Category: The Opposition

UNHCR says US has pledged “open-ended resettlement numbers” for Syrians

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

What the heck does “open-ended” mean?

We have been puzzled in recent weeks about why there is no announcement from the US State Department about the number of Syrians they expect to resettle in the US this fiscal year (the fiscal year ends Sept. 30th).  As regular visitors to RRW  know, the contractors*** want 12,000-15,000 this year.

As of May 31st we have resettled 42 Syrians as “refugees.”   And, there isn’t much squawking coming from the contractors.  Do they know something we don’t know?

Here is the news release from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees:

Socialist UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres. https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2013/07/26/unhcr-guterres-looking-to-resettle-tens-of-thousands-of-syrians/

Geneva, 27 June 2014 – New offers of resettlement or humanitarian admissions for Syrian refugees were today pledged by Belgium, Ireland, Switzerland and Uruguay. In all, 565 new places were announced during a high-level meeting of 42 countries, taking the total number of offers received since mid-2013 to more than 34,700 places. In addition, the United States has pledged open-ended resettlement numbers.

The majority of offers to date come from European states, with Germany having offered over half the global total. [Invasion of Europe!—ed].   In all 22 countries have offered places for Syrian refugees so far.

High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres said: “I hope this momentum continues over the coming months. Resettlement and other humanitarian admission programmes are critical and can be life-saving for the victims of the conflict in Syria.

Now, go to the US Refugee Admission numbers for this year (so far, as of May 31).

Obama set the ceiling for admissions from the Near East/South Asia at 33,000 for the fiscal year that ends Sept. 30th.  (See Presidential Determination for FY2014.)

We have taken 11,660 Iraqis so far.   6,005 came from Bhutan, and smaller numbers from other countries in the region bringing the total to 20,278.  There are also 2,000 spaces labeled as ‘unallocated reserve.’   It is those 2,000 spaces that most observers believe will be available to Syrians.

There is no such thing as open-ended resettlement, EXCEPT as this President has shown us time and again, he can make law since most members of the Legislative branch of government have abrogated their duty under the Constitution and are letting him get away with it!

Will the announcement on Syrians arriving in large numbers during the remaining 3 months of the fiscal year be the next stunner out of the lawless Obama Administration?

***The contractors:

Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society praises federal agencies for “responding to anti-refugee resettlement backlash”

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society is one of the nine top federal resettlement contractors.***  Thanks to Joanne for spotting their published testimony to the US State Department last month.  Daily readers know that the State Department has refused to make public any testimony they received.

The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society’s statement is here.  Check it out!

Melanie Nezer, author of the report on anti-refugee backlash is calling for 75,000 Syrians to be resettled in the US. And, they wonder why there is a backlash! https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2014/03/29/hebrew-immigrant-aid-society-us-should-bring-75000-syrians-to-us-over-next-5-years/

Pockets of Resistance!

The most interesting/amusing part, at least to us at RRW, is a segment of the testimony praising the State Department (PRM) and the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) for “responding” to the “anti-refugee resettlement backlash”

(I assume by responding they mean that those federal agencies shoveled more of your $$$ to contractors to write reports and hire the likes of ‘Welcoming America’ to help community organizers get your minds right about the growing crush of refugees resettled to your towns and cities).

Here is what they say:

They thank PRM and ORR for “responding to the anti-refugee resettlement backlash that has emerged to threaten the long-term viability of the US Refugee Admissions Program…”

Cool! They have written a whole report about “pockets of resistance.”

They go on to tout their own report written by Melanie Nezer and entitled, ‘Resettlement at Risk: Meeting Emerging Challenges to Refugee Resettlement in local communities’ (a report which I can’t wait to read!).

Other items of interest in the testimony include expressions of:

* Happiness that LGBTI’s are getting in to the US.

* Happiness about relaxed terror screening.

* Happiness about the fact that PRM reached its ceiling of 70,000 refugees admitted last year (they don’t always reach the CEILING).

*Unhappiness that we aren’t letting the Syrians in.  They want 75,000 Syrians over five years.

*Unhappiness that we aren’t expanding family reunification to suit them.

*Unhappiness that not enough refugees from the Ukraine and Colombia have been let in yet.

There is other stuff too, have a look.

***The Contractors:

Major media mentions refugee resettlement moratorium calls in New England

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Thanks to everyone who has sent me one version or another of this story about calls for refugee resettlement moratoriums in Springfield, Mass, Lewiston, Maine, and Manchester, NH.***    Regular readers here know the problems in those three New England cities well, so it is not news to us.

However….

What is news is that the news (mainstream media) is actually paying attention and making connections!  I don’t know which came first, the Fox News story (Fox does credit AP), or the AP story.

But, I’m thrilled to see the word “moratorium” used other than on the pages of RRW!

I haven’t enough time to analyze the articles for you, so please read them!  There is one thing that caught my eye, however, that needs to be mentioned.  The US State Department and its contractors choose resettlement cities with virtually no input from the locals (elected or otherwise), any reference to “stakeholders” usually means only FRIENDLY stakeholders (for the record, I hate that word)!

Daniel Langenkamp (right) Public affairs adviser at US State Dept. PRM http://www.linkedin.com/pub/daniel-langenkamp/1a/197/563

Once they have established a seed community of certain ethnic groups they then throw up their hands and say—what can we do? Families must be reunited and we can’t stop refugees from moving where there are ethnic enclaves of their kind of people.  You see their cop-out in these stories when State Department spokesman Daniel Langenkamp says this:

Such requests [for a moratorium—ed] are rare, said Daniel Langenkamp, a department spokesman.

“We make every effort to work with local officials and other stakeholders to ensure the resettlement of refugees is acceptable,” he said.  [If everything went so well there would never have been a RRW!—ed]

The Department, he said, does not place refugees unless an area is equipped to handle them. [LOL!–ed] The government’s work with refugees in Springfield is mostly about family reunification, and it cannot keep families from moving there if they are placed elsewhere, he said.

He doesn’t mention that other locales have asked for moratoriums as well.  I’m thinking of other “pockets of resistance” like Clarkston, Georgia and Amarillo, TX among others.

Note to any city contemplating “welcoming” refugees, remember this!  Once a seed community is established, the extended family comes, and there is no stopping it!  Any elected official calling for a slow-down or outright moratorium will be demonized!

See my ten reasons why a MORATORIUM is needed! —all the more important now that the border is being overwhelmed with mostly teenaged boys seeking “asylum.”

*** Search RRW for each of those three cities and find dozens of posts (spanning several years) on problems in each.

 

 

Who is to blame for the crisis on the border with so-called “unaccompanied minors” invading by the thousands?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The list is long!  And, Obama surely tops it!  But, here are some others who have brought us to this awful place in our Nation’s history:  Senator Dianne Feinstein, Former Senator Sam Brownback (now governor of Kansas), the Office of Refugee Resettlement, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops,  and Edwin Larios Muñoz (a convicted murderer)!  Huh?

Edwin Larios Munoz, an “unaccompanied alien child” who was convicted twice of murdering a woman in whose home he was placed for foster care by a refugee contractor.

Editor:  See also our post yesterday, here, for additional historical background and why the soft treatment of illegal alien teenagers by the Office of Refugee Resettlement has served as a magnet for more to break into America.

Last night a reader directed us to this 2006 article at VDARE by Thomas Allen which spells out the early history of how the illegal alien “children” first came under the care of the Office of Refugee Resettlement.

Allen tells us about Edwin Larios Muñoz the poster-boy who tearfully testified in Congress about his supposedly brutal treatment at the hands of the Immigration and Naturalization Service and was featured on the cover of an August 2002 issue of Parade magazine (I could not find the cover—ed)

Only three years later (2005) Honduran cover-boy Munoz was arrested and convicted of murdering Silvia Sanchez-Parada and her unborn child.

Read the VDARE article and then see some news prior to 2006.

First, from the San Diego Union Tribune from August 2, 2002 (amazing the story is still available!):

Each year thousands of children under 18 try to sneak into the United States. While many make it, many are caught and turned over to the Immigration and Naturalization Service as “unaccompanied minors.” In San Diego alone, the INS processed 390 children last year. This year, the pace has quickened, with 234 arrested through July 31.

As the numbers rise, the INS is increasingly under fire for the way it handles the children.

One of the chief critics is California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who has sponsored a bill that would remove the children from INS jurisdiction and transfer their care to a new office in the Department of Health and Human Services.

Feinstein and others have highlighted the San Diego case of Honduran immigrant Edwin Larios Muñoz, who was arrested Aug. 19, 2000, at the San Ysidro border crossing. Edwin is featured in an article in today’s issue of Parade magazine, and he testified in front of a Senate committee in February about his experiences at Juvenile Hall, where the INS housed him.

In his tearful testimony, Edwin said that at age 14 he was surrounded by violent juveniles facing serious charges such as murder and rape, witnessed numerous fights and was hit with sticks by probation officers.

Munoz not subjected to any cruel punishment!

Alan Crogan, the head of the Probation Department, disputed Edwin’s claims of mistreatment at Juvenile Hall, where he was held from Aug. 29, 2000 until Feb. 27, 2001.

Crogan said Edwin was kept in a special unit with other non-citizen Latinos and allowed the same privileges as other detainees. He attended school and was allowed the standard recreation time of two hours a day.

“He was not subjected to any kinds of cruel and unusual punishment,” Crogan said.

Nonetheless, Feinstein’s bill then became part of the Bush reorganization of Homeland Security.

In the meantime, however, Feinstein’s bill is moving forward. Last week, it was moved out of the Senate Government Affairs Committee as part of legislation to form the Department of Homeland Security.

So who was meting out “cruel and unusual punishment?”

Feinstein’s star witness was later tried and convicted (again), and here, of brutally murdering a woman and her unborn baby in a home where he rented a room.   Munoz was under the care at the time of Bethany Christian Services a subcontractor of one of the top nine federal contractors—Church World Service.

Attorney for Munoz said:

….his client had been here only a month through a Bethany Christian Services refugee program.

There are a lot of reports on the case, google them, if you want to spend another minute on this horrible story.

See all of our coverage for several years on the so-called “unaccompanied alien minors” here.

Springfield Mass. Mayor pleads with federal elected officials to support moratorium on refugee resettlement for his city

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

A “pocket of resistance!”

We have written since last summer about Mayor Domenic Sarno’s pleas to slow or stop the flow of impoverished third worlders to Springfield and no one is listening to the Mayor.

Mayor Domenic Sarno: I am not cold-hearted! (Answering the loaded question!).

 

 

This should be a lesson for any city contemplating “welcoming” refugees—once the flow has started and the contractors are set up in your town or city, they DO NOT STOP.

This article tells us why—family reunification cannot be questioned and there is no incentive for the contractor to stop the flow.

Once a seed community has been established, the contractors are paid to resettle family members—it is called family reunification and anyone who opposes reuniting the poor families is treated like a cold-hearted SOB.   Are you listening Wyoming?

From MassLive:

SPRINGFIELD – Mayor Domenic Sarno has renewed his request for a moratorium on new refugees in Springfield after learning that possibly 70 more will be resettled here in the coming year.

Sarno raised his concerns in a letter submitted Thursday to U.S. Rep. Richard E. Neal, of Springfield, with copies sent to U.S. Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey, and Gov. Deval Patrick.   [Good luck getting any help from that trio!—ed]

[….]

In his three-page letter, Sarno asked Neal for assistance in encouraging the area agencies to have a moratorium on new refugees in Springfield “until the City is able to adequately address the impact of further refugee placement, and, in the interest of fairness to all involved, until other communities accept some percentage of the displaced refuguees.”

A Jewish agency and the Lutherans are doing the resettling in Springfield and they call the shots—not the local government!

The Jewish Family Service of Western Massachusetts and the Lutheran Social Services of New England serve as the refugee resettlement agencies in the region.

In response to the city’s request for information, Jewish Family Service stated in a recent email that it “is proposing to resettle 250 individuals to Hampden County” in the coming year, including 35 individuals in Springfield. The number includes adult and children.

“Of this number, we will only be resettling refugee families in Springfield with existing ‘U.S. Tie’ family members or family reunification,” said Mohamud Mohamed, who is New America Program director for Jewish Family Service.

By the way, for the third year in a row, I’ve called for a Moratorium on refugee resettlement for many of the same reasons Mayor Sarno is.   Here are my ten reasons submitted to the US State Department most recently last month.

And, here, a former refugee worker from Massachusetts told the US State Department the same thing!

Now with the crisis on the border of the so-called asylum seekers from Central America, it is all the more reason for Congress to halt the whole darn refugee program until there is a thorough investigation and reforms are initiated.

More “pockets of resistance” tomorrow!