Another 50,000 wannabe migrants to US learned if they won the lottery to America this week

05/07/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I’ve concluded that I need to start writing more about other ways legal immigrants get to the US from Islamic terror-producing parts of the world.
This week tens of thousands learned whether they won the “diversity visa lottery” (aka green card lottery) and will soon be on the way to your town.

Overlooked by most everyone is this insane lottery set up with the premise that the US is lacking in diversity and needs more of it!

Previously, I wrote about the ‘Diversity Visa Lottery’ (see category here) a lot, but it has fallen off my radar screen as the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program has drawn so much attention.

The WaPo tells us that Trump has not mentioned the Diversity Visa Lottery. Has any staff member told him about it?

Frankly I’ve been disappointed that no other private citizen investigators have taken up the cause of writing about this program, or about Temporary Protected Status, or Immigrant Food Stamp/welfare fraud. Those are all areas where someone should write exclusively on the topic!
Goodness knows there is enough material to keep someone going daily on just one of those topics.
Here the Washington Post tells us that earlier this week the new ‘winners’ were announced. By the way, refugee numbers do not count when determining ineligible countries, so we take lottery applicants from Cuba, Iraq, Burma, and Iran to name just a few.
WaPo (at The Denver Post):

On Tuesday, more than 14 million anxious people around the world will begin checking computers and smartphones in one of the strangest rituals of the U.S. immigration system. When the clock strikes noon in Washington, they will be able to visit a State Department website, enter their names, years of birth and 16-digit identification numbers. Then they will press “submit” to learn whether they have won one of the world’s most coveted contests: the U.S. green card lottery.

Each year, the Diversity Visa Lottery, as it is officially known, provides up to 55,000 randomly selected foreigners – fewer than 1 percent of those who enter the drawing – with permanent residency in the United States.

I learned something I didn’t know! Mohammad Atta tried twice to win the lottery, but ultimately got in (as sadly we know) using another legal visa.

The current lottery coincides with an intense debate over immigration and comes amid policy changes that have made the country less welcoming to new arrivals. President Donald Trump has cracked down on illegal immigration and pressed forward with plans to build a wall along the border with Mexico. He has issued executive orders targeting foreign workers, refugees and travelers from certain majority-Muslim countries.

But he hasn’t said a word about the green card lottery.

Its days may be numbered, nonetheless. The lottery appears to conflict with the president’s call for a “merit-based” immigration system. And at least two bills in the Republican-controlled Congress seek to eliminate the program.

“The Diversity Lottery is plagued with fraud, advances no economic or humanitarian interest, and does not even deliver the diversity of its namesake,” according to a news release from Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., a co-sponsor of one of the bills.

Just what we need, 50,000 people annually, some with barely a high school education, and with spouses and families along for the ride!

The lottery’s premise is simple. It’s not connected to employment or family members in the United States. Instead, the only requirement is that entrants be adults with a high school diploma or two years of work experience. Winners can bring spouses and children. Citizens of countries that have sent 50,000 people to the United States in the past five years – such as Canada, China, India, Nigeria and Mexico – are ineligible to participate.

The lottery, which was launched in its present form in 1995, is especially beloved in Eastern Europe and Africa. In recent years, the two regions have accounted for more than two-thirds of lottery winners. In Liberia and other West African countries, nearly 10 percent of the population applies each year.

[….]

The program – operated from a consular center in Williamsburg, Kentucky [Mitch McConnell country!—ed] – has been on the chopping block before. It came under attack in 2002 after an Egyptian terrorist who killed two people in Los Angeles was found to be in the United States through his wife’s diversity visa. Mohamed Atta, another Egyptian and one of the 9/11 suicide pilots, had entered the lottery twice before entering the United States on a different visa to study aviation.

“If you’re a terrorist organization and you can get a few hundred people to apply to this from several countries . . . odds are you’d get one or two of them picked,” Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., told The Washington Post in 2011 after introducing an ill-fated bill to kill the program.

Continue reading here.
I couldn’t find a list of the numbers (selected for 2018) from each country, but here are the countries eligible to participate in 2018 from Africa and Asia.

Haitian 'temporary' refugees to test Trump's resolve on immigration

04/24/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I’ve written about ‘Temporary Protected Status’ over the years as a side issue here at RRW. But, like the Diversity Visa Lottery, it begs for more attention from some intrepid wannabe blogger who should take on the issue as a sole priority and really do it justice.

TPS is basically a scam, it is rarely temporary!
The US, in its humanitarian zeal (supposedly), allows certain nationals who got in to the US in some other way (usually illegally) to stay if their home country cannot take them back for some extenuating reason (big storm, earthquake, civil war). Under TPS, these nationals become temporary refugees allowed to stay and work in America.
Then every 18 months, a TPS designation is extended for another 18 months and this can go on for years.
Click here to learn more and see the countries eligible for this special deal right now. Note that Hondurans have had their special status extended ever since 1999. El Salvador since 2001.
And, since we have such a huge refugee program from Somalia, I have never understood why Somalis have TPS.
At one point, during the Bush presidency (when he was extending again some TPS designation), I came to understand that those countries, like El Salvador, loved this program because their people working legally in the US were propping up the Salvadoran economy with their remittances (money sent out of the US economy to the third world country).
Here is the latest from the Miami Herald. You see what happens, after years and years in the US, these people have jobs, houses, kids in school and they use that argument—you can’t possibly be so mean to send us back now—against us!
BTW, all of those on TPS had their hopes dashed when the ‘Gang of Eight’ legislation failed in Congress a few years ago. They were hoping for amnesty so they would never have to leave.
Miami Herald:

Immigration attorney Little calls the proposal to not extend TEMPORARY status to Haitians “heartless and stupid.”

The Trump administration is recommending sending tens of thousands of Haitians back to their homeland because it believes conditions have significantly improved in the disaster-prone, poverty-stricken nation.

[….]

James McCament, the acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, said Temporary Protected Status, the immigration relief that has allowed Haitians to live and work freely in the United States, should be terminated. The Obama administration granted the status following the earthquake, which left more than 300,000 dead, 1.5 million injured and an equal number homeless.

“Conditions in Haiti no longer support its designation for TPS,” McCament said in a memo to U.S. Department of Homeland Secretary John F. Kelly obtained by the Miami Herald.

McCament’s recommendations came as a surprise to many, including Haitian and immigration advocates who have been pushing for the extension of TPS before July 22, when it is up for renewal.

Help OUR economy? Someone should do a study about how much of our money leaves our economy through remittances!

“TPS beneficiaries contribute greatly to our economy,” said attorney Cheryl Little, whose Americans for Immigrant Justice organization also represents some of the estimated 300,000 Central Americans who have been enjoying the special status since 1999. “They are growing our economy and to suddenly say, ‘There is a new sheriff in town, pack your bags,’ it’s heartless and it’s stupid.”

The Center for American Progress had been closely monitoring the decision on Haiti because it’s the “first test of this administration’s commitment to handle TPS determinations in an apolitical manner that respects human rights and the letter of the law,” said Tom Jawetz, the center’s vice president for immigration policy.

It is a test for CAP and a test for those of us who supported Trump’s campaign promises!
Continue here for lots more at the Miami Herald clearly advocating for Haitians to stay!
One last thing! TPS allows those so designated to live and work here as if they were legal immigrants. And, it allows them to get drivers’ licenses. It does not allow them to vote, but with drivers’ licenses, who is going to stop them?

Pence in Australia: Sure! We will be taking over 1,000 illegal aliens now held in Australian detention

04/23/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Donald Trump called it a “dumb deal,” but your American town may soon see some of the 1,250 illegal aliens, who attempted to get to Australia by boat and have been housed in detention centers, flown in and given apartments and homes where you live. They won’t be living next door to Vice President Pence for sure!

Some of these men will be coming to your town!

Here is what AP is reporting at the Japan Times (emphasis is mine) about a deal the Obama State Department left for Trump:

SYDNEY – Vice President Mike Pence and Australia’s prime minister brushed off any lingering hostility over a contentious refugee deal and joined forces on Saturday to urge China to take a greater role in pressuring North Korea to drop its nuclear weapons program.

Pence and Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull repeatedly praised the decades-long American-Australian alliance following a meeting in Sydney, with the vice president thanking Turnbull for calling on Beijing to play a more active part in the international effort to de-escalate Pyongyang’s nuclear threat.

The two leaders appeared at pains to present a united front following an unusual period of tension between the longtime allies that was sparked by a spat between Turnbull and President Donald Trump over a refugee resettlement deal struck by the Obama administration.

Pence said Saturday that the U.S. would honor the agreement even if it didn’t agree with it. Under the deal, the U.S. would take up to 1,250 refugees that Australia houses in detention camps on the Pacific island nations of Nauru and Papua New Guinea. Trump’s anger over the agreement led to a tense phone call with Turnbull in January and an angry tweet in which the president called the deal “dumb.”

“President Trump has made it clear that we’ll honor the agreement — that doesn’t mean we admire the agreement,” Pence said during a joint news conference with Turnbull.

So some small American towns and cities are going to get illegal aliens (mostly Muslim men) who failed to be approved for asylum in Australia! Disgusting!
Here is a portion of a letter from the chairmen of both the House and Senate Judiciary Committees sent to the Obama Administration in November identifying which countries the illegal aliens are from (the “stateless” are most likely Rohingya from Bangladesh or Burma).

All of our posts on the Australian “dumb deal” are here.
And, by the way, beginning in 2012, I testified at US Dept. of State hearings that there were ten reasons a moratorium on refugee admissions should be put in place. One thing I said must be done is to stop using the refugee program to move people around the world just to address some other foreign policy objective.
Only people who are truly refugees, in need of humanitarian assistance, should be considered for resettlement. This Australia deal is exactly what I had in mind when I presented my testimony. This deal is only to help the Turnbull government out of a sticky situation. Here is my #7:

7) Congress needs to specifically disallow the use of the refugee program for other purposes of the US Government,especially using certain refugee populations to address unrelated foreign policy objectives—Uzbeks, Kosovars, Meshketians and Bhutanese (Nepalese) people come to mind.

Let the White House know how you feel by clicking here (do it even if you have done it before!).

And, Chairmen Grassley and Goodlatte are not off the hook either, they could pressure this White House (they were all too happy to pressure the Obama White House) on the subject!
All of my posts about Trump’s refugee policies are archived in Trump Watch!

Trump Effect: More Central American migrants want asylum in Mexico, not moving on to US

04/19/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

And, that is how asylum is supposed to work.
Anyone who meets the legal definition of a refugee*** is supposed to seek asylum in the first safe country they reach—not go asylum-shopping throughout the continent as we saw in yesterday’s report on the rush to the Canadian border by many migrants illegally in the US.

More Central American young men are staying in Mexico and applying for asylum. UN sending more workers to process them.

For probably a couple of decades the open borders left has been trying to expand the definition of ‘refugee’ (fleeing violence or looking for better economic conditions does not make one a refugee!) and to condone the practice of asylum-shopping (seeking the best deal!).
The Left wants you to believe that anyone on the move, anywhere in the world, is a legitimate refugee!
Here is a sob-story about how Mexico is being increasingly saddled with Central Americans who would normally be simply passing through to a better deal in the US.
From Buzzfeed News (hat tip: Joanne):

Fleeing violence in their home countries, more Central Americans are seeking asylum in Mexico instead of making the trip north to the US, according to the United Nations.

More Central Americans are seeking asylum upon reaching Mexico, rather than attempt to make it into the US, where the Trump administration has been clamping down on immigration.

The number of Central Americans applying for refugee status in Mexico has been steadily increasing since 2011, but applications surged in 2016 by 156% compared to the year prior, according to Mark Manly, a representative in Mexico for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

“What we have seen is more people arrive in Mexico, not because they’re in transit for a better future in the United States, but they are fleeing for their lives and see in Mexico a country that can offer protection and asylum,” Manly said in an interview released by the UN.

As in previous years, many Central Americans continue to flee violence in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, but instead of passing through on their way to the US, many of them are looking to make a new home in Mexico, Manly said. [That is how asylum is supposed to work!—ed]

From November 2016 to March, Mexico’s commission for refugee assistance, known as COMAR, received 5,421 asylum applications. During the same five-month period in 2015, the agency received 2,148 applications, Reuters reported.

As applications for refugee status mount, the Mexico government and United Nations have had to beef up border resources to handle the strain on resources. [Good! Not our problem!—ed]

More here.
Endnote:
Obama began processing Central Americans to the US as ‘refugees’ directly from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala last year. The practice continues under Trump. We have admitted (directly from their home country) over a thousand (1,106 as of today) mostly fake ‘refugees’ from El Salvador to the US in FY2016 and 2017.
*** Refugee definition (do you see anything in here about violence or economic need?)

(42) The term “refugee” means:

(A) any person who is outside any country of such person’s nationality or, in the case of a person having no nationality, is outside any country in which such person last habitually resided, and who is unable or unwilling to return to, and is unable or unwilling to avail himself or herself of the protection of, that country because of persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion….

For the zillionth time, a legitimate refugee is supposed to be able to prove he or she will be PERSECUTED! Anyone looking for economic well-being is an “economic migrant.” Fleeing gangs and violence does not make one a refugee! Notice that war isn’t mentioned either!

Fishy, fishy, fishy! PBS relates tall tales from US to Canada border-crossers!

04/18/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

You’ve heard the news, we’ve reported it for months, that fearing the Trumpster, migrants are flooding to the Canadian border into Prime Minister Trudeau’s waiting and welcoming arms.
Here we have PBS interviewing a couple of Africans who feared if they stayed in the US, Trump would be rounding them up to return them to Africa. Their tales of woe are transparently and obviously fishy!
The Somali woman, we are first introduced to, risked a winter trek across the US/Canada border with a small child even though we are told she was in the US LEGALLY. There are only a few possibilities: She was NOT in the US legally; she is shopping for a better welfare deal in Canada; or she is a nut. In any case, Canada can have her!

Lisa Desai hides face of Somali woman for her “safety”? Why is she unsafe in Canada? She clearly has escaped the grasping arms of Donald Trump’s Justice Dept.

PBS:

LISA DESAI: Much of the four thousand mile American border with Canada is wide open and unsecured. In the first three months of this year, a steady stream of immigrants from all over the world braved the bitter cold to reach a country where they believe there’s less risk of detention and deportation. [Lisa doesn’t report that the upward trend of border crossers began while Obama was still President and the expectation was that Hillary would be the next one, so this isn’t a new phenomenon—ed]

Just north of Minnesota and North Dakota lies the Canadian province of Manitoba. The town of Emerson is a main entry point. An hour’s drive north is the provincial capital, Winnipeg, a city of 700-thousand. That’s where I met this woman from Somalia.

For her safety, we agreed to shield her face and call her “Nasra.” She settled in Minneapolis on a U.S. medical visa to get treatment for her six-year-old autistic son. Her family is part of a minority clan persecuted in Somalia’s civil war. [So, if she would be persecuted, why didn’t Nasra apply for asylum in US?—ed]

NASRA: I faced a lot of problems in Somalia. During the war, my father and my brother were attacked, and my mother and I endured so much pain — we left and never went back.

LISA DESAI: After President Trump listed Somalia as one of the countries whose citizens would be blocked from entering the U.S. Nasra decided that although she was legal, it wasn’t safe to stay.

NASRA: I heard that they were going to arrest people and take them back to Somalia and that they were going into people’s homes and they were going to separate families, mothers from children.

LISA DESAI: What would happen if you were deported back to Somalia?

NASRA: If I go back to Somalia I won’t stand a chance there, I would be killed.

LISA DESAI: In February, she left Minneapolis and became one of nearly 1,000 migrants, according to the Canadian Government, to cross from the U.S. into Canada this year. She paid a driver to take her and her son most of the way.

NASRA: We walked for hours, the snow was falling, we couldn’t see. It was cold, it was dark and if it wasn’t for God we would have died.

LISA DESAI: Under Canadian law, people like Nasra, who cross the border illegally, are arrested and taken in for a background check. If they don’t have a criminal record, they are often released within 24 hours. They’re appointed a government lawyer to represent them in their asylum hearing which usually takes place in two months. They are also connected with nonprofits that provide food and housing.

Go to the report, here, and don’t miss the story of the FAILED asylum seeker from Ghana. He failed to be granted asylum in Ecuador and in the US, so he took a trip to Canada to shop for a better deal. How convenient that PBS can blame Trump for scaring him to Canada?

Then it appears that the ‘welcoming’ Canadians are getting sick of it!

LISA DESAI: A poll last month found Canadian support for welcoming refugees is slipping. 48 percent said Canada should send these migrants back to the U.S. 36 percent said Canada should accept them.

See our previous posts on Trump and the Canada border by clicking here.