14 million refugees in the Middle East: utter disaster

09/09/2014 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The brilliant and knowledgeable David P. Goldman writes in PJ Media:

There are always lunatics lurking in the crevices of Muslim politics prepared to proclaim a new Caliphate; there isn’t always a recruiting pool in the form of nearly 14 million displaced people (11 million Syrians, or half the country’s population, and 2.8 million Iraqis, or a tenth of the country’s population)….Many of them will have nothing to go back to. When people have nothing to lose, they fight to the death and inflict horrors on others. That is what civilizational decline looks like in real time.

Goldman has been predicting this kind of disaster in the Middle East for years. He also writes under the pen name of Spengler after Oswald Spengler, a German historian who is best known for his book, Decline of the West. Goldman continues:

The Arab states are failed states, except for the few with enough hydrocarbons to subsidize every facet of economic life. Egypt lives on a$15 billion annual subsidy from the Gulf states, and if that persists, will remain stable if not quite prosperous. Syria is a ruin, along with large parts of Iraq. The lives of tens of millions of people were fragile before the fighting broke out (30% of Syrians lived on less than $1.60 a day), and now they are utterly ruined. The hordes of combatants displace more people, and these join the hordes, in a snowball effect. That’s what drove the 30 Years War of 1618-1648, and that’s what’s driving the war in the Levant.

There’s a lot to be said about what we should do about ISIS and the other terrorist groups militarily, and it is being said. Here at RRW I’m wondering whether the State Department thinks 14 million refugees with nothing to go back to, rootless and dispossessed and many filled with a destructive rage beyond our comprehension, are our responsibility, a great pool of potential United States citizens. I’m wondering if the resettlement agencies see a potential windfall and meat packers see cheap labor without end. God help us if so. Ann has written extensively about Syrian refugees and the pressures on other countries to take them. I’m sorry, but you can’t place 11 million Syrians and 3 million Iraquis in western countries.

If there were anyone in the government looking after America’s interests, we would recognize that this catastrophe is not something we can fix. If we’re going to help, we should be looking only to Christians and other selected religious minorities. I wish we had the will and the strength to find them a piece of land of their own over there, but that’s a fantasy. Goldman writes:

When I wrote in 2011 that Islam was dying, this was precisely what I forecast. You can’t unscramble this egg. The international organizations, Bill Clinton, George Soros and other people of that ilk will draw up plans, propose funding, hold conferences and publish studies, to no avail. The raw despair of millions of people ripped out of the cocoon of traditional society, bereft of ties of kinship and custom, will feed the meatgrinder. Terrorist organizations that were hitherto less flamboyant (“moderate” is a misdesignation), e.g. the Muslim Brotherhood (and its Palestine branch Hamas) will compete with the Caliphate for the loyalties of enraged young people. The delusion about Muslim democracy that afflicted utopians of both parties is now inoperative. War will end when the pool of prospective fighters has been exhausted.

Australia may take 4,000 Christian Iraqi and Syrian refugees

08/14/2014 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The Abbott government, which is constantly beaten-up by those who want Australia to take in the world, is considering resettling persecuted Christians, but that isn’t enough for the no-borders pushers.

From the Sydney Morning Herald:

The Abbott government is considering offering refuge to as many as 4000 Iraqis and Syrians after the new Anglican Primate of Australia, Philip Freier, called for asylum in Australia for Christians facing slaughter in northern Iraq.

Dr Freier, Anglican Archbishop of Melbourne, said he had written to Prime Minister Tony Abbott and Immigration Minister Scott Morrison asking that they emulate France in offering refuge to Christians facing forced conversion to Islam or death.

By the way, has anyone seen anything from the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service or any of the other US “religious” resettlement contractors saying we should be taking CHRISTIANS into the US now? Or, are they so politically-correct and fearful of saying anything against Islam that they keep their mouths shut?

(New readers of RRW probably don’t know that Catholics and Lutherans are responsible for much of the Muslim refugee resettlement happening in the US right now.)

Adam Bandt wants to know why Abbott treats those in detention differently than persecuted Christians from Iraq. Could it be that those in detention have broken the law and won’t make good citizens.

Greens call out Abbott

The text of the Sydney Morning Herald story does not include anything from the Green Party, but there is a clip of Green Party leader Adam Bandt criticizing Tony Abbott for what he calls hypocrisy because while perhaps agreeing to take 4,000 refugees now, the government is holding hundreds of Iraqis in detention. He wonders why the disparity in treatment.

It is pretty obvious to me! Those in detention are mostly Muslims who broke into Australia illegally—not persecuted Christians running for their lives at the moment.

Here is the caption under the film clip:

PM needs to decide if he’s a humanitarian or a hypocrite: Greens

Granting extra places to refugees fleeing Iraq is a good start, but it would be hypocritical of the government to send refugees already in detention back to Iraq says Adam Bandt.

See all of our coverage of the migrant problem in Australia by clicking here (141 previous posts!). See especially Australia’s Muslim migrants call for Caliphate. What does Bandt not see about the difference between Muslims and Christians as prospective new Aussies?

Austria to take 1,000 Syrians

04/23/2014 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

That number seems rather high to me and I sure hope they aren’t passing through Austria to the US as some Muslim refugees have done this past year. See our earlier post on Austria, here.

A reader explained to me privately at that time that we were using Austria as a conduit for “refugees” on the way to America.

‘Asylum seekers’ protesting in Vienna in 2012. They were demanding better living conditions.

From novinite.com: But, check this out, the Austrians actually have the courage to say they are focusing their attention on persecuted Christians!

Austria will receive an extra 1000 Syrian refugees in addition to the quota of 500 announced in August 2013, according to Interior Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner.

In a Sunday interview for Austrian newspaper Kurier, she explained that the country would receive an additional 1000 refugees apart from the initially announced quota of 500, adding that priority treatment would be granted to women, children and persecuted Christians. She said that the number of asylum applicants had not been taken into account in the measure.

Austria has been swamped by Muslim asylum seekers, see our earlier posts on a country that repelled the invaders at the Gates of Vienna in 1683.

Abrams and Schwartz want further relaxation of security screening for Syrian refugees

04/03/2014 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

In a highly criticized move, the Obama Administration already relaxed security screening aimed at bringing in thousands of Syrians. Now Elliott Abrams and Eric Schwartz have penned an op-ed saying it wasn’t enough.

Frankly, some serious wrangling must be going on within the Administration because as far as I can tell, Obama has not YET opened the floodgates to Syrian refugees and thus we are seeing the public relations push—as we mentioned in the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society story the other day. (Incidentally, that story was viewed by 33,328 readers via our facebook page!)

Who are Abrams and Schwartz? According to the USA Today op-ed:

Elliott Abrams, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, was a deputy national security adviser in the George W. Bush administration. Eric P. Schwartz, dean of the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota, was assistant secretary of State for population, refugees and migration in the Obama administration. They are members of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.

We have a lot on Eric P. Schwartz, a Soros protege and one-worlder, on our pages, here.

Abrams and Schwartz at USA Today:

Last month, as Syria’s civil war entered its fourth year, bloodshed continued without pause and the number of refugees continued to swell. Those are among the reasons that the Obama administration took an important step to sustain a U.S. tradition of protecting refugees, including Syrians fleeing their country. But the administration can do more.

The United States has long provided haven and resettlement to those escaping tyranny.

They then go on to describe the waiver from terrorism bars the Obama Administration has already put in place and say it isn’t enough:

There are other categories of refugees who still fall afoul of current law, such as former combatants who never acted against U.S. interests and have laid down their arms, and individuals who provided “insignificant” support for groups that the U.S. has designated as terrorist groups. The administration should consider expanding its waiver to include these groups.

Abrams and Schwartz say they only want a few thousand Syrians to be admitted, but therein lies the rub. The US State Department had bandied about the possible resettlement of 2,000 this fiscal year, but the resettlement contractors are pushing for from 12,000-15,000 this year (to be repeated again next year and the year after…).

BTW, we are already 6 months into the 2014 fiscal year which began on Oct. 1, 2013. And, just a reminder: the contractors are paid by the head for each refugee they resettle.

In case you are wondering, Abrams and Schwartz never mention the persecuted Syrian Christians.

This is how you snooker the low-information Americans who read USA Today:

We are not suggesting that the United States admit waves of new refugees. While there are more than 2 million Syrians outside their homeland, the U.S. resettlement program for Syrians is focused only on several thousand of the most vulnerable.

LOL! It is only a few thousand and only the “vulnerable” they say. What is “several thousand?”

As I said the contractors and the open borders lobby must be running into some resistance on the Syrian refugee resettlement issue or Abrams and Schwartz wouldn’t be penning this piece.

Just as Americans are weary of war, I believe they are weary of taking in the world and putting the masses on US taxpayer-funded welfare, not to mention putting our security at risk!

You need to be letting your Representative in Congress or US Senators know, you have had enough!

My favorite refugees, German homeschoolers, get asylum

03/13/2014 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Uwe and Hannelore Romeike and their children left their native Germany in 2008, fleeing persecution by the government because they wanted to homeschool their children. Lynda Altman reports in the Examiner

The family applied for asylum based on religious persecution. Asylum was granted. However, the Obama administration overturned that decision and the Romeike family faced deportation.

HSLDA stepped in and fought the deportation. They lost the battle at every turn. Even when Glenn Beck stepped in with a sizable donation, the family still could not catch a break in court. Then, a petition was filed with thousands of signatures requesting that the U.S. Government answer a final request. On that, the family won.

The U.S. Supreme Court was supposed to hear the case on Monday, March 3, 2014. Instead of hearing the case, the court decided against it. That left the Romeike family with no more options. They were out of time and legal recourse. It looked like deportation was inevitable.

After public outcry, the Department of Homeland Security gave the Romeike family permission to remain in the United States. This happened on Tuesday, March 4, 2014.

Blogger Ben Swann has these further details (as well as some details about what happened to them in Germany):

The Romeike’s received help from the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA). The HSLDA requested a rehearing with the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. The request was denied. The case caught the attention of the homeschooling community, as well as a number of Christian groups. An online petition asking President Obama to grant the family asylum was signed by more than 127,000 people. Eventually the Romeike’s and the HSLDA decided to request a hearing with the Supreme Court.

Michael Farris, founder of the HSLDA, commented, “The Attorney General and Sixth Circuit are ignoring critical evidence and are trying to send back this family who is trying to stay in our country legally. We are hopeful that the Supreme Court will go the other way and see what the original immigration judge saw: that this family and other religious homeschoolers in Germany are being persecuted for what they believe is the right way to raise their children.”

Both writers give the petition and public outcry credit for the outcome. I wonder; I’ve never heard of a petition to the federal government having any effect. It’s great if that’s true. I do remember that more than 20 years ago Rep. George Miller of California introduced a bill in Congress that homeschoolers interpreted as threatening to their right to educate their children. (I should say “we homeschoolers” as I was one at the time.) They jammed the Capitol switchboard — it was reported to be the most calls ever — and the bill was withdrawn. Today there are many more homeschoolers.

I posted on the case here in 2010 and Ann posted here in 2013 when the Romeikes were denied asylum. Note that they were initially granted asylum and then that was overturned at the federal level. We can imagine how much the Obama administration would love a Christian family educating its children outside the state’s control. (Not!) I’d love to know the inside story of the judicial and government actions in this case.

As Ann commented in her post when the Romeikes lost their asylum case: We will take Chechens, Somalis and Rohingya Muslims, but not persecuted Christians from Germany who pose no threat to America. Go figure!

Addendum: Here a great piece by Michael Farris, Dangerous Policy Lurks behind Romeike Triumph. I don’t have time to write about it, but if you are interested in homeschooling, parental rights, religious freedom, or oppressive government, there’s a lot here for you.