Some fruits of Samantha Power’s labor in Nebraska

Yesterday, I told you about White House refugee czar Samantha Power and her foreign policy doctrine—Responsibility to Protect—which basically says war is o.k. when you are saving people.   So, the White House and the State Department were overjoyed to help the Islamist revolution in North Africa—in Tunisia, in Egypt and in Libya.

How is that working out now for the Arab Spring cheering squad at the White House?  Yesterday we learned that a leading Presidential candidate in Egypt said Christians must convert to Islam or leave the country (or pay the jizya).

We get them—not just the Christians but the Muslims as well!

We see that if things don’t go according to plan, we get the so-called “refugees” like the three chronicled in this news report from Lincoln, Nebraska.  Is that what Ms. Power means when she says “responsibility to protect?”

From KVNO Public Radio:

Lincoln, NE – The Arab Spring and accompanying violence might seem far away to most Nebraskans, but for some refugees now living in Lincoln, that devastation took place in their backyards.

Now just think about this.  The Tunisian featured in this article tells the reporter that he was already living in the US but went back for the revolution.   He says for their labors the revolution produced less freedom (we could have told him that is what happens when Islamic totalitarians take over).   So, oh well, he returned to his good life in Nebraska as a “refugee” from the Arab Spring.

“Everything we had before that could be considered the little freedom – we lost it,” Zahrouni said. “We wanted freedom, but we didn’t have freedom. We had less freedom than before So, it was really frightening. It was a long, long nightmare.”

Instead of fleeing the conflict in his country, Zahrouni chose to experience it head-on. He’d originally left Tunisia in December of 2007 when his wife was accepted into one of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s doctorate programs. But when news of the revolution first broke, he decided to return to his family in his home country, and witnessed a new beginning. Zahrouni would ultimately stay in Tunisia until the small country settled down before returning to Lincoln with his family.

[....]

“I suffered what they suffered, I’ve seen what they have seen, and I say, Guess what, they can survive it,’” he said. “If I didn’t go there (during the revolution), I would feel really bad to stay here. But now I feel comfortable and confident that Tunisia has a chance to survive, and probably, it already did.”  [But, I'll stay here as a refugee in comfy America just in case---ed]

There should be a law!  If  someone is here in the US on some other VISA, or are a “refugee,” we should forbid that person from returning to his or her “home” country to participate in revolutions by forbidding their return to the US.  And, while we are at it, anyone here formally as a refugee or asylee should be banned from returning (unless it’s a permanent return!) to the country from which he or she supposedly escaped—like Somalia or Bosnia—for visits and vacations!

Visas for family “reunification” explained

A few days ago I reported on Somalis in Minneapolis who are angry that the US State Department/Homeland Security are making it harder for them to bring their “families” to the US.    I explained that the P-3 program had been suspended in 2008 when it was learned that tens of thousands of Africans (mostly from Somalia) had gotten into the US fraudulently—they lied about their family relationship.  The program is still partially closed.   And, now the I-130 visa process has added some hurdles which has ticked-off the would-be migrants (and their lawyers) even further.

Since these visa application processes are all ‘greek’ to those of us on the outside, I appealed for help in understanding the I-130 visa and the I-730 visa as it relates to “refugees.”    A kind reader with experience has sent us the following explanation (emphasis mine).   This will be filed in our ‘where to find information’ category for your future reference.

I-130’s

This is the name used for a form to apply for the legal immigration of certain relatives of  certain types of US legal residents. It is not a part of the US refugee resettlement program. It’s an application for a permanent visa based on family relationship criteria.

Any  US citizen can petition for parents, spouse , minor children, single adult children over 21, married children , and siblings. (spouses and minor children of beneficiaries are included on the visa)

Depending on the relationship to the petitioner,there are various waiting times based on the number of pending applications.

Parents, spouses and unmarried minor children are eligible for “immediate” visas and it’s just a matter of the actual processing time (although  it’s usually several months to a year).  Older children have a much longer waiting period and for siblings, the wait hovers around 10 years .

Legal permanent residents (green card holders) can only petition for spouses, unmarried minor children. Those are not “immediate” visas, but are subject to another waiting list but is usually 3-4 years),

Visas  are initially adjudicated by the visa center here in the US simply based on documentation presented with the application, and then (provided they are initially approved) , once they become “current” , sent overseas to the nearest embassy/consulate for final decision, based on a face to face interview and documentation.

The US petitioner is also required to file an “affidavit of support” (showing financial ability to support the applicant (s)) which precludes the applicants from accessing any public benefits upon entering the US. (this is a whole other issue, since  actual enforcement of those affidavits varies greatly from state to state and many legal visa recipients do access public benefits).

At one time, in the P-3 program, US relatives who were US citizens were barred from utilizing the P-3 process and required to file I-130’s. Refugee advocates successfully lobbied to have this rule changed, thus US citizens could file P-3 applications.  While no longer required to, they could still also simultaneously file I-130’s  as a back up in case the applicants failed to meet refugee criteria (one does not preclude the other). In my experience, most US relatives chose not to file the I-130s and , instead, rely solely on the P-3 process which, as you know, confers refugee status and eligibility for all available public benefits and puts no onus of financial responsibility on the US anchor relative.

I-730’s

This is where the lines can get a bit blurry.

This is a US visa called “following to join.” There are 2 categories:

Visa 93 (US relative was admitted as a refugee)
Visa 92 (US relative was granted political asylum in the US)

Applicants are limited to spouses and unmarried minor children (not parents, siblings, married or over 21 kids).

Relationships must have existed prior to granting of US petitioner’s status (some tricky parts here!).  Application must be filed within 2 years of granted status.

Visas 92/93 can be filed simultaneously with  P-3 applications.

Those applications are initially approved  by US immigration processing centers (there are only a couple who do these) and sent to the local embassy/consulate for final adjudication. The applicants are under no requirement to provide any proof of refugee claims themselves,  but only proof of relationship to the petitioner.  If the visa is granted, they are admitted to the US under “derivative refugee/asylee” status.  Affidavits of support are not required, and they are eligible for public benefits subject to the petitioner’s income (again,… my experience showed a large amount of  easily-conducted fraud).

California citizen: refugee program a fraud!

Russian:

“Who would not tell a white lie in order to get everything for free”?

Readers, I haven’t forgotten that I plan to continue to post testimony from that May 1 State Department meeting which was ostensibly to give you an opportunity to voice your opinion on how many refugees the US will take in FY 2013 and from where.  But, the Refugee program head honcho, Lawrence Bartlett, said at the meeting that they wouldn’t make the testimony available on-line (those in attendance received the testimony in hard copy).   All of the testimony I’ve posted so far is here in our special category for the meeting.

This is what one California citizen had to say (emphasis mine):

I have been in the photography business since 1973 in a town called Rancho Cordova, California. It is a suburb of Sacramento. We do not need any more refugees in our community. We have been the destination point for over 150 thousand alleged religiously persecuted refugees from the former Soviet Union. It is nothing more than a scam against taxpayer. It is under the Lautenberg act of 1989. There is no religious persecution in Russia. And if there was, is it our duty to support them?

The churches are behind it in order to receive free money for putting phony refugees on public assistance. I cannot describe in words the resentment of my customers who work in the banks, grocery stores, and in the medical field who are extremely resentful of this largesse.

The women who work at the banks and grocery stores are witnesses to the scams and the fraud that is committed on a daily basis. As my friend who works at the bank states if I cash one more social security check for someone who has never paid into the system and is drawing more than my parents who worked all of their lives I will scream. The resentment is palpable.

Particularly when the community found out there is no religious persecution in Russia. That it is nothing more than a scam to obtain a middle class life on the backs of someone else.

I have proof it is all fraud and not even my congressman Lungren [Dan Lungren] will discuss it out of fear of being destroyed politically. I have brought the fraud to the attention to ICE. They responded with they know it is fraud. They said they would be sued if they dare try and stop it.

I am a Viet Nam Vet as is my brother via the law in those days. My brother’s neighbors from Cambodia never worked a day while they lived next to my brother. He and his wife worked to support them. How can you justify that. The nice folks from Cambodia received section 8 housing and their kids went to college at my brother’s expense.

If we took that money and spent it on the black community maybe there would not be cities full of Ghettos?

We cannot afford it period. We need to follow the original law. Meaning they cannot be a burden on taxpayers. They are supposed to have sponsors who support them. It is shameful the only reason the churches are interested in resettling is money for themselves.

You forget the domino effect in our community such as crime and gangs in the Russian community. I had a Russian friend who worked for me, by the name of Alex Sukonof tell me “Who would not tell a white lie in order to get everything for free”?

Alex also told me that he thought “It was ok that his in laws claimed religious persecution like the others.” That they only receive about $1300.00 between them, including free health care that we pay for. Apparently as alleged Refugees: they are entitled to SSI for 7 years. If they become citizens within that time, it is now a lifetime entitlement. Even though they have never worked a day in their life here.

The real sad part is that according to Alex they are allowed to take the Citizenship test in their native language. I know for a fact his in laws do not speak a word of English, as I have called their house looking for him several times.

The bottom line is: by telling a little white lie about religious persecution, they are allowed an income for life that they did not earn. That is persecution of hard working taxpayers. This entire Refugee program is an upside down cake.

Furthermore: even if it was all real as there are others that are real, this directly affects Americans who are in need of a job. We need to shut it down totally until we become flush with cash again as a country.

We need to eliminate the entire program and operate it on an individual basis with true volunteers.

The reason you do not hear from the public is fear of losing their job or demonized as a racist.

Comment worth noting: large contractors like ECDC monopolize refugee funding

This is a comment I received in response to my post last week about how the Ethiopian Community Development Council (one of the big nine cabal of federal refugee contractors) testifying at the US State Department May 1 meeting, here, asked that the funds keep coming even if the refugees aren’t.

Readers not familiar with the situation in St. Louis with the African Mutual Assistance Association of Missouri, might wish to first read this article (for background) in St. Louis Today from earlier this year.

From Gedlu B. Metaferia (emphasis mine):

Although I differ in views from you [at RRW] because of my former status as a refugee with liberal background I still appreciate your blogs because you expand our horizon of dialog and understanding from various angles. I know where you are coming from.  I am with you on many posts of waste of Government use of tax payer dollar. I was sick to the stomach when I saw the $13-14 million ECDC 990 to resettle less than 300 refugees every year.  I am not envious person by nature, and I expected honesty from non-profits, foundations and our government. Now I know better.  I did not want to write this post because I have stopped writing on ORR-“VOLAG” related issues temporarily because I do not want to offend very few genuine contractors who help refugees, although I believe that change is coming soon.  I am also outspoken on ORR and the crony like racket because the grant (contract) awardees are always the same personalities and organizations. I have also stopped writing temporarily because I believe that the worst offenders of a malfunction of a system are those refugee workers who keep quite and turn their just eyes the other way instead of fixing it.  I will be having a web site of advocacy in refugee issues pretty soon.  As you may probably know ECDC has given me hard time by cropping ad helping another agency (AIRS) in St. Louis, the effect has contributed to AMAAM [African Mutual Assistance Association of Missouri] to close early. We were beaten hard here in St. Louis by ORR money which was obtained on behalf of AIRS by ECDC from 2002-2004.

ORR does not consider million of resources that VOLAGS have before distributing $600 million- $1 Billion a year.  This why small genuine organizations are wiped out  especially in this recession.  One refugee  specialist friend made me laugh when he commented that ‘If some of these rich share volags  contribute at least 1% of their net income  for agencies like AMAAM life will not be difficult for many”. I know that this will not happen. The resettlement lobby is very strong. It does not tolerate differing opinion. It is a kingdom  that uses refugees to enrich itself. I am not writing as a self-serving issue, but I was providing services for more than 500 refugee families without including other categories of legal immigrants for less than $100K with 3-7 employees.  These refugees are often given support 2 years after arrival because resettlement agencies have to concentrate on new arrivals. There are also secondary migrants (who stay in St. Louis from 1 week to 5 years). It is not self-serving to say that I have the blessing of respect, well wishes and love as I walk on the street from African immigrants. That is the only beautiful capital and gratitude I get and it is a blessing from God.  When I saw the $14 million figure in the 990 of ECDC it just makes me sad.  I am not against making wealth. I strongly believe that tamed capitalism is the best system because I had seen vestiges of 3 systems in Ethiopia which are very horrible. I am not against if VOLAGS make billions by their hard work. But this one is not right by capitalisms standard, by Gods standard, by true charitable standard, by any standard, by conservative standard, by liberal standard, by American standard.  There has to be a way to reform refugee resettlement, non-profits and foundations. I do not want the name refugee to be associated with making profits, it is immoral and unjust.

Well said!

International Institute of New Jersey will file for bankruptcy

“Nowadays nonprofits have to rethink their strategy”  (a soon-to-be former staff person at this resettlement agency).

I couldn’t agree more!

The International Institute of NJ (IINJ) is an affiliate of the resettlement contractor, one of nine volags, the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) headed by Lavinia Limon* former director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement in the Clinton Administration (the revolving door at work again!).  By the way, if you are new to refugee industry-speak, VOLAG stands for voluntary agency, but there is nothing much voluntary about them anymore—contractors like USCRI are almost completely funded by tax dollars.  Now it is crunch time—the tax dollars are running out and so agencies like IINJ are closing their doors.

Here is the story Monday from the Jersey Journal:

A Jersey City-based nonprofit that provides immigration services is drastically downsizing because of cuts in government grant funding.

Employees at the International Institute of New Jersey (IINJ), a nonprofit located at 1 Journal Square Plaza in Jersey City, spent today packing boxes to move to a smaller office because of a $800,000 cut in federal and state aid, IINJ Executive Director Catherine Tansey said.

The organization’s overall yearly budget had been $1.8 million, Tansey said.

The organization had also fallen seven months behind in rent, owing its current landlord more than $46,000, officials said.

[.....]

“Nowadays nonprofits have to rethink their strategy,” said Sophia Rossovsky, 53, director of IINJ’s training center. Rossovsky said IINJ needs to improve its fundraising efforts among private donors.

Ms Rossovsky probably doesn’t understand that it was supposed to be that way from the beginning—-the resettlement agencies were supposed to be using large amounts of privately raised money, but have over the years drifted into simply reaching into the US Treasury’s pot of gold.  You can see from the most recent available Form 990 for IINJ (here) that they were almost completely dependent on your money.

INJJ that year received $2,435,781 from state and federal government coffers while only raising $44,000 from private sources.  What is that —something like 2% came from private money?

A day after that report above, the Jersey Journal reports that the International Institute is in even worse shape.  Now they are closing completely and filing for bankruptcy.  I’m not a lawyer but I wonder how a non-profit that was almost completely funded by government could actually file for bankruptcy?

Reversing comments they made yesterday, officials with the International Institute of New Jersey (IINJ), a Jersey City-based nonprofit that provides services for immigrants, said today the organization will be closing by mid-June and declaring bankruptcy.

* This isn’t the first of Lavinia Limon’s subcontractors to have problems, in 2008 we reported that the International Institute of Connecticut was closed (at least for a time) due to media reports that refugees were not being properly cared for.  You can visit the most recent Form 990 for USCRI here.  They received $27,857,423 from the US taxpayer and privately raised $321,530 (about 1% raised privately? check my math!).  $749,900 went to the International Institute of NJ.   Ms. Limon’s pay package that year was just over $200,000.

By the way, here is the Office of Refugee Resettlement’s payout to New Jersey resettlement agencies for 2009.

Hey, here is a thought!  Maybe the city of Manchester will get lucky and the International Institute of New England will go broke too!

PR campaign is on to relieve refugees of travel loan repayment

One of the things that jumped out at me in the testimony at the May 1 US State Department “scoping meeting”  nearly two weeks ago was that refugee advocates seemed to have themes to their testimony—things that many are pushing to change.  One of those things was a plea to eliminate some responsibility for travel bills the refugees ring up.

Back in  2007 I was surprised to learn that the refugees sign a promissory note to begin repaying their travel “loan” shortly after arrival.  A State Department employee told us that it was good for the refugees to begin to have responsibility for loans.  Of course as an advocate for the taxpayers of America I want to see them repay their travel expenses to get to the US, but how the h*** can they do that if they don’t have jobs?

Here is a story from Idaho last week which gives more detail then I have ever seen about the “loan” program that comes through the International Organization for Migration (IOM).   Of course what the World Relief (one of the nine federal contractors) employee doesn’t tell you here is that his non-profit will get a cut of any money they can wring out of the refugees—it doesn’t all go back to the US Treasury!

From NPR Idaho (What is the program you likely haven’t heard of? Emphasis mine):

It’s called the International Organization for Migration U.S. Refugee Travel Loan Program.

What is it?  In short, it covers the cost of transportation for nearly all refugees resettled in the United States.  (For this year, that could be as many as 76,000 people.)

Basically, it’s a revolving loan fund.  The loans are interest-free, and the money comes from the U.S. Department of State.  In FY2011, the State Department contributed $78.35 million for the transportation of refugees.  That money  went to the International Organization for Migration, an intergovernmental group headquartered in Geneva.

Before refugees come to the U.S., whether they are coming from Iraq, Tanzania, Uzbekistan, they sign a promissory note.  It spells out the refugee or refugee family’s cost of  travel, and requires that monthly payments begin within six months of arrival in the U.S.  The loan amounts vary according to the number of people traveling, and where they’re traveling from.  One loan may be $1,413, another $10,306.

Payment amounts vary accordingly.  Promissory notes dictate that loans be repaid within 42 months of arrival.  That means monthly payments are determined by dividing the total loan amount by 36.  The promissory notes say that if a loan goes unpaid for four or more months or if a refugee doesn’t pay the loan fully within 46 months, the IOM can accelerate payment, and report the refugee to a collection agency.

Before the recession hit, Boise’s World Relief office resettled more than 300 refugees annually. In part due to the economic downturn, that number has been cut back. Last year the agency received a total of 166 refugees.

“What of it?” you might ask.  As StateImpact has reported elsewhere, the recession dealt an especially hard blow to Idaho’s refugee population.

Larry Jones is the Boise Field Office Director for a refugee resettlement agency called World Relief.  In a recent interview, he recollected what it was like to try to help refugees establish lives here in Idaho as the recession hit.  “Fewer and fewer people were able to get jobs,” he remembered.

Jones said the lack of jobs meant refugees needed more support.  “We started to see the needs of initial resettlement start to stretch from five or six months to maybe two years before someone got their first job,” he said.  “That’s a long time to be patching together support structures to keep people in their homes.”

Sounds like it is time for a moratorium on the whole program!

More here on refugees to Idaho.  And, lots more by typing “Idaho” into our search function!

So what is going on in Lancaster, PA? More refugees than the city can handle?

Update May 20th:  Church World Service—thousands upon thousands resettled to Lancaster, here!

You know Lancaster—the home of the Amish.  Not!

I’m going to tell you about one of my favorite testimonies sent to the US State Department two weeks ago for the May 1 scoping meeting to hear from “stakeholders” (that is government talk for contractors) on how many refugees and which ones to bring to the US in FY 2013.  Obama will make a “determination” and send it to Congress in September where Congress will rubber stamp it just in time for the October 1st opening of fiscal year 2013.

But… before I tell you more about the testimony, a little background:  In 2007, we in Washington Country Maryland were just minding our own business when several incidents occurred with new immigrants that got the attention of the authorities and finally the newspaper.  We learned that the Virginia Council of Churches (Virginia! mind you) was resettling third worlders in Hagerstown (our county seat).  Some of us just wanted to better understand how this was happening—WHAT WAS THE GOVERNMENTAL PROCESS that allowed a supposed non-profit from Virginia to drop off people in Hagerstown.  Where would they work?  Who was paying for this?  Who was responsible for their health, their housing, their education?

To make a long story short, we had a public meeting for all those involved which included the primary federal contractor Church World Service (they subcontract to Virginia Council of Churches), our state refugee coordinator, and some representatives of the US State Department.  The public asked a lot of questions—many were answered in let’s just say a not straightforward fashion.  We were lectured about how we are a ‘nation of immigrants’ and probably not even two weeks later the program was closed in Hagerstown and we were labeled “unwelcoming” —I suppose because we asked too many questions.   This is how this blog was born—out of annoyance with government officials who keep information from the public!  (For anyone interested in more on what happened in Hagerstown we have a category, unused lately, here, in which we told our story in the early years.)

So how does Lancaster fit in?

We were told in 2007 that the majority of refugees we were getting were Meshketians (Russian Sunni Muslim Turks) who were originally destined for Lancaster, PA about 100 miles away.  However, somehow there was a glitch in the plan for Lancaster (we heard a crime problem had cropped up) and that Church World Service (one of nine federal contractors who monopolize the program) had to quickly find a place to take the next batch of Meshketians.  I think they just looked at a map and picked Hagerstown—fresh territory for refugee resettlement and close enough to Lancaster so the Meshketians could visit back and forth.

And, by the way, we heard that some Meshketians had homes to sell in Russia and were able to buy homes here—so were they even real refugees?  Or, were we using this program (again!) for some foreign policy political reason involving Russia and Turkey?

Here is what Church World Service (CWS) told the State Department on May 1 (Oh, and by the way, CWS is the “crop walk” group, some of you may know them from participating in their fundraising project.—ed):

In the United States, communities, schools, religious congregations, and employers welcome refugees and help them integrate in their new homes.  In turn, refugees bring their innovative skills, diverse cultures, dedicated work, and other positive contributions to their new communities, enhancing the quality of life for all parties. Refugee resettlement showcases the best virtues of the United States—community, opportunity, hard work, diversity, caring for one another, and courage to start a new life.

Now, here is what a citizen of Lancaster, PA says of Church World Service (I won’t publish the woman’s name, but apparently she has been trying to help refugees who are struggling in her community—in other words she is not a bigot and xenophobe like we are here at RRW!).  This is not the first time we have heard of refugee volunteers trying to do the best for refugees and running into problems with arrogant resettlement contractors.   For the record, I don’t know this woman.  [Emphasis below is mine---ed]

From a refugee volunteer in Lancaster, PA:

Why do organizations like Church World Service make unilateral decisions on how many refugees get settled into an area?

CWS and Lutheran Social Services have settled at least 2500 refugees (that’s probably a low guess as they refuse to give out totals, but only list how many of one nationality that they have settled in a past year) in Lancaster in the past 3 years without any approval process required from our mayor, our city council or without any consultation with our school board. The city of Lancaster population is approximately 56,000. In the past 2 1/2 years, these two organizations, who have no accountability to voters… have made the population approximately 4% refugee. I help refugees here in Lancaster and I am aware that in the short term, they are a very heavy financial burden on the city. Surely it is reasonable and right for our elected officials to have some say in how many refugees are settled into the city within a certain time period?

I work with families, I see the neglect:

I work with three refugee families in an informal support system through the Unitarian Social Justice committee here in Lancaster. I work with refugees who are hard working, serious people. They will eventually be a great asset to the city. But in the short term, they are a great financial burden on the city.

Every member of these three refugee families arrived with health issues. Many continue to have serious health issues and use the free clinics for health care, for surgery, for extensive testing, for dental work.

Each family has one or more grandparents who are permanently disabled in some way and need financial aid and city services.   [Elderly refugees may receive SSI even if they never paid into the system---ed]

Because of language and educational difficulties, earning power is low. In spite of their very low income, there are cultural issues, which lead the young women to marry early and start families right away and stay home with their babies. They do not work outside the home. I know this because… within a year… my three families, including newly married older daughters and married cousins who share the same buildings… had four new babies… and another baby is due this month. They are good families and the Nepali refugees are wonderful parents. But, each low income family needs government services and financial aid to insure that there is good food and good medical care for the moms and babies. It’s a significant cost to the community.

There are other cultural difficulties that present challenges and sometimes dangers for the refugees and for the city, which are not addressed by the two Lancaster settlement agencies.

CWS officially works with the families for 3 months but their orientations are neglectfully inadequate.

I could quickly list 10 very serious incidences of neglect by CWS, but to save time here, I will tell only one story and a few bullet points. Please contact me if you would like more information. I could write many pages based on my notes of the past 2 years.

The testimony goes on to report problems with the orientation of refugees, safety issues and bed bugs.

“CWS is dumping refugees on to the city”

Many Lancaster people that I talk with…who also try to help refugees here… use the word “dumping”… CWS is dumping refugees on to the city… taking a payment to settle the refugees and moving on to the next group of refugees who will bring in more money to pay for CWS salaries, office space and fund raising events. This is the impression of many compassionate, frustrated people here in Lancaster, who are then accused of being part of a racist or anti-immigration backlash. We are not anti-immigration. We are expending our own personal time and money and pressuring our churches to spend time and money, picking up the pieces that CWS drops into our community. We now want a say in how many refugees can be settle here.

[New readers, see this 2010 story from Greensboro, NC and see the same problem---local church volunteers crying out to stop the flow of refugees at least for awhile!]

The commenter then goes on to make recommendations and mentions the State of Tennessee’s efforts to get some local control into the program.   How much do you want to bet the State Department won’t follow-up and ask her for her proposals.  Nor is the State Department making any of this testimony available to the public.   She needs to send her testimony to her Congressman and US Senators and ask that they publish it in the Congressional Record!  The buck stops with Congress!

“We are a Nation of immigrants” mumbo-jumbo

Update and correction!  It was brought to my attention last evening by an observant reader that Mr. Hunter’s testimony to the State Department below was taken in part from a 2006 article in Frontpage Magazine, here.  The author is Lawrence Auster whose thoughtful writing on the issue of immigration has been widely published.  You may wish to read his blog, View from the Right, here.  I sincerely apologize to Mr. Auster for this rookie editor’s error.

As I said the other day, I am going to have days and weeks of material from the US State Department meeting last week on the Refugee Program.

Editor’s note to citizens and taxpayers:  The US State Department is not going to release the testimony to you although all of the testimony we received last week was available to anyone in the public who made the trek to that 11th floor obscure meeting room in Arlington, VA.  When I get a few minutes I’ll make links for all the files we have from that meeting.

Here is one segment of testimony from Edward Hunter (US Voices on Immigration Reform) where he discusses the sacred cows and pat little phrases and slogans the immigration industry pushes on the public.   How many times has someone tried to shut you up with this one—We are a Nation of immigrants!—as if that statement alone justifies wide open borders.

Hunter/Auster(emphasis mine):

This—the veritable “king” of open-borders, globalist, mass immigration, refugee resettlement clichés—seems at first glance to be an indisputable statement, in the sense that all Americans, even including the American Indians, are either immigrants themselves or descendants of people who came here from other places. Given the above, it would be more accurate to say that we are “a nation of people descended from immigrants.” But such a mundane statement would fail to convey the thrilling idea conjured up by the phrase “nation of immigrants”—the idea that all of us, whether or not we are literally immigrants, are somehow “spiritually” immigrants, in the sense that the immigrant experience defines our character as Americans.

This friendly-sounding, inclusive sentiment—like so many others of its kind—turns out to be profoundly exclusive. For one thing, it implies that anyone who is not an immigrant, or who does not identify with immigration as a key aspect of his own being, is not a “real” American. It also suggests that newly arrived immigrants are more American than people whose ancestors have been here for generations. The public television essayist Richard Rodriguez spelled out these assumptions when he declared, in his enervated, ominous tone: “Those of us who live in this country are not the point of America. The newcomers are the point of America.”

In reality, we are not—even in a figurative sense—a nation of immigrants or even a nation of descendants of immigrants. As Chilton Williamson pointed out in The Immigration Mystique, the 80,000 mostly English and Scots-Irish settlers of colonial times, the ancestors of America’s historic Anglo-Saxon majority, had not transplanted themselves from one nation to another (which is what defines immigration), but from Britain and its territories to British colonies. They were not immigrants, but colonists. The immigrants of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries came to an American nation that had already been formed by those colonists and their descendants. Therefore to call America “a nation of immigrants” is to suggest that America, prior to the late nineteenth century wave of European immigration, was not America. It is to imply that George Washington and Ulysses S. Grant (descended from the original colonists) were not “real” Americans, but those that have entered most recently and who in many ways are bringing cultures that are inimical to that original American identity are.

Apart from its politically correct function of diminishing the Americans of the pre-Ellis Island period and their descendants, the “nation of immigrants” motto is meaningless in practical terms. Except for open-borders ideologues, everyone knows we must have some limits on immigration. The statement, “we are a nation of immigrants,” gives us no guidance on what those limits should be. Two hundred thousand immigrants per year? Two million? Why not twenty million—since we’re a nation of immigrants? The slogan also doesn’t tell us, once we have decided on overall numbers, what the criterion of selection shall be among the people who want to come here. Do we choose on the basis of family ties to recent immigrants? Language? Income? Nationality? Race? Victim status? First come first served? The “nation of immigrants” slogan cannot help us choose among these criteria because it doesn’t state any good that is to be achieved by immigration. It simply produces a blind emotional bias in favor of more immigration rather than less, making rational discussion of the issue impossible.

To see the uselessness of the “nation of immigrants” formula as a source of political guidance, imagine what the British would have said if they had adopted it in 1940 when they were facing an imminent invasion by Hitler’s Germany. “Look, old man, we’re a nation of immigrants/invaders. First the Celts took the land from the Neolithic peoples, then the Anglo-Saxons conquered and drove out the Celts, then the Normans invaded and subjugated the Anglo-Saxons. In between there were Danish invaders and settlers and Viking marauders as well. Since we ourselves are descended from invaders, who are we to oppose yet another invasion of this island? Being invaded by Germanic barbarians is our national tradition!”

Since every nation could be called a nation of immigrants (or a nation of invaders) if you go back far enough, consistent application of the principle that a nation of immigrants must be open to all future immigrants would require every country on earth to open its borders to whoever wanted to come. But only the United States and, to a lesser extent, a handful of other Western nations, are said to have this obligation. The rule of openness to immigrants turns out to be a double standard, aimed solely at America and the West.

It is also blatantly unfair to make the factoid that “we are all descended from immigrants” our sole guide to national policy, when there are so many other important and true facts about America that could also serve as guides. For example, throughout its history the United States has been a member of Western civilization—in religion overwhelmingly Christian, in race (until the post-1965 immigration) overwhelmingly white, in language English. Why shouldn’t those little historical facts be at least as important in determining our immigration policy as the pseudo-fact that we’re all “descended from immigrants?” But immigrant advocates are incapable of debating such questions, because there is no rational benefit for America that they seek through open immigration. Their aim is not to strengthen and preserve America, but to transform it into something else.

This post and all posts on the State Department meeting are filed in a new category entitled, “Testimony for 5/1/2012 State Dept. meeting” here.

Burmese refugee on trial for murder in Utah might be saved from death penalty, why?

He may have lied on his documents to get into the US and may have been under 18 when he allegedly brutally raped and murdered a little Burmese Christian girl in 2008.   Gee, I wonder where his defense lawyers got this idea (4 years later!)?  Could they have been watching the Somali trial in Tennessee where the alleged sex traffickers are using the missing birth records defense too.

Here is one of several posts I wrote about the Utah case in 2008.  I wondered then, and still do, if the accused is a Muslim.  I had heard at the time that resettlement contractors were placing Burmese Muslims in buildings and neighborhoods with Christian Burmese refugees and that the Christians feared them (since they had been enemies in their home country!).   As a matter of fact, several of the federal refugee contractors and their lobbying arm–Refugee Council USA–were pushing for more Burmese Muslims to be allowed into the US in 2013 at the meeting I attended on Tuesday.

I have never heard which of the many Burmese ethnic groups the accused, Esar Met, came from.

I wondered what happened to the case, but it looks like it finally inches toward trial with a preliminary hearing in June (4 years after the murder!).  Can you imagine how much this refugee is costing the taxpayers of Utah.  You can bet he is not in the general jail population.  There have probably been many many psychiatrist visits and expensive translators visiting regularly.  As a matter of fact, it would help to know which ethnic dialect he speaks—we would know then if he is a Muslim.

Here is a reform idea!  The resettlement contractor which brought Met to Utah should pay his legal expenses!  Maybe they would then push the Department of Homeland Security and the US State Department to do a better job of screening “refugees!”

From AP in an Indiana newspaper:

SALT LAKE CITY — Attorneys for a Burmese refugee accused of a South Salt Lake killing say there’s no proof he was an adult when the crime happened, and the death penalty should be taken off the table.

Esar Met’s birthday is listed as January 1987, which means he would have been 21 when 7-year-old refugee girl Hser Ner Moo was found dead in his apartment in spring 2008.

But attorneys filed a motion in Salt Lake City’s 3rd District Court this week saying Met and his family aren’t sure of the man’s date or year of birth.

“There is no existing paperwork, and there likely never was any paperwork, documenting the date of Mr. Met’s birth in Burma,” the documents say.

It would be illegal to execute Met if he were younger than 18 at the time of the crime, according to the motion. Lawyers cite a 2005 Supreme Court ruling that banned capital punishment for minors.

Not knowing a birthday isn’t uncommon among refugees.

So he lied to those doing security clearances for the US?  Readers, we don’t really know who we are letting into the country.  And, we have heard that in some Burmese camps a criminal can get into camp and literally steal the identity of someone else.

Salt Lake County prosecutor Rob Parrish told the Associated Press on Friday that the lack of documents “creates complications, but it’s not insurmountable.”

His office is researching a response to the motion in advance of Met’s preliminary hearing, which is set for June.

Parrish said refugees sometimes encounter similar problems while trying to determine whether they’re old enough to get a driver’s license or to enroll in a specific program.

Just as I was about to post this, I came across this article I missed in 2010 in which we are told that authorities had trouble finding Met’s family members in Arizona, but the article wraps up with a report that Met’s mother says he was even older than 21 at the time of the alleged crime.   However, if as the defense argues Met was a teenager at the time of the murder, why wasn’t he still with his family?  Why was he resettled in another state?  Was he a perhaps a fraudulent family reunification case?  So many questions!

Recap of the State Department meeting on refugee admissions for FY2013

I hope no one out there has been holding their breath waiting for my report from the May 1 meeting in Arlington!   Primarily I am delayed in writing this because I was so blown away by the large amount of testimony sent in by some of you and others (I’ve never heard of) that I didn’t know where to start this report!

Much to my surprise, critics of the program sent more comments, by far! than the professional resettlers looking for more business with the government.   We are compiling those comments in Pdf format and hope to have links for you soon (the State Department is not going to make them available, but we will since they were made public for the meeting attendees).   The Refugee Resettlement program has stayed under the radar for so long because of things like this—no reporters present and the statements not distributed to the general public.

Here is what I’m going to do.  First give you a little sense of the meeting now and then in the days and weeks to come I will report on the various testimony received.   This post and all posts on the meeting will be in the category on the side bar entitled, “Testimony for 5/1/2012 State Department meeting.”  At this writing there are four other posts there.

The meeting whose purpose is to begin to determine how many refugees would be “welcomed” to America in FY2013 by President Barack Obama (in a formal letter to Congress in September) was held in a small room on the 11th floor of an Arlington, VA high rise building.  The meeting is obviously geared to those who have salaried staffers working in the DC metropolitan area. So, guess how many average American taxpaying citizens might ‘find their way there?’    LOL!  Next year we should push for regional meetings around the country so certain Mayors of certain beleaguered towns and cities might be able to attend.

I would love to have asked those in attendance (maybe around 100 max) to raise their hands if they were paid to be there.  I would guess only three critics actually gave up a day from work and other duties to attend.  The others had some financial stake in the event.   Although in fairness there were some speakers representing small advocacy groups of certain ethnic peoples they would like admitted to the US and who surely aren’t making 6-figure salaries like the big contractor reps.   Of the contractor behemoths, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, Ethiopian Community Development Council, Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, Kurdish Human Rights Watch and Church World Service gave testimony and had written statements available.

I can only assume the other biggies gave private testimony to the State Department.  The International Rescue Committee, one of the largest recipients of federal grant money, doesn’t need to present testimony when its Vice President has just recently been chosen by Obama and approved by the Senate to head the program, here.   Check out the IRC’s 2009 Form 990.  They received $200 million from the US taxpayers that year!  And, while you are at it, have a look at the 6-figure salaries of its top-grossing employees.  I wonder how they were able to exclude their President’s nearly $400,000 salary and benefits package of previous years on this tax return?

I’m digressing and that is one of the reasons I didn’t get started on this post earlier—I knew I would have too much to say!

Back to the meeting!

Sitting at the head table were the following:

Lawrence Bartlett

Director, Office of Refugee Admissions

Department of State

Barbara Strack

Chief, Refugee Affairs Division, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services

Department of Homeland Security

Eskinder Negash

Director, Office of Refugee Resettlement

Department of Health and Human Services

I’ll tell you more about the principals (above) in later posts.

No public record of the meeting will be available, nor was anyone permitted to videotape it.   Efforts had been made to urge certain Members of Congress to request that videotaping be allowed or that C-Span be invited in to film the event so that Congress (which holds the purse strings) might have some idea of the process whereby contractors ask for more immigrants (and more money!).  I doubt any serious effort was made by Members of Congress because it would have happened if someone, or several Members, had pushed hard enough (What is that I hear? click here!).    After all, this isn’t the Supreme Court!  It is a meeting for government officials to hear from contractors!

Each person who had signed up IN ADVANCE was permitted 5 minutes to make a pitch.  Most of us read from our previously submitted statements (mine is here).  There were no questions permitted and those presiding asked no questions (although I am told in the past there was more give and take).  The meeting concluded in about an hour and a half.

More Muslims please!

I can’t wait to tell you about the testimony.  I haven’t read all of it yet.  But, one thing that jumped out at me in what I’ve read so far (or heard at the meeting) is that no one spoke for Christians persecuted by Muslims!  The US Conference of Catholic Bishops never even mentioned them, but they sure asked the State Department to send more Muslims to the US, in particular, they want more Somalis and Rohingya* (Burmese Muslims)!   Several of those testifying also called for the prompt re-opening of the P-3 family reunification program that has been closed for nearly 4 years due to the widespread fraud uncovered involving Africans, mostly Somalis.  The State Department has reported that as many as 36,000 Africans entered the US fraudulently in a 5 year period after 9/11!

Perhaps my favorite testimony came from a citizen of Lancaster, PA who is helping refugees, but critical of Church World Service (the contractor).

Watch for upcoming posts on the testimony!

* Please take a few minutes and begin to familiarize yourselves with Rohingya Muslims.  We have a whole category (Rohingya Reports) with 100 posts in it on this group of “stateless people” that the US State Department initially resisted when the UN told them to start letting them into the US.  They have begun to be resettled here (although at the moment there is some bureaucratic snafu with Bangladesh where many are located).