Category Archives: Illegal Immigration

U.S. to Say So Long to UNESCO, Finally, but not UNESCO

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But, the Trump administration is leaving yet one major piece of business undone and that is UNRWA.

This Palestinian refugee claims that even though UNRWA was created in order to help Palestinian refugees, UNRWA hires foreigners and some of them earn wages that are high enough to support 20 local Palestinians: “An UNRWA employee can earn $10,000 per month. Others earn more. They have luxury cars and apartments. Some have villas for free. Meanwhile, local Palestinian teachers hired by UNRWA earn $700 to $800 per month. The people from abroad get 10 times more. The more the refugees suffer, these people live a more luxurious life. I blame them for me being a refugee.”  Read more here.

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To see how much money the United States gives to UNRWA, go here. It is a chart of the top donors as of December 31, 2016. See where that money allegedly goes exactly and why by clicking here.

UNESCO photo

Primer:

Economist: IT MUST have felt like déjà vu for Rami Hamdallah, the Palestinian prime minister, as he crossed the heavily-fortified border into Gaza on October 2nd. It was his first visit in two-and-a-half years. There were speeches, rallies and lofty promises to end the schism that has paralysed Palestinian politics for more than a decade. It was like a replay of a trip he made in 2014 to inaugurate a new unity government— which fell apart within weeks.

The Palestinian territories split in 2007, a year after Hamas, the militant Islamist group, won a majority in parliament. It seized control of Gaza after months of bloody fighting with its nationalist rival, Fatah. Since then Hamas has run the coastal strip as a separate fief, with its own civil servants and police. The two parties have signed six reconciliation deals meant to end the split, but none held. Hamas was loth to give up its enclave.

Now it seems more amenable. It has agreed to cede control of the civilian ministries in Gaza. Over the coming year it will add 3,000 police officers from the Palestinian Authority (PA), which runs the West Bank and is dominated by Fatah. Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’s number two, said he would “break the neck” of anyone who opposes reconciliation. (That may not be an idle threat: in the 1980s his job was to kill Palestinians who collaborated with Israel.)

Hamas has few alternatives at this point. Life in Gaza has been grim for a decade, amid three wars and a blockade imposed by both Israel and Egypt. Conditions worsened further this spring when Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, slapped his own sanctions on the territory to press Hamas into a deal. Most of Gaza’s 2m people receive just four hours of electricity a day. Tap water is equally scarce and when it is available it is brackish and polluted. Nearly two-thirds of young people cannot find work. In dingy, crowded hospitals, basic medicines are in short supply. Hamas is keen to put someone else in charge of the misery.

So are regional powers. Qatar, the main sponsor of Hamas, is under embargo by Egypt and three of its Gulf neighbours, which want the emirate to cut ties with Islamists. It has not halted aid to Hamas, but it has quietly urged the group to reconcile with Fatah. The United Arab Emirates has dangled the prospect of massive investment in a post-Hamas Gaza. It is working closely with Muhammad Dahlan, an ex-Fatah security boss who was banished by Mr Abbas and now lives in Abu Dhabi.

The greatest pressure has come from Egypt, which controls Rafah, the sole border crossing accessible to most Palestinians. It has been largely closed since 2013. Egypt accuses Hamas of working with jihadists who are fighting a bloody insurgency in Sinai. Though the charges are exaggerated, Hamas has indeed allowed dozens of wanted Egyptian militants to seek refuge in Gaza. The generals in Cairo would be happy to see Mr Abbas’s men back on the border.

Hamas has not agreed to that. It may let Mr Abbas run the schools and hospitals, but it will not give up a militia that boasts tens of thousands of fighters and a cache of rockets. “This will never be up for discussion,” says Moussa Abu Marzouk, a top Hamas official. So this effort is likely to fail for the same sorts of reasons as the past six. Mr Abbas cannot accept a well-armed group operating under his nose. It would be a threat to the unpopular president’s tenuous rule.

It could also bankrupt his government. Israel would probably withhold the tax revenue on which the PA depends, and some Western countries might suspend foreign aid. “If someone from Hamas has a weapon, I’ll put him in prison,” Mr Abbas told Egyptian television. He may not get the chance.

***

The State Department on Thursday announced America’s withdrawal from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. As with everything that President Trump does, the move provoked journalistic anger and agony. Prepare for years of sob stories about UNESCO heritage sites neglected and aspiring developing-world scientists unfunded, all due to Trumpian unilateralism.

Yet this was a sound and overdue step that will help advance peace and U.N. reform.

In its statement, the State Department cited “continuing anti-Israel bias” at UNESCO, among other things. The Paris-based agency is far from the only U.N. outfit to single out the Jewish state for opprobrium. But UNESCO’s anti-Israel stances have been egregious even by this global body’s debased standards, especially since 2011. That was the year the Palestinian Authority sought and won admission to UNESCO as a full member-state. As Jonathan Schanzer of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies told me, “The Palestinians targeted UNESCO early as part of their Palestine-194 strategy”–the PA effort to win recognition as a state in U.N. halls rather than through talks with Israel. “UNESCO has played a role in this strategy, and it isn’t done yet.”

The Obama administration denounced the PA’s admission, with then-State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland calling it “regrettable, premature” and harmful to “our shared goal to a comprehensive, just and lasting peace.” Washington cut off American dollars for UNESCO under a Bill Clinton-era law that prohibits the U.S. government from funding any U.N. agency that admits a non-state as a member. American funding, once accounting for more than one-fifth of UNESCO’s budget, hasn’t been restored since 2011. The agency has lost out on some $600 million as a result.

UNESCO only doubled down on its anti-Israel agitation in the years that followed, however, passing a raft of resolutions that denied the Jewish (and Christian) connection to Jerusalem and other holy sites in Israel.

A resolution on Jerusalem passed in May described Israel as the “occupying power,” denying the Jewish state’s claim to its own capital. Another Jerusalem resolution, approved last year, referred to the Western Wall and the Temple Mount by their Muslim names only. The agency thus attached the U.N.’s name to the odious Arab project to de-Judaize the City of David. That move prompted then U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to distance himself from “any perceived undertaking to repudiate the undeniable common reverence for these sites.” Even UNESCO’s left-leaning chief, Irina Bokova, criticized the text.

Yet anti-Israelism and–it must be said–anti-Semitism are part of UNESCO’s diplomatic culture. When, in July this year, Israel’s ambassador to UNESCO called for a minute of silence for Holocaust victims, Cuba’s envoy objected: “Only the Chair can request a minute of silence. So with your indulgence, let me request Mr. Chairman, that we stand for a minute of silence for all of the Palestinians who have died in the region.” Footage of the scene, available on the website of the indispensable U.N. Watch, shows numerous delegates standing up and clapping in favor of the Cuban motion.

It was this black record that impelled the Trump administration to withdraw from UNESCO. The decision, by the way, is not without precedent. President Carter withdrew the U.S. from the International Labor Organization for three years and didn’t rejoin until the ILO took steps to reform itself. The Reagan administration in 1983 pulled the U.S. out of UNESCO over its “hostility toward the basic institutions of a free society.” President Reagan was worried about a creepy UNESCO proposal to have the agency and its authoritarian members license and regulate foreign reporters. Washington returned to UNESCO in 2002, under George W. Bush.

By withdrawing from UNESCO (once more), the Trump administration is sending an important message to the U.N. mandarins: that America doesn’t have infinite patience for international institutions that function as platforms for Jew-hatred. Long before Donald Trump came on the scene, that used to be a bipartisan American position.

AG Sessions Announces Renewed Project SAFE Neighborhoods

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Sounds great but it costs money and well….the money goes to states in the form of grants….is your area included?

For Chicago, the stipulations are rather thin on substance:

The Chicago PSN team will implement the following promising strategies to achieve five violent crime reduction objectives: 1) improved murder and non-fatal shooting clearance rates; 2) increased number of illegal firearms recovered from the district;
3) reduced retaliatory violence; 4) improved community partnerships to reduce violent crime; and 5) improved use of technology and data to develop efficient
and effective local violence reduction strategies.

Attorney General Announces Reinvigoration of Project Safe Neighborhoods

ALEXANDRIA, Va. – Today, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced several Department of Justice actions to reduce the rising tide of violent crime in America.

Foremost of those actions is the reinvigoration of “Project Safe Neighborhoods,” a program that has been historically successful in bringing together all levels of law enforcement to reduce violent crime and make our neighborhoods safer for everyone. In announcing this recommitment to Project Safe Neighborhoods, the Attorney General issued a memo directing United States Attorneys to implement an enhanced violent crime reduction program that incorporates the lessons learned since Project Safe Neighborhoods launched in 2001.

In a statement on the program, the Attorney General said, “According to the FBI, the violent crime rate has risen by nearly seven percent over the past two years, and the homicide rate has risen by more than 20 percent. We cannot be complacent or hope that this is just an anomaly: we have a duty to take action. Fortunately, we have a President who understands that and has directed his administration to reduce crime. The Department of Justice today announces the foundation of our plan to reduce crime: prioritizing Project Safe Neighborhoods, a program that has been proven to work. Let me be clear – Project Safe Neighborhoods is not just one policy idea among many. This is the centerpiece of our crime reduction strategy. Taking what we have learned since the program began in 2001, we have updated it and enhanced it, emphasizing the role of our U.S. Attorneys, the promise of new technologies, and above all, partnership with local communities. With these changes, I believe that this program will be more effective than ever and help us fulfill our mission to make America safer.”

The Attorney General also announced the following Department of Justice initiatives to help reduce violent crime:

–Additional Assistant United States Attorney Positions to Focus on Violent Crime – The Department is allocating 40 prosecutors to approximately 20 U.S. Attorney’s Offices to focus on violent crime reduction.

-More Cops on the Streets (COPS Hiring Grants) – As part of our continuing commitment to crime prevention efforts, increased community policing, and the preservation of vital law enforcement jobs, the Department will be awarding approximately $98 million in FY 2017 COPS Hiring Grants to state, local, and tribal law enforcement agencies.

-Organized Crime and Drug Enforcement Task Force’s (OCDETF) National Gang Strategic Initiative –The National Gang Strategic Initiative promotes  creative enforcement strategies and best practices that will assist in developing investigations of violent criminal groups and gangs into enterprise-level OCDETF prosecutions.  Under this initiative, OCDETF provides “seed money” to locally-focused gang investigations, giving state, local, and tribal investigators and prosecutors the resources and tools needed to identify connections between lower-level gangs and national-level drug trafficking organizations.

-Critical Training and Technical Assistance to State and Local Partners –The Department has a vast array of training and technical assistance resources available to state, local and tribal law enforcement, victims groups, and others.  To ensure that agencies in need of assistance are able to find the training and materials they need, OJP will make available a Violence Reduction Response Center to serve as a “hot line” to connect people to these resources.

-Crime Gun Intelligence Centers (CGIC) – The Department has provided grant funding to support a comprehensive approach to identifying the most violent offenders in a jurisdiction, using new technologies such as gunshot detection systems combined with gun crime intelligence from NIBIN, eTrace, and investigative efforts.  These FY 2017 grants were awarded to Phoenix, AZ, and Kansas City, MO.

-Expand ATF’s NIBIN Urgent Trace Program – The Department will expand ATF’s NIBIN Urgent Trace Program nationwide by the end of the year.  Through this program, any firearm submitted for tracing that is associated with a NIBIN “hit” (which means it can be linked to a shooting incident) will be designated an “urgent” trace and the requestor will get information back about the firearm’s first retail purchaser within 24 hours, instead of 5 to 6 business days.

70 WH Points the Democrat Caucus Declared DOA

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Poor Chuck and Nancy…

President Trump’s political dalliance with “Chuck and Nancy” already is running into problems, as the top congressional Democrats balk at the president’s new terms for a deal to help the roughly 800,000 young illegal immigrants known as ‘Dreamers.’

“This proposal fails to represent any attempt at compromise,” House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said in a joint statement, after the administration announced the demands Sunday night.

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*** But this could mean no other legislative business will advance for the balance of Trump’s first term.

WT: Determined to finally solve illegal immigration, the White House submitted a 70-point enforcement plan to Congress Sunday proposing the stiffest reforms ever offered by an administration — including a massive rewrite of the law in order to eliminate loopholes illegal immigrants have exploited to gain a foothold in the U.S.

The plans, seen by The Washington Times, include President Trump’s calls for a border wall, more deportation agents, a crackdown on sanctuary cities and stricter limits to chain migration — all issues the White House says need to be part of any bill Congress passes to legalize illegal immigrant “Dreamers” currently protected by the Obama-era deportation amnesty known as DACA.

But the plans break serious new ground on the legal front, giving federal agents more leeway to deny illegal immigrants at the border, to arrest and hold them when they’re spotted in the interior, and to deport them more speedily. The goal, the White House said, is to ensure major changes to border security, interior enforcement and the legal immigration system.

“Anything that is done addressing the status of DACA recipients needs to include these three reforms and solve these three problems,” a senior White House official told The Times. “If you don’t solve these problems then you’re not going to have a secure border, you’re not going to have a lawful immigration system and you’re not going to be able to protect American workers.”

All told, the list includes 27 different suggestions on border security, 39 improvements to interior enforcement and four major changes to the legal immigration system.

The White House said the list was built from the ground up, with input from the Justice, State and Labor Departments and the three main immigration agencies at Homeland Security, each of whom was asked what tools they needed to finally get a handle on illegal immigration.

Ideas poured in, ranging cracking down on sanctuary cities that shield illegal immigrants — a long-running battle — to new proposals, such as doling out assistance to other in the Western Hemisphere, enlisting them as partners in the effort to stop illegal immigrants heading north.

The running theme of the list, though, is closing loopholes that illegal immigrants have exploited:

 

• Lax asylum standards, which illegal immigrants have learned to game through saying “magic words” that earn them instant protections, would be stiffened.

• The Unaccompanied Alien Children — or UAC — who streamed to the U.S. under President Obama would have to prove they really are without parents and are fleeing abuse, in order to access generous humanitarian protections.

• Visitors who come legally but overstay their visas — perhaps now an even larger group of illegal immigrants than those who jump the border — would, for the first time, face a misdemeanor penalty.

• A 2001 Supreme Court decision that has forced the release of tens of thousands of illegal immigrants, including murderers, would be curtailed.

• The ability of federal, state and local authorities to detain illegal immigrants would be fully enshrined in law, helping settle a long-running question that’s fueled some sanctuary cities.

Also on the list are proposals that have been included in past immigration bills that garnered bipartisan support such as canceling the annual visa lottery that doles out 50,000 green cards at random, and requiring all businesses to use E-Verify, the government’s currently voluntary system for checking to make sure new hires are legally eligible to work.

Immigrant-rights advocates had feared the move, saying they believed Mr. Trump was giving in to hard-liners in his administration, including senior adviser Stephen Miller.

“President Trump and Members of Congress need to decide – do they want to resolve this crisis, or do they want to fall prey to Stephen Miller et al’s strategy to kill legislation and expose all 800,000 DACA beneficiaries to deportation?” Frank Sharry, executive director of America’s Voice, said in a statement last week in anticipation of the announcement.

Many of the items on the president’s list have drawn bipartisan support in the past, including more fencing, a massive boost in Border Patrol agents, the end to the diversity visa lottery and mandatory use of E-Verify.

Each of those was, in fact, part of the 2013 immigration bill the Senate approved, with the support of every single Democrat in the chamber.

But Democrats say they only supported those measures at the time as part of a broad compromise that offered legal status to some 8 million of the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the country at that point. They said a smaller legalization for Dreamers can’t be coupled with that broad an enforcement surge.

“Please do not put the burden on the Dreamers to accept every aspect of comprehensive immigration reform to get a chance to become citizens of the United States,” Sen. Richard Durbin, a Democrat who was part of the so-called “Gang of Eight” senators that wrote the 2013 bill, told top administration officials at a hearing last week. “That’s too much to ask.”

The senior White House official, though, said Mr. Durbin’s logic amounted to a “false pretense that the safety of the American people should be held hostage to some other goal.”

“Congress doesn’t need an excuse to pass laws that make our streets safer or our country safer or make our jobs more secure. It’s just the right thing to do,” the official said.

The administration’s new list is likely to irk Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who emerged from a meeting with Mr. Trump last month insisting they had the outlines of a Dream Act-style deal that would grant a pathway to citizenship to Dreamers in exchange for limited border security, such as technology, boosting the Coast Guard or adding more inspectors at ports of entry.

The two leaders said they had explicitly won an agreement not to couple the Dream Act with any new action on Mr. Trump’s proposed border wall.

DoJ Investigates Harvard U, How About other Universities?

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We keep hearing the term ‘class warfare’ meaning the population in the United States has been officially divided into groups where the left has applied labels. This essentially translates to breaking down the profiles of people into segmented minority groups such as LGBT, color, religion, culture, country of origin and economic status. Hence the divisions manifest.

College campuses are the incubation hubs for where the defined groups are most notable and Harvard is being investigated by the Department of Justice on the matter of admissions related to exacerbating division and class warfare.

Investigating Harvard is a good start and may provide a model for what is occurring at other universities such as Berkeley, Columbia, Georgetown and hundreds more.

Related reading: Since 1978

Newsweek published a summary which itself appears to endorse the affirmative action via admissions not only at Harvard but any college across the country. The debate begins…

Harvard’s Affirmative Action Program is Now the Subject of a DOJ Investigation

The Trump administration is investigating Harvard University over whether the elite university is favoring particular racial groups in its admissions policies — a probe that critics say is an attack on affirmative action on campus.

The Department of Justice confirmed its investigation, which follows reports that the agency was hiring lawyers to begin a probe into whether Harvard was exercising “intentional race-based discrimination” to pick its student body, the New York Times reported in August.

Supporters of affirmative action, which allows colleges to use race as a factor in their selection process, said such an investigation would undermine educational opportunities for students of color.

“The Department of Justice has launched an unprecedented assault on efforts to promote racial diversity in higher education,” said Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a national watchdog group.

The Justice Department has not outlined which racial groups it believes are being favored at Harvard or, potentially, other universities. But the department’s actions under Attorney General Jeff Sessions are aligning with an argument popular in right-wing circles that affirmative action is reverse discrimination that hurts white students. Critics say the Justice Department investigation is a big by the Trump administration to energize its base.

The Justice Department’s move arrives when for the first time the majority of Harvard’s incoming class was made up of minorities, with 50.8 percent of the Class of 2021 from racial minorities, up from 47.3 percent last year.

“When you think about what the top priorities for the Department of Justice should be at this time when it comes to civil rights, I can’t imagine that chiming in for the first time against affirmative action policies should be at the top of the list,” Austin Evers, executive director of American Oversight, told Newsweek.

Evers’s group had filed a freedom-of-information request that led to the Justice Department revelation that it was indeed investigating Harvard.

Officially, the Justice Department has it was following up on a 2015 federal complaint filed by more than 60 Asian-American associations.

Harvard officials declined to comment on the investigation.

The alleged attack on affirmative action comes after Eric Dreiband, Trump’s pick to lead the Civil Rights Division, once defended the University of North Carolina when it was accused of discriminating against transgender people. Civil rights group protested his nomination to the position.

“The fact that Mr. Dreiband failed to separate himself from or condemn the politically charged investigations into affirmative action policies at colleges and universities makes his nomination even more concerning in light of this new information regarding the Department’s efforts,” Clarke said.

In 2016, the Supreme Court upheld the basic ideals of affirmative action, asserting that race could remain a factor considering a student’s admittance into a university. The court also cautioned universities to continually review their affirmative action programs and suggested that not all programs could stand up against “reverse racism” challenges. Supporters of affirmative action were frustrated that the High Court did not use the case to end all challenges to using race as a factor in selecting students.

Indeed, Harvard’s frustration was apparent in a statement issued to Newsweek with its no comment on Thursday: “To become leaders in our diverse society, students must have the ability to work with people from different backgrounds, life experiences and perspectives,” the school said. “Harvard remains committed to enrolling diverse classes of students. Harvard’s admissions process considers each applicant as a whole person, and we review many factors, consistent with the legal standards established by the U.S. Supreme Court.”

Refugee Proposal to Congress for 2018

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Click here to see the report and numbers filed for previous years including locations.

 

 

(Reuters) – The United States will admit a maximum of 45,000 refugees during the 2018 fiscal year, President Donald Trump said in a memorandum to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and released by the White House on Friday.

The cap, the lowest in decades, was proposed by the administration in a report to Congress on Wednesday.

Refugee advocates say the lower limit ignores growing humanitarian crises around the world that are causing people to flee their native countries in greater numbers, and represents a departure from U.S. global leadership.

The Trump administration says the lower cap is necessary so that U.S. officials can address a growing backlog of people applying for asylum inside the United States, and to do better vetting of refugees.

In its report to Congress, which was reviewed by Reuters, the administration said it may assess refugees on their “likelihood of successful assimilation and contribution to the United States.”

***

Then there is DACA:

A major deadline for recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy, or DACA, has arrived as the Trump administration continues to press forward in rolling back the Obama-era program for young undocumented immigrants.

Under the program, these immigrants, who entered the U.S. as children have been able to receive renewable two-year deferred action from deportation so that they can work or go to school.

As part of the wind-down process announced by Attorney General Jeff Sessions last month and under the leadership of the Department of Homeland Security, those eligible for DACA had until Thursday to properly file for a renewal request and other associated applications for employment authorization to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).

After Thursday, young undocumented immigrants will not be able to apply for renewal of their DACA status.

According to DHS, eligible individuals are DACA recipients whose DACA and work authorization expire between Sept. 5, 2017, and March 5, 2018, inclusive. Of the approximately 154,200 individuals whose DACA is set to expire between Sept. 5, 2017, and March 5, 2018, just over 106,000 either have renewal requests currently pending with USCIS, or have already had USCIS adjudicate their renewal request.

Acting Secretary of DHS Elaine Duke released a memo on Wednesday urging all those still eligible to request a renewal of their DACA status as soon as possible if they have not done so already.

“I urge you to make this a priority. The renewal process is quicker than an initial request and requires minimal documentation, so take the time now to fill out and properly file your renewal request.  It is imperative that USCIS physically receives your request by October 5th,” said Duke.

USCIS has also been frequently updating applicants over social media, urging followers to file their requests in order to get their case adjudicated in time.

But in light of the recent devastation in Puerto Rico, which left millions without power, food or shelter, Duke said she has directed USCIS to consider on a “case-by-case basis DACA requests received from U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico residents.”

“As of today, fewer than 20 current recipients from the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico have yet to renew with USCIS,” she added.

Since the announcement, several lawmakers have made moves on drafting legislation to serve as a temporary fix to the DACA program as the roll back allowed for six months of adjudication, time that Congress could use to develop new immigration laws.

President Trump hosted a dinner last month with Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer which caused an uproar after the two Democrats issued a statement saying they had they had agreed to finalize a law “quickly” that would protect DACA recipients, and that the law would also include border security, “excluding the wall.” More here.