Lutheran lobbyist says 100,000 Syrians is a responsible number for FY2016

10/21/2015 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

…..State Department representative says it isn’t possible.

But, get this! We learn that the United Nations has 22,000 Syrians picked out for us already!

BrittneyNystrom_290 — Brittney Nystrom, chief lobbyist for Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service. Since LIRS is almost 100% funded by US taxpayers, you are paying for most of her salary! Photo here: http://blog.lirs.org/brittney-nystrom/

By the way, one of the arguments Lutheran lobbyist Brittany Nystrom makes is that Lebanon has taken in tens of thousands of Syrians so far and so the much larger US should take in 100 million by comparison. It is a ludicrous comparison that they love to make. Remember that the Syrians going to Lebanon are there temporarily, in camps, and they will NOT become citizens of Lebanon.
Refugees who are resettled in America become permanent residents and citizens in a few short years—THEY WILL NEVER GO HOME EVEN IF THE SYRIAN CIVIL WAR ENDED TOMORROW.
You need only look to the Somali resettlement (now three decades old!) we mentioned in our previous post to know that the flow, once begun, will never end.
You know what the problem is with events like this? Reporters and others in the audience don’t know enough about refugee resettlement so they accept the propaganda that Ms. Nystrom is only too happy to promote.
Please also be assured that Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (97% funded by your tax dollars) is a sponsor of the big New York pow-wow we wrote about this morning (probably sponsoring with your $$$). The gathering is to get their marching orders for the 2016 Presidential election campaign.
Here is how the report from CNS News.com begins (emphasis is mine):

(CNSNews.com) – Of the world’s 16 million refugees, 4.1 million have emerged from the Syrian conflict alone, a United Nations refugee resettlement officer told a gathering at the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington on Monday.

And as Europe deals with a refugee crisis of historic proportions, “We’d certainly like U.S. to do more,” said Larry Yunck.

For the fiscal year beginning in October, the United States has promised to take in 10,000 Syrian refugees. That number is “woefully inadequate,” Brittney Nystrom of the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Center told the gathering.

Kelly Gauger representing the US State Department told the gathering that we simply don’t have enough money for 100,000 Syrians in one year, but Nystrom is quick to spread more propaganda—that refugees are self-sufficient in 8 months and are taxpaying members of society at that point. That is simply ludicrous (why would we be seeing stories like the one from Erie, PA yesterday about “impoverished” refugees then?).
Remember readers! The federal government defines self-sufficiency as being OFF OF CASH ASSISTANCE. Refugees can still get (and do get!) food stamps, subsidized housing, Medicaid, and education for the children paid for by you—the taxpayers—long after 8 months.
CNS News continues:

She (Kelly Gauger) said it’s one thing for refugee advocates such as Nystrom to be calling for 100,000 Syrians to come here in FY 2016, but “we need significantly more money than we’re getting now, and I’m not sure that many of us have confidence that we’re going to get that money from this Congress.”

Nystrom said she didn’t want to leave the audience with the perception that refugees are “just sucking up resources.” [LOL! Of course not!—-ed]

“That’s not the case,” she said. “Most of the refugees that we help resettle become self-suffienct very, very quickly…

“And we know that communities are made richer who resettle refugees,” Nystrom added. “They gain in resources from refugees who open businesses, who contribute to the economy of their community — and the amount of time that refugees are eligible for public assistance is very limited.

“There’s an 8-month window where a refugee receives cash assistance. After that period of time, they’re expected to become completely self-sufficient. So there is an outlay of resources at the beginning of the resettlement process, but the country as a whole benefits from resettling refugees.”

Again, apparently those in audience like this one don’t know enough to ask about ALL OF THE OTHER SOCIAL SERVICES REFUGEES RECEIVE FOR YEARS AND YEARS, or, how much LIRS is paid (out of the federal treasury) to resettle refugees.
Gauger reported that the UN High Commissioner for Refugees has referred 22,000 Syrians to the US for resettlement. 97% of the Syrians admitted in FY2015 are Muslims from UN camps, so I guess we can conclude that the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service is not concerned about saving Syrian Christians as a first priority.

Think Progress has Rep. Brian Babin in its crosshairs….

10/21/2015 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

…..not happy that Rep. Babin (R-TX) told Laura Ingraham we should only take Syrian Christian refugees.
No surprise that Think Progress should faint at the thought that someone might actually say ‘let’s prioritize persecuted Christians’ in our Syrian refugee stream.

Photos of Laura Ingraham in her studio after the Laura Ingraham Show, as she talks with her producers who are off camera. (Photo by Rich Lipski/The Washington Post/Getty Images) — In 2013, talk radio host and Fox News contributor Laura Ingraham called for a moratorium on Muslim immigration.

Think Progress is the media arm of John Podesta’s Center for America Progress, one of Washington’s hardest left (if not THE hardest left agitation groups) and a great friend of both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Here is one post we wrote on Podesta in 2009.
The article is a bit muddled indicating that the writer doesn’t understand the Refugee Admissions Program, but I’m posting this to show that the Left hates this argument—if we are going to bring in Syrians, why not Syrian Christians who we know are being persecuted and whose screening would be much simpler since they don’t have a reputation for terrorism.
Here is Think Progress writer, Emily Atkin, apparently gasping in outrage that someone should say such a discriminatory thing—America should prioritize Middle East Christians.

A Texas Congressman is calling for an immediate halt to the Obama administration’s plan to take in 10,000 Syrian refugees, saying the plan is a threat to national security and that more should be done to ensure Christian refugees are getting help.

Rep. Brian Babin (R-TX) appeared on the Laura Ingraham show on Monday to tout his latest bill, which calls for an immediate suspension of the Refugee Resettlement Program pending a “thorough examination” of the program’s costs and national security risks. The program allows the U.S. government to admit refugees when it is justified by humanitarian concerns.

But according to Babin, the program is a conduit for terrorist groups like ISIS to “set up bases of operations” in the United States, and should be suspended. At the same time, though, he said the U.S. should be doing more to accept Christian refugees.

[….]

….the vast majority of refugees to Europe are coming from Syria — and among those, the vast majority are Sunni Muslims, according to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. And advocates say biases about which religious groups should be prioritized for resettlement could leave many affected Muslims in the dust.

By the way, one of the top posts of all time here at RRW is this one—Laura Ingraham calls for a moratorium on Muslim immigration to America.
See posts on Rep. Babin, here.
Just a reminder readers, that the number of refugees matters too—the US cannot take in the whole world or our economy will surely collapse.

Be sure to see Leo Hohmann’s latest at WND (from last night) on how the Left is reacting to the resettlement pushback going on in many states, here.

Uruguay: Syrian refugees have (already) worn out their welcome

10/19/2015 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

They complain that the government isn’t giving them enough stuff and they want to move on to more ‘welcoming’ countries.

We’ve reported on trouble in Uruguay previously here.
Now this!

merhi-alshebli-r — Merhi Alshebli brought his family of 15 children to Uruguay, but now wants out. He doused himself with gasoline in protest (never lit the match however). Photo: http://concordiadirecto.com/el-refugiado-sirio-merhi-alshebli-protesta-porque-el-campo-que-le-cedieron-en-salto-es-de-arena-y-no-es-un-area-cultivable.html

From the Associated Press (at ABC NEWS):

When Uruguay announced last year that it would be taking in five families fleeing Syria’s devastating civil war, residents of this small town pulled together and lobbied to host one.

Then in November, locals welcomed a newly arrived Merhi Alshebli, his wife and their 15 children with food and seeds to plant vegetables. People in Juan Lacaze, a coastal city of fishermen and paper factory workers in southwestern Uruguay, wanted to do their part to help a country where more than 200,000 have been killed in the fighting.

But after months of the Syrians’ complaints about their living conditions and demands to be sent to another country, many Uruguayans in this town and elsewhere have come to see the refugees more as rude, ungrateful guests. This month the 51-year-old Alshebli shocked locals by dousing himself in gasoline in protest, furthering Uruguayans’ indignation and sense that this South American nation’s humanitarian gesture has gone off the rails.

There is much more! Read the whole shocking story. LOL! Perhaps the most shocking part is that the mainstream media is reporting on the ungrateful Syrians!
Uruguay is re-thinking its previous promise to resettle more Syrians.
What happens in America when thousands and thousands of mostly Muslim Syrians get here and the resettlement contractors and the taxpayers get overwhelmed?

Sweden: so much for socialism as capitalists use the system in refugee crisis to rake in the bucks

10/19/2015 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Invasion of Europe news…..

I love this stuff, do-gooder socialists foiled by what?—a desire by some to make money! Making money off of the refugee flow is nothing new—just ask the US refugee resettlement contractors!

Stefan Löfven efter slutdebatten i SVT 2014 — Prime Minister Stefan Löfven: Hey, we are welcoming tens of thousands of Syrians and other Middle Easterners here. How dare you make gobs of money from the crisis?

From The Guardian (hat tip: Jon):

Sweden is in the grip of a row over housing for refugees, with private accommodation providers accused of making fat profits while the country struggles to find beds for tens of thousands of asylum seekers before winter.

Housing is so limited for record numbers of arrivals – 9,000 are arriving in Sweden every week – that the authorities are using heated tents to put people up.

But at the same time, private companies have been accused of charging exorbitant amounts to help the government find accommodation for more than 80,000 people who have made it to Sweden this year.

“We are living hand to mouth,” said Tolle Furegård, head of refugee accommodation at Sweden’s migration board, who said the service relies a heavily on the private sector in this situation. “They are not doing this to be nice to us… It is a big sector, a chance to earn lot of money quickly, and it’s safe, because the government pays its bills.”

The board had lowered its standards to attract more offers of accommodation, and is seeking 30,000 more beds by the end of the year – “a huge number”, Furegård said.

The prime minister, Stefan Löfven, has asked company bosses whether it “feels good when you look in the mirror” to be making big profits at a time when the country is pulling together over the refugee crisis.

More here of the classic supply and demand story. Sweden is learning the hard way, just hope it isn’t too late for them.
And, click here for our entire ‘Invasion of Europe’ archive. We have been following Sweden’s death spiral for years, go here for more.

Two weeks into FY2016, 51 Syrians arrive in US; Kentucky 'welcomed' the most

10/19/2015 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

As we know, the Obama Administration is aiming to resettle 10,000 Syrians this year. The resettlement contractors, including the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, are pushing for 100,000 (btw, this post on the Bishops and 100,000 took off on social media in the last few days).
From the US State Department’s Refugee Processing Center for October 1-October 15 (hat tip: Diane).

As we previously reported, 97% of the Syrians resettled to the US in FY 2015 are Muslims. Make no mistake, this is not about saving the persecuted Christians or Yazidis.
Related: Have a look at this AP article about Syrians going to Michigan where the Republican governor is welcoming them (and wants many more). It was only posted yesterday and has 2,786 comments already (as of this writing) with the vast majority opposed to what Governor Snyder is doing.