Category: Where to find information

Shocking graphic shows US population rise from immigration

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Check out this website ‘Comprehensive Immigration Reduction’ to see how rapidly US population is increasing from all of our LEGAL and illegal immigration sources.     Hat tip:  Paul.

My only complaint is that the refugee number is too low.  It is not 35,000 but in recent years has been in the 75,000 range.  Obama this year asked for 80,000.

Makes you kind of wonder where the Lefty environmentalists are on the immigration issue. Shouldn’t they be concerned about all the houses, cars, schools that will destroy the environment and open space as the population booms? (Oh, that’s right, the environmental leaders like Carl Pope of the Sierra Club are Marxists and working with Van Jones to bring on the Revolution.)

That reminds me, wouldn’t someone please undertake to write some blogs on these other immigration programs—the diversity visa needs attention every day, as does the treaty investor program (food stamp fraud!), and how about someone please follow the student visa scam!

Where do I voice my concerns about the refugee program?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

It’s probably been two months since a couple of readers asked me where they could voice complaints and concerns about the refugee program.  Sorry, I’m finally getting around to answering (this isn’t so much fun to write about compared to some other stories!).

You can forget about complaining to the Volags (the supposed voluntary agencies that are funded with your tax dollars).  They will not listen.

Although he should be part of your repertoire for filing complaints, the US State Department, Asst. Secretary of State for Population, Refugees and Migration won’t listen either—he is a hardcore Leftist ideologue on George Soros’ team—and won’t likely answer your concerns.

Most states have state coordinators.  You can let them know how you feel.   And, of course don’t forget to try to get your local media involved—an uphill battle because most are now so politically correct and raising any question about this program will get you labeled a racist, but don’t be deterred that is their tried and true strategy to silence good questions.   [An aside:  one of the reasons we write RRW is to balance the media puff pieces we see so frequently about anything to do with refugees—you know, we gotta balance the ‘refugees see first snow’ type of stories. You can’t make good policy decisions unless all the facts are known.]

But….

The State Department and the Office of Refugee Resettlement in Health and Human Services will sit up and listen if a Member of Congress or a US Senator is on their case (your tax money is the lifeblood of refugee resettlement and Congress holds the purse strings).  So readers with concerns about the program must reach your own Representative or US Senators.  As a matter of fact, there is a new report out from the Congressional Research Service seeking to answer the many concerns voters have already expressed to their members of Congress.  It is dated January 4th and you should write and request a copy (US Refugee Resettlement Assistance) from your Congressman.   Unfortunately after addressing a litany of questions that must have been going in to the Congressional Research Service, one glaring omission in its final recommendations is the option of severely cutting the number of refugees entering the US in a recession!

One of the big concerns mentioned in the report was the virtual non-existence of any consultation with local governments about refugees being resettled in large numbers in some locations.

And, this is very important.  If you write to the Asst. Secretary of State, be sure to cc: your letter to your Member of Congress and both of your US Senators.

Find your Representative here.   Find your US Senators here.

More important than just writing to your elected officials (write to governors too), is to put pressure on them otherwise. Visit them at home offices, write letters to the editor, contact influential campaign donors and others who share your concerns about large numbers of immigrants entering the country.

Keep on top of the issues in Congress.

A good place to check in daily is MicEvHill (a pro-migration blog, but a good source of what they are thinking and what is happening in Congress).   Here is the February archive (you have to scroll down the whole month).   Note that the open borders gang are not happy with the direction of the “immigrant restrictionists” in the House Judiciary Committee now that the Republicans control the House.

By the way, if your Representative or one of your Senators sits on the Judiciary Committee, its especially important for you to contact them with concerns and reform suggestions for refugee resettlement. 

House Judiciary Committee

I see the Senate Judiciary Committee doesn’t have its subcommittee assignments.  But the full committee is here.

Hope that helps.  Take those comments you are sending my way and turn them into letters to your elected representatives. 

Is your county a “secure community?”

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Secure Communities is the name of a federal program to identify criminal aliens.  When someone is booked into your local jail, fingerprints are taken and sent to ICE to determine if the person is in the country illegally, or I assume a legal immigrant would be identified who is wanted in another jurisdiction (like the Somali guy in North Dakota recently).

To see if your county is participating, check out “Deportation Nation.”

I see no counties in North Dakota participate.

From time to time readers ask what they can do.  This is something you can do politically and locally—push your county government to enroll in Secure Communities.

Migration Policy Institute–more than a research outfit

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update: Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies has some insiteful comments about MPI’s 287g report at National Review On Line, here.  Hat tip: Judy.

Yesterday two people sent me the latest “study” from the benign-looking Migration Policy Institute. The press release on the report is entitled, “ICE’s 287(g) Immigration Enforcement Program Is Not Targeted Primarily at Serious Offenders, New MPI Study Finds,” and attempts to show that some jurisdictions involved in the 287g program (that is the federal program which authorizes local law enforcement to apprehend illegal aliens) are stopping illegals for petty crimes and traffic violations and thus in their view abusing the law.   It is a study that looks balanced, but in fact advances a political agenda.

The Migration Policy Institute  (MPI) does just that—it advances an open-borders agenda (as well as advocates for more legal immigration—more refugees and more asylees).

I had never really looked more deeply into the organization, but did just now because this report irritated me so much—not what it says, but that over and over again we are led to believe there is no agenda behind supposedly objective studies like this one and gullible readers, especially reporters, take this stuff as the unvarnished truth.

In 30 minutes I found some of the following information:

The first thing I always check is a group’s Form 990 (virtually all of these pro-migration advocacy groups are non-profits and are required to file a Form 990, some do so in a more timely fashion than others).  Here is the most recent Form 990 for MPI–2008.  There is no reason they shouldn’t have 2009 available.

The most interesting thing to me is that their income went from just over $4 million in the prior year and then jumped to a whopping $9.6 million in the next year.   Could it be that with Obama’s election they were gearing up to push amnesty through Congress?

Unfortunately other than the government portion of their funding which is $443,000, one is not given access to their funders.  I don’t care what end of the political spectrum a group is on, but its major funders should be identified on their public Form 990—a good project for an enterprising Tea Party oriented Congressman!

Like so many of these Washington groups ostensibly helping the world’s poor and downtrodden, one of the biggest portions of their expenses is for all the 6-figure salaries paid to employees.  Examining the Form 990, one sees that one of those receiving six-figures from MPI is Doris Meissner.  I told you about her here recently as she was quoted supporting the “free market idea” of human trafficking and smuggling Somalis across our border:

Doris Meissner, former commissioner of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, said applicants can wait in camps for years with no assurance they’ll get into the country of their choice.

“Sometimes they decide that smuggling is the best shot,” said Meissner, now a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington. [You see what I mean about reporters, they eat this up, “nonpartisan think tank” my foot—-ed]

When I scrolled down that Form 990 all I had to see was a $50,000 grant MPI gave to the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition that year to know who they were.  That is a very far Left, highly political, open borders and pro-migration and pro-Muslim immigration advocacy group we have written about on many occasions.

And, interestingly, I didn’t know that MPI was actually mentioned in an article about the hotel in Nashville that canceled a meeting I attended in May 2009.  After the Lowe’s Vanderbilt hotel canceled a conference days before it opened, we all went to another “welcoming” hotel and proceeded to have a good meeting.  Here is ACT for America’s account of what happened.  Here is Judy’s post.

So, just by giving TIRRC a $50,000 grant I knew there was nothing nonpartisan and balanced about MPI.  Just one more of George Soros money laundering outfits?

When you can’t figure out who exactly is funding an organization one can search by just googling some of the likely candidates.  For example, I typed in Migration Policy Institute and the Tides Foundation or Tides Center (the hard Left’s premier money laundering operation), MPI and George Soros, and then Discover the Networks is also a really good first option.

Below are some links to give you a better idea of who MPI is:

Discover the Networks, here.

MPI and George Soros here ( here is the source for that story).  Soros operation is called the “shadow party.”

Working with the big money government contractor, International Rescue Committee, here for a PR campaign for more tax dollars going to Iraqi refugees (actually it won’t go directly to the refugees it will pass through the contractors so the head of the IRC can make his $400,000 plus salary).

I told you about this meeting hosted by MPI (here) where “experts” admitted that black men are hurt the most when immigrant numbers are high, but that doesn’t matter to the elite and highly educated at MPI.

Wikipedia reports that MPI gets funding from international interests through the United Nations, here.  Heck, you can see all their international funders at their website, here.

And, to really see what grassroots immigration control groups are up against, see UNBOUND PHILANTHROPY, here.

O.K. so this is taking me more than a half hour—UNBOUND has a boatload of information on its Form 990!  Will have to write a separate post!  [Update: Here is my post on Unbound Philanthropy.]

Bottomline, MPI is not an unbiased, nonpartisan, independent think tank.  It is an open borders advocate and a pro-migration organization. So please read any “study” or report that they release as propaganda to advance their agenda.

So how much does all this cost us?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Your tax dollars:

You are probably aware that the last Congress never did pass an Appropriations bill for the fiscal year (FY 2011) that we began on October 1st, 2010 and is about to take up the matter with votes expected in mid February.  Although the Constitution says that all money bills must originate in the House of Representatives, at the end of the 111th Congress the US Senate was actually driving the appropriations debate with a draft Appropriations bill.

According to the blog MicEvHill the following is a summary of the spending that was proposed in the last Congress for Refugee and Asylee programs (MicEvHill doesn’t seem to have links for the individual posts which makes finding things very difficult, you need to go here and scroll down to the story on January 5th).  The new House of Representatives is proposing an appropriations cut which takes the spending back to 2008 levels.

The grand total cost of the Refugee program as proposed by the Senate is just over $2,500,000,000 (that is billions!), while 2008 levels would take it down a half billion to around $2 billion.

From MicEvHill:

*Refugee Admissions and Overseas Refugee Assistance. The draft Senate bill would have appropriated $1.685 BILLION in fiscal year 2011 for Department of State’s Migration and Refugee Assistance (MRA) account, which funds both refugee admissions and overseas refugee assistance. Congress appropriated the same amount for the MRA account in fiscal year 2010. However, it only appropriated $1.296 BILLION for the MRA account in fiscal year 2008.

*Emergency Refugee and Migration Assistance. The draft Senate bill would have appropriated $45 MILLION in fiscal year 2011 for the Emergency Refugee and Migration Assistance (ERMA) account, which funds draw-downs for emergency refugee situations. Congress appropriated the same amount for the ERMA account in fiscal year 2010. However, it appropriated $76 MILLION for the ERMA account in fiscal year 2008.

*Office of Refugee Resettlement. The draft Senate bill would have appropriated $767.1 MILLION in fiscal year 2011 for the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), which operates the federal government’s refugee resettlement, trafficking victim assistance, torture victim assistance, and unaccompanied alien children programs. Congress appropriated $730.928 MILLION for ORR’s activities in fiscal year 2010. However, it only appropriated only $628 MILLION for ORR in fiscal year 2008.

*Refugee and Asylum Adjudications. The draft Senate bill would have directly appropriated $176.4 MILLION in fiscal year 2011 to the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) for processing applications for asylum or refugee status. Congress appropriated $50 MILLION for refugee and asylum adjudications in fiscal year 2010. However, it did not appropriate any funds for that purpose in fiscal year 2008.

Granted, some of this funding gets sent abroad—like that ERMA money ($20 million) that Obama sent to the Palestinians in 2009, here, but this means that with about 100,000 combined refugees and asylees we admit each year the cost of this program could be more than $20,000 per refugee ($100,000 for a family of 4?). You know the refugees aren’t getting much so you can see why this is such a cash cow for the immigration industry (including the UN, by the way).

And, that number does not include the cost to cities and states for health care, education, public housing, public safety and so on.

Who benefits the most?  Volags like the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (which lobbies for more legal immigration and for amnesty for illegal immigrants) and big companies who need cheap labor like Tyson Foods benefit.

What is that expression again?  Doing well by doing good?