The [...]]]>
The Dalai Lama is a war refugee himself, having been chased out of Tibet after the invasion by Red China in 1950.
He has obviously thought about this issue, since he expressed almost the same sentiment in 2016 (Now even the DALAI LAMA says Europe has too many migrants – and they should go HOME, Express UK, June 1, 2016), remarking, “Europe, for example Germany, cannot become an Arab country. Germany is Germany.”
Perhaps the Dalai Lama understands that a world population now approaching eight billion means that immigration cannot be the solution for dissatisfied people seeking a better life: they must build it at home. And nations have a right to their own cultures and sovereignty.
]]>Dalai Lama says ‘Europe belongs to Europeans,’ AFP, September 12, 2018
Stockholm (AFP) – The Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, said Wednesday that “Europe belongs to the Europeans” and that refugees should return to their native countries to rebuild them.
Speaking at a conference in Sweden’s third-largest city of Malmo, home to a large immigrant population, the Dalai Lama — who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 — said Europe was “morally responsible” for helping “a refugee really facing danger against their life”.
“Receive them, help them, educate them… but ultimately they should develop their own country,” said the 83-year-old Tibetan who fled the capital Lhasa in fear of his life after China poured troops into the region to crush an uprising.
“I think Europe belongs to the Europeans,” he said, adding they should make clear to refugees that “they ultimately should rebuild their own country”. (Continues)
In comparison, the Times’ attitude toward [...]]]>
In comparison, the Times’ attitude toward Americans has been less generous to say the least, and the paper prefers the California acquiescence as the ideal social model rather than an insistence on assimilation.
But diversity’s difficulties look a little different from a great distance, as the Times story does observe the normal stresses and reactions that happen when a nation is burdened with an enormous influx of needy foreigners.
The story got a front-page placement in Thursday’s paper.
The story was reprinted in an obscure website:
]]>In Lebanon Town, Refugees and Locals Agree on 1 Thing: Time for Syrians to Go, UpdateNews.news, August 9, 2018
ARSAL, Lebanon — The mayor was tired. Asleep-at-3, awake-at-6 tired. Tired the way you cannot help but be after years of the Islamic State squatting in your town, killing your citizens and forcing the army to quarantine you from the rest of the country.
Tired of Syrian refugees from just across the border growing so numerous that they eclipse your actual constituents — and of your constituents growing so sick of the refugees that they mutter about taking the town back by force.
All this fell to the mayor of Arsal, Lebanon: checkpoints to negotiate, refugees to manage, townspeople to appease. And now even his wife complained that he was neglecting her.
“At night, I go back home and I listen to people’s problems again,” said the mayor, Bassil Hujeiri. “It’s not like my shift ends and I get to close the door.” [. . .]
Lebanon has taken in so many Syrians — more than a million — that they now make up a quarter of the country’s population. But the welcome has not always been gracious.
Lebanese authorities never gave full rights to the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees who have lived in Lebanon since the 1940s and ’60s, even as the refugee camps have become permanent cities. Apparently learning from that experience, the government has prohibited the establishment of refugee camps and made the Syrians’ lives difficult, in ways large and small, in the hope that they would return as soon as possible.
Most Syrians in Lebanon cannot move freely around the country. They are banned from some public parks and certain jobs. The small minority of Syrian children who attend school are largely separated from Lebanese children.
Town cemeteries often refuse to bury Syrian bodies. Many landlords reject Syrian tenants. History — Syrian troops occupied Lebanon from 1976 to 2005 — is not improving guest-host relations. Nor are Lebanese sensitivities about the country’s fragile sectarian balance, which Lebanese leaders fear would be upended by the settlement of the mainly Sunni refugees.
“We don’t have any safety guarantees from Assad, but it’s better there than here,” said Mohamed Abdul Aziz, a father of six from the same village as Mr. Ishac. “We have a choice between the bad and the worst.”
Much like populists across Europe and the United States fulminating against immigrants, Lebanese politicians blame Syrians for dragging down wages, dialing up crime and overtaxing infrastructure. Across the country, Syrian refugees have been evicted, deported, beaten and even killed by Lebanese.
Unsurprising, then, to hear Lebanese leaders pressing for their return. (Continues)
In the report, we see a Syrian family getting settled — they are some of the 12,500 Obama jammed in during this fiscal year with reduced screening.
The [...]]]>
In the report, we see a Syrian family getting settled — they are some of the 12,500 Obama jammed in during this fiscal year with reduced screening.
The Bilal family seems decent enough, but why is infidel America supposed to rescue Muslims when other members of the all-embracing ummah (like wealthy Saudi Arabia) have taken Zero fellow members of the faith? In fact, the oil-rich Gulf States cite the security threat as the reason for not accepting Syrian refugees.
So why is Washington so naive when terror groups have said they mean to use the refugee flow for infiltration? Why isn’t American safety Job #1 for our government?
And even if the initial refugees/immigrants are not hostiles, it is often the younger folks who take up jihad as part of their youthful rebellion. Today’s cute pre-schooler (which the Bilal family apparently includes) can easily grow into tomorrow’s jihadist. Along that line, a Danish study found that second-generation Muslim immigrants are twice as criminal as their parents.
The extreme case is when the second generation returns to their parents’ homeland to fight for jihad, as many have. Last year, six young Somalis were arrested as they attempted to leave Minnesota to join ISIS, as have dozens of other Somalis.
The danger contained within the refugee program was the reason that Texas recently withdrew from participation.
Below, Texas governor Gregg Abbott joined with 29 other governors to oppose Syrian refugee resettlement.
But instead of explaining the obvious risk to public safety that inadequately screened Syrians present, Fox News gives us the sensitive sob story.
]]>MELISSA FRANCIS: America opened her arms to more than 12,000 Syrians this year as they escape the violence and the civil war in their home country. A great many ended up living in California, so what can they expect and what can we do to help them settle in? William La Jeunesse takes a look at their first 90 days, and he is live in our Los Angeles Bureau — William.
WILLIAM LA JEUNESSE: Well, Melissa, that’s what we were curious about. What is it like to be dropped into a country — broke, you don’t speak the language and find out a lot of people don’t want you there. And yet it’s a lot better than what you left behind.
SAMIR BILAL: The situation in Syria is very bad. Here I find peace for me and my family.
LA JEUNESSE: The Bilal family arrived in the US three months ago after the war in Syria forced them to leave.
ZUHER BILAL: I am not coming there, but maybe 10 million in Syria, it’s damaged life.
LA JEUNESSE: Like others, the journey wasn’t easy, including three years in Jordan for a background check. Now thanks to the State Department, US taxpayers and their caseworker, life in California is looking up.
This is Ibrahim Hussain. It is his job to make sure these immigrants and these refugees do not fall through the cracks, financially or culturally, so he spends a lot of time in the car going to the bank, to the school, apartment to make sure these people get off on the right foot.
IBRAHAM HUSSAIN: When they come here, they are so much grateful, they want to help themselves and help their children.
SAMIR BILAL: I live in Westminster Apartments (?) — it’s good.
LA JEUNESSE: To start their new lives each refugee receives $1200 from Washington. They also qualify for food stamps, Medicaid and welfare. And while some 40 percent of refugees receive benefits for five years or more, Samir hopes they won’t need it.
ZUHER BILAL: Now training for the gas station.
SAMIR BILAL: Learn the gas station and the cashier.
LA JEUNESSE: So polls show about half of America doesn’t want more Syrian refugees. Now Bilal and his son say they understand the fear over vetting and terrorism, Melissa, but say they want to be judged on their own, and of course they’re grateful to be here. Back to you.
FRANCIS: Wow, what a journey, William La Jeunesse. Thank you for bringing us that story. Good stuff.
ANN CORCORAN: It has been nine years since I began investigating the very secretive refugee admissions program which turned 36 years old this year, and reported on what I found at my blog RefugeeResettlementWatch. A joint enterprise of the US State Department and the United Nations, the refugee admissions program was the brainchild of former Senators Ted Kennedy and Joe Biden. It was signed into law by President Jimmy Carter in 1980, and since then it has admitted almost 2 million refugees into your towns and cities.
In recent years the federal government admitted on average 60-70,000 refugees a year and placed them in hundreds of US towns and cities in 49 states where they immediately upon arrival receive all forms of welfare including Social Security for the elderly and disabled. Barack Obama has increased that number to 85,000 for this year — 10,000 of which are Syrian Sunni Muslims — and he vowed that next year he would propose bringing 100,000.
In September Obama will have his last opportunity to change America by changing its people, but we think he will go way beyond a hundred thousand as the resettlement industry, composed of nine federal contractors or VOLAGs (VOLuntary AGencies), began a huge propaganda campaign in Washington yesterday on August 28th, a rally that fizzled spectacularly. They held a pathetically small astroturf event to demand even higher numbers for Fiscal Year 2017 which begins on October 1st, demonstrating that popular support for more refugees is tepid.
This Washington DC rally, funded by George Soros and his globalist friends, is the lead up to a refugee extravaganza to be held at the United Nations where we know that the Organization of Islamic Cooperation has great influence. Obama will travel to New York City for two days in September the 19th and 20th to play host to world leaders and make Americans feel guilty about not welcoming poorly vetted Syrian refugees to their neighborhoods.
Clearly the timing of the event is meant to impact in November election, as Hillary Clinton has said she is in favor of much larger numbers of refugees especially Syrians. She’s on record saying that she wants 65,000 Syrians in the next year — 65,000 when we barely managed 10,000 this year. That would be in addition to the hundred thousand or more from other countries.
This summer I spent 30 days on the road visiting refugee-overloaded towns and cities in 13 states, and I can assure you that citizens were extremely concerned wherever I went. They fear for their economic futures as well as the future of their towns where already they see signs of creeping sharia, zoning fights over the locations of mosques, aggressive demands for special prayer-break times in the workplace and special accommodations in school systems as the Muslim population increases —often because some large multinational food-processing or manufacturing corporation is demanding the cheap refugee labor.
There’s only one entity that could rein in Soros’ and Obama’s of ambition and that is Congress. The Constitution gives Congress the power of the purse. All eyes will be on the legislators in the House and the Senate: they will decide your family’s future through the choices they make. Congress, led by Republicans, will decide whether or not to fund Obama’s proposed refugee numbers.
Those nine federal contractors or VOLAGs do not have money of their own: they resettle refugees with millions of your tax dollars. Turn off the US Treasury spigot and the flow of refugees will stop. It should most certainly be stopped until a new president sets the tone in 2017.
There are alternatives to costly and disruptive resettlement that benefit the refugees and the US taxpayer, including the creation of safe zones in the Middle East and Africa where refugees would be cared for until the conflict ends. Saudi Arabia comes to mind as a prime location.
You as citizens must become engaged in finding such alternative solutions because the Soros Obama-Clinton solution most certainly puts the future of the great American experiment in jeopardy. The future of your children and grandchildren is in your hands.
Business likes cheap legal labor that refugees supply, like the Karen tribespeople from Myanmar shown below in a South Dakota turkey-processing plant.
Friday’s news also included a dismal employment report of only 151,000 jobs created in August, below what was expected and a sign that economic stagnation is continuing. This is certainly no time to be importing more backward, unemployable and possibly hostile refugees into America’s struggling communities.
Ann’s blog including the new Youtube shown above also has contact information so concerned citizens can express their opposition to the extreme increase of refugee resettlement (much of which turns out to be Muslim, not persecuted Christians as I have reported):
Remember the other side is flooding Congress with postcards, see here (scroll down to see card). Maybe it’s time for an old fashioned letter writing campaign to counter them. After all, it is your money that will be required to fund 200,000 refugees’ travel, placement, and lives in America. (In an upcoming post, I’ll give you some other important legislators who need to hear from you!)
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell
317 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington DC 20510
Phone Number: (202) 224-2541Speaker Paul Ryan
1233 Longworth House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515
Phone: (202) 225-3031
Don’t say you weren’t warned.
]]>For a media celebration of Obama’s goal being reached, the Associated [...]]]>
For a media celebration of Obama’s goal being reached, the Associated Press focused on a rather sketchy family from Homs. The father, Nadim Fawzi Jouriyeh, says he is 49 but looks a lot older, and is characterized as a construction worker having heart ailments — so it sounds like the whole bunch of six will go straight to the welfare office.
Below, Syrian dad Nadim Fawzi Jouriyeh with his wife and three of four kids will be resettled in refugee-diverse San Diego.
At some point, San Diego got the rep as being a soft touch for refugee resettlement, so the extreme diversity pile-on continues. The local Union-Tribune reported last October: County tops in refugee resettlement, referring to the fact that San Diego County has taken the most refugees in the state over the last seven years. The county accepts around 3,000 refugees annually, including persons from the Congo, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Syria, Afghanistan, Burundi, Burma, and Columbia.
Unfortunately, extreme diversity has not worked out that well in the county. The local immigrants were stirred into rage a few years ago when Shaima Alawadi was found dead in her El Cajon home with a note nearby telling the Iraqi refugee to go home. Lefty propagandist Salon wrote five articles railing against American haters and CAIR waved the Islamophobia flag as well, resulting in a lot of bad feeling.
In fact, the murder was a hate-crime hoax created by her husband to cover up his crime. But apologies from the diversity mongers for stirring up various immigrant groups were nil.
Anyway, San Diego is getting still more diversity, and plenty of it.
Oh, and how many Christians are included in the 10,000 horde? you may ask. Even though Syrian Christians face genocide in the Middle East, Obama has focused on importing thousands of unscreenable Muslims into America, despite the obvious danger to this nation and the tribe’s disturbing unwillingness to assimilate in general.
When the total number of Syrians had reached 9,144 a few days ago, only 47 (0.5 percent) were Christian. Regarding the whole refugee cohort for this fiscal year, Muslims outnumber Christians for the first time in a decade: of the total 66,480 refugees, 30,543 (45.94 percent) were Muslims and 28,973 (43.58 percent) were Christians.
As Daniel Greenfield wrote recently, “If you are a member of ISIS, you have a better chance of reaching America than your Yazidi sex slave.”
Does Obama hate Americans? He sure acts like it. A president who cared about the safety of this country would end Muslim immigration entirely.
]]>The long road from Homs to San Diego: Syrian refugee family ‘filled with fear and joy’ embark on 7,000mile trip as part of resettlement plan for 10,000 immigrants, Daily Mail (UK), August 28, 2016
Nadim Fawzi Jouriyeh is a 49-year-old construction worker with heart ailments and four children to look after.
As if that wasn’t difficult enough, he and his family were enmeshed in the destructive civil war that has left Syria in ruins and killed hundreds of thousands of their countrymen and women.
Now, they are getting a new lease on life.
The Jouriyehs are among the 10,000 refugees fleeing the smoldering Middle Eastern nation and resettling in the United States.
Forced to leave their hometown of Homs, Syria’s third largest city and one which has been placed under siege for months, the Jouriyeh family made their way to Jordan.
On Monday, they will board a plane in Amman bound for the United States, as will hundreds of other Syrians who will round out the target of 10,000 refugees who will be resettled in the country.
When asked by The Associated Press about his sentiments just before beginning a new life in San Diego, Jouriyeh said he is filled with ‘fear and joy, fear of the unknown and our new lives, but great joy for our children’s lives and future.’
The resettlement program focuses on the most vulnerable refugees, including those who were subjected to violence or torture or are sick.
Close to 5 million Syrians have fled civil war since 2011. Most struggle to survive in tough conditions in neighboring countries, including Jordan, which hosts close to 660,000 Syrian refugees.
The intake of refugees from Syria has emerged as a hot-button issue during the US presidential campaign.
Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, has said that an anticipated flood of Syrian refugees admitted to the US by the Obama administration will bring with them a new wave of terror attacks unleashed by Islamist groups.
‘Bad things will happen. A lot of bad things will happen. There will be attacks that you wouldn’t believe, the Republican presidential nominee-in-waiting said on a podcast hosted by the National Border Patrol Council.
There will be attacks by the people that are right now coming into our country, because – I have no doubt in my mind,’ Trump predicted.
The Obama administration has committed that by the end of September it will resettle 10,000 Syrians in the United States following a lengthy vetting process overseen by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
That number will likely expand in 2017 unless Trump were to move into the Oval Office.
The administration, for its part, scoffs at the notion that its policy will put the country in danger.
Obama’s top diplomat in Amman said this week that her country is fulfilling a longstanding tradition in opening its doors to the world’s downtrodden.
‘Refugees are the most thoroughly screened category of travelers to the United States, and Syrian refugees are subject to even greater scrutiny,’ said Alice Wells, the American ambassador to Jordan.
Wells said the US has taken in more refugees from around the world over the years than all other nations combined.
But orderly examination is [...]]]>
But orderly examination is so 2015. Now in Obama’s last year, the process has been upclicked into special “Surge” mode to speed things along. The goal is to process 10,000 Syrians into the US by the end of the fiscal year on September 30, not to protect the safety of the American people. To accomplish that objective, the two years of processing have been squeezed into three months, and hundreds of Syrians are being interviewed in a “refugee surge center” in Amman Jordan.
Funny how all the government has to do is say it’s a “surge” and the previous promises magically disappear, poof.
Below, U.S. Ambassador to Jordan Alice Wells, top left, poses for the do-gooder shot with a Syrian family on their way to be resettled in Missouri.
What is never mentioned is how the jihad problems often occur in the second generation or those who arrived as children. Today’s cutesy moppets may become Allah’s mass murderers of tomorrow. A Danish study found that second generation Muslim immigrants are more than twice as criminal than the first.
So the towns targeted for Obama’s Syrian dumping may be looking at trouble for years to come.
]]>First Syrian refugees arrive in U.S. under faster program, CBS News, April 7, 2016
AMMAN, Jordan –The first Syrian family to be resettled in the U.S. under a speeded-up “surge operation” for refugees left Jordan on Wednesday and arrived in Kansas City, Missouri, to start a new life.
Ahmad al-Abboud, who is being resettled with his wife and five children, said he is thankful to Jordan, where he has lived for three years after fleeing Syria’s civil war. But the 45-year-old from Homs, Syria, said he was ready to build a better life in the U.S.
“I’m happy. America is the country of freedom and democracy, there are jobs opportunities, there is good education, and we are looking forward to having a good life over there,” al-Abboud said.
They have been living in Mafraq, north of Amman. Al-Abboud was unable to find work, and the family was surviving on food coupons.
“I am ready to integrate in the U.S. and start a new life,” he told The Associated Press in Amman’s airport before the family boarded a flight to Kansas City.
Al-Abboud said he wanted to learn English and find a job to support his family.
A spokeswoman for the social services organization helping resettle the family said they arrived in Kansas City late Wednesday night.
In the airport in Amman, the family received a Kansas City Royals jersey, reports CBS Kansas City affiliate KCTV. It’s a symbol of their new hometown.
“They are literally fleeing to America because of horrific conditions they’ve experienced in their homelands,” Judy Akers, executive vice president of Della Lamb Community Services, told the station.
“Refugee families who come through Della Lamb refugee services have been vetted by the U.S. State Department,” she said.The refugees are fingerprinted and screened by the National Counterterrorism Center, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Homeland Security and Department of State.
“The American promise really exists for them. Their families are free,” Akers added.
Since October, some 1,000 Syrian refugees have moved to the U.S. from Jordan. President Obama has set a target of resettling 10,000 Syrian refugees by Sept. 30.
A resettlement center opened in Amman in February to help meet that goal, and about 600 people are interviewed every day at the center.
The temporary processing center will run until April 28, said U.S. Ambassador Alice Wells, who was at the airport to see the al-Abboud family depart.
Gina Kassem, the regional refugee coordinator at the U.S. Embassy in Amman, said that while the target of 10,000 applies to Syrian refugees living around the world, most will be resettled from Jordan.
“The 10,000 (figure) is a floor and not a ceiling, and it is possible to increase the number,” Kassem told reporters.
While the resettlement process usually takes 18 to 24 months, the surge operation will reduce the time to three months, Kassem said.
The U.N. Refugee Agency prioritizes the most vulnerable cases for resettlement, and refers them to the U.S. to review, Kassem said. The priority is given to high-risk groups such as unaccompanied minors and victims of torture and gender-based violence, she said.
“We do not have exclusions or look for families with certain education background, language skills or other socio-economic factors, and we do not cut family sizes,” she said.
Jordan hosts about 635,000 of the more than 4.7 million Syrians who have registered with the U.N. refugee agency after fleeing the war. The total number of Syrians in Jordan is more than 1.2 million, including those who arrived before the conflict began in 2011.
And as the Republican leadership [...]]]>
Congress is back in session and members are in a hurry to get their business done ASAP so they can have a nice long Christmas vacation. That priority means jamming through another omnibus spending bill, a form of budget management that allows all sorts of corruption to permeate the sausage.
And as the Republican leadership has repeated, they will do anything to avoid a government shutdown — how not to negotiate!
Wait, didn’t the GOP guys pledge to return Congress to regular order, where the budget is voted in semi-manageable chunks?
The nation’s defender Senator Sessions points out the evil that lurks in the stacks of pages — Obasma’s nation-crushing unlawful immigration scheme. The president’s big list of open borders priorities includes resettling 10,000 mostly Muslim unscreenable Syrians in addition to 85,000 other refugees being dumped into American communities which are forced to bear welfare costs.
In the October hearing video below, Senator Sessions questioned a USCIS official, who admitted Syrians cannot be vetted because there’s no database to check.
The refugee category has also been rejiggered by the administration into a convenient catch-all and now applies to the thousands of illegal aliens from Central America who are being shoved down America’s throat on the taxpayer’s dime.
]]>Sessions: Omnibus Expected to Fund Obama’s Entire Immigration Agenda, December 1, 2015
WASHINGTON—U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), Chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest, released the following statement warning about what is expected in the omnibus and why it must be changed:
“As currently written, this year’s appropriations bills – which will be combined into a catch-all ‘omnibus’ by December 11th – amount to a blank check for the President to carry out his refugee resettlement plans. Not only will the President be allowed to bring in the 85,000 refugees he has announced on top of current record immigration levels, but this will include at least 10,000 refugees from Syria who will subsequently be able to bring in their foreign relatives. All refugees are eligible for lifetime government assistance and can draw funds from Social Security and Medicare at Americans’ expense. More than 90% of recent Middle Eastern refugees are on welfare. And they are on a fast-track to becoming voting U.S. citizens.
Altogether, we can expect to issue nearly 700,000 green cards – or lifetime residency cards – to migrants from Muslim nations over the next five years (as we did over the last five years). Terror groups have demonstrated that they will recruit from among this inflow. We have already identified nearly 30 foreign-born individuals charged or convicted of terrorism offenses in the last year – investigations which required the deployment of vast manpower, financial and legal resources.
The Obama Administration has additionally said it may admit up to 30,000 Syrian refugees into our nation next fiscal year. There is, however, no limit on the number that the President can admit this year or any year under current law, if Congress continues to write blank checks.
It is also expected that the omnibus bill will fund the Office of Refugee Resettlement’s continued placement of illegal aliens from Central America into U.S. communities – instead of deporting them – on top of the enormous green card flow.
It is further expected that the omnibus will continue federal funding for “sanctuary cities” and allow for the continued operation of the President’s 2012 executive amnesty program, which provides work authorizations and certain government benefits to some 700,000 illegal aliens under the age of 30. And, shockingly, the omnibus may also include a huge expansion of the H-2B foreign worker visa program, used to fill blue collar jobs such as truck driving, landscaping, construction work, and hotel service. This action would further replace and reduce wages of American workers during a time of record immigration and historically low workforce participation rates.
The President’s annual funding requests are just that: requests. It is the exclusive and sole constitutional prerogative of Congress whether or not to accept his requests, reject them, or impose whatever conditions Congress deems proper on behalf of taxpaying Americans.
Now is the hour of choosing for Congress; will we surrender – funding Obama’s entire immigration agenda – or will we assert Congress’s power on behalf of the interests of the American people, and declare by appropriations what programs are worthy and what are not?”
Still, occasional glimpses of sanity burble out from unexpected sources. Senator Dianne Feinstein, the Ranking Member of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee, observed [...]]]>
Still, occasional glimpses of sanity burble out from unexpected sources. Senator Dianne Feinstein, the Ranking Member of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee, observed recently:
“They [ISIS] are a dominant threat to peace in the world today. I really believe this. There’s never been a time when there are more threats to the United States than there is now. So as I said once before, we’re either going to fight them there or fight them here.”
On the other hand, Feinstein supports the Senate Democrats filibustering the DHS funding bill to prevent debate on the tough House-passed legislation. Oh, well!
Elsewhere, Chairman Mike McCaul of the House Homeland Security Committee expressed doubt about the policy of admitting potentially dangerous Syrian refugees to America. The Feb 11 hearing was titled Countering Violent Islamist Extremism: The Urgent Threat of Foreign Fighters and Homegrown Terror and his opening statement finished with the following paragraph:
I am very disappointed that the State Department chose not to send a witness here today. The threats we are discussing are serious, and the State Department plays a key role in combating them. I recently sent a letter to the White House expressing my concerns over the Department’s desire to resettle tens of thousands of Syrian refugees in the United States. I am worried ISIS could exploit this effort in order to deploy operatives to America via a federally funded jihadi pipeline.
Below, some Syrians have become expert jihad soldiers during the ongoing wars in the Middle East.
McCaul spoke plainly in the hearing about the danger:
MCCAUL: I’ve been over there and I’ve seen them. Most are women and children but there are male actors that concern me. I think this would be a huge mistake if we bring in these refugees into the United States that could potentially be radicalized. We’re not only trying to keep foreign fighters out but under this would be a federally sanctioned welcome party, if you will, to potential terrorists in the United States.
The caution about Middle Eastern refugees is well grounded in previous events. After two Iraq refugees were found to be active jihadists a few years back, a re-examination took place: Terrorist Refugees Prompt Rescreening. Unfortunately, last year the White House lowered the standards for admitting refugees.
Finally, why should Americans be forced to deal with Muslim refugees when Islam is by far the biggest refugee generator on the planet? Displaced Muslim persons should be relocated in dar al-Islam, period.
]]>U.S. Expects to Quadruple the Number of Syrian Refugees Brought Here, CNS News, February 17, 2015
The United States has “a long tradition of welcoming refugees,” and it expects to welcome thousands more of them from Syria in 2015 and 2016, despite concerns about foreign fighters, the State Department said.
“The United States has admitted 524 Syrians since 2011. We’re likely to admit 1,000 to 2,000 Syrian refugees for permanent resettlement in Fiscal Year 2015 and a somewhat higher number, though still in the low thousands, in Fiscal Year 2016,” spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters on Friday.
But at a hearing of the House Homeland Security Committee last week, Chairman Mike McCaul (R-Texas) said it would be a “huge mistake” to bring refugees from Syria and Turkey into the United States where they “could potentially be radicalized.”
Psaki told reporters on Friday that national security “is absolutely a priority” in the decision to admit refugees.
“That’s why the process can take months, if not longer. And we have a lot of experience with this with Afghanistan, with Iraq, with Somalia, and other places where the United States has taken refugees in from.
“Refugees are the most carefully vetted of all travelers to the United States,” Psaki continued.
“Every refugee under consideration for admission to the United States undergoes the same intensive security screening involving multiple federal intelligence, security, and law enforcement agencies. These include the NCTC, the Terrorist Screening Center, the Department of Defense, the FBI. This process includes a lengthy overseas in-person refugee determination and security screening interview conducted by…specially trained DHS officers.
Psaki repeated that “one of our values is bringing in and welcoming refugees who have fled horrors around the world, and that continues to be central to what we believe in.”
In response to a question, Psaki said she’s aware of only “two incidents” involving “two Iraqis” who were admitted to Kentucky and were later accused of trying to send weapons and money to al Qaida in Iraq.
“Additional measures were activated as a result of evidence that came in on two Iraqis after they were admitted to Kentucky. Those measures are now applied to all refugees. So we always evaluate and use information as it becomes available,” Psaki said.
At the Feb. 11 hearing, McCaul said he’s written a letter to National Security Adviser Susan Rice expressing his concern about refugees from Syria and Turkey:
“I’ve been over there and I’ve seen them. Yeah, most of them are women and children, but there are male actors that concern me. I think this would be a huge mistake if we bring in these (refugees) into the United States that could potentially be radicalized…We’re not only trying to keep these guys, the foreign fighters, out, but under this would be a — a federally sanctioned welcome party, if you will, to potential terrorists in the United States.”
Nicholas Rasmussen, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, told McCaul that the Syrian refugees are “clearly a population of concern.”
Rasmussen and two other witnesses told the committee that a rigorous vetting and screening process is applied to all refugees in an attempt to identify possible connections to foreign terrorist groups.
Now the government is toting up the financial cost and the result is not pretty.
The New York Times included a dollar figure for the Swedish taxpayers’ cost a few months back:
[...]]]>
In September 2013, the Swedish government generously offered to welcome all refugees from Syria — counted as being two million at that time.
Now the government is toting up the financial cost and the result is not pretty.
The New York Times included a dollar figure for the Swedish taxpayers’ cost a few months back:
Scandinavians Split Over Syrian Influx, New York Times, September 19, 2014
… Sweden has taken an open-door approach to people fleeing the conflict, accepting more Syrians than any other European country.
Never mind that Sweden has double-digit youth unemployment. That there have been riots in immigrant neighborhoods in Stockholm. That there is a severe housing shortage for new arrivals. Or that the Swedish Migration Board, which handles asylum seekers, needs a drastic budget increase — almost $7 billion — to cover soaring costs over the next few years.
Interestingly, that number is based on only 100,000 Syrian refugees, just a tiny portion of the two million Sweden had welcomed. Have all diversity-besotted liberals failed math?
Parties duel as refugee costs rocket, The Local (Sweden), August 20, 2014
Swedish media reported on Tuesday that the country is looking at record-breaking numbers of refugees this year, with one report predicting up to 100,000 displaced people resettling in Sweden.
The Migration Board has announced that it cannot afford to handle the influx with its current budget, and has asked for 48 billion kronor ($6.9 billion) above the 91 billion ($13.2 billion) allowance the board has already been granted for the next four years.
Note to Washington: refugee rescue is an expensive hobby for a nation that is $18 trillion in debt, increasingly so when the uneducated Third World newbies are unlikely to ever pay their way. Excess unskilled labor is particularly unnecessary in an economy which is rapidly becoming automated by smart machines doing the work that was earlier performed by humans.
Back in Sweden, the city of Sodertalje is now being overwhelmed with Middle Easterners. Syrian And Iraqi Refugees Are Half The Population Of This Swedish City:
As a refugee named Issa, who declined to give his surname due to fears of repercussions for his family back in Syria, put it, “The city is mostly Iraqi and Syrian immigrants, but some Swedes live here too.”
The usual mass immigration problems are showing up in utopian Sweden — unemployment, self-segregation leading to non-assimilation and increased costs for taxpayers with jobs.
And Sodertalje is lucky that Muslims self-segregated to another town, leaving the Syrian Orthodox Christians to live in peace. “If they built a mosque there would be trouble here,” one Christian remarked.
Check out a recent news piece from Dutch television, Swedish Budget at Risk from Syrian Refugees (for which GatesOfVienna has posted a transcript).
]]>The Pope could have shown leadership by admitting a few dozen suffering souls to his diminutive city-state (a real country with ambassadors and a flag), but he has not. He is scheduled to [...]]]>
The Pope could have shown leadership by admitting a few dozen suffering souls to his diminutive city-state (a real country with ambassadors and a flag), but he has not. He is scheduled to meet with survivor refugees from a 2013 Mediterranean shipwreck which would be a perfect opportunity to ask some to live in the Vatican, but no mention has been made of a forthcoming invitation. Opportunity lost.
Meanwhile, Europe is not exactly bursting with opportunity for job seekers, particularly unskilled Africans and Middle Easterners.
Europe’s agony: Painfully high unemployment, inflation near zero, The Globe and Mail (Toronto), September 30, 2014
• Unemployment among the 18 nations that make up the troubled euro zone held at 11.5 per cent in August, according to the statistics agency Eurostat. In the wider European Union, the jobless rate dipped to 10.1 per cent from 10.2 per cent.
• Almost 25 million people can’t find work in the EU, more than 18 million of them in the euro zone.
• Greece and Spain continue to have the highest unemployment in the region, at 27 per cent and 24.4 per cent, respectively.
• Austria and Germany, at 4.7 per cent and 4.9 per cent, enjoy the lowest.
• Among young people, unemployment now stands just slightly below that of July’s level, at 21.6 per cent in the EU and 23.3 per cent in the euro zone.
• More than half the youth work force in Greece and Spain is jobless. And in Italy, youth unemployment is now running at more than 44 per cent.
The Pope’s first visit out of the Vatican was to the Italian island of Lampedusa, which has been flooded with thousands of foreign boat people for years.
In other refugee news, RefugeeResettlementWatch reminds us that FY2015 begins today (October 1) and one consequence is that 4000 Syrians will be dumped into American communities starting now, with the government lowering screening guidelines to get them in, despite the obvious national security danger.
]]>Pope Urges Europe to Open Doors to Refugees, Associated Press, October 1, 2014
Pope Francis urged Europe to open its doors to refugees Wednesday as he marked the anniversary of a deadly migrant shipwreck off Sicily by meeting with survivors and relatives of the victims.
Some 368 people — most of them Eritrean and Syrian asylum-seekers — drowned Oct. 3, 2013 when their smugglers’ boat capsized off the island of Lampedusa. The tragedy jolted the EU and prompted Italy to beef up its Mediterranean sea patrols, which have rescued some 160,000 people this year alone.
On Wednesday, nearly 40 survivors and relatives of the Lampedusa victims met with Francis in the Vatican auditorium before heading to Lampedusa for ceremonies to commemorate the anniversary.
Francis, who has frequently lamented the plight of refugees, said he was speechless, unable to find the words to comfort people who had faced such tragedy.
“I ask all the men and women of Europe to open the doors of their hearts,” Francis said. “I want to let you know I’m near you, I pray for you, and I pray that doors that are closed are opened.”
Francis visited Lampedusa months before the October tragedy to show solidarity with migrants following the death of a dozen would-be refugees over the summer. During a Mass on the island, he denounced the “globalization of indifference” that greets migrants who risk their lives in search of safety and a better life for themselves.
Members of the refugee delegation thanked Francis for his support and urged him to back their efforts to recover remains of the victims; some of the bodies haven’t been turned over to relatives.
“It was good, but we need more help,” said Smliva Zeregherghis, an Eritrean who was part of the delegation. His wife, Wine, was killed in the shipwreck as she attempted to join him in Britain, where he has been working as a manual laborer for six years.