Category Archives: Illegal Immigration

Caution: Pope’s Visit and New Immigrant Quotas

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Pope Francis will be visiting the United States after He completes his trip to Cuba on September 22. Pope Francis will include Washington D.C., New York (Madison Square Garden and Central Park) and Philadelphia on His agenda. During his time in New York, He will address the United Nations, make an appears at the 9/11 Memorial and Museum and Our Lady of Queen of Angels School in East Harlem.

At the core of His presentations, you can bet it will include refugees and immigration.

The back story and what you need to know.

President to decide on refugee quota for FY2016 NOW! Will Congress lift a finger to protect America?

Posted by Ann Corcoran

It is September and as we speak, the Obama Administration (US State Department) is putting its final touches on their annual Determination Letter and accompanying report to Congress.

Obama shushing

The new fiscal year begins on October 1 and by the 30th of this month Obama will send to Congress for “consultation” a document which states how many refugees and from what regions of the world we will be “welcoming” refugees to America.

This so-called “consultation” with Congress is a legal requirement. However, it is common knowledge that the House and Senate Committees responsible for analyzing this information have in the past been silent.

In fact, Ken Tota (who recently served as the interim director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement) was overheard saying that “in his entire almost 30-year career, Congress has never questioned the numbers.”

State Department scoping meetings

For our many new readers, this year there was no US State Department hearing on the “size and scope” of the refugee program (or, LOL! they kept it very secret!).  We can only assume that was because in the three previous years they heard testimony that they didn’t like from citizens that were concerned about the program.  Here is one post of dozens on the topic.  Readers of RRW had flooded the State Department with negative testimony about the program.  In fact, we testified that there should be a moratorium on the program.  See my 2014 testimony here.

I mention this because the Presidential Determination being prepared now is the culmination of the annual process that began with those late spring ‘hearings’ (and again there was no public opportunity to comment this year that we were aware of).

Also, regular readers know that we have been discussing, and attempting to obtain, R & P abstracts the subcontractors located around the country prepare for Washington—those are part of the process as well. Just as taxpaying citizens had no opportunity to testify to the State Department this year, taxpaying citizens have no input in the abstract preparation process either.

Presumably one final check in the system to protect America is the “consultation” with Congress in September of each year.

However, if this year is like all others, our elected representatives in Washington will not lift a finger to question the size and scope of this year’s proposed refugee quota!

And, this could be the year that plans to resettle tens of thousands of Syrians will be announced!

Click here for last year’s Presidential Determination, and here for the lengthy report which was sent to Congress on September 18th last year.  The report begins:

This Proposed Refugee Admissions for Fiscal Year 2015: Report to the Congress is submitted in compliance with Sections 207(d)(1) and (e) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). The Act requires that before the start of the fiscal year and, to the extent possible, at least two weeks prior to consultations on refugee admissions, members of the Committees on the Judiciary of the Senate and the House of Representatives be provided with the following information….

Note that the report goes to the House and Senate Judiciary Committees.  Chairmen of the full committees are Bob Goodlatte and Chuck Grassley respectively.  Subcommittee Chairmen responsible for Refugee Resettlement are Trey Gowdy and Jeff Sessions.

Will those chairmen help protect America this year by holding hearings when the Presidential Determination for FY2016 arrives on the Hill which by law should be in about two weeks!  Or, will they (yet again!) simply rubber stamp what Obama wants?

 

Congress: Islamist Terror Threat Matrix

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U.S. Terror Matrix

 

 

 

The full House of Representatives 8 page report is here.

 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• The jihadist threat in the U.S. homeland is high and has escalated dramatically this year. There have been more U.S.-based jihadist terror cases in 2015 than in any full year since 9/11. The number of U.S. terrorist cases involving homegrown violent jihadists has gone from 38 in July 2010 to 124 today—more than a three-fold increase in just five years.

• ISIS is fueling the Islamist terror wildfire across the globe at unprecedented speed. As of the end of August, the group has inspired or directed 57 terror attack plots against Western targets, including 15 in the United States. A recent train attack in France would have been a mass-casualty attack had it not been for an alert group of Americans. There have now been nearly twice as many ISIS-linked attack plots against the West this year (37) as there were in all of 2014 (20).

• Islamist terrorists are intent on killing American law enforcement and military personnel, in addition to innocent civilians. Radicals are increasingly targeting men and women in uniform here in the United States. In August, ISIS supporters released another “hit list” of American government personnel, including service members. Since early 2014, the majority of Islamist terror plots on U.S. soil have featured plans to kill police or U.S. service members.

• ISIS has largely maintained its terror safe havens in Syria and Iraq while expanding globally more than a year after the U.S. and its allies launched operations against it. Al Qaeda affiliates from Syria to Yemen have also carved out sanctuary and seized additional terrain. ISIS retained control over its major strongholds in Syria and Iraq while undertaking disruption attacks and offensives in key territory; ISIS-affiliated militants have simultaneously consolidated control in Libya. Foreign fighters continue to swell the ranks of Islamist extremist groups looking to recruit foot soldiers and activate followers to launch attacks in their home countries.

HOMEGROWN ISLAMIST EXTREMISM

The jihadist threat in the U.S. homeland is high and has escalated dramatically this year.

By the numbers

• Since September 11, 2001, there have been 124 U.S. terrorist cases involving homegrown violent jihadists. Over 80 percent of these cases—which include plotted attacks and attempts to join foreign terrorist organizations—have occurred or been disrupted since 2009.1

 

• Authorities have arrested or charged at least 52 individuals in the United States this year – 67 since 2014 – in ISIS-related cases. The cases involve individuals: plotting attacks; attempting to travel to join ISIS overseas; sending money, equipment and weapons to terrorists; falsifying statements to federal authorities; and failing to report a felony.2

• FBI Director James Comey has said authorities have hundreds of open investigations of potential ISIS-inspired extremists that cover all 56 of the bureau’s field offices in all 50 states. He stated there may be hundreds or thousands of Americans who are taking in recruitment propaganda over social media applications: “It’s like the devil sitting on their shoulders, saying ‘kill, kill, kill.”

Recent Developments

• August 24: Ahmed Mohammed El Gammal, 42, was arrested in Avondale, Arizona, for helping a 24-year-old New York City resident travel to Syria to receive military training from ISIS. El Gammal was an avid ISIS supporter online and engaged the recruit through social media before in-person meetings. El Gammal and the recruit communicated with an unnamed co-conspirator based in Turkey.

TERROR PLOTS AGAINST THE WEST

ISIS is fueling the Islamist terror wildfire across the globe at unprecedented speed.

By the numbers

• Since early 2014, there have been 57 planned or executed ISIS-linked terror plots against Western targets, including 15 inside in the United States.3

• There have been nearly twice as many ISIS-linked plots against Western targets in the first seven months of this year (37) than in all of 2014 (20).4

Recent Developments

• August 21: A 25-year-old Moroccan national, Ayoub El Khazzani, attacked passengers on a train in Thalys, France, before a group led by three Americans, including two service members on vacation, subdued him. Khazzani was armed with an arsenal of weapons and 270 rounds of ammunition. He watched a jihadist propaganda video before attempting to launch his attack. He had lived in and attended a radical mosque in Spain before relocating to France. He had also lived in Belgium and traveled from Germany to Turkey in early May before returning to Europe in June. This trip was reportedly part of a plot to fight with ISIS in Syria.

• August 13: ISIS’s “hacking division” released information regarding 1,400 American government personnel, including service members, and encouraged supporters to track down and attack them. The list included names, e-mail addresses, and phone numbers. ISIS operative and hacker Junaid Hussain had been central to similar plots targeting servicemembers; Hussain was eliminated in an August 24th drone strike in Syria.

FOREIGN FIGHTERS

Undeterred by airstrikes, foreign fighters continue to pour into the conflict zone in Syria and Iraq, bolstering ISIS and representing a potential threat to their home countries—including America—upon return.

By the numbers

• More than 25,000 fighters from 100 countries have traveled to Syria and Iraq to join extremists—the largest convergence of Islamist terrorists in world history. U.S. estimates reportedly put its current manpower at 20,000-30,000 members. “We’ve seen no meaningful degradation in their numbers” since last August, according to a defense official.

• Approximately 4,500 Western fighters have traveled to Syria and Iraq.5 Europol recently assessed that the high-end estimate of EU citizens who left to fight in Syria may have been as high as 5,000 at the beginning of this year.

• An estimated 550 Western women have traveled to the conflict zone.

Read the whole report here.

 

 

The Truth Hidden by the Left of Affects of Immigration on Wages

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The Brookings Institution is a liberal think tank that covers all policy, foreign and domestic. The officially describe themselves and non-partisan but that is hardly the case. The institution was founded in 1916 and is the president is Strobe Talbott, where he and President Bill Clinton were roommates at the University of Oxford, both there as Rhodes Scholars. In later years, Talbott helped the Clintons in their political campaigns. Now that the table is set:

NYT, Brookings Unwittingly Show How Immigration Affects Wages

DailyCaller: Wages for many American workers continue to decline, hitting workers the most in industries where demand for work is increasing, a new study found. One explanation via the Brookings Institution is that immigrants fill a disproportionate share of those jobs.

The New York Times covered the National Employment Law Project study:

“Despite steady gains in hiring, a falling unemployment rate and other signs of an improving economy, take-home pay for many American workers has effectively fallen since the economic recovery began in 2009 …

“The declines were greatest for the lowest-paid workers in sectors where hiring has been strong — home health care, food preparation and retailing — even though wages were already below average to begin with in those service industries.”

The study raises the question: Why would wages be falling the most in industries with greater demand for workers?

The Times notes that “macroeconomic forces like automation, demographics and globalization” are contributing to falling wages, and refers to ongoing slack in the labor market —the labor supply is still outstripping the (increasing) demand for work.

One explanation the Times doesn’t mention directly is that immigrants share a disproportionately high share of these jobs, and are to some extent crowding American workers out of these low-skilled, high in demand industries.

A 2012 Brookings Institution report found that many of the jobs in the occupations deemed fastest and largest growing by the Bureau of Labor Statistics are going to immigrants — in many of the same occupations the Times reports have seen the greatest decline in wages in recent years.

The NELP report lists restaurant cooks, food preparation workers, home and personal care aides and cleaning service jobs as those that have taken the biggest hit in wages. Real wages for restaurant cooks have declined 8.9 percent since 2009.

The Brookings report found immigrants (legal and illegal) are clustered in those same sectors — health care, food prep and service and the accommodations industry. In private households, immigrants were 49 percent of all workers, in the accommodation sector they were 31 percent, and in home and personal care they were more than 20 percent of all workers.

Among the 15 occupations expected to see the largest numerical growth in coming years, eight had high shares of foreign-born workers, and among the 15 fastest growing occupations, seven had high shares of foreign-born workers.

“If current trends continue, we would expect to see these occupations filled disproportionately by immigrants,” the Brookings report stated in 2012.

Here is a New York Times chart based on the NELP report that shows where wages declined the most, followed by a chart from the Brookings report that shows how immigrants share in the largest growing jobs. You can compare the overlap.

Screen Shot 2015-09-04 at 8.25.20 AM

 

 

 In 1970, immigrants made up approximately 5 percent of the population and 5 percent of the civilian labor force, the Brookings report notes. In 2010 that number grew to 23.1 million immigrants in the labor force, making up 16.4 percent of the total.
Screen Shot 2015-09-04 at 10.30.46 AM

“As the economy sputters along with some signs of improvement, people often point to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’s list of fastest-growing occupations as the bright spots in the labor market,” Bloomberg Business reported in a 2012 story about the Brookings report.

“These occupations—in nursing, home health care, and food service—are low-skilled, low-pay jobs, but at least they are market segments that present opportunity.  Much of that opportunity, it turns out, is being seized by immigrants.”

Since 1970, the foreign-born population has increased by more than 325 percent, while wages and share of income fell. 

The U.S. foreign-born population — legal and illegal immigrants — is at an all-time high of 42.1 million, recent Census Bureau data shows. And by 2023 the foreign-born population will exceed 51 million — the largest share of total population ever recorded in American history.

Nearly one in five U.S. residents will be an immigrant by 2060, largely because of legal immigration, not illegal immigration, a previous Center for Immigration Studies analysis of the Census data found. And immigrants will account for 82 percent of population growth in the U.S. from 2010 through 2060.

If federal law is not changed, the U.S. is on track to issue 10 million green cards over the next decade — a massive new permanent resident bloc larger than the combined populations of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.

(Photo: Screenshot/ Center for Immigration Studies)

 

 

 

When Global Leaders and the UN Retreat….

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When the United States as part of the P5+1 negotiated with Iran on a nuclear deal, at no time were demands placed on Iran to stop the tyrannical and militant support of Bashir al Assad’s civil war in Syria. The same holds true, when any diplomatic efforts between Russia and the United States avoids Russian support for the Assad regime. With 11 million Syrians that have fled their home country, the damage, the costs and the deaths coupled with desperation leads to a global crisis, where advanced world leaders shirk their duty to protect.

Nothing is more shameful when refugees fleeing to freedom by any means possible including boats, where passengers are attacked and or drowned such that bodies wash up on shore.

From the DailyMail:

 

Refugees lay on train tracks in fear of being taken to camps

Scuffles break out at a small Hungarian train station as refugees lay on the train tracks in fear of being taken to camps.

Riot police, who were waiting at the small station of Bicske, ordered the asylum seekers off the train. Many clung to the doors and some wrestled trying to get back on board.

 

One man threw himself on the tracks with his wife clutching their crying baby in fear of being sent to a camp.

On arriving at the town of Bicske, which has a migrant reception centre, many refugees were shouting “No camp, no camp!”

The train left Budapest’s Keleti station bound for the town Sopron, near the Austrian border, this morning after more than 1,000 people poured into the capital’s main terminal.

 

Hungary’s rail operator said no direct trains are running to western Europe due to “railway transport” security reasons. Despite this, desperate refugees pushed themselves and their children on to carriages through doors and windows. Many cheered as trains pulled into the station.

Hungary had initially allowed people to travel on Monday, letting more than 1,000 people pack on to westbound trains from Budapest, but then withdrew the option 24 hours later.

The decision to allow people inside the train station today came hours before Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban met European leaders in Brussels to discuss the growing humanitarian crisis.

He said that because so many migrants wanted to reach Germany, it was a “German problem”, however European Parliament President Martin Schulz argued that fair and just distribution of people was needed.

‘A German problem’

“The problem is not a European problem. The problem is a German problem.”

“Nobody would like to stay in Hungary, neither in Slovakia, nor Poland, nor Estonia. All of them would like to go to Germany. Our job is only to register them,” he said.

Mr Orban said EU rules state that countries must protect their boarders and refugees looking to leave the country without registration is “totally against European regulations”.

Under EU regulations, refugees must seek asylum in the first country they arrive in, however this has come into question after Germany said it would accept asylum claims from Syrian refugees regardless of where they entered the EU.

Austrian authorities say refugees arriving in Vienna from Budapest will not be checked or registered and will be allowed to continue their onwards journey.

Police chief Gerhard Puerstl said: “What we certainly can’t do is check all those people coming through, establish all their identities, or possibly even arrest them – we can’t do this, and we have no plans to do this.”

Meanwhile, Czech police announced that they will stop detaining Syrian migrants who have claimed asylum in Hungary but are attempting to travel to Germany, according to local media in the country.

Hungary is the gateway to Europe

More than 150,000 refugees and economic migrants have travelled to Hungary this year as it is the gateway to the EU for those crossing by land through Macedonia and Serbia. Many of those, who have come from Syria or Afghanistan, are looking to travel to western countries such as Germany and Austria.

The mass influx of refugees seeking asylum in Europe are fleeing war-torn countries from the Middle East and parts of Africa.

Eritreans, who are granted refugee status when they reach Germany, make up a large number of those fleeing across the Mediterranean to Europe – around 15 per cent of the total reaching Europe’s sea border are from the country.

Most of the Eritreans arriving in Europe have travelled by sea, initially, via Ethiopia and Sudan.

 

More than Half of Immigrants on Welfare

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Contrary to declaration from the White House:

How do immigrants strengthen the U.S. economy? Below is our top 10 list for ways immigrants help to grow the American economy.

  1. Immigrants start businesses. According to the Small Business Administration, immigrants are 30 percent more likely to start a business in the United States than non-immigrants, and 18 percent of all small business owners in the United States are immigrants.
  2. Immigrant-owned businesses create jobs for American workers. According to the Fiscal Policy Institute, small businesses owned by immigrants employed an estimated 4.7 million people in 2007, and according to the latest estimates, these small businesses generated more than $776 billion annually.
  3. Immigrants are also more likely to create their own jobs. According the U.S. Department of Labor, 7.5 percent of the foreign born are self-employed compared to 6.6 percent among the native-born.
  4. Immigrants develop cutting-edge technologies and companies.  According to the National Venture Capital Association, immigrants have started 25 percent of public U.S. companies that were backed by venture capital investors. This list includes Google, eBay, Yahoo!, Sun Microsystems, and Intel.
  5. Immigrants are our engineers, scientists, and innovators. According to the Census Bureau, despite making up only 16 percent of the resident population holding a bachelor’s degree or higher, immigrants represent 33 percent of engineers, 27 percent of mathematicians, statisticians, and computer scientist, and 24 percent of physical scientists. Additionally, according to the Partnership for a New American Economy, in 2011, foreign-born inventors were credited with contributing to more than 75 percent of patents issued to the top 10 patent-producing universities.
  6. Immigration boosts earnings for American workers. Increased immigration to the United States has increased the earnings of Americans with more than a high school degree. Between 1990 and 2004, increased immigration was correlated with increasing earnings of Americans by 0.7 percent and is expected to contribute to an increase of 1.8 percent over the long-term, according to a study by the University of California at Davis.
  7. Immigrants boost demand for local consumer goods. The Immigration Policy Center estimates that the purchasing power of Latinos and Asians, many of whom are immigrants, alone will reach $1.5 trillion and $775 billion, respectively, by 2015.
  8. Immigration reform legislation like the DREAM Act reduces the deficit.  According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, under the 2010 House-passed version of the DREAM Act, the federal deficit would be reduced by $2.2 billion over ten years because of increased tax revenues.
  9. Comprehensive immigration reform would create jobs. Comprehensive immigration reform could support and create up to 900,000 new jobs within three years of reform from the increase in consumer spending, according to the Center for American Progress.
  10. Comprehensive immigration reform would increase America’s GDP.The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found that even under low investment assumptions, comprehensive immigration reform would increase GDP by between 0.8 percent and 1.3 percent from 2012 to 2016.

Report: More than half of immigrants on welfare

USA Today: More than half of the nation’s immigrants receive some kind of government welfare, a figure that’s far higher than the native-born population’s, according to a report to be released Wednesday.

About 51% of immigrant-led households receive at least one kind of welfare benefit, including Medicaid, food stamps, school lunches and housing assistance, compared to 30% for native-led households, according to the report from the Center for Immigration Studies, a group that advocates for lower levels of immigration.

Those numbers increase for households with children, with 76% of immigrant-led households receiving welfare, compared to 52% for the native-born.

The findings are sure to fuel debate on the presidential campaign trail as Republican candidates focus on changing the nation’s immigration laws, from calls for mass deportations to ending birthright citizenship.

Steven Camarota, director of research at the center and author of the report, said that’s a much-needed conversation to make the country’s immigration system more “selective.”

“This should not be understood as some kind of defect or moral failing on the part of immigrants,” Camarota said about the findings. “Rather, what it represents is a system that allows a lot of less-educated immigrants to settle in the country, who then earn modest wages and are eligible for a very generous welfare system.”

Linda Chavez agrees with Camarota that the country’s welfare system is too large and too costly. But Chavez, a self-professed conservative who worked in President Reagan’s administration, said it’s irresponsible to say immigrants are taking advantage of the country’s welfare system any more than native-born Americans.

Chavez said today’s immigrants, like all other immigrant waves in the country’s history, start off poorer and have lower levels of education, making it unfair to compare their welfare use to the long-established native-born population. She said immigrants have larger households, making it more likely that one person in that household will receive some kind of welfare benefit. And she said many benefits counted in the study are going to U.S.-born children of immigrants, skewing the findings even more.

“When you take all of those issues into account, (the report) is less worrisome,” she said.

Chavez, president of the Becoming American Institute, a conservative group that advocates for higher levels of legal immigration to reduce illegal immigration, said politicians should be careful about using the data. Rather than focus on the fact that immigrants are initially more dependent on welfare than the U.S.-born, she said they should focus on studies that show what happens to the children of those immigrants.

“These kids who get subsidized school lunches today will go on to graduate high school … will go on to college and move up to the middle class of America,” Chavez said. “Every time we have a nativist backlash in our history, we forget that we see immigrants change very rapidly in the second generation.”

The center’s report is based on 2012 data from the Census Bureau’s Survey of Income and Program Participation. It includes immigrants who have become naturalized citizens, legal permanent residents, those on short-term visas and undocumented immigrants.

Camarota said one of the most shocking findings from the report was the high number of native-born Americans also on welfare. About 76% of immigrant households with children are on welfare, but so are 52% of native-born households with children.

“Most people have a sense that if you were to work for $10 an hour, 40 hours a week, you couldn’t be receiving welfare, could you? You couldn’t be living in public housing, could you?” he said. “The answer is yes, you can. That’s one of the most surprising things about this study.”

Other findings in the report:

  • Immigrants are more likely to be working than their native-born neighbors. The report found that 87% of immigrant households had at least one worker, compared to 76% for native households.
  • The majority of immigrants using welfare come from Central America, Mexico and the Caribbean. The use of welfare is lower for immigrants from East Asia (32%), Europe (26%) and South Asia (17%).
  • Immigrants who have been in the U.S. more than 20 years use welfare less often, but their rates remain higher than native-born households.

    • If you need some immigration advice, contact a team of immigration lawyers who will help you out.