US Refugee admissions plummet even further

01/17/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

On the first of January we reported the facts about the extremely low refugee arrival numbers so far in this fiscal year (FY18 began on October 1, 2017) and now Michael Leahy (Breitbart) has a summary of where we stand during the first two weeks of January.
201 is the number for the first two weeks and the fact that it is low is the reason you are seeing so many articles popping up in local papers quoting resettlement agency employees wailing about Trump-the-meany.
For the umpteenth time, these ‘non-profit’ groups’ federal funding is tied to the number of refugees arriving, so budgets are being wreaked and thus the hissy-fits.
Frankly, if they had raised sufficient private money (in the ways normal charities do), they wouldn’t be so on-the-edge in lean times.
In fact, if they had raised private resources they could keep themselves busy by taking better care of the refugees they previously dropped off in your towns!
But, here is the truth of the matter, they can’t raise enough private money because the general (giving) public isn’t behind what they do! They need to have their hands in taxpayers’ wallets in order to survive!
Enough of my usual harangue, here is Leahy at Breitbart:

Refugee admissions to the United States fell to a new low during the first two weeks of January.

Between January 1 and January 15, the number of refugees admitted into the country fell to a mere 201, the lowest number admitted during any two week period in more than a decade.

Below is a map of where the 201 went. The numbers are hard to read, but top five ‘welcoming’ states for the first two weeks of January are: Washington, California, New York, Ohio and Minnesota.

Screenshot (148) — From Wrapsnet for January 1-15, 2018 http://www.wrapsnet.org/admissions-and-arrivals/

Leahy continues….

Seventy-nine percent of these refugees, or 158 out of 201, came from four countries: Ukraine (80), Burma (29), Bhutan (28), and Eritrea (21).

The religious mix of arriving refugees continued the trend seen in the first three months of FY 2018 from September 1, 2017 to December 31, 2017: More Christians and fewer Muslims than under the Obama administration.

Eighty-five percent of these refugees, or 171 out of 201, were Christian, while only four percent, or eight out of 201, were Muslim.

This contrasts dramatically with the last full fiscal year of the Obama administration, FY 2016, when 46 percent of the 84,995 admitted refugees were Muslim and 44 percent were Christian.

[….]

Voluntary agencies (VOLAGS)***, who have been paid more than $1 billion a year by the federal government for more than the past decade to resettle refugees, are beginning to feel the financial pressure caused by the reduced revenue associated with fewer refugee arrivals.

[….]

A number of local resettlement agencies operating under the broader umbrella of the VOLAGs around the country are either shutting down their operations or shrinking them dramatically.

“Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Dubuque [Iowa] is preparing to end its refugee resettlement program after 77 years in operation. The primary reason the program is closing down is because the numbers of refugees are down,” Catholic News Service reported last week.

[….]

In September, President Trump set the ceiling of new refugee admissions for FY 2018 at 45,000.

Based on the current rate of admissions, total FY 2018 numbers are likely to be well under that number. If refugee admissions continue at the same pace as they have for the first three and a half months of FY 2018 for the remaining eight and a half months of the fiscal year, total refugee arrivals for the fiscal year will be slightly less than 19,000.

There is much more here.
***VOLAGs is what the nine federal refugee contractors like to call themselves. I call them government contractors. As long as taxpayers pay them by the head to place refugees in your towns and cities while they, at the same time, are permitted to act like political community organizers and agitators, there can be no reform of the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program.

Acting Asst. Secretary of State for PRM, Simon Henshaw, steps down

01/16/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

He says it has nothing to do with the fact that under the Donald Trump Administration the number of refugees being admitted to the US has plummeted. (I checked yesterday and in the first 2 weeks of January only around 200 came in.)
For new readers, the Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees and Migration is normally a political appointment used by a new President to set a tone in the Department of State reflecting his (or her) political view on the controversial issue.

anne richard-and-unhcr — Anne Richard with then UNHCR Antonio Guterres. Richard is a hard core ideologue who has recently been speaking around the country against Trump and his immigration policies.

President Obama had two hard core Leftwing Open Borders advocates running the program. The first was Eric Schwartz and many of you know of Anne Richard who was selected after Schwartz moved on.
The job is a political appointment that requires Senate approval (both of Obama’s picks were approved).
However, here is the rub: Donald Trump has put no one forward for this position thus leaving it in the hands of State Department career professionals.
Perhaps he has a strategy behind that—-one less battle with Senate Dems, and Rs like Flake and Graham, and maybe it is easier to shrink the program without a leading figurehead. I don’t know the answer.
Anyway here is the latest news at a pro-more-refugees website.
LOL! My first thought when I saw this was: okay where is Hans and his reporter pal at Reuters?
From Refugees Deeply:

Simon henshaw 2 — Henshaw is moving on….

The top U.S. diplomat dealing with refugees has resigned his post. Simon Henshaw became the third senior official dealing with refugees to depart or be reassigned in recent weeks.
The acting assistant secretary of the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM) said it was a routine professional departure.

“It very honestly had to do with the fact that I’d felt I’d spent enough time,” Henshaw told Reuters. “I’m used to moving on every two or three years.”

The 33-year public service veteran said his move was not a protest at the Trump administration’s refugee policies, which have seen cuts to financial support and resettlement numbers as well as travel bans.

carol_Oconnell_150_1 — **Carol O’Connell is moving in: https://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/biog/bureau/272122.htm**

Henshaw, who has been with PRM since 2013, will hand over to Carol O’Connell, the deputy assistant secretary of state for African affairs. On January 9 Lawrence Bartlett, previously the head of the refugee admissions office at the State Department, was reassigned to the office handling Freedom of Information Act requests.

Since taking office, President Donald Trump has suspended the entire refugee program for four months, slashed resettlement places and funding for refugee programs and withdrawn the U.S. from the negotiations for a global compact on migration.

Earlier in January, Barbara Strack, chief of the Refugee Affairs Division at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, under the Department of Homeland Security, said she would retire this month.

The White House is also preparing to slash funding to the U.N. agency supporting Palestinian refugees (UNRWA). [Yippee!—ed]

See our stories on Bartlett, here and Strack, here. (Hans and reporter pal again!).
I bet the head honchos of the nine US State Department refugee contractors are running as fast as they can to meet O’Connell (if they haven’t done so already). If past is prologue, she will be their information pipeline (and advocate, they hope).
Here are the nine that are largely funded (involuntarily) by you, the taxpayer:

No surprise! UN Secretary General (Socialist) Antonio Guterres pushing mass migration

01/16/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update: Leo Hohmann has more on this story at his new website, here.
In his argument posted at The Guardian, he says more legal pathways are needed because they (from the third world) are coming illegally (whether we like it or not). Sounds like blackmail to me!
He also confirms my oft-repeated contention that it is the desire by industries for labor that we should be satisfying in the new borderless (dream) world.

Aspiring migrants, denied legal pathways to travel, inevitably fall back on irregular methods. This not only puts them in vulnerable positions, but also undermines governments’ authority. The best way to end the stigma of illegality and abuse around migrants is, in fact, for governments to put in place more legal pathways for migration, removing the incentives for individuals to break the rules, while better meeting the needs of their labour markets for foreign labour.

Thanks to reader Deb for sending me Jihad Watch’s take on his screed here. See discussion there about hijrah and the OIC.

Obama delivers remarks to reporters as he welcomes Guterres in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington — Guterres in happier times (December 2016) https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2016/12/03/big-smooch-from-obama-to-new-un-secretary-general-guterres/

Then check out Breitbart’s report :

United Nations Secretary General António Guterres has unveiled his plan to promote global mass migration in the left-liberal Guardian newspaper.

Guterres, a former Socialist Party prime minister in his native Portugal, took over the top job at the UN on January 1st, having previously served as the institution’s High Commissioner for Refugees.

His article, titled ‘Migration can benefit the world. This is how we at the UN plan to help’, makes the bold claim that mass migration “powers economic growth, reduces inequalities and connects diverse societies”, in order to promote the Global Compact for Migration.

“This will be the first overarching international agreement of its kind,” he boasted — but claimed it would not “place any binding obligations on states”, but rather serve as “an unprecedented opportunity for leaders to counter the pernicious myths surrounding migrants”.

Trump dumps!

Breitbart continues: Trump at UN

These assurances have failed to convince the Donald Trump administration in the United States, with the White House rejected it as “simply not compatible with US sovereignty”, and President Trump summarizing it as “no borders, everyone can come in!”

Then this….

He [Guterres] made the contentious claim that migrants “take jobs” that local workers “cannot” fill, and asserted that this is a positive thing. He also attempted to spin the fact that migrants send huge sums of money straight out of their host countries and back to their countries of origin as a kind of supplement to foreign aid.

Breitbart continues here.
Pay attention to this last issue above about remittances. It is huge!
I remember when the Temporary Protected Status for Salvadorans was up for renewal under George W. Bush. It was quickly renewed with his administration saying that the money the Salvadorans sent OUT OF THE US ECONOMY was propping up El Salvador (so we needed to continue doing that).
Guterres at RRW:
We followed Antonio Guterres here at RRW for a decade since he was previously the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (before moving up to top dog position at the UN).
Go here for my Guterres archive.
Just a reminder that in June of 2009, as UNHCR, he said it was sharia law that underpins international refugee law and United Nations refugee activities. See here:

New York, 23 June (AKI) – The 1,400-year-old Islamic custom of welcoming people fleeing persecution has had more influence on modern international refugee law than any other traditional source, according to a new study sponsored by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

High Commissioner Antonio Guterres said that more than any other historical source, Islamic law and tradition underpin the modern-day legal framework on which UNHCR bases its global activities on behalf of the tens of millions of people forced from their homes around the world.

Take that Christians and Jews! You thought Biblical Judeo-Christian charity predated Islam, silly you.

Austria: Mahmoud took the money and went home!

01/14/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

They are trying it all over Europe—paying the migrants to go home!

It is something we have advocated here as well. Believe me, it is cheaper than incarceration and deportation and way cheaper than migrants of all stripes living (for years!) off the generosity of the US taxpayer for food, shelter, education and medical care.
going home
Here is the story from NPR (hat tip: Joanne):

158,000. That’s roughly how many refugees are stuck in limbo in Europe right now.

Many of them got to Europe in late 2015, when the refugee crisis reached its peak, and have been waiting since then to see if they’ll be formally accepted into the European Union.

To cut down on the wait time and economic impact of this massive influx, some countries and nonprofits in Europe have embraced a new idea — pay refugees to go back to the countries they left in the first place.

Mahmoud Abdelwahab is one of the people who has been waiting. He’s 25, and originally from Mosul, Iraq. In early 2016, he quit his job as a cook and came to Europe, ending up in Vienna.

[….]

….the Austrian courts have been overwhelmed by applications. When the migrant crisis reached its peak back in 2015, the number of people wanting to stay in Austria tripled.

Instead of waiting longer, Mahmoud late last year made a tough decision. He decided to leave Austria and go back to Iraq.

“He saw other Iraqi people receiving the negative decision that they have to go back,” Epaid says. “And that’s why he decided for himself to back, before he got a negative.”

That decision — to voluntarily leave the country — is exactly what the Austrian government wants refugees to do.

Last spring, Austria announced that it would give 1,000 euros (roughly $1,219 USD) to the first 1,000 refugees who signed up to leave on their own.

The program was successful, and the government extended the offer to more refugees. It’s an incentive that’s gaining traction across Europe.

[….]

He’s taking the buyout, he says, to go home and use the money to buy a car and become a cab driver.

“Two years … [I] was here for nothing,” Mahmoud says as Epaid translates. “It didn’t make any sense to come here.”

More here.
And, LOL!, if I could run the immigration program (in any country) I would hire Mahmoud for a huge sum of money and have him filmed saying that in public service announcements to be shown all over the Middle East and Africa!
And, for my readers who just want to see them arrested and taken in chains to an airport, I don’t want to hear from you so don’t bother commenting. (Of course there would have to be all sorts rules put in place, like they can’t come back next week. I know that!)
Heck, if we could pay the supposedly educated DACA kids (the Dreamers!) to go back to their countries of origin they might actually (if they have been educated by the US) help their people and their homelands improve themselves, and the world would be a better place.
Come on President Trump, give it a try. Offer to pay them to return to where they came from, with maybe a little starter money, and see how many will sign up. Call the program Dreams from my Father’s Homeland!
There would be a little humorous side benefit for us as we watched the Dems scream bloody murder about wasting taxpayer dollars….
(I’m shutting up! I’m getting carried away!).
Click here to see all my posts on the ‘Invasion of Europe.’

President Trump gives us permission to speak!

01/12/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

With all the hullabaloo since yesterday about the President’s question about why we needed to import so many people from certain s***hole countries, I’m thinking that the great fear the PC crowd (pulling out the smelling salts) has is that when the President speaks straightforwardly (on anything), it gives permission for masses of Americans to do the same. Speaking freely about critical issues facing our country could be the death of the hard Left and they know it.

Graham and Durbin chuckle — So who leaked the comment to the Washington Post? Some speculate it was someone connected to these two unhappy participants—Senator Dick Durbin and Senate pal Lindsey Graham

I’m expecting that half of America was laughing in the privacy of their homes when they heard the President voice something that they themselves dare not say.
I didn’t look around for what might be the best discussion about what exactly happened, but this one at the American Spectator by Scott McKay seems on point and brings up the Somali issue something we know a good bit about.
Here are a few snips (emphasis is mine):

A quote attributed to President Trump horrifies our snowflake intellectuals, but accurately reflects the sentiments of much of America.

Thursday saw a media firestorm erupt over a Washington Post report that amid a White House meeting with several members of Congress working on a compromise having to do with the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, President Trump asked why America should have to take in so many immigrants from “s***hole countries” rather than people from places like Norway.

The Post article isn’t exactly the finest example of American journalism, identifying as its source no one actually in the room to confirm what Trump supposedly said but instead naming two anonymous people who were “briefed on the meeting.”

Those anonymous second-hand sources claimed that the offending statement came amid a discussion over a proposal to eliminate the diversity visa lottery program and use the 50,000 visas per year tied up in it to offer protection to “vulnerable populations” living in the United States under Temporary Protected Status. Trump became irritated at this, according to the Post, and asked about Haitians, and when the conversation turned to Africa Trump supposedly said, “Why are we having all these people from s***hole countries come here?” and suggested that maybe instead America should be taking in more people from Norway — whose prime minister visited the White House the day before.

[…..]

The Post reported that the Senators attempting to come to a DACA solution, most prominently Illinois Democrat Dick Durbin (whose track record indicates a lack of reliability where it comes to good faith in negotiations) and South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham (no more need be said) were upset over, upon arriving at the meeting, being joined by immigration hard-liners Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) and Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Virginia), among others. Durbin and Graham thought they’d have the president more or less to themselves. And when the meeting devolved into disagreement, with Trump showing no interest in a DACA deal, it’s pretty obvious someone on one or both of their staffs rushed to the Post to offer up a juicy second-hand Trump quote which might or might not have been reported in proper context.

Author McKay then goes through a list of dysfunctional countries whose nationals are here in large numbers, including from Somalia:

Abukar Ibrahim — The most recent Somali machete attacker in Vermont last week (at a hotel for the homeless). A reader tells me he came as a refugee in 2004. If so, what has he contributed to America in those 13 years?

How about Somalia? Who’s up for more mass immigration from Somalia? Is there any argument Somalia is a s***hole, or do we need a national screening of Black Hawk Down to remind us what that country is like? If you’d like a more recent depiction of what Somalia has to offer the world we could all watch Captain Phillips, the 2013 Tom Hanks vehicle about the true story of the Maersk Alabama, set upon by one of the multitudinous hordes of pirates — yes, actual pirates — sloughing off from Somali shores in search of fat from international commerce.

Somalia is such a s***hole that its stench infects nearby countries like Kenya — viz., the Westgate Shopping Mall attack in Nairobi in 2013 — and Uganda, where Al-Shabaab, Somalia’s home-grown jihadist terror group, set off a series of bombs in the capital of Kampala to slaughter 76 people as they watched the 2010 World Cup soccer final.

What has America derived from mass immigration from Somalia? Machete attacks on street corners in Columbus and mall stabbings in suburban Minneapolis. And if you like, you can ask the current and former residents of Lewiston, Maine, what a boon Somali immigration has been to that town. [See machete attack in Shelburne, VT in the last week.—ed]

The last thing the open-borders Left wants is for you to talk openly about immigration and who should be permitted to live here.

The open-borders crowd doesn’t want to talk about that, though, and it wants to call you racist if you’re opposed to a deluge of immigrants from the worst places on earth. That’s why Trump’s “s***holes” objection is big news rather than the fact there are so-called political leaders who can’t agree to reorient our immigration policy toward taking people who can successfully assimilate here.

Between the two, the crude man who tells the truth and looks out for his own citizens is preferable to the genteel man who sells us out for cheap labor or ballot-box fuel for a political machine. If Trump is the former, so be it.

Much more here.