Poughkeepsie: Church World Service has signed lease, refugees coming

01/18/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The opposition that had begun to grow seems to have waned according to Poughkeepsie mayor Rob Rolison and Church World Service is expecting refugees shortly apparently confident that Donald Trump will not stop the flow anytime soon.
Although, opening the office and then having to close it, if Trump does pause the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program, will serve them well as a public relations hammer to use on the Trump administration meanies. So, it isn’t a crazy gamble on their part.

poughkeepsie-map — Refugees to be placed within 50 mile radius of Poughkeepsie.

Remember, refugee resettlement is a business dependent on your tax dollars and the federal contractors are skilled political fighters and will use those abilities to keep their federal money flowing. (See CWS could not exist without your money!)

Here is the latest from Poughkeepsie. (See our previous posts here)

A refugee resettlement program in the Hudson Valley is on schedule to welcome its first families this month. Church World Service has found office space in Poughkeepsie and volunteers in the region are ready to lend a hand.

Church World Service has signed a lease for office space in the Family Partnership Center in Poughkeepsie and the welcome mat is out, with staff and volunteers at the ready. Church World Service is one of nine resettlement agencies that contracts with the federal government to resettle refugees across the country. Church World Service, as announced in November, expects 80 individuals to relocate within a 50-mile radius of Poughkeepsie through September.

Reverend Chris Antal is president of the Greater Newburgh Interfaith Council, which represents about a dozen faith communities in Orange County. The Council is a partner of the Mid-Hudson Refugee Solidarity Alliance and has established a welcome team. And Antal says the Council recently received an anonymous donation. [Someone gave them $10,000 for the effort to bring mostly Muslim third worlders to Poughkeepsie.—ed]

[….]

At a Church World Service meeting in Poughkeepsie in November, senior director for the organization’s Immigration and Refugee Program Sarah Krause said a priority is being placed on Congolese and Syrian refugees as well as Iraqis with special immigrant visas for the Poughkeepsie region.

[….]

Meanwhile, Democratic Assemblyman Frank Skartados says he hopes to work with the community to help refugees.

As is usual, the plan to resettle refugees was sprung on the community. Secrecy is its watchword (unless of course you are an insider in the interfaith community network!).

His district includes both the cities of Poughkeepsie and Newburgh. Some area residents at the November meeting expressed concern about the resettlement effort. And some say resources should be spent on Hudson Valley residents. Others are concerned the initial number of refugees could skyrocket, plus took issue with being informed of the program late in the process without many answers to their questions.

[….]

City of Poughkeepsie Mayor Rob Rolison says any talk of formal opposition seems to have waned.

More details here.

Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society bringing Syrian Muslims to Philly

01/17/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This is a longish story meant to be warm and fuzzy about how the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society*** is injecting diversity into crime-ridden Philly. That should be really good for the struggling African Americans there, but who cares about them, HIAS is being paid to do a job. This is a business.
The reporter has the facts down fairly well and I recommend reading it, especially for Pennsylvania residents who should know that your state is in the top ten resettlement states in the nation right now.

HIAS’s Philly rep Rona Buchalter is worried about what Trump will do once he arrives at the White House. Bio and photo are at HIAS’s website: http://hiaspa.org/rona-buchalter

I quibble with the selective reporting here where we are told that the refugees get $1,125 each (from US taxpayers). To be completely accurate it should be mentioned that the contractor (HIAS here) gets an equal amount for its payment to do their ‘charitable’ work. All of the contractors are quaking in their boots now as the wait to see what Donald Trump does after Friday because cutting the numbers means cutting their income!

HIAS Pennsylvania is an affiliate of one of those nine organizations that receives funding from the U.S. Department of State to resettle refugees. They are funded to provide initial casework and help refugees spend $1,125 per person they get in assistance from the government to pay for housing, groceries, bills and other necessities. From there, it’s enrolling kids in school, finding adults work and getting families integrated into their communities. Quickly.

By the way, I once had an American, who was trying to help a new refugee family in his neighborhood, contact me to ask why the refugee doesn’t get the full $2,250 because the contractor was not helping the family. Why? This is a business!

How many Syrians since the beginning of the 2017 fiscal year?

I haven’t checked the Syrian numbers at Wrapsnet lately, so checked just now.

In the first 3 and 1/2 months of the fiscal year (it began on Oct. 1, 2016) we have admitted 4,005 Syrians, and 98% are Muslims.

Here is where they were ‘planted’ in Pennsylvania from October 1, 2016 to January 15, 2017:

screenshot-151 — 98% of Syrians arriving in US are Muslims.

For new readers, know that it was HIAS which first directed the Southern Poverty Law Center to investigate RRW, see here.
***They don’t want to be called by their full name anymore, they changed it to HIAS (why was that?).

Anne Richard leaves her perch as chief refugee promoter for Obama with not much to show!

01/17/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

In an interview at Refugees Deeply, Anne Richard, Asst. Secretary of State for Population, Refugees and Migration, says she is “shocked” by the national conversation on refugees and laments that the once bipartisan support for refugee resettlement has almost disappeared during Obama’s term in office.
Editor: Anne Richard is a political appointee and as such she must have tendered her resignation or will be doing it before Friday. Career bureaucrats will be running the refugee program until the Trump people pick a replacement.

In December Bill O’Reilly called for a complete one year moratorium on refugee resettlement, something that would have been unheard of prior to the Obama Administration. https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2016/12/06/fox-news-bill-oreilly-calls-for-one-year-moratorium-on-refugee-resettlement/

Most of the interview focuses on Richard’s struggle to find something that the highly publicized September refugee forum at the UN did to advance their agenda.
We saw the event as a publicity opportunity to advance Hillary Clinton’s Presidential bid and to denigrate Donald Trump whose message about unvetted refugees being placed in unsuspecting communities was resonating with voters. The publicity stunt fizzled especially as countries refused to make any firm commitments.
You can read about it in the first part of this report at Refugees Deeply. In the closing paragraphs of the interview she bemoans the fact that the Refugee Program, once supported on both sides of the aisle, has become a politically charged issue and that there are now members of Congress, governors and some in the media calling for a complete halt to it.
I could tell her where they went wrong, but that isn’t my job.
Here is what she said to author Daniel Howden:
(Emphasis is mine)

The end of the Obama era coincides with the emergence of deeply polarized views in the U.S. on the country’s leading role in resettling refugees.

anne-richard-cspan — The arrogance and secretiveness of those administering the RAP is partially responsible for the divisiveness surrounding the resettlement of refugees. Keep it up! Keep calling concerned citizens the “ugly element.”

The Obama administration has faced strong domestic opposition to increasing the number of refugees it resettles each year from from 85,000 in the fiscal year of 2016 to 110,000 in 2017. Republican lawmakers, most notably in Texas, have sought to block federal resettlement programs for Syrian refugees. The son of Republican nominee Donald Trump recently compared Syrian refugees to poisoned Skittles on social media.

Richard said she had been “shocked” by the U.S. national conversation this year. “We’ve had pushback on refugees. There has always been an ugly element that believes that the latest wave of newcomers are not to be trusted.” [It is nothing Obama or she did, it is all about you haters!—ed]

She said that there had traditionally been bipartisan support for the U.S. giving refuge to the most persecuted people in the world, as “that is who we are,” but that this is now under threat: “What’s most alarming about the current discourse in American politics is that it’s a departure at the leadership level from defending that.”

More here.
I don’t want to leave readers with the idea that Obama did nothing to advance his agenda to diversify America, he did plenty. We are now talking about refugees in the 100,000 range as normal when only a few years earlier, we were resettling about 60,000 on average. Obama also managed to increase the number of Muslim refugees coming in from places where it is impossible to vet them.
Anne Richard was a well-paid VP for one of the federal refugee contractors, the International Rescue Committee. Prior to that she worked for the State Department. It will be interesting to see if she revolves back to a federal contractor job.
As we have said on many previous occasions, who the Trump team nominates for this post will be telling. The job requires approval by the Senate.
***Update*** One of our readers has reported that Ms. Richard is already gone and is now an Adjunct professor at Georgetown Univ. according to LinkedIn:

Anne Richard

Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University

United States

International Affairs

Current	Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University
Past	Assistant Secretary, Population, Refugees & Migration at U.S. Department of State, Vice President, Government Relations & Advocacy…
Education	The University of Chicago, Georgetown University
Summary	Specialties: (1) Relief and Development policies of US and other major donor governments (2) Budget and management of US government…

Samantha Power whines: don't cut UN funding!

01/15/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Perhaps after Obama and Hillary, Samantha Power is next on my list of Leftists I will be happy to see leave the world stage.

We have written extensively about Ms. Power who along with Hillary and Susan Rice (I called them the three witches!) nagged Obama to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi which unleashed a new wave of African migration to Europe via the now failed state of Libya.

samantha-power-and-obama — Samantha Power and Obama share the same views of Israel and you can bet she was knee deep in getting the anti-Israel resolution through the Security Council.

Readers, if the US cuts our funding to the UN (I know it’s a long shot), but that one act could help ‘pause’ refugee admissions to America like nothing else (since the UN is now picking almost all of our refugees).
Unfortunately it looks like the Ted Cruz/Lindsey Graham effort to cut funding is tied only to the resolution on Israel.
From Breitbart Jerusalem:

(AFP) UNITED NATIONS, United States — US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power on Friday warned that cutting US funding to the United Nations would be “extremely detrimental” to American interests, one week before Donald Trump’s administration takes office.

Addressing her final news conference, Power told reporters that “countries like Russia and China” would benefit from Washington’s reduced standing at the United Nations if funding were withdrawn.

“We lead the world, in part, by leading at the UN,” said Power, who is stepping down next week after four years as President Barack Obama’s ambassador to the United Nations.

[….]

The Safeguard Israel Act of 2017 — introduced by Senate Republicans Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham — aims to push back against the UN by threatening to pull billions of dollars in funding.

Continue reading here.
See my Samantha Power archive here.
She began her White House career as the Iraqi refugee czar but was quoted in 2012 indicating her frustration with “doing rinky-dink do-gooder stuff,” such as advocating on behalf of beleaguered Christians in Iraq.
She moved on to join the girls (the “humanitarian Vulcans”) in working to destabilize Libya and from there she climbed to her perch at the UN.
I shudder to think where she will turn up next!

Catholic Charities Southwestern Ohio planning for large refugee influx this year; ID cards for illegals

01/14/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

They believe that Obama’s last proposal, sent to Congress in September 2016, will continue to be operative and that his huge ‘recommendation’ for 110,000 refugees to be admitted this year will be honored by the incoming Trump administration.
Curious to see the last time we admitted more than the astronomical number of 110,000 refugees in one year, I went back to the Office of Refugee Resettlement annual reports and found that we must go back to 1995 (Bill Clinton) to find a year when we brought that many refugees. It was a year that we admitted over 30,000 Cubans, 30,000 Russians and 30,000 Vietnamese.
Just a few days ago I posted a widely read post about this week as National Migration Week at the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and how much of your money is going to the USCCB.

The USCCB’s migration fund is 97% funded by you! Their ‘work’ is not funded by Catholic parishioners giving their own private money!

Here is a report from Cincinnati, Ohio about one Migration week, ‘welcoming the stranger,’ event. This is how the progressives do it, they declare a special day or week, hold a public relations event and the press shows up to write glowingly. They are masters at media manipulation (propaganda)! (Emphasis below is mine):

Despite uncertainty and concerns about policies of the incoming Trump administration, programs and agencies helping immigrants and refugees in Greater Cincinnati anticipate more growth in 2017.

The Refugee Resettlement Program of Catholic Charities Southwestern Ohio, which helped bring in 330 refugees in 2016, will help 450 this year, said Alisa Berry, the agency’s chief operating officer who oversees the program. It resettled 260 refugees in 2015.

alisa-berry — Wishful thinking on Alisa Berry’s part—Obama’s 110,000 refugee plan for FY17 will continue?

“The federal government keeps asking us to help more people,” Berry said. “Demand for services increases every year.”

She was one of five panelists to participate Thursday in an interfaith immigration insights event at Hebrew Union College. About 150 people attended to listen to updates on programs and perspective on a contentious national issue.

The opposition to legal immigration and assistance for undocumented immigrants and refugees helped Donald Trump defeat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential race.

The Thursday event was part of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ National Migration Week and in conjunction with Pope Francis’ World Migrant and Refugee Day, which will be Tuesday.

The United States will accept 110,000 refugees in 2017, a number established by President Barack Obama. Trump has the authority to change the number for 2018. [Trump can change the number in 2017, on day one, will he?—ed]

Refugees arriving in Greater Cincinnati through Catholic Charities are coming from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, Bhutan, Syria, Iraq and Myanmar.

Check out what else they are doing through CLINIC (the Catholic Legal Immigration Network), a non-profit organization that depends on millions of your tax dollars too! They are giving ID cards out to those who have no legal identity in the US. Who is paying for this? You?

In January 2015, immigration attorney Allison Herre started as the local Catholic Charities’ agency director of Legal Immigration Services.

[….]

The event also provided an update on the MARCC ID card, issued by the Metropolitan Area Religious Coalition of Cincinnati and manufactured and distributed by Catholic Charities. It is recognized as legal identification by all city departments, including the police.

[….]

Card supporters say the card will improve public safety by providing people who otherwise do not have an ID card – people returning from prison, the homeless, immigrants, especially those living here without legal documentation.

Herre said her agency continues to advise clients to apply for the MARCC card and file for extensions of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. Known as DACA, it was created by an Obama executive order in 2012 to provide status to children brought illegally into the country and who have grown up in the United States. It allows them to apply for driver’s licenses and work permits.

See all of the CLINIC offices operating in your communities, here.
Below is a screenshot of one portion of the government grants received by Catholic Charities of Southwestern Ohio (USASpending.gov).

screenshot-141

If all of these Catholic organizations (USCCB, Catholic Charities and CLINIC) operated on truly private charitable giving, then we would have nothing to say about their activities, but it is the fact that they use our money (never report that fact to the public), so they can brag about their Christian charity, that is so offensive to me.