Last week I took a swing at the refugee resettlement rackets, with particular reference to the swelling numbers of Iraqi refugees we're taking in, even as we get ready to disengage from Iraq.
My colleague Mark Krikorian directed me to a report his Center for Immigration Studies put out last month, title "Refugee Resettlement: A System Badly in Need of Review." If you think I was being mean-spirited and hard-hearted in my remarks last week, check out this report. I didn't tell the half of it. (You can find the report online at cis.org: go to "Backgrounders and Reports" under the heading "Publications" on the left of the page there.)
Here are some findings from the report. First, who gets to decide who is a genuine refugee? Not you, citizen, and not any person or agency you've chosen to represent you. Mostly who decides is, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. And given our foolish policy of chain migration, i.e. that once you're in, you can petition for your relatives to come in, a big piece of U.S. immigration policy is driven by the decisions of U.N. bureaucrats. Whatever your overall view of immigration is, I can't believe you like this.
And then there's the security issue. Quote from the CIS Backgrounder:
Meaningful background checks are difficult to obtain for refugees admitted from countries without reliable government records. Common criminals, war criminals, international fugitives, and terrorists have all used the United States Refugee Admissions Program and its related asylum provisions for entry into the United States. Bribery of U.N. officials is commonly reported among those attempting to secure refugee admission to the United States.
End quote. And then there are the so-called non-profits who are handling these U.N.-selected refugees once they arrive here. These are people like the International Rescue Committee, Church World Service, Episcopal Migration Ministries, U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, and so on. They all sound very charitable and pious; but in fact the funds they spend come almost entirely from us, the U.S. taxpayers, through government contracts and grants; and the officials of these organizations are paid handsome salaries. Worse yet, after four months or less, the refugees they've sponsored are handed over to welfare agencies and are thenceforth one hundred percent clients of the welfare state. These so-called charities with their appealing churchy names are just middlemen between the U.N. and our own welfare bureaucracies, taking a handsome cut in taxpayer-funded salaries as they pass the refugees along.
The impact of refugee resettlement on small communities is often devastating. Another quote from the CIS Backgrounder: "At no point are these communities consulted. The closed loop of the U.N., the State Department, and NGOs leaves citizens with no voice in events that affect their communities." End quote.
Listeners, this is a simply shameful policy. If your state is involved, lobby your state representatives to get you out of the program. If your church is involved, tell them you will contribute only to programs that take no government money and select deserving refugees themselves. If Senator Patrick Leahy's Refugee Act is introduced into the current session of Congress, lobby your U.S. lawmakers to vote against it. Leahy's act will make it harder to deport refugees who are found to be fake, or dangerous.
At the very least, inform yourself. Go to the CIS website, cis.org, and read the Backgrounder. There's a whole page and a half of footnotes you can follow up on if you're skeptical — state department, NGO, and news service reports. Refugee resettlement is a scandal and a racket, badly in need of clean-up. Don't take it from me: find out for yourself.
07 — Eboo Patel. Meet Eboo Patel, an American-born Muslim of Indian ancestry.
Back in February '09, sortly after he was inaugurated, Barack Obama launched an Office of Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Its purpose is, to quote from the White House website, quote, "to form partnerships between the Federal Government and faith-based and neighborhood organizations to more effectively serve Americans in need," end quote.
Why churches can't minister to needy citizens without federal "partnerships," and how you square all this with the First Amendment, I shall leave you to discuss among yourselves.
The Office of Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships of course needs an Advisory Council, or else how could it function? So Obama appointed 25 big-name religious types to form the Advisory Council. Eboo Patel is among them. He is, in other words, one of the President's advisers on matters of religion, giving Obama the Muslim angle, presumably.
Though only 30-something, Patel has accumulated a long paper trail of anti-American remarks. For example, he's compared al-Qaida to what he called, quote, "Christian totalitarians in the U.S.A. and Jewish totalitarians in Israel," end quote. Patel told a National Public Radio interviewer in 2007 that if he'd grown up in the '60s he'd have joined Bill Ayers' terrorist movement, the Weather Underground. Quote, referring to Bill Ayers: "I was kind of taught the same myths about America, a land of freedom and equality and justice, et cetera, et cetera." End quote. Patel is also a big fan of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's Trinity United church and has written that, quote, "What Obama learned at Trinity will help America."
Now, a person as eminent in the religious sphere as Eboo Patel is obviously in direct communication with the Creator of the Universe, so it would be highly presumptuous of me, a mere lapsed Anglican, to criticize his divinely-inspired words. And Barack Obama, who is even less religious than I am, if that's possible, obviously needs all the advice he can get on matters of faith. Still, I have to ask: Wasn't Louis Farrakhan available?
No comments:
Post a Comment