…..And, to rein-in the refugee resettlement contractors who have been lobbying hard on this bill to make it easier for more refugees and asylum seekers to enter the US, as well as give the contractors more of your tax dollars.
Senators Corker and Hoeven with adoring press being used by Schumer/Obama/Rubio and Grover Norquist and they don’t get it!
Erick Erickson at RedState postedthis commentary by Senator Ted Cruz—here we go again, voting on a monster (over 1000 pages) bill without sufficient time to read it. Why the rush—because the public is starting to catch on to the horrors in it!
And, if you are thinking it will be O.K. in the House forget it! They could pass anything in the House and when they go to conference committee, the conferees could take the whole Senate version as the final bill.
Erickson went on to post this list of the key swing Senators (and yes, he wants you to call the architects of the “deal” Corker and Hoeven too):
….and we (Catholic leaders) want more of your tax dollars!
Earlier this month the Vatican released a new study lecturing Catholics on xenophobia and how they should welcome immigrants and other displaced people. Fine, we should be good and decent people, but what really ticked me off was that there appears to be no mention of the indecent amount of money agencies of the Catholic Church receive from taxpayers in order for them to do their good works.
Are we to have no Christian compassion for the middle class taxpayer who might be working a couple of jobs to care for his/her family, but is forced to pay into the Church’s till through taxation? Maybe those struggling workers have other ideas about the charity they would like to give to others that doesn’t include the Catholic Church.
And, I’ll bet if you read the whole study about the plight of refugees and sufferers of human trafficking, you would find the root of the problem world wide—the ‘I’ word and the ‘M’ word missing altogether.
Cardinal Antonio Maria Veglio: Give us (the Catholic Church) your tax dollars so we can be charitable and lecture you about being xenophobic!
VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Catholic laity have an obligation to root out traces of xenophobia in their hearts and recognize refugees as their brothers and sisters — children of God whose dignity must be protected, said a new Vatican document.
“Welcoming Christ in Refugees and Forcibly Displaced Persons,” a document of pastoral guidelines for providing material and spiritual assistance to people forced to leave their homes was published June 6 by the Pontifical Council for Migrants and Travelers and the Pontifical Council Cor Unum, which promotes and coordinates Catholic charitable activity.
Since the mid-1980s, the document said, the debate surrounding refugees and other asylum seekers has become “a forum for political and administrative election purposes, which fed hostile and aggressive attitudes among the electorate.”
This is infuriating, and who helped the issue of kindness to immigrants become a “political and administrative election” issue—the Catholic Church by demanding taxpayers pay for the Church’s “charity” and forcing communities to take refugees without advance consultation. Human nature is such that there will be a negative reaction when being forced to do something. Rather than look into the policies of Catholic organizations that might be generating the anger, it is easier to call you xenophobic.
CNS continued:
In effect, countries are focused more on deterring newcomers from reaching their shores than they are on offering protection and a welcome to suffering people fleeing situations that threatened their lives and dignity, Cardinal Antonio Maria Veglio, president of the council for migrants and travelers, told reporters.
From a Catholic point of view, he said at a Vatican news conference, “every policy, initiative or intervention in this area must be inspired by the principle of the centrality and dignity of the human person.” [What about the human person who has to pay for your charity?—ed]
Readers, I have a whole bunch of Catholic pro-immigration news so what follows are some short takes. Please visit the sites for more information and to follow the links before you head off to church where you will surely be lectured today to call your Senators on S.744 (which contains a slush fund for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops among others).
Catholic elites spend millions to sell illegal alien amnesty!
This is a story penned by Brenda Walker back in April. Walker published a great pie chart to illustrate her post and I’ve been looking for an opportunity to re-post it.
From Catholic Charities at a Glance (2010). Yes, those are billions in government revenue!
The Catholic church has upped its bankroll to wreck American law and sovereignty. It has added $800,000 to its previous amnesty spending of $3 million, since opening the borders to millions more hispanic Catholics is highly desirable for the bishops.
Not that it’s new for Vaticrats to work to subvert a nation that has been very generous to them. The Catholic hierarchy believe their organization supersedes mere laws and nation-states, particularly when the church sees a way to fill its empty pews. Immigration-fueled demographic change has supplied the Catholic church with more credulous worshippers, helpful to replace the many Americans who have left the church out of disgust with its pervert priest problem. (Around 10 percent of Americans are former Catholics, according to Pew research.)
‘Catholic Bishops promote national suicide’ a must-read at the Thinking Housewife! Hat tip: Jewel
Christopher Manion’s 2011 Crisis magazine article, “The Catholic Bishops and Immigration Reform” is an indictment of the malfeasance of the “American” (italics entirely intentional) Catholic Bishops concerning immigration and the United States’ borders that is timelier than ever. I highly recommend it as the execrable Charles Schumer, boy-idiot Marco Rubio, man-lunatic John McCain and light-in-the-loafers Lindsey Graham conspire with Barack Hussein Obama, the Democratic Party and the Republican establishment – bought by such as Sheldon Adelson and Mark Zuckerberg — to destroy the United States through their illegal-alien-amnestying, “guest”-worker-increasing, legal-and-illegal-immigration-increasing, immigration enforcement-gutting S. 744 bill.
Catholic Charities volunteer, Mark Krikorian, fired!
Mark Krikorian, himself from an immigrant family, is now director of theCenter for Immigration Studies and was featured this past week in a Washington Post Style Section profile about his research and policy work in limiting immigration to America. He volunteered his time at Catholic Charities(demonstrating there is nothing xenophobic about him!) and VDARE reportshe has been fired from his charitablework in the wake of the WaPo feature story.
Krikorian’s organization writes policy reports and criticizes government programs, yet the Catholic elite (the “good” people!) can’t counter with good policy work, they must denigrate critics by calling them xenophobic or racist.
In Europe the Jesuits lecture/lobby too!
Be sure to have a look at this story from the Jesuits in Europe—Catholics knee-deep in government policy there too. I wonder if they have a taxpayer-funded slush fund for their charitable work lobbying the EU (just as the Bishops take from Caesar in America? ) Does anyone know?
Tomorrow! Call your US Senators and tell them to vote NO! on S.744!
And, in almost every case it’s Islamic-generated chaos and violence they are escaping.
UNHCR Guterres, a longtime Socialist who never lets a good crisis go to waste!
Actually the High Commissioner, Antonio Guterres didn’t say that. He never would say something so politically incorrect.
Do you know who did say something taboo?Sarah Palin. In a speech in Washington, DC last weekend, Palin said, referencing the conflict in Syria, these are all Muslims squabbling, so maybe we should just let Allah sort it out.
Here is the obligatory World Refugee Day story from the UN:
GENEVA, Switzerland – War and other crises drove one person from their home every 4.1 seconds in 2012, the UN’s refugee agency said Wednesday, June 19, pushing the number of people forcibly displaced to a two-decade high of 45.2 million.
All told, the UNCHR’s annual figures showed 1.1 million people fled across international borders in 2012, while 6.5 million were displaced within their homelands.
“This means one in each 4.1 seconds. So each time you blink, another person is forced to flee,” Antonio Guterres, the UN high commissioner for refugees, told reporters.
The total figure of 45.2 million included 28.8 million internally displaced people, 15.4 million border-crossing refugees, and 937,000 asylum seekers.
Muslim countries, Muslim countries and more Muslim countries creating refugees!
“War is the main reason for this very high number of refugees and people internally displaced. Fifty-five percent of them correspond to the well-known situations of Afghanistan, Somalia, Iraq, Sudan, and Syria,” Guterres said.
Overall, Afghanistan remained the world’s top producer of refugees, a position it has held for 32 years. Worldwide, one refugee in four is Afghan.
Guterres also blamed conflicts in Mali, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Central African Republic.
Guterres then discussed the latest Muslim vs. Muslim conflict in Syria and reported that they aren’t ready yet to send Syrians to your towns!
“We witness a multiplication of new conflicts, and it seems that old conflicts never die,” he said.
Guterres pointed out that the number of people who had fled the spiraling violence in Syria had soared from 650,000 at the end of 2012 to around 1.6 million now, surpassing last year’s total from all conflicts.
The UNHCR has warned that Syrian refugee numbers could hit 3.5 million by the end of this year, while there are also fears that the number currently displaced within the country, 4.25 million, will also climb.
Syrian refugees have flooded into neighboring Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey and Iraq, stretching those nations’ ability to cope.
Guterres urged the international community to help shoulder the load, although he said UNHCR-brokered resettlement programs for Syrians in rich countries were not yet on the cards.
NOT YET, but they sure are sending out feelers as we learned recently, here. Although that news came as a big surprise to the Senate Republican brain trust of Rubio and Graham, here.
This is the second part of my report from the Pennsylvania Refugee Conference which I attended earlier this week in Lancaster, PA. If you haven’t read my earlier report it might be useful to check it out and then come back here for part II.
One of the many things that I found revealing about the conference was that problems with the program to resettle over 100,000 “refugees and asylees” to your towns and cities each year was not discussed (your classic hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil!). There was no direct discussion about problems with assimilation, tensions in communities, crime problems, cost to local communities, school conflicts, housing shortages for refugees etc. except for one session dedicated to how to silence people who might like to complain—the keynote speaker talked about how ‘Welcoming America’ was working to get YOUR minds right about your new refugee neighbors (and, they received a federal grant from ORR to do it!).
Before Susan Downs-Karkos from ‘Welcoming America’ spoke, we had been alerted by the Office of Refugee Resettlement’s Director of Placement, Mitiku Ashebir that (gasp!) “three pockets of resistance against new arrivals” had developed. He assured the gathering it was not widespread and that Pennsylvania, thankfully, was not one of them. Drum roll please! Here are the pockets of resistance and Mr. Ashebir’s brief description of the unwelcoming problems:
New Hampshire—some mayors have problems, said Ashebir
David Lubell, founder of ‘Welcoming America,’ doing work for George Soros!
Georgia—budget reductions for some service providers
Tennessee—they want to control arrival numbers! Imagine that!
But, Welcoming America is on the case! They want to “transform” communities by “Building a Nation of Neighbors”!
Downs-Karkos described her organization’s job as “promoting understanding and support for refugees.” The whole concept is that YOU must improve your attitude to your new neighbors, not that the refugees must learn to fit into American society. We are a Nation of immigrants, they are coming, so get used to it was the basic message.
The refugees and immigrants are the seeds and your community is the soil into which they are being planted is how she described what is happening. Her group is working on improving the soil.
She said ‘Welcoming America’ was created by David Lubell of TENNESSEE who had successfully launched ‘Welcoming Tennessee’ a few years ago where he mobilized support for refugees in Nashville and Shelbyville and promoted the propaganda film—Welcome to Shelbyville. If you are a new reader here you might want to visit our many posts where we traced the history of that deceptive film from its origin when a Hard Left documentary film group was funded to visit Shelbyville (where community tensions had developed around a large influx of Somali refugees who had arrived there to work for Tyson Foods)–-it is a classic case study in how to produce propaganda.
“Is everything perfect in Tennessee now?” asked Downs-Karkos. No, she answered herself, “but it is improving.” Really?
Follow the money!
Here is a summary from Welcoming America’s websiteabout how the organization got its start (with the help of George Soros). Our friends in Tennessee will be amazed at the spin about their state! “Changing communities” indeed. I wonder does David Lubell understand what just happened in Manchester, TN last week?
The history of ‘Welcoming America’:
In 2005 the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition (TIRRC), inspired by the Iowa campaign’s message and approach, started to make plans for a “Welcoming Tennessee Initiative” (WTI). Since launching in 2006, The Welcoming Tennessee Initiative – the model for all subsequent welcoming initiatives – has substantially improved the climate for immigrants within the state. Statewide polling by Middle Tennessee State University has demonstrated an increase in positive opinions towards immigrants, and thousands of Tennessee residents have become active supporters of Tennessee’s increased diversity as a result of the project.In 2009 WTI was awarded the E Pluribus Unum Prize for exceptional immigrant integration initiatives. [LOL! an award!—ed]
The success of Welcoming Tennessee inspired several additional immigrant support organizations across the country to follow its lead. In July of 2007, seven organizations interested in starting Welcoming campaigns met to combine efforts and expand Welcoming campaigns past Tennessee. Hosting the meeting was Four Freedoms Fund, a funding collaborative that has played a crucial role in the formation and development of Welcoming America.
Four Freedoms Fund: This organization was designed to serve as a conduit through which large foundations could fund state-based open-borders organizations more flexibly and quickly.
Longtime readers know that Soros has had his proteges installed as Asst. Secretaries of State for Population, Refugees and Migration throughout the Obama Administration. Type ‘George Soros’ into our search function for more.
A chuckle for Tennesseans—Tom Negri is on the board of ‘Welcoming America’! You may remember the story from back in 2009: Negri, who manages the Loews Vanderbilt Hotel in downtown Nashville (hotels need cheap immigrant labor and that’s why so many are behind open borders), broke a contract just days before a conference that I and others (from around the country) had registered to attend saying we might be a danger to their other guests. Maybe the Muslim protesters would be a danger, but not us! The conference went on peacefully at another “welcoming” hotel!
Negri’s move was a stupid one because it just confirmed for all of those who knew about it (including thousands of readers of Newsmax) what dirty tricks the open borders advocates and Lefties are willing to use to silence speech they don’t like!
Bottomline is that ‘Welcoming America’ is spreading throughout the US–they are “community organizers”with affiliates in twenty plus states, here.If you are in one of those states, sign up for the group and begin learning what they are planning for your community. And, then spread the word!
For new readers: If you would like to learn more about those pockets of resistance in New Hampshire, Tennessee and Georgia, simply type the state name into our search function and dozens of posts will be available. Also, note that we have a separate category on Nashville (50 posts!) because it has been such a controversial site for refugee resettlement (by Catholic Charities!) and Islamic activism.
I was away yesterday at a Refugee meeting in Lancaster, PA which I’ll tell you about shortly, and when I heard the news during my long drive home that Amnesty for 11-20 million illegal aliens might be on the horizon I wondered to myself what that will do to refugee resettlement.
Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, a leading opponent of “comprehensive” immigration reform.
The contractors, here are the top nine, who bring (some say drop-off) refugees in your towns and cities are struggling to find work for legal refugees (half are not finding any work!), and decent apartments (not in slums!), and to get them enrolled in welfare programs, and if the monster S.744 passes there will be a slush fund so these very same contractors will get federal money to process even more immigrants through a failing system.
Other than more money coming their way, I can’t for the life of me understand why those nine major contractors and their hundreds of subcontractors are lobbying for amnesty and the inevitable job competition for the legal refugees they can’t properly manage now!
I also predict an even greater public backlash against refugees if amnesty comes to pass because the general public will feel that immigrants are being shoved down their throats and taking their jobs. The average American citizen does not understand the difference between the federal programs and the people they permit to enter the US.
Here is what Roy Beck at NumbersUSA reported about the vote yesterday. If you are not on Numbers’ e-mail alert list, go to their website and please sign up.
DEAR FRIENDS,
We have a ton of work ahead of us, but you have done an amazing job thus far with your phone calls and faxes and personal appearances.
The Senate a couple of minutes ago passed the Motion to Proceed to bring S. 744 to the floor for debate.
Two hours ago, 82 Senators voted YES to stop a filibuster. That vote allowed the Motion to Proceed.
But don’t be alarmed by that number, even though it is far above the 60 votes needed on the all-important final filibuster vote later this month.
A number of the Senators who voted to proceed have announced over the last few days that they will eventually vote against the b ill unless it is significantly changed on the floor. And the changes they are demanding are being called unacceptable on the floor right now by Chief Amnestymeister Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.).
We have no doubt that your tens of thousands of calls the last two days planted very powerful seeds among many of the YES voters today that makes them realize that they are going to have a very hard time voting YES at the end when the question is not debate but passage.
The 15 Senators who today said that this bill is so hopelessly out of touch with the needs of America that it shouldn’t even be debated included four Senators who a couple of weeks ago were being touted in the media as prime swing voters who would push the final vote over 60:
Kirk of Illinois
Crapo of Idaho
Risch of Idaho
Barrasso of Wyoming
Congratulations to all of you from those three states who have done such a remarkable job of helping those Senators understand both where the voters are in your state and also the moral and practical imperative of stopping this bill.
Back in 2007, we also lost big on this procedural first vote to bring that amnesty bill to the floor. But we built on the solid opposition of a strong bloc of Senators to kill the amnesty on the final vote later.
HERE ARE TODAY’S CHAMPIONS WHO TRIED TO STOP THE AMNESTY BILL IN ITS TRACKS
ALABAMA: Sessions & Shelby
ARKANSAS: Boozman
IDAHO: Crapo & Risch
ILLINOIS: Kirk
IOWA: Grassley
KANSAS: Roberts
LOUISIANA: Vitter
OKLAHOMA: Inhofe
SOUTH CAROLINA: Scot
TEXAS: Cruz
UTAH: Lee
WYOMING: Barrasso & Enzi
Everybody else voted YES, except for three who didn’t vote:
ALASKA: Murkowski
ARIZONA: McCain
OKLAHOMA: Coburn
I have no idea at this time why they didn’t vote. Murkowski and Coburn have both made strong nods toward voting for the bill recently but have been hammered by the voters.
Senator Jeff Session a champion for common sense! The numbers are just too high!
Sen. Sessions (R-Ala.) did a magnificent job in his speech on the floor today, speaking up not only for the 20 million unemployed but for the millions more Americans whose real wages have been driven downward by 30 yea rs of high immigration.
He painted the picture very clearly that this is a bill about helping those affluent Americans who happen also to be greedy at the expense of the most struggling members of our society, and at the expense of the taxpayers.
If you haven’t gotten in gear yet to oppose S.744, the next couple of weeks are critical. The Senate will proceed now to floor debate, so contact your US Senators. The House will be crafting a bill, so contact your Member of the House—NOW! Tell them to stop the bipartisan Obama/Schumer/Rubio destruction of America.
By the way, at RRW we believe at minimum all refugee and asylum changes should be stripped from the bill because the program is in dire need of Congressional review on its own—especially in light of the Boston Marathon bombing by a political refugee.
Addendum: If you’ve never watched Roy Beck’s video—Immigration by the Numbers—take a few minutes and watch it now.
