Heritage Foundation leaves out one important consideration in its ‘plan’ for reforming refugee program—you!

11/25/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

First, you need to know that the Heritage Foundation, a huge ‘conservative’ think tank in Washington, hasn’t paid one lick of attention to the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) until this year, until Trump entered the White House.

***Update*** If you commented at the Heritage site linked below, and after opening the link in a different browser, no longer see your comment, please let me know! Write to refugeewatcher@gmail.com (or comment to this post) and tell me. Something is very fishy because I can’t see some of your comments and just now my comment from earlier today had disappeared. They aren’t ‘shadow banning’ are they?

Update November 26th: We will be eager to hear tomorrow why the Heritage Foundation has not publicly posted many comments. See here. Missing comments found and they are doozies! Click here.

Now they are tooting their horn because they got a meeting with retired Admiral Garry Hall in the White House to promote their version of reform.

But, what is absent from their ‘study’ and report entitled: ‘The U.S. Refugee Admissions Program: A Roadmap for Reform,’ is the cost shifting of the USRAP to state taxpayers, the cultural and economic impact on communities, refugee crime, and the secrecy by which the feds and nine contractors (paid almost exclusively with taxpayer dollars)*** place refugees in American towns and cities.

They do give a little lip service to the idea that refugees must assimilate. Oh, pray tell, how are you going to force certain ‘religious’ refugees to assimilate while the whole resettlement effort is being done by contractors who have no interest in teaching refugees to assimilate? (They won’t even use the word ‘assimilate!’)

In short, the focus of their work is Washington-centric and how refugee resettlement is somehow mostly an issue of foreign policy to advance US interests!

What about US citizens’ interests!

The authors clearly have no idea what is going on outside the DC bubble.

Here are the three takeaways from their work product:

Screenshot (53) — Do you see anything here about States Rights and the feds shifting costs to states? Anything about the US Treasury heavily funding ‘religious’ NGOs which then operate in secrecy? Anything about the social and cultural impact roiling communities that are overloaded with refugees?

Here is a recent email from the ‘Johnny-come-lately‘ Heritage Foundation:

At Heritage, we bring the best and the brightest minds together to boldly address refugee policy.

Adm-Garry-E-Hall-200x300 — Before coming to the White House, Admiral Hall sat on a board at the US Conference of Catholic Bishops the largest of the nine federal contractors placing refugees in your towns (can’t make this up!) http://www.milarch.org/retired-navy-rear-admiral-garry-e-hall-appointed-to-national-review-board-of-the-u-s-conference-of-catholic-bishops/

This summer, Heritage experts Olivia Enos, David Inserra, and Joshua Meservey wrote a report titled “The U.S. Refugee Admissions Program: A Roadmap for Reform”.

Their report asserts that the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program should be used neither as a service to mass distribute global migration rights, nor to solve international conflict.

Rather, it should be reformed to assert American leadership, tangibly help partners and allies, and rescue some of the world’s most vulnerable people.

Last Thursday, they briefed Admiral Hall on their report at the National Security Council. He was very receptive and promised to pass it to the new Senior Adviser for Refugees [Who?—ed]

James Jay Carafano, the Vice President for the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy and E. W. Richardson Fellow, said of their work:

“While others have obsessed about the numbers and bans, we have focused on substantive reforms to actually make the program better—reduce abuse, enhance security and promote assimilation. Our work has not gone unnoticed. I have gotten constructive feedback from NGOs on all sides of this issue.”

Plans to make their roadmap to reform a reality are in the works.

What do you think should be done about America’s refugee program?

Readers ask me all the time, what can I do? Do this!

Go here and tell Heritage what you think about ‘reforming’ the USRAP! Tell them what is happening in your towns!

Again, the authors clearly have no idea what is going on outside of the swamp.

(As of this writing there are 16 comments at the Heritage site.)

My previous reports on this Heritage project are here and here.

*** The nine federal contractors that secretly place refugees in hundreds of US towns and cities. The USCCB Migration Fund is 97% funded by the US Treasury. Does Admiral Hall know that? Is that OK with him?

Poughkeepsie LOUDLY said no to refugees!

11/24/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The political Left-wingers, like those at Church World Service, don’t like LOUD when it comes from the people who don’t want their towns and cities changed without their consultation.

I had to laugh when I saw this headline at NPR:

Opposition To Refugee Arrivals Keeps Getting Louder

erolkekic — Erol Kekic dog whistling with this line? He said people asked: “Why are we bringing people who don’t all look like us?” I will bet no one uttered those words that night!

Don’t you know! Loud is bad if it doesn’t come from the Left!

And, it is funny, just last night I was so irritated by Leftwing commentators always referring to Rightwing “dog whistles” when along comes a story with some dog whistles from the Left!

If you don’t know what the heck dog whistles are (in the political sense), it is when a supposedly secretive message is being sent to one’s own political base.

Before I give you some juicy bits on this NPR story, you might want to revisit my reports on Poughkeepsie here.

In the waning months of the Obama Administration (before November) hopes were running high. Obama had set a refugee admissions ceiling for FY17 at 110,000, the highest in years and certainly much higher than any of his previous 7 years, and they all thought that Hillary was headed to the Oval.

So the US State Department with its contractors*** set about finding lots and lots of fresh territory in which to place refugees (older sites were getting overloaded and tensions were building). Poughkeepsie was one such new site.

Then along came Donald J. Trump to mess up their big plans….

Thus this National Public Radio story:

A few days after Donald Trump was elected President, more than a hundred people packed into a church sanctuary in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. to hear a presentation about refugee resettlement in their town.

It didn’t go well.

This was after Trump had campaigned on refusing Syrian refugees, citing security concerns. In the church that night, staffers from the non-profit organization Church World Service laid out their plan to open a refugee resettlement office in Poughkeepsie, and bring in about 80 refugees, mostly from the Congo, Iraq and Syria.

The audience had questions. A lot of them. They wanted to know, would they be safe? And could Poughkeepsie afford to care for these new residents?

“As a resident of this town, of this city, I can look out my window any time and find someone in need,” said Poughkeepsie resident Steven Planck, to vigorous applause.

I have seen this comment dozens of times and ask this question: If Church World Service is a Christian ‘charity,’ why not focus on the poor people in every American city? Why are we importing more poverty?

The head of Church World Service’s refugee program, Erol Kekic, spent more than an hour trying to respond to the questions.

“We had to do a lot of truth-telling, and dispel some myths,” says Kekic. “From ‘the value of my property will go down because refugees will be resettling next to me,’ to ‘are we bringing terrorists?’ to ‘why are we bringing people who don’t all look like us?'”

It’s getting harder for refugees to find a welcoming home in the U.S. The Trump administration has cut the number of refugees allowed into the country. In cities and town across the nation, citizens are protesting refugees being resettled in their neighborhoods.

In Poughkeepsie, the debate got ugly. On social media, people called opponents of the refugee plan racists and Islamophobes. The staff of Church World Service received death threats. [Ho hum! Death threats, so what else is new—ed]

[….]

Until recently, refugee resettlement in the U.S. had wide bipartisan support. The U.S. State Department, along with nine large non-profit groups, decides where to resettle refugees fleeing persecution, war and violence. They look for communities where there are volunteers to help.

The reason the refugee industry had “wide bipartisan support” and still does is that the Republican establishment wants the cheap labor for their big business donors and the Dems want the voters. And it is only in the last few years that this secret program has been exposed to the American taxpayers who shell out the bucks for it!

NPR continued:

“We all wondered, why? Why Poughkeepsie?” says David Cole, 37, a lifelong resident of the town who helped mobilize opposition to Church World Service. Cole insists he has nothing against Muslims or other refugees. But he says Poughkeepsie isn’t a wealthy town; unemployment there is higher than the statewide average.

Why Poughkeepsie? Because Church World Service thought a banner year was coming with a slew of Obama/Clinton paying refugee “clients,” and they figured Poughkeepsie would be a pushover!

“I looked at people that I knew,” Cole says. “And I said, OK, well, why aren’t these people getting help? Why are we trying to help, you know, people from war-torn countries in an area where there’s people looking for jobs? Like, they’re scavenging for jobs around here. I don’t get it.”

[….]

“Yes, there are loud voices in every community,” Kekic says. “But they’re usually not the majority, and they’re usually just a very loud minority.”

So what is the lesson here: Louder wins!

There is much more and it is worth reading here.

To learn more about hard Leftwing Church World Service, click here.

***These are the nine major US taxpayer-funded NGOs responsible for (secretly) placing refugees in hundreds of American towns.

Australian detention center riot ended with PNG police clearing the facility

11/24/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

That is the news this morning from The National.

Why does that matter to us? Because some of those rioting and refusing to be moved to another processing center could end up in your town in America.

Two days ago it was a different story. From the Times of Malta:

Look at the video (in the story) and consider this, some of these men may be flown to America to be quietly placed in your town by the US State Department and its contractors.***

Screenshot (1110) — Video shot inside facility as detainees refused to be removed. These are the ‘refugees’ Australia doesn’t want, but supposedly America does?

And, check it out, how do detainees have fully-charged phones to be able to film this and tweet to the world. They think (so they say) that if they step out of the door of the closed facility the locals will attack them.

Papua New Guinea authorities have ratcheted up pressure on more than 300 asylum seekers to abandon a decommissioned immigration camp, where refugees reported their shelters, beds and other belongings had been destroyed.

Police Chief Superintendent Dominic Kakas said 50 police and immigration officials entered the Manus Island camp on Thursday morning and persuaded 35 of the 378 men there to leave for alternative accommodation in the nearby town of Lorengau.

Water, power and food supplies ended when the Manus camp officially closed on October 31, following the Papua New Guinea Supreme Court’s ruling last year that Australia’s policy of housing asylum seekers there was unconstitutional.

But asylum seekers say they fear for their safety in Lorengau because of threats from local residents.

Kakas said force would not be used to empty the squalid Manus Island camp.

“There’s no raid. It’s an ongoing negotiation with the refugees,” Kakas told The Associated Press. “It’s not an eviction exercise. We’re telling them to move because there’s water, food and proper shelter on the other side.”

[….]

Sudanese refugee Abdul Aziz Adam tweeted that police had arrested Iranian refugee and journalist Behrouz Boochan.

Boochan had earlier tweeted: “They are destroying everything. Shelters, tanks, beds and all of our belongings.”

[….]

Australia pays Papua New Guinea, its nearest neighbour, and the tiny Pacific nation of Nauru to hold thousands of asylum seekers from Africa, the Middle East and Asia who have attempted to reach Australian shores by boat since mid-2013.

More here.

Not mentioned in the text that accompanies the video, is this near the end: New Zealand has offered to take some of the detainees but Australia declined the offer.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull says that the priority is the existing refugee swap deal with the US.

Trump and turnbull on phone — Initially Trump told Turnbull it was a “dumb deal.” Still is!

Go back and look at that video and consider that some of these men will be living in your town because Donald Trump said he will honor the unorthodox deal the Obama Administration made with Australia as Obama was walking out the door in late 2016.

BTW, that story from The National I linked above says 24 of the DETAINEES have already arrived in America, but that doesn’t fit the number we had heard previously—-we heard 50 have arrived of the possible 1,250.

See my complete archive on the ‘Australia deal’ by clicking here. And for all of my posts on Australia, go here.

If you have never told the White House what you think about the Obama/Trump “dumb deal” with Australia, take a few minutes and do it (here).

***These are the nine major US taxpayer-funded NGOs responsible for (secretly) placing refugees in hundreds of American towns.

Tillerson wants further investigation before jumping on the Buddhists are bad, Rohingya are victims bandwagon

11/19/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Good for Secretary of State Tillerson! My estimation of him has just risen enormously!

He hasn’t fallen for the propaganda campaign that the Muslim Rohingya have no blame and that the Buddhist government of Burma (aka Myanmar) is made up of evil killer Islamophobes.

Tillerson with Suu Kyi — Secretary of State Tillerson is greeted by famous human rights activist and leader Aung San Suu Kyi. CNN parrots the Rohingya are victims meme here too! http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/15/asia/tillerson-myanmar-rohingya/index.html

Unlike VP Pence who immediately jumped to the international ‘humanitarians’ tune here in September, Tillerson wants more facts!

From the LA Times:

When Secretary of State Rex Tillerson made his first official trip to Myanmar on Wednesday, he did not describe the country’s brutal military crackdown on Rohingya Muslims as ethnic cleansing, as other diplomats have done.

Now read this next paragraph, so typical of the Leftwing media. NO mention of how some atrocities were perpetrated by Rohingya against their Buddhist neighbors!

Security forces have conducted or allowed what critics call systematic rape and murder against the Rohingya minority, leading more than half a million to flee to squalid camps in neighboring Bangladesh since August.

But speaking in Naypyidaw, Myanmar’s capital, Tillerson declined to call for sanctions or other censure, saying more investigation is needed.

“If we have credible information that we believe to be very reliable that certain individuals were responsible for certain acts that we find unacceptable,” Tillerson said, “then targeted sanctions on individuals very well may be appropriate.”

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have already documented atrocities against the Rohingya, a Muslim minority in the Buddhist-majority country. In September, the United Nations’ top human rights official accused Myanmar of carrying out “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.”

Whether Tillerson was ill-informed or following administration policy wasn’t clear. [It is almost laughable how they write the ‘news’!—ed]

obama and aung san — Obama failed to sufficiently charm Suu Kyi!

This is what really has the Human Rights Industrial Complex (HRIC) steamed. Their hero won’t come to an unqualified defense of the Rohingya:

In Myanmar, human rights groups have been dismayed at the failure of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi to speak out on the plight of the Rohingya, especially now that she is state counselor, a position akin to prime minister.

“What people mean is what I say is not interesting enough,” she said of her critics during Tillerson’s visit. “What I say is not meant to be exciting. It’s meant to be accurate, not set people against each other.”

John Sifton, who is following the conflict in Myanmar for Human Rights Watch, said it was “naive” for Tillerson to call for another investigation.

Continue reading here where the reporter gives another opportunity for Republican Senators Corker and McCain to badmouth Trump and the changes being made at the US State Department.

You should know that, in my opinion, Trump and Tillerson are making a huge mistake with this staff cut-back by leaving in place career bureaucrats to run the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM), the agency within the State Department that hires the contractors that place refugees in your towns.

But, for the moment, I am thrilled that Tillerson has enough sense to not buy the HRIC line that will soon be followed by demands that we admit even more Rohingya to your towns and cities than we have already (nearly 20,000 in the last decade).

See my Rohingya Reports category here where for nearly ten years I’ve reported on the build-up of this propaganda campaign—that the Rohingya are the sole victims here.

While Republicans welcome Chinese companies ($$$) to the US, Dems welcome new American voters….

11/17/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

…..lost in the middle, are the rest of us.

Yesterday I told you about the Trump/Daines (Republican Senator from Montana) deal to invite China to set up a massive meat processing plant in Montana. A Canadian company is planning a second one.

For new readers, meat processing=foreign labor.

Buchanan state of emergency — My first thought when I read Coulter’s piece was of the warning that Pat Buchanan trumpeted for years in innumerable books. It must be maddening for him to see his predictions playing out just the way he said they would.

And, I see Ann Coulter yesterday chastised the Republicans for not seeing that their weak immigration policies are allowing the Dems to turn red states blue with immigrant voters who invariably vote for the party giving them stuff.

Here is Coulter on what the real message from the Virginia election should be. (Hat tip: Cathy)

Putting these two events together one can only conclude that the R’s want money and D’s want voters and the rest of us be damned.

Yes Virginia, Immigration is Turning the Country Blue

Hey, Republicans! Did you enjoy Election Night last week? Get ready for a lot more nights like that as immigration turns every last corner of the country blue.

When Ed Gillespie lost in Virginia, liberals crowed about how they’re winning the war of ideas. The country has thoroughly, emphatically rejected Trumpism!

Republicans, being idiots, played along, arguing only about whether Gillespie’s problem was that he didn’t embrace Trump enough or embraced him too much.

Gillespie’s campaign was fine. No cleverer arguments, community outreach or perfectly timed mailings would have changed the result. Contrary to The New York Times’ celebratory article in last Sunday’s magazine, “How the ‘Resistance’ Helped Democrats Dominate Virginia,” it wasn’t Democratic operative Kathryn Sorenson’s savvy use of Facebook, Google and Eventbrites that carried the day. “The Resistance” didn’t win.

What happened was: Democrats brought in new voters. In 1970, only one out of every 100 Virginians was foreign-born. By 2012, one in nine Virginians was foreign-born.

The foreign-born vote overwhelmingly, by about 80 percent, for Democrats. They always have and they always will — especially now that our immigration policies aggressively discriminate in favor of the poorest, least-educated, most unskilled people on Earth. They arrive in need of a LOT of government services.

According to the Pew Research Center, 75 percent of Hispanic immigrants and 55 percent of Asian immigrants support bigger government, compared to just over 40 percent of the general public. Even third-generation Hispanics support bigger government by 58 percent.

[….]

They were brought in to vote for the Democrats. That’s the real job immigrants are doing that Americans just won’t do.

As Democratic consultant Patrick Reddy wrote for the Roper Center 20 years ago, the 1965 Immigration Act, bringing in “a wave of immigration from the Third World,” will go down in history as “the Kennedy family’s greatest gift to the Democratic Party.” [Ted Kennedy was responsible for the creation of the Refugee Act of 1980 as well.—ed]

There isn’t much time on the clock before it’s lights-out for the GOP.

And all Republicans can think to do is argue about how quickly to grant amnesty to so-called “Dreamers” and give the Democrats another 30 million voters.

More here.

Trump and Daines — The Trump/Daines dumb deal!

How many times have I heard in the last decade that we have to work within the Republican party, that there is no hope for another party?

I am not buying it.

When Republicans are this dumb and this greedy they don’t deserve to be our ‘leaders!’

What happened to America First? Is Trump a globalist after all?

When Trump thinks it’s a good idea to welcome China to build a huge, polluting, meat plant in Montana (to feed the Chinese), a plant which will, without a doubt, use foreign labor (possibly even Chinese workers brought in to live in barracks!), then I’m done.

It is time for a commonsense party for commonsense people.

Go here to learn more about meatpackers changing the face of American heartland towns. I’ve been writing about the transformation for nearly ten years.

If you are looking for something to do, help your fellow Americans in Montana and contact the White House, tell Trump what you think about his dumb deal to feed the Chinese while destroying America, here.