You might want to read my post on asylum here last week. Asylum seekers differ from the refugees we normally talk about because they get to a country like Germany (or the US, or Canada) and ask for asylum claiming they will be persecuted if returned home. The refugees we write most about here are selected abroad and we fly them in.
So the next time you hear that Germany is welcoming refugees in greater numbers than the US, remember these hordes who arrived in Europe with a goal of getting to Germany over the last two years are migrants seeking asylum. Now we are learning that, yikes! Germany has 450,000 who failed to prove their asylum claims and will now be deported.
Gee, wouldn’t it have been a better idea to close their borders in the first place!
They are not going to love her so much when she starts filling up those planes and flying hundreds of thousands out of dear Deutschland. Poster and story here: http://panteres.com/2015/08/28/angela-merkel-syrians-praise-chancellor-for-receiving-refugees/
From the Daily Mail(a department in Berlin will be created to organize the mass deportations!):
Merkel offers cash handouts worth millions of pounds for migrants to return home in an embarrassing U-turn
Angela Merkel will offer cash handouts worth millions of pounds for migrants to leave Germany in an effort to silence criticism of her ‘open-door’ border policy.
In a highly-embarrassing U-turn over the ill-fated plan, which saw 1.2million migrants flock to the country, Mrs Merkel has now vowed to send many of them home.
The German chancellor agreed a package of measures to speed up the deportation process for an estimated 450,000 migrants who have been rejected asylum.
The controversial plan, which marks a significant toughening of previous proposals, includes a £76million scheme that will offer migrants cash incentives to leave Germany voluntarily.
Many will see the move as a desperate attempt for Miss Merkel to claw back support ahead of her challenging re-election bid in September.
Criticism of her decision to leave Germany’s borders open and welcome all refugees during Europe’s migration crisis in 2015 has led to a surge in support for anti-immigrant parties.
[….]
The proposed crackdown, which has been criticised by human rights groups, will also include the creation of a department in Berlin to co-ordinate mass deportations.
Continue reading here.
The Trump message for Leftwing politicians worldwide: not a winning strategy to promote the replacement of your own people with migrants.
Our entire ‘Invasion of Europe’ archive is here (extends back many years).
Here is one of many stories about the impact of the cap reduction to 50,000 refugees for the US in FY17, a portion of the Trump EO not effected by court wrangling.
We learned here that the refugee resettlement contracting agencies were going to be working on placing sob stories (like this one) to sway public opinion against President Trump.
As you read this, remember that since 9/11 we have had 4 years under 50,000 (2003, 2004, 2006, 2007) and under Obama we had one year (2011) under 60,000 see here. Joel Charny: “I expect the 50,000 cap to remain in place in subsequent years as well.” 50,000 is not that low! Photo and bio here: https://www.maxwell.syr.edu/leadership_inst.aspx?id=152471339390
So these whining contractors have often had lower numbers to resettle, but they were licking their chops for Obama’s proposed 110,000 paying refugee clients (they are paid by the head, by you, to resettle refugees in your towns and cities).
And, here, I argued that the Trump Administration should lower the cap to 35,000. Very few migrants from Syria, Somalia and Iraq get to the US outside of the refugee program so it would effectively slow the flow from terror hotspots. And, btw, we have been taking Somalis for 30 years—DOES IT EVER STOP!
***This morning we are already at 34,078 (1,953 since the EO was signed on 1/28) according to Wrapsnet.***
One more thing before I give you a few snips from the “chaos” news. Don’t allow anyone to use the argument made at the end of this article that we only take a fraction compared to say Turkey or Pakistan. Our refugees become permanent citizens and those presently swamping those countries will not be accepted as citizens. They will be expected to return to their own countries when the conflict ends. Mark my words, if this flow from Syria to America gets going full steam, as it has for Somalia, we will still be taking Syrians for decades no matter what happens in their homeland.
Here is Devex:
President Donald Trump’s ban on refugees from entering the U.S. has — at least for now — been suspended. But the resulting scene for those involved in refugee resettlement is chaotic, exacerbated by concern about the longer term prospects of the United States’ role as a host country, according to several resettlement, legal aid and advocacy organizations. A cap on refugee arrivals at less than half the previous expected figure remains in place.
“We don’t know when people will be brought over, or how many those numbers will be. It’s very complicated — total chaos,” said Bill Swersey, senior director of communications and digital media at HIAS, one of the nine refugee resettlement organizations*** contracted by the U.S. federal government, in a phone interview early this week. “Everybody is confused. It is like we are riding a rollercoaster. First there is a ban, then it is rescinded… We don’t know when we will receive new people. Last week, there was one Syrian refugee family that arrived.”
[….]
…..some elements of the ban remain in place.
This includes a reduction of the number of refugees the U.S. will welcome — now curtailed to 50,000 per year, less than half of this year’s expected admission of 110,000.
[….]
“That is a huge concern. Over time we have incrementally worked up to more sufficient numbers and that is a highly discretionary thing the President sets a cap for every year,” said Kate Phillips-Barrasso, the International Rescue Committee’s senior director of policy and advocacy. “We worry if the caps are lower it just sets us back many, many years with the resettlement we are doing. [And, it means less $$$ and less staff for them!—ed]
The US takes the largest share by far of UN chosen refugees for permanent resettlement
The U.S. has historically been the largest participant in the U.N. refugee agency’s global resettlement program. Canada, Australia, Norway and the U.K. also take large numbers of refugees through this program.
“It is hard to see any countries being able to come forward and make up for this reduction,” Joel Charny, director of the Norwegian Refugee Council USA, wrote in an email to Devex. “I expect the 50,000 cap to remain in place in subsequent years as well.”
In 2016, a total of 114,916 refugees were resettled as part of the U.N. refugee agency’s program. The U.S. admitted 84,995 people during fiscal year 2016.The greatest number of refugees entering the U.S. came from the Democratic Republic of Congo, followed by Syria, Burma, Iraq and Somalia.
Continue reading here.
This reminds me, Trump could take us out of the UN program and we could pick our own refugees. The fact that 98% of the Syrians entering the US right now are Muslims is because the UN makes the first cut. Where is Congress? Hiding? Afraid of the Chamber of Commerce and big corporations needing cheap labor, like the meatpackers? The present system of resettlement in America is so flawed that I believe the Refugee Act of 1980 must be trashed.
Congress could then write a new law, dumping the UN role in choosing refugees, if it was determined to be in America’s best interests to bring in a certain amount of third world poverty to our towns and cities.
***Nine major federal refugee contractors:
And, check out who admits that Meatpackers have been drivers behind the importation of cheap immigrant labor, specifically refugees!
Thanks to reader Deena for spotting this!
Big Meat Braces for a Refugee Shortage
Reporters Lauren Etter and Shruti Singh at Bloomberg (emphasis below is mine): I took this photo of JBS headquarters in Greeley this past summer on my 6,000 mile tour of refugee-overloaded towns. JBS is a Brazilian owned company benefiting from cheap refugee labor. Our tax dollars (welfare) subsidize those wages, so our meat is not cheap!
Word of President Trump’s executive order barring the entry of international refugees shocked Fort Morgan, a town of 11,000 on the snowy plains of Colorado, some 80 miles northeast of Denver. Many of the workers at a Cargill Meat Solutions plant that’s the town’s largest employer emigrated from Somalia and Myanmar and had been waiting months, if not years, for relatives to join them. Now they’re afraid that reunion might never happen. As a result, the plant in Fort Morgan and other meatpacking plants in the U.S. that have dozens of openings may have to scramble to find a new labor pool.
[….]
Trump’s decision to sharply curtail the number of refugees admitted into the U.S. may lead Big Meat to recalibrate its recruitment practices.
While a federal court has temporarily suspended the administration’s four-month ban on new arrivals, not affected is Trump’s plan to slash refugee admissions from 110,000 to 50,000 in the current fiscal year.
Refugees have been a fixture within the meat processing workforcesince 2006, when immigration officials under President George W. Bush raided plants in several states, leading to the arrest of about 1,300 undocumented workers. Companies “realized that their business model of hiring undocumented people was causing problems for them,” says Lavinia Limón, chief executive officer of the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, a resettlement organization. “So they moved to the refugee population.”
More here. I’m quoted saying that maybe it’s time BIG MEAT paid higher wages and hired American workers! Ms. Limon must have forgotten that it was Bill Clinton in the mid-1990’s who first made Bosnian refugee labor available to his meatpacking pals (remember those cattle futures!) in Iowa, see here. Ms. Limon was his Director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement at the time! How could she have forgotten!
“And IBP’s good fortune didn’t end there,” Limbacher continues, “turns out the Clinton administration’s Bosnian refugee resettlement efforts also helped to keep labor costs down. Since 1995, for instance, the town of Waterloo, Iowa — population 65,000 – has been swamped with 6,000 Bosnian refugees, many of whom wound up working for the No. 1 local employer, IBP.”
(Iowa Beef was ultimately absorbed by Tyson Foods).
If you missed my post this morning where I argue that Trump could still stop most of the flow from terror hotspots by further reducing the refugee ceiling for this year from 50,000 to 35,000 (we are at over 33,000 now), be sure to have a look.
US Refugee law must be reformed and curtailing the program might serve as an incentive for Congress to get off the dime and do it! If threats of terrorism can’t move them, maybe threats in a decline in cheap immigrant labor for big global corporations and the Chamber of Commerce might.
Because he is all over the news today as the focal point in one more attack on President Donald Trump, I’m re-posting this story from 2015 so you know just who Senator Blumenthal is and why he must be pretty unhappy with Trump.
In 2015 Senator Blumenthal held a press conference with the director of CAIR Connecticut seeking to speed up Syrian refugees to America by reducing security screening requirements. 98% of Syrians entering the US are Muslims. This is what I said October 7, 2015:
Update: Who was that man over Senator Blumenthal’s left shoulder?
Yesterday we told you that Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) is leading the charge to lessen the security screening for Syrian and other Middle Eastern refugeesand he wants to expand the so-called P-3 (fraud ridden!) family reunification program.
See yesterday’s post by clicking here. (Go there to see exactly how Senator Blumenthal wanted to make it easier for Syrians to get through the refugee screening process.)
That is CAIR-Connecticut’s Executive Director behind Senator Blumenthal. Getting pretty brazen aren’t they, or is Blumenthal just pretty dense to invite CAIR to be so prominently involved in lessening security screening for refugees?
Now we know the answer to the question I asked all of you to help answer. Looming over Blumenthal’s shoulder is none other than Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR)- Connecticut director Mongi Dhaouadi.
(When I mentioned to a friend that I had updated my post with that information (thanks to Kyle), she suggested I write a second post because as a subscriber, who received the earlier one, she would not see the update.)
But it is worth mentioning again because this is now the second time we have seen CAIR involving itself directly in the Syrian (mostly Muslim) resettlement issue (and you can bet they are not advocating for the persecuted Syrian Christians). Clearly their interest is in boosting the Muslim population in the US. CAIR was herein the St. Louis ‘Bring them here march’ last month.
Here is Mr. Dhaouadi’s bio at CAIR’s website: (update: Apparently Mr. Dhaouadi has moved on since I first wrote this story)
Mongi Dhaouadi Executive Director
Mongi S. Dhaouadi was born and raised in Tunisia. He moved to the US when he was 19 years old and studied Electrical Engineering at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. As The Executive director of CAIR-CT, he conducts civil rights workshops throughout the state of Connecticut under the title “Know Your Rights.” Also, he leads several workshops and discussions on Islamophobia and the Muslim experience before and after 9/11.He has participated in and led several media campaigns and press conferences on issues concerning the Muslim community ranging from discrimination cases to advocating for the change of racial profiling laws in the state of Connecticut. Dhaouadi was featured in countless local, national, and international media outlets including NPR, FOX News, and Democracy Now with Amy Goodman. During the summer, he runs a youth internship program during which high school and college students work on several projects ranging from preparing a toolkit on Islamic cultural competency for schools, to writing and publishing articles from a Muslim youth perspective in the local papers and publications. Dhaouadi leads a Connecticut delegation at the Capitol Hill visits; an event that is organized every year by CAIR National, where members of the Muslim community visit their representatives in Wasington, DC and advocate for issues of concern domestic and foreign. Prior to joining CAIR-CT on a full time bases Dhaouadi was the Head Administrator at SKF Academy in Hamden Connecticut. Dhaouadi is married with three children: ages 11, 14 and 18. He lives with his family in New London, Connecticut. His favorite past time is playing or coaching soccer.
So far Connecticut doesn’t get very many refugees compared to other states. I guess Blumenthal and Dhaouadi would like to change that.
Is CAIR getting into the refugee resettlement program where you live? Let me know. And, while you are at it, see if you notice the involvement of Islamic Relief (USA)as well. Go here to find the regional offices of Islamic Relief (USA) thanks to reader Cathy. More on Connecticut here.
Readers, you may see more of this going on in the coming days and weeks. Since the Refugee Admissions Program is going to be slowed no matter what the outcome is of the legal arguments about the “ban.” The RAP is being capped at 50,000 for the fiscal year and we are at 33,081 this morning. That portion of Trump’s EO is not effected, see here. I think you will see this gathering be turned into an anti-Trump propaganda stunt used to garner more media attention.
Pittsfield will not get many refugees in the coming months no matter what happens, so why bother holding this meeting? The ‘bidding for bodies’ will be fierce!
By the way, since the numbers coming in will be so low, established resettlement sites will be getting most of the refugees. New sites will be at the end of the line for receiving paying clients (refugees!).
Our previous post on Pittsfield is here.
From iBerkshires.com:
PITTSFIELD, Mass. — The organization heading the refugee resettlement program in Pittsfield will hold its second community meeting on the topic on Monday, Feb. 13.
Maxine Stein says there is strong community support for resettling what will be mostly Muslim Iraqis and Syrians in Western Mass.
Jewish Family Services of Western Massachusetts is looking to resettle 50 refugees from Iraq and Syria in Pittsfield. The group announced its intentions in September and held a community meeting later that month. That meeting was so well attended that people were being turned away at the door.
In January, the U.S. State Department approved Pittsfield as being a site for resettlement and the group announced it will have another round of community meetings. One was scheduled for Monday at Morningside School but that has since been canceled. The second is still scheduled for Feb. 13 at Herberg Middle School at 6 p.m.
“Jewish Family Service has been helping refugees to build new lives in Western Massachusetts for more than 40 years. We have been incredibly fortunate to have the strong support of the community in this work,” said Maxine Stein, CEO of Jewish Family Service of Western Massachusetts, said in a statement.
“Each year, we resettle more than 240 refugees through our Springfield office***. Last year alone, we helped more than 80 families begin new lives in safety and freedom in the Springfield area. By expanding to Pittsfield, we will be able to help welcome an additional 50 refugees this year.”
However, an executive order signed by President Trump put halt on resettlement programs. The impact of that order is expected to be discussed at the meeting on Feb. 13.
If there are any patriots left in Massachusetts you might want to attend.
***Nearby Springfield, Mass is overloaded and that is why they are moving out to fresh territory. See our archive on the problems in Springfield, here. Mayor begged for a moratorium!
One of my favorite stories from Springfield is the one about refugees hunting for food in the local public park! This is not fake news!
