Hawaii judge places restraining order on Trump EO involving refugee pause

Unless I find a definitive article about what exactly the judge in Hawaii ruled on the Trump Executive Order in the next couple of hours (I have a doc appt.), here is one news story from the AP (thanks to reader Theodore).

Also, according to several news sources discussing other pending cases, including Fox News , one argument in the Maryland case is absolutely nuts.  I worry that judges ruling on the cases have no idea about what the US Refugee Act of 1980 says or how the program has been administered for 37 years!

Judge Derrick Watson. Photo and story “One Unelected Leftist Judge in Hawaii Decided Security for the Entire Nation” http://www.independentsentinel.com/one-unelected-leftist-judge-hawaii-decided-security-entire-nation/

It makes me want to scream!

The line that I see while searching just now, that is being spread by many news sources, is this one:

“The Maryland lawsuit also argues that it’s against federal law for the Trump administration to reduce the number of refugees allowed into the United States this year by more than half, from 110,000 to 50,000. Attorneys argued that if that aspect of the ban takes effect, 60,000 people would be stranded in war-torn countries with nowhere else to go.”

We are assuming that comes from the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society suit we reported here. The true gist of their argument is that they, the federal resettlement contractors, were expecting more paying “clients” and had built their budgets around the per head payment they were expecting with the unrealistic 110,000 refugees Obama said would come in the year he no longer was president!

For the umpteenth time, that 110,000 that Obama set last fall is a CEILING that the Administration says it will not surpass, it is not a goal!

And, that 110,000 was the highest Obama had ever set in his presidency.  Trump has the absolute authority to reduce the ceiling, but more importantly he can bring in any number under whatever he set, or whatever Obama set!

Forget the EO!

President Trump has all the authority he needs to not import any more refugees this entire year (I’m not sure that his team even knows that he has no legal obligation to bring in even 50,000!).

As of this morning, we have admitted 38,106 refugees this fiscal year (2017) via Wrapsnet.  783 refugees arrived in the ten day period from the announcement of this EO and today when the “moratorium” was to go in to effect.

I repeat!  The President does not have to call it a moratorium or include it in this EO. He can simply stop processing new refugees abroad with no further explanation!

President George W. Bush had 4 years under 50,000! His lowest year was 39,554.  Even Obama had two years under 60,000 and well below the ceiling!  See here.

Now look at this chart (below) very carefully.   When I found it at Wrapsnet, the last year, 2016, was not complete.  Know that we brought in just short of the 85,000 ceiling (a rare occurrence).

The federal refugee resettlement contractors have long wanted the president’s ‘determination’ each year to be a GOAL (a target) not a CEILING! But, the law says it is a ceiling. Look at the column for CEILING and the column for the number actually admitted!

What do you see?  Rarely does the number admitted reach the CEILING.

In FY2006, they were 28,777 below the CEILING. Did anyone sue the President?

In FY2007, they were 21,718 below the CEILING. Did anyone sue the President?

In FY2008, they were 19,809 below the CEILING. Did anyone sue the President?

In FY2009, they were 5,346 below the CEILING. Did anyone sue the President?

In FY2010, they were 6,689 below the CEILING. Did anyone sue the President?

In FY2011, they were 23,576 below the CEILING. Did anyone sue President Obama?

In FY2012, they were 17,762 below the CEILING. Did anyone sue President Obama for leaving thousands “stranded in war-torn countries”?

Obama got closer to the lowered CEILING over the next few years.

You get my drift!

 

Be sure to note that Obama never set a ceiling as high as 110,000 in all his previous years as president. That 110,000 was set in the final months of his final year! The average admissions over the years shown here is around 65,000. I could not find the chart that includes the last month of FY16, but we admitted only a few refugees short of the 85,000 ceiling because the Administration was hell-bent to get in thousands of Syrians.

 

I’m begging ignorant and lazy reporters to get the facts!

And, I am sure you are scared as heck, as I am, to see judges making decisions based on sheer ignorance of the law.

See my post from last Friday about how Hawaii hypocrites! have “welcomed” only a tiny number of refugees over the years—none from Africa and only 5 (total) from two Muslim countries.

This post is filed in our Trump Watch! category as well as ‘refugee statistics’ and ‘where to find information.’

Sterling Heights mosque could be delayed further as local community files its own lawsuit

For background see our earlier post, here. And, take note that the Obama US Attorney who sided with the mosque builders was one of those asked to resign by President Trump a few days ago.

From Leo Hohmann at World Net Daily (Christians who escaped persecution in Iraq are fighting back!):

The saga of the 21,000-square-foot mega-mosque in Sterling Heights, Michigan, is not over yet.

The mayor and city council voted Feb. 21 to settle a lawsuit by a Shiite Muslim group and allow it to build a mosque in a residential neighborhood populated largely by Chaldean Christian refugees who escaped Islamic persecution in Iraq.

A companion suit against the city by Barack Obama’s Department of Justice alleging the city had denied the mosque a permit based on “anti-Muslim” sentiments in the community was also settled at the Feb. 21 meeting, paving the way for the mosque to start construction.

Nahren Anweya: “This minority group consists of more than four generations of refugees and genocide victims under radical Islam.”

But the counter-lawsuit filed Monday argues that city officials were actually favoring the Shiite Muslims of neighboring Madison Heights while ignoring the wishes of its own citizens who were overwhelmingly against the mosque.

If built, the American Islamic Community Center, or AICC, will become the third mosque in Sterling Heights.

Second DOJ-imposed win for Muslims in less than year

It was the second bitter mosque battle in Southeastern Michigan in less than a year.

Obama’s DOJ forced a madrassa on Pittsfield Township, near Ann Arbor, and that town had to pay out $1.7 million to the mosque while sending township employees to be trained on how not to discriminate against Muslims.

After the contentious Feb. 21 meeting in Sterling Heights in which the mayor ordered police to empty the city-hall chambers before the council took a vote on the mosque deal, WND reported that the Chaldean Christians were upset and talking about a counter-lawsuit.

On Monday, they acted. They had Ann Arbor-based American Freedom Law Center, or AFLC, file a civil rights suit on their behalf against the city and Mayor Michael C. Taylor, alleging violations of state and federal law.

“The mayor and the corrupted personal interests behind him have outraged a community which is comprised of the largest minority Assyrian/Chaldean Christians from Iraq,” said Nahren Anweya, spokeswoman for the Chaldean and Assyrian Christians in Sterling Heights. “This minority group consists of more than four generations of refugees and genocide victims under radical Islam.”

CAIR crows and threatens:

Dawud Walid CAIR Michigan. Learn more about him here: http://www.investigativeproject.org/2438/dawud-walid-unhinged#

When the city agreed to settle the suit and allow the mosque to be built, the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, said the victory for the mosque should teach Michigan cities a lesson.

“We hope that this settlement, along with last year’s settlement in Pittsfield Township regarding a previously blocked Islamic school project, sends a strong message to city governments in Michigan seeking to deny zoning of religious institutions simply because they are led by Muslims,” said CAIR-Michigan Executive Director Dawud Walid.

An attorney for the AICC mosque, Azzam Elder, threatened to “monitor” local residents he felt were Islamophobic.

“Moving forward, we’re very concerned about some of what you’ve seen at the public hearings with some of the residents,” Elder told the Detroit News. “We’ll be monitoring what we feel (could be) potential hate groups.”

Hohmann’s story is very thorough.  I have only snipped a small portion of it, go here to learn more.

Besides the lawsuit, I’m thinking that the citizens there might follow the Rutland model and work very hard to remove (at the ballot box!) the elected officials who caved!

One of the great and lasting legacies of a naive federal refugee program is that the US State Department and its contractors have placed Middle Eastern groups who have been in conflict for centuries in close proximity to each other in American cities assuming, we can only presume, that their religious conflicts will melt away in the great (mythical?) American melting pot.

Horowitz: Where is Congress? Why are they not helping Trump on immigration?

That’s been my question too!

Here at Conservative Review, Daniel Horowitz asks why Congress is not backing the President’s right to control immigration to America and determine how many refugees we admit and from where they originate.

Instead Congress is entangled in one major mess over Obamacare.  And, frankly, although important, repeal of Obamacare did not motivate voters to support Trump in the way immigration restriction did.

Here is Horowitz (emphasis mine):

Where is Congress?

Look at the House GOP’s agenda since January. It has been devoid of any substance. What other majority party with control of the White House has failed to act on a single significant issue in its first 100 days? Why are they not passing bills defending Trump’s executive order, and why are they not stripping the courts of jurisdiction over immigration?

While you are at Conservative Review, be sure to check out their very useful ‘scorecard.’ I think you will be surprised at the low scores of many members of Congress and Senators you might have once thought were conservative. https://www.conservativereview.com/scorecard

Trump’s only major accomplishment thus far was the refugee moratorium and that is hanging by a thread thanks to the erroneous outsourcing of legislative and executive authority to the courts. It’s time for Trump to work with House conservatives to bolster his immigration agenda against the courts, instead of fighting conservatives to enshrine Obamacare into law.

Trump must demand that Congress back his immigration order in the April budget bill by defunding the refugee resettlement program and the issuance of any visas from the six countries on his list. House conservatives should also work with Trump to defund Obama’s executive amnesty.

Instead of threatening conservatives with primary challenges if they fail to betray Trump’s own election mandate, why not threaten to primary the RINOs for not backing his immigration agenda? Or is it easier to go after conservatives because they are politically expendable?

Read the whole column here and see how “rogue” judges are taking control of the immigration issue in America.

For more on Congress, see my tag ‘Where is Congress‘ especially on the appropriations issue!

One report: Trump Dept. of State to cut funding to UN by 50%

That is the news from The Hill two days ago!

Finally an elusive number I’ve wondered about for years is mentioned here:

The US pays $1.5 billion of the $4 billion annual budget of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

UN High Commissioner for Refugees glass-fronted building in Geneva. Imagine what this costs to staff and run in Switzerland! American taxpayers pay 37% of it! ($1.5 billion of an annual $4 billion budget).

That is the agency of the UN choosing our refugees for your towns and cities!

The Hill:

President Trump’s administration has told the State Department to cut more than 50 percent of U.S. funding to United Nations programs, Foreign Policy reported.

The push for the drastic reductions comes as the White House is scheduled to release its 2018 topline budget proposal Thursday, which is expected to include a 37 percent cut to the State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development budgets.***

It’s not clear if Trump’s budget plan, from the Office of Management and Budget, would reflect the full extent of Trump’s proposed cuts to the U.N.

[….]

The U.S. spends roughly $10 billion annually on the U.N., and the cuts could have the greatest impact on peacekeeping, the U.N. development program and UNICEF, which are funded by State’s Bureau of International Organization Affairs.

The fate of other popular [?—ed] programs, like the World Food Programme and U.N. refugee operations, are less clear. The World Food Programme’s funding comes from the Department of Agriculture.

Let the wailing begin….

Richard Gowan, a U.N. expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said the alterations would spark “chaos” if true.

Richard Gowan, European Council on Foreign Relations, said cuts would bring “chaos.” Photo: http://www.ecfr.eu/experts

“[It would] leave a gaping hole that other big donors would struggle to fill,” he told FP, pointing to how the U.S. provided $1.5 billion of the U.N. refugee agency’s $4 billion budget last year.

“Multiply that across other humanitarian agencies like the World Food Programme and you are basically talking about the breakdown of the international humanitarian system as we know it.”

More here, and then yesterday The Washington Post reported the news as well, but does not mention the UNHCR.

The Post quotes Trump’s UN ambassdor Nikki Haley as saying the following in her confirmation hearing in January. (Just a reminder dear readers that Haley works for Trump, so let’s hope she is now on the same page as the President!)

  “I do not think we need to pull money from the U.N. We don’t believe in slash-and-burn.”

***Let’s talk about USAID for a minute!

We haven’t written much over the years about the Agency for  International Development which also gives gobs and gobs of (your) money to some federal refugee contractors.

I knew the International Rescue Committee couldn’t be pulling in millions from solely seeding refugees in places like Missoula, Montana, so I checked USA Spending just now to see what they were getting from USAID. Yikes!  Here is a screen shot of one tiny portion of one page. (These are grants from 2008 to 2016).

The IRC received nearly $1 billion from US taxpayers during the Obama years!

No wonder they have money to community-organize against citizens in small city America!

 

Six transactions of 971!

 

For our complete archive on the IRC, click here.

Cut Donald, cut!

Pew: Almost 2,500 refugees from travel-restricted countries entered US since Trump took office

Pew Research has done a handy little summary of where we stand with refugees admitted this fiscal year, but most importantly they made a useful graph of how many entered from travel-restricted countries since the first week of December, through Trump’s inauguration and up to last Friday.

There is nothing we haven’t already been talking about as we reported also from Wrapsnet over recent weeks and months, but they put it in a neat little package for your review on the eve of the 120-day moratorium on refugee resettlement.

Pew Research Center:

A total of 2,466 refugees from six countries under new travel restrictions – Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen – have resettled in the United States since Donald Trump became president, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. State Department data. The number of refugees from the six travel-restricted countries represents 32% of all refugees who have entered the U.S. since Trump took office.

Do you see that big spike ending on inauguration day? That is because the Obama State Dept. was working night and day to get as many Muslims in to the US as possible in the week before the Trump team took over.

 

Pew continues….

Including refugees from countries with no travel restrictions, a total of 7,594 refugees have entered the U.S. during Trump’s first seven weeks in office (Jan. 21 to March 10). Of these refugees, 3,410 are Muslims (45%) and 3,292 are Christians (43%), with other religions or the religiously unaffiliated accounting for the rest.

So far in fiscal 2017 (which began Oct. 1, 2016), refugees who hold citizenship from the six restricted countries have accounted for more than a third (34%) of 37,716 refugee admissions.

More here.

President Trump has set the ceiling for the entire 2017 fiscal year at 50,000, a number we explained here is not that low!

This post is filed in our Trump Watch! category as well as ‘refugee statistics’ and ‘where to find information.’

Endnote: It is amusing to me to see research/articles like this because for years and years (I started writing RRW in 2007) no one paid any attention to the numbers, religions and ethnicities of refugees entering the US. It is nice to see so many news outlets educating the public!

Tennessee files suit against federal government over cost to state of refugee program

It’s been a  long time coming, but yesterday, the State of Tennessee filed its Tenth Amendment case against the US Department of State and the Department of Health and Human Services over the issue of cost-shifting of the US Refugee Admissions Program to the states.

Readers, this is big news!

Here is Michael Patrick Leahy at Breitbart yesterday (I see that Drudge featured the story last night and Fox News has picked it up as well):

The Thomas More Law Center filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of the Tennessee General Assembly and the State of Tennessee in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Tennessee on Monday challenging the federal refugee resettlement program for violating the state’s sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

The lawsuit places Tennessee at the center of the national debate concerning the operation of the federal refugee resettlement program.

President Trump will be holding a rally in Nashville on Wednesday to garner public support for his agenda. His revised Executive Order 13780 temporarily halting the federal refugee resettlement program and temporarily banning travel from six Middle Eastern countries goes into effect on Thursday.

[….]

The Refugee Act specified that 100 percent of each state’s cost of Medicaid and cash welfare benefits provided to each resettled refugee during their first 36 months in the United State would be reimbursed to each state by the federal government. However, within five years of having created the federal program, Congress failed to appropriate sufficient funding and instead, costs of the federal program began shifting to state governments.

Within ten years of passing the Refugee Act, the federal government eliminated all reimbursement of state costs, a huge financial cost to the states that was, in effect, yet another unfunded federal mandate.

[….]

The lawsuit seeks to define Tennessee’s rights in light of the forced expenditure of state funds in support of a federal program from which the state has formally withdrawn.

Continue here and see below the full text of the press release from the Thomas More Law Center.

For all of you in states that have withdrawn from the program***, you must push your governor and legislators to join this case.

If your state has not withdrawn and is willing to sue on states’ rights grounds, this is the direction you should be following: withdraw and then sue when the feds assign a non-profit to run the program!

To further your understanding, here (and below) is the full press release from the Thomas More Law Center, yesterday:

First in the Nation — Tennessee Files Lawsuit Challenging Constitutionality of the Federal Refugee Resettlement Program

ANN ARBOR, MI – The Thomas More Law Center, a national nonprofit public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, MI, today filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of the State of Tennessee, the Tennessee General Assembly, and two State legislators, challenging the constitutionality of the federal refugee resettlement program as a violation of the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the principles of State sovereignty.

Defendants in the lawsuit include the U.S Departments of State and Health and Human Services, and their respective Secretaries.

Assisting the Thomas More Law Center, pro bono, is attorney B. Tyler Brooks with the law firm of Millberg Gordon Stewart PLLC located in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Richard Thompson, President and Chief Counsel of the Thomas More Law Center, noted, “Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts has observed, ‘The States are separate and independent sovereigns. Sometimes they have to act like it.’ We intend to follow that advice in our lawsuit on behalf of the State of Tennessee and its citizens. We are asking the Court to stop the bleeding out of millions of Tennessee taxpayer dollars each year to fund a federal program from which the State officially withdrew in 2007.”

Thompson added, “Although there are compelling policy reasons to dismantle the existing refugee resettlement program in favor of resettling refugees in Middle East safe- zones as President Trump has suggested, this lawsuit focuses solely on the unconstitutional way the federal program is currently operating in the State of Tennessee.”

The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Tennessee. The purpose of the lawsuit is not to inflict harm on refugees, but to preserve the balanced constitutional relationship between the federal government and the States. It seeks a court declaration that the federal government has violated the Tenth Amendment and an order permanently enjoining the federal government from forcing the State of Tennessee to pay money out of its treasury to finance the federal refugee resettlement program.

The Tennessee General Assembly, by overwhelming majorities in both the House and Senate, passed Senate Joint Resolution 467 (“SJR 467”) during the 2016 legislative session, which authorized legal action to stop the federal government from unconstitutionally commandeering State funds to finance the federal refugee resettlement program.

State Senator John Stevens and State Representative Terri Lynn Weaver are the two legislators who joined the lawsuit as individual plaintiffs. Senator Stevens is First Vice-Chair of the Senate’s Standing Committee on Finance, Ways and Means, which is responsible for all measures relating to taxes and oversight of public monies in the State’s treasury. Representative Terri Lynn Weaver is the Chairman of the House Transportation Subcommittee which is charged with oversight of the budget relating to transportation.

Senator Stevens stated, “Through federal economic dragooning of our State’s budget, past Presidents and Congresses have quieted my vote and thereby my constituents’ voices. President Trump through executive action has reversed the overreaches of the Obama Administration in numerous ways. I trust President Trump in this regard. However, he needs our help.”

Continued Stevens, “The Constitution does not allow the Federal Government to force me as the elected representative of the 24th Senate District to implement federal programs while they sit in Washington insulated from the consequences.”

Representative Weaver, who played an instrumental role in mobilizing legislative support for passage of SJR 467, commented, “Of all the legislation that I have worked on, this by far is the most important. The only way we can get back to our constitutional beginnings and the intent birthed by our Founding Fathers is to go and take it back. We are looking forward to linking arms with the Thomas More Law Center for the long haul to regain sovereignty for our great State.”

Senate Majority Leader Mark Norris, another strong advocate for the lawsuit, emphasized the point that the lawsuit should not be taken as a criticism of the Trump Administration, “We want to convey to the President that we support his efforts concerning immigration and refugee resettlement and believe this suit for declaratory relief is consistent with what would likely be his position regarding states like Tennessee which have withdrawn from the refugee resettlement program but are forced to continue paying costs associated with it.”

When Congress enacted the Refugee Resettlement Act of 1980, the explicit intent was to assure full federal reimbursement of the costs for each refugee resettled and participating in benefit programs provided by the states. Eventually, however, federal reimbursements to the states for these benefit programs were reduced and, by 1991, eliminated entirely. The states thereby became responsible for the costs of the programs originally covered by the federal government.

Tennessee officially withdrew from participation in the refugee resettlement program in 2007. However, instead of honoring Tennessee’s decision to withdraw from the program, the federal government merely bypassed the State and appointed Catholic Charities of Tennessee, a private, non-governmental organization to administer the program. Catholic Charities receives revenue based upon the number of refugees it brings into the State.

Currently, Tennessee State revenues that could otherwise be used for State programs to help Tennesseans are, in effect, appropriated by the federal government to support the federal refugee resettlement program. This arrangement displaces Tennessee’s constitutionally mandated funding prerogatives and appropriations process.

The Complaint is here.

The Thomas More Law Center defends and promotes America’s Judeo-Christian heritage and moral values, including the religious freedom of Christians, time-honored family values, and the sanctity of human life. It supports a strong national defense and an independent and sovereign United States of America. The Law Center accomplishes its mission through litigation, education, and related activities. It does not charge for its services. The Law Center is supported by contributions from individuals, corporations and foundations, and is recognized by the IRS as a section 501(c)(3) organization. You may reach the Thomas More Law Center at (734) 827-2001 or visit our website at http://www.thomasmore.org.

*** These are the so-called Wilson-Fish states that have withdrawn from the program over the years.

In addition to these below, several states have withdrawn in the last year and those include: Texas, Kansas, New Jersey and Maine. Florida is considering it right now.

Texas citizen activists must press your governor. He has already shown a willingness to sue the feds, but this is a much stronger case!

To the right of the state (and one county) is the federal NGO running the program in the state (I don’t know who has been assigned in the 4 recent withdrawals mentioned above):

Alabama: USCCB – Catholic Social Services

Alaska: USCCB – Catholic Social Services

Colorado: Colorado Department of Human Services

Idaho: Janus Inc. (formerly Mountain States Group), Idaho Office for Refugees

Kentucky: USCCB – Catholic Charities of Louisville, Kentucky Office for Refugees

Louisiana: USCCB – Catholic Charities Diocese of Baton Rouge, Louisiana Office for Refugees

Massachusetts: Office for Refugees and Immigrants

Nevada: USCCB – Catholic Charities of Southern Nevada

North Dakota: LIRS – Lutheran Social Services of North Dakota

San Diego County, CA: USCCB – Catholic Charities Diocese of San Diego

South Dakota: LIRS – Lutheran Social Services of South Dakota

Tennessee: USCCB – Catholic Charities of Tennessee, Tennessee Office for Refugees

Vermont: USCRI – Vermont Refugee Resettlement Program

 

 

CNN ballistic over Rep. Steve King’s tweet about demography being destiny

Holland’s future or not? If left unchecked, the Turks and the Moroccans will outbreed the Dutch. It is a fact.

I’ve mentioned before that I watch CNN every morning while my coffee is perking. I recommend it to all of you because one is instantly oriented to what the political Left is going to harp on for the day.

This morning they were aghast at the remark Rep. Steve King tweeted in relationship to tomorrow’s election in Holland where Geert Wilders has a shot at winning.

(By the way, I also recommend tweeting to all of you. If you follow the right sites and people, it is the fastest way to get breaking news—even better than Drudge. You don’t have to tweet yourselves, just get an account and follow certain people. Then, throughout the day, check in to see what is breaking around the world! I tweet a lot of news out that I never have time to write about.)

Here is what got Rep. Steve King in hot water with the Lefties at CNN.

Isn’t this the absolute truth! The Dutch election tomorrow is about saving Holland and Western Civilization!

 

 

 

Why are we taking any ‘refugees’ from Israel?

This is another in my series of inquiries about why it is our responsibility to take ‘refugees’ off the hands of governments where those asylum seekers (supposed refugees) are that country’s problem.

(Is Israel taking any of our illegal aliens/asylum seekers?)

See my recent post on Russia, here.  Or, see the dumb deal with Australia, here.  And, I have been writing about this issue for years as it relates to Malta, here.

This morning I want to know why we took 38 ‘refugees’ from Israel in the first 5 months of FY17.  Whoever they are, they are not our problem?

(For background on the problems Israel has with illegal aliens, especially from Africa over the years, go to our category ‘Israel and refugees’ by clicking here).

This is the Refugee Processing Center data from Wrapsnet:

There are a lot of countries on this list that beg the question, why are we taking refugees from these countries where refugees would be perfectly safe!

 

One more thing President Trump’s State Department could do, is to stop using refugees in deals with other countries, something I testified about several times here (see #7).

In the past year, 600,000 Afghans have returned home, so why are we bringing more to the US?

PBS has a report from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees which says that hundreds of thousands of those who fled Afghanistan over the last 30 years are returning home.  The UNHCR is looking for western governments to give more money to Afghanistan to soften the blow on the economy there as this many people return.

 

Photo in the PBS story: Afghans wait to cross into their home country at the border post in Torkham, Pakistan, on March 7. Photo by Fayaz Aziz/Reuters (Where are the women and children?)

 

When I checked Wrapsnet to see how many we were bringing to America, I was surprised to see our ‘refugee’ intake from Afghanistan increasing, not decreasing.

First see what the PBS Newshour is reporting, here:

For years, Afghans have fled the violence in their country, seeking asylum in Europe or elsewhere in the Middle East. But over the past year, about 600,000 Afghans have crossed the border back into Afghanistan, coming from Pakistan, Iran and Europe when they are denied asylum.

Human Rights Watch says Pakistan is using a UN incentive program that gives refugee families a cash grant of $400 to voluntarily return home as a way to pressure Afghans to go back to Afghanistan.

[….]

United Nations High Commission for Refugees spokeswoman Ariane Rummery said at a press briefing last month the organization is concerned that the pace of those returning is outstripping the country’s ability to accept them. She urged donor countries to follow through on their pledges to support the Afghan government.

So how many are we taking and where are they going?

(I want to know why we are taking any!)

Checking Wrapsnet going back to FY03 (because prior to that we can’t get good data) up until today, this is what I learned.

From FY03-FY13 we admitted on average 674 Afghans (small compared to the massive numbers of Iraqis, Somalis and now Syrians we have brought). In FY09, our lowest year, we admitted 349 from Afghanistan.

In FY14 the number started to pick up and we admitted 753 Afghans.

FY15 was 910.

FY16 jumped to 2,737 and in the first five plus months this fiscal year we admitted 1,008.

The total number was 12,824 and 97% were Muslims of various stripes. 6,537 were Sunnis and 4,531 were Shiites (once again admitting both sides of the religious divide!).

Here is where they were placed since FY03:

 

Florida is 319. Alaska got zero as did Hawaii, something we reported here as Hawaii (ha! ha!) sued the Trump Administration EO. https://refugeeresettlementwatch.wordpress.com/2017/03/10/hawaii-needs-refugees-sues-feds-over-refugee-pause-travel-restrictions-from-certain-muslim-countries/

 

For more on refugees from Afghanistan, click here.

Could there be racial bigotry among practitioners of the religion of peace?

Fighting a war on two fronts! Some Muslims believe “we shouldn’t talk about anti-blackness within the community, because we’re under siege by Islamophobes. This is not the right time to air internal laundry.”

(Kameelah Rashad, University of Pennsylvania)

 

Yup, you know it is true!  Or, why would Somali Muslims, for example, want to build their own mosques in a community where  the Arab Muslims already had one?

Also, according to The Atlantic there is a split between immigrant Muslims (many black) and the long-established (well-off) Arabs in America.  The tension within the ‘community’ burst in to full-flower, we are told, at a December Muslim conference in Toronto.

Kameelah Rashad (right) with Linda Sansour. Rashad says she is fighting a war on two fronts—racism within Muslim ‘community’ and Islamophobia everywhere else. Photo: http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/jehron_muhammad/Jehron-Muhammad-Why-do-Muslims-have-to-apologize-for-the-actions-of-a-few.html

The article is a bit disjointed (or maybe it is me!).  Or, could that be because the author can’t quite present the politically-incorrect information in a straightforward manner?

[BTW, when you have a few minutes look around at the many historical reports about how light-skinned Arab Muslims enslaved Africans for over a thousand years.]

Here are a few snips of Emma Green’s article at The Atlantic (emphasis is mine):

Muslim Americans Are United by Trump—and Divided by Race

When weary Muslims gathered in Toronto in December for an annual retreat, marking the end of a tumultuous U.S. election year, they probably didn’t expect the event to turn into a referendum on racial tensions within the American Muslim community. But it did.

[….]

Even though slightly less than one-third of American Muslims are black, according to Pew Research Center, American Muslims are most often represented in the media as Arab or South Asian immigrants. The distinction between the African-American Muslim experience and that of their immigrant co-religionists has long been a source of racial tension in the Muslim community, but since the election, things have gotten both better and worse. While some Muslims seem to be paying more attention to racism because of Donald Trump, others fear that any sign of internal division is dangerous for Muslims in a time of increased hostility.

While the Toronto conference was upsetting, Evans [Ubaydullah Evans, the executive director of the American Learning Institute for Muslims, who is black] said, he doesn’t think it’s representative of the biggest racial problems in the American Muslim community. White racism toward black people is “not the kind of racism that circumscribes my life as an American Muslim,” he told me. “It’s the social racism I experience from people of Arab descent, of Southeast Asian descent. This is the racism no one is talking about.” [Wait!  I thought only white Europeans could be racists! Arabs too?—ed]

[….]

The wave of immigration that shaped today’s American Muslim population began in the 1960s, after Congress lifted previous race-based restrictions on immigration. In many ways, this surge was directly connected to the work of black Muslims and others involved in the civil-rights movement: The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 allowed far greater numbers of people from Asia and Africa to emigrate to the U.S. As of 2014, an estimated 61 percent of Muslims were immigrants, according to Pew, and another 17 percent were the children of immigrants. Many of the perceived racial tensions among Muslims come from conflicts between these immigrant communities and non-immigrants, who are often black.

[….]

Omar Suleiman (Dallas Imam): American Muslim population segregated by ethnicity and income.

“Immigrant Muslims had a convenient comfort zone,” said Omar Suleiman, an imam based in Dallas with a large online following. As each new immigrant community established its own mosques and community centers, portions of the Muslim American population became segregated by ethnicity and income.

For non-black Muslims who grew up in the suburbs, attended private schools, and rarely encountered black Muslims in their mosques, it’s easy “to internalize many of the poisonous notions about the black community that … diminish the pain of those communities,” he said.

“I think a lot of African American Muslims see a hypocrisy sometimes with immigrant Muslims,” said Saba Maroof, a Muslim psychiatrist with a South Asian background who lives in Michigan. “We say that Muslims are all equal in the eyes of God, that racism doesn’t exist in Islam.” And yet, cases of overt racism aren’t uncommon, like when South Asian or Arab immigrant parents don’t want their kids to marry black Muslims. “That happened in my family,” she said.

[….]

Some Muslims believe “we shouldn’t talk about anti-blackness within the community, because we’re under siege by Islamophobes. This is not the right time to air internal laundry,” Rashad [Kameelah Rashad, a black Muslim chaplain at the University of Pennsylvania] said. But “if I have to contend with anti-Muslim bigotry outside of the Muslim community, and within my own community, I’m having to push back on anti-black racism, I’m kind of fighting a war on two fronts.”

There is much more, continue reading here.

Melting pot myth exploded!

So, not only do we have a lack of assimilation among the many ethnic and religious groups we are admitting to the US, we obviously have it within Islam in America too!