Category: Obama

Moving more “refugees” to Gaza…

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

.….and they are Palestinians who’ve never been there before.

Continuing with the major disruption in North Africa (partially due to Obama’s policies) comes this story.  I don’t know what to make of it, but now Palestinians are being taken to Gaza.   Why add more so-called “refugees” to Gaza (to build an even greater army against Israel)?

From Ma’an News Agency:

CAIRO (Ma’an) — An eighth group of Palestinians was evacuated from Libya and transferred safely into Gaza on Saturday evening, officials in the coastal enclave said, as battles between pro- and anti-government forces continue to rage in the North African nation.

The group, accompanied by Palestinian consular representative in Egypt Mohamed Hammad, consisted of 48 Palestinians who had been living in Libya when anti-government protests turned into clashes.

[…..]

Most have been Palestinian refugees working in Libya, few have ever visited Gaza.

As refugee numbers mount, Libyan stalemate could be Obama’s undoing

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We were told by the French, the British and the UNITED NATIONS that we had to save the people of Libya from Qadhafi.  President Obama said, oh sure, as long as the UN says it’s about humanitarianism we’re in!  There was apparently no serious planning, no serious thought when Macbeth’s “weird sisters” Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice and Samantha Power told Obama to jump (and he did).  Now we are faced with a “slow motion humanitarian crisis” according to the Politico:

Obama originally justified U.S. involvement on the grounds that it was needed to avert an imminent humanitarian crisis there, including the possibility that large numbers of civilians would be killed if forces loyal to Qadhafi overran the rebel-held city of Benghazi.

Now critics see a stalemate producing a similar, slow-motion humanitarian crisis that could linger for months.

“Deterring Qadhafi’s forces from moving forward doesn’t remove him from power, doesn’t create a functioning economy, doesn’t solve humanitarian problems of people being out of their homes, out of work — all of which comes from having this war drag on and on,” said Anthony Cordesman, a defense analyst at the Brookings Institution. “What gets totally lost here is you have hundreds of thousands of people displaced here — refugees … you’re losing economic opportunity, losing jobs, the educational system is breaking down, the whole infrastructure is coming under pressure.”

“The problem we face, is, having started this without evidently any clear plan as to what the outcome would be, we are everyday making this worse.

Moral duty?

And, now we have the UN running to Russia for help with, what else, the “humanitarian crisis” that was unleashed by the UN itself!   We have two stories on UN officials begging Russia for help.

Here is UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in Moscow telling the world the fighting must stop—-waaahhhh! Make it stop!   The United Nations (presumably with Ban’s blessing)  unleashed the three witches in the first place!

Moscow – UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Friday renewed his call for an end to the violence in conflict-ridden Libya.

‘I urge the Libyan authorities to stop fighting and stop killing people,’ he said during an official visit to Moscow.

He said the United Nations’ priority right now was to implement a verifiable and effective ceasefire so that humanitarian aid efforts could be stepped up. Only then, he said, could the flow of refugees out of the country be stopped.

He estimated that half a million people had already fled Libya.

Also in Moscow we learn that the UN is begging for money for the refugee crisis of its own making!

More than $160 million is needed to help refugees from riot-hit Libya, President of the UN General Assembly Joseph Deiss said in an interview with Russia Today TV channel.

[….]

Libyan opposition leaders earlier requested the international community to protect the Libyan people “from any further genocide and crimes against humanity without any direct military intervention on Libyan soil.”

“On the one hand, the UN stands for member states and their sovereignty, and on the other hand there are fundamental values the UN stands for,” Deiss said.

“And, beyond certain limits the international community has the moral duty to protect those who are at the mercy of the governments who are not coming up to their obligations,” he added.

Protect!  It would be so ironic if  one of Obama’s national security advisors, Samantha Power, and her scheme (with George Soros) called the “Responsibility or Right to Protect” would destroy far more lives then it saved.  But, I guess that’s what happens when we put immature ideologues and community organizers together in the White House.

Presidential “call to arms” on immigration

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Hey, wait a minute, what happened to the new civility—call to arms (a summons to engage in active hostilities)?

Two days ago the White House held a meeting of 70 pro- immigration activists (no, that is wrong, they called them “stakeholders”), including Al Sharpton (huh?), former Governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger, and the AFL-CIO’s Trumka to say it wasn’t going to be easy to get immigration reform and that everyone is going to have to work together.   So, why now, why a hastily called meeting when he had two years with a Democratically controlled House and Senate to get the job done for them?

Pro-immigration forces say Obama screwed up in his first two years and now is in desperation-mode to keep his immigrant base happy.

This is from Southern California Public Radio.   In a quick search, I couldn’t find a larger publication that might have written about the story (emphasis mine):

In what was described as a “last-minute meeting,” President Obama met at the White House on Tuesday with 70 labor, law enforcement and political leaders, including former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the current president of the Los Angeles City Council. The topic – immigration – hasn’t placed high on the list of Congressional priorities.

[…..]

LA City Council President Eric Garcetti said the president issued a “good call to arms” for shared effort on immigration reform. Garcetti said the president admitted it was “not going to be easy,” but he wouldn’t abandon the topic.

“(The president) said, ‘this is not going to be easy, but I am not going to abandon this. I’m going to be alongside you, but I can’t do this by myself. And that we have to change the conversation. We have to get back to a place where we humanize and recognize the contributions of immigrants,'” said Garcetti.

Last year, the US Senate [thankfully–ed] failed to pass the Dream Act. It would have created a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who attend college or serve in the military. Garcetti said the president didn’t want that legislation to be Washington’s last word on immigration reform.

Immigration activists plan a protest Thursday night outside Sony Studios in Culver City where Obama is hosting a political fundraiser.

Maybe that last line gives us a hint as to why the meeting was a “last minute meeting.”  Obama has learned that his immigrant/Hispanic base is going off the reservation.

Immigration lawyer: Most actively anti-immigration White House in a long time!

You think the open borders gang is pretty unhappy about our dear leader?  You got that right!  Check out a couple of posts at Immigration Daily to see just how angry they are!

This is Greg Siskind not exactly holding back in his criticism of the big talker (Obama):

Absent the speeches and the meetings, strictly judging by the ACTIONS of this Administration, this is arguably the most anti-immigrant White House we’ve seen in quite some time. Whether Latino voters and another pro-immigration constituencies support the President in 2012 fearing that the GOP candidate would be even worse is still an open question.

Read it all.

Or, how about this from immigration lawyer Matthew Kolken (emphasis mine):

Obama gathered a bunch of people together yesterday to talk about immigration. Among the invitees was the person who oversaw the deportation of more immigrants over a two-year span than at any other time in the history of the United States, the richest man in New York, an aging movie star, the police, the COO of Facebook (“Like”), and Al Sharpton.

You know who Obama didn’t invite: an experienced immigration lawyer, a seasoned immigration judge, or members of Congress who ultimately vote on immigration reform legislation. The conspicuous absence of any individual who has in-the-trenches experience with the implementation of the immigration law from an immigrant’s perspective, or the lawmakers who can actually do something to fix the problem is very telling.

What it reveals is that this President is more interested in creating a photo-op to garner votes for his reelection than figuring out a way to craft bi-partisan legislation that will infuse some equity into our beyond broken immigration laws. Or better yet, putting an end to his own administration’s draconian deportation quotas.

This President has been giving lip-service to immigration reform for over two years now. His do nothing and blame the Republicans strategy isn’t fooling anyone.

You can’t say he is a completely do nothing President, heck he is over in Libya helping create more poor refugees with his war effort.

Read the rest of Kolken and Siskind’s blasts and note that Kolken lists the invitees to the photo-op and includes a film clip of Rep. Luis Gutierrez, Congress’ greatest Open Borders advocate, saying he might not support Obama in 2012 (yeh, well, who else would he support?).

Just a reminder, I told you about a similar White House meeting to push immigration reform in the summer of 2009 here.    Check Kolken’s White House list and then the one from 2009 and note how many advocacy groups are missing.   These guys (Kolken and Siskind) have a point, Obama wanted a ‘friendly’ group for a White House photo opportunity, plain and simple.

Refugee funding to be reduced, but by how much?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

….and what is Samantha Power up to?

Check out the pro-migration blog MicEvHill from time to time to keep up with what is happening with immigration generally in Washington.  A government shutdown has been averted for now and here is what blogger Michael Hill is reporting as of 10:50 a.m. this morning on the status of funding for refugee and other immigrant programs:

Consequences for Fiscal Year 2011 Immigration and Refugee Spending?

At the very least, the deal that Congress and the White House have reached will require that refugee-related programs sustain an across-the-board cut in fiscal year 2011 of a yet-to-be-revealed percentage below fiscal year 2010 spending levels.  However, the full consequences for immigration-, border security-, and refugee-related spending and policy of the full-year fiscal year 2011 deal were not yet known at the time of this writing.

Insiders who are familiar with the details of the deal indicate that it does not include the deep cuts in refugee resettlement, overseas refugee assistance, and refugee admissions funding that were contained in the House-passed version of H.R. 1, a full-year fiscal year 2011 continuing appropriations measure.  Moreover, insiders indicate that the only significant immigration-related policy rider that was contained in the House-passed version of H.R. 1, a provision that would have barred federal funding for immigrant integration programs, also will not be in the final fiscal year 2011 measure.  Notwithstanding the assertions of insiders, however, no firm word on those matters can be relied upon until the text of the measure that the House and Senate will take up emerges.

Samantha Power!  Now, I am beginning to see why it was so important to place the refugee issue with Power in the White House!

Readers may recall that in January 2010 the Obama Administration doubled the funding for the refugee program (so cutting to before 2010 levels would only take it to the amount it was supposed to be before the Obama money bomb).  This increase in spending came as a result of a stepped up PR campaign by federal contractors and was supposed to be part of an overall (and much needed) reform of the Refugee Resettlement Program.

That reform was being coordinated by Samantha Power’s office in the White House.  But, as far as I know Mrs. Cass Sunstein (aka Power) hasn’t accomplished  much in the way of reform (or they’ve been awfully quiet about it).  I suppose Power/Sunstein has been too busy getting us involved in a “humanitarian” war in Libya.

Unleashing the refugee weapon on Europe!

Uh oh, come to think of it, Ms. Power with her ‘humanitarian interventionism‘ has been busy creating more refugees as we just reported here and here.   Scary thought—what if these Marxists are using refugees as weapons to create chaos  behind a smokescreen of humanitarian concern.   First Europe, next stop Israel?

So whatever happened to the Obama refugee reform we were promised?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

It’s been a while now since the Obama Administration with much fanfare took up the project of “reforming” refugee resettlement.  That was after they took the Iraqi refugee issue away from the State Department and put it in the hands of Samantha Power, head honcho of the National Security Council, in the White House, here.   Ultimately Samantha Power (wife of Obama regulatory czar, Cass Sunstein) was tasked with reforming the whole refugee program, but all they did was throw more money to the contractors, here.  Last June, I gave up on seeing any reform, here.

Samantha Power, one of George Soros’ groupies, was previously on the board of  perhaps the wealthiest, judging by the nearly half million dollar salary and compensation of its CEO, federal contractors—the International Rescue Committee, so it would be no surprise that Obama would pick her to lead a reform effort.  But, none has ever come.

Now I see that Ms.(humanitarian) Power has buried the hatchet with Hillary and has turned into one of three female  hawks in the Obama orbit.  Guess she is too busy advising war (and creating more refugees) to lead any reform of the refugee program.