Category: The Opposition

Maryland Delegate: “…money is a principal driver of the foreign governments’ interest in immigration reform.”

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Editors note:  I posted this yesterday at Potomac Tea Party Report but since we frequently write about “Temporary” Refugees here, I thought this might be of interest to RRW readers as well.

That quote would be from Del. Ana Sol GUTIERREZ  of  Montgomery County, Maryland when she was being interviewed by The Hill a week ago on why she wants her El Salvadoran countrymen, who are now here on Temporary Protected Status, included in “comprehensive immigration reform.”  In fact, she wants them first in line.

She is referring to the hundreds of thousands of immigrants who came here illegally decades ago, but were given “temporary” refugee status (because back home there was a long-ago civil war or more likely a big storm or earthquake) and can do everything any American can do except vote.  However, they do get drivers licenses and I’ll bet you a buck they vote!

So what’s this about money to foreign governments?  And, beyond humanitarian concern?

Gutierrez in front of Salvadoran Money transfer business. Photo credit: Greg Dohler/The Gazette

The Hill tells us it is all about “remittances” here (emphasis mine):

Foreign governments are working hard to shape the debate on immigration reform as momentum for a comprehensive bill builds in Congress.

[….]

A number of countries with significant immigration ties to the United States — notably Mexico, Ireland and several Central American nations — have been making their concerns known while doing their best to avoid meddling in domestic affairs.

For many countries, the issue goes beyond humanitarian concern: Remittances from foreign nationals living in the U.S. provide a significant boost to the economies of their home countries.

Mexicans are here illegally but many Central Americans have TPS:

An estimated 7 million Mexicans in the country illegally stand to benefit from reform.

While Mexico has adopted a wait-and-see attitude, other countries have specific changes they hope to see in the law. However, they’re happy to do so discreetly — letting American groups take the lead.

That’s the case with El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua, three countries whose citizens have long been eligible for a temporary immigration status first offered in the wake of the civil wars of the 1980s.

The countries hope that immigration reform will include a path to permanent legal status, and eventually citizenship, for the estimated 300,000 or so Central Americans who are in the United States under the Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, which is up for renewal periodically. [LOL! for Salvadorans it was renewed just in time for the November 2012 election!—ed]

Gutierrez:  We want the Salvadorans first in line

The Salvadoran embassy has requested updated data from U.S. Immigration and Citizenship Services, said Maryland state Del. Ana Sol Gutierrez (D), a Salvadoran-American immigration activist.

The embassy reached out to other embassies to do the same in order to get a better sense of how many Central Americans currently benefit from the program. El Salvador is believed to have about 210,000 of its citizens currently in the U.S. under the program.

“We just need to be able to say, ‘These are the people we want to be first in line because they’ve already been here,’ ” Gutierrez said. “First of all, they have to pass background checks every 18 months, they have to pay taxes, they’ve been here with a legal status.

So far! (So far!) “Temporary” refugees are not included in Obama’s amnesty plan.  Let the squabbling begin!

TPS reform is not included in the principles of the White House immigration reform proposal, Gutierrez said.

So readers, the next time someone puts you on an emotional guilt-trip about the poor and downtrodden seeking a “better future,” remember! as I said yesterday, this is all being driven by money for big businesses in need of cheap labor and by foreign governments  propping up their economies as Gutierrez makes clear!

The Hill story continues:

Gutierrez said money is a principal driver of the foreign governments’ interest in immigration reform.

[….]

Total remittances to El Salvador in 2010 were $3.6 billion in 2010.

For Mexico, the figure was $22.7 billion, or 2.1 percent of GDP.

That says it all, fewer jobs for Americans because we need to prop-up the third world.

Read the entire Hill story, there is much more.

For more on the TPS racket, see all of our previous posts at Potomac Tea Party Report .  And here are the posts at RRW on the topic.

Christian RIGHT now shilling for big business/Muslims and supporting “comprehensive immigration reform”

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

(Just an aside) I’m sure it hasn’t escaped readers here at RRW that “comprehensive” never includes reforming the refugee resettlement program.

An Act of God or an Act of Grover (Norquist)?

The coalition largely driven (up to now) by big business (cheap labor!), the Christian Left, and the hard core Open Borders Socialists, can say they have won over the generally conservative Christian Right according to this article in Politico yesterday (hat tip: Robin):

The usual suspects pushing immigration reform have a new ally in the fight this time — the religious right.

Christian conservatives, who stayed on the sidelines in 2006 or opposed reform outright, have sprung into action for the cause.

They’re talking to their congregations from the pulpit. They’re urging lawmakers in private meetings to support reform. And they’re even calling for change publicly.

The efforts have dramatically changed the dynamics of the debate, so much so that Republicans anxious to vote yes on a deal might have the political cover to do it.

“I think it is night and day, particularly among social conservatives,” Faith and Freedom Coalition’s Ralph Reed told POLITICO of the support for immigration reform.

Reed’s group released a letter Tuesday that outlines broad goals for reform, like keeping families together, reforming the visa system and securing the border.

High profile leaders are also weighing in. Mathew Staver, vice president of Liberty University, the college started by former TV minister Jerry Falwell, is on board. Focus on the Family, which for years has focused on issues like opposing abortion rights and gay marriage, is supporting immigration reform for the first time in its history — even using its radio broadcast that reaches millions to push its message.

Giving cover!

Social conservatives are directly targeting GOP offices and trying to show that they can give cover to lawmakers in the South, West and Midwest, who are worried about facing retaliation at the ballot box in 2014.

Just because they have the word “evangelical” in their name doesn’t make them conservatives!

Nearly a dozen groups, including Bread for the World, Esperanza, Christian Community Development Association and the National Association of Evangelicals, have launched a 40-day “I was a stranger” campaign asking parishioners to read a bible verse dealing with immigrants each day.  [Is your church doing this? Tell them you are offended or find another church—ed]

The National Association of Evangelicals is the parent organization of World Relief one of the big nine federal refugee contractors.   From its Form 990 (2010) note that they are a $53 million dollar a year organization and YOU the taxpayer funded them that year to the tune of $31 million.   It has been my view that these refugee contractors are nothing more than head-hunters for the service industry, the meatpacking giants  and other industries in need of cheap captive labor disguising themselves as humanitarians.  A side benefit is that the immigrants are in need of welfare and become Democrat voters.

So where does Norquist the Islamist come in?

Doesn’t Republican Norquist see that immigrants in the first generations vote for Democrats?  Could it all just be about money from his industry supporters that Norquist cares about?  Or is he really interested in a specific subset of immigrants?

This closing section of the Politico story has Norquist written all over it—Ali Noorani is Grover’s Pakistani buddy (big smooch from Noorani to Grover ), and this is classic Norquist strategy:

It’s not just religious leaders looking to help galvanize support from social conservatives. The National Immigration Forum has created its “Bibles, Badges and Business” effort that targets conservative lawmakers by bringing in pastors, law enforcement and business owners into the debate. The group helped facilitate more than 70 meetings on Capitol Hill in December, of which 56 were with Republicans.

NIF is preparing to roll out a formal network to help provide a vehicle for sharing and strategy.

Ali Noorani, head of the forum, said it just makes sense when looking at how immigration reform is going to get passed.

“A conservative voter is going to listen to a conservative leader, especially in conservative states,” Noorani said. “From our perspective, this is about voters hearing from their pastor police chief or business — why their Republican member of Congress needs to be supported in this push for immigration reform.”

For more on Ali Noorani who created the political agitation group Massachusetts Immigrants & Refugee Advocacy Coalition (MIRA), see my previous posts here.

Also, see Discover the Networks (DTN) about Noorani’s National Immigration Forum(NIF).  Although the entry is several years old, DTN lists the board members at the time:

The NIF Board of Directors includes such notables as: (a) James Zogby, President of the Arab American Institute; and (b) Jeanne Butterfield, currently the Executive Director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, and formerly the Director of the Palestine Solidarity Committee, which acted as the political arm of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Also sitting on the NIF Board are members of the American Civil Liberties Union, the Service Employees International Union, and the Los Angeles branch of the Central American Refugee Center, which backed the Communists in El Salvador’s civil war and helped pioneer the “sanctuary” movement to subvert American immigration law.  [For Maryland readers, the sanctuary movement brought us CASA de Maryland–ed]

Here is today’s NIF board (Jeb Bush is on it!).

For more on Norquist, see my archive here.

Update!  New poll! Most Americans want illegal immigrants to go home and will support the political party that stands for enforcing immigration laws!

Samantha Power, White House Iraqi refugee czar, Soros protege’ leaving Obama Administration

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Power, also the architect of Obama’s excellent adventure in Libya, was supposed to have led an intergovernmental reform of the Refugee Resettlement Program which never happened unless you consider throwing more money to the contractors a reform!  By the way, she once served as a director of the wealthiest refugee resettlement contractor (funded largely by US taxpayers)—the International Rescue Committee (George Rupp, their head honcho makes a cool $447,432 in salary and benefits which beats Obama’s $400,000 salary!)

Human Rights First cheered her role as Iraqi refugee czar at the White House here in 2009.  But, by 2011 Power was quoted (by Joe Klein) as saying she wanted more exciting work then the “rinkey-dink do-gooder stuff”  of helping beleaguered Christians in Iraq.  So she moved on to working with Obama’s female hawks to oust Gaddafi from Libya (we see how that is working out!).  Well, heck, the move produced a whole new wave of refugees in need of resettlement services from the federal contractors!

Power’s name came up as a possible second-term pick for either UN Ambassador if Susan Rice moved up to the Secretary of State position we all know went to John Kerry.   There had even been talk that Power, a Soros protege’, might be in line to fill her nemesis’ shoes at State.  Remember Power called Hillary a “monster” during the 2008 Presidential primary campaign.

We have a lot of posts on Power, you can check them out here.

The percentage of white men surrounding the President just went up!

Here is Bloomberg on Power’s leave-taking (for now anyway):

Samantha Power, one of President Barack Obama’s top advisers on national security and a longtime aide, is leaving the administration, at least temporarily, to focus on family matters, a White House spokesman said.

Power, director for multilateral affairs and human rights at the National Security Council, has served as an aide to Obama since his 2008 presidential campaign and is a Pulitzer Prize- winning author for her book on genocide. She has two young children, one three years old and the other eight months.

Power probably will return to the administration, though no decisions have been made on what her future role might be, according to the spokesman, Tommy Vietor.

“Samantha has been a powerful voice in this administration and a longtime friend and adviser to the president,” Vietor said. “We will miss her at the NSC, and we look forward to continuing the president’s work promoting human rights and dignity.”

Power, 42, who successfully advocated for the 2011 intervention in Libya on humanitarian grounds, has played a central role in discussions over how far the U.S. should go to protect civilians from repressive regimes.   [Her ‘responsibility to protect’ doctrine is a thinly disguised excuse to send the US to war—ed]

[….]

Her departure comes as Obama has been criticized for not appointing a sufficient number of women to high-profile posts as he forms his second-term team.

Should Norquist and Napolitano decide our immigration policy?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Editors note:  This is cross-posted from Potomac Tea Party Report and mostly involves illegal immigration which we mention here from time to time.  Also there are ramifications for asylum because if a path to citizenship is available for all those who entered the US illegally, then surely the thousands of pending asylum cases would become moot literally overnight should “comprehensive immigration reform” come to pass.

Of course the answer is a resounding NO (to Norquist and Napolitano)!

But, having these two—Grover Norquist and Janet Napolitano—as the poster children for so-called “comprehensive immigration reform” is good for us (the side whose adherents see the rush, to legalize 11 million workers and dependents on the social safety net, as America committing suicide.)

Two stories over the weekend are worth mentioning.

First The Hill reports that the “gang of eight” would let the Secretary of Homeland Security determine if the border is sufficiently secure to grant what amounts to amnesty for the 11 million illegal aliens presently in the country.

Under a bipartisan Senate framework, Democrats say, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano would have final say over whether the border is secure enough to put 11 million illegal immigrants on a path to citizenship.

If Napolitano does not provide the green light for putting illegal immigrants on a pathway to citizenship, the responsibility for judging whether the metrics for border security have been met will be given to her successor. [And just for a minute imagine the stampede to the border this legislation would unleash if signed into law!—ed]

The early debate over immigration reform has yielded two thorny questions: What metrics will be used to determine whether the goals for border security and other safeguards against illegal immigration have been met? Who will decide whether the metrics have been achieved?

Sen. Charles Schumer (N.Y.), the lead Democratic sponsor of the bipartisan immigration reform framework unveiled this past week, said Napolitano should decide.

“What we’ve proposed is that the DHS secretary, whomever it is, will have final say on [whether] whatever metrics we proposes are met,” Schumer said. “We think those metrics will be quite objective.”

Grover Norquist

(LOL! gotta keep my Norquist files up-to-date)

This story from the Daily Caller highlights Grover Norquist as one of the chief proponents of open borders and a corporate gun for hire.

Americans for Tax Reform head Grover Norquist’s insistence that large-scale immigration is good for America and the Republican Party is attracting intense criticism from policy advocates who see him as a pawn of corporate interests.

“There are a whole bunch of people who are listening to loud voices, some of whom claim to be Republican … talking about [employers] who didn’t fill out the paperwork, about going after [an immigrant’s] aunt,” said Norquist, whose opposition to tax increases has made him popular among Republicans and a hate-figure among progressives.

Once advocates for tighter immigration are sidelined, the GOP will be able to win votes from Hispanics and other recent immigrants, he said.

“Removing that threat [of deportation] from millions of Americans will make it possible to have a conversation with [immigrants] about tax policy and spending, and all the other issues we have with legal Americans.”  [Oh sure Grover, as soon as they are legalized they will want to sit down to talk about tax policy—hell, most won’t make enough money to be among the taxpaying members of the public. And, as for spending, they will be voting for candidates who promise a larger “safety net”—ed]

His critics are equally vehement.

“Grover is an extremely effective lobbyist … [and] the thing about Grover is that he has clients who make big money off of immigration,” said Roy Beck, founder of advocacy group NumbersUSA, which helped derail previous efforts to expand immigration.

“Grover is going to do everything in his power to prevent America having a middle class … it appears he thinks oligarchy is a better way to go. … You can’t have a Republican Party when you have a voting base that is impoverished and needs government assistance.”

Norquist has been pushing to rewrite immigration policy for years, and he’s got his arguments down cold.

The Daily Caller goes on to say Norquist wouldn’t care if the immigrants were Egyptians or Uzbeks (of course not, remember Norquist is an Islamist sympathizer).  And, as we have pointed out on other occasions, the illegal aliens who would be allowed to stay are not just the friendly ones from Mexico and south, but they include Somalis, Iranians, Iraqis and the list goes on of OTMs (Other than Mexicans) coming across our southern and northern borders.  Also, don’t forget, Norquist famously said Shariah Law is compatible with the US Constitution here.

Darn! We missed the Catholic Bishops’ National Migration Week

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Your tax dollars

January 6th to the 12th was the big week when the US Conference of Catholic Bishops ginned up its pro-amnesty political indoctrination campaign with National Migration Week.

Mind you, the Bishops can pressure the Catholic flock however they wish, it’s a free country (for now!), but it’s when they take taxpayer money to do their “charitable” and political work then it becomes every taxpayer’s business.

Before you read the excellent discussion of their latest parishioner indoctrination campaign by Dominique Peridans at the Center for Immigration Studies please visit this comprehensive review of the Bishops finances by Thomas Allen at VDARE.

Allen:

….in fact USCCB independently raises only about 2% (two percent) of its $72.1 million total revenues. The rest comes from contracts, grants and earnings from federal programs.

Also, we have written extensively here (see our archive!) over the years about the USCCB as one of the top nine federal contractors resettling refugees to your towns (and their lobbying for other issues as well, including global warming) while feeding from the federal trough.

Peridans at CIS:

Ecclesiastes offers a rather honest and blunt appraisal of human life, and seeks to articulate basic human truths. Chapter 1, verse 9 of the book in the Hebrew Bible reads “What has been, that will be; what has been done, that will be done. Nothing is new under the sun!” Now, human truth, if indeed truth, is trans-situational, that is to say, can be applied to host of situations.

The situation in this case to which this truth can be applied is that of National Migration Week (January 6-12), sponsored by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops through its Migration and Refugee Services Offices. I perused the promotional materials, almost naively hoping to find a few nuggets of newness, some refreshing insight, a slightly more holistic perspective being put forth. “Nothing is new under the sun” here.

In fact, it is striking to read how the American Catholic Church’s pastoral proposals regarding immigrants display how hardened the Church’s “official position” is becoming: presented as a given. There is no acknowledgment whatsoever that the issue is complex and there is no margin of freedom granted to the laity to discern varying responses to the issue.

Against the spiritually magnificent, yet concretely vague backdrop of “welcoming Christ in the stranger” (drawn from Christ’s own exhortation in Matthew 25:35), the document restates the American Catholic Church’s presumption that any perspective different from that which it articulates is characterized by in-hospitality. The document then invites the reader to labor for a “conversion of hearts and minds” in those who hold these differing perspectives.

To what one must convert? Comprehensive immigration reform. In this campaign (and beyond it), the bishops hope to help Catholics at the parochial level to enact local expressions of such reform and to incite Catholics at the national level to promote such reform.

Bishops:  Border enforcement is “meanness.”

Not only are the bishops very concrete and very specific in their proposals, they are unabashedly political. They are in the business of a “broad legalization program”. In their minds, charity can only and must work this way. An enforcement-only approach (which no one is really proposing, but which they confuse with an enforcement-first approach) they decry as antithetical to charity – and, according to their expertise, a failure. So much money is being devoted to meanness!

There is more!  Read it all.