Category: Other Immigration

Church leaders and congregants at odds over immigration

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The Center for Immigration Studies has analyzed a new Zogby poll that appears to indicate that when religious leaders advocate for amnesty and more immigration they are doing so against the wishes of their parishoners.   Check it out here.

In contrast to many national religious leaders who are lobbying for increases in immigration numbers, a new Zogby poll of likely voters who belong to the same religious communities finds strong support for reducing overall immigration. Moreover, the poll finds that members strongly disagree with their leaders’ contention that more immigrant workers need to be allowed into the country.

Also, most parishioners and congregants advocate for more enforcement to cause illegal workers to go home, while most religious leaders are calling for putting illegal immigrants on a path to U.S. citizenship.

The survey of Catholic, mainline Protestant, born-again Protestant, and Jewish voters used neutral language and was one of the largest polls on immigration ever done.

We reported a related story a few months back when the National Association of Evangelicals testified for amnesty but had backtracking to do when some of its member groups disavowed the testimony—-in other words, when the parishoners and members got wind of what their leaders were up to.

Comment worth noting: America owes the world

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Comments worth noting is a category we created to highlight comments that otherwise would be lost because they were sent to old posts, or are so good (or bad!) that we want to make the point more strongly by posting them upfront.   Here is one this morning (posted to our ‘fact sheets’ link) just to give you an idea of the sorts of comments we get.  Apparently this guy (assume it’s a guy) says that because of Islamic terrorism, he has left his “beloved” African country and come across our Mexican border illegally.  And, we owe him.    No further comment from me!

Dolecha says:

I can’t tell you how flawed your immigration system is or other bullshit your writing……But i can tell you something[how i end up being an asylum seeker]i came vie the Mexico border.I haven’t in my wildest dream thought of coming to USA to be illegal this way.I was having a multiple profession with a very comfertabel income.But your country is helping a blood sucker in East Africa in the name of terrorism it let us flee our beloved country hence,it is your responsibility to give us what we lost in our respective country’s.You have to take responsiblity.I am not saying that all of us have the same reason to be here,but there are fewor many of us who don’t want to be here but were forced to be.

Which African country is the “blood sucker?”

Debbie Schlussel has the scoop on the Detroit attempted terror attack

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update:  Suicide underwear discussed at Hot Air, here.  See also “Great Balls of Fire,” here.

Thanks to Janet Levy for sending it,  here is Debbie Schlussel’s post on the Nigerian Jihadist—who he is and  how he got into the US.  This is one point she makes, and one we have made here on numerous occasions.

This incident is also yet another weight on the overwhelming evidence refuting the still often uttered claim that Muslims are driven to terrorism because they are poor or do not have economic and educational opportunities. Not only was he studying in London, but his father, Alhaji Umaru Mutallab, is a wealthy, prominent Nigerian banker, who is the immediate past chairman of the First Bank of Nigeria and a former Nigerian government minister. But as indicated by the “Alhaji” prefix on his fathers name, the elder Mutallab was apparently a religious Muslim, who went on the hajj to Mecca, Saudi Arabia.

Read her whole post, she has inside information on the Detroit area legal system that will be involved in his case.  Our friend Jerry Gordon, in a conversation with me yesterday, referred to the Jihadist as the “leg-bomber” (you know, like Richard Reid was the shoe-bomber), well it appears that if Debbie is accurate about the location of his bomb parphernalia, he could be called the crotch-bomber.  I know it’s no laughing matter, but since these Islamists have no sense of humor, we must keep ours.  Besides, didn’t Alinsky say that ridicule was the strongest weapon (short of killing or maiming people that is).

Afterawhile:  I just heard on TV that Senator Lieberman had suggested that we don’t know yet if the Nigerian Jihadist was connected to Al Qaeda.  He may have been self-radicalized, so the argument goes.  I noticed that last March when I attended the Senate Homeland Security hearings on the Somali missing youths, that that same kind of reasoning was being employed—if no Al Qaeda link then Lieberman et al gave a visible sigh of relief.  But, what difference does it make?  What difference if the Islamic radical becomes a dangerous terrorist on his own, he is just as dangerous.  What is so magic about a link to Al Qaeda?  Or, is it just one more bit of wordplay to make us all go back to sleep?

It’s all about “Jihadi cool”

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

That’s what the AP headline wants to leave us with in attempting to explain why five DC/Northern Virginia immigrant young men gave up promising lives to train for Jihad in Pakistan (see previous post here).  It’s a long story at Fox News (thanks to Blulitespecial for sending it) that like so many similar stories skirts the real issue—the Koranic imperative to fight Jihad.

As I said it’s long, but here is one little bit that made me laugh.  This is really reaching!  It’s the Washington, DC made me do it excuse.

In this instance, Khan (Saeed Khan, a specialist in Islam who teaches at Wayne State University in Michigan) thinks the young men’s close proximity to the nation’s capital also could have influenced them.

“They feel a certain helplessness that, despite this proximity, they are disenfranchised from helping end the perceived violence against fellow Muslims thousands of miles away,” he says.

Maybe they could get some homemade signs and go demonstrate against the Obama Administration, if they are such frustrated Americans.   But, I guess the Koran never talked about that sort of Jihad and it’s not as cool as killing people.

Some states fingerprint prospective food stamp recipients

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Your tax dollars:

And, of course the push is on by the Obama Administration to get that guard against fraud dumped real quick.   I notice that the four states with the highest food stamp useage, who do fingerprinting, are also four huge immigrant population states.

Apparently the policy of requiring fingerprints deters some people from applying; doesn’t that say something!   From the NY Times:

At a time when food stamp enrollment is soaring in the city and across the nation — to the point where one New Yorker out of five takes part in the federal nutrition program — advocates have continued to raise questions about New York City’s requirement that food stamp applicants be fingerprinted.

The advocates assert that the requirement — intended to help prevent fraud — deters some needy people from applying because they are put off by fingerprinting, which many consider intrusive. Betsy Gotbaum, the public advocate, has called the requirement “a very expensive failure.”

New York, Texas, California and Arizona, which together have more than a quarter of all food stamp recipients nationwide, all have the fingerprinting requirement. Studies by the Agriculture Department have found that the fingerprinting rules do not necessarily reduce error or fraud, and may reduce food stamp participation rates — a fact that the critics say means the requirement should be discarded.

Refugee use of food stamps is on the rise.  However, much to my great consternation the Office of Refugee Resettlement is way behind in its legally required annual reports to Congress.  We have now finished FY 2009 and the most recent ORR report is from 2007, here.  Nonetheless, the figures BEFORE the recession indicate refugee food stamp use was already increasing from 33.5% in 2002 to 49.3% in 2007.   I wonder if the foot-dragging on getting out the next reports is because the numbers for employment and public assistance useage are horrible.