Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society launches petition drive to increase this year’s refugee quota from 70,000-100,000

10/29/2014 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We want 75,000 Syrians admitted to US in next five years.

Citing the crisis in Syria and Iraq, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, one of nine major federal contractors has launched a drive to petition the Obama Administration to increase the Fiscal Year 2015 admissions to the US.

Always keep in mind that the contractors are paid by the head to resettle refugees to your towns and cities.

See a previous post this morning for what all this is costing you.

Readers will remember it was Nezer who earlier this year said we should take 75,000 Syrians over 5 years.

Although she says they are trying to save Christians and religious minorities, interested readers should call them and ask how many Muslims they resettled in recent years and ask what percentage of the Syrians in the pipeline for America right now are Muslims.

From an e-mail alert this morning:

Dear Friend,

The conflict in Syria has forced more than 3 million people from their homes. In Iraq, the Islamic State has engaged in an ethnic cleansing campaign against Christians and other ethnic and religious minorities. Those who have fled will likely never be able to return home.

Yet, despite ongoing persecution and conflicts creating more and more refugees, the United States has not increased the quota of people we will resettle in the coming year.

Sign our petition! It is imperative that the annual US refugee quota be increased from 70,000 to 100,000.

Raising the resettlement ceiling will not put an end to the violence sweeping Syria and Iraq. But it will allow us to save more of the most vulnerable refugees of this unimaginable suffering. It will support the countries hosting them. And it will uphold our nation’s promise to support religious freedom and provide safe haven to those who are persecuted.

Stand with us and urge President Obama to uphold our nation’s promise to support religious freedom and offer safe haven to those who are persecuted for their faith and beliefs.

Sincerely,
Melanie

Melanie Nezer
Vice President, Policy and Advocacy

Kentucky: Convicted Iraqi refugee terrorist wants chance to withdraw guilty plea

10/27/2014 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Longtime readers may remember the case of two Iraqi refugees resettled in Senator Rand Paul’s hometown of Bowling Green (see our extensive coverage of the diversity jungle created by resettlement contractors that is B.G. today by clicking here).

We covered the arrest and trial of the Iraqi pair over the years (go here for an archive on the case).

Perhaps one of the most shocking revelations, and evidence of very shoddy processing of refugees, was the fact that at least one of the Iraqi’s fingerprints was found on fragments of an IED that killed American National Guard troops.

Here is the latest from Kentucky.com thanks to reader Robin:

BOWLING GREEN, Ky. — An Iraqi man convicted in a Kentucky terrorism case has asked a federal judge to give him access to his complete case file so he can try to withdraw his guilty plea.

U.S. District Judge Thomas B. Russell had not ruled on the request from 26-year-old Mohanad Shareef Hammadi as of Friday morning.

Hammadi and 33-year-old Waad Ramadan Alwan pleaded guilty in 2010 and 2011 to taking part in a plot to ship thousands of dollars in cash, machine guns, rifles, grenades and shoulder-fired missiles from Bowling Green, Kentucky, to al-Qaida in Iraq in 2010 and 2011. The pair was working with an FBI informant who squelched their plans.

Alwan is serving a 40-year sentence and Hammadi are serving a life sentence at a maximum security prison in Florence, Colorado.

In a letter to his court-appointed attorney that was filed in the court record, Hammadi said he wanted to review the records to file motions to attack his guilty plea before the statute of limitations runs out.

By the way, I would love to see the US State Department made responsible for legal fees incurred by the refugees they let in to the country. And, just imagine what this pair’s incarceration will cost the US taxpayer for the next forty plus years! So much for refugees bringing economic benefits—these two imprisoned refugees will likely offset the small economic benefit of thousands and thousands of non-criminal refugees.

And, don’t forget, right now Iraqis are the top group of refugees we are resettling in your towns and cities, here.

For ambitious readers, we have a huge category on Iraqi refugees, here, with 635 previous posts!

Fiscal year 2014 wrap-up: Top nationalities admitted to US; top resettlement states

10/07/2014 ~ Ann Corcoran

If you are following the refugee resettlement program closely you should occasionally visit the Refugee Processing Center for the data the US State Department is willing to allow the public to see.

They have taken away from public view one data table that we previously found interesting and that was the information on which nationalities were resettled in which city. That was very useful and they surely still track those numbers but are only available to special people who have a pass code to get in. Likewise they track the religions of refugees but again only friends of the refugee program are allowed to see those.

Before I get to those useful tables that you can still access, I noticed one more way to keep you in the dark. One table that you might think would be useful and which I initially directed readers to in my previous post (removed now) is one in which it lists which refugees went to which state, BUT, on closer examination, it is useless! Why? Because it only shows the processing country and the US state to which the refugee was resettled. Processing countries are virtually meaningless!

We don’t process refugees directly from Somalia yet we took in 9,000 Somalis in FY 2014 from all over the world apparently. If you do look at that data table, check out Minnesota to see what I mean—they list no Somalis going to MN last year (2014), but we know they did (see data table from Minnesota listing 977 Somalis arriving there as of August 31), we just don’t know how many were processed in Kenya, in Malta, in Thailand etc.

Political caucus in Minneapolis (men sit on one side, the women on the other). https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2014/09/07/wnd-more-on-minnesota-somalis-welfare-and-jihad/ Photo: Star Tribune

Go here for all the data tables available to the public, some updated for September 30th, and some, as of this writing, only updated to August 31. Don’t delay because these soon disappear down a black hole.

Somalis move up to the number three slot for the most number of refugees we resettled in FY2014.

(See all of the numbers for Somali resettlement we have compiled over the last 30 years, here).

Top five nationalities of refugees resettled in US in FY 2014 (from this map):

1) Iraq (19,769) the largest percentage will be Muslim

2) Burma (14,598) most will be Christians, other minority religions and some Muslims (update: a larger number than I originally assumed)

3) Somalia (9,000) Muslims (almost up to George Bush levels!)

4) Bhutan/Nepal (8,434) most will be Hindu, Buddhist, a few Christians

5) D.R. Congo (4,540) mostly Christians (update: some Muslims among them)

Remember we learned the other day that the Bhutan resettlement would soon end and be replaced by Syrian refugees who will be majority Muslim.

Top ten states receiving refugees in FY 2014 (I took these off the map so check it for me!):

1) Texas (7,211)

2) California (6,110)

3) New York (4,079)

4) Michigan (4,000)

5) Florida (3,519)

6) Arizona (2,963)

7) Ohio (2,812)

8) Pennsylvania (2,743)

9) Georgia (2,693)

10) Illinois (2,578)

North Carolina and Washington state are not far behind.

We have archived this information in two categories here at RRW: Refugee Statistics and Where to find information.

Just a reminder to states (like Wyoming!) and cities which will “welcome” refugees in FY2015, you will not get refugees just from certain countries, but will get a smattering from a wide variety of countries which will make it even more difficult to deal with the language problems in the schools, the health department and the criminal justice system. See the language stats by going here and clicking on ‘top ten languages.’

San Antonio: Surprise! Iraqi lied on refugee application; suspected links to Al-Qaida

10/07/2014 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

But, the government got him on only ripping-off the taxpayer for his disability payments! He could get ten years in the slammer (on our dime), but no mention of deportation!

The next time you hear about how thoroughly refugees are screened, remember this story!

Iraqi “refugee” leaves federal court house yesterday. Photo By JERRY LARA/San Antonio Express-News

By the way, he is not the first to lie, nor will he be the last!

From MySanAntonio:

SAN ANTONIO — An Iraqi man who was resettled in San Antonio to escape purported persecution pleaded guilty Monday to lying to get refugee status and stealing from the U.S. government.

Ahmed Khudhur Tayyeh, 39, was arrested last year after counterterrorism agents investigated him on suspicion that he had ties to al-Qaida.

He was set to go to trial Monday on charges of withholding information from the Social Security Administration and withholding information on his refugee application. He abruptly accepted a plea offer instead, pleading guilty to one count of theft from the government and one charge of making a false statement. A charge of Social Security fraud was dismissed.

As one of nearly 200,000 Iraqi refugees approved by the U.S. government for resettlement in America since 2007, Tayyeh was given a green card despite his giving conflicting stories about how he injured his leg.

In one story, he allegedly said he took a hit from an improvised bomb; in another, he said he was kidnapped by Iraqi police and shot in the leg.

[….]

In court Monday, Tayyeh admitted that on his refugee application he failed to list two brothers and claimed his father had been killed. His brothers are believed to have al-Qaida links, and his father is still alive.

Read it all.

Off the top of my head here are a few other Iraqis now spending time in US prisons on our dime. By the way, I’ve advocated that the US State Department pick up some of the prison tabs for those they have resettled (not just Iraqis) now living in prison on us!

See, Kentucky Iraqi terrorists here. Colorado Iraqi rapists here. Arizona Iraqi bombs Social Security Office, here. California Iraqi who murdered his wife and pretended Islamophobes did it, here. South Dakota Iraqi sex trafficker gets life, here.

So much for screening!

Will the thousands of Syrian refugees now being admitted to the US be Christians?

10/04/2014 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update December 9, 2015: We have much more up-to-date data and the percentage of Syrian Muslims coming into the US this fiscal year is now 99%, here.

Update November 17, 2015: This post is over a year old. We do know exactly how many Muslims are in the refugee stream arriving from Syria, it is well over 97%, see today’s post, here.

That is a question I get all the time. My best guess is that a few will be, but the vast majority will be Sunni Muslims.

My guess is based on a few facts from the past, first that of the Iraqi refugees we have resettled in recent years, the majority (we hear 62% this past year) are Muslims, and secondly, I have never seen in print any clamor from our major refugee resettlement contractors***, most of which are ostensibly Christian groups (US Conference of Catholic Bishops, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee service and others), for specifically saving the Christians of the Middle East.

Now outdated map (thanks to ISIS), but it gives you some idea of the areas that were Christian. See this article about Christians fighting with Assad against the “rebels.” http://thechristians.com/?q=node/880

Maybe someone could direct me to anything where these contractors said to the US State Department—we want more Christians to resettle! My guess as to why they haven’t said that (correct me if I’m wrong and they have) is because of an overwhelming and insane desire to be politically correct and a fear of being called Islamophobes.

(Oh, and believe me, they aren’t taking mostly Muslims because they think they can convert them to Christianity, this is all about multiculturalism, diversity and inclusiveness!)

A writer (Terry Mattingly) at a website called ‘GetReligion’ addressed his question—how are refugees being chosen?—in response to the Washington Post article of this past week (our post here) where the WaPo tells us the State Department is processing 4,000 resettlement applications.

Mattingly found more evidence that most will be Muslims.

He says that since they will come from UN camps (after all the UN is pre-selecting for the US State Department), and the Christians are not in camps, surely the majority will be Muslims. As a matter of fact, I’ve read that many Christians are still in Syria somewhat protected by the secular Assad government.

Here is ‘GetReligion:’

First, the WaPo said this:

Most Syrian refugees considered candidates for U.S. residency have been living in refugee camps or elsewhere outside Syria for a year or much longer.

And then this from Terry Mattingly (emphasis is mine):

This leads to a logical question: Who is, when push comes to shove, running these UNHCR camps? In particular, I was curious to know how this selection system would affect the cases of refugees who are part of oppressed religious minority groups. I decided to ask a veteran human-rights activist about that.

The response? Christians on the run have been avoiding these camps because they tend to be hostile to minority-faith refugees. In other words, these camps are run by those in majority forms of Islam, even if they have – logically enough – clashed with the radicalized Islamic State.

In other words, we have a major religion ghost in this story. It is likely that the current pipeline to safety is all but closed to Christians and members of other minority faiths in this ravaged region.

Read it all.

***The US State Department’s nine major contractors (they have hundreds of subcontractors working for them if you don’t recognize these names in your cities):