Tag: Center for Immigration Studies

Gang of Eight provides “slush fund” for refugee resettlement contractors

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

….or any number of other non-profit groups with experience in serving immigrants.

Your tax dollars!

We mentioned it here a few days ago, but the Center for Immigration Studies highlights the new grant program to benefit the bill’s lobbyists in a piece this morning, by Jon Feere.

The pro-amnesty lobbyists who helped craft the Schumer-Rubio immigration bill included within the bill two “slush funds” amounting to $150 million that may be supplemented with additional taxpayer dollars for years to come. Slush fund grantees are “public or private, non-profit organizations” described in the bill as including “a community, faith-based, or other immigrant-serving organization whose staff has demonstrated qualifications, experience, and expertise in providing quality services to immigrants, refugees, persons granted asylum, or persons applying for such statuses.” In other words, the grantees would include many of the groups involved in writing and promoting the amnesty.

Section 2537 of the Schumer-Rubio bill provides “Initial Entry, Adjustment, and Citizenship Assistance” grants to public and private, non-profit organizations that promise to help illegal immigrants apply for the amnesty (p. 384). For example, this includes help with “completing applications”, “gathering proof of identification”, and “applying for any waivers”. But the recipients of these funds are given a lot of discretion, as the funds can also be used for “any other assistance” that the grantee “considers useful” to aliens applying for amnesty. The bill appropriates $100 million in grant funding for a five-year period ending in 2018, plus any additional “sums as may be necessary for fiscal year 2019 and subsequent fiscal years”. (p. 392). There are no limits to the amount of money that may be given out to pro-amnesty groups.

Read it all!

So who are those “faith-based” and “immigrant-serving organizations” we are familiar with here at RRW—the federal refugee contractors euphemistically called Volags (short for Voluntary Agencies) paid largely by the US taxpayer to resettle refugees.

I already know that most of these ‘non-profits’ are lobbying for the Gang of Eight bill (I just haven’t bothered to check each website).  There are hundreds more smaller groups that will be squabbling over the new federal handout if the ‘Gang’ is successful.

I’ve wondered aloud why these contractors, charged with finding jobs for LEGAL refugees and asylees, are pushing for the legalization of millions of illegal alien job-competitors—this new pot of money is surely near the top of the list for reasons why!

I wonder does Bill O’Reilly know how deep the Catholic Bishops are in this refugee/asylum industry?  (They are the largest of the nine, followed by the IRC and LIRS):

CIS: Denaturalize US citizens who’ve committed certain crimes

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The Center for Immigration Studies has released a new study by WD Reasoner which says we are not stripping US citizenship from convicted immigrant citizens who pose a national security threat to the US.

Here is what CIS Director Mark Krikorian says in a press release today:

WASHINGTON, D.C. (January 24, 2013) – In light of the discussions of a “path to citizenship” for illegal immigrants, it’s important to note that in extraordinary cases, the path to citizenship can be run in reverse. Naturalized citizens who acquire their citizenship through fraud, especially those involved in terrorism or espionage, can and should be subject to denaturalization.

The Center for Immigration Studies today released a new report by, “Upholding the Value of our Citizenship: National Security Threats Should Be Denaturalized”, that discusses the danger of allowing naturalized U.S. citizens who have been charged with serious national security-related offenses to retain their citizenship. Even immigrants who fraudulently conceal material facts in order to be granted citizenship remain citizens and receive all the benefits, including sponsorship of family members for immigration and traveling abroad using a U.S. passport. The report also reveals that the Department of Homeland Security has no method in place for reviewing such cases, which ensures there will not be any future improvement of the vetting process.

See the full report here.

The Somalis

The appendix lists two Somalis that should be stripped of citizenship.  One is deceased because he blew himself up in Somalia.   Remember him!  In 2008, the US government brought his body parts back to give him a decent burial because he and his family are US citizens.   The other is the Christmas Tree bomber whose trial began just last week, here.

How about all those we’ve sent to prison lately for either terror funding or who have gone back to Africa for Jihad training?   I think they should be on the list!

Darn! We missed the Catholic Bishops’ National Migration Week

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Your tax dollars

January 6th to the 12th was the big week when the US Conference of Catholic Bishops ginned up its pro-amnesty political indoctrination campaign with National Migration Week.

Mind you, the Bishops can pressure the Catholic flock however they wish, it’s a free country (for now!), but it’s when they take taxpayer money to do their “charitable” and political work then it becomes every taxpayer’s business.

Before you read the excellent discussion of their latest parishioner indoctrination campaign by Dominique Peridans at the Center for Immigration Studies please visit this comprehensive review of the Bishops finances by Thomas Allen at VDARE.

Allen:

….in fact USCCB independently raises only about 2% (two percent) of its $72.1 million total revenues. The rest comes from contracts, grants and earnings from federal programs.

Also, we have written extensively here (see our archive!) over the years about the USCCB as one of the top nine federal contractors resettling refugees to your towns (and their lobbying for other issues as well, including global warming) while feeding from the federal trough.

Peridans at CIS:

Ecclesiastes offers a rather honest and blunt appraisal of human life, and seeks to articulate basic human truths. Chapter 1, verse 9 of the book in the Hebrew Bible reads “What has been, that will be; what has been done, that will be done. Nothing is new under the sun!” Now, human truth, if indeed truth, is trans-situational, that is to say, can be applied to host of situations.

The situation in this case to which this truth can be applied is that of National Migration Week (January 6-12), sponsored by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops through its Migration and Refugee Services Offices. I perused the promotional materials, almost naively hoping to find a few nuggets of newness, some refreshing insight, a slightly more holistic perspective being put forth. “Nothing is new under the sun” here.

In fact, it is striking to read how the American Catholic Church’s pastoral proposals regarding immigrants display how hardened the Church’s “official position” is becoming: presented as a given. There is no acknowledgment whatsoever that the issue is complex and there is no margin of freedom granted to the laity to discern varying responses to the issue.

Against the spiritually magnificent, yet concretely vague backdrop of “welcoming Christ in the stranger” (drawn from Christ’s own exhortation in Matthew 25:35), the document restates the American Catholic Church’s presumption that any perspective different from that which it articulates is characterized by in-hospitality. The document then invites the reader to labor for a “conversion of hearts and minds” in those who hold these differing perspectives.

To what one must convert? Comprehensive immigration reform. In this campaign (and beyond it), the bishops hope to help Catholics at the parochial level to enact local expressions of such reform and to incite Catholics at the national level to promote such reform.

Bishops:  Border enforcement is “meanness.”

Not only are the bishops very concrete and very specific in their proposals, they are unabashedly political. They are in the business of a “broad legalization program”. In their minds, charity can only and must work this way. An enforcement-only approach (which no one is really proposing, but which they confuse with an enforcement-first approach) they decry as antithetical to charity – and, according to their expertise, a failure. So much money is being devoted to meanness!

There is more!  Read it all.

Temporary Protected Status protects criminals from deportation

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

But will Temporary Protected Status be rendered moot if Obama-Rubio-Ryan get their way?  The answer is Yes!  Everyone will be able to stay! (but they can now anyway!)

Just two days ago I told you that the push was on to give Temporary Protected Status to Malians in the US.  Most recently we granted TPS to Syrians.   Haitians, as we reported here, aren’t signing up in large numbers because they see the Obama-Rubio-Ryan Amnesty coming (more on that below).   And, those Guatemalans and their Leftwing open borders advocates are trying to get the designation as well (although they seem to have slacked off, waiting for amnesty perhaps?).  “Temporary” refugees, can get drivers licenses and jobs and every couple of years their “temporary” status is renewed.

The Center for Immigration Studies tells us here how hard it is to get rid of even the criminals who have TPS status.

Roberto Galo has been in the US since the 1990’s!

Last week ICE arrested Roberto Galo, the unlicensed Honduran who killed a young man named Drew Rosenberg in a traffic crash in November 2010, and is detaining him without bond. Galo’s arrest is appropriate but, incredibly, despite the fact that Galo repeatedly violated California driving laws and killed someone, ICE had to make an exception to its policies in order to take him into custody and seek his removal.

Galo is an illegal immigrant who has been living here legally since the late 1990s under a grant of Temporary Protected Status (TPS). Beneficiaries of TPS may apply for driver’s licenses; but Galo could not get one because he failed the driving test three times. Under immigration law, Galo no longer qualifies for TPS after having been convicted of two misdemeanors (vehicular manslaughter and unlicensed driving) stemming from his responsibility for the crash that took Drew Rosenberg’s life.

But under current policies, offenders like Galo are not supposed to be put on the path to removal. USCIS, which administers the TPS program, has directed its officers to try to reclassify some misdemeanors as “infractions” in order to allow these offenders to stay.

Read it all!

The Obama-Rubio-Ryan Amnesty of 2013

Appropriately, Mark Krikorian the Director of the Center for Immigration Studies, with USCIS cases like Galo’s in mind, asks Rep. Paul Ryan and Senator Marco Rubio, so are you planning to trust Obama to keep his end of the bargain as you pander to the ‘Hispanic’ voter.

Krikorian:

Sen. Marco Rubio has effectively endorsed President Obama’s approach to immigration, and that endorsement was in turn endorsed by Rep. Paul Ryan. Or, as Julia Preston put it in the New York Times yesterday, “Strikingly, Mr. Rubio’s principles did not sound that different from proposals for an immigration overhaul by Mr. Obama, Democratic leaders and a handful of other Republicans.”

So, in considering what can now accurately be referred to as the Obama-Rubio-Ryan amnesty plan of 2013, there’s one central question that Rubio and Ryan need to be asked: Do they trust President Obama to enforce the immigration laws in the future, after today’s illegals have been legalized?

If they answer “yes”, then they need to explain why they think he’d suddenly become committed to enforcement after four years of downgrading immigration law enforcement, and more generally acting as though the U.S. Code were a body of suggestions rather than laws.

[…..]

This isn’t some nit I’m picking — it’s central to the whole concept of “comprehensive immigration reform”. If you trust Obama to do the right thing, then, by all means, endorse his plan for amnesty, as Rubio and Ryan have done. But if you don’t trust him to keep his word, if you think all his statements come with an expiration date, then there’s no honest way you can back his approach.

For more on what Rubio’s (and no doubt Grover Norquist’s too!) “comprehensive” plan would do, visit VDARE and see what “Washington Watcher” says about it.  Here is one snippet:

In reality, because, as I mentioned earlier, there is no way to find out when an illegal alien first came to this country, an amnesty will certainly lead to more illegals crossing the border to take advantage of the new program.

It is safe to say that Rubio’s proposal appears to be virtually indistinguishable from what the Democrats want—except the delay in granting citizenship to the amnestied illegals.

Usually, Republican amnesty proposals at least pretend that they are focused even more on enforcement than legalization—but Rubio has pretty much given up even that pretense.

My theory: Rubio is willing to give the Democrats whatever they want—so long as the illegals don’t get (immediate) citizenship.

Back to TPS

I don’t see any other conclusion, if Obama-Rubio-Ryan get their way, everyone gets to stay and Temporary Protected Status is permanent (no more fig leaf), but for certain classes of illegal immigants it already is—Salvadorans, Somalis, Haitians etc.

Liberians had TPS for years and note that they are off the list, but no one deported them!

To be truly “comprehensive,” Rubio’s bill should include a repeal of TPS.  And, the diversity visa lottery too!  How about a moratorium on refugee resettlement as well until that 1980 Kennedy-Biden-Carter law has been back to Congress for reauthorization (something that has never happened).