The filthy rich US Conference of Catholic Bishopsis at odds with the Trump Administration over immigration policy—so what else is new!
“America welcomes refugees; that is who we are, that is what we do.” Vasquez chair of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Migration is telling Trump.
Here is a long (too long) recitation of everything the President is doing to annoy Catholic Bishops, but one thing is missing and that is that the Trump Administration has reduced by tens of millions the boodle the Bishops get from the US Treasury!
Could that be the real reason they are so hot under the collar?
Trump administration at odds with Catholic leaders on immigration policies
This has been the summer of discontent for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops on U.S. immigration policy. Since June the U.S. bishops have released more than 10 statements reflecting their displeasure with a broad range of White House decisions on immigration.
The U.S.C.C.B. has criticized the administration’s treatment of migrant detainees, especially children, challenging policy that has resulted in the separation of families and led to inhumane conditions at detention sites. It has resisted White House plans to rewrite asylum rules and to allow temporary protected status for vulnerable migrant communities to expire, and it has deplored proposed cuts to foreign aid that bishops say will only drive more migrants to the U.S. border.
[….]
On Sept. 13 the U.S.C.C.B. weighed in on immigration again, this time on plans that critics charge will mean the end of the United States as a safe haven for the world’s refugees.
So get this, large numbers of Catholics are supporting the President!
Ethics professor Heyer with the Pope. Catholics who support Trump are “ignoring their bishops.”
Resistance to the president’s immigration policies is high when measured among all Catholics, but white Catholics offered Trump 56 percent of their vote in 2016 and a majority of white Catholics—51 percent—still maintain a favorable opinion of the president—many among them presumably support White House immigration proposals. Those who do are not only ignoring their bishops, said Kristin Heyer, discussing the subject via email, they are endorsing positions at sharp odds with church teaching on migration and its call to protect the lives and the human dignity of migrating people.
Ms. Heyer is a professor of theological ethics at Boston College.
“The Catholic social tradition recognizes the right of sovereign nations to control their borders,” Ms. Heyer said, “but the right is not understood to be absolute. In the case of blatant human rights violations, the right to state sovereignty is relativized by the tradition’s primary commitment to protecting human dignity.”
[….]
“As the Catholic Church prepares to celebrate the World Day of Migrants and Refugees” on Sept. 29, “we are reminded of Pope Francis urging us all to work for a ‘globalization of solidarity’ with refugees, not a globalization of ‘indifference,’” the bishops said.
It is long, so you can read the rest yourself byclicking here. Catholics should definitely read it so you know the entire litany of complaints the Bishops have with the Prez.
Absent from the article is any mention of the fact that the USCCB is one of the largest ‘non-profit’ recipients of taxpayer dollars going to what they call their “migration program.”
Gee, I wonder how the humanitarians are managing with a budgetary loss of $24 million in one year!
From arecent financial statement(page 10). This is only the federal tax dollars the USCCB receives for its migration services. They receive many millions more for myriad programs they run for the federal government.
Holy moly! Their revenue received from the US Treasury dropped by nearly a third in one year ($24 million went poof!).
The disingenuous Leftwing media is never going to mention that there is TAXPAYER funded payola involved in the USCCB’s supposed ‘Christian charity,’ so I guess I will just have to keep repeating myself!
I’vealready reported that our US military wants to give tickets to America to more Iraqi and Afghan ‘refugees’ as rewards for helping us in those long wars—one more reason not to go to war in Islamic terrorist-producing countries.
And, I would like to know for how many years after we’ve ended a war are we responsible for moving their nationals to our towns and cities?
See the staggering numbers of Special Immigrant Visa holders we have admitted from Afghanistan and Iraq already! Over 56,000 from Afghanistan and over 18,000 from Iraq!
Why doesn’t NBC report that information?
Here NBCcharacterizes this year’s battle over the annual presidential determination as one of Stephen Miller vs. America’s mighty military!
Pentagon is last holdout as Stephen Miller tries to slash number of refugees allowed in U.S.
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon is fighting against proposals by White House officials to drastically cut the number of refugees allowed into the U.S., and has called for reserving visas for Iraqis who risked their lives working for U.S. troops, according to five people familiar with the plan.
Miller vs. the military
In internal discussions, the Defense Department has expressed opposition to any further reductions to the current annual ceiling of 30,000 for refugee admissions, which already is at a historic low for the 40-year-old U.S. refugee program, the sources told NBC News.
Defense officials also proposed setting aside about 6,000 slots specifically for Iraqi applicants who worked for U.S. troops as interpreters or in other jobs, according to one current U.S. official, one former U.S. official and three refugee advocates briefed on the deliberations.
The Pentagon has emerged as the lone voice in internal debates defending the traditional role of a refugee program overseen by the State Department, an unusual twist that reflects the administration’s aggressive stance on immigration and refugees.
The Pentagon’s stance is at odds with White House senior adviser Stephen Miller — the architect of the president’s sweeping crackdown on immigration— and his allies at the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security, who are all proposing deep cuts or even a halt to refugee admissions for the next fiscal year starting in October.
It is not likely to be zero as the White House floated here in July sending the refugee industrial complex into panic.
The White House, however, is weighing one option that would reduce overall refugee admissions — possibly lowering the cap to 15,000 or lower — while setting aside a certain number of openings for Iraqi applicants, similar to what the Pentagon has proposed, the sources said. [Someone must be blabbing to the media!—ed]
Keep reading and then see this:
Evangelical activist Tony Perkins, president of the conservative Family Research Council and a strong supporter of President Trump, said earlier this month he was “alarmed” that the administration was considering more dramatic reductions in refugee admissions.
In a letter in July, nine evangelical leaders appealed to the administration to back up its frequent public statements on religious freedom and helping persecuted Christians abroad by raising the cap on refugee admissions.
Of course, Perkins wants more Christians, but those the military wants are mostly Muslims!
Then here, without mentioning that World Relief is one of nine federally-funded(and UN approved) refugee contractors that can’t survive without a steady flow of your tax dollars to their coffers, NBC quotes them as a representative of concerned evangelicals in America.
“The drastic decline in the number of refugees we are resettling in the U.S. is really troubling and it goes against everything that we believe about what our faith teaches us,” said Jenny Yang, vice president for advocacy and policy at World Relief, an evangelical organization that helps resettle refugees in the United States.
“It’s extremely concerning that the administration is not heeding the views of a lot of evangelicals.”
HIAS, for those new to refugee industry lingo, is the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Societyand yesterday they launched a grassroots campaign to pressure Congress into passing legislation that would abolish Trump’s so-called Muslim ban, and make it harder for any future President to keep us safe.
Nevermind that there isn’t a Muslim ban as we reported here a few days ago.
Rohingya Muslims are entering the US as refugees by the thousands, and taxpayer-funded HIAS (about $25 million in one recent year!) and the other federally-funded refugee contractors are being paid to take care of the thousands of US-boundSpecial Immigrant Visa holders from Iraq and Afghanistan (mostly Muslims!)*** who supposedly helped our military (and NGOs!) in those terror-producing hotbed countries!
But, the propagandists in the Open Borders cabal never let facts get in the way of their get-Trump agenda.
They know the bill will never become law while Trump is in the White House, however they are using it as one more media stunt in advance of the 2020 presidential contest. And, they need to keep their followers/donors busy and engaged.
Not enough Muslims in America! HIAS with CAIR protesting the so-called “Muslim ban” at the White House in January 2018. https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2018/01/28/church-world-service-and-hias-join-cair-to-protest-at-white-house/
Hereis what HIASis telling its followers to do. (And lucky you! You can read their appeal in ten languages!)
Tell Congress to Support the NO BAN Act
On Tuesday, September 24, Congress will review H.R. 2214, the NO BAN Act. The NO BAN Act will repeal all versions of the Muslim Ban authorized through executive order over the past two years, and will amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to prohibit discrimination based on religion. Additionally, it will limit the broad executive authority that allowed the refugee and asylum bans by implementing stricter implementation requirements and greater congressional oversight.
Now, more than ever, it is critical that Members of Congress show their support against discrimination, and support this legislation.
Join us in telling Members of Congress to support the NO BAN Act.
STEP ONE: Find out who your representative ishere.
Continue reading here. They have kindly provided a script in case their followers need guidance about what to say.
Learn more about the bill here. See that it has 170 co-sponsors (all Dems).
If you disagree with HIAS, use their link above to find your representative (I suspect you already know who your representative is) and call your member of Congress to express your views in your own (polite please) words.
***A reader, who wished not to be named, told me that it was the large number of SIVs entering with the help of the contractors that were keeping the refugee ‘non-profits’ afloat during these lean Trump years.
That is what the Director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement Jonathan Hayes told Congress this week.
The ‘children’ coming to America by train through Mexico in 2016!
Actually he calls them “unaccompanied alien children,” but heck when only 15% of the “children” crossing the border illegally without parents are under 12-years-old, we might just as well call them more accurately “teens.” (See data here.)
Virtually all of them are from three countries: Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador.
And, caring for the ‘children’ is costing American taxpayers well over a billion a year!
HHS: Number of Unaccompanied Alien Children Entering US Reaches Highest in History
(CNSNews.com) – The number of unaccompanied children (UACs) entering the United States during fiscal year 2019 has grown to levels never seen before, Jonathan Hayes, director of the HHS’s Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), told Congress on Thursday.
According to his written testimony before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, DHS referred more than 67,000 UACs to ORR as of Sept. 16, 2019, which is the highest number in the program’s history.
Compare that to the 59,170 DHS referrals in FY 2016, the second highest number of referrals on record.
At the moment, HHS has less than 6,000 UACs in its care, but the number fluctuates on a daily basis, Hayes said.
“The number of children in our care is down from a recent high of over 13,700 just a few months ago in June. This decline is due to a decrease in daily referrals over the last few months, and ORR’s ability to maintain a steady high discharge rate of UAC placement with sponsors,” he testified.
Curious about where they have placed tens of thousands of teenagers, I checked the data and here are some fun facts.
Toprecipient statesof alien (mostly) teens for the first ten months of FY19 are:
(States which ‘welcomed’ over 3,000 in ten months!)
When you visit that data add up the last 6 years for your state to see the real impact these “children” must be having on your school systems. Maryland, for example, added 18,330 UACs since October 2013!
Now have a look at the lucky counties during that same time period (here):
By the way, when I first started writing about these new ‘refugees’ they were referred to as ‘unaccompanied minors’ so that is the tag I have continued to use.
Public Radio International posted a glowing puff-piece yesterday about how the burgeoning Rohingya population in the Chicago area is now well established and members of the ‘community’ are becoming US citizens.
The article features one man in particular, but it is generally informative and gives me an opportunity to remind readers that there is no Trump Muslim ban. Certain countries might be temporarily excluded from sending refugees to America, but that prohibition does not extend to the Rohingya.
The Rohingya are strict adherents to Islam and are unwelcome in Burma and their original home in Bangladesh. For ambitious readers, I have been writing about them for over a decade and have archived over 200 posts in my category entitled, Rohingya Reports. (So glad to have all that material back!)
When I first began following the Rohingya, the US State Department had banned them from resettlement here.
What it’s like to become a US citizen after a lifetime of statelessness
Zakaria’s [Nasir Zakaria, the star of the story] path to US citizenship included years of hard work supporting his community. Three years ago he founded Chicago’s Rohingya Cultural Center, a community space on the city’s northwest side that has become a hub for some 1,600 Rohingya refugees who have settled in the area over the past decade. The center offers English lessons, Quran classes, cultural events and after-school homework help for children.
(I told readers about the founding of the Rohingya Cultural Center, here, in 2016.)
Zakaria family with judge (center). His wife is on the right.
The center also offers citizenship classes, which gives adults English-language skills and an overview of US history, politics and civics knowledge. The classes help them pass their naturalization interviews with US Citizenship and Immigration Services.
Tens of thousands of Rohingya refugees have been resettled to the US in the past five years, the majority of them between 2015 and 2016, according to State Department statistics.
The Trump administration has made steep cuts to refugee admissions in recent years. As more and more of Rohingya approach the five-year mark of permanent residency in the US, they are becoming eligible to apply for citizenship. Zakaria was among the first from the Chicago community to be naturalized.
Zakaria founded the Rohingya Cultural Center in 2016 with financial backing from the Zakat Foundation of America, an Islamic nonprofit based in Chicago. It’s often the first place local Rohingya refugees turn when they need help deciphering a cable bill, job application or letter from a government agency.
The idea for the center stemmed from his own experience acclimating to life in the United States.
Zakaria had already been granted refugee status in Malaysia, a safe Muslim country.
Is it America’s duty to give employment and public services to the world?
Zakaria fled Myanmar alone as a teen, he said, to escape capture by the country’s armed forces. He lived in Bangladesh, then Malaysia, where he was granted refugee status. But like other Rohingya refugees in Malaysia, he did not have access to public services, education or legal employment.
It would be another two decades before he was resettled to the United States in 2013, along with his wife, Laila Binti Mohamad Husan, and his grandfather. They were sent to live in Chicago. Zakaria and his wife now have three children.
[….]
On the way out, he picked up a voter registration form.
