USCIS removes "nation of immigrants" from mission statement, Left goes nuts

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

“…..reveals the insidious racism harbored by those in this administration.”

(Eleanor Acer, director of refugee protection at Washington-based advocacy group Human Rights First)

Here is the story at Think Progress (consider the source):
 

Eleanor Acer cspan
They are one-trick ponies! It is “racist,” Trump is “racist” and you, dear readers, are “racists!”

 

In a move formalizing more than a year of hardline anti-immigration rhetoric from the White House, the agency responsible for overseeing both green cards and citizenship has wiped a key line framing the United States as a “nation of immigrants” from its mission statement.

In a letter sent Thursday, Lee Francis Cissna, the director of United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), told employees that the statement had been altered to “guide us in the years ahead.”

The original language:

“U.S.C.I.S. secures America’s promise as a nation of immigrants by providing accurate and useful information to our customers, granting immigration and citizenship benefits, promoting an awareness and understanding of citizenship, and ensuring the integrity of our immigration system,” read the agency’s original mission statement.

The new Trump Admin. language:

The new offering is notably altered: “U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services administers the nation’s lawful immigration system, safeguarding its integrity and promise by efficiently and fairly adjudicating requests for immigration benefits while protecting Americans, securing the homeland and honoring our values.”

That new statement, Cissna said, “clearly defines the agency’s role in our country’s lawful immigration system and the commitment we have to the American people.”

In addition to the removal of the “nation of immigrants” phrase, the statement has also eliminated any reference to non-U.S. nationals as “customers” — a decision Cissna said served as “a reminder that we are always working for the American people.”

Did you know that some Native Americans and Blacks never did like the phrase—nation of immigrants—so they must be cheering this move!

The phrase “nation of immigrants” is not without controversy — many Native Americans have argued against the saying, as have Black Americans, arguing that the arrival of colonizers and slaves should not be conflated with immigration more broadly. But the phrase has become a rallying cry for many contemporary proponents of immigration, which helps to diversify the United States and keep the economy strong. Its removal formalizes an agenda long pursued by the Trump administration, which has made cracking down on immigration a key pillar of its tenure.

[….]

“Our nation is one built by immigrants—removing this language does nothing to change that fact, it only reveals the insidious racism harbored by those in this administration,” said Eleanor Acer, director of refugee protection at Washington-based advocacy group Human Rights First, in a statement.

More here.  You might find it heartening to read the list of all the “racist” things the White House has been doing!
And, I don’t want to get in to a big yak, but we haven’t been a nation of immigrants, in fact we took about a 40 year break until Senator Ted (don’t bring them to Hyannis) Kennedy pushed the 1965 Hart-Cellers Immigration Act that opened the present day flood gates.  Earlier waves of immigration were mostly from Europe (and there was no welfare system. They worked hard or went home). All that changed in 1965. 15 years later he pushed through the Refugee Act of 1980.
I always wondered if ol’ Teddy was a true believer, or did someone have a gun to his head?

Israel set to deport African economic migrants, Canada says wait (they want more)

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Canada is apparently the leading country to take off Israel’s hands some of the tens of thousands of Africans who entered Israel illegally. Israel says they are mostly economic migrants and not legitimate refugees.
Canada wants a bunch, so why they are dragging their feet isn’t clear.
And, readers, know that the US is taking some too.  I just checked data at Wrapsnet and it looks like we have taken 58 during this fiscal year as of January 31.
Here is the news at The Star:

Ottawa has reached a last-minute deal with Israel to suspend the deportation of asylum-seekers who currently are waiting for resettlement to Canada.

Israel refugees
Waiting for a ticket to Canada?

Israel is set to begin deporting some 37,000 asylum-seekers, the majority of them Sudanese and Eritreans, in April after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government issued them expulsion notices.

The asylum-seekers, most of them deemed by Israel to be economic migrants rather than refugees in need of protection, can either leave voluntarily for a “safe” African country and receive $3,500 and a plane ticket, or face imprisonment.

The Canadian government is under the gun to resettle 1,845 of the African refugees whose sponsorship applications are currently in process, some for years.

“Canada does not support policies of mass deportations of asylum-seekers. The rights of asylum-seekers and refugees are laid out in the Geneva Convention on the Status of Refugees, of which Israel is a signatory,” said Adam Austen, press secretary for Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland.

Joanne Beach
Working on finding more churches willing to sponsor one of Israel’s illegal aliens!

“As the country that resettles the highest number of African asylum-seekers from Israel, we are in direct contact with the Government of Israel to convey Canada’s concerns about the situation.”

[….]

Joanne Beach, director of justice and compassion for the Christian and Missionary Alliance in Canada, which has a sponsorship agreement with Ottawa, said Canada must do its utmost to expedite the resettlement of refugees.

“The alliance is still concerned for the welfare of those at risk of deportation in Israel who do not have applications currently in process. We are appealing to churches to consider entering into a sponsorship agreement or partnering with a Canadian Jewish organization to help those at imminent risk of deportation from Israel,” said Beach.

More here.
This post is filed in my Canada category and my Israel and Refugees category.

Investigative reporter and blogger, Leo Hohmann's first-hand account of trip to South Dakota

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

It was an eye-opener on so many levels Hohmann recounted to me and here is the first of a couple of posts on what he saw and learned when he was invited to help educate a South Dakota legislative committee about refugee resettlement and the refugees being secretly placed in American towns in recent years.
Joining Hohmann on a witness panel were James Simpson and Phil Haney, both should be familiar to regular readers here at RRW.
Below is the title and a few snips of the must read post at LeoHohmann.com, but please read it all! (Emphasis below is mine):

GOP governor leads fight against ending refugee influx from Somalia and other jihadist strongholds

Many of you have noticed I’ve been quiet this week, posting only one article about the efforts of Kansas Congresswoman Lynn Jenkins to win amnesty for an illegal-alien Muslim professor with ties to a terror-stained mosque.

Rest assured I haven’t been slacking. I was traveling on special assignment, so let me fill you in.

sen-neal-tapio
SD Senator Neal Tapio is running for Congress. Although Republicans soundly defeated his bill, the hearing served as an educational opportunity that should be replicated in other states.

Refugee resettlement has over the past couple of years become a controversial subject in many state capitals as more Americans educate themselves on the dark underbelly of a program that has been transforming U.S. cities and towns for 35 years.

South Dakota — like Idaho, Ohio, Michigan, Texas, Tennessee, West Virginia and Minnesota — is a state where patriotic Americans have formed pockets of resistance to the resettlements. They’ve seen the fraud and greed upon which the program — run by the United Nations in cooperation with the U.S. State Department and its federal contractors affiliated with private agencies like Catholic Charities and Lutheran Social Services — is based.

[….]

My task Wednesday was to testify before the South Dakota Senate’s Committee on State Affairs in support of a bill introduced by Sen. Neal Tapio that would place a moratorium on refugees entering that state from any country that has been placed on a federal travel ban.

Any time a state pushes back against refugee resettlement it is a big deal, so I dropped everything and flew to South Dakota. This federal program has evolved over the decades from a legitimate humanitarian effort into a fraudulent operation whereby agencies like Lutheran Social Services serve as headhunters for industries looking for cheap Third World labor. The cost for U.S. communities has been devastating in terms of crime, terrorism and welfare abuse but the establishment of both parties will tell any lie necessary to keep the cheap labor flowing.

I saw them in action in South Dakota Wednesday and it left me with a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.

Continue here for the remainder of part one.
See the Argus Leader here for its sanitized story on the hearing. More later on that!
Go here for my South Dakota archive, a state I visited during my tour of meatpacking states in the summer of 2016.

Get those federal "monitoring reports" for your community (if you can!)

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I’m reminded by this report on the San Diego refugee housing scandal at Inewsource.org.
The US State Department on some sporadic basis sends monitors out to refugee resettlement offices around the country to see if your local resettlement agency is compliant with guidelines for the care of refugees they have placed.
Years ago I spoke with Chris Coen who had a blog called ‘Friends of Refugees’ and he regularly submitted Freedom of Information Act requests to the State Department for those monitoring reports, then patiently waited YEARS to get responses.  Lacking patience, I never sought them (little did I imagine that nearly 11 years later, I am still doing this!).

Mireille Cronin Mather
IRC’s representative in San Diego: Mireille Cronin Mather

Now that we know that the Tillerson State Department is trying to clear its FOIA backlog, maybe some of you should try again to get the reports for contractors operating in your towns.
Clearly the reporters at Inewsource.org were able to obtain one for the International Rescue Committee in San Diego.
Here is the title and first paragraph of their latest report.  The contractors are extremely vulnerable on the issue of how they care for refugees they are paid to care for (I’ve been hearing it for years), and it goes to the heart of the question about whether this is really a ‘humanitarian’ program or simply driven by money.

Federal monitors warned San Diego refugee nonprofit of problems with resettlement practices

Federal monitors raised concerns about a local refugee resettlement agency’s housing placement practices months before the organization’s employees committed additional violations, which KPBS uncovered and detailed in a series of reports last year.

Continue here.
Now see what a Monitoring report looks like.  2016 report for IRC in San Diego:
 
Screenshot (217)
 
Here is the State Department’s FOIA guideline site.
If you need to know which resettlement agencies are working near you, go here for a directory.  Pick offices that are within a hundred miles of your home.
This post is filed in my ‘What you can do’ category, see here.

Catholic Charities can't have cake and eat it too in Lesbian adoption case, or….

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

…to put it another way—Live by the government, die by the government!
I wasn’t planning to get into this story about how a Lesbian couple was denied the right to foster a refugee child by Catholic Charities because the couple is a same-sex couple, but couldn’t resist when I saw this Leftwing report on a “Rightwing” TV interview.

DONOHUE
Donohue wrote a book entitled: Twilight of Liberty! Unbelievable that he can’t see that being financially beholden to the federal government doesn’t exactly advance ‘religious’ liberty!

You may be surprised to hear that I am on the side of the Lesbians in this case.
Why?
Because Catholic Charities wouldn’t be in this pickle if they weren’t living off the federal dole with their millions of dollars in grants/contracts they receive from taxpayers.
You might be saying, well they probably would still go after Catholic Charities, yes, maybe, but would have a more difficult road if it weren’t for all the federal money that goes directly to CC and indirectly via the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, one of nine major federal refugee contractors.***
Catholic agencies can’t act like they are private RELIGIOUS organizations while living off you and me via the US Treasury.  
From The Advocate:

A Texas lesbian couple’s lawsuit over the denial of a foster care opportunity amounts to “gay bullying and harassment” in the mind of right-wing Catholic activist and noted homophobe Bill Donohue.

Fatma Marouf and Bryn Esplin filed suit in federal court Tuesday against the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and several federal government agencies after the director of international foster care at the Catholic Charities of Fort Worth turned down their application to foster a refugee child because they don’t “mirror the Holy Family,” The Texas Tribune reports. The bishops’ conference receives federal funding that it funnels to the foster care program, so it is using taxpayer dollars to illegally discriminate based on Catholic beliefs, say the women, who are represented by Lambda Legal.

But Donohue contends the women are just trying to bully the Catholic church. “They’re gay activists,” he said Wednesday on The Ingraham Angle, Laura Ingraham’s show on the Fox News Channel (watch below). “They are trying to shove their secular values down our throats. … Secular militants [are] trying to shove their way in and basically neuter Catholic institutions,” he continued.

He and Ingraham both said the couple could go to other religious groups or secular agencies in search of foster care opportunities, but they are targeting Catholic institutions to rob them of their religious identity. “The intent is to intimidate, to bully, to get them to capitulate,” Donohue said. In some states, Catholic groups have ceased providing adoption or foster care services rather than serve same-sex couples.

More here.
When Catholic Charities and the Bishops give up their federal boodle, then I’ll listen to their “religious identity” arguments.
Decide! Religious principles OR federal money!
If you missed it last month, go here, and see Capital Research Center‘s educational youtube on CC and its dependency on federal money.
*** These are the nine federally funded refugee agencies operating in the US.
The number in parenthesis is the percentage of their income paid by you (the taxpayer) to place the refugees and get them signed up for their services (aka welfare)!  From most recent accounting, here.