Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society lawyers "save" Somali from deportation

01/05/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

In a touching tale, HIAS (Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society), bragged on its blog yesterday that, in a Baltimore, MD court, it saved Somali illegal alien Yaasir from deportation back to Somalia.

Screenshot (130) — Only one retweet in 19 hours? You can see how much people like this story!

The tale goes from one touching scene to another, in Yaasir’s 22-years, all written (and told by Yaasir) to elicit sympathy from the reader, and is likely what they presented to the court in Baltimore.
Read it here, then let me take the story to its bare bones (stripping it of all the fluffy feel-good language):

~There were bombs and fighting, but Yaasir’s family was not directly targeted.

~His big problem was because he was in a lowly clan and the more powerful clans were always out to get them. (Clans are central to Somali culture and we have admitted to the US most, if not all, of them. Somalis discriminate against each other by clan. Is this our problem?)

~He was warned by family members to not play with children from the more powerful clans, but he did it anyway.

~As a teen he got into (as HIAS describes it)—“a bit of a scuffle”—with kids from a more powerful clan. Dumb? They kidnapped him, he says, and beat him up for two days.

~Not able to interact with other teens (What? no teens in his clan liked him either?), he quit school.

~HIAS: “Yaasir soon fell in love with a girl from a more powerful clan and impregnated her.” Her brothers came to kill him. Our problem?

~Angry father told him to get out and go to South Africa.

~Problem is that South African blacks hate Somalis (see my entire archive on South Africa here. BTW, we are taking black African refugees from the rainbow nation. Insanity!). HIAS: He “began to encounter severe discrimination and abuse by hostile South Africans.” I have to laugh because HIAS wants you to believe that the discrimination was from white South Africans!

~After a few months in SA, he ‘married’ a Somali woman and got her pregnant (or was it the other way around?)

~He always had to run from the South African police because he had no documentation. So he sends pregnant wife back to ‘unsafe'(?) Somalia.

~He then “made his way” to the US border beginning after he flies to Brazil. (There is zero mention of how he found enough money for a global jaunt!). This is perhaps the biggest issue that is never discussed—where did this kind of money come from?

~His struggle northward is described as “treacherous” which HIAS uses to show what a determined young man he is and therefore worthy of becoming an American.

~HIAS doesn’t tell us how, or when, he was detained on America soil. Was he here for months/years before he came to the attention of authorities, or was he detained as he crossed our southern border?

hetfield at NY anti-Trump rally — HIAS CEO Hetfield speaking at their anti-President Trump rally last February!

But nevermind, the tale ends happily when Yaasir finds himself in the arms of HIAS lawyers who work hard to get him through the asylum process.
As a successful asylee he becomes eligible for all the welfare benefits a refugee gets—which is pretty much everything! And…

He is free in America and getting ready to bring his ‘wife’ and child (and probably parents, brothers, sisters, etc) to live with him happily ever after in America. (As soon as HIAS lawyers can stop DJT from killing chain migration!)

Go here to read Yaasir’s “fight” at HIAS’s blog.
For our huge archive on HIAS click here.
They are one of the nine federal resettlement contractors (paid with taxpayer dollars) placing refugees in your towns and cities, but obviously they are busy on a whole host of fronts to help Muslims and others get in to the US.
Readers need to know that I am not picking on HIAS to the exclusion of other contractors, it is just that they send out such tantalizing material for me to write about compared to some others.

Refugees, which is it: Meatpacker laborers or helping the "oppressed?"

01/04/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Ali Noorani of the National Immigration Forum tries both arguments in USA Today.

ali noorani twitter — Ali Noorani on twitter: @anoorani https://twitter.com/anoorani?lang=en

I wasn’t planning to post on one more hysterical story about Trump refugee numbers being low and thus decimating the refugee contractor industry, but I can’t resist mentioning one little bit of the story entitled:

Refugee admissions to U.S. plummet in 2017

Before I get to Noorani, Mark Krikorian summed it up with this:

“Elections have consequences,” said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for lower levels of legal and illegal immigration. “This is what he said he’s going to do, and he’s doing it.”

Readers, for years and years, refugee advocates pretended they have nothing to do with the global meatpacking industry and its ‘need’ for cheap migrant labor, but now even savvy DC operatives like Noorani trot out the argument feigning concern for Midwestern economies.

Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, which has advocated for a higher refugee cap, said many Midwestern cities depend on refugees to work in the meat-packing and poultry plants that sustain their struggling economies.

Okay and if that establishment Rightwing argument doesn’t float your boat, he moves on to moral duties, historic roles and oppressed people so he can hit the Leftwingers too:

As more migrants are fleeing their homelands, Noorani said now is the worst possible time for the U.S. to retreat from its historic role as a “moral beacon” for the oppressed.

“There are ways to help refugees get to places of safety and begin a new life that serves the American interest,” Noorani said. “Past administrations have been able to do that. This administration is not that so interested.”

American interest? Or global meatpackers’ interest (subsidized by US taxpayers)?

This “new life to serve American interests” was on full display in a Washington Post story (hat tip: Melanie) the other day about a South Dakota turkey plant and how it gets its migrant laborers (this time plane loads from Puerto Rico to join the refugee labor force, but they have to pay back their airfare out of their paychecks!).
It made me sick, especially because I traveled to Huron in the summer of 2016 to see how that plant, Dakota Provisions, was changing (forever) the city of Huron.
Is this what Noorani thinks “serves the American interest?” Grover’s interests maybe?

If I ever stop writing this blog, I’m writing a modern day “The Jungle.” It is long overdue!

I can happily skip eating turkey!

Top USCIS refugee official leaving; more evidence admissions slowdown could continue

01/03/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We reported here on January 1 that the Trump refugee numbers, at the present rate of arrival, would come in at half of the CEILING of 45,000 set for FY18.
By the way, George Bush had two years that saw refugee admissions in the 20,000 range.
Trump will set a record if he comes in below George W. Bush’s two lowest years of 27,070 (2002) and 28,117 (2003).
(Yesterday, Michael Leahy at Breitbart posted a more detailed look at the numbers so far.)

hans van de weerd bald — Hans Van de Weerd of the two hats (IRC and RCUSA) is the go-to-guy for media comments these days. As you know RCUSA is the lobbying arm of the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program. My question: is Hans still a Dutch citizen? Bio here: http://www.phocuswrightconference.com/Whos-Coming/Speakers/2016/Hans-Van-de-Weerd

Here Reuters reports on the retirement of Barbara Strack (hat tip: Joanne):

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – One of the top U.S. government officials working on refugee issues announced her impending retirement on Tuesday, and refugee advocates expressed concern about the fate of the country’s resettlement program which faces mounting pressure from the Trump administration.

Barbara Strack, a career official and chief of the Refugee Affairs Division at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, did not specify when she will leave her post, but USCIS spokesman R. Carter Langston said it would be in January.

[….]

“It’s something I’ve been planning towards for a long time, and it’s not driven by policy considerations,” Strack said. “I will deeply miss the colleagues and friendships that I‘m leaving behind, and the important mission of refugee resettlement. It’s been a privilege to be part of this community for the last 12 years, working to make the U.S. refugee resettlement program robust and secure.”

Advocates expressed concern at the timing of Strack’s retirement, saying it could further hamper U.S. refugee admissions. It was unclear immediately who would replace her.

[….]

The Refugee Affairs Division, which Strack oversees, includes dozens of officers charged with interviewing refugees abroad for resettlement in the United States.

[….]

Advocates for resettlement and some U.S. officials have expressed alarm at what they see as a slowdown in trips abroad known as circuit rides, in which USCIS officers interview refugees.

“The number of circuit rides has gone down drastically with currently only a few planned,” said Hans Van de Weerd, chair of Refugee Council USA***, a coalition of non-governmental groups working on refugee issues. “Many more will need to be scheduled soon to resettle 45,000 refugees and we don’t have any information about whether they will.”

More from Reuters here.
*** See my recent post on RCUSA the lobbying shop for the nine federal contractors which receive the vast majority of their funding from the US taxpayer. With the reduction in paying clients (aka refugees) entering the US, their budgets are taking huge hits. Go here and see IRC salaries, spokesman Hans does not make the top tier.

NPR's Deborah Amos: US refugee program unraveling

01/02/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I just wish for once ‘journalists’ at Amos’s level would explain to her listeners some of the real facts about how the US Refugee Admissions Program operates, but maybe NPR listeners are only interested in horror stories about the President with headlines meant to alarm them in to action.
(More on that below)
But see how journalism professor Amos begins her report (hat tip: Margaret) with Donald Trump declaring that Obama’s Australia deal was dumb. It was, and it is!

Deborah Amos, advocate for the existing UN/US Refugee Admissions Program, opinion writer at NPR and Journalism visiting lecturer at Princeton University. https://journalism.princeton.edu/people/deborah-amos/

Last year began with an angry phone call about refugees, famously leaked later. The newly inaugurated Donald Trump exploded when Australia’s prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, asked him to honor a U.S. pledge to resettle some 1,200 refugees from Australia’s offshore detention centers.

“This is a stupid deal,” Trump fumed to an astonished Turnbull. “This shows me to be a dope.”

A day earlier, the president had signed an executive order temporarily halting the entire U.S. refugee resettlement program and slashed the number of expected arrivals President Obama had set.

Trump complained that by honoring the deal with Australia he was “going to get killed” politically and abruptly hung up the phone.

It was the harbinger of policies set in motion to unravel the U.S. refugee resettlement program, an issue that defined Trump’s election campaign and has shaped much of his first year in office.

What the heck!

She then goes on and never reports that the President is going along with the deal (doesn’t she read RRW?).

But, you see, admitting that the President caved-in to pressure and is now going to admit up to 1,200 migrants that Australia doesn’t want, who have been in Australian-controlled detention for as long as four years, doesn’t fit the opinion piece she crafted and thus wouldn’t help stir up Leftwing anger.
She then quotes former Middle East ambassador Ryan Crocker (Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama), bemoaning the (financial!) losses the federal refugee contractors*** will experience going forward:

“This is strategic, that’s why it’s different from previous anti-immigrant mindsets. It is a conscious effort to deconstruct the system,” Crocker says. He points to dramatic budget cuts for the nine private, voluntary agencies that for decades have contracted with the State Department to resettle and integrate the refugee population in communities across the U.S.

“The damage has already been done. These agencies run on the slimmest of margins. The layoffs are already doing structural damage. It’s going to take a long time to rebuild,” he says.

At this point, a real journalist would explain just a bit about the “voluntary agencies” (Ha! Ha!) which are almost completely funded by the US taxpayer, and, as such, are quasi-government organizations.
It would only take a paragraph or two to explain their financial structure based on federal payments on a refugee per head basis (hey! maybe even throw in a few numbers about CEO salaries). She might explain how they operate in secrecy in hopes that the locals won’t catch on to plans for their communities (Rutland, VT for example!).
She might say they are community organizers holding anti-Trump rallies like the recent one in Washington with CAIR, or that they hired the Podesta Group (for $100,000) to lobby for them.
She could point out that they could have been raising private charitable dollars to tide them over (and help refugees!) through slow refugee admission times. Or, maybe she could report on refugees left in the lurch by the contractors, some wishing to return to camps in Africa. You get my drift!
Then she quotes me wanting to be sure her listeners know what an extremist I am (well ok!). But, in many ways I’m more of an investigative journalist than she is!

“Donald Trump missed a fabulous opportunity to suspend the entire refugee admissions program,” activist Ann Corcoran complained to Breitbart News. Corcoran runs the Refugee Resettlement Watch website that regularly claims the resettlement program is corrupt and a health and security risk for communities that accept the newcomers. [Have I ever used the word corrupt?—ed]

Laughing my head off! This is my complete statement quoted at Breitbart:

“Donald Trump missed a fabulous opportunity to suspend the entire refugee admissions program, at least on a temporary basis, until we get back on our feet in Texas, Florida, and Puerto Rico,” Ann Corcoran, who runs the Refugee Resettlement Watch website, tells Breitbart News.

And, Amos is training young journalists at Princeton!
Yes, the President has great power under the Refugee Act of 1980 and he could have suspended it outright. His team obviously decided to “smother” it by cutting the numbers and consequently cutting the funding (your tax dollars) that feed the refugee contractors***.

becca-heller (1) — Immigration lawyer Becca Heller in Glamour magazine: “The fight against Trump….” https://www.glamour.com/story/becca-heller-irap-vs-trump-supreme-court

Here she gives Becca Heller with the International Refugee Assistance Project in New York a lot of column inches to say what we said yesterday that Congress will need to step in to make permanent changes to the law.

“We are in a pitched battle for the continued existence of the U.S. refugee resettlement program,” says Heller. “The numbers are going to be low for the next few years and it’s our job to keep them as high as we can.”

[….]

Heller says there are limits to the president’s powers to end the refugee resettlement program outright. Congress established the program’s framework and would need to vote to eliminate it.

“I think [the refugee program is] under attack but I don’t think it’s over. For one thing, it’s the law,” says Heller, pointing to the 1980 Refugee Act that sets out the provisions for the admission of refugees “of special humanitarian concern,” and the 1965 immigration law that emphasizes family reunification [aka chain migration—ed].

“The president may be able to temporarily prevent refugees from coming in,” Heller says. “It’s not going to successfully dismantle the program without Congress.”

Ms. Amos earlier in her piece, designed to paint the President in the worst light, while the refugee industry is pure as the driven snow, quoted a spokesperson for Human Rights First. But, she could have just as well quoted Bill Frelick of Human Rights Watch who said this in November 2016 and I reported here. Take that Ms. Heller!

See what refugee advocate and longtime expert Bill Frelick (Human Rights Watch) said in November after Trump was elected and the refugee industry went in to shell-shock:

“In the U.S., there’s not a quota that has to be filled. The U.S. has a budgeted amount of money to do refugee resettlement, but there’s no requirement that the U.S. resettle a single refugee, and there’s no legal obligation to do it.”

I suspect he wasn’t too popular with his peers/media after that statement. I rarely see him quoted now.
More promotion of the existing/flawed refugee program and criticism of the President from Ms. Amos here.
***These are the “voluntary agencies” responsible for all refugee resettlement in the US. I rarely use the phrase voluntary agencies (VOLAGs) because it makes me laugh. When one thinks of voluntary agencies, one thinks of non-governmental organizations working hard to raise private money and using volunteer workers to carry out their humanitarian good works, not agencies funded with MILLIONS of taxpayer dollars (involuntarily taken from you) and CEOs making $200,000, $300,000 and $600,000 annual salaries!

This post is tagged ‘media bias.’

Refugee numbers are low for first 3 months of fiscal year; Ohio is top receiving state

01/01/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

As promised, below are the stats for the first three months of fiscal year 2018 (it began on October 1, 2017).
Update January 3: More detailed numbers analysis by Michael Leahy at Breitbart, here.
President Trump set the CEILING for the year at 45,000 refugees. That is the lowest CEILING since the Refugee Act of 1980 (Kennedy/Biden) was signed in to law by Jimmy Carter.

Somalis in Columbus — Columbus, Ohio second only to Minneapolis for its number of Somalis. Columbus received 245 refugees from 11 different countries, including Somalia, in the first three months of the fiscal year. It was followed by Akron as the second most ‘welcoming’ city in the state with 139 ‘new Americans’ in the last 3 months.

I capitalize the word CEILING because I want to get it into the heads of reporters that a CEILING is not a target to be achieved. It is a cap that the President cannot exceed without consultation with Congress.
There is nothing in refugee law that says he can’t come in with half of the proposed CEILING.
And, if the present rate of resettlement were to continue for the year, that is about where we will come in.
According to Wrapsnet, as of today, we have admitted 5,323 refugees over 13 weeks.
Extending that same rate out for 52 weeks would put the number at just under 22,000 for the year.
I know, to many readers, that 22,000 is too many, but you can be sure the low number of paying “clients” (refugees) will wreak havoc with the budgets of the nine federal contractors which could (optimistically) in turn force a complete review about why we have such a dysfunctional system where ‘non-profits’ are paid by the head to place refugees (in as much secrecy as they can muster) into towns and cities in 49 states.
There is never an incentive to slow the flow in overloaded communities with such a system where nine contractors*** are literally bidding for bodies.
Here is where the 5,323 have been placed as of today:

Screenshot (118) — Data available at the Refugee Processing Center (Wrapsnet) for October 1, 2017 to December 31, 2017. I know the numbers are a little hard to read, but nothing I can do about it.

The top ten ‘welcoming’ states are: Ohio, Texas, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington, California, Georgia, Illinois, Michigan and North Carolina. California is normally first or second so who knows what that is all about.
Top ten countries from which we admitted refugees since October 1, 2017:

Bhutan (1,535)

DR Congo (1,154)

Burma (655)

Ukraine (487)

Eritrea (428)

Russia (132)

Somalia (128)

El Salvador (113)

Ethiopia (102)

Afghanistan (81)

Iraq (77), which has been in the top three or so for years, didn’t make the top ten.
The percentage of Muslim refugees is way down.
In the final Obama years we were admitting close to 50% Muslim refugees and now (all Muslim sects combined) we admitted 726 Muslims in the last 3 months which amounts to about 14%.
I am concerned to see that 199 of the 726 were Muslims from Burma (Rohingya).
*** These are the nine federal refugee contractors. I like to post this list once a day (if I remember!) so new readers can begin to get the list memorized! They have hundreds of subcontractors working for them. If you visit their websites you can find out which, if any, are operating where you live.