Wednesday, October 21, 2015

RR Watch - Ann Corcoran: Lutheran lobbyist says 100,000 Syrians is a responsible number for FY2016


Posted by Ann Corcoran on October 21, 2015

State Department representative says it isn’t possible.

But, get this!  We learn that the United Nations has 22,000 Syrians picked out for us already!

BrittneyNystrom_290

Brittney Nystrom, chief lobbyist for Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service. Since LIRS is almost 100% funded by US taxpayers, you are paying for most of her salary! Photo here: http://blog.lirs.org/brittney-nystrom/

Crocodile smile? --tma
By the way, one of the arguments Lutheran lobbyist Brittany Nystrom makes is that Lebanon has taken in tens of thousands of Syrians so far and so the much larger US should take in 100 million by comparison.  It is a ludicrous comparison that they love to make.  Remember that the Syrians going to Lebanon are there temporarily, in camps, and they will NOT become citizens of Lebanon.
Refugees who are resettled in America become permanent residents and citizens in a few short years—THEY WILL NEVER GO HOME EVEN IF THE SYRIAN CIVIL WAR ENDED TOMORROW.
You need only look to the Somali resettlement (now three decades old!) we mentioned in our previous post to know that the flow, once begun, will never end.
You know what the problem is with events like this?  Reporters and others in the audience don’t know enough about refugee resettlement so they accept the propaganda that Ms. Nystrom is only too happy to promote.
Please also be assured that Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (97% funded by your tax dollars) is a sponsor of the big New York pow-wow we wrote about this morning (probably sponsoring with your $$$).  The gathering is to get their marching orders for the 2016 Presidential election campaign.
Here is how the report from CNS News.com begins (emphasis is mine):
(CNSNews.com) – Of the world’s 16 million refugees, 4.1 million have emerged from the Syrian conflict alone, a United Nations refugee resettlement officer told a gathering at the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington on Monday.
And as Europe deals with a refugee crisis of historic proportions, “We’d certainly like U.S. to do more,” said Larry Yunck.
For the fiscal year beginning in October, the United States has promised to take in 10,000 Syrian refugees. That number is “woefully inadequate,” Brittney Nystrom of the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Center told the gathering.
Kelly Gauger representing the US State Department told the gathering that we simply don’t have enough money for 100,000 Syrians in one year, but Nystrom is quick to spread more propaganda—that refugees are self-sufficient in 8 months and are taxpaying members of society at that point.  That is simply ludicrous (why would we be seeing stories like the one from Erie, PA yesterday about “impoverished” refugees then?).
Remember readers!  The federal government defines self-sufficiency as being OFF OF CASH ASSISTANCE. Refugees can still get (and do get!) food stamps, subsidized housing, Medicaid, and education for the children paid for by you—the taxpayers—long after 8 months.
CNS News continues:
She (Kelly Gauger) said it’s one thing for refugee advocates such as Nystrom to be calling for 100,000 Syrians to come here in FY 2016, but “we need significantly more money than we’re getting now, and I’m not sure that many of us have confidence that we’re going to get that money from this Congress.”
Nystrom said she didn’t want to leave the audience with the perception that refugees are “just sucking up resources.”  [LOL! Of course not!—-ed]
“That’s not the case,” she said. “Most of the refugees that we help resettle become self-suffienct very, very quickly…
“And we know that communities are made richer who resettle refugees,” Nystrom added. “They gain in resources from refugees who open businesses, who contribute to the economy of their community — and the amount of time that refugees are eligible for public assistance is very limited.
“There’s an 8-month window where a refugee receives cash assistance. After that period of time, they’re expected to become completely self-sufficient. So there is an outlay of resources at the beginning of the resettlement process, but the country as a whole benefits from resettling refugees.”
Again, apparently those in audience like this one don’t know enough to ask about ALL OF THE OTHER SOCIAL SERVICES REFUGEES RECEIVE FOR YEARS AND YEARS, or, how much LIRS is paid (out of the federal treasury) to resettle refugees.
Gauger reported that the UN High Commissioner for Refugees has referred 22,000 Syrians to the US for resettlement.  97% of the Syrians admitted in FY2015 are Muslims from UN camps, so I guess we can conclude that the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service is not concerned about saving Syrian Christians as a first priority.