Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turbull’s government has prioritized persecuted Syrian Christian refugees over their Muslim counterparts in a program that provides homes to 10,000 asylum seekers who have passed a stringent screening process.
So Prime Minister Turnbull is going to prioritize Christian refugees and hand off THEIR rejected Muslims to us? Come on Donald get back to why we elected you!
The Australian government has now issued the 12,000 visas previously promised to Syrian refugees and is set to resettle the asylum seekers mostly in New South Wales. Although it seems Prime Minister Turnbull has not yet revealed the religious composition of the resettled refugees, the Daily Telegraph has learned that around three quarters of the migrants who were processed were persecuted Christians.
The refugees in the resettlement program had to go through a strict security screening process to make sure that no radicalized foreign fighters make their way into Australia. The program, which was first announced by former prime minister Tony Abbott, was previously met with opposition by those who are against prioritizing refugees of any religion.
[….]
In December, The Australian columnist Angela Shanahan called on the Australian government to take in more Christian refugees fleeing persecution in the Middle East. She said many refugees who are merely fleeing war have the chance to return to their homeland, but these Christians can never return.
Shanahan also highlighted the potential eradication of Christianity in the faith’s cradle in the Middle East. For her, not taking into account a refugee’s religion is “blind” obedience to Australia’s immigration policy, and added that their country cannot ignore religion when processing resettlement of asylum seekers because these people fled their country because of religious persecution.
This post is filed in our Australia category, here. And, Trump Watch! here.
For background see our earlier post, here. And, take note that the Obama US Attorney who sided with the mosque builders was one of those asked to resign by President Trump a few days ago.
From Leo Hohmann atWorld Net Daily(Christians who escaped persecution in Iraq are fighting back!):
The saga of the 21,000-square-foot mega-mosque in Sterling Heights, Michigan, is not over yet.
The mayor and city council voted Feb. 21 to settle a lawsuit by a Shiite Muslim group and allow it to build a mosque in a residential neighborhood populated largely by Chaldean Christian refugees who escaped Islamic persecution in Iraq.
A companion suit against the city by Barack Obama’s Department of Justice alleging the city had denied the mosque a permit based on “anti-Muslim” sentiments in the community was also settled at the Feb. 21 meeting, paving the way for the mosque to start construction.
Nahren Anweya: “This minority group consists of more than four generations of refugees and genocide victims under radical Islam.”
But the counter-lawsuit filed Monday argues that city officials were actually favoring the Shiite Muslims of neighboring Madison Heights while ignoring the wishes of its own citizens who were overwhelmingly against the mosque.
If built, the American Islamic Community Center, or AICC, will become the third mosque in Sterling Heights.
Second DOJ-imposed win for Muslims in less than year
It was the second bitter mosque battle in Southeastern Michigan in less than a year.
Obama’s DOJ forced a madrassa on Pittsfield Township, near Ann Arbor, and that town had to pay out $1.7 million to the mosque while sending township employees to be trained on how not to discriminate against Muslims.
After the contentious Feb. 21 meeting in Sterling Heights in which the mayor ordered police to empty the city-hall chambers before the council took a vote on the mosque deal, WND reported that the Chaldean Christians were upset and talking about a counter-lawsuit.
On Monday, they acted. They had Ann Arbor-based American Freedom Law Center, or AFLC, file a civil rights suit on their behalf against the city and Mayor Michael C. Taylor, alleging violations of state and federal law.
“The mayor and the corrupted personal interests behind him have outraged a community which is comprised of the largest minority Assyrian/Chaldean Christians from Iraq,” said Nahren Anweya, spokeswoman for the Chaldean and Assyrian Christians in Sterling Heights. “This minority group consists of more than four generations of refugees and genocide victims under radical Islam.”
CAIR crows and threatens:
Dawud Walid CAIR Michigan. Learn more about him here: http://www.investigativeproject.org/2438/dawud-walid-unhinged#
When the city agreed to settle the suit and allow the mosque to be built, the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, said the victory for the mosque should teach Michigan cities a lesson.
“We hope that this settlement, along with last year’s settlement in Pittsfield Township regarding a previously blocked Islamic school project, sends a strong message to city governments in Michigan seeking to deny zoning of religious institutions simply because they are led by Muslims,” said CAIR-Michigan Executive Director Dawud Walid.
An attorney for the AICC mosque, Azzam Elder, threatened to “monitor” local residents he felt were Islamophobic.
“Moving forward, we’re very concerned about some of what you’ve seen at the public hearings with some of the residents,” Elder told the Detroit News. “We’ll be monitoring what we feel (could be) potential hate groups.”
Hohmann’s story is very thorough. I have only snipped a small portion of it, go here to learn more. Besides the lawsuit, I’m thinking that the citizens there might follow the Rutland model and work very hard to remove (at the ballot box!) the elected officials who caved!
One of the great and lasting legacies of a naive federal refugee program is that the US State Department and its contractors have placed Middle Eastern groups who have been in conflict for centuries in close proximity to each other in American cities assuming, we can only presume, that their religious conflicts will melt away in the great (mythical?) American melting pot.
Pew Research has done a handy little summary of where we stand with refugees admitted this fiscal year, but most importantly they made a useful graph of how many entered from travel-restricted countries since the first week of December, through Trump’s inauguration and up to last Friday.
There is nothing we haven’t already been talking about as we reported also from Wrapsnet over recent weeks and months, but they put it in a neat little package for your review on the eve of the 120-day moratorium on refugee resettlement. Pew Research Center:
A total of 2,466 refugees from six countries under new travel restrictions – Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen – have resettled in the United States since Donald Trump became president, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. State Department data. The number of refugees from the six travel-restricted countries represents 32% of all refugees who have entered the U.S. since Trump took office.
Do you see that big spike ending on inauguration day? That is because the Obama State Dept. was working night and day to get as many Muslims in to the US as possible in the week before the Trump team took over.
Pew continues….
Including refugees from countries with no travel restrictions, a total of 7,594 refugees have entered the U.S. during Trump’s first seven weeks in office (Jan. 21 to March 10). Of these refugees, 3,410 are Muslims (45%) and 3,292 are Christians (43%), with other religions or the religiously unaffiliated accounting for the rest.
So far in fiscal 2017 (which began Oct. 1, 2016), refugees who hold citizenship from the six restricted countries have accounted for more than a third (34%) of 37,716 refugee admissions.
President Trump has set the ceiling for the entire 2017 fiscal year at 50,000, a number we explained here is not that low!
This post is filed in ourTrump Watch!category as well as ‘refugee statistics’and ‘where to find information.’ Endnote: It is amusing to me to see research/articles like this because for years and years (I started writing RRW in 2007) no one paid any attention to the numbers, religions and ethnicities of refugees entering the US. It is nice to see so many news outlets educating the public!
Actually it is over a half billion the US Conference of Catholic Bishops received from US taxpayers since 2008!
(By the way, I just heard Raymond Arroyoon Fox and Friends say that the USCCB gets millions of tax dollars annually from the federal treasury, but I couldn’t find the clip. Yeh! Finally that information is getting in to the mainstream media!) ***Update***Reader Robin has found the clip. Be sure to watch (click here) at about 50 seconds in when Brian Kilmeade asks why Lutherans and Catholics oppose the Trump refugee slowdown. Clearly Arroyo has done some homework!
Here is the latest from Catholic News Agency (CNA):
Washington D.C., Mar 6, 2017 / 03:50 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- With people fleeing humanitarian crises around the world, President Donald Trump’s new executive order halting refugee admissions is wrong, Catholic bishop and aid groups maintain.
Bishop Vasquez chairs the U.S. bishops’ committee on migration. Last time we looked we reported that 97% of the Bishop’s Migration funds money comes from you—the taxpayers! https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2017/01/11/and-we-almost-missed-it-us-conference-of-catholic-bishops-celebrates-its-national-migration-week/
“We remain deeply troubled by the human consequences of the revised executive order on refugee admissions and the travel ban. While we note the Administration’s efforts to modify the Executive Order in light of various legal concerns, the revised Order still leaves many innocent lives at risk,” Bishop Joe Vasquez of Austin stated March 6. Bishop Vasquez chairs the U.S. bishops’ committee on migration.
“The U.S. Catholic Bishops have long recognized the importance of ensuring public safety and would welcome reasonable and necessary steps to accomplish that goal,” he said.
“However, based on the knowledge that refugees are already subjected to the most vigorous vetting process of anyone who enters the United States, there is no merit to pausing the refugee resettlement program while considering further improvement to that vetting process.”
Here comes the big lie that Trump is reducing the number of refugees dramatically! Contractors, like the US Bishops, did just fine on less than 50,000 refugees during 4 of Bush’s years.
But, for only one year did Obama propose the astronomical number of 110,000 (for most of the year he would not be in office!) and that becomes the standard that the ignorant, gullible media goes with! For the many new readers we get every day, the resettlement contractors, including the USCCB, gets paid by the head to place refugees in your towns. More refugees=more money!
“Resettling only 50,000 refugees a year, down from 110,000, does not reflect the need, our compassion, and our capacity as a nation,” Bishop Vasquez stated.“We have the ability to continue to assist the most vulnerable among us without sacrificing our values as Americans or the safety and security of our nation.”
He goes on to oppose any religious test (like the prioritization of Christians in the first EO) for admission to the US. Now, here comes a major truth! And, this is why Christians are not prioritized from Muslim countries!
Refugees must first register with the UNHCR to be eligible for resettlement.
Trump should immediately sever our ties with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, save us millions of dollars, and put in place a program where we, the US, chooses our refugees without the UNHCR middle men!
CNA continues……
“The Obama administration policy was to prioritize these groups, but despite this they remain severely underrepresented in U.S. refugee admissions, so it’s clear that a fair outcome is even more important than a stated priority,” he said. [Andrew Walther, vice president of communications and strategic planning at the Knights of Columbus.]
Syriac Patriarch Ignatius Joseph III Younan of Antioch has warned that Christians hoping to be resettled in the U.S. or Canada have never even had the chance.
“I personally heard on several occasions from many of our Christian refugees in Lebanon and Jordan, that their applications for refugee visas, either to the USA or Canada, are without any response, if not refused by the consulates of the USA and Canada,” he stated.
Never mentioned at CNA News is the financial reason the USCCB does not want to slow the flow for even a short period of time—$$$$$!
Here (below) is just one page of the income the USCCB is getting from you (from 2008-2016). This does not include the millions and millions of tax payer dollars received separately by individual Catholic Charities around the country.
My screenshot from USASpending.govcaptures only 7 of 227 transactions. For those of you interested in the USAID funding be sure to scroll through the pages and see how much of that money the USCCB gets!
By the way, since the Bishops are exempt from filing Form 990’s we can’t get at their salaries.
Who is Lautenberg? You will see below. First the news that CNN is reporting this morning (that the new EO will likely come today).
And, the Wall Street Journal was suggesting last evening also that the newly revised Executive Order (the so-called travel ban) could come today. If early reports are correct, the new EO will express no preference for saving Christians of the Middle East and Africa.
Here are a few highlights that involve the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program, from the Wall Street Journal:
The new version is expected to still ban travel from several Muslim-majority nations, but unlike the original, it will leave Iraq off the list, several people familiar with the planning said. [The irony is that the refugee terrorists we have caught in the US were mostly Iraqis!—ed]
No preference for Christians?
The new order is expected to remove a provision giving preference to refugees who are members of religious minorities, which was expected to benefit Christians coming from Muslim nations, several people said. It is unclear if this or possibly other changes would be enough to address those concerns.
The revised order is expected to again temporarily suspend the admission of refugees to the U.S., but unlike the original, it is likely to treat Syrian refugees the same way as those from other countries, people familiar with the planning said. The original executive order suspended the entire refugee program for four months and indefinitely suspended admission of Syrian refugees.
Let’s talk about this issue of a religious test!
We have had a religious test for certain special groups since 1990! Senator Frank Lautenberg, a Democrat from New Jersey, served in the US Senate beginning in 1982. He died in 2013. He put into federal law a provision to FAVOR religious minorities from Russia, later expanded to include those from Iran. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Lautenberg
You will hear representatives of the federal resettlement contractors scream that we can’t possibly favor Christians because our Muslim friends will get mad at us, but……. We have been giving special treatment and admitting certain religious minorities AS REFUGEES for decades under a law commonly referred to as the Lautenberg Amendment!
How do you think we justified admitting religious minorities from Russia including since FY03, 1,965 Jews and 11,410 Russian Muslimsknown as Meskhetians (out of a total of 19,440 ‘refugees’ from Russia)! (Numbers from Wrapsnet) What on earth made them “refugees?”
Lautenberg was later extended to include Iranian religious minorities.
Our old pals at the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society have been patting themselves on the back for decades for their work under Lautenberg!
From their website (emphasis mine):
The Lautenberg Amendment, first enacted in 1990 as part of the U.S. foreign operations budget to facilitate resettlement of Jews from the former Soviet Union, allowed HIAS to bring tens of thousands to safety. As the worldwide refugee situation changed, the Lautenberg Amendment was expanded to include persecuted religious minorities in other countries, such as Jews, Christians, and Baha’is from Iran.
Despite being a crucial part of U.S. refugee policy, it expires each year and must be reauthorized.
They then direct readers to a pdf, here.
This is a screenshot of the opening page of the document: https://www.hias.org/sites/default/files/lautenberg_amendment_backgrounder.pdf
I had a quick look at Wrapsnet for just this fiscal year (10/1/2016 to today) and learned that we admitted 1,637 ‘refugees’ from Iran (635 processed through Vienna, Austria as of January 31, 2017, data not yet available through February). Of those only 122 were Muslims, so the remainder (1,515) were religious minorities including 26 Jews.
We have a religious test!
We processed from Russia from the first day of fiscal year ’17 (October 1, 2016) to January 31, 2017, 251 so-called ‘refugees.’ 29 were Russian Jews.
We have a religious test!
I’m not a lawyer, but if the courts don’t allow a Trump Executive Order to give preference to African and Middle Eastern Christians, how is it that the Lautenberg Amendment (recently extended by Congress) is legal? And, has been legal and Constitutional for going on 27 years?
Can we rightly expect HIAS to stand in support of Trump’s original concept of a religious test that would allow Christians in majority Muslim countries to have access to the US Refugee Admissions Program? Don’t hold your breath!
