I’m actually stunned that they think that the Trump Administration could be forced by a judge (ortwo judges) to shoot for a refugee “ceiling” number set by Obama for a year he would no longer be President.
For the zillionth time, even if Obama was still in the White House there is no legal requirement that the President reach the CEILING he set for admissions the previous fall.
As we showed youhere—they never reach the ceiling! Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service and World Relief mentioned in this story are federal refugee resettlement contractors paid through your tax dollars to place refugees in your towns and are most assuredly part of the ‘Religious Left’ Itold you aboutearlier this morning.
Calling all Lutherans! You need to know what is being done in your name!***
Here is the story from Religion News Service:
CHICAGO (RNS) It was her desire to hear the stories of real people — “not just faceless refugees or immigrants” — that brought the Rev. Elizabeth A. Eaton to a refugee resettlement agency that provides a range of services to refugees in the Chicago area.
Presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
“Especially now, when there’s this fear that’s been stirred up and anti-refugee sentiment, it’s really critical to say, ‘No, these people are our grandparents, our aunts and uncles,” said the presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the nation’s largest Lutheran denomination.
Her visit last week (March 21) to RefugeeOne, a resettlement agency supported by Lutheran Immigrant and Refugee Service, comes at a time when the status of the U.S. refugee resettlement program is uncertain.
On March 15, a federal judge in Hawaii blocked an executive order by President Trump that would have more than halved the number of refugees accepted by the United States from the current ceiling of 110,000.
Now, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service is “cautiously hopeful” resettlement will return to the numbers that had been planned for 2017, said Kay Bellor, vice president for programs.
***According to LIRS websitethese are the Lutheran groups affiliated and supportive of bringing refugees to the US:
Rooted in Lutherans’ faithful and caring response to the challenges facing uprooted peoples, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service celebrates strong collaborative relationships with three national Lutheran church bodies. They are the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod LC-MS, and the Latvian Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (LELCA).
Go herefor our extensive reporting on LIRS, a preeminent member of the refugee industry.
Don’t miss this post—Will Lutheran bigwigs see pay cuts? I am forever confident that one day, mainstream media will report on how much of your money these groups are gobbling to promote their progressive world view!
Thanks to Joanne for spotting the answer to our question from earlierthis morning. Montgomery County, MD, Superintendent of Public Schools, Jack R. Smith held a press conference yesterday about the “tragedy.” The tragedy is that the Obama Administration allowed creeps like these to enter the US and with the government’s help be spread out throughout America.
The Conservative Tree Housereported the following when describing the press conference yesterday about the alleged Rockville rapists from Central America:
Mr. Smith does acknowledge during the latter part of the presser that these predator suspects were indeed part of the Unaccompanied Alien Children relocation program.
Go to the Conservative Tree House and watch the video of the press conference led by MoCo Superintendent of Schools Jack R. Smith. If you don’t want to watch the whole thing, go to 20:10 and see that in response to a question about screening, Smith says they don’t screen those who are part of the “unaccompanied minors” program where the federal government places the children with families. He implies that the feds screen them. To get to the bottom of whether they were part of the program housed in the Office of Refugee Resettlement, real investigative reporters should try and get information out of them.
Unfortunately, the place is still being run by Obama bureaucrats, so chances are slim anyone there will fess up to having processed the alleged rapists.
Central American Minors (CAM) program
God forbid that these perps came in through Obama’s illegal expansion of the US Refugee Admissions Program known as CAM where instead of the ‘child’ aliens coming across our southern border on their own steam trying to claim asylum, we go and get them!
I’ve been meaning to report that Wrapsnet has catalogued hundreds coming in from Central America as refugees already in this fiscal year, but will try to get to that later. THESE ARE NOT REFUGEES. People escaping poverty or violence do not fit the definition of a refugee who must prove he/she will be PERSECUTED for one of several reasons if returned home. Obama vastly expanded the refugee definition and Trump’s team needs to get to work immediately and rein-in the expansion!
Looks like Maryland has become the California of the East Coast (see our earlier newsabout Montgomery County coddling illegal aliens) and now see Michael Patrick Leahy at Breitbart with an analysis of why the Maryland judge who ruled against Trump’s refugee EO should have disqualified himself.
Theodore Chuang, the Federal District Judge for the District of Maryland who halted most elements of President Trump’s latest executive order temporarily banning travel from six Middle Eastern countries, as well as refugees from all countries, served as deputy general counsel at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in the Obama administration from 2009 to 2014.
Senator Chuck Grassley opposed Chuang for the federal bench mostly due to his role in defending the Obama Administration over Benghazi. https://www.grassley.senate.gov/news/news-releases/grassley-prepared-floor-statement-theodore-david-chuang-be-us-district-judge
His March 15 ruling in the case, International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP) v.Trump, in which DHS, the State Department, and President Trump are defendants, raises legitimate questions about whether he should have recused himself from hearing the case in the first place.
Title 28, Part I, Chapter 21, Section 455 (a) “Disqualification of justice, judge, or magistrate judge” of the U.S. Code Annotated reads as follows: (28 U.S. Code § 455 )
Any justice, judge, or magistrate judge of the United States shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.
The Public Advisory Opinions concerning ethical standards of federal judges offer little further guidance on this particular standard.
As former deputy general counsel at DHS under an administration that pursued policies that are diametrically opposed to those of President Trump, it is not surprising that many legal scholars and political commentators have written articles which, taken as a whole, suggest that the impartiality of Judge Chuang’s March 15 ruling “might reasonably be questioned.”
Continue hereto see what legal experts are saying.
And, go here to learn more about the role of federal refugee contractor, Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, and this case.
They say they may close if the number of refugees admitted to the US falls as a result of Trump’s 120-day pause on the program.
Somehow they seem to think that the flow will pick up because of the Hawaiian judge’s misguided restraining order. As we have said repeatedly, Trump didn’t need the Executive Order to reduce numbers being admitted to the US. (We are monitoring the numbers coming in every few days, see refugee admissions in right hand side bar.)
After I give you the latest news, I want to tell you about Tucson, Arizona and unhappy Iraqis there ten years ago.
Here below are a few snips from a story yesterday at Arizona Public Media. Notice that once again, they are admitting, and the media is publishing the fact, that these so-called non-profit agencies actually live off of contracts (based on per refugee head payments) with the US government.
Tucson-area nonprofits that resettle refugees are worried that they may have to cut services or close their doors under the refugee ban President Donald Trump is seeking.
Refugee Focus is one of three nonprofit agencies in Tucson that resettle refugees from around the world.
Lutheran Social Services of the Southwest runs Refugee Focus, and Connie Phillips oversees the nonprofit. [She participated in an ‘interfaith’ rally against Trump, here, last month.—ed]
Connie Phillips Lutheran Social Services Southwest. http://www.lss-sw.org/key-staff/
She said Refugee Focus may have to stop operating if the Trump Administration wins the court battle for the most recent executive order and there is a 90 to 120 day pause in settling refugees.
[….]
Money to run the program comes from federal contracts for resettlement services.
“There’s just a lot of uncertainty. It is just highly, highly stressful right now.”
The other two nonprofits that resettle refugees in Tucson are International Rescue Committee and Catholic Social Services.
I just checked Lutheran Social Services Southwest recent Form 990 here.
92% of their funding is from you, the taxpayer. Their gross revenue in that form (2014) was $14,238,656. $9,210,621 is from government grants and $3,957,813 is listed as medicaid contracts (What the heck is that! Why is some Lutheran non-profit managing medicaid contracts?)
Iraqi refugees resettled in Tucson voice their unhappiness!
Back in the earliest days of RRW (2007), this news (below) from Tucson was an eye-opener for me. Iraqis complained to the Washington Post that they were unhappy and neglected.
Like the Cuban, Vietnamese, Laotian and Sudanese refugees before them, some of the Iraqis are going through a difficult adjustment period, feeling disoriented, alone and even abandoned by the social service agency that is supposed to serve them.
[….]
When the Iraqi refugees arrive in the United States, they are sent to cities where there are other Arab or Muslim populations. Social service organizations are assigned to help them resettle.
“Refugees, in general, endure a tremendous cultural shock,” said Janell Mousseau, a program director at the Lutheran Social Services of the Southwest, an Arizona nonprofit organization that helped to resettle the 34 Iraqis here. “They have a lot of adjusting to do in a short time.”
LOL! Read this next paragraph! What a difference ten years makes. Back then the WaPo and most media never mentioned that the resettlement contractors were PAID for their charitable work by the US taxpayer!
The organization was asked [LOL! asked!—ed] by the State Department to find proper housing for the Iraq families, providing them basic supplies and helping them acquire Social Security numbers and food stamps. The group is paying [LOL! the group is paying!—ed] the refugees’ rent for three months. After that, the families will have to pick up the cost themselves.
Before they arrived here, the refugees said they were told by U.N. representatives that they could get jobs based on their professional qualifications. But they said they have now been told that they should work as hotel housekeepers, an occupation many of them have refused because they deem it degrading. [The hotel industry along with food processing companies have been major consumers of cheap refugee labor!—ed]
To add to their frustration, when the families arrived, they said they found their apartments missing beds, kitchen supplies, bedspreads and blankets. [Contracts with the govt. specifically list these items to be supplied as requirements of the contract—-ed]
This last line resonated with me because one of the first things that people were buzzing about in my Maryland county, when refugees were placed there beginning in 2006, was that some teachers at the local junior college were finding the refugees blankets and winter coats!
I have 727 posts in my Iraqi refugee category(see early posts where I joked about Matthew Lee a reporter carrying water for the contractors by helping to beat the drum for more Iraqi admissions).
Obama gone wild!
You need to know that George W. Bush was reluctant to admit the thousands of Iraqi refugees (paying clients!) that the contractors were demanding. But, in the last year he opened the flood gates and we have now, 11 years and 5 and 1/2 months later, admitted 141,433 Iraqis! Here at Wrapsnet you can see what happened when the Obama team took over the US Department of State in 2009:
You can see how the number jumped when Obama took office. Of the 141,433 Iraqis we admitted in the last decade plus, 1,578 were placed in Tucson, AZ. Do you see that low year (2011)? That was the year two Iraqi refugee terrorists were arrested in Bowling Green, KY and all of the Iraqis had to be rescreened.
In a story about whether Australia’s illegal alien/asylum seekers housed on Nauru and Manus islands had another choice to go to another country besides the US (no, there isn’t another choice except for the previously offered Cambodia), we learn that Trump has sent a team to those islands to begin the screening process.
Here is the news from News Corp Australia: (Don’t forget, most of the aliens held in offshore detention centers are from Muslim countries.)
THE immigration department chief has confirmed Australia is not negotiating with any other countries to find refugee resettlement places for people on Nauru and Manus Island who miss out on going to the US.
Even after riots that burned a portion of the detention center, Australian leftists want them as their neighbors. Why should US towns get them? Photo: http://www.ibtimes.com/asylum-australia-one-killed-many-injured-asylum-seekers-riot-papua-new-guinea-detention-camp-manus
Asked what happens to the refugees who miss out on America, department secretary Michael Pezzullo said there was scope for them to stay in Papua New Guinea, on Nauru or go to Cambodia.
Out of five refugees who went to Cambodia, only one is left — the rest went back to their countries of origin, despite the $55 million budgeted for the deal.
Mr Pezzullo rubbished suggestions the US may take no refugees under the resettlement deal with Australia.
“I don’t agree it could be zero,” Mr Pezzullo told a Senate inquiry hearing in Canberra late on Monday night. He said the agreement was for in the ballpark of 1250.
[….]
The deal was struck with the Obama administration and will reluctantly be honoured by new US President Donald Trump, who branded it a “dumb deal”.
[….]
The hearing was told there are teams of US Homeland Security officials on Nauru doing fingerprinting and security interviews who will then go on to Manus Island in April and May. Medical screening would follow.
Department official Rachel Noble said America had not set any parameters around the country-of-origin of refugees that it will accept, despite a 90-day travel ban to the US by citizens of six Muslim countries — Yemen, Iran, Libya, Syria, Somalia and Sudan.
Continue reading here. If we start to admit the ‘refugees’ Australia does not want to take to its homeland, we need to demand to know which lucky US towns and cities will get them!
Our entire ‘Australia deal’ archive is here.
