And, you can be sure that right now the “interfaith community” is getting in gear for what they anticipate will be a great blue wave in November and they will all be back in business when Biden/Harris fling open our borders to the third world beginning in January.
Of course you are probably reading this and thinking: don’t we need to get our people back to work and get through the Chinese virus panic before you hit the Hill with your strategic lobbying for more refugees and for more payola!
No! While you are distracted they are busy as they always are working all the angles to get more fundingand influence more members of Congress to see things their way.
If a member is Catholic—send in the Catholics! Jewish? Send in HIAS. If the Muslims want an entree? The Catholics and the Jews will help make that possible.
This article at Devexdescribes the basics of well-organized lobbying efforts in Washington that you, average citizens, can NEVER match.
These are all well-funded organizations with high paid staff working 40-hour work weeks, 52 weeks a year to influence Congress, and they hope very soon to get back into the White House.
(emphasis is mine)
‘We can be very strategic’: How faith-based NGOs advocate on Capitol Hill
WASHINGTON — Many NGOs dedicate time to advocacy (aka lobbying) on Capitol Hill to garner support for development and humanitarian policies and funding, but faith-based organizations work together to bring a different perspective to these lobbying efforts.
“We, at one level, are doing what everybody’s doing, which is trying to understand to the greatest extent we can what drives a particular member.And that is as varied as the membership in the House and Senate,” said Bill O’Keefe, executive vice president for mission, mobilization, and advocacy (aka lobbying) at Catholic Relief Services.***
“We do look at what is the religious background of this member, and is there a particular appeal that we can authentically make that would make a difference in this case?”
[….]
CRS aims to meet with every member of Congress regardless of the member’s religious affiliation, O’Keefe said. The organization’s work to eliminate causes of poverty and injustice is rooted in principles of Catholic social teaching, a tradition that bolsters the NGO’s reputation and allows it to work well with members on both sides of the aisle, he said.
[….]
CRS works closely with other faith-based organizations — both those that are part of what O’Keefe calls “Team Catholic,” as well as those of other faiths — on the Hill to coordinate advocacy (aka lobbying) efforts for certain bills or funding requests.
The NGOs determine what type of appeal may be most effective with particular members who may have seats on relevant committees or from whom they want support.
“If there is an office where the elected official is a strong Catholic, it wouldn’t necessarily make sense for HIAS to take the lead on that meeting,” said Naomi Steinberg, vice president of policy and advocacy (aka lobbying) at refugee resettlement organization HIAS.
“Every single day we are in partnership with other faith organizations and we work in coalition on a lot of different issues. What we find is that we are all heading in the same direction and certainly we sometimes might have different strategies, but through the coalition, we really do speak with one voice.
The value of us coming from different faith traditions is that we can be very strategic.”
HIAS began as an agency that resettled Jewish refugees in the U.S. Now, it is one of nine refugee resettlement agencies in the country that works with people of all faiths as well as with refugees abroad — issues Steinberg said have become unfortunately partisan during the Trump administration.
Her team works to develop relationships with congressional offices even when they are not pushing for a particular policy or funding so that when there is a tougher issue on which they seek support, they have existing contacts to tap.
I was a lobbyist decades ago and I can assure you that this is where they spend a lot of their time building their influence. They make friends with staff members and spend time with them, often outside of regular work hours, so that naturally when the lobbyist needs something, they can get a phone call returned or even get an entree to the member on short notice.
Devex continues….
HIAS also ties this advocacy (aka lobbying) closely with its grassroots efforts on refugee issues, which includes urging Jewish communities across the country to contact their members of Congress to express their support for more funding and higher refugee resettlement caps.
[….]
“One of the messages we share with our grassroots advocacy network … is you should never assume that even if your elected official has been on the right side of these refugee issues, that they know how important this is to you, to their constituency,” Steinberg said.
“Keep those calls coming, keep those emails coming. Because we want them to know that people in their district vote partially based on these issues.” [Other than NumbersUSA and FAIR, with limited staff and financing, I don’t know any other organizations doing this on the immigration restriction side of the debate.—ed]
Politics can also impact inroads faith-based organizations are able to make on Capitol Hill. Jihad Saleh Williams, senior advocacy (aka lobbying) and government affairs advisor at Islamic Relief USA, said his organization can have difficulty getting a response from Republican offices who are nervous to meet with a Muslim organization with which they may not be familiar.
As a former congressional aide, Williams said he understands the instinct of Hill staffers to protect their boss at all costs, and that IR USA must understand “discreetness” required for some of its meetings.
[….]
Williams said he often begins outreach with congressional offices by discussing IR USA’s domestic work in order to build relationships.
Many offices incorrectly believe that the organization only works in the Middle East, he said, or only deals with civil liberties and counterterrorism issues. By educating members about work to promote food security and health access — particularly during COVID-19 — in the U.S., Williams said he can gain an entry point to promote the value of international development and humanitarian work as well.
NGOs use interfaith coalitions to work together to counter such misconceptions about particular groups, positioning faith-based organizations as a united block that support the same issues, regardless of religious affiliation, to strengthen their power on the Hill.
[….]
“I really have tried to work hard over time, particularly with Islamic Relief and with other minority religious groups in the United States, to make sure … when people think of the faith community, they don’t just think of the Christian community,” O’Keefe said.
“We partner a lot with Islamic Relief and consider them brothers and sisters in this development and humanitarian world.”
***I just had a look at the most recent Form 990 for Catholic Reliefand learned that in 2018 they had an income stream of over $936 Million and of that $453,988,287 (nearly a half a billion!) came from you, the US taxpayer!
No wonder they are busy lobbying on the Hill.
Here is the salaries page from that Form 990. Sean Callahan sure is doing well by doing good!
Personal anecdote: About 20 years ago I had a reason for wanting to help a Catholic convent in Danang, VN. The sisters there are devout Catholics who had spent a couple of decades in the rice fields when the Communists took over the country. By the year 2000, the government had lightened up on them and they were back running an orphanage and a school for young children, but they needed financial help.
In my naivete I called Catholic Relief to see if they could help that convent and was told “That isn’t what we do!”
Now I have a better understanding of what they do—big fat salaries, lobbying efforts to garner more funding, and efforts to bring more Muslims into the US is what they do! Nuns in Vietnam who love America can go pound sand.
By bringing in even greater numbers than we have in the past we can show the world that we have “moral authority” and even those dastardly Chinese will have to pay attention!
America needs more Rohingya refugees so we can show the world that we have moral authority and the rest of the globe will follow us to multicultural Nirvana.
They are all getting excited for Biden/Harris and here the Leftwing Brookings Institution*** in Washington says forget the idea of simply restoring our Refugee Admissions Program, it needs to be reformed to be even more robust when Biden gets to the White House in January 2021.
I thought I was going to be reading about real reform of the program when this headline was brought to my attention. But alas, reform=more poor (sick!) third worlders for your town.
COVID-19 and the chance to reform US refugee policy
COVID-19 has exposed the underlying fault lines in societies around the world and in modern globalization. Yet by revealing long ignored flaws, it presents a rare chance to reform.
Authors of this prescription for Biden. Yeh, we are going to take advice from a Turk telling us to go big with our refugee admissions numbers?
Unsurprisingly, refugees — the vast majority of whom live deeply precarious lives — have been among the most threatened by the pandemic.
A new U.S. administration should seize the opportunity presented by COVID-19 to build a better refugee policy, both for refugees’ benefit and for U.S. national security and strategic interests. [No one has ever shown me that our national security benefits from bringing in people from countries that hate us!—ed]
With the 70th anniversary of the 1951 Geneva Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees approaching in 2021, now is an opportune time for an update to U.S. refugee policy.
[….]
Today, vibrant[They cannot write a refugee story without using that word!—ed] refugee communities can be found in cities like Los Angeles, California, Nashville, Tennessee, and St. Louis, Missouri, which host the largest number of Vietnamese, Kurds, and Bosnians in the United States, respectively. [Notice they don’t mention the vibrant community of Somali Muslims in Minneapolis!—ed]
A compelling argument can be made that America needs refugees and owes part of its economic success to those who came to its shores seeking shelter from persecution and violence. The arrival of refugees helped to uphold America’s identity as a multicultural nation that accepts all victims of persecution who would come to its shores.
But that evil creature Trump has caused our “moral authority” to go into the toilet!
Blah, blah, blah…
I’m very interested to learn, if it’s true, that a battle is going on among Ds about whether to restore the program or go bigger….
As the 2020 presidential election draws near, a key division amongst Democrats who hope to see President Trump leave office in 2021 is between the restorationists, who think things can go back to the way they were before Trump, and the reformists, who see the hurricane of the Trump administration as an opportunity to build back stronger. COVID-19 should render this debate moot with regards to U.S. refugee policy.
Biden has already said he is going big in January (but won’t the pandemic still be raging in January)! And, I have no doubt he and Kamala will be eager to jump on the UN bandwagon on the Global Compact on Refugees!
There are already signs that a post-Trump United States could adopt a more helpful stance on refugees. Presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has promised to rescind the Trump administration’s Muslim ban, restore access to asylum, and increase yearly refugee resettlement quotas to 125,000, a move that would show solidarity with countries hosting large numbers of refugees and likely spur U.S. allies to follow suit. There is also support in Congress for shouldering a greater refugee burden, as seen with Refugee Protection Act proposed in November 2019.
With a definitive end to the COVID-19 pandemic nowhere in sight, the threat facing refugees and the political stability of their host countries calls for the next administration to go beyond simply restoring the traditional U.S. leadership role on refugees. To address the challenge of rebuilding after COVID-19, the United States should endorse the Global Compact on Refugees (GCR).
And then this! By bringing in even greater numbers of refugees we can stick it to China, say the great minds at Brookings?
A revamped U.S. commitment to helping refugees carries direct benefits for U.S. national security priorities, in particular with respect to the strategic rivalry posed by a rising China.
Firstly, revamping its leadership role in managing refugee resettlement would go a long way in helping America reclaim the moral leadership it has enjoyed in past decades, which enabled it to create unique solutions to problems.
America’s support for refugees does more for it in a “battle of ideas” than its military and economic capacity alone: an America that actively protects the less fortunate might more easily win hearts and minds globally while also serving its own national security interests.
It drives me mad, when they say things like that—“win hearts and minds globally”—with not a bit of proof that anyone loves us more, surely not the Chinese!
And what about Americans’ hearts and minds!
The devastation wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed deep flaws in countries around the world and endangered the health and livelihoods of millions. To build a better, more democratic, more equitable world after the pandemic, the United States could start by helping refugees, rather than what it can do by merely seeking its own benefit.
In the wake of the Chinese virus crisis the US has only one obligation and that is to take care of Americans FIRST!
***Brookingstries to pretend it is centrist however,
Starting with the 1990 election cycle, employees of the Brookings Institution gave $853,017 to Democratic candidates and $26,104 to Republican candidates. In total, since 1990, 96 percent of its political donations have gone to Democrats.
As you know if you follow RRW, the Refugee Admissions Program came to a grinding halt in March due to the worldwide travel restrictions in the wake of the Chinese virus pandemic.
However, the US State Department announced on July 29th that our welcome mat had once again been put out for third world migration to Anytown, USA.
Refugee admissions to the US resume after being on pause due to coronavirus
(CNN)Refugee admissions to the United States have resumed after being put on pause for five months due to the coronavirus pandemic, according to the State Department.
In March, the US put a temporary pause on refugee admissions after the International Organization for Migration, which is in charge of booking refugees on their travel, and the United Nations refugee agency announced a temporary suspension of resettlement travel. Both organizations have since moved to restart admissions.
Sec. of State Mike Pompeo Opens Refugee Admissions Program as COVID (supposedly) continues to sicken and kill Americans and destroy the economy. What’s a few more mouths to feed!
In a statement to CNN, a State Department spokesperson said Secretary Mike Pompeo approved the resumption of admissions on July 29.
“This program is a vital lifeline for the world’s most vulnerable refugees who have no other alternative and who are made even more vulnerable by the COVID-19 pandemic,” the spokesperson said, adding that the program “resumed arrivals for approved refugees effective July 30 with significant COVID health measures in place as required by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”
The spokesperson didn’t provide additional details on what extra health measures entailed. Refugees are usually heavily screened before arriving in the US.
We have admitted 196 refugees and spread them out among 22 states in the two weeks since Pompeo made the announcement according to data compiled by the Refugee Processing Center.
The top three welcoming states are Texas, Minnesota and Wisconsin.
Of the 196, 41 are Muslims (there is no Muslim ban). The 41 include 15 Burmese Rohingya people and 15 Syrians.
Just a reminder, next month the President is required by law to submit his determination (ceiling) for the number of refugee arrivals for FY2021 that begins on October 1, 2020.
We will be watching!to see what the President does. He can, of course, postpone any decision, or he can set the ceiling at zero.
That is the type of headline I’ve seen often in recent days as the Trump Administration works to protect Americans from further spread of the Chinese virus by blocking and immediately returning illegal border crossers.
Editor: By the way, don’t miss my post on Friday at ‘Frauds and Crooks’ about former refugee Rep. Ilhan Omar’s fraudulent marriage and the decision by the feds not to pursue a case against her.
What these stories, about so-called “unaccompanied children,” won’t tell you is that the vast majority—72% (FY19 numbers)—are “children” ages 15-17 years old. 66% of the those little darlings are teenage males, according to data at the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement.
In FY19 (there isn’t any FY20 data available) we admitted 69,488 “children.”
Therefore over 50,000 were over the age of 15! At age 18 they are free to go!
So don’t get ideas that little frightened five-year-olds are held alone in hotel rooms waiting for big bad Don to send them packing as the legacy media wants you to believe.
Migrant kids to be expelled under virus order not entitled to attorneys and other safeguards, DOJ lawyers say
The Trump administration is arguing that migrant children set to be expelled from the country under an emergency coronavirus order are not entitled to legal safeguards guaranteed to all minors in U.S. immigration custody.
In a court filing on Tuesday, Justice Department lawyers argued that migrant minors processed under a public health order meant to curb the coronavirus’ spread are not in the “legal custody” of the U.S. immigration officials who physically detain them. Instead, the government lawyers said, the children are in the “legal custody” of public health officials they never interact with while on U.S. soil.
Citing that distinction, the Trump administration says these children are not covered under the landmark Flores Settlement Agreement, which guarantees minors access to lawyers, safe and sanitary housing facilities and prompt release from U.S. government detention.
During the pandemic, Department of Homeland Security officials have been relying on a directive issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to bounce most border-crossers off U.S. soil. More than 109,000 of these expulsions were carried out in July, June, May, April and the last 11 days of March.
Like adults, most migrant children who arrive at the border unaccompanied or with their families have been processed and expelled under the CDC order. Despite a federal law generally requiring their transfer to the Office of Refugee Resettlement, only 162 migrant children were transferred to the agency’s state-licensed shelters in April, May and June — a time period in which more than 3,300 apprehensions of unaccompanied minors were made by officials at the southern border.
The exact number of children who have been expelled under the CDC order is unknown, as the Trump administration has declined to disclose figures. There are fewer than 800 unaccompanied minors in the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which has the capacity to care for more than 13,000 children at a time.
There is more here. And, another story at ABC blasting the Trump administration too.
I was most interested in the fact that so few were placed with contractors. We know that Catholic Charities and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIRS) have lucrative contracts to not only resettle refugees, but also to ‘care’ for the kids.
So, of course, I figured those contractors were hurting for payola as the numbers of refugees and unaccompanied alien children were both way down.
Lutherans rolling in bucks!
I checked USA Spending to see how LIRS is doing under the Trump Administration because four years ago contractors like LIRS were crying the blues about how their mostly federal funding would dry up.
Well, it hasn’t! LIRS was granted by you, the taxpayer, $71 million in the last twelve months to take care of the children. 72% of that money went to take care of the mostly teenage boys, and for several months there were very few of those allowed to even stay in the country.
They are getting as much or more in funding from the Trump Administration as they got under Obama! They will be able to get right back to full steam ahead if Biden wins in November!
Note these bars represent fiscal years that run from Oct. 1 to Sept. 30th.
“They’re coming to benefit to consume and to establish themselves inside other people’s countries with the goal of eventually turning Europe into an Islamic state.”
(Ret. Col. Douglas Macgregor on the invasion of Europe)
According to news accounts in the last week or so, the President has signaled that he is considering nominating Retired Army Col. Douglas Macgregor for Ambassador to Germany.
As you might expect the Leftwing media is going crazy over his views on immigration that he has made crystal clear in interviews in recent years, including on Tucker Carlson’s show.
***Update***Jewish groups join CAIR in demanding Macgregor’s name be withdrawn. So watch, it will be.
German ambassador pick disparaged immigrants and refugees, called for martial law at US-Mexico border
(CNN)President Donald Trump’s nominee to become the US ambassador to Germany has a history of making xenophobic and racist comments about immigrants and refugees in both Germany and the US.
Retired Army Col. Douglas Macgregor, a decorated combat veteran, author and frequent guest on Fox News, claimed that Muslim migrants were coming to Europe “with the goal of eventually turning Europe into an Islamic state.”
He criticized Germany for giving “millions of unwanted Muslim invaders” welfare benefits rather than providing more funding for its armed services.
Macgregor’s newly unearthed comments come as the Trump administration announced it will withdraw nearly 12,000 troops from bases in Germany.The decision to remove troops from Germany was slammed by Republicans, Democrats and former senior military officials, who said the move would benefit Russia.
CNN’s KFile reviewed dozens of radio and television interviews with Macgregor and found he often demonized immigrants and refugees.
He warned Mexican cartels were “driving millions of Mexicans with no education, no skills and the wrong culture into the United States, placing them essentially as wards of the American people.” He repeatedly advocated to institute martial law at the US-Mexico border and “shoot people” if necessary.
[….]
“The Germans, thanks to us, don’t feel obligated to defend themselves. And the President has simply said, ‘look, why should the American taxpayer defend you if you aren’t willing to defend yourself?'” Macgregor said in 2018.
Macgregor’s criticisms of Germany extended to its immigration policies. He said, “These people are not coming to assimilate and become part of Europe.
They’re coming to benefit to consume and to establish themselves inside other people’s countries with the goal of eventually turning Europe into an Islamic state. That’s a bad thing for the West. It’s a bad thing for Europeans,”said Macgregor in a radio interview in June 2016.
[….]
He lamented in an interview posted in 2015 that the European Union provided “very luxurious and extremely expensive welfare” benefits to Muslim refugees during the height of the global migrant crisis and that “these people are not coming to assimilate or become Europeans–quite the opposite. They’re coming to take over whatever they can get.”
He further attacked the German military and government in 2018 for having “practically no armed forces” and instead spending money on “unwanted Muslim invaders.”
Thanks so much to CNN for helping to identify an American patriot who tells the unvarnished truth.
By the way, to hear the Left tell it, Trump is on his way out, so why worry about an Ambassador who they assume would only be on the job for a few months?
This post is archived in my ‘Invasion of Europe’ filewhere I have chronicled exactly what Macgregor says is happening for the last ten years.
We have admitted 196 refugees and spread them out among 22 states in the two weeks since Pompeo made the announcement according to data compiled by the Refugee Processing Center.
