Pittsburgh: Jewish agency and Islamic Center working together to bring more Syrians to the city

02/12/2016 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We’ve told you previously that apparently the city of Pittsburgh has run out of American poor people and is looking to import more poverty from the Middle East, Africa and Asia so at least their poverty would be diverse.
The mayor, Bill Peduto, wrote to Obama in September looking especially for thousands of Syrians.
I’ll bet African American voters helped put this guy in office and they don’t get it that he is now bringing in competition for low income housing and jobs for low-skill workers. (The city is 26% African American, here)
This is the latest from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (housing and jobs are in short supply, no kidding?):

While the city of Pittsburgh might be welcoming more refugees from war-torn Syria, it is local agencies such as Jewish Family & Children’s Service and the Islamic Center of Pittsburgh that are working to make their lives here possible.

The challenges, Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto said, are housing and jobs.

Leslie Aizeman 2 — Leslie Aizenman of the local Jewish resettlement office explains how her organization uses your tax dollars to find housing and jobs for refugees.

“It’s not the city government that does this work,” Mr. Peduto said at “A Syrian Summit” Thursday night at East Liberty Presbyterian Church. “It’s the agencies … they look at those two critical factors.”

[….]

Dozens of people attended the meeting, sponsored by the Southwest PA division of the National Association of Social Workers, to ask Mr. Peduto and other speakers what Pittsburgh is doing for Syrian refugees and to advocate for them to live here. Four families already do.

[….]

The city will be able to take 500 refugees — not just Syrians — this year, he said.

Continue reading here.
Jewish Family and Children’s Service of Pittsburgh is a sub-contractor of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, here. Don’t forget, HIAS is the organization that wrote a report in 2013 which urged the Southern Poverty Law Center to investigate (and label as racists, bigots and xenophobes) anyone who had problems with the social and economic upheaval from refugee resettlement in their communities.
Pennsylvania is in the top FIVE states ‘welcoming’ mostly Muslim Syrians, see here.
Click here for everything we have said about Pittsburgh in previous posts.

Greenwich, CT not getting refugees anytime soon (so they think!)

02/10/2016 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Yesterday we told you about the Sanders ‘plant’ in a Trump townhall meeting in New Hampshire. See that story first so you know what we are talking about here.

Screenshot (23) — Darren Ornitz a bearded Sanders supporter and former resident of Greenwich, CT implies Greenwich could get Syrian refugees.

The ‘plant’ Darren Ornitz implied that Greenwich, CT (where he ostensibly grew up) would soon see Syrian refugees resettled there. Since Greenwich is an upscale town, I’m figuring that is unlikely despite the fact that Connecticut elected officials are all for “welcoming” large numbers of Africans, Asians and Middle Easterners to the state (see Senator Richard Blumenthal here with CAIR CT).
Apparently alarmed by what Ornitz said, the Greenwich Time was quick to make sure the citizens there were safe for the time being.

Greenwich officials said Tuesday that they were not aware of any plans to settle Syrian refugees in town, a day after a Greenwich man pressed Donald Trump on his controversial immigration policy.

The unnamed man, who identified himself as being from Greenwich, asked Trump at a campaign event Monday in Salem, N.H., whether the Republican presidential candidate’s refugee policy would bar Syrian children from the country.

[….]

Trump’s stance is contentious, with many of his opponents disputing his characterization of Syrian refugees.

But the question that the Greenwich man asked Trump appears to be a moot one – at least for the moment – in Greenwich. Both Town Hall and school district officials said that they were not aware of any plans to relocate Syrian families to the town.

I recommend that the town fathers stay on top of the issue.

blumenthal and CAIR CT — Keep an eye on Senator Blumenthal (here with CAIR CT director) who wants to make security screening easier for Syrian refugees to get into the US!

Although the town’s wealth may be an impediment (rich, politically well-connected, people don’t want refugees in their towns), it is no guarantee it couldn’t happen.
State Department data base…
Connecticut has gotten 3,397 refugees since Obama took office. The largest numbers went to Hartford and New Haven. None went to Greenwich.
I was surprised to see that Connecticut got 479 Somalis. And, even more surprised to see that 61 Syrians have already been placed in the state (the largest number of those went to New Haven).
Go here for more on Connecticut.

Lutheran refugee contractor convinces SD legislator to withdraw bill

02/09/2016 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Ho hum! No real surprise here. A South Dakota legislator had introduced a bill that would have attempted to rein-in the refugee program in that state, but Betty Oldencamp, Lutheran Social Services of SD Prez convinced him they were taking very good care of the citizens of South Dakota and that there wouldn’t be terrorists and other undesirables coming to SD through the program.
The bill was unlikely to go anywhere because the REPUBLICAN governor was all for more refugees colonizing the state anyway.
Since South Dakota is a Wilson-Fish state, he has a ready-made opportunity to sue the federal government using a states’ rights argument, here, and has not taken it. A surefire way to find out where your governor stands on refugees in twelve US states is whether any of them agree to be a plaintiff on the lawsuit crafted by the Thomas More Law Center. So far, no brave governor is willing to defend the Constitution.

map-refugees-distorted — This very cool map shows the states getting more refugees as a percentage of their populations. North and South Dakota are by far the most disproportionate. Idaho and New Hampshire not far behind. https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2015/05/14/36144-refugees-admitted-to-us-in-first-seven-months-of-fy2015/

I’ll betcha that there are some powerful special interests, big businesses, the Chamber of Commerce making sure they get a continuous supply of cheap labor flowing to SD! Security, economic stability and cultural cohesiveness be damned. Follow the money! Find out which business interests are donating to elected officials!

LSS South Dakota is rich!

By the way, LSS South Dakota is rolling in YOUR money. Check out USA Spending.gov. Yikes! Almost $40 MILLION of your tax dollars have gone (via grants and sub-grants) to this one state ‘religious’ non-profit since 2007.
From Rapid City Journal:

House Bill 1158, which sought to give the South Dakota governor the power to keep refugees out of the state, is dead.

The proposed law has been tabled by its lead sponsor, state Rep. Scott Craig, R-Rapid City.

BettyOldenkamp36 — Betty Oldencamp, President of LSS South Dakota convinced legislators that they have everything under control. What a coincidence! Oldencamp is on the Board of Directors of the Chamber of Commerce in Sioux Falls. http://www.siouxfallschamber.com/board-of-directors.cfm

“That’s a nice way to say the sponsor withdrew the bill,” Craig said in a phone interview Monday, adding that HB 1158, which was scheduled for a committee hearing on Monday, will not come up again during this legislative session.

Craig said he made the decision to abandon the bill after a weekend conversation with his bill’s state Senate co-sponsor, Sen. Bruce Rampelberg, R-Rapid City, and Betty Oldencamp, president of Lutheran Social Services.

Apart from granting the governor extraordinary powers, HB 1158 would have created an infrastructure within the South Dakota Department of Social Services to monitor and coordinate the resettlement of refugees, a function that Lutheran Social Services already performs.

“Everything that bill attempted to secure, they already do, so it’s unnecessary,” Craig said. “We’ve got a phenomenal process. Everything (Oldencamp) described is very thorough.”

Continue reading here.
And, go here, for more on problems with the refugee program in the Dakotas. Don’t miss the 2014 Iraqi refugee sex trafficking case, here.

Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society hires grassroots organizer to get American Jews' minds right

02/08/2016 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Her job is to organize the American Jewish community to “welcome the stranger,” in this case Muslims from the Middle East and Africa (because they have run out of Jews and Christians to resettle).

The Times of Israel has a very lengthy story on their new Vice President Rabbi Jennie Rosenn. I encourage you to read it because it is very informative, but was virtually impossible to snip for some reason.
Rabbi Rosenn’s job is to try to bring around the American Jewish community to support Muslim refugee admission to the US. The article says that some Jews (understandably!) got skittish after the Paris and San Bernardino terrorist attacks.
And, then they have to counter the likes of us (bigots, racists and nativists).
Here are just a few things new readers need to know about the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (they want to be called HIAS):

In 2013 they received a grant from the JM Kaplan Fund to write a $35,000 report about us.
They advocate sending the goons at the Southern Poverty Law Center after us! Click here.
They lobbied hard for so-called “comprehensive immigration reform” (aka Gang of Eight bill) in the Senate.
In 2014, they re-branded and dropped the word “Hebrew” from their title and are known only as HIAS or HIAS Inc. now (what was that all about?).
Here we learn that they don’t want money and supplies for Syrians, they want the American Jewish community to lobby for more refugees to be brought to America.
They want 100,000 Syrians in here by the time Obama leaves office!
HIAS (no friend of Netanyahu) blasts Israel for attempting to close its borders and deport illegal aliens, here.
As one of nine major federal resettlement contractors*** they receive millions of your tax dollars every year to do this work. From USASpending.gov: Under the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society they received just short of $135 MILLION from the US taxpayer since 2007, and then when you search HIAS there is another $59 MILLION there in grants and sub-grants.
They could not be doing this work without YOUR money.

Click here for dozens more posts on the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS).
***The contractors

Alabama governor gets on wrong side of CAIR with comments about refugees

02/06/2016 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

In his State of the State address earlier this week, Alabama Governor Robert Bentley spoke disparagingly about the secrecy that surrounds the resettlement of refugees into 48 US states (they want 50, but so far Wyoming and Montana are holdouts) including his own. Of course, the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) pounced.

Hadeed 2 — Khaula Hadeed recently spoke at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Her topic: Islamophobia is it real? https://www.facebook.com/events/1004104292983029/

But, before I get to the news, let me say that this governor could do an awful lot more to help with restoring states’ rights regarding this program than simply spouting words.
He is one of twelve governors who have a ready-made 10th Amendment case just waiting for him to put his name on at the Thomas More Law Center. It would only take one brave governor to test the legality of what the federal government has been doing to towns and cities for years.

If the governor is going to bring on the wrath of CAIR, he might as well do it with something that matters!

Alabama readers tell your governor to sign on to the Thomas More lawsuit!
Here then is the latest news from the Montgomery Advertiser:

MONTGOMERY — A Muslim advocacy group on Thursday asked to meet with Gov. Robert Bentley about statements he made on a refugee resettlement program that the group says were “derogatory and dehumanizing.”

During his State of the State address on Tuesday, Bentley criticized the federal refugee resettlement program for not disclosing refugees’ background information to government officials in the states where they settle. Bentley alluded to terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California, and said “among those killers was a refugee from a terrorist nation.” The governor later said, “Many have entered our state from terrorist nations.“

Khaula Hadeed, executive director of the Alabama chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said in a statement that labeling a predominantly Muslim country as a terrorist nation promotes prejudice.

Changing America by changing the people!
This is not only about Bentley disparaging Muslims. Hadeed and CAIR understand the need to continue the UN/US state Department Refugee Admissions Program an important source of Muslim immigrants they need for the Hijrah (the migration).

Hadeed should take up the issue of ‘terrorist nations’ with Obama’s US State Department!

Just yesterday a reader asked me which countries are ‘state sponsors of terrorism.’ I have to admit I had never looked that up, but was then surprised to learn that there are ONLY three designated as such and they were designated decades ago: Iran, Sudan and Syria!
So when Bentley refers to terrorist nations, and is discussing Syria, he has it right.