Category: Other Immigration

“Outside-the-box idea” explains a lot

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I told you just last week, at the time of the national pro-amnesty campaign kick-off by the Open Borders crowd, that I couldn’t understand why groups like USCRI (US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants) which must find jobs for deserving refugees could support the legalization of 12 million presently illegal aliens living in the US who would then be in direct competition with refugees for few jobs.

Here is a possible explanation in Christianity Today.   Bear in mind that the Top Ten (volag) Government Contractors and their 300 plus subcontractors are largely compensated by you, the tax payer, to act as  agents to find employment and plug clients into our welfare system.   They basically teach immigrants—up until now refugees and asylees—the ropes of our system so that they can get the most out of it.  You know, putting it crassly, they teach how to  milk the system.

Here is the “outside-the-box idea” (trial balloon? leak of insider discussions?) from an unidentified author (presumably the editor) at Christianity Today.

Refugee resettlement is one of the most successful church-state partnerships in the U.S. [Edit:  I beg to differ]. Using mostly volunteers [not enough true volunteers], faith-based groups have decades of operational experience resettling on average 50,000–60,000 refugees annually.

One outside-the-box idea would be for refugee-resettlement groups to work with the federal government to identify, screen, and process undocumented workers. The same services given to refugees—housing, education, health care, and employment—could be provided. Teaching respect for the law should be one necessary part of the integration process. The idea is not for a 1980s-style amnesty, but it is a way for willing churches to help assimilate undocumented workers and their families. (During the late 1980s, some immigrant-friendly congregations undertook such services successfully.)

I should have known there was a financial motive.  Since volags (supposedly voluntary refugee agencies) are paid by the number of refugees they resettle, increasing the CLIENT base would assure they stay in the money (your money)!

Liar, Liar pants on fire!  Then this next line really ticked me off.

It’s time to face the political reality: There is still no consensus for spending millions of taxpayer dollars on hunting down 11.9 million people and transporting them to their home nations.

This is the straw man argument.   No reasonable person is suggesting “hunting down” anyone.  If our present laws were enforced, many here illegally would leave on their own.   I thought Christians were not supposed to lie.

Jihadist loses election in Virginia with more than 1,000 votes

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Ann has posted on Esam Omeish a couple of times, bringing your attention to this Muslim jihadist who caught our attention because he spoke at a religious event at the Hagerstown mosque. Here’s an excerpt of one of her posts that summarizes what happened:

Dr. Esam Omeish’s  tenure on a Virginia commission to address immigration problems in that state was shortlived when tapes of past statements supporting Jihad came to light.    Omeish is President of the Muslim America Society (MAS) an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood.  Go to the Center for Vigilant Freedom here for the full story.

Now here’s a blog post from April 29 by Marc Fisher on the Washington Post web site, From Fairfax to Richmond, “The Jihad Way?” , on candidate Omeish who ran for state delegate in the Democratic primary.

Esam Omeish’s campaign web site is fairly typical for a candidate for state delegate. The big issues for his Fairfax County district are traffic congestion, growth issues and public education.

But Omeish, who is running for the Democratic nomination in the 35th district, covering an area from Vienna west to Monument and Leehigh, is no ordinary candidate. He’s a surgeon with a classic immigrant success story, having arrived in this country as a young boy who spoke no English, yet rose up through the Fairfax school system to attend Georgetown University.

And Omeish is also a Muslim fundamentalist rabble-rouser whose videotaped rants urging crowds of demonstrators to adopt “the jihad way” led to his resignation from Virginia’s state Commission on Immigration just 24 hours or so after Gov. Tim Kaine appointed him to the panel last fall.

This is full of links to Omeish’s jihadist statements. And he points out:

A candidate who speaks with great pride and zest to an audience of fellow Muslims about people “giving up their lives..for the sake of the Muslim honor” should also be someone who happily delivers the same message to the Virginia voters he hopes will choose him for public office. But there is not a word in Omeish’s campaign literature about this great passion of his life.

So how did he do? He came in third out of four candidates, with 1,040 votes, or 16 percent. That is, over a thousand Virginians voted for a jihadist candidate.

Hat tip: Robert Spencer

Giving Amnesty to Illegal Hispanics will impact refugee employment prospects

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Here is a story from Oregon about refugees finding employment at a corporate dairy farm.   It made me smile because one Bhutanese refugee says he really enjoys working with cows because they are sacred in his Hindu religion.   I like cows too.

Chapagai said he felt privileged to be working with cows, which are considered sacred to Hindus. Unlike some workers, he said, he never kicks them or treats them roughly.

“The cow is a god to us,” he said. “If I tell my friends I work with cows, it is a great thing.”

There is lots to read in the East Oregonian article, but this (below) is what interested me the most, in light of my argument a couple of days ago that giving Amnesty to 12 million illegal aliens in the US now would take jobs away from legitimate refugees.   I said I didn’t understand how a refugee resettlement agency (USCRI)that gets 96% of its funding from the taxpayer could justify lobbying for Amnesty. 

Guterbock said Threemile Canyon Farms has trouble keeping the dairy fully staffed. Most of the applicants are Hispanic, he said, and while there is no shortage of people looking for a job, many are not legally authorized to work in the United States.

Cultural conflicts?  So far so good.

“I actually expected much more resistance or trouble (from the Hispanic workers),” Guterbock said, “but people have been giving them rides and sharing food.”

But, the potential for trouble is still there.

There may be some rumors among the dairy’s Hispanic workers that Guterbock intends to replace them with refugees, he said, but that’s untrue. Threemile Canyon Farms still accepts applications and hires from the Boardman community, he said.

In addition to Hispanics, corporate farmer Guterbock has Iraqis and Africans employed as well.  I can’t wait to see how all that works out.  Remember how there was no love-loss between immigrant groups (they hadn’t gotten the PC multicultural message) at Greeley and Grand Island meatpacking facilities (see our whole category here) when Muslim workers demanded special religious accomodation. Hispanics led the opposition to Muslim demands. 

The corporate farm’s English classes are not working out so well!  I’ve thought all along that any employer who hires more than a couple of refugees should be required to offer English classes as part of the work day, so when I saw this, I (at first) perked up.   However, on closer examination it obviously isn’t working.  This employer tacks the English class on at the end of a long day and refugees, too tired  to attend, are learning Spanish from co-workers instead!

Threemile Canyon Farms offers the refugees about $9.50 an hour, plus benefits and evening English classes – although many, Guterbock admitted, are too tired at the end of the day to attend. But the refugees find ways to communicate, he said, and many of them are picking up Spanish quickly from their co-workers.

Endnote:  I was very disappointed earlier this year to see the degree to which Agricultural businesses and groups  (like the American Farm Bureau Federation) were lobbying for Amnesty.  See this study from the Federation for American Immigration Reform.   This East Oregonian article makes it clear that corporate farms need a steady supply of cheap immigrant labor.   Refugee employment agencies (head hunters) like USCRI and the IRC are helping keep the supply lines open—well, at least for now.  When 12 million illegal aliens enter the legal job market then all bets are off for the refugees.

A tangled web leads back to the Tides Foundation

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I should have written about this earlier today because I am losing steam and it’s pretty convoluted.  Remember I mentioned I did research last evening till my eyes were falling out of my head.    I was trying to unravel the Tides Foundation, SEIU, ACORN, George Soros, Wade Rathke, and how all these players are involved in the latest push for Amnesty for illegal aliens and generally want to swamp America with immigrants and refugees.   Afterall, people like Soros and Rathke (SDS and Bill Ayers) hate America so why are they so interested in bringing the less-fortunate to a “downright mean country?”

Also, I’ve been completely puzzled for two years why the volags aren’t taking very good care of the refugees they resettle in our towns and cities.  Now, I am NOT talking about the hardworking and sincere people who run the local affiliates nor am I talking about volunteers who want to feel good by helping the downtrodden.  But, it’s the corporate officers of the volags that seem so uncaring, almost hostile if a refugee should complain (see our extensive file on Iraqi refugees to see what I mean). Do they even like the people they help bring into the country?

There seems to be no logic involved, or is there?

I don’t believe pushing amnesty or opening the country to a flood of immigrants when we don’t have jobs or resources to give them good lives is a very caring thing to do.  I also don’t believe yanking people out of their cultures and plopping them down in US slums is a very humanitarian thing either, unless of course your goal is a political one and to hell with the individual immigrants.

So, the only conclusion I can draw is:  1) refugee resettlement is just an industry to supply cheap labor for big business (we have lots of evidence for this), and/or 2)  refugees and immigrants are needed as the pawns for the war of the “have nots” against the “haves”—-the Obama/Alinsky strategy to swamp the welfare system, produce  chaos and ultimately bring change (see our community destabilization category, here)—and these agency CEO’s don’t really care about the human beings involved.

I’m drifting away from what I wanted to say.    When I noticed that the new “Reform Immigration for America” umbrella group was funded through the Tides Foundation (Tides Advocacy Fund), I realized that is the same outfit that is entangled with ACORN (that Glenn Beck has been investigating).  Turns out that ACORN’s founder, Wade Rathke, is also on the board of Tides, and now heads the SEIU (Service Employees International Union) that is busy signing up dues-paying immigrants and organizing them—for work in such fields as home health care and meatpacking (should sound familiar to regular readers!).

The Tides Foundation is kind of like a laundramat.  It washes money.  Corporations and other foundations pass money through it to all sorts of progressive causes.   For example a big corporation might like to give to the Amnesty battle for its own selfish wish to have loads of cheap immigrant labor but doesn’t dare donate outright.  That might not sit too well with the public.  Instead they donate to the Tides Foundation (a charitable organization itself) which merrily passes it through to Leftwing causes the corporation wishes to fund.   To add insult to injury, federal government agencies also add taxpayer money to this giant money washing machine.

Tides Foundation Form 990

Now this is as far as I’ve gotten with my research, but check out this 2007 Tides Foundation Form 990.    So far I know that one of the top ten volag government contractors, The International Rescue Committee, received one of the largest gifts that year, $3.5 million.

While the IRC is closing its doors in Boston for instance because of a shortage of funds and the high cost of living in that city, it’s busy telling its supporters to lobby Obama to bring more refugees.   Such illogical action can mean only one thing—–the refugees are not the first priority for the agency, a larger agenda is at work and somehow the Tides Foundation and George Soros play a very large role.

More to come!

Volag pushes Amnesty for illegals

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update June 6th:  A more detailed discussion of USCRI in response to a readers comment, here.

I received an action alert this week from one of the Top Ten (volag) government contractors paid to resettle refugees in American towns and cities.   For the life of me I cannot figure out how it benefits LEGAL refugees if we give amnesty to an estimated 12 million ILLEGAL aliens.  Would someone in the refugee community please tell me how so-called Comprehensive Immigration Reform helps refugees!

This is from an action alert sent out by USCRI (US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants) head honcho Lavinia Limon*.  (Sorry I couldn’t find a link for the action alert on their website here).    I also wonder how groups like this, whose mission is a non-profit one to resettle refugees, can justify lobbying Congress.  I thought 501(c)3s were barred from lobbying.

This week, hundreds of allied organizations launched the campaign to Reform Immigration FOR America in cities all across the country — from Los Angeles to Maine, Miami to Seattle Yesterday, a broad coalition of allies from labor, business, and community groups officially kicked off the national campaign in Washington, DC. USCRI is a part of this exciting grassroots movement to reform immigration and I invite you to join us.

Tomorrow June 4, over 700 advocates are descending on Capitol Hill to tell Congress: “We cannot wait any longer. America needs to reform immigration now.”

Here’s our thinking: President Obama has said reforming the immigration system is a priority for him. But it’s going to take more than just having the President on our side to win. We need 279 votes to pass comprehensive immigration reform: 218 US Representatives + 60 Senators + the President’s signature. So over the coming months, we’re going to be asking you to help us flood Congress and the White House with faxes, calls, emails, and visits to say (each in our own way):

Our economy and thousands of families are suffering under the burden of a broken system. The time has come for just and humane immigration reform. We cannot wait any longer.

Go here and check out Reform Immigration for America.  I still don’t see how this SOROS-setup umbrella organization will help refugees except as cheap labor and a voter pool for their exploiters.

As for the so-called local grassroots organizations (“allied organizations”) we are learning in places like Tennessee that they are comprised of a handful of community organizers (ala Obama/Alinsky) who set up myriad faux grassroots groups to make the general public think there is a groundswell of support for their liberal-fascist-corporatist agenda as Judy described here a couple of days ago.

Ms. Limon even admits above that they are working hand in glove with big business and big labor, making my point again that this is all about supplying dues-paying members for the unions and cheap labor for big business.   Meanwhile they rope in all the humanitarian-minded do-gooders as their foils (fools?).

…..a broad coalition of allies from labor, business, and community groups

* We have written on many occasions about Ms. Limon who headed up the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement during the Clinton Administration.   Several of USCRI’s subcontractors have been either closed (see Waterbury, CT here) or reprimanded in recent years by the US State Department for not taking good care of the refugees in their charge.   Learn more about USCRI here and note they have changed their name a couple of times.   I wonder why.