Editor: I’m back and there is so much news I don’t know where to begin! I hope you have been able to follow my Twitter feed over the last ten days at Twitter, or here at RRW, where I posted the most interesting bits I came across while traveling.
This story is all over the internet, so I expect you have seen it already. I’m posting it to make the point that although the story is about the UK, the US should be cutting the UN completely loose from our decision-making process when choosing refugees for America for FY19. The UN tells the US which refugees to accept and from where, but that is changing under this President.
(As we speak, the deep state and the White House are surely at loggerheads over numbers for the coming year.)
And, this time rather than the International Rescue Committee getting the blame (as they did in California), it is Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of San Antonio.
Catholic refugee agency worker:
The charity’s “model of resettlement has not really changed for 20, 30 years. They still basically do what they’re required to do, but they don’t do any more.”
Jose Antonio Fernandez, CEO of Catholic Charities San Antonio says the agency received $7.5 million in 2016 from the federal government to help 1,900 refugees. What! Over $3,900 for every man woman and child!
Sounds like they are taking in more refugees than they can adequately provide for!!!
Not enough decent housing that is also cheap they wail. But, I have noticed over the years that the answer is never that there might be too many refugees entering the US! And, with rich agencies like Catholic Charities, maybe they could pony-up with some of their own private Christian-charity dollars rather than depending on the US taxpayer to supply them with more!
As I reported here, just yesterday, Texas is the number one refugee-welcoming state in the nation right now! Sounds like Texas, and its stable of ‘charities’, are ‘welcoming’ more refugees than they can adequately provide for!!!
Clearly The Guardian doesn’t want to hear that bit of information.
Frankly, if there weren’t nine federal refugee contractors being paid on a per refugee head basis to bring refugees to your towns and cities, maybe then a realistic policy could be advanced to care for (legitimate) refugees near their homes so that returning them to their homes and to their familiar cultures would be the number one priority of humanitarian care.
Perhaps if this pattern could be broken now—Middle East wars=flow of migrants to the West—it would be a very important legacy for Trump to leave us with. Trump and Haley could break the pattern! No more knee jerk admission of ‘refugees’ with every Middle East conflict. HereNikki Haley says what the No Borders Left never wants to hear:
Donald Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations on Sunday defended the president’s ban on allowing Syrian refugees into the US by claiming that people displaced due to the country’s civil war did not actually want to leave the region.
When asked how she justified the Trump administration admitting almost no Syrian refugees while also bombing Assad regime targets in the country, Nikki Haley cited conversations she said she had had with refugees at camps in Jordan and Turkey.
“Not one of the many that I talked to ever said we want to go to America,” Haley said on Fox News Sunday. “They want to stay as close to Syria as they can.”
More here.
In a related story at Hurriyetwe see that the bloom is off the rose as Germany begins restricting family members (limiting chain migration!):
Syrians leaving Germany to return to Turkey
A growing number of Syrian refugees in Germany are seeking to return to Turkey as a new German legislation has introduced new barriers to family reunification, local media reported on April 12.
Even Mama Merkel is beginning to understand limits.
The German government recently imposed stricter measures to curb family reunification for Syrian refugees, many of whom were granted “subsidiary protection.”
German broadcaster ARD reported that its correspondents documented the journey of several Syrian refugees who sought to return to Turkey by paying hundreds of euros to human smugglers.
The refugees wanted to return to Turkey because they could not receive permission from German authorities to bring their family members who had fled to Turkey after the Syrian civil war broke out, the report said.
The EU’s largest economy has accepted more than 700,000 Syrian refugees since 2015, but amid domestic political pressure, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition government introduced barriers to family reunification. A cap of 1,000 people per month was imposed on who could come to Germany for family reunification.
One of the most maddening things about our UN/US Refugee Admissions Program is that it is permanent.
When we take refugees they are here to stay and on track to citizenship even if their home country goes back to relative peace.
As we have watched Europe, particularly Germany ‘welcoming’ migrants, remember those flooding in to that country will have to seek asylum and wait for that legal process to work its will. Until their asylum claims are adjudicated they have no right to permanent resettlement—our refugees do!
Sure is a good thing we didn’t listen to Hillary who wanted 65.000 Syrians admitted to the US ASAP. Now will Mama Merkel move to send hers back? https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2016/10/05/at-last-nights-vp-debate-hillarys-65000-syrian-refugees-came-up/
This is why we should not fall for every UN/Leftwing scare tactic and jump to admit refugees who in a year or two could go home—like the Syrians.
Here is the newsfrom Germany that is not being widely broadcast!
European Union calls for return of Syrian refugees as the war against Islamic State draws to a close
Senior EU officials have started to call for Syrian refugees who fled the the ensuing violence and suffering from the war against Islamic State to be returned to their home country now that the war is over.
After recovering all strategic strongholds from IS, the Syrian Army on Wednesday claimed that it had won the war against the terrorist group.
This has prompted senior German officials to call on Chancellor Angela Merkel to open up communications with the Syrian government to facilitate the return of refugees who fled the war in Syria.
The right-wing Alternative for Deutschland (AFD) party say Angela Merkel and her new government should immediately strike up talks with Syria’s president Assad to start the ball rolling on a deal to repatriate migrants that had fled to Germany during the migrant crisis.
“This deal should ensure that the returnees will be accepted in Syria and accommodated only in safe areas,” the AFD said in a statement. They are also calling for the Syrian government to help pay for the cost of sending them all back.
The Green Party, which has been invited to help Merkel form a government, branded the politicians “irresponsible, inhumane and heartless”.
The Open Borders Leftists have their hearts set on a new refugee flood—watch for the rise of the Rohingya. And, just behind those Muslims from Bangladesh/Burma look for the propaganda campaign for millions of climate refugees to be ‘welcomed’ to the west.
The climate refugees are a twofer for them—-they get to yak about global warming and refugees!
See my ‘Invasion of Europe’ archive here and see how Hillary is responsible for the invasion launching now from Libya.
This Syrian family and the brothers left behind were in Saudi Arabia (one of the brothers had already emigrated to S.A.). Saudi Arabia is a safe country! Therefore, why are these people now the responsibility of the US taxpayer? They weren’t living in some sqaulid camp.
They were in arguably the richest country in the Middle East!
So tell us again why Saudi Arabia couldn’t house millions of Muslim refugees in their tent cities reserved for the brief Hajj period? Instead we are taking Syrian ‘refugees’ from S.A.!
It is worth reading the whole article because there are lots of useful nuggets and some important comments by critics of the program (besides the story of a Syrian family that came to the US as ‘refugees’ from Saudi Arabia!)
By the way, I’m sure many of you are saying—yes! If we must have them, keep them in California!
Even though overall arrival numbers in fiscal 2017 dropped by more than half from the previous year, San Diego County continued its legacy as the California county that took in the most refugees.
In a year that began with a promise of more refugees than ever before coming to the U.S. and ended with an ongoing court battle over how many and whom the president could block from coming, about 1,500 refugees resettled in San Diego County, according to data from the State Department. That’s down from just over 3,100 the year before, and it’s the only time that number has dipped below 2,000 in the last decade.
“The fact that we remained the largest county, it definitely makes us proud to continue the tradition of San Diego being a safe haven,” said Etleva Bejko, director of refugee and immigration services for Jewish Family Service, a resettlement agency.
Where refugees resettle once the U.S. agrees to take them is a complicated decision-making process that factors in whether they already have family living here, which agencies have the bandwidth to support them and which places have infrastructure in place to help them succeed. That often means that places like San Diego that already have large populations of people from a country will continue to take refugees from that country. [Multiplier effect! Like Ft. Wayne in my previous post—ed]
San Diego County has been known for leading the state in refugee arrivals since large numbers of Iraqis fleeing war began arriving in late summer of 2007.
Confirmation again! Federal resettlement contractors paid by the head!
Bejko said her organization has had to reorganize support efforts because of the overall decreases in arrivals. Resettlement agencies receive funding based on the number of refugees that they help.
[….]
Three members of the Tarakji family, originally from Damascus, Syria, were some of the few who made it to the U.S. after the travel ban. The slowdown in accepting refugees has separated them from two other members of their family.
Catholic Charities resettled mother Alshifaa Hammoush, 52, father Manaf Tarakji, 58, and daughter Maria Tarakji, 21, in April. Two sons, Yasser Tarakji, 29, and Yaman Tarakji, 27, remain in Saudi Arabia.
They had already been trying to immigrate to the U.S.to reunite with their extended family who live in San Diego County when the war in Syria broke out. [They hit the jackpot because the refugee category is the most desirable way to get into the country. They get their hands held by a federal contractor who helps them get all of their welfare (not available to other categories of legal immigrant)!—ed]
After bombing destroyed the pharmacy where Hammoush worked and scared off Manf Tarakji’s clients for his electronics repair business, and a car exploded outside their building, the family fled in 2013 to Saudi Arabia, where the oldest son was already living and working.
Once in Saudi Arabia, they couldn’t continue the process to get family-sponsored green cards.
They stayed there in limbo, unable to fully establish new lives because they were on visitor visas that they had to renew every three months, until they were accepted as refugees to the U.S. Yaman Tarakji was separated into his own refugee case because of his age, and he is still waiting for processing.
The oldest brother, Yasser Tarakji also tried to apply but never heard back from the U.N. agency that registers refugees.
[….]
Still, separation from the two sons is painful for all of them. Whenever Maria Tarakji looks at photos from their last day together in Saudi Arabia, her eyes wet with tears.
“The U.S. was accepting refugees forever. It’s unfair to do this now,” Maria Tarakji said. “It’s really hard to live here, and our brother is not here.”
She said she’s had to take responsibility for tasks that her brothers used to handle, like choosing an internet router.
Both brothers work in computer programming and repair.
