Tag: Donald Trump

Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service "cautiously hopeful" refugee ceiling will return to 110,000

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I’m actually stunned that they think that the Trump Administration could be forced by a judge (or two judges) to shoot for a refugee “ceiling” number set by Obama for a year he would no longer be President.
For the zillionth time, even if Obama was  still in the White House there is no legal requirement that the President reach the CEILING he set for admissions the previous fall.
As we showed you here—they never reach the ceiling!
Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service and World Relief mentioned in this story are federal refugee resettlement contractors paid through your tax dollars to place refugees in your towns and are most assuredly part of the ‘Religious Left’ I told you about earlier this morning.
Calling all Lutherans! You need to know what is being done in your name!***
Here is the story from Religion News Service:

CHICAGO (RNS) It was her desire to hear the stories of real people — “not just faceless refugees or immigrants” — that brought the Rev. Elizabeth A. Eaton to a refugee resettlement agency that provides a range of services to refugees in the Chicago area.

Presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America

“Especially now, when there’s this fear that’s been stirred up and anti-refugee sentiment, it’s really critical to say, ‘No, these people are our grandparents, our aunts and uncles,” said the presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the nation’s largest Lutheran denomination.

Her visit last week (March 21) to RefugeeOne, a resettlement agency supported by Lutheran Immigrant and Refugee Service, comes at a time when the status of the U.S. refugee resettlement program is uncertain.

On March 15, a federal judge in Hawaii blocked an executive order by President Trump that would have more than halved the number of refugees accepted by the United States from the current ceiling of 110,000.

Now, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service is “cautiously hopeful” resettlement will return to the numbers that had been planned for 2017, said Kay Bellor, vice president for programs.

***According to LIRS website these are the Lutheran groups affiliated and supportive of bringing refugees to the US:

Rooted in Lutherans’ faithful and caring response to the challenges facing uprooted peoples, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service celebrates strong collaborative relationships with three national Lutheran church bodies. They are the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod LC-MS, and the Latvian Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (LELCA).

Go here for our extensive reporting on LIRS, a preeminent member of the refugee industry.
Don’t miss this post—Will Lutheran bigwigs see pay cuts?
I am forever confident that one day, mainstream media will report on how much of your money these groups are gobbling to promote their progressive world view!

'Religious Left' on the rise in response to President Trump's people and policies

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Are they organizing in your name?
This is a Reuters story highlighting the phrase ‘Religious Left’ something we have been talking about on these pages for years.  Entitled of course to their political views, what has grated on me for so long is the FACT that many of the organizations working on the ‘Religious Left’ receive large pots of federal grant money that is not sufficiently accounted for.
The ‘Religious Right’ has not tapped in to the US Treasury as the Left has done!
Also, I believe churchgoers (Catholics and Protestants) should know what is being done in their names.
Here are some snips from the story featured at Drudge yesterday:

(Reuters) – Since President Donald Trump’s election, monthly lectures on social justice at the 600-seat Gothic chapel of New York’s Union Theological Seminary have been filled to capacity with crowds three times what they usually draw.

Rev. Serene Jones, a leader of the Religious Left

In January, the 181-year-old Upper Manhattan graduate school, whose architecture evokes London’s Westminster Abbey, turned away about 1,000 people from a lecture on mass incarceration. In the nine years that Reverend Serene Jones has served as its president, she has never seen such crowds.

“The election of Trump has been a clarion call to progressives in the Protestant and Catholic churches in America to move out of a place of primarily professing progressive policies to really taking action,” she said.

Although not as powerful as the religious right, which has been credited with helping elect Republican presidents and boasts well-known leaders such as Christian Broadcasting Network founder Pat Robertson, the “religious left” is now slowly coming together as a force in U.S. politics.

This disparate group, traditionally seen as lacking clout, has been propelled into political activism by Trump’s policies on immigration, healthcare and social welfare, according to clergy members, activists and academics. A key test will be how well it will be able to translate its mobilization into votes in the 2018 midterm congressional elections. [They better darn well not use taxpayer dollars for their vote mobilization!—ed]

[….]

Some in the religious left are inspired by Pope Francis, the Roman Catholic leader who has been an outspoken critic of anti-immigrant policies and a champion of helping the needy. [These reports NEVER mention that the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and Catholic Charities receive millions of tax payer dollars every year!—ed]

Although support for the religious left is difficult to measure, leaders point to several examples, such as a surge of congregations offering to provide sanctuary to immigrants seeking asylum…

[….]

The number of churches volunteering to offer sanctuary to asylum seekers doubled to 800 in 45 of the 50 U.S. states after the election, said the Elkhart, Indiana-based Church World Service, a coalition of Christian denominations which helps refugees settle in the United States – and the number of new churches offering help has grown so quickly that the group has lost count.

You need to know that “asylum seekers” are illegal aliens until their cases are settled by an immigration judge. The Left uses the phrase to put a veneer of respectability on illegal aliens who may or may not have a shot at being granted asylum and thus being deemed a legitimate refugee.

Church World Service!

As we said here earlier in the month, CWS, got nearly a HALF A BILLION tax dollars during the Obama years. Why doesn’t Reuters ever mention this!

There  should be a law! Any non-profit sucking this kind of money out of the US Treasury should be prohibited from running anti-Trump (or anti-any President) campaigns!

 

 

Donald Trump needs to nip this in the bud through the budget process. Will he?

Are you being used by the Religious Left?  Are they working in your name?
I recommend that you check with your ministers and pastors!
See the churches that are affiliated with Church World Service and its progressive policies:

Member Communions

    African Methodist Episcopal Church

 

Australia plans to take mostly Syrian Christians for resettlement…

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Okay, that sounds reasonable and sensible except for one thing!

Australia is pawning off over 1,000 mostly Muslim asylum seekers presently housed in offshore detention centers on to the US.  What are we nuts!
Here is the news (at Christian Daily) about Australia’s magnanimous gesture toward Christian Syrians:

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turbull’s government has prioritized persecuted Syrian Christian refugees over their Muslim counterparts in a program that provides homes to 10,000 asylum seekers who have passed a stringent screening process.

So Prime Minister Turnbull is going to prioritize Christian refugees and hand off THEIR rejected Muslims to us? Come on Donald get back to why we elected you!

The Australian government has now issued the 12,000 visas previously promised to Syrian refugees and is set to resettle the asylum seekers mostly in New South Wales. Although it seems Prime Minister Turnbull has not yet revealed the religious composition of the resettled refugees, the Daily Telegraph has learned that around three quarters of the migrants who were processed were persecuted Christians.

The refugees in the resettlement program had to go through a strict security screening process to make sure that no radicalized foreign fighters make their way into Australia. The program, which was first announced by former prime minister Tony Abbott, was previously met with opposition by those who are against prioritizing refugees of any religion.

[….]

In December, The Australian columnist Angela Shanahan called on the Australian government to take in more Christian refugees fleeing persecution in the Middle East. She said many refugees who are merely fleeing war have the chance to return to their homeland, but these Christians can never return.

Shanahan also highlighted the potential eradication of Christianity in the faith’s cradle in the Middle East. For her, not taking into account a refugee’s religion is “blind” obedience to Australia’s immigration policy, and added that their country cannot ignore religion when processing resettlement of asylum seekers because these people fled their country because of religious persecution.

This post is filed in our Australia category, here.  And, Trump Watch! here.

World Relief building a "new community" in Durham, NC, was there anything wrong with the old one?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Changing America by changing the people!

This story at WRAL.com is meant to be one of those warm and fuzzy stories about ‘welcoming’ refugees (and diversity) to a southern city and how mean old Donald Trump has slowed their progress in changing Durham.
The last line of the story by reporter Tess Allen is the most instructive:

A new community is being built in Durham, one that is constantly evolving, one with a mix of faces, languages and cultures. And World Relief Durham and its volunteers plan to be there every step of the way.

 

Turning red states blue by seeding diversity. Map showing where all of North Carolina’s refugees came from in 2016. Story here: https://www.carolinajournal.com/news-article/diverse-crowd-gathers-in-durham-to-protest-federal-immigration-policies/

 
 
Here are a few bits worth highlighting:

World Relief depends on federal funding for the majority of their financing. They receive a per capita grant dependent on the number of refugees coming into their area. That money helps support the agencies’ offices, staff and, mostly, the refugees themselves.

See what else Soerens said here: https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2017/02/17/panic-button-as-refugee-contracting-agencies-begin-to-downsize-as-they-lose-federal/

With the dramatic decrease in refugee arrivals that would accompany the reinstatement of this order, World Relief’s funding will drop equally dramatically. The Durham office, for example, will lose one-fourth of its federal funding, or about $250,000 a year. Nationwide, five World Relief offices will close and 140 staff members will be laid off.

[….]

Soerens [Matthew Soerens, World Relief’s U.S. director of church mobilization] also said that the loss of funding is why it’s increasingly important for their Good Neighbor teams to help refugees find jobs. World Relief can no longer afford to cover rent for families for more than a couple of months.

Wasn’t finding refugees a job a top priority all along? Or, it didn’t matter so much when they were flush with federal dollars.
Is Soerens saying that, because they (at World Relief) need to pay their staffs and keep offices open, they are going to be stingy about refugee rent going forward? Sounds like it to me.
If you feel like reading all the good news about good neighbors, continue reading here.
For our complete archive on changing North Carolina, go here.  See especially my post on the 2016 Presidential election.
For more on World Relief’s finances, go here.

Maryland judge to hold hearing on Tuesday regarding FY2017 refugee ceiling issue

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

For background, see my post here about the annual refugee admissions ceiling and my contention that the President had (still has!) the authority under the Refugee Act of 1980 to stay under the ceiling set by Obama (110,000) or the new ceiling he has set (50,000).  There is nothing in the Act which compels him to bring in numbers approaching the ceiling.
The judge in Hawaii seems to think the judiciary has the right to set numbers, and apparently the Maryland judge is headed in the same direction.

One of the main plaintiffs in the case being heard on Tuesday is Mark Hetfield of HIAS. See here how much of your money HIAS lives on: https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2016/11/13/hebrew-immigrant-aid-society-lectures-trump-never-mentions-its-pecuniary-interest-in-refugees/

(BTW, we reported yesterday that Trump’s Dept. of State is still admitting refugees and another 31 came in since yesterday.)
Michael Patrick Leahy (Breitbart) thoroughly addresses the subject of whether courts can set the refugee admissions ceiling in an article entitled:

Federal Judge Who Blocked Trump Travel Ban Will Rule on Plaintiffs Request to Double Number of Refugees in FY 2017

Leahy explains the role of Congress in appropriating money, but the 1980 Act itself placed most of the power in the hands of the President.  I’m guessing that in 1980, Senators Kennedy, Biden and President Jimmy Carter never envisioned a President like Donald Trump, or the degree to which American citizens would object to admitting such poverty to the country, so it is silent on the subject of how low a Prez can go.
Anyway, here is Leahy:

Judge Theodore Chuang of the U.S. District Court in Maryland, who issued a temporary restraining order on March 15 halting part of President Trump’s Executive Order 13780, has scheduled a hearing on March 28 to consider the merits of a request made by the plaintiffs in their complaint to revoke the section of that exec order that limited the maximum number of refugees authorized to enter the United States in FY 2017 to 50,000.

Several legal scholars and political commentators have questioned Chuang’s impartiality, in part because he served as deputy general counsel of the Department of Homeland Security in the Obama administration, as Breitbart reported.

In the very first sentence of his March 15 decision, Chuang makes an error of fact which may indicate how he will rule on March 28.

“On March 6, 2017, President Donald J. Trump issued an Executive Order which bars, with certain exceptions, the entry to the United States of nationals of six predominantly Muslim countries, suspends the entry of refugees for 120 days, and cuts by more than half the number of refugees to be admitted to the United States in the current year,” Judge Chuang writes. (emphasis added)

With this statement, Judge Chuang makes it clear that he accepts the argument made by plaintiffs HIAS (formerly Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society) and the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP) about refugee resettlement numbers in FY 2017. The plaintiffs argue that former President Obama’s September 22, 2016 “presidential determination” that he wanted Congress to fund the resettlement of up to 110,000 refugees in the United States in FY 2017 means that Congress must fund the resettlement of 110,000 refugees this fiscal year, and that President Trump has absolutely no say in the matter.

The facts and the law say otherwise.

Leahy follows here with great detail about the role of Congress in appropriating money for resettlement.  Just a reminder that we argue that 50,000 is NOT THAT LOW when analyzing all years since 9/11.

Congress, however, has, of now, only appropriated funding sufficient to resettle 48,901 refugees in the United States in FY 2017, which is 1,099 below the limit of 50,000 President Trump established in Executive Order 13780.

Officials at the Department of State as well as all the refugee resettlement agencies–including HIAS–are well aware that their funding for FY 2017 is about to run out, and that circumstance is entirely unrelated at this time to President Obama’s September 22 “presidential determination” that set the maximum limit of refugees authorized to resettle in the United States in FY 2017 at 110,000.

[….]

The HIAS/IRAP complaint on which Judge Chuang will hold a hearing on March 28 is all about continuing the flow of federal funds to these VOLAGs who are almost completely reliant on the taxpayers to pay for their operations, and their salaries.

Much, much more here.
Go here to see, in my view, what HIAS is worried about!
This is going to be a week in courts involving refugees, more tomorrow.