Obama's damn Australia 'refugee' swap deal must be killed!

01/16/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I thought this thing was dead until I happened across this story at the Financial Review by Dougal Robinson from Melbourne, Australia.
The nerve of Aussie’s suggesting that if the US reneged on the deal, this might strain relations with Australia.

turnbull-trump — Is Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull blackmailing Donald Trump into taking 1000 of Australia’s detained FAILED asylum seekers, or is a “research fellow” running his mouth at the Financial Review?

See our previous posts on the insane deal, here (posts dated 2016 and 2017).
Remember when you read this that we are talking about illegal aliens who attempted to get to Australia, but that country refused to admit them to their mainland and they are in detention elsewhere.

The Australians did not want these mostly Muslim illegal aliens! They were not granted asylum in Australia! So why are they our problem?

This has got to stop! There should be no DEALS involving refugees where our US State Department wants something from another country, but those getting shafted and suffering the consequences are local communities that must put up with unwanted aliens moving to their towns!
Here is what the Financial Review said three days ago. Damn it! These are NOT REFUGEES, they failed Australia’s asylum process! (Emphasis below is mine, you can tell I’m outraged when I write in red!)

Australian diplomats in Washington face an unenviable assignment: to convince the incoming Trump administration that more than 1000 refugees on Manus Island and Nauru should be resettled in the United States. While the Australian government wants the planned refugee resettlement to occur, circumstances will force it to consider the importance of this issue relative to many other topics needing discussion with the new administration.

The refugee resettlement deal, announced by the Turnbull government and Obama administration after November’s presidential election, faces growing opposition among members of Mr Trump’s party. Three congressional Republicans have already stated their opposition to the deal. If more Republicans express similarly critical views in coming days and weeks, it will become increasingly difficult for Mr Trump to carry out an Obama-era agreement that seems at odds with his comments on refugees and Muslim immigration. [Note that Obama’s State Dept. made the deal AFTER the election!—ed]

brian-babin-in-chair — Author Dougal Robinson calls Rep. Brian Babin a “hard-right” Congressman and says he (a “junior member of Congress”) surely does not have Trump’s ear. Babin called the deal “madness” just last week.

Brian Babin, a hard-right Texas congressman and member of the House Freedom Caucus, said he was “confident President-elect Trump will do everything in his power to put an immediate stop” to a refugee deal he described as “madness”. It is improbable that Babin, a junior member of Congress first elected in 2014, was foreshadowing the internal thinking of incoming Trump administration officials who are invariably focused on other priorities.

Of more concern are the other outspoken opponents of the deal: Senator Chuck Grassley and Representative Bob Goodlatte, influential Republicans who have spent several decades in Congress….

[….]

Australia will in all likelihood be asked to do much more than foot the bill for vetting and resettling the refugees in the United States, and accepting US-controlled refugees from Central America into Australia as currently planned will do little to assuage the new administration. A new commitment could be needed on one of Trump’s priorities, such as increased Australian engagement in the fight against ISIS. In these circumstances, the Trump administration could sell the resettlement as a pre-done agreement and point to an enhanced Australian alliance commitment. Security concerns could be alleviated by references to comprehensive vetting by Homeland Security officials and Australia’s strict standards on border control. [So Australia wouldn’t help fight ISIS unless we take 1,000 mostly Muslims that Australia doesn’t want!—ed]

Confirming that Trump can do what he wants with refugee admissions, this sounds like a threat from the Financial Review (or whoever they are writing this for!):

A final scenario is that this becomes a totemic issue due to Trump’s focus on immigration and ISIS. If several more Republicans in Congress, especially the senior and influential types, speak out against the deal then its fate may be sealed. As President, Trump can unilaterally scrap the deal without congressional approval. (Professor Niels Frenzen, an immigration expert at the University of Southern California school of law, notes that overseas refugee admissions are “pretty much subject to the unfettered discretion of the President”.) Such a rejection would be humiliating and problematic for Australia, a loyal US ally, and dominate evolving discussions of the alliance.

Sounds like blackmail to me!
More here.
Once again, Obama is leaving Trump with a foreign relations problem wholly of Obama’s making!

What will Rex Tillerson as Sec. of State do on refugees? (No idea!)

01/16/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

That is the question Daniel Horowitz asks at Conservative Review yesterday. He suggests that silence on the subject doesn’t bode well for those of us who know that the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program must be scrapped as written.
My reading of the Refugee Act of 1980 is that the program is almost completely under the power of the President and Congress “consults,” but definitely does not set the numbers and the regions of the world from which we take refugees.
Here is what Horowitz says:

Given that Rex Tillerson is the first secretary of State nominee with absolutely no political or military experience, we have no clue where he stands on many critical geopolitical issues. After this week’s hearing, which was almost completely consumed with Russia and random Democrat priorities, he is still very much a blank slate, including on the all-important issue of refugees.

trump-tillerson — What will Donald Trump and Rex Tillerson do about the Refugee Program? We will start a daily watch on January 21, 2017

One of the most important issues within the purview of the secretary of State is refugee resettlement in general and the UN’s Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in particular. Although the secretary of DHS is widely viewed as the point-man on the issue of immigration, the secretary of State is the gatekeeper. The State Department works with the UN to identify the pool of refugees and bring them to our shores.

A secretary of State who has his priorities straight would serve as a positive influence on Trump and urge him to shut down or curtail the program in the face of pressure from the global elites. On the other hand, a secretary of State who subscribes to the views of James Baker, Condi Rice, Bob Corker, and Robert Gates — all strong backers of Tillerson — could serve as a major negative influence on the president-elect.

With all the negative energy that will inevitably swarm Trump on behalf of Islamic refugee resettlement, a secretary of State with anything short of a full-throated opposition to this program will become a problem in the long run.

[….]

The point is we can’t merely hope for change on immigration; we have to ensure and demand it. While repeal of Obamacare has unfortunately turned out to be needlessly complex and uncertain, the repeal of refugee resettlement is very straightforward and does not require any complicated legislation. It would be nice if we had a sense of where this administration is headed. Radio silence on these issues seldom portends a strong change in a conservative direction. [I am not a lawyer, but I think “repeal” of the Act would require Congress, but halting the program is in Trump’s power. After ‘pausing’ the program, Trump should make Congress repeal or reform it. The pause itself would be the hammer. Otherwise, when Trump leaves office in 4-8 years they could all just go back to the same old program.—ed]

Continue reading here.
Here are my thoughts in no particular order:

~I tell everyone who will listen that we can fix things like Obamacare in due time, but we can never fix the demographic changes we make every day through uncontrolled illegal and LEGAL immigration. And, Trump voters recognized that and thus immigration must be the first priority of this new administration.

~Trump can and should ‘pause’ the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program on day one. Congress can not stop him! In 1980, Ted Kennedy, Joe Biden and Jimmy Carter put the power in the hands of the President to set the numbers and the nationalities.

~Some are suggesting he only pause refugees from terror-exporting regions of the world, but I believe it is politically easier to pause the whole thing. Also, I don’t have enough confidence in new Trump people to understand that although Burma (for instance) isn’t considered a terror-exporting center, we do bring unable-to-be-vetted Rohingya Muslims from that region. We also pick up some Somalis in Europe, and so I believe it will be too hard to define those terror-exporting areas of the world. And, certainly he shouldn’t admit those in the Obama Australia deal.

bob-carey — Bob Carey is the Director of ORR (in HHS) and should be on the way out. Anne Richard, his counterpart at the US State Department should be packing up too. If the Trump team keeps them on for awhile, it will be a signal that not much is going to change. Both Richard and Carey came to their jobs from a resettlement contractor (revolving door!),the International Rescue Committee.

~That said, I’m giving him a few weeks to get it done, but know that we are adding 285 refugees to your towns and cities every day that he delays. See here. ***Update*** Daily average has dropped to 257, here.

~Congress did give the Administration more funding for the higher number of refugees coming, but a big chunk of it does not become available until February 17th, so it is important to stop the flow before that date.

~We have had no word on it, but Asst. Sec. of State Anne Richard and Director of ORR Bob Carey should be packing up their offices this week, if they haven’t already. Who the Trump team places in those two positions will tell us where Tillerson and Rep. Tom Price (HHS nominee) are on refugees.

~If Trump pauses now we will already have over 30,000 refugees admitted in the first three months of the 2017 fiscal year. Obama set the level for this year at 110,000, but Trump has no obligation to honor that HUGE number.

~The resettlement contractors will moan and wail because their federal funding depends on numbers they place. Certain members of Congress, including many Republican ‘leaders,’ will scream bloody murder as well (they want cheap immigrant labor!). But, frankly, if Congress thinks it is in our interests to continue taking refugees the UN is pushing on us, let them work on a reform of the program!

Because they are so fearful of being called names, they will never do it unless Donald Trump forces them to!

By the way, when the Bush Administration dramatically reduced the number of refugees coming in 2002 and 2003 (9/11 scared them), they conspired with the resettlement contractors to give them funding to keep their doors open even when they had so many fewer refugees to place. This writer has no sympathy for them, let them raise private money from private ‘humanitarians’ to pay their rent!
Or, heck, maybe the big globalist meatpackers and food processing companies like Chobani Yogurt can pay them to keep their doors open!

Catholic Charities Southwestern Ohio planning for large refugee influx this year; ID cards for illegals

01/14/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

They believe that Obama’s last proposal, sent to Congress in September 2016, will continue to be operative and that his huge ‘recommendation’ for 110,000 refugees to be admitted this year will be honored by the incoming Trump administration.
Curious to see the last time we admitted more than the astronomical number of 110,000 refugees in one year, I went back to the Office of Refugee Resettlement annual reports and found that we must go back to 1995 (Bill Clinton) to find a year when we brought that many refugees. It was a year that we admitted over 30,000 Cubans, 30,000 Russians and 30,000 Vietnamese.
Just a few days ago I posted a widely read post about this week as National Migration Week at the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and how much of your money is going to the USCCB.

The USCCB’s migration fund is 97% funded by you! Their ‘work’ is not funded by Catholic parishioners giving their own private money!

Here is a report from Cincinnati, Ohio about one Migration week, ‘welcoming the stranger,’ event. This is how the progressives do it, they declare a special day or week, hold a public relations event and the press shows up to write glowingly. They are masters at media manipulation (propaganda)! (Emphasis below is mine):

Despite uncertainty and concerns about policies of the incoming Trump administration, programs and agencies helping immigrants and refugees in Greater Cincinnati anticipate more growth in 2017.

The Refugee Resettlement Program of Catholic Charities Southwestern Ohio, which helped bring in 330 refugees in 2016, will help 450 this year, said Alisa Berry, the agency’s chief operating officer who oversees the program. It resettled 260 refugees in 2015.

alisa-berry — Wishful thinking on Alisa Berry’s part—Obama’s 110,000 refugee plan for FY17 will continue?

“The federal government keeps asking us to help more people,” Berry said. “Demand for services increases every year.”

She was one of five panelists to participate Thursday in an interfaith immigration insights event at Hebrew Union College. About 150 people attended to listen to updates on programs and perspective on a contentious national issue.

The opposition to legal immigration and assistance for undocumented immigrants and refugees helped Donald Trump defeat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential race.

The Thursday event was part of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ National Migration Week and in conjunction with Pope Francis’ World Migrant and Refugee Day, which will be Tuesday.

The United States will accept 110,000 refugees in 2017, a number established by President Barack Obama. Trump has the authority to change the number for 2018. [Trump can change the number in 2017, on day one, will he?—ed]

Refugees arriving in Greater Cincinnati through Catholic Charities are coming from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, Bhutan, Syria, Iraq and Myanmar.

Check out what else they are doing through CLINIC (the Catholic Legal Immigration Network), a non-profit organization that depends on millions of your tax dollars too! They are giving ID cards out to those who have no legal identity in the US. Who is paying for this? You?

In January 2015, immigration attorney Allison Herre started as the local Catholic Charities’ agency director of Legal Immigration Services.

[….]

The event also provided an update on the MARCC ID card, issued by the Metropolitan Area Religious Coalition of Cincinnati and manufactured and distributed by Catholic Charities. It is recognized as legal identification by all city departments, including the police.

[….]

Card supporters say the card will improve public safety by providing people who otherwise do not have an ID card – people returning from prison, the homeless, immigrants, especially those living here without legal documentation.

Herre said her agency continues to advise clients to apply for the MARCC card and file for extensions of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. Known as DACA, it was created by an Obama executive order in 2012 to provide status to children brought illegally into the country and who have grown up in the United States. It allows them to apply for driver’s licenses and work permits.

See all of the CLINIC offices operating in your communities, here.
Below is a screenshot of one portion of the government grants received by Catholic Charities of Southwestern Ohio (USASpending.gov).

screenshot-141

If all of these Catholic organizations (USCCB, Catholic Charities and CLINIC) operated on truly private charitable giving, then we would have nothing to say about their activities, but it is the fact that they use our money (never report that fact to the public), so they can brag about their Christian charity, that is so offensive to me.

Refugee contractor may have exaggerated numbers in letter promoting Rutland, VT resettlement

01/12/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Every one of you working in your local communities and questioning plans for either expanding the number of refugees in your city or where new sites are planned, pay attention! Do what this housing authority member did—don’t take the contractors word on the economic benefits that refugees supposedly bring to your town or city.
I’ve been begging for years for someone with an economic/business background to thoroughly debunk (with a focused economic study) this illogical notion that bringing more poor people to a poor and struggling city benefits the city economically! I’ve suggested Utica, NY as the case study location.

This meme along with the propaganda that no refugees have been involved in Islamic terrorism are the two major talking points the refugee industry advocates peddle.
Here is Vermont Watchdog. You too can do this!

Gail Johnson, a Rutland resident and Board of Aldermen hopeful, likes to confirm her facts. This practice grew out of necessity when, as a U.S. Navy finance officer, she was in charge of payroll for an entire naval base in Charleston, S.C.

lavinia-limon-96 — In 1996 Lavinia Limon was Bill Clinton’s Director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement. After leaving government where she doled out grant money, she took the reins of one of nine major government refugee contractors receiving grant money, the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants. See Breitbart’s Michael Leahy’s dossier on Limon here last August: http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/08/05/twin-falls-refugee-crisis-clinton-appointee/

Now, a member of the Rutland Housing Authority commission, Johnson continues to fact check. “Whatever I say or do, I have proof. I back it up. I expect others to do that as well,” she said.

Johnson never thought she would find discrepancies in a letter by the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) to the Rutland Board of Aldermen, but she did.

[….]

In October, the Board of Aldermen sent a letter to USCRI, asking for justification of Rutland’s selection as a refugee relocation site. The agency still has not released the original grant application, which is supposed to spell out in detail Rutland’s suitability. Instead, USCRI CEO Lavinia Limon responded to the board in December, sending a letter that cited numbers of available jobs and housing.

Limon said that, as of Nov. 28, 2016, The Vermont Housing Data showed “284 housing units available for rent in Rutland City.”

Johnson noted that the 284 figure could be a result of expanded search parameters, to potentially place refugees in rent-to-buy situations, homes or condos. However, USCRI only places refugees in apartment rentals. [However, because the numbers coming in now are so astronomical, we are hearing refugees being placed (against federal regulations) in hotels!—ed]

However, when Watchdog checked the site on Jan. 11, only 23 housing locations are listed in Rutland City. Of those listed, none have availability.

[….]

“I’ve worked with people from many backgrounds. I’ve studied Arabic. Refugee settlement is a wonderful humanitarian effort,” she said.

But she said she becomes concerned when settlement agencies claim refugees will be beneficial to Rutland’s economy.

“They say that bringing in refugees is good for our economic recovery. I don’t know that that’s the solution. What I do know, in a bigger sense, is that the logic behind improving our economic recovery in Rutland by bringing in low-income people to generate business, it’s not a logical economic model,” she said.

Instead, Johnson contends, Rutland’s unemployment and lack of affordable housing makes bringing low-income refugee families into the city counterproductive from an economic standpoint.

Please read the whole story, Ms. Johnson found many more discrepancies in Lavinia Limon’s letter.
See my previous post on Rutland where I said Ms. Limon was setting this up (with the New York Times help) to use as a cudgel against Donald Trump should he stop the flow of Syrians after January 20th.
See our many posts on the Rutland controversy, here. And, learn more about Lavinia Limon and USCRI by clicking here.

More news blaming Trump for Africans crossing in to Canada from US and asking for asylum

01/11/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Expect to see a spike around the time when Trump takes office until refugees get a sense of the direction in which the new president may take immigration policy.

(Canadian Immigration lawyer Bashir Khan)

Readers might want to first check out a post from a few days ago where we reported that ‘refugees’ from Ghana were found freezing after a long walk across the US/Manitoba border, click here.
For new readers, just a reminder, we have a Canada category, here, with 186 previous posts going back nearly 10 years.
Canadian immigration lawyers are saying there is an increase in the number of mostly Somalis leaving the US and heading north and they predict that when Trump is inaugurated (in 9 days) the numbers will tick up even higher.
What concerned me most about this news is that if these Somalis were legally admitted to the US, they have nothing to fear. Why bother risking their lives traveling to Canada? So, that can only mean that they were in the US illegally and were possibly waiting on asylum claims to be processed and simply disappeared. How many more illegal Somalis are wandering around America?
Editor: I had previously posted a photo here that I now believe came from a fake news site. I apologize and have removed it.
From CBC Manitoba (hat tip: Joanne). Emphasis is mine:

The number of asylum seekers crossing the Canada-U.S. border into Manitoba on foot instead of through official ports of entry has risen fivefold in the past three years. [Keep in mind that the numbers were going up before Trump even came on the scene!—ed]

In the 2013-2014 fiscal year, 68 people illegally crossed the international border near the small, southern Manitoba community of Emerson and claimed refugee status, according to the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA). That jumped to 340 in 2015-2016.

This fiscal year’s numbers have already surpassed that, with 410 asylum seekers making the journey between April and December 2016.

screenshot-131 — Emerson is just north of the United States border at the point where the province of Manitoba and states of Minnesota and North Dakota meet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emerson,_Manitoba

According to Jacquie Callin, a CBSA spokeswoman, most of those crossing near Emerson are from Somalia, which has been wracked by civil war and political instability since the overthrow of military dictator Siad Barre in 1991.

Canada has the reputation of being a land of liberty and appeals to the unprecedented number of refugees displaced by the world’s various conflicts and crises, said immigration lawyer Bashir Khan. [Business must be booming for Mr. Khan!—ed]

[….]

CBSA reports 119 asylum seekers came to Manitoba in the coldest winter months between December 2015 and March 2016 without passing through a port of entry or border checkpoint.

Pay attention to this next line! Legitimate asylum seekers are to ask for asylum in the country in which they first arrive. If this international understanding was enforced everywhere then many of the problems the world is experiencing with migrants would be solved. Instead migrants now believe they can wander around the world looking for the best deal! It is called asylum shopping.

Under the Canada-U.S. Safe Third Country Agreement signed in 2002, individuals must seek asylum in the country in which they first arrive, with a few exceptions. For instance, if a Somali refugee who arrived in the United States presented themselves at the Canadian border seeking asylum, they would be sent back to the U.S. unless they had family in Canada. [But were the illegal border-crossers sent back, there is no mention!—ed]

[….]

People entering the country without visas or proper immigration papers have been spotted walking through fields and gravel roads near the border in Emerson, whose southern boundary borders the states of North Dakota and Minnesota.

[….]

RCMP D Division patrols 520 kilometres of the Canada-U.S. border, the world’s longest undefended border. When officers find a person trying to illegally cross, they bring them to the nearest port of entry to be assessed by a CBSA official.

If there’s no admissibility concerns and the person’s refugee claim is legitimate, they are released and a date is set for the claim to be heard. [How many ever show up?—ed]

[….]

Khan said he expects to see a spike around the time when Trump takes office until refugees get a sense of the direction in which the new president may take immigration policy.

LOL! I bet some of you are wondering if you could hire buses to take loads to the border of Justin Trudeau’s ‘welcoming’ Canada.