as he deems necessary.

There is much more here as Horowitz lays out the case.

Conservative Score Card

If you have never seen it, don’t miss Conservative Review’s Congressional score card and see how your representatives rank on issues you care about.  Go here.  You might find that an elected official you thought was conservative might not be voting that way once he or she got to Washington!

South Korea: No refugee status, but Yemenis can stay for awhile

Oh boy, big mistake!  If they have been denied asylum they need to go.

I’m guessing that South Korea hasn’t been paying attention to the Australian mess or even our mess in the US with Temporary Protected Status.

See my post from this summer on South Korea’s Muslim migrants.

 

jeju protester
Citizens get it, government doesn’t!

 

From Reuters (headline is slightly deceptive!):

South Korea denies refugee status to Yemeni asylum seekers

SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korea has denied refugee status but granted temporary stay permits to hundreds of Yemeni asylum seekers who arrived on the southern island of Jeju this year, the Ministry of Justice announced on Wednesday.

More than 500 Yemenis sought refugee in South Korea between January and May, having fled the war that has engulfed their homeland.

Asian countries including China, Japan and South Korea grant very few asylum claims and take few refugees from the UN.

The influx of asylum seekers to South Korea – which has only granted refugee status to 839 of 40,470 applicants from various countries since 1994, not including defectors from North Korea – sparked a backlash and led to the government tightening immigration laws in June.

A total of 481 Yemenis have applied for asylum, with 362 granted temporary humanitarian stay permits, the ministry said in a statement.

Another 34 applications were rejected with no permits issued because officials determined they had criminal records or were seeking asylum for economic reasons, the ministry said.

A final 85 cases are still being processed.

Most of the Yemenis flew into the resort island of Jeju, where they have largely been blocked from leaving for mainland South Korea.

But get this:

Under the humanitarian stay permits, the refugees will be able to leave Jeju.

I presume that means to the mainland!

More here.

In my humble opinion, South Korea will never be able to remove them now!

Trump must put pressure on Mexico to block migrant caravan from Honduras

In an interview with Breitbart radio, Jessica Vaughan of the Center for Immigration Studies gives the President sound advice.

 

Migrant caravan 2
Honduran government begs the migrants to turn around.    https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/oct/16/honduras-begs-migrant-caravan-turn-back/

 

I’m writing about this story again today because I noted how interested you are in it after my post yesterday, and because it is an opportunity to inform more of you about the other part of our US refugee system—namely the asylum process.

Just recently, here, I told you about asylum and how it is part and parcel of the Refugee Act of 1980, but is being scammed and abused by thousands in recent years.

Simply: refugees are selected abroad as supposedly persecuted people and flown here (that is what all this 30,000 cap business is all about).  The Hondurans and others who ask for asylum are not part of that cap.

Asylum seekers get to America on their own steam and then claim they will be persecuted if returned home. 

If granted asylum they are then considered refugees. However, most of those headed our way are what are called economic migrants in migration lingo.

From Breitbart:

Jessica Vaughan: Trump Should ‘Put Pressure on Mexico’ to Block Migrant Caravans

Jessica Vaughan

Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, advised the Trump administration to pressure Mexico against allowing entry to caravans of migrants seeking passage to the U.S.

Vaughan offered her remarks in a Monday interview with Breitbart News Editor-at-Large Rebecca Mansour on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Tonight.

Vaughan described existing U.S. refugee asylum policies as incentivizing foreigners to seek entry into the homeland via their humanitarian provisions, recalling previous analyses offered on an earlier migrant caravan’s access to America.

“It’s really our policy that is enticing them to come, and I am surprised it took this long,” said Vaughan. “This is not the choice of the Trump administration. It certainly does not want to entice people to take this dangerous journey, and when you look the pictures, it is a lot of young men, but it’s also some kids coming, too. It’s dangerous for them, but it now has this aura of an adventure that people are taking, like the gold rush or something.”

Vaughan said aspiring migrants are advised to travel to America by both smugglers and ostensibly humanitarian groups based in the U.S.

“[Migrants] are being told by the smugglers — who I’m sure are among them, or the organizers, I mean they’re really almost the same thing — to [travel to the U.S.].

Certainly they’re being egged on by the humanitarian groups and even by groups within the United States.”

In April, Left-wing American lawyers offered migrant caravan travelers “legal training sessions,” advising migrant what to say to improve their likelihood of obtaining entry to the U.S. in their dealing with immigration judges and asylum officers.

[….]

Vaughan added, “Why wouldn’t it [the caravan] grow? They are realistically optimistic that they will be let into the United States. At some point, the Trump administration, the best possible solution is for them to say, ‘No.’ Or put pressure on Mexico to not issue them transit visas. They have no basis to enter Mexico unless Mexico is going to give them asylum.”

BP
Former Senator and now Attorney General Jeff Sessions has ordered asylum judges to stick to the legal definition of persecution when weighing asylum claims.  Running from gang violence, abusive husbands or looking for work are not grounds for admission.

Vaughan described Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s new directives to immigration judges and asylum officers.

Claiming to have witnessed violence or to have come from a violent place is not good enough to get you into the country to make an asylum claim, to pass your ‘credible fear’ test,” stated Vaughan. “They’re expected now to show that the persecution that they claim was carried out by the government, or with the government’s blessing. General violence is not going to cut it.”

[….]

Vaughan said, “The best possible solution is to not let [caravan migrants] enter,” adding that “it is obvious to everyone” that the caravan migrants’ motivations are “economically based.”

Vaughan explain, “The goal should be to have people not get across, at all, because then it’s a whole different story once they set foot in the United States, whether they’ve been admitted or paroled or whatever. As soon as we let them across, that’s when it becomes extremely difficult to remove them and return them to their home countries.”

There is much more here.

Temporary Protected Status connection?

I wouldn’t put it past the Open Borders activists to ultimately use this caravan PR campaign to try to get the Trump administration to reverse its decision to rescind the Temporary Protective Status for Hondurans already in the US. See here, and here.

How can the President be so mean as to return thousands of Hondurans already in the US to a country where so many are trying to escape, they might say.