Temporary Protected Status for Syrians will expire March 31st and the wailing has begun

01/15/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

As we have learned repeatedly, Temporary Protected Status, a LEGAL immigration program, is not temporary.
You’ve been hearing the wailing about Salvadorans, who have had 17 years here in America to get over a natural disaster back home nearly 2 decades ago (having to leave the US by 2019) well wait till you hear the clamor for the Syrians who were first granted ‘temporary’ protection by Obama in 2012.

leahy, Durbin, Feinstein — The usual culprits! Three of the six US Senators who appealed to Obama for ‘temporary’ protection for Syrians already in the US. Senators Leahy, Durbin and Feinstein.

The more I think about this whole program, which allows nationals of designated countries who were present in the US (illegally?) on the date of the designation to stay and work for 18 months until their home country is back on its feet and then is extended every 18 months for YEARS, the more I think the whole program should be trashed right along with that insane Diversity Visa Lottery.
With TPS, every 18 months there is a hue and cry from advocates for the people working, getting drivers licenses, having babies and probably voting (with their drivers licenses) to allow them to stay for another 18 months. (And, by the way, sending billions out of the US economy and ‘home’ to their third world country as remittances.)
Every 18 months for the ten countries that have TPS now we hear the same cries from the Dems—you can’t make them leave, they have families, houses, businesses etc.

Frankly it has been a back door amnesty and what they have all been waiting for for nearly 2 decades is a real amnesty granted by Congress and the President.

You need to understand that it is a BFD that President Trump has said TPS for Salvadorans will end.
Now comes the next anti-Trump media campaign on behalf of 7,000 Syrians who got TPS during the Obama Administration.
I wrote about it at the time and you should know that these six Democrat Senators petitioned Obama for the Syrian designation:

Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Ill.; Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.; Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.; Robert Menendez, D-N.J.; Ben Cardin, D-Md.; and Bob Casey, D-Pa.

Again, remember that this program does not let supposed ‘refugees’ in to the country it was only designed to allow a temporary stay in the US for those ALREADY IN HERE for another reason to stay for a little while. Wikipedia has a good description, here.

El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, Liberia, Nepal, Nicaragua, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. By November 2017, about 300,000 foreign nationals were recipients of protection under temporary protected status. Some have been in the United States since the 1990s. People with temporary protected status are able to obtain work authorization every 18 months since the designation was made, in some cases for many years.

Here comes the Huffington Post with the next installment of ‘Trump is a meany!’ This time it is the Syrian TPS designation that has them worked up!
Remember readers these are not REFUGEES! If they have a claim for asylum and prove they would be persecuted if returned to their home country, surely they have made those applications.

nadeen-bio — HuffPo writer immigration attorney **Nadeen Aljijakli: http://akimmigration.com/attorneys.htm**

With humanitarian relief, known as Temporary Protected Status (TPS), set to expire for nearly 7,000 Syrians at the end of this month, many fear the Trump administration’s looming decision. [The USCIS website says they have until March 31st, so I’m guessing the announcement is made 2 months in advance.—ed]

The countries selected for TPS are few and far between, with only ten currently designated. And the Trump administration appears to be eliminating TPS protection for each designated country one at a time: Nicaragua, Sudan, Haiti, and now the latest upset of El Salvador, which was designated 17 years ago and tragically affects at least 200,000 people. In light of the Trump administration’s unrelenting attacks against dreamers, refugees, immigrants, and other vulnerable populations, Syrians in the U.S. are bracing themselves for the worst.

In order to extend the program, the Department of Homeland Security must merely decide whether the catastrophic country conditions in Syria, that warranted the TPS designation in 2012, continue to be met. Although the answer appears not only obvious, but indisputable, Washington is mulling this over. If the administration decides that Syrians no longer require protection and terminates TPS on January 31, 2018, such a devastating decision can only be grounded in political theatre, and not the reality of the country’s conditions.

Blah, blah, blah… now this!
(And, again, if Syrians can prove they would be killed if returned to Syria, then they need to apply for asylum. The immigration attorney writing this piece knows that!)

While the Trump administration may stand to gain political points with its right wing supporters for being “tough on immigration,” many Syrians, who consider their return to Syria a death sentence, will pay the price. The President continues to leverage his platform of xenophobia and superiority against those less fortunate — nations he, reportedly, disgracefully refers to as “shithole” countries. This cannot be the guiding force of this country’s immigration policies. By ending TPS for Syrians, the administration would not only be turning its back on a most vulnerable population, but it would be abandoning the humanitarian principles and values that led to the creation of TPS.

More here if you feel like reading it!

End TPS altogether!

I repeat: It is time to dump this whole program because like so many other LEGAL immigration programs it has been corrupted by the Open Borders Left!
And, I can’t emphasize enough that Donald Trump has opened the window for change on how we admit immigrants to America. We must strike now because once he is out of office there will be no one with the guts to do what must be done. And the Dems know it!

Announcement from US Embassy in Jordan: Syrian refugee surge to America is now underway

04/06/2016 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Obama is reducing the screening time of 18-24 months to 3 months!

Regular readers know I have been reporting how the Obama Administration is way behind (so far) in resettling the 10,000 Syrians it has ‘promised’ you would be coming to your towns this fiscal year (by September 30th). Well, here comes the news!
The Syrian Muslim surge is underway! And, it could involve MORE than 10,000!
From AP:

Since October last year, 1,000 Syrian refugees have moved from Jordan to the U.S. The resettlement surge hopes to increase that number ten-fold.

A resettlement surge center opened in Amman in February to meet President Barack Obama’s target of resettling 10,000 Syrians to the United States by Sep. 30. Every day, the center interviews some 600 Syrian refugees.

The temporary processing center for the surge operation will run until April 28, U.S. Ambassador to Jordan Alice Wells said. She travelled to the airport to greet the family before their departure.

The regional refugee coordinator at the U.S. embassy in Amman, Gina Kassem, said that while the 10,000 target applies to Syrian refugees living around the world, the majority will be resettled from Jordan.

“The 10,000 is a floor and not a ceiling, and it is possible to increase the number,” she told reporters.

Now get this! How many times have you heard about how our screening process takes 18-24 months? They are getting it done now in THREE MONTHS!

While the resettlement process usually takes 18 to 24 months, under the surge operation this will be reduced to three months, Kassem said.

As we reported here (and we expect the trend to continue) 99% of those being rushed to America are Sunni Muslims.

Aljazeera article about Temporary Protected Status for Syrians tips us off—thousands of Syrians in US illegally

07/09/2015 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

…..and more appear to be coming!
For new readers, Temporary Protected Status, is basically a sham LEGAL immigration program that is anything but temporary.
The idea behind it is that we would give temporary refugee status to people already in the US for some other reason (tourist or student visa for example) when a calamity befalls their home country. The thinking is that it wouldn’t be humane of us to send them home to a country in chaos either from war or natural disaster. It is supposed to last for 18 months and allows the temporary ‘refugees’ to work, but not collect welfare.
Sounds fine and dandy except there are those with TPS status who are here for decades as the federal government just continues to extend the deadline, and you know darn well many are now collecting welfare and voting! See our post last week about the newest TPS designated country—Nepal.
Syrians were granted TPS status in 2012, but I have laugh when I see they have a rolling deadline of sorts!
Here is Aljazeera on the news that not very many Syrians want to identify themselves to the US government by signing up for TPS.

Some, Aljazeera says, are applying for asylum, but thousands are simply moving around America to avoid detection! Emphasis below is mine:

Nahla11 — Nahla Kayali, who runs Access California Services: They keep a low profile, traveling from city to city and changing their phones. Photo and bio here: http://www.accesscal.org/about-us/founder-executive-director/

The window for Syrians in the United States to apply for a special temporary legal designation closes July 6, but less than half of the estimated 10,000 who qualify have applied so far. Advocates say that disparity reflects fear of the U.S. immigration system and may indicate that more Syrians in the U.S. are applying for asylum instead as the war drags into its fifth year.

[….]

Under the program, Shaguj [star of the story, Osama Shaguj, a 28-year-old data analyst—ed] gets authorization to work and the right to live in the United States, but only for 18 months at a time.

The Department of Homeland Security first ordered that Temporary Protected Status (TPS) be given to Syrian nationals already in the United States in March 2012, and has twice extended the designation for 18 months. To qualify, Syrians must demonstrate they were in the country before the cutoff date — originally March 2012 and now, Jan. 5, 2015.

Anyone who arrived even a day later cannot apply.

Under the latest extension, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service, which administers TPS applications, reports that 3,124 Syrians have re-registered and another 1,835 have signed up for the first time. That is fewer than half of the number of Syrians the office estimated (PDF) would qualify.

But many of those people who could have been eligible are now applying for asylum. [This number should be available through the asylum system—ed]

[….]

Undocumented people and TPS holders are not eligible for public benefits, but Kayali [See photo and caption—ed] raises funds from her community specifically for Syrians who may not have connections on which to rely. But, she says many would rather keep a very low profile, changing their phone numbers frequently and traveling to different cities.

[….]

In practice, Syrians are finding ways to relocate outside of the refugee system, though they can still apply for asylum if they qualify when they reach a new country. This can mean flying to Europe, crossing the Mediterranean, or settling for temporary solutions like those who hold TPS in the United States.

Read it all by clicking here.
So it sounds like that of an estimated 10,000 Syrians in America now, as many as 5,000 could be under the radar somewhere in America.

Temporary protected status extended for Syrians; let’s hope they are dumb

01/09/2015 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The Center for Immigration Studies has another winner this week. Yesterday we reported that CIS has produced a new study about the huge number of Muslim immigrants entering the US, and this time, CIS writer David North describes an easy way for Syrians to get into the US and then apply for Temporary Protected Status—a ridiculous LEGAL immigration avenue that is anything but temporary.

Here is North at CIS:

It is 11:36 a.m. on Monday, January 5, 2015. You are Ali Abdullah, a Syrian who desperately wants legal status in the United States but has been refused a visa. You have just seated yourself for an early lunch in Kingston, Canada, on the northern edge of Lake Ontario.

As you wait for the waiter, you check your laptop for the latest immigration news from the States (you had foresightedly asked USCIS to send you bulletins, as I have done).

And there it is – the announcement that the U.S. will offer legal status (Temporary Protected Status, or TPS) to all Syrian Nationals who can claim “continuous residence in the United States since January 5, 2015″.

You rub your eyes and check the date on the lower right-hand corner of the laptop and find that today is, in fact, January 5, 2015, and that you have 12 hours and 24 minutes to get into the US so that you can claim TPS……

Read it all, it is really quite amusing (sort of!). Let’s just hope all of those who are eligible for all Temporary Status designations aren’t as smart as Mr. North.

By the way, those with TPS status can work and do anything an American citizen can do except vote (and they are probably doing that too!).

The next time you hear someone say, “I’m all for legal immigration, it is illegal immigration I have a problem with,” tell them they don’t know what they are talking about!

ISIS could exploit weakened immigration system says union official

09/19/2014 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

“We’ve become the visa clearinghouse for the world.“

Every time I see a news program where the talking heads are going on about our “porous Southern border” I want to shout at the TV—it’s not just the border that is a threat to our security. There is no screening on earth that will keep Islamic terrorists out if they want to get in here on a visa of some sort, or as a refugee.

Bartlett (the Refugee Admissions Director at the US State Department) assures us that we screen for terrorists hidden in the refugee population. http://www.c-span.org/video/?309771-1/terrorists-refugee-programs

By the way, when you hear a government official (or a contractor) say that refugees are thoroughly screened, don’t believe it! How do you screen someone from a country in complete chaos like Syria, Iraq or Somalia?

Do you think those countries have any sort data base on terrorist wannabes, especially those who have become radicalized only recently?

Or, do you think when interviewed a would-be Islamic supremacist is going to tell the truth? Yeh, we are coming to take you over from within!

From Breitbart (hat tip: Cathy):

Kenneth Palinkas, the head of the union that represents more 12,000 officials from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS) bureau, says that terrorists from ISIS and other extremists are likely to try to exploit the immigration system that President Barack Obama has systematically weakened for over the past several years.

Palinkas, an immigration official himself, speaking on behalf of those other immigration officials, said it is a serious threat that ISIS “has already or will soon slip across our porous southern border” but also may “exploit” the weakened interior enforcement of immigration laws to get in and attack the U.S.

[….]

Palinkas noted that the president’s changes in immigration policy that essentially prohibit immigration agents like the ones he represents from enforcing interior immigration laws mean that USCIS, the agency he works for, is like a “rubber stamp” for illegal immigration. He concluded:

Many millions come legally to the U.S. through our wide open immigration policy every year – whether as temporary visitors, lifetime immigrants, refugees, asylum-seekers, foreign students, or recipients of our ‘visa waiver program’ which allows people to come and go freely. Yet our government cannot effectively track these foreign visitors and immigrants. And those who defraud authorities will face no consequence at all in most cases. Our caseworkers cannot even do in-person interviews for people seeking citizenship, they cannot enforce restrictions on welfare use, and they even lack even the basic office space to properly function. Applications for entry are rubber-stamped, the result of grading agents by speed rather than discretion. We’ve become the visa clearinghouse for the world.

When I pulled up the photo of Lawrence Bartlett, I came across a discussion (a kind of press pep talk) in New York City a couple of years ago where David Robinson, then acting Asst. Secretary for Population, Refugees and Migration, and Bartlett were talking to reporters about how the refugee program works. It strikes me as a good summary for those newly following this program. Click here for the interview.