Tag Archives: Immigration

News

New study: 70% of households headed by immigrants are collecting welfare

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Net annual cost of illegal immigration
Net annual cost of illegal immigration

The Washington Times reports on the latest numbers from the Census Bureau.

Excerpt:

The latest Census Bureau numbers find that more than seven of 10 households headed by immigrants in California, and nearly the same amount in Texas, are on the taxpayer dole.

[…]According to the latest numbers from 2014, fully 63 percent of non-citizens are living off at least one welfare program. That translates into 4.68 million households.

[…]“Concern over immigrant welfare use is justified, as households headed by non-citizens’ use means means-tested welfare at high rates,” said the Center for Immigration Studies, in its report on the numbers. “Non-citizens in the data include illegal immigrants, long-term temporary visitors like guest workers, and permanent residents who have not naturalized.”

What’s most troublesome about the Census findings is the fact that the 63 percent of non-citizens on welfare actually grows to 70 percent for those who stay in-country 10 years or longer — meaning the entitlement mind only solidifies.

Meaning non-citizens on welfare don’t tend to get off welfare.

The reason I am posting about this study is because of the widespread perception on the left that all opposition to illegal immigration is just caused by racism. And similarly, support for border security has nothing to do with preventing crime and protecting our national security. It’s all caused by racism too. Well, when you look at a study like this, you can clearly see that people who oppose illegal immigration and support border security have other things on their minds than racism.

Right now, we are nearly $22 trillion in debt. And it’s climbing by over $1 trillion per year. We’re already spending too much money. Interest on the debt is becoming a larger and larger part of our budget, leaving less money for real priorities like defense and infrastructure. Someone is going to have to pay for all these handouts that are driving us into debt. Young people people have the most to lose, because they have their whole professional lives ahead of them.

I just want to be clear about something. I am very much in favor of skilled immigration. I think that people who come here to WORK  should be allowed to come here to WORK. While they are WORKING they should be ineligible for collecting any money from the government. They should not be able to vote or influence elections. They should not be able to bring any of their non-working relatives here. They should be deported if they commit a felony. They should be deported if they lose or quit their jobs. And if they are able to keep working, following the law, and staying off the dole, for a period of 10 years, then they should be allowed to apply for green cards. But our current system isn’t oriented towards skilled immigrants. All the concern on the left AND on the right AND in the churches is about refugees and illegal immigrants.

Personally, I think we could be a LOT more accepting of skilled immigrants if we got rid of all the welfare programs. After all, if there is no welfare to be collected, then why would people even want to come here? The only reason they would come would be for the right reason – for liberty. And in order to stay, they would have to work and follow the law. That’s who we want to bring in. If we only brought in law-abiding workers, then we could be a lot more generous about letting people of all races in.

And from a political point of view, we don’t do well when we import a bunch of big government liberals from countries that don’t accept American ideals, like individual liberty and limited government.

As far as I’m concerned, there should only be two paths to citizenship for immigrants: skilled labor and military service. And both of those for 10 years minimum. But that’s not how the current system works. I just want everyone to understand that this is not an issue that has no effect on taxpayers. If we bring in unskilled immigrants and refugees, then we are going to have to pay for their schooling, their health care, and maybe even basics like food and spending money.

Like we saw in my post about the rioting environmentalists in France, leftists are all for big spending – until they realize that they are going to be taxed to pay for it. Then, they start rioting to get out of being taxed to pay for what they voted for. Well, YOU’RE going to be taxed to pay for the unskilled immigrants brought in by “generous” politicians of both parties. Are you doing so well in your own lives that you have extra money to throw around to other people?

News

Christian mother Asia Bibi is being hunted house-by-house in Pakistan

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The sign the Pakistani men are holding should read "Hang Asia"
The sign the Pakistani men are holding should read “Hang Asia”

Have you heard about Asia Bibi? She’s the Christian woman who was imprisoned because of unsubstantiated charges made against her by her neighbors in Pakistan. Although she was finally found innocent, she remains in Pakistan. But she can’t live there because radicals trying to kill her. And they don’t want to let her leave the country.

The radically leftist UK Guardian says:

The family of Asia Bibi, the Christian woman who spent eight years on death row in Pakistan for blasphemy before being acquitted three weeks ago, claim they are being hunted by extremists going house to house with their photographs to try to track them down.

Bibi’s family have been in hiding since her acquittal by the country’s supreme court. She is in protective custody as part of a deal between the government and a hardline Islamic party, under which violent protests were called off while a review of the court ruling was undertaken.

Bibi’s lawyer, relatives and supporters have appealed for the family to be given asylum in a European or north American country.

Although the United Kingdom has taken in millions of unskilled immigrants from the Middle East – including many who started sex-trafficking rings  using underage British girls – they don’t want to take in Bibi. Why not?

A few months ago, I added the book “The Strange Death of Europe” to my reading list on the blog. It talks about the immigration policies of all the European nations, and what happens to people who question those policies. Not just to their careers, but to their lives. That book was written by Douglas Murray, and he wrote a column about Asia Bibi in National Review.

He writes:

Her case has had ramifications throughout Pakistani society in the years since. For instance, it provoked the statement by the brave governor of Punjab, Salman Taseer, which led to his own murder by one of his own bodyguards. In the days since her release from jail, there have been mass protests in Pakistan where thousands of enraged fanatics have called, literally, for Asia Bibi’s head.

[…][T]oday there are reports that the British government has said that it will not offer asylum to Asia Bibi. The reason being “security concerns” — that weasel term now used by all officialdom whenever it needs one last reason to avoid doing the right thing. According to this report, the government is concerned that if the U.K. offered asylum to Bibi it could cause “unrest among certain sections of the community.” … The “community” that the British government will be scared of is the community that comes from the same country that has tortured Asia Bibi for the last eight years.

The government is right to expect a backlash. There have been cases before of this “community” expressing its views. From the book-burnings and protests over The Satanic Verses affair in 1989 to the mass protest against cartoonists, which was the “community’s” response to the Charlie Hebdo massacre in 2015, the Pakistani Muslim community in the U.K. has never been shy of expressing its views. Occasionally you even get a case like that at Easter 2016, when a Muslim from Bradford drove up to Glasgow to kill another Muslim (a shopkeeper called Asad Shah) because Mr. Shah came from a minority Muslim group that his killer deemed heretical. Which you might say is another example of “diversity.”

These days, many people are voting for policies on the basis of how it makes them feel about themselves, or how it makes them look to others. As long as they aren’t spending their own money, or risking their own safety, these feelings-based voters want to be very  generous. Very generous spending other people’s money. Very generous risking other people’s safety. Is that real generosity?

We should definitely have a system that allows highly-skilled immigrants to come here to work. And if they prove that they are hard-working and law-abiding, then they should be able to apply for permanent residency. But we also need to be careful about bringing people in who will not respect basic human rights, like Asia Bibi’s right to religious liberty. That’s not compassion, it’s foolishness.

By the way, don’t expect Western feminists to say anything about Asia Bibi’s situation. That would be going against their “intersectional” allies – something they aren’t willing to do.

Polemics

The Southern Baptist Convention’s progressive immigration policies threaten public safety

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Russell Moore and Barack Obama
Russell Moore and Barack Obama

I have a confession to make. I have really been struggling with the Southern Baptist Conventions slide into liberalism, not just on moral issues, but on policy issues as well. The straw that broke the camel’s back for me is the SBC slide towards open borders. Thankfully, not everyone thinks it is “compassionate” to spend other people’s money and risk other people’s safety. The Heritage Foundation, my favorite think tank, is still taking the conservative view on immigration. And they do it by looking at the evidence of how open border policy is working out in other times and other places.

Here’s the latest on Germany from Robin Simcox, writing at the Daily Signal.

Excerpt:

Diana Feldman received an unusual text message from the phone of her 14-year-old daughter, Susanna, late last month.

Written in broken German, the message said she would be back home in a few weeks and that her mother should not try to find her.

Yet the message was not from Susanna. She had already been raped and strangled, and her body was dumped next to some railroad tracks in the city of Wiesbaden in western Germany.

[…]Ali Bashar, a 20-year-old Iraqi Kurd, entered Germany in October 2015 with his parents and was a blight from the beginning. According to the BBC, he was allegedly tied to a robbery, possession of a weapon, and sexual assault on an 11-year-old girl in the refugee shelter where he lived (and where he dealtdrugs).

Bashar’s asylum claim was rejected toward the end of 2016, but he was allowed to stay in the country while he appealed the decision.

Over 18 months later, when he killed Susanna, a decision on his appeal still had not been made. Days after his crime, Bashar and seven other members of his family returned to Iraq. However, he was tracked down by Kurdish authorities and extradited to Germany.

Bashar has since admitted to killing Susanna.

[…]Hussein Khavari arrived in Europe in January 2013. He proceeded to throw a woman over a cliff that summer in Corfu, Greece, and was subsequently imprisoned for 10 years in February 2014 for attempted murder. However, he was released after just 18 months, part of a government amnesty aimed at reducing strain on its overcrowded prisons.

Khavari journeyed on to Germany, where he arrived in November 2015, and claimed asylum the following February. He claimed to be a 17-year-old Afghan upon arrival, saying that his father had been killed fighting the Taliban.

In October 2016, Khavari raped and strangled Maria Ladenburger, a 19-year-old German student, in Freiburg, in southwest Germany. Khavari left his still-breathing victim to drown in a nearby river after his attack. He was sentenced to life in prison.

During his trial, it emerged that rather than being a 17-year-old fatherless Afghan, Khavari was a Iranian. His father was alive and well, living in Iran. Khavari’s asylum claim was also undecided at the time of Ladenburger’s killing.

Another case from southwest Germany, this time in Kandel, saw Mia Valentin, a 15-year-old girl, being stabbed to death by her ex-boyfriend last December. The killer, Abdul D., came to Germany from Afghanistan in April 2016, claiming to be 14 years old. In reality, he is now 20.

Such stories—coming in the wake of the mass sexual assault of more than 1,000 women in Germany on New Year’s Eve of 2015—have a variety of consequences.

Now consider this article from June 2016 from the far-left National Public Radio, which is delighted with the new progressive policies of the SBC:

Matthew Soerens of the evangelical refugee resettlement group World Relief praised the move, noting that churchgoers of many religious denominations are eager to aid refugees, and are “strongly opposed to governmental efforts that would block their ability to be a part of this sort of ministry.”

Soerens says Donald Trump’s proposal to bar immigration from countries with a “proven history of terrorism” would likely keep out Christians and other religious minorities as well.

Got that? He wants to let in refugees from countries with a “proven history of terrorism”. The point about Christianity is a red herring, since almost none of the refugees admitted under Obama were Christians.

CNS News explains in this article from October, 2016:

The administration admitted a total of 12,587 Syrian refugees during the just-ended fiscal year, exceeding the target President Obama declared last fall by 2,587 (20.5 percent).

Of the 12,587, the vast majority are Sunni Muslims – 12,363 (98.2 percent) – while another 103 are identified in State Department Refugee Processing Center data simply as Muslims and a further 20 as Shi’a Muslims.

Sixty-eight of the 12,587 Syrian refugees (0.5 percent) are Christians. They comprise 16 Catholics, eight Orthodox, five Protestants, four Jehovah’s Witnesses, one Greek Orthodox, and 34 refugees self-identified simply as Christians.

The Bible says that rape and murder are wrong. Perhaps Southern Baptist leaders like Moore and Sorens are just more concerned with political expediency than sound theology.

Keep in mind that no one in the SBC has a real private sector job where they earn money in a competitive free market by providing goods and services. When they talk about letting in refugees, they aren’t going to be liable for the crimes and social costs (education, health care, public safety, etc.). That’s on you, the taxpayers. And on the little girls who are raped and murdered. The SBC is not primarily concerned about underage sex-trafficking gangs run by Pakistani Muslim immigrants. Their priority is feeling good and being liked. Meeting with Obama in the Oval Office and preening for the cameras and hearing the praises of the far-left mainstream media. They like to be seen as “compassionate” by spending other people’s money and risking other people’s safety.

Once again, I must mention that I myself am non-white, and I favor skilled immigrants from all races. I am in favor of naturalizing skilled immigrants who can keep a high-paying job, refrain from committing crimes, and who are barred from collecting from any social welfare program for some long period of time. But refugees and unskilled immigrants should not be put on a path to naturalization under any circumstances. If individuals want to help them, they are free to help them with acts of voluntary charity. I myself am more interested in funding pro-life, pro-marriage, apologetics, etc. efforts.