Heritage Foundation leaves out one important consideration in its ‘plan’ for reforming refugee program—you!

11/25/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

First, you need to know that the Heritage Foundation, a huge ‘conservative’ think tank in Washington, hasn’t paid one lick of attention to the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) until this year, until Trump entered the White House.

***Update*** If you commented at the Heritage site linked below, and after opening the link in a different browser, no longer see your comment, please let me know! Write to refugeewatcher@gmail.com (or comment to this post) and tell me. Something is very fishy because I can’t see some of your comments and just now my comment from earlier today had disappeared. They aren’t ‘shadow banning’ are they?

Update November 26th: We will be eager to hear tomorrow why the Heritage Foundation has not publicly posted many comments. See here. Missing comments found and they are doozies! Click here.

Now they are tooting their horn because they got a meeting with retired Admiral Garry Hall in the White House to promote their version of reform.

But, what is absent from their ‘study’ and report entitled: ‘The U.S. Refugee Admissions Program: A Roadmap for Reform,’ is the cost shifting of the USRAP to state taxpayers, the cultural and economic impact on communities, refugee crime, and the secrecy by which the feds and nine contractors (paid almost exclusively with taxpayer dollars)*** place refugees in American towns and cities.

They do give a little lip service to the idea that refugees must assimilate. Oh, pray tell, how are you going to force certain ‘religious’ refugees to assimilate while the whole resettlement effort is being done by contractors who have no interest in teaching refugees to assimilate? (They won’t even use the word ‘assimilate!’)

In short, the focus of their work is Washington-centric and how refugee resettlement is somehow mostly an issue of foreign policy to advance US interests!

What about US citizens’ interests!

The authors clearly have no idea what is going on outside the DC bubble.

Here are the three takeaways from their work product:

Screenshot (53) — Do you see anything here about States Rights and the feds shifting costs to states? Anything about the US Treasury heavily funding ‘religious’ NGOs which then operate in secrecy? Anything about the social and cultural impact roiling communities that are overloaded with refugees?

Here is a recent email from the ‘Johnny-come-lately‘ Heritage Foundation:

At Heritage, we bring the best and the brightest minds together to boldly address refugee policy.

Adm-Garry-E-Hall-200x300 — Before coming to the White House, Admiral Hall sat on a board at the US Conference of Catholic Bishops the largest of the nine federal contractors placing refugees in your towns (can’t make this up!) http://www.milarch.org/retired-navy-rear-admiral-garry-e-hall-appointed-to-national-review-board-of-the-u-s-conference-of-catholic-bishops/

This summer, Heritage experts Olivia Enos, David Inserra, and Joshua Meservey wrote a report titled “The U.S. Refugee Admissions Program: A Roadmap for Reform”.

Their report asserts that the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program should be used neither as a service to mass distribute global migration rights, nor to solve international conflict.

Rather, it should be reformed to assert American leadership, tangibly help partners and allies, and rescue some of the world’s most vulnerable people.

Last Thursday, they briefed Admiral Hall on their report at the National Security Council. He was very receptive and promised to pass it to the new Senior Adviser for Refugees [Who?—ed]

James Jay Carafano, the Vice President for the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy and E. W. Richardson Fellow, said of their work:

“While others have obsessed about the numbers and bans, we have focused on substantive reforms to actually make the program better—reduce abuse, enhance security and promote assimilation. Our work has not gone unnoticed. I have gotten constructive feedback from NGOs on all sides of this issue.”

Plans to make their roadmap to reform a reality are in the works.

What do you think should be done about America’s refugee program?

Readers ask me all the time, what can I do? Do this!

Go here and tell Heritage what you think about ‘reforming’ the USRAP! Tell them what is happening in your towns!

Again, the authors clearly have no idea what is going on outside of the swamp.

(As of this writing there are 16 comments at the Heritage site.)

My previous reports on this Heritage project are here and here.

*** The nine federal contractors that secretly place refugees in hundreds of US towns and cities. The USCCB Migration Fund is 97% funded by the US Treasury. Does Admiral Hall know that? Is that OK with him?

Poughkeepsie LOUDLY said no to refugees!

11/24/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The political Left-wingers, like those at Church World Service, don’t like LOUD when it comes from the people who don’t want their towns and cities changed without their consultation.

I had to laugh when I saw this headline at NPR:

Opposition To Refugee Arrivals Keeps Getting Louder

erolkekic — Erol Kekic dog whistling with this line? He said people asked: “Why are we bringing people who don’t all look like us?” I will bet no one uttered those words that night!

Don’t you know! Loud is bad if it doesn’t come from the Left!

And, it is funny, just last night I was so irritated by Leftwing commentators always referring to Rightwing “dog whistles” when along comes a story with some dog whistles from the Left!

If you don’t know what the heck dog whistles are (in the political sense), it is when a supposedly secretive message is being sent to one’s own political base.

Before I give you some juicy bits on this NPR story, you might want to revisit my reports on Poughkeepsie here.

In the waning months of the Obama Administration (before November) hopes were running high. Obama had set a refugee admissions ceiling for FY17 at 110,000, the highest in years and certainly much higher than any of his previous 7 years, and they all thought that Hillary was headed to the Oval.

So the US State Department with its contractors*** set about finding lots and lots of fresh territory in which to place refugees (older sites were getting overloaded and tensions were building). Poughkeepsie was one such new site.

Then along came Donald J. Trump to mess up their big plans….

Thus this National Public Radio story:

A few days after Donald Trump was elected President, more than a hundred people packed into a church sanctuary in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. to hear a presentation about refugee resettlement in their town.

It didn’t go well.

This was after Trump had campaigned on refusing Syrian refugees, citing security concerns. In the church that night, staffers from the non-profit organization Church World Service laid out their plan to open a refugee resettlement office in Poughkeepsie, and bring in about 80 refugees, mostly from the Congo, Iraq and Syria.

The audience had questions. A lot of them. They wanted to know, would they be safe? And could Poughkeepsie afford to care for these new residents?

“As a resident of this town, of this city, I can look out my window any time and find someone in need,” said Poughkeepsie resident Steven Planck, to vigorous applause.

I have seen this comment dozens of times and ask this question: If Church World Service is a Christian ‘charity,’ why not focus on the poor people in every American city? Why are we importing more poverty?

The head of Church World Service’s refugee program, Erol Kekic, spent more than an hour trying to respond to the questions.

“We had to do a lot of truth-telling, and dispel some myths,” says Kekic. “From ‘the value of my property will go down because refugees will be resettling next to me,’ to ‘are we bringing terrorists?’ to ‘why are we bringing people who don’t all look like us?'”

It’s getting harder for refugees to find a welcoming home in the U.S. The Trump administration has cut the number of refugees allowed into the country. In cities and town across the nation, citizens are protesting refugees being resettled in their neighborhoods.

In Poughkeepsie, the debate got ugly. On social media, people called opponents of the refugee plan racists and Islamophobes. The staff of Church World Service received death threats. [Ho hum! Death threats, so what else is new—ed]

[….]

Until recently, refugee resettlement in the U.S. had wide bipartisan support. The U.S. State Department, along with nine large non-profit groups, decides where to resettle refugees fleeing persecution, war and violence. They look for communities where there are volunteers to help.

The reason the refugee industry had “wide bipartisan support” and still does is that the Republican establishment wants the cheap labor for their big business donors and the Dems want the voters. And it is only in the last few years that this secret program has been exposed to the American taxpayers who shell out the bucks for it!

NPR continued:

“We all wondered, why? Why Poughkeepsie?” says David Cole, 37, a lifelong resident of the town who helped mobilize opposition to Church World Service. Cole insists he has nothing against Muslims or other refugees. But he says Poughkeepsie isn’t a wealthy town; unemployment there is higher than the statewide average.

Why Poughkeepsie? Because Church World Service thought a banner year was coming with a slew of Obama/Clinton paying refugee “clients,” and they figured Poughkeepsie would be a pushover!

“I looked at people that I knew,” Cole says. “And I said, OK, well, why aren’t these people getting help? Why are we trying to help, you know, people from war-torn countries in an area where there’s people looking for jobs? Like, they’re scavenging for jobs around here. I don’t get it.”

[….]

“Yes, there are loud voices in every community,” Kekic says. “But they’re usually not the majority, and they’re usually just a very loud minority.”

So what is the lesson here: Louder wins!

There is much more and it is worth reading here.

To learn more about hard Leftwing Church World Service, click here.

***These are the nine major US taxpayer-funded NGOs responsible for (secretly) placing refugees in hundreds of American towns.

US Catholic Bishops Thanksgiving message: we thank the US taxpayers for so generously supporting our good works

11/22/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

That headline is a joke of course!

As the Bishops gathered and gave “thanks for the gift and contributions of immigrants and refugees to our great nation,” not a peep was mentioned about the millions of tax payer dollars going to the US Conference of Catholic Bishops “Migration Fund” which allows them to demonstrate their humanity to man (well, to the foreign ones anyway).

Before you read the story, here again is a reminder of just one year of the income the Bishops received thanks to the generosity of US taxpayers.

I wrote this in July, here, summarizing the income that nine federal refugee contractors*** receive for their ‘charitable’ good works.

The Bishops Migration Fund was 97% taxpayer-funded according to a 2014 annual report for their Migration Fund and I doubt the percentage has changed much in recent years.

The Bishops don’t file a Form 990 and their operations are so vast, I could spend the whole day and still not sort it out. Also, maybe you can find one, but I have not found an annual report for their refugee program since I found this one for 2014.

So we will have to rely on it (again). Keep in mind these funds for their refugee resettlement program do not include millions that go directly from the feds to some individual Catholic Charities and Dioceses around the US. (If you are researching your local CC or Dioceses, you can often find good numbers at USASpending.gov)

Screenshot (671)_LI — Both the federal grants and the travel loan collections are your taxpayer dollars!

Now here is the news from Crux:

U.S. bishops release Thanksgiving message advocating for migrants and refugees

NEW YORK – The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has issued a special Thanksgiving message, offering a particular plea for the protection of migrants and refugee families.

Pope Francis Attends A Mass for The Opening Of The Synod — Worried look? As refugee admissions decline, so will their income! Cardinal Daniel DiNardo gets top USCCB job: http://dfw.cbslocal.com/2016/11/15/u-s-catholic-bishops-elect-texas-cardinal-to-top-post/

In a statement released on Monday, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, archbishop of Galveston-Houston and president of the USCCB, expressed solidarity with DACA recipients, beneficiaries of Temporary Protected Status, and other refugees attempting to escape persecution or danger in their home countries. [We pay them millions for their advocacy!—ed]

DiNardo cited last week’s fall assembly of U.S. bishops in Baltimore and said the conference was “attentive in a special way to those who are often excluded from this great abundance-the poor, the sick, the addicted, the unborn, the unemployed, and especially migrants and refugees.

“My brothers expressed a shared and ever-greater sense of alarm-and urgency to act-in the face of policies that seemed unthinkable only a short time ago,” said DiNardo.

[….]

DiNardo also used his Thanksgiving message to advocate for comprehensive immigration reform, a long-time policy goal of the USCCB. [If the Senate Gang of Eight bill had been signed in to law, the refugee contractors would have gotten an expanded role and more taxpayer money to sign the newly amnestied up for their government services, just as they do now for refugees—ed]

“This year, I give thanks for the gift and contributions of immigrants and refugees to our great nation. I also pray that next year, families now under threat will not be broken and dispersed, but instead will be united in joy around their tables, giving thanks for all the blessings our nation has to offer,” he concluded.

(Including the blessings of an over-flowing federal treasury that sends us millions annually!)

More here.

I’m going to continue talking about this until the Bishops tell Americans the truth about their income! Why is that so hard?

***These are the nine federal refugee contractors paid by you to place refugees in your towns and cities.

The Tent Foundation hires Lutheran refugee contractor to write refugee hiring guide

11/18/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Hamdi Ulukaya, the founder of Chobani Yogurt (we mentioned their expansion in Twin Falls, Idaho, here recently), created a personal foundation launched at Davos (Switzerland) in 2016 he called The Tent Foundation.

clinton and Chobani — I’m using this photo because I’m intrigued by the fact that last night on two different Fox News programs focusing on Clinton’s past indiscretions, they used a clip from this event with Ulukaya. Why? Sending some sort of message to viewers? Or, just coincidence because it was a quick and easy video to find? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgjqzO63XfM

To learn more about Ulukaya’s pitch to global corporations see his 2016 opinion piece published at CNN Money (watch the video!) where he says he has hired 600 refugees for his yogurt plants in New York and Idaho and that he has pledged to give half of his $1.4 billion personal wealth to refugee causes.

Now comes news that The Tent Foundation has hired Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service to pen a guide for their “member” companies (affiliated with Tent) to answer questions corporations have about hiring refugee labor.

Let me be clear:

We applaud global corporations (like those below) and uber-wealthy CEOs that send millions of their own dollars to care for refugees living in camps and in other difficult situations around the world.

However, when they rely on the federal taxpayer, through the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program, to deliver their potential workers to the US (to compete with Americans for jobs), it becomes our business.

For new readers, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIRS) is one of nine federal contractors*** hired and funded (on a per refugee-head basis) by the US State Department and the Office of Refugee Resettlement in HHS to place refugees in towns where citizens have no say in the matter and are generally kept in the dark about the process and plans for their communities.

LIRS, approximately 96% funded by taxpayer dollars, is at the moment in a tight spot due to internal turmoil.

We have also recently reported on two other LIRS side ‘deals’ with global corporations— the meatpackers JBS Swift and Tyson Foods.

Now we hear that Ulukaya’s personal foundation, The Tent Foundation, has hired LIRS to write “a 15-page resource toolkit for employers laying out why they should hire refugees.”

According to a signed contract seen by RRW, the finished product was to be delivered to The Tent Foundation by the end of October.

It is unclear if that happened, or if it did, if the ‘guide’ will be available to the public.

Making a deal…..

Here, below, is a July e-mail provided by someone close to the arrangement from an obviously very pleased Linda Hartke, LIRS CEO, to staff members (recipient names removed by me).

From: Linda Hartke
Sent: Monday, July 24, 2017 3:05 PM
To:
Cc:
Subject: RE: Recruitment of a contractor

For those who are not aware of the background on this project, the focus is the development of a 15 page resource toolkit for employers laying out why they should hire refugees, what are the legal and cultural issues to consider, how to go about it, and where to get help. The Tent Foundation is the foundation of the founder of Chobani yogurt who is himself a refugee and employs many refugees. They have many large corporate “members” related to the foundation, and their members have been hungry for such a resource.

While current LIRS staff will manage this project, the heavy lift of the research and writing will be done by a contractor as described below.

There is no formal contract or paperwork on the grant yet – but there is email communication confirming agreement on terms. We have asked them to proceed this week to finalize the necessary paperwork and begin the process to transfer funds. We did not provide a budget, but rather a fixed amount to produce the toolkit.

Congrats all, on this new funder for LIRS!
Linda
—
Linda Hartke
President and CEO | LHartke@lirs.org | 410-230-2762

Here (and below) are those companies and NGOs affiliated with Ulukaya’s foundation which wikipedia refers to as his “personal foundation.” You will surely recognize many global corporations on the list! Don’t miss Soros Fund Management!

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And, here are the non-profit’s working with The Tent Foundation including our old pals at ‘Welcoming America.‘

Click here for our complete archive on the community organizers at Welcoming America.

Screenshot (1096)

*** These are the nine federal resettlement contractors paid largely with your tax dollars to place refugees in hundreds of locations around the US.

Go here to see a recent accounting of their finances and CEO salaries:

While Republicans welcome Chinese companies ($$$) to the US, Dems welcome new American voters….

11/17/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

…..lost in the middle, are the rest of us.

Yesterday I told you about the Trump/Daines (Republican Senator from Montana) deal to invite China to set up a massive meat processing plant in Montana. A Canadian company is planning a second one.

For new readers, meat processing=foreign labor.

Buchanan state of emergency — My first thought when I read Coulter’s piece was of the warning that Pat Buchanan trumpeted for years in innumerable books. It must be maddening for him to see his predictions playing out just the way he said they would.

And, I see Ann Coulter yesterday chastised the Republicans for not seeing that their weak immigration policies are allowing the Dems to turn red states blue with immigrant voters who invariably vote for the party giving them stuff.

Here is Coulter on what the real message from the Virginia election should be. (Hat tip: Cathy)

Putting these two events together one can only conclude that the R’s want money and D’s want voters and the rest of us be damned.

Yes Virginia, Immigration is Turning the Country Blue

Hey, Republicans! Did you enjoy Election Night last week? Get ready for a lot more nights like that as immigration turns every last corner of the country blue.

When Ed Gillespie lost in Virginia, liberals crowed about how they’re winning the war of ideas. The country has thoroughly, emphatically rejected Trumpism!

Republicans, being idiots, played along, arguing only about whether Gillespie’s problem was that he didn’t embrace Trump enough or embraced him too much.

Gillespie’s campaign was fine. No cleverer arguments, community outreach or perfectly timed mailings would have changed the result. Contrary to The New York Times’ celebratory article in last Sunday’s magazine, “How the ‘Resistance’ Helped Democrats Dominate Virginia,” it wasn’t Democratic operative Kathryn Sorenson’s savvy use of Facebook, Google and Eventbrites that carried the day. “The Resistance” didn’t win.

What happened was: Democrats brought in new voters. In 1970, only one out of every 100 Virginians was foreign-born. By 2012, one in nine Virginians was foreign-born.

The foreign-born vote overwhelmingly, by about 80 percent, for Democrats. They always have and they always will — especially now that our immigration policies aggressively discriminate in favor of the poorest, least-educated, most unskilled people on Earth. They arrive in need of a LOT of government services.

According to the Pew Research Center, 75 percent of Hispanic immigrants and 55 percent of Asian immigrants support bigger government, compared to just over 40 percent of the general public. Even third-generation Hispanics support bigger government by 58 percent.

[….]

They were brought in to vote for the Democrats. That’s the real job immigrants are doing that Americans just won’t do.

As Democratic consultant Patrick Reddy wrote for the Roper Center 20 years ago, the 1965 Immigration Act, bringing in “a wave of immigration from the Third World,” will go down in history as “the Kennedy family’s greatest gift to the Democratic Party.” [Ted Kennedy was responsible for the creation of the Refugee Act of 1980 as well.—ed]

There isn’t much time on the clock before it’s lights-out for the GOP.

And all Republicans can think to do is argue about how quickly to grant amnesty to so-called “Dreamers” and give the Democrats another 30 million voters.

More here.

Trump and Daines — The Trump/Daines dumb deal!

How many times have I heard in the last decade that we have to work within the Republican party, that there is no hope for another party?

I am not buying it.

When Republicans are this dumb and this greedy they don’t deserve to be our ‘leaders!’

What happened to America First? Is Trump a globalist after all?

When Trump thinks it’s a good idea to welcome China to build a huge, polluting, meat plant in Montana (to feed the Chinese), a plant which will, without a doubt, use foreign labor (possibly even Chinese workers brought in to live in barracks!), then I’m done.

It is time for a commonsense party for commonsense people.

Go here to learn more about meatpackers changing the face of American heartland towns. I’ve been writing about the transformation for nearly ten years.

If you are looking for something to do, help your fellow Americans in Montana and contact the White House, tell Trump what you think about his dumb deal to feed the Chinese while destroying America, here.