On Sunday I reported that Democrat writer Steven Roberts (of the DC/NYC bubble) had posted a syndicated column praising Republican governorsfor betraying the President’s first effort to reform the US Refugee Admissions Program and opening their welcoming arms to more refugees for their states that will ultimately cost state taxpayers millions to care for.
I asked if the Burmese refugee, Esar Met, who raped and murdered a Christian girl in Utah was part of the “beautiful cycle of charity” and suggested you write a letter-to-the-editor if the column shows up in your home town paper.
He especially focused on Utah’s Governor Herbert in his stunningly fluffy piece about how refugees are the most wonderful people, helped by benevolent Christian charity doled out by the likes Church World Service and World Relief, and that they also provide workers to companies looking for unskilled employees for low wage jobs.
But, nary a mention of any cultural upheaval or criminals that come along with welcoming certain ethnic groups from Africa, Asia and the Middle East—refugees like Esar Met.
Roberts’ implication of course is that our President is a nativist SOB for wanting to halt the “beautiful cycle of charity.”
This morning I see Roberts’ column is published in an Oregon newspaper—at Coos Bay’s The World.
If we don’t remember, it didn’t happen, right?
But, I remember (it is my job to remember) and likely you do too because I reminded readers at ‘Frauds and Crooks’recently:
Memory Lane: Somali Refugee Planned to Bomb Oregon Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony
Once again, I recommend that if you see Roberts’ fluffy, puffy piece in your paper that you write a response letter-to-the-editor praising the President for trying to keep us safe—for putting Americans FIRST!
In order to bludgeon the President, here comes another misinformed diatribe using theRepublican governors who consented to receiving more impoverished people for their states’ taxpayers to care for.
The writer (Steven Roberts) is a longtime Democrat who has lived in the Washington, DC/New York City elitist bubble as the husband of journalist Cokie Roberts. But, because he has lived in his bubble he hasn’t a clue about the refugee admissions program (Washington, DC gets only a handful), how it works, how it impacts communities, how it is paid for, and how it has admitted some evil, yes evil, creatures.
But, that hasn’t stopped him from running his mouth about something he knows so little about!
Roberts uses, as the star of his opinion piece, Gary Herbert, the governor of Utah who prattled on about a “beautiful cycle of charity” when he told the State Department to send Utah more refugees.
More like Esar Met?
Did the governor not know about the horrible murder committed by Burmese refugee Esar Met—the trial was front page news in Utah in 2014—when he penned his “beautiful cycle of charity” letter?
Or, is the governor hoping you all have forgotten about it? (If you don’t remember, it didn’t happen, right!)
I suppose we should forgive Roberts because the national media NEVER reported the story and frankly this is the primary reason I continue to report about the other side of the “beautiful cycle of charity.”
My mission is to balance the news! (and to remember!).
Steven V. Roberts: These Republican governors welcome refugees
Donald Trump didn’t reckon with Gary Herbert.
Since the day the president took office, he has conducted a morally abhorrent and economically absurd campaign against refugees, slashing the annual quota admitted to America from 110,00 during Barack Obama’s last year in office to 18,000 currently. [Like so many lazy lefties, he fails to mention that Obama never had numbers close to 110,000 in his previous 7 years in office.—ed]
Last fall, Trump doubled down on his appeal to the country’s worst nativist instincts, issuing an executive order that allows individual states and localities to bar all new refugees from resettling within their borders. Clearly, he thought most Republicans would join his cynical crusade.
Utah Governor Herbert, one of many Republican governors to turn on Trump!
Enter Herbert, the governor of Utah since 2009. Not only did he reject Trump’s offer, he wrote a letter to the president welcoming refugees to Utah and asking the administration to send more of them, not fewer.
“Those refugees who resettle in Utah become integrated and accepted into our communities,” wrote the governor. “They become productive employees and responsible citizens. They become contributors to our schools, churches and other civic institutions, even helping serve more recent refugees and thus generating a beautiful cycle of charity.This marvelous compassion is simply embedded into our state’s culture.”
It turns out that “marvelous compassion” is still embedded in our national culture, not just Utah’s, despite the president’s efforts to deny and destroy our heritage. Political leaders across the country, including many Republicans, have soundly rebuked the president because they know Herbert is right: Refugees are an enormous benefit to any community.
Church World Service’s CEO the Reverend McCullough is far left. That is Nihad Awad, CAIR’s head honcho in the middle. They were arrested on the steps of the Capitol this fall protesting the President. McCullough pulls down a handsome salary and benefits package for doing “moral” ‘religious charity’ work.
[….]
Some of the revulsion to Trump’s anti-refugee rampage is simply moral. The Rev. John L. McCullough, president of the Church World Service, an agency that helps resettle refugees, told the New York Times, “With one final blow, the Trump administration has snuffed out Lady Liberty’s torch and ended our nation’s legacy of compassion and welcome.”
[….]
The whole country will suffer from Trump’s poisonous policies. Gary Herbert’s “beautiful cycle of charity” is also a beautiful cycle of growth and prosperity.
You can read it all here . Roberts throws in a bit about how businesses need the cheap labor refugees provide in the “beautiful cycle of charity.”
Roberts fails to mention that for its “moral” charitable work Church World Service is paid millions annually by US taxpayers (62.3 % of CWS’s income is from federal grants according to a recent report at Charity Navigator).
Therefore it has a financial interest in opposing the President and lobbying for ever greater numbers of impoverished Africans, Asians and Middle Easterners to be dropped off in your towns and cities (but not in Washington, DC!) for local and state taxpayers to support.
One of CWS’s “moral” agitators!
This is now my third visit to USA Spendingin the last week.
Roberts’ column is syndicated so if you see it show up in your city, write a letter to the editor, use his column to get the paper to publish your views on the UN-driven Refugee Admissions Program.
Three down and six more visits ahead at USASpending.gov!
That is the response to Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s suggestion on Fox News earlier this week that groups like Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Servicefocus their ‘Christian’ charity on vulnerable Texans.
Governor Abbott’s plea: ‘Humanitarian’ groups should take care of Texans first!
Abbott is the only governor who has said his state needs a break from the massive influx of illegal aliens, asylum seekers and refugees the state has received (like it or not!) for a decade or more.
He suggests that the ‘non-profit’ groups that are pushing refugee resettlement reprioritize and take care of Texans first, especially the homeless, because he says he does not want Texas to be California.
Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service‘s new CEO, former Michelle Obama staffer, shot back in a story at theTexas Tribune on Wednesday:
Gov. Greg Abbott says Texas nonprofits helping refugees should focus on homelessness. Refugee groups say it doesn’t work that way.
Former Obama staffer, Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, became President of LIRS when Linda Hartke was pushed out over some sort of mismanagement scandal.
Gov. Greg Abbott dug his heels in Tuesday in a TV interview explaining why Texas will be the only state in the nation to reject refugees seeking resettlement, saying that aid groups working with refugees should instead prioritize other Texans in need, including the state’s homeless population.
[….]
Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president of the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, said money for resettlement can’t be spent on homelessness or any other safety net programs.
“The federal funding that nonprofit resettlement agencies administer limits its use so it can only be spent through the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program,” she said in an email.
Well, this is interesting! Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIRS) has in the last 12 months received as much as the US Conference of Catholic Bishops!
And, although the Bishops have experienced a steep reduction in their federal taxpayer provided ‘gifts’ since their top Obama year, LIRS has not!
Haven’t they been crying the blues that the President is causing them to close offices?
One reason for their steady stream of funding appears to be that the Lutherans’ budget is being propped up via $38 million from Unaccompanied Alien Children grants, while the USCCB in the same time period received $21 million for what should be more accurately labeled Unaccompanied Alien Teens. 84% of the ‘children’ crossing the border without a parent are above the age of 13. Two thirds of the teens are males.
Yup! Ms. V is right, all of their federal funding is to take care of foreigners, many here illegally, so, silly Abbott, why on earth would the humanitarian Christians bother with Americans, with vulnerable Texans—there is no MONEY in it!
From USA Spending:
Note that they are down only about $3 million from their top Obama year while the US Catholic Bishops were down by $50 million. Why? I don’t know.
See that 60% of their federal boodle is for whatever they are doing with the Unaccompanied Alien Teens (illegal aliens). Close the border and save the taxpayers millions!
BTW, I’ve been told by a reliable source that it was the Obama Administration that made this revealingUSASpending.govresource available to us.
Now, it is always fun to have a look at a recent IRS Form 990 for these ‘religious charities.’ This is the salaries page for the most recent one I found for LIRS which is 85%-90% FEDERALLY FUNDED in any given year.
Former CEO Linda Hartke was hitting the $400,000 mark just as she was headed out the door. You were paying 85-90% of that salary and the salaries of the other six-digit employees. I wonder if they are paying Ms. Vignarajah that much? (We will find out when their next Form 990 is made public).
This is fun. I can’t wait to have a look at the other ‘religious charities’ which use our money to “welcome the stranger” rather than to take care of Americans.
I sure hope good Lutherans are speaking up and making it clear that LIRS does not represent them!
Oh, and I should have mentioned that LIRS is one of the three federal contractors that filed a lawsuit and successfully halted, for now, President Trump’s first effort to reform the UN-driven Refugee Admissions Program.
Lofgren (72) has served 13 terms in the House of Representatives serving a district near Fresno, California—a district that is now 58% Hispanic. For as long as I’ve been writing RRW, a dozen years, she has been an outspoken proponent of more third world migration to the US.
When I saw her droning away on the floor of the Senate last night I was reminded to tell you that she has been a leading advocate for more refugee resettlement for decades.
In fact, late last year, she, along with Senator Leahy of Vermont, introduced the ‘Refugee Protection Act of 2019’ which among other things seeks to set a minimum number of refugees that a President must admit to the US each year.
Lofgren, Leahy and a whole host of Democrat lawmakers want the ‘Refugee Act of 1980’ changed to REQUIRE a President to set the annual cap at 95,000 or higher. Presently there is no floor and a President could set the level at zero if he wished.
A level of a minimum of 95,000 a year would keep the nine federal refugee contractors*** rolling in federal dough with not a worry about a year like this one where the President set the level at 18,000 thus straining their budgets that in many cases depend entirely on federal funding.
You can read about other changes the Democrats want to see, here.
I must say again that this is why the Leftists are successful—they push and they push and they push—while those of us who want to see immigration brought under control must always play defense.
Trump changed that dynamic and that is why they want him gone.
Personally I think it is Trump’s America First! immigration policies that are driving the Dems to a state of insane frenzy. They are comfortable with Chamber of Commerce Republicans who quietly go along with ever-increasing numbers of cheap labor coming into the country…
...but, a Republican on the offensive is something new and frightening.
The Senate bill is cosponsored by 16 Senators: Senators Leahy, Harris, Booker, Hirono, Markey, Shaheen, Gillibrand, Blumenthal, Cardin, Wyden, Murray, Sanders, Reed, Merkley, Warren, and Klobuchar.
The House bill is cosponsored by 31 Members of the U.S. House of Representatives: Representatives Lofgren, Nadler, Jayapal, Neguse, Castro, Crow, Dean, DeLauro, DeSaulnier, Engel, Escobar, Espaillat, Garcia, Grijalva, Higgins, Johnson, Khanna, Lowenthal, McGovern, Napolitano, Norton, Pallone, Panetta, Quigley, Raskin, Sires, Smith, Swalwell, Watson Coleman, Welch, and Tlaib.
The Refugee Protection Act of 2019 is endorsedby a wide range of refugee, asylum, immigration, and faith-based organizations. A short outline of the bill can be foundhere, and a sectional analysis can be found here. Text of the legislation can be found here.
*** For new readers these (below) are the nine federally-funded refugee contractors that operate as a huge conveyor belt monopolizing all refugee placement in America.
And, they do not limit their advocacy toward only legal immigration programs, but are heavily involved in supporting the lawlessness at our borders.
The question isn’t as much about refugees per se, but about who is running federal immigration policy now and into the future?
(I plan to say this once a day from now on!)
I continue to argue that these nine contractors are the heart of America’s Open Borders movement and thus there can never be long-lasting reform of US immigration policy when these nine un-elected phony non-profits are paid by the taxpayers to work as community organizers pushing an open borders agenda.
Editor: This is the next installment of my ‘Knowledge is Power’ series designed to help new readers and interested media get up to speed on how the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program works (because I simply can’t answer all of the incoming e-mails!).
As I told you in ‘Knowledge is Power I,‘ VOLAG stands for Voluntary Agency and is the acronym favored over the years by the nine federal refugee contractors*** that monopolize all refugee resettlement in the US.
This 2012 GAO study revealed that the VOLAGs were not holding regular stakeholder meetings to consult with local agencies and elected officials. https://www.gao.gov/assets/600/592975.pdf
My plan this morning was to expound on two things the VOLAGs don’t want you to know about and those are local “stakeholder” meetings and R & P Abstracts, but as I went back through literally dozens of posts over the years on those two supposed opportunities for citizens to find out what is happening to your resettlement sites, your towns (see the present sites here), I realized it is way too much for new readers to absorb.
Just know this about the quarterly stakeholder meetings that your local subcontractors are supposed to be holding in your community—you will have a helluva time getting into one!
The meetings are to ‘consult’ with various agencies that must interface with the new refugees—like the school system and the health department—but they don’t want you, the taxpayer, the ultimate stakeholder, to be in attendance. Interestingly, they will often invite former refugees, leaders of local ethnic groups.
In ‘Knowledge is Power I’I told you how to find your state refugee coordinator. Call him or her and ask when the various subcontractors (call them refugee agencies) in your state will be holding their upcoming quarterly stakeholder meetings and try to get in. The state coordinator is supposed to be the go-between for the state, the citizens and the feds (and their contractors).
If you can’t get in, if the meeting is barred to you, then make sure your county or city elected officials will be there. If local elected officials are not attending these planning meetings, then it is a dereliction of their duty as your representative.
As a matter of fact, right now as you are contacting county commissioners about whether they will consider opting-out of the refugee program this year as part of the President’s reform initiative, ask them if they have ever attended a “stakeholder meeting.”
Use my search window for “stakeholder meetings” and see what I have said over the years.
Now to the R & P Abstracts….
You might call them planning documents that the VOLAGs must submit to the US State Department each year for your town or city. Of course the contractors don’t want you to see them. But, they are fascinating because they actually list the amenities your community has to offer new refugees—one of my favorites is when they mention the great mental health facilities locally available.
Ask your state refugee coordinator for recent abstracts for each VOLAG working in your state. You might get older ones, but if they give you a recent one, I would be stunned.
Or, if you know the refugee subcontractors working near you then call and ask directly for recent R & P Abstracts and when their next quarterly stakeholder meeting will be!
Just to show you how secretive the VOLAGs are, I’m posting a 2015 letter leaked to me in which contractor World Relief tells its staff to NOT give out any Abstracts to anyone who calls!
(Refugee Council USA is the lobbying arm for the refugee industry.)
We’ve heard recently from other members of RCUSA (Refugee Council USA) that local affiliates have been contacted by individuals questioning the U.S. refugee program. This is a result of an interview Ann Corcoran, a blogger who runs Refugee Resettlement Watch, with a local news station in Minnesota. She has told her followers to to ask you for your R&P abstract – please do not send it. And please let us know if you are contacted.
Finally, please don’t go searching for this woman’s blog. I give you her information so you know if and when someone calls that this is the same topic. Here are Scott’s tips on interacting with these types of blogs:
Here is an important remember of how blog analytics work. Remember that what feeds the beast essentially are clicks. Ever hear the term “click-bait”? Seeing something in your Facebook feed that says “Velociraptor eats Skittles and your mind will be blown at what happens next!”, would be a dramatized example of that. In other words, while we all don’t really like anything this blogger has to say, every time we share the link, she gets a click. Bloggers have some very useful tools. They are able to tell when people read articles, what they are interested in, and what they search for on the blog. The more times this article is shared, the more the blogger will think they are onto something here and post more about it. Just as a news organization may hammer on a specific story, not because it is a great story, but because it builds up ratings and viewership. What can be done about this?
The best thing I recommend is if a blog such as this is posted by ForRefugees (Chris C.) or Refugee Resettlement Watch (Ann C.) and we believe it is worth sharing for FYI, that the person who locates it simply copy and paste the text from the blog into the e-mail. This will ensure that the clicks are limited. It will get 1 or 2 clicks from WR, versus 20 clicks. Those add up.
Casey Leyva R&P Program Manager
7 E. Baltimore Street Baltimore, MD 21202 T 443.451.1916 E cleyva@wr.org www.worldrelief.org
Of course it made me laugh to see that they were telling their employees to NOT visit RRW because I wouldn’t get so many ‘clicks’ that way. In fact, for me, the clicks don’t matter as RRW is not monetized (with advertising etc.).
I suspect the real motivation was to keep their staff from learning some things they might not know.
I’ve posted that letter to show you just how much the contractors want to continue to operate in secrecy—something they have enjoyed for decades.
After all, to them you are just a bunch of “deplorables” while they are the smart, elite, good people who know what is best for your community and for America.
***For new readers these (below) are the nine federally-funded refugee contractors that operate as a huge conveyor belt monopolizing all refugee placement in America.
A ‘religious’ message from CWS one of three federally funded contractors suing to stop the President’s effort to reform the UN-driven Refugee Admissions Program.
And, they do not limit their advocacy toward only legal immigration programs, but are heavily involved in supporting the lawlessness at our borders.
The question isn’t as much about refugees per se, but about who is running federal immigration policy now and into the future?
(I plan to say this once a day from now on! Oops! I missed yesterday!)
I continue to argue that these nine contractors are the heart of America’s Open Borders movement and thus there can never be long-lasting reform of US immigration policy when these nine un-elected phony non-profits are paid by the taxpayers to work as community organizers pushing an open borders agenda.
