Category: What you can do

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?

 

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.

While Republicans welcome Chinese companies ($$$) to the US, Dems welcome new American voters….

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

…..lost in the middle, are the rest of us.

Yesterday I told you about the Trump/Daines (Republican Senator from Montana) deal to invite China to set up a massive meat processing plant in Montana.  A Canadian company is planning a second one.

For new readers, meat processing=foreign labor.

Buchanan state of emergency
My first thought when I read Coulter’s piece was of the warning that Pat Buchanan trumpeted for years in innumerable books. It must be maddening for him to see his predictions playing out just the way he said they would.

And, I see Ann Coulter yesterday chastised the Republicans for not seeing that their weak immigration policies are allowing the Dems to turn red states blue with immigrant voters who invariably vote for the party giving them stuff.

Here is Coulter on what the real message from the Virginia election should be. (Hat tip: Cathy)

Putting these two events together one can only conclude that the R’s want money and D’s want voters and the rest of us be damned.

Yes Virginia, Immigration is Turning the Country Blue

Hey, Republicans! Did you enjoy Election Night last week? Get ready for a lot more nights like that as immigration turns every last corner of the country blue.

When Ed Gillespie lost in Virginia, liberals crowed about how they’re winning the war of ideas. The country has thoroughly, emphatically rejected Trumpism!

Republicans, being idiots, played along, arguing only about whether Gillespie’s problem was that he didn’t embrace Trump enough or embraced him too much.

Gillespie’s campaign was fine. No cleverer arguments, community outreach or perfectly timed mailings would have changed the result. Contrary to The New York Times’ celebratory article in last Sunday’s magazine, “How the ‘Resistance’ Helped Democrats Dominate Virginia,” it wasn’t Democratic operative Kathryn Sorenson’s savvy use of Facebook, Google and Eventbrites that carried the day. “The Resistance” didn’t win.

What happened was: Democrats brought in new voters. In 1970, only one out of every 100 Virginians was foreign-born. By 2012, one in nine Virginians was foreign-born.

The foreign-born vote overwhelmingly, by about 80 percent, for Democrats. They always have and they always will — especially now that our immigration policies aggressively discriminate in favor of the poorest, least-educated, most unskilled people on Earth. They arrive in need of a LOT of government services.

According to the Pew Research Center, 75 percent of Hispanic immigrants and 55 percent of Asian immigrants support bigger government, compared to just over 40 percent of the general public. Even third-generation Hispanics support bigger government by 58 percent.

[….]

They were brought in to vote for the Democrats. That’s the real job immigrants are doing that Americans just won’t do.

As Democratic consultant Patrick Reddy wrote for the Roper Center 20 years ago, the 1965 Immigration Act, bringing in “a wave of immigration from the Third World,” will go down in history as “the Kennedy family’s greatest gift to the Democratic Party.” [Ted Kennedy was responsible for the creation of the Refugee Act of 1980 as well.—ed]

There isn’t much time on the clock before it’s lights-out for the GOP.

And all Republicans can think to do is argue about how quickly to grant amnesty to so-called “Dreamers” and give the Democrats another 30 million voters.

More here.

Trump and Daines
The Trump/Daines dumb deal!

How many times have I heard in the last decade that we have to work within the Republican party, that there is no hope for another party?

I am not buying it.

When Republicans are this dumb and this greedy they don’t deserve to be our ‘leaders!’

What happened to America First? Is Trump a globalist after all?

When Trump thinks it’s a good idea to welcome China to build a huge, polluting, meat plant in Montana (to feed the Chinese), a plant which will, without a doubt, use foreign labor (possibly even Chinese workers brought in to live in barracks!), then I’m done.

It is time for a commonsense party for commonsense people.

Go here to learn more about meatpackers changing the face of American heartland towns. I’ve been writing about the transformation for nearly ten years.

If you are looking for something to do, help your fellow Americans in Montana and contact the White House, tell Trump what you think about his dumb deal to feed the Chinese while destroying America, here.

Utah: Struggling refugees now look on refugee camps in Africa with longing

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

“Life got harder for me when I came to America…Most of the time, I wish I could go back to the refugee camp in Africa.”

Congolize refugee

Update November 15th: See how many from the DR Congo we have brought in already, here.

This story represents one of my major reasons for writing RRW for the last 10 years.

The do-gooders want ever-greater numbers of refugees admitted to the US despite the fact that many will live in poverty while many of the CEOs of the major resettlement agencies are raking in large 6-figure salaries.

Damn it! If you ‘humanitarians’ care so much for the world’s downtrodden, why do you need to be making salaries in excess of $200,000, $300,000, $500,000 largely funded by the US Treasury?

Nigeria Refugees Miliband
For the camera, IRC CEO David Miliband shows compassion for children in Nigeria, but where is the compassion for refugees his organization dropped off in Utah and are now living in squalor or are homeless. Doing well by doing good, Miliband makes $591,846 annually. Photo: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/ap/article-3349940/Refugee-kids-bring-David-Miliband-knees-Nigeria.html

And, readers, it isn’t refugees like these in Utah that should be criticized or castigated (they were sold a bill of goods), it is the refugee industry (the globalists) that obviously turns a blind eye to the refugees they brought in previous years.

Instead of admitting only the number of refugees communities can afford or otherwise accommodate, the nine contractors*** always want more. Why?

Because the newly arriving refugees bring-in money by the head to the resettlement agency and that is the primary reason they are so angry at Trump. He has reduced the number of their paying “clients.”

From Deseret News  where the story features refugees from the DR Congo.

For new readers, back in 2013, here, Obama’s State Department said it would help clean out UN camps in Africa by bringing 50,000 from the DR Congo to Anytown, USA. We may have already exceeded that number.

When he felt hopeless, the Bible’s words lifted him up and renewed his faith that God had a plan for him. He prayed that the Lord would deliver his family to America.

If he ever made it there, he imagined, he would have a home of his own with a large backyard, where he could tend a garden and watch his children play.

Instead, this is Ngunza’s reality: He lives in a tiny, roach-infested apartment with his wife and 11 children. His job slicing meat at a local deli pays just above minimum wage, which barely covers his monthly rent, and leaves him precious little to feed and clothe his family.

Instead of dreams, these days Ngunza only has fears – that he won’t be able to provide for his family’s basic needs and still keep a roof over their head.

“Just like in the camp,” he says, “I feel trapped all over again.”

Mike Lee
Where are you Senator Mike Lee? Why don’t you take the lead and call for an investigation of the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program!

[….]

On its face, the resettlement program is a feel-good story, a symbol of America’s commitment as a global citizen, and for refugees, the epitome of the American Dream.

[….]

Utah is the only state that allocates funding for resettlement agencies – the International Rescue Committee and Catholic Community Services – to offer case management services for a full two-year period. During this time, they provide refugees with job training, housing placement and English language lessons, and more, all with the goal of helping refugees reach self-sufficiency as quickly as possible.

Nevertheless, despite the best of intentions, the Deseret News has found that many refugees are living well below the poverty line. Some are facing eviction. Others have become homeless.

In part, that’s because it is very difficult for arriving refugees to find jobs that pay a living wage and housing they can afford.

It is not the Mormon church doing the resettling in Utah, it is Catholic Charities and the International Rescue Committee (IRC is headed by David Miliband, a Brit, who pulls down a cool $500,000 plus a year salary).

Aiden Batar, director of Migration and Refugee Services at Catholic Community Services, says he does not know how many refugees in Utah are homeless or living in poverty. Neither does Poulin with the International Rescue Committee.  [Of course they don’t—see no evil!….–ed]

[….]

At the Road Home shelter, the Deseret News met a Congolese refugee family of 11 evicted from their apartment three months ago who have been unable to find another place to live. At an apartment complex in South Salt Lake, a single mother named Feliz, also from the Congo, has been unemployed for two months after losing her job as a maid at a downtown hotel, and she has struggled to find other work.

“Life got harder for me when I came to America,” says Feliz. “I constantly worry that I will be evicted and my family will end up on the street. Most of the time, I wish I could go back to the refugee camp in Africa.”

It is a huge article, go here for more.

Dear Donald, maybe it’s time for that repatriation fund we talked about years ago.  Set up financing for unhappy refugees to go home!  LOL! take it out of the salaries of the top executives of the refugee industry!

What you can do!  If you live in Utah (or otherwise have contact with the Senator), call on Senator Mike Lee to launch an investigation!

***The nine federal contractors that monopolize all resettlement in the US are below. Go here to see a recent accounting of their finances and salaries.