Category: Trump

I guess the Heritage Foundation doesn’t want to hear from you after all

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update #2:  Here is what I said about the missing comments being found.

***Update***  Happy news and happy reading! Some of you went to work today and just now I see that there are 137 comments posted (while the number had hovered around 28 since yesterday)!  All of you who contacted me are now posted for all to see!  Here !

Yesterday I told you about that completely inadequate “reform” proposal for the US Refugee Admissions Program that the Heritage Foundation took to the White House last week.  If you missed the story click here.

Heritage invited comment from the public on its plan, but has apparently failed to post many of your comments.  

I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt until tomorrow morning that their failure to post comments, or more accurately let the commenter believe his or her comment was posted, but then not make it visible for the general public is because they had a technical malfunction and that all comments would be posted on Monday when they return to work…..

However, the other scenario is that Heritage was practicing what is called “shadow banning” (a highly questionable trick in the tech world) where the commenter can see his comment as if it had been posted, but no one else can.  I wrote about it here in August when obviously twitter had briefly shadow-banned me.

Again, we will see what happens tomorrow when DC workers return to their offices and Heritage checks its system.

(I do know that Heritage says they screen comments and reject some, but if so, why do they appear to some readers and not to others if they had been outright rejected? And, if you are immediately thinking they are rejecting comments they don’t like, it doesn’t make sense.  Some of those that have disappeared don’t seem any more critical than some they did post for all to see. And, besides, is it reasonable to assume that a Heritage worker, knowledgeable about refugees, was screening comments on Saturday of a holiday weekend? No.)

This is why I suspect shadow-banning is possibly going on. It would be very shameful if the estimable Heritage Foundation is engaging in that unfair practice.  After all, they were soliciting comments!

Here is what they asked:

What do you think should be done about America’s refugee program?

Several readers wrote to me to tell me that they had posted comments, but I couldn’t see those comments. Some reported that they hadn’t seen mine.  Strange, I thought, because mine is right here in front of me.  This is a screenshot of what I saw.  (At that time there were about 16 comments and as of this writing there are 28.)

I was the first commenter on November 25th right under Ron and before Gail:

Screenshot (1117)_LI

 

I then tried something else.  I opened the site in another browsing window and what do you know, I was gone!  See screenshot below. Who is now missing between Ron and Gail? Me!

 

Screenshot (1118)

So, dear readers, how many of you can see my comment, and how many can’t?

About six other people reported that they had posted comments that they could see, but  were not visible to me.  Here are two of those.  Tell me, can you see Margaret Starry or Richard Falknor’s comments?  I can’t (other than in the screenshots they shared with me below)!

image1 (1)_LI

Look for her just before Thomas Stark, do you see her comment?

How about Richard Falknor’s?

Shadowbanners!_LI

Can you see Richard Falknor’s comment immediately following Stephen Palmer? Mr. Falknor could obviously see it in order to take this screenshot.

Since so many comments are missing, there is no way for me, or anyone!, to know if you posted a comment. Please send me an e-mail here:  refugeewatcher@gmail.com and I will tell you if your comment is visible.  I have already received e-mails from a few of you who sent me your comment’s text and I confirmed that it is not visible to me.

If you can, get a screenshot of your ‘posted’ comment and send it to me.

Or, ask one of your friends to go to Heritage’s comments and see if they can see your comment!

And, tomorrow if Heritage has a good explanation we will report that—stay tuned!

Heritage Foundation leaves out one important consideration in its ‘plan’ for reforming refugee program—you!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

First, you need to know that the Heritage Foundation, a huge ‘conservative’ think tank in Washington, hasn’t paid one lick of attention to the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) until this year, until Trump entered the White House.

***Update*** If you commented at the Heritage site linked below, and after opening the link in a different browser, no longer see your comment, please let me know! Write to refugeewatcher@gmail.com (or comment to this post) and tell me. Something is very fishy because I can’t see some of your comments and just now my comment from earlier today had disappeared. They aren’t ‘shadow banning’ are they?

Update November 26th: We will be eager to hear tomorrow why the Heritage Foundation has not publicly posted many comments. See here. Missing comments found and they are doozies! Click here.

heritage logo

Now they are tooting their horn because they got a meeting with retired Admiral Garry Hall in the White House to promote their version of reform.

But, what is absent from their ‘study’ and report entitled:  ‘The U.S. Refugee Admissions Program: A Roadmap for Reform,’ is the cost shifting of the USRAP to state taxpayers, the cultural and economic impact on communities, refugee crime, and the secrecy by which the feds and nine contractors (paid almost exclusively with taxpayer dollars)*** place refugees in American towns and cities.

They do give a little lip service to the idea that refugees must assimilate.  Oh, pray tell, how are you going to force certain ‘religious’ refugees to assimilate while the whole resettlement effort is being done by contractors who have no interest in teaching refugees to assimilate? (They won’t even use the word ‘assimilate!’)

In short, the focus of their work is Washington-centric and how refugee resettlement is somehow mostly an issue of foreign policy to advance US interests!

What about US citizens’ interests!

The authors clearly have no idea what is going on outside the DC bubble.

Here are the three takeaways from their work product:

 

Screenshot (53)
Do you see anything here about States Rights and the feds shifting costs to states? Anything about the US Treasury heavily funding ‘religious’ NGOs which then operate in secrecy? Anything about the social and cultural impact roiling communities that are overloaded with refugees?

 

Here is a recent email from the ‘Johnny-come-lately‘ Heritage Foundation:

At Heritage, we bring the best and the brightest minds together to boldly address refugee policy.

Adm-Garry-E-Hall-200x300
Before coming to the White House, Admiral Hall sat on a board at the US Conference of Catholic Bishops the largest of the nine federal contractors placing refugees in your towns (can’t make this up!) http://www.milarch.org/retired-navy-rear-admiral-garry-e-hall-appointed-to-national-review-board-of-the-u-s-conference-of-catholic-bishops/

This summer, Heritage experts Olivia Enos, David Inserra, and Joshua Meservey wrote a report titled “The U.S. Refugee Admissions Program: A Roadmap for Reform”.

Their report asserts that the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program should be used neither as a service to mass distribute global migration rights, nor to solve international conflict.

Rather, it should be reformed to assert American leadership, tangibly help partners and allies, and rescue some of the world’s most vulnerable people.

Last Thursday, they briefed Admiral Hall on their report at the National Security Council. He was very receptive and promised to pass it to the new Senior Adviser for Refugees [Who?—ed]

James Jay Carafano, the Vice President for the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy and E. W. Richardson Fellow, said of their work:

“While others have obsessed about the numbers and bans, we have focused on substantive reforms to actually make the program better—reduce abuse, enhance security and promote assimilation. Our work has not gone unnoticed. I have gotten constructive feedback from NGOs on all sides of this issue.”

Plans to make their roadmap to reform a reality are in the works.

What do you think should be done about America’s refugee program?

Readers ask me all the time, what can I do?  Do this!

Go here and tell Heritage what you think about ‘reforming’ the USRAP!  Tell them what is happening in your towns!

Again, the authors clearly have no idea what is going on outside of the swamp.

(As of this writing there are 16 comments at the Heritage site.)

My previous reports on this Heritage project are here and here.

*** The nine federal contractors that secretly place refugees in hundreds of US towns and cities. The USCCB Migration Fund is 97% funded by the US Treasury. Does Admiral Hall know that? Is that OK with him?

 

Poughkeepsie LOUDLY said no to refugees!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The political Left-wingers, like those at Church World Service, don’t like LOUD when it comes from the people who don’t want their towns and cities changed without their consultation.

I had to laugh when I saw this headline at NPR:

Opposition To Refugee Arrivals Keeps Getting Louder

erolkekic
Erol Kekic dog whistling with this line? He said people asked: “Why are we bringing people who don’t all look like us?” I will bet no one uttered those words that night!

Don’t you know! Loud is bad if it doesn’t come from the Left!

And, it is funny, just last night I was so irritated by Leftwing commentators always referring to Rightwing “dog whistles” when along comes a story with some dog whistles from the Left!

If you don’t know what the heck dog whistles are (in the political sense), it is when a supposedly secretive message is being sent to one’s own political base.

Before I give you some juicy bits on this NPR story, you might want to revisit my reports on Poughkeepsie here.

In the waning months of the Obama Administration (before November) hopes were running high.  Obama had set a refugee admissions ceiling for FY17 at 110,000, the highest in years and certainly much higher than any of his previous 7 years, and they all thought that Hillary was headed to the Oval.

So the US State Department with its contractors*** set about finding lots and lots of fresh territory in which to place refugees (older sites were getting overloaded and tensions were building).  Poughkeepsie was one such new site.

Then along came Donald J. Trump to mess up their big plans….

Thus this National Public Radio story:

A few days after Donald Trump was elected President, more than a hundred people packed into a church sanctuary in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. to hear a presentation about refugee resettlement in their town.

It didn’t go well.

This was after Trump had campaigned on refusing Syrian refugees, citing security concerns. In the church that night, staffers from the non-profit organization Church World Service laid out their plan to open a refugee resettlement office in Poughkeepsie, and bring in about 80 refugees, mostly from the Congo, Iraq and Syria.

The audience had questions. A lot of them. They wanted to know, would they be safe? And could Poughkeepsie afford to care for these new residents?

“As a resident of this town, of this city, I can look out my window any time and find someone in need,” said Poughkeepsie resident Steven Planck, to vigorous applause.

I have seen this comment dozens of times and ask this question: If Church World Service is a Christian ‘charity,’ why not focus on the poor people in every American city? Why are we importing more poverty?

The head of Church World Service’s refugee program, Erol Kekic, spent more than an hour trying to respond to the questions.

“We had to do a lot of truth-telling, and dispel some myths,” says Kekic. “From ‘the value of my property will go down because refugees will be resettling next to me,’ to ‘are we bringing terrorists?’ to ‘why are we bringing people who don’t all look like us?'”

It’s getting harder for refugees to find a welcoming home in the U.S. The Trump administration has cut the number of refugees allowed into the country. In cities and town across the nation, citizens are protesting refugees being resettled in their neighborhoods.

In Poughkeepsie, the debate got ugly. On social media, people called opponents of the refugee plan racists and Islamophobes. The staff of Church World Service received death threats. [Ho hum! Death threats, so what else is new—ed]

[….]

Until recently, refugee resettlement in the U.S. had wide bipartisan support. The U.S. State Department, along with nine large non-profit groups, decides where to resettle refugees fleeing persecution, war and violence. They look for communities where there are volunteers to help.

The reason the refugee industry had “wide bipartisan support” and still does is that the Republican establishment wants the cheap labor for their big business donors and the Dems want the voters.  And it is only in the last few years that this secret program has been exposed to the American taxpayers who shell out the bucks for it!

NPR continued:

“We all wondered, why? Why Poughkeepsie?” says David Cole, 37, a lifelong resident of the town who helped mobilize opposition to Church World Service. Cole insists he has nothing against Muslims or other refugees. But he says Poughkeepsie isn’t a wealthy town; unemployment there is higher than the statewide average.

Why Poughkeepsie? Because Church World Service thought a banner year was coming with a slew of Obama/Clinton paying refugee “clients,” and they figured Poughkeepsie would be a pushover!

“I looked at people that I knew,” Cole says. “And I said, OK, well, why aren’t these people getting help? Why are we trying to help, you know, people from war-torn countries in an area where there’s people looking for jobs? Like, they’re scavenging for jobs around here. I don’t get it.”

[….]

“Yes, there are loud voices in every community,” Kekic says. “But they’re usually not the majority, and they’re usually just a very loud minority.”

So what is the lesson here: Louder wins!

There is much more and it is worth reading here.

To learn more about hard Leftwing Church World Service, click here.

***These are the nine major US taxpayer-funded NGOs responsible for (secretly) placing refugees in hundreds of American towns.

 

 

Australian detention center riot ended with PNG police clearing the facility

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

That is the news this morning from The National.

Why does that matter to us?  Because some of those rioting and refusing to be moved to another processing center could end up in your town in America.

Two days ago it was a different story. From the Times of Malta:

Look at the video (in the story) and consider this, some of these men may be flown to America to be quietly placed in your town by the US State Department and its contractors.***

 

Screenshot (1110)
Video shot inside facility as detainees refused to be removed. These are the ‘refugees’ Australia doesn’t want, but supposedly America does?

 

 

And, check it out, how do detainees have fully-charged phones to be able to film this and tweet to the world.  They think (so they say) that if they step out of the door of the closed facility the locals will attack them.

Papua New Guinea authorities have ratcheted up pressure on more than 300 asylum seekers to abandon a decommissioned immigration camp, where refugees reported their shelters, beds and other belongings had been destroyed.

Police Chief Superintendent Dominic Kakas said 50 police and immigration officials entered the Manus Island camp on Thursday morning and persuaded 35 of the 378 men there to leave for alternative accommodation in the nearby town of Lorengau.

Water, power and food supplies ended when the Manus camp officially closed on October 31, following the Papua New Guinea Supreme Court’s ruling last year that Australia’s policy of housing asylum seekers there was unconstitutional.

But asylum seekers say they fear for their safety in Lorengau because of threats from local residents.

Kakas said force would not be used to empty the squalid Manus Island camp.

“There’s no raid. It’s an ongoing negotiation with the refugees,” Kakas told The Associated Press. “It’s not an eviction exercise. We’re telling them to move because there’s water, food and proper shelter on the other side.”

[….]

Sudanese refugee Abdul Aziz Adam tweeted that police had arrested Iranian refugee and journalist Behrouz Boochan.

Boochan had earlier tweeted: “They are destroying everything. Shelters, tanks, beds and all of our belongings.”

[….]

Australia pays Papua New Guinea, its nearest neighbour, and the tiny Pacific nation of Nauru to hold thousands of asylum seekers from Africa, the Middle East and Asia who have attempted to reach Australian shores by boat since mid-2013.

More here.

Not mentioned in the text that accompanies the video, is this near the end: New Zealand has offered to take some of the detainees but Australia declined the offer.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull says that the priority is the existing refugee swap deal with the US.

Trump and turnbull on phone
Initially Trump told Turnbull it was a “dumb deal.” Still is!

Go back and look at that video and consider that some of these men will be living in your town because Donald Trump said he will honor the unorthodox deal the Obama Administration made with Australia as Obama was walking out the door in late 2016.

BTW, that story from The National I linked above says 24 of the DETAINEES have already arrived in America, but that doesn’t fit the number we had heard previously—-we heard 50 have arrived of the possible 1,250.

See my complete archive on the ‘Australia deal’ by clicking here. And for all of my posts on Australia, go here.

If you have never told the White House what you think about the Obama/Trump “dumb deal” with Australia, take a few minutes and do it (here). 

***These are the nine major US taxpayer-funded NGOs responsible for (secretly) placing refugees in hundreds of American towns.

HIAS out of the closet says Daniel Greenfield, Sarsour support confirms

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Thanks to several readers who sent it, here is yet another reason for the US government to cut off funding for refugee resettlement groups who have become out-of-the-closet political agitation groups. 

mark-hetfield
Hetfield

Longtime readers know that HIAS receives millions of taxpayer dollars to place refugees in unsuspecting towns and cities and they have led the charge in the courts against Donald Trump’s efforts to keep us safe by limiting certain migrants entry in to the US.

HIAS also recently helped organize an anti-Trump rally along with CAIR in Washington, DC, here.

And, they invited Rep. Keith Ellison to speak at an anti-Trump rally here.

(Sure hope HIAS is keeping its pots of federal and private money separate! Is there a funding firewall at HIAS?)

 

Here is Greenfield on Mark Hetfield’s latest:

Is this the moment when Mark Hetfield and HIAS officially joined the anti-Israel lobby?

hias (with gun)

Mark Hetfield had already hijacked HIAS and transformed it from a Jewish organization to a radical left-wing group concerned entirely with Muslim migration.

Hetfield’s HIAS had already attacked Israel and collaborated with the anti-Israel group, J Street.

But signing a statement in support of Linda Sarsour, an Islamic anti-Semitic activist who celebrated throwing stones at Jews, is Mark Hetfield’s official coming out party.

The immediate trigger for this was having Sarsour head a New School panel accusing Jews of exploiting anti-Semitism. That’s quite a show for a woman who is quite comfortable with Louie Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam.

[….]

Previously, Mark Hetfield had avoided getting his hands dirty. Now he no longer seems to care.

Continue here for more and to follow links.

Go here to see my ever-expanding file on HIAS (aka Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society) one of the US State Department’s nine federal resettlement contractors.

Here are the nine (LOL! I haven’t named them often enough lately). I sure hope all of them have built firewalls between their federal funding and the money they use for political activities.