Tag: Sen. Ted Kennedy

North Dakota update: seems that very few elected officials have a clue about what ol' Teddy and Joe created

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Back in 1980 when Jimmy Carter signed the monster into law (after it was pushed through the Senate by Ted Kennedy and Joe Biden) everyone jumped on board (every state but Wyoming!) and figured this was just one of those warm and fuzzy feel-good plans from Washington.

Ted and Joe
Thank Senators Ted Kennedy and Joe Biden for being the ‘brains’ behind the bill that became the Refugee Act of 1980

It was put on auto-pilot (no serious review by Congress has happened in 35 years) until now when the once seemingly innocuous program has grown so large, so costly and fraught with security risks that the public is finally paying attention.
Here is the latest on North Dakota, a state with one of the highest per capita rates of refugee placement, and where elected officials are now trying to figure out what rights they have to slow it or get out altogether.
The story is here at Breitbart where reporter Michael Patrick Leahy tells us how the North Dakota Senator and former governor doesn’t understand how the program works.
Read the story.  Learn how much your state is on the hook for!
Now this…

Every “humanitarian arrival” costs the US taxpayer a bare minimum of $10,000 per person. Do our Washington elected officials even have a clue?

I want to use this opportunity of the Breitbart story to highlight a brief mention of the cost of the program reporter Leahy mentions near the end.  Here is what Leahy said:

Hoeven is not the only member of Congress who does not seem to understand how the federal refugee resettlement program works. In fact, hardly any members of Congress seem to have such an understanding. That may be the most obvious reason to explain why Congress continues to fund the VOLAGS who operate it to the tune of $1 billion a year.

Since a reader asked just this morning about the cost of the program (in light of the upcoming opportunity to testify), the best I can do is send you here to Obama’s proposed FY 2016 Report to Congress (from Sept. of 2015) on what the Administration said the program would cost the feds in this year (2016).  Go to Table VII and see that they estimated $1.19 billion total.  That includes $652 million for the Office of Refugee Resettlement.
However, when you go here to the Dept. of Health and Human Services FY2017 Budget Justification (begin on p. 244) you will see a very different story. Either the budget has dramatically increased (from 2016 to 2017) or Obama was downplaying the costs only 6 months ago.
Get this! Obama’s FY2017 budget includes (rounded number) $2.2 BILLION just for the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) where they say they will care for 213,000 “humanitarian arrivals” including Obama’s 100,000 refugees he has been touting for next year.

The FY 2017 budget of $2,184,860,000 for this account represents the cost of maintaining current law and service requirements for additional refugees and other Entrants and unaccompanied children and for expanding assistance to domestic victms of trafficking. The funding levels for the Refugee and Entrant Assistance account in FY 2017, particularly with regard to Transitional and Medical Services, Social Services, Preventative Health, and Survivors of Torture programs.

The President’ Budget request would support a total of 213,000 humanitarian arrivals in FY 2017, including 100,000 refugees, consistent with the Administration’s commitment to admit at least this number of refugees in FY 2017. The FY 2017 base funding level for unaccompanied children represents an increase of $278,000,000, which is flat from the base resources available in FY 2016, including carryover.

I’m rotten at math, but doesn’t that amount to over $10,000 per refugee just for the ORR share.
That over $2 billion figure does not include the costs of the US State Department which pays contractors their per head fee and it doesn’t include the enormous security screening costs for the Dept. of Homeland Security for the large numbers arriving from Muslim countries.
And, it most certainly does not include the (surely!) billions in welfare payments, medical care and education for the children refugees receive.
 

Howie Carr remembers Ted Kennedy (and not fondly)

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Here is a good piece I missed a couple of days ago, but wanted to be sure you all see it!  Radio talk show host Howie Carr penned this op-ed in the days following the latest Islamic terror attack on US soil—the Chattanooga killings.  If you have been following RRW, you know the now deceased Senator Ted Kennedy was the driving force behind the Refugee Act of 1980 (Then Senator Joe Biden was one of its chief co-sponsors).

Thank Ted and Joe for the Islamists living among us!

By the way, Hyannis was never a preferred resettlement site, and, in 2014, Delaware got a big fat zero number of refugees.
From the Boston Herald:

Every time another foreign terrorist murders Americans in cold blood, I think of Ted Kennedy.

It’s still unclear how this latest Middle East monster infiltrated the United States. But you can bet it involved his family taking advantage of one of Ted Kennedy’s “landmark” laws — the Immigration Reform Act of 1965, perhaps, or the Refugee Act of 1980.

Or maybe his father utilized one of the “terrorist visas” enshrined by the Immigration Act of 1990. That catastrophe, by the way, was signed into law by Juan Ellis Bush’s father, Bush 41.

Teddy’s fingerprints are all over each of these disastrous laws — as well as so many others.

These are Ted Kennedy’s words from 1965, when he was first promoting his plot to import the Third World here:

“First, our cities will not be flooded with a million immigrants annually … Secondly, the ethnic mix of this country will not be upset … Contrary to the charges in some quarters, (the bill) will not inundate America with immigrants from any one country or area.”

So Kennedy lied, what else is new!
There is more here.

Diversity Visa Lottery: LEGAL immigration program allows 50,000 into US each year because we don't have enough diversity!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We have written a little bit over the years about the truly outrageous ‘Diversity Visa Lottery,’ sometimes referred to as the ‘Green card lottery.’
I’m writing about it now so that our many new readers understand that it isn’t just the Refugee Admissions Program that is allowing immigrants into the US who could potentially threaten our security in addition to competing with Americans for limited job opportunities.

Obama with Texas Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee. “The Green Card Lottery has really been the African Green Card Lottery.” In 2009 Lee attempted to change the Diversity lottery by adding another 50,000 which would have brought 100,000 annual “winners” to America. http://newafricanmagazine.com/will-green-card-lottery-get-red-card/

The program, like the Refugee resettlement program, is the brainchild of Senator Ted Kennedy and was signed into law by President George H.W. Bush in 1990.
Beginning in 1996 we began offering 50,000 slots (it can be confusing because some reports say 55,000) for legal immigration to the US in a lottery system that is shocking when you begin to examine it.   It’s primary purpose is to increase our diversity!
We sure did increase our diversity as 1 million LEGAL immigrants entered the US in the last 20 years as a result of the Kennedy/Bush lottery.

The lottery aims to diversify the immigrant population in the United States, by selecting applicants mostly from countries with low rates of immigration to the United States in the previous five years.

Unsuccessful efforts have been made in recent years to kill it, but among the programs great supporters are the very same federal refugee resettlement contractors we write about every day.  Every time Congress has advanced bills to cut the lottery or cut its funding, who pops up to defend it?  The VOLAGS!
One would think they might be concerned about increasing competition from the lottery winners for the scarce jobs that their refugees desperately need!  Guess not!

If you would like to check it out yourselves, just type in one of the contractor’s names along with ‘diversity visa lottery’ and you will get lots of testimony and lots of lobbying by the contractors to keep the lottery alive.

New York Uzbek’s largely here thanks to Diversity Visa Lottery

What got me thinking about it this morning was a New York Times piece about ten days ago entitled:

Accusations of Terrorism Worry Brooklyn’s Uzbek Community

We learned that a large number of New York City’s Uzbek (mostly Muslim) immigrants came in through the lottery.  However, we have also admitted Uzbek’s as refugees and have had some terror busts involving those.  Here is one in Idaho.

Immigrants from Uzbekistan have been arriving in New York with help from a diversity visa lottery program, which the United States government created in 1990 to foster immigration from countries with previously low rates. The State Department issues 55,000 green cards every year through its diversity visa program and for the 2014-15 year, 4,368 were allotted to Uzbek lottery winners, the department said.  [It was 5,101 in 2013, see below—-ed]

In my quick search I couldn’t find the 2014 “winners,” but here are the 2013 lucky ducks!   I’ve selected some of the countries (those with the largest number of winners) from which “enrichment” has arrived on our shores.  (See this commentary about the US Conference of Catholic Bishops going to bat for the lottery in Congressional testimony).  Remember this line when you look at the list!

….a diverse pool of immigrants makes our nation a culturally richer place.  [Who says so?—ed]

Selected entrants—2013

Here (and below) are the largest ethnic groups given green cards after winning the lottery in 2013:
Africa:

Algeria (2,161)

Cameroon (3,858)

DR Congo (3,924)

Egypt (5,015)

Ethiopia (4,910)

Ghana (5,105)

Kenya (4,410)

Morocco (2,068)

Nigeria (6,218)

Sierra Leone (2,516)

Togo (1,065)

Asia:

Iran (6,029)

Nepal (4,370)

Europe:

Albania (1,520)

Armenia (1,174)

Belarus (1,195)

Bulgaria (1,299)

Poland (2,038)

Russia (2,846)

Turkey (1,807)

Ukraine (6,424)

Uzbekistan (5,101)

The next time you hear an elected official mouth this foolish line know that he or she doesn’t know what the heck they are talking about!

I’m o.k. with legal immigration, but it is illegal immigration I have a problem with!

To learn more, we have a category on the ‘Diversity Visa Lottery’ here.

History lesson on “nation of immigrants” mumbo-jumbo

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

In the middle of a piece by Patrick Buchanan yesterday, here at World Net Daily.  He gives a brief timeline that you need to know when someone in your community tries to shut you up with that tired old declaration that “we are a nation of immigrants,” and therefore we are expected to take in the world forever.

Below is Buchanan after explaining that our founders were all of similar background, religion, culture and language.

Later, in our history we abruptly slowed immigration for 40 years because we were overloaded (graph at right shows the dramatic slowdown). 

We were not a nation of immigrants in 1789.

They came later. From 1845-1849, the Irish fleeing the famine. From 1890-1920, the Germans. Then the Italians, Poles, Jews and other Eastern Europeans. Then, immigration was suspended in 1924.

From 1925 to 1965, the children and grandchildren of those immigrants were assimilated, Americanized. In strong public schools, they were taught our language, literature and history, and celebrated our holidays and heroes. We endured together through the Depression and sacrificed together in World War II and the Cold War.

By 1960, we had become truly one nation and one people.

So where are all the Leftist environmentalists? http://www.susps.org/overview/immigration.html

Along comes Senator Ted (don’t bring any to Hyannis) Kennedy:

Then, of course, in 1965, the Immigration and Nationality Act was championed by Ted Kennedy, who would 15 years later push through the Senate his Refugee Act of 1980 (signed into law by Jimmy Carter) and we were on our way to a borderless Nation.

Here we are again today flooded with millions of migrants who are not assimilating, will have little chance of assimilating even if they want to (are they going to assimilate when resettled into ghetto hell holes?), and others who have no plans to become Americans in any sense of the word.

But, they, impoverished masses, are not to blame for why we are no longer one Nation, one people, as Buchanan says.  The blame falls directly on the “progressives” and one-worlders who are tearing down America’s gates (and the gates of every first-world country), for what?   Do they really think a glorious one-world utopia awaits?  Or, do they just  want every country leveled to third-world squalor status.

Invitation to tell us what you want!

Over the years I have asked critics of this blog to write a guest post that explains to us what they want, do they want a borderless America?  If not, how many people do they want to let in?  Tell us how and when they would stop the flow. Then tell us where the millions who would come here from every corner of the world would work and how they would all be fed and housed.  I especially would like to hear from an avowed environmentalist who is also an advocate for more immigration.  And, the guest writer must write the piece without any emotional guilt-driven “nation of immigrants” B.S.

I’ve been waiting for years!

 

Afghan SIV applicants say US government dragging its feet on visas

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment
Special Immigrant Visa program was Sen. Ted Kennedy’s dark-of-night addition to Defense Authorization bill. Kennedy was also the power behind the Refugee Act of 1980.

The Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) is a program passed by Congress in the the dark of night in 2007 spearheaded by Senator Ted Kennedy, here is a document explaining how those who supposedly helped the US in the Iraq war, and their families, can get into the US where they will reap all the benefits refugees receive (welfare etc.).  Here is a description of the Afghan SIV program.

You might want to see our previous post about one Afghan interpreter and his family arrested in New York.

From the Seattle Times (hat tip: ‘pungentpeppers’):

Thousands of Afghans who have served as U.S. military interpreters and who now fear for their lives are waiting in limbo to hear about their applications to move to the U.S. Though Congress authorized 8,750 visas for Afghan interpreters, only 1,982 had been issued through Dec. 10.

Stars of the Seattle Times story say they have already proven their loyalty to America and now want the US to “return the favor.”

For Nazari, who has worked for the U.S. military since 2006, years of waiting have left him confused and demoralized — and at risk of retaliation from insurgents who he says know what he does.

“We’re living in the 21st century,” Nazari said, speaking flawless English while sipping tea at a Kabul guesthouse. “If the State Department wants to find out if I’m a bad guy or a terrorist, just check their computer databases. It should take five minutes, not five years.”

Sardar Khan, 26, who has translated for the U.S. military since 2007, said he has waited nearly two years for a decision on his SIV application. He jokes that he and other applicants have “SIV syndrome” from constantly checking a State Department website for updates on their cases.

“We have already proved our honesty and loyalty to the United States,” Khan said. “All we ask now is for the United States to return the favor.”

Convicted Iraqi refugee terrorists got through old screening system and yet Obama now makes it even easier to get through!

US State Department says they are speeding things up, but are apparently still haunted by those Iraqi refugee terrorists convicted in Kentucky.

Jarrett Blanc, deputy special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, said the State Department improved its processing times last year and has issued more Afghan interpreter visas during the latest fiscal year than in any previous year, a tenfold increase over 2012. In the last three months of the fiscal year that ended Oct. 1, he said, the U.S. Embassy in Kabul issued more interpreter visas than in the previous four years.

The department has also begun an appeals process for interpreters turned down at the embassy level, sped up the visa process for approved applicants and is doing more to spread word about the SIV program.

“We are committed to helping those who — at great personal risk — have helped us,” Blanc said.

Officials are concerned that Afghans with ties to insurgents or terrorists will slip through the vetting process. The 2011 arrests of two Iraqi refugees in Kentucky on terrorism charges slowed the visa process, though neither had been an interpreter.  [Of course, now we can expect the vetting process to be relaxed!—ed]

The Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project calls the SIV process “prohibitively complicated, bureaucratic and opaque.” The group, which also assists Afghans, says more than 5,000 Afghan applicants are backlogged. It says only 6,675 of the 25,000 visas authorized for Iraqi interpreters have been issued.

In December, Congress extended the Iraq SIV program through Sept. 30, but failed to extend the Afghan program, which expires Sept. 30.

To readers:  The next time you hear someone say I oppose illegal immigration, but legal immigration is a good thing, know that they don’t know what they are talking about!