Tag: Guatemala

Trump Administration Cuts $500 Million from Central American NGO’s Budgets

~ Ann Corcoran ~ 3 Comments

Holy cow!  Who knew! Not only do millions of your tax dollars go to the nine federal refugee contractors*** in the US, but we send apparently billions to supposedly Christian social justice groups in places like Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador.

Let the wailing begin as the groups claim that they use our millions to keep citizens of those countries from fleeing toward our southern border, so cutting them off is wrong they say.

It is pretty clear for all to see that even with billions of dollars over the years they have failed spectacularly in stopping the invasion and I assume the State Department has pretty much figured that out.

 

Honduran migrants on the way to the US in 2018

 

I wish I had time today to take a deep dive into past funding for the groups that include, Proyecto Aldea Global, Association for a More Just Society, International Justice Mission and World Vision, but I don’t.

Here is the story at Christianity Today:

Christian Nonprofits Reeling from Trump Cuts to Foreign Aid

Christian ministries in Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador know they are in for a tough year. The US government has drastically cut aid to the three Central American countries in response to the large number of refugees who have fled north to seek asylum in America. Some of the more than $500 million of US taxpayer money was going to Christian nonprofits working on economic development, anti-corruption efforts, and helping children in poverty in the three countries. Those ministries will have to lay people off, reduce services, and scramble to find other funds.  [Just call George Soros and ask him to supply the funds—ed]

“The Trump administration shot itself in the foot with these cuts,” said Chet Thomas, director of Proyecto Aldea Global in Honduras, which has been forced to stop a job training program that gave teenagers alternatives to working for criminal gangs. “These projects are designed to … reduce the number of people migrating to the US.”

US foreign aid flows through various channels. In many cases, it ends up funding nongovernmental organizations, including Christian relief organizations in the area of Central American known as the Northern Triangle. Many of these address the conditions that cause people to flee their homes and seek asylum, leading to a crisis at the US border. Some ministries work directly with host governments to train national staff and increase the effectiveness of state institutions. Others focus more on community development, often building connections with local churches that don’t trust their government and don’t have many of their own resources.

Governments must do their jobs!

Justifying the cuts, the State Department appeared to downplay the role of nonprofit groups in addressing migration. “We expect the governments of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras to keep their commitments to stem illegal immigration to the United States,” it said in a statement.

More here.

Sure looks to me that the State Department calculated that based on the hordes flooding to the US border, we weren’t getting our money’s worth from these ‘Christian non-profits’.

However, some US ‘religious charities’ are not seeing huge funding cuts!

*** Here (below) are the nine federal refugee resettlement contractors.

I’m not posting my usual spiel, but only want to say that in my analysis of funds received by three contractors (so far) since Trump took office, only the US Conference of Catholic Bishops has taken a large cut in its federal funding.

Church World Service and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service are still about on par with federal funding as they were under Obama.

I’ll have more to say when I’ve been through all nine.

 

Trump has a plan to stop the migrant caravan, will announce Tuesday

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I have to say: this is the newest news I’m seeing.  Since the whole issue is in flux (and perhaps more so after the shooting at the synagogue in Pittsburgh where we heard the shooter may have been angry over the caravan as well as HIAS’s role in it), things could change any minute.

Screenshot (1502)
Ready or not, here we come! Photo: Time magazine   http://time.com/5435748/border-patrol-wont-shoot-caravan-kirstjen-nielsen/

 

But, here is what Neil Munro reported at Breitbart yesterday:

WashPo: Trump Will Announce Anti-Caravan Plan on Tuesday

 

President Donald Trump will announce Tuesday how he will use his extraordinary powers over legal immigration to block the caravan and other asylum-seeking economic migrants, according to the Washington Post.

“A draft of the proposal reviewed by The Washington Post says the president can use his authority under Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act to declare certain migrants ineligible for asylum for national security reasons,” the Post reported.

The little-used powers are in Section 212(f) of U.S. law, at 8 U.S. Code § 1182:

Suspension of entry or imposition of restrictions by President

Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.

But pro-migration advocates say that 212(f) clause cannot stop illegal migrants from jumping over the border wall into the United States and then use U.S. and international law to apply for asylum.

These advocates say migrants — even those with invalid cases — are protected by the constitution’s Fith Amendment once they get onto U.S. territory. The clause — “No person shall be … deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law” — allows migrants to get court hearings, despite Presidential opposition, the advocates say.

However, U.S. law does not require that asylum applicants be allowed to stay in the United States while their legal claims are considered by the courts, countered Christopher Hajec, the litigation director for the Immigration Law Reform Institute.

President Trump has the legal authority to deport classes of migrants to an outside location where they can safely live until their appeals are heard, he said. Migrants would be allowed to appeal for asylum in court cases conducted via video, he told Breitbart News. “Some might get asylum,” he added.

Much more here.

Remember readers that asylum is the other side of the refugee coin.  The only difference is the means of getting here.

If we fly them they are called refugees, if they get here on their own steam they must apply for asylum (refugee status).  Then, if the migrant is granted asylum, he/she gets the benefits that refugees we transport here receive.

Will the migrant caravan headed north from Honduras have implications for US midterm elections?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I think, yes, if they continue northward.

Yesterday, the migrants numbering between 1,600 and 2,000, chanting “We have rights,” crossed the border from Honduras into Guatemala with the intention of illegally crossing in to Mexico.

 

Migrant caravan
Yikes! the caravan is made up of mostly young men! It looks just like the European invasion!

 

Just a reminder to all, these are not refugees.

(See my most recent discussion about the misuse of the word ‘refugee.’)

They are mostly economic migrants, but the Leftwing Open Borders advocates will say they are seeking asylum from persecution for their race, religion, political view, and will call them refugees.

If that is the case, they are required to ask for asylum in the first safe country they enter.

I know you are saying as you read this that Mexico isn’t safe, but indeed it is considered so for the purpose of asylum.  It will be a real test of the new Mexican government if they permit the movement of the Honduran caravan across Mexico and to the US border.

Just as Elizabeth Warren’s Indian heritage stunt isn’t good for the Dems three weeks out from the mid term elections, neither is this migrant caravan should it reach our border.

It will just be one more argument in favor of President Trump’s hardline immigration stance.

Here is the AP at the Chicago Tribune yesterday:

Honduran migrant caravan crosses Guatemala border, US-bound

 

Hundreds of Honduran migrants surged over the Guatemalan border under a broiling sun Monday hoping to make it to new lives in the United States, far from the poverty and violence of their home nation.

Police stopped the migrants at a roadblock outside Esquipulas for several hours in the afternoon, but the travelers refused to return to the border and were eventually allowed to pass.

They arrived in town as night fell, exhausted by the day’s heat, hobbling on blistered feet. Few carried food and some local residents began to organize to help feed them. Some migrants asked for money, others passing a bakery were handed bread.

map honduras etc
They crossed from Honduras and into Guatemala yesterday.

Earlier in the day, the migrants arrived at the Guatemalan border singing the Honduran national anthem, praying and chanting, “Yes, we can.” The group estimated at 1,600 or more defied an order by the Guatemalan government that they not be allowed to pass.

“We have rights,” the migrants shouted.

[….]

Local media coverage prompted hundreds more to join, and Dunia Montoya, a volunteer assisting the migrants, estimated Sunday that the group had grown to at least 1,600 people. Police gave their own estimate of around 2,000 on Monday.  [Find out who the “volunteer” works for and find out who organized the march. Could it be the Catholic Church?—-ed]

The caravan formed a day after U.S. Vice President Mike Pence urged the presidents of Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala to persuade their citizens to stay home and not put their families in danger by undertaking the risky journey to the United States.

In April, President Donald Trump threatened in April to withdraw foreign aid from Honduras and countries that allowed transit for a similar caravan that set out from the Central American country. That caravan dwindled as the group approached the U.S. border, with some giving up along the way and others splitting off to try to cross on their own.

Historian Dana Frank, an expert on human rights and U.S. policy in Honduras, said the caravan could have political implications in the United States less than a month before the midterm elections.

More here.

Yes, it surely could and my prediction is that the impact will favor Republicans who support Trump’s stronger border initiatives.

You may have noticed that the Dems are campaigning with no mention of immigration (if they can avoid it).

So, make sure you send this news to everyone you know!

There goes the hellhole myth for El Salvador and Guatemala; so why the flood of migrants?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Could it be that Obama Administration pals in the No Borders movement (including the Catholic Church) used the “children” as pawns and started the stampede northward?  I think so, and hope one day we will all have the truth.

In the meantime, here comes a worldwide study that puts El Salvador and Guatemala in the top ten countries where people are most satisfied with their lives, while the US is number 12!

From the Daily Mail  (hat tip: ‘pungentpeppers’).  A picture is worth a thousand words:

 

Latin America is the place to feel happy: Seven of the top 10 countries in the well-being poll hailed from the Americas, with Canada rounding out the top 10. Six of the 10 worst were from Africa

 

Here is how the article begins (Respondents were asked to rate their well-being over five categories: purpose, social, financial, community and physical):

People in Panama feel happiest about their lives, according to a new global well-being poll in which the U.S. finished 12th and the United Kingdom 26th.

There were six Latin American countries in the top 10 in the poll, which asked people to measure their well-being across five key areas.

Panamanians were well above the world average for feeling positive about their lives – 61 per cent were found to be ‘thriving’ in at least three of the five facets – compared with just 17 per cent internationally.

Read it all.

See all of our posts on ‘Unaccompanied minors’ by clicking here.  The archive goes back several years.

As Guatemalans flee their homeland for America, Guatemalans want Jews out of Guatemala

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Go figure! 

Guatemalan allegedly abused women arrive in US.

We have Mayan Guatemalans flooding into the US into such cities as Lynn, Massachusetts saying they are persecuted back home (and Obama letting in Guatemalan women who claim domestic abuse) and we are expected to welcome them.

Then we have Mayan Guatemalans forcing Jews to leave their town fearing that the Jews would destroy their “religion and customs” (and drive tourists away) and everyone seems fine with that!

Why aren’t we permitted to fear Guatemalans changing our customs?

From The Telegraph (hat tip: ‘pungentpeppers’):

Members of an ultra-Orthodox Jewish sect have been expelled from a lakeside Guatemalan village after clashing with the local Mayan population.

Around 230 members of Lev Tahor, an intensely religious Jewish group that rejects the state of Israel, moved to Guatemala earlier this year after fleeing amid allegations of child abuse in Canada.

Jews given the boot in Guatemala

[….]

“We felt intimidated by them in the streets. We thought they wanted to change our religion and customs,” said Miguel Vasquez Cholotio, a member of the elders’ council.

As I read this story I wondered if the Guatemalans, or the US and Canada before them, would have had the nerve to throw out an Islamic sect with similar views and attire.

And, how come these Jews aren’t being championed as “stateless” by the international ‘humanitarian industrial complex?’  And, where is the UN with its condemnation of Guatemala?