Tag Archives: Refugees

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.

News

Refugee rapes and murders 14-year-old German girl before fleeing home to Iraq

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Muslim populations in Europe
Muslim populations in Europe

I’ve been busy reading “The Strange Death of Europe”, which is a book all about how European countries and the UK decided to invite millions of low-skilled immigrants from predominantly Muslim countries to immigrate, in order to achieve the goal of multiculturalism. Let’s see how that’s working out for Germany, as reported in this article from the radically leftist New York Times.

Excerpt:

It was a gruesome murder: A 14-year-old girl was raped and strangled, her body buried under brushwood in a secluded area near the railway tracks near her hometown in western Germany.

But the fact that the chief suspect is an Iraqi asylum seeker has turned a terrible crime into political dynamite.

[…]The killing comes on top of a deepening scandal and calls for a full-blown parliamentary investigation over allegations that civil servants may have granted asylum to as many as 1,000 migrants in exchange for money — and that some of those migrants may have been criminals or even terrorism suspects.

The murder suspect, identified as Ali Bashar, a 20-year-old Iraqi, arrived in Germany in October 2015, shortly after Ms. Merkel opened the borders to hundreds of thousands of migrants. He was rejected in late 2016, but was allowed to stay in the country while his appeal was pending.

[…]He came to the attention of the police several times, involving allegations of jostling a police officer, robbing a passer-by and carrying a knife.

The New York Times saves the most interesting detail for last:

Susanna’s mother has been chronicling her daily anguish on Facebook since her daughter went missing on May 22.

The entry on June 1, a week after her daughter had disappeared, directly addressed Ms. Merkel.

“I turn to you with this cry for help because I feel abandoned by the German state as well as by our friend and helper (Police!!!),” the mother wrote.

The last text message she received from her daughter’s cellphone on May 23 was written in bad German. “Don’t look for me,” it said. “I come in 2 or 3 weeks.”

At that point Susanna was already dead.

Notice that just like in the United States with our school shootings, the people who commit the violence are known to the police, but because they are non-white, the police are unwilling to do anything about it. It reminds me of how the police in the UK covered up for the child sex-trafficking gangs in several cities, because the gangs were run by immigrants and refugees from predominantly Muslim countries. The police just isn’t willing to do anything that would draw attention to the fact that their open borders multiculturalist immigration policies cause harm to law-abiding citizens. We have the same thing here with the police and politicians covering up for illegal immigrants who commit crimes.

I want to preface my comments by saying that I favor skilled immigration, and I think we benefit from allow non-white immigrants into the country, so long as they have to prove that they are able to hold onto a highly-skilled job while obeying the laws of our nation. Asians, for example, make particularly good immigrants by that criteria.

Open borders Southern Baptists

What is interesting about this is that I keep hearing about all of these compassionate Christians – mostly philosophers, missionaries and pastors and other wordsmiths – who keep telling me how important it is for the West to retreat from wars against radical Islam, and then welcome in predominantly Muslim immigrants who are displaced by our retreat. I ask them whether they understand that the Boston bomber’s parents were let it by claiming to be refugees. I ask if they knew that the San Bernardino terrorist woman was background-checked by five different government agencies. And I ask them about the victims of crime by illegal immigrants who are convicted, but never deported. Their answer is that they didn’t mean for it to happen. They thought that because they felt good supporting a policy, that meant that it would have good results.

I guess I have a simple question for the pro-refugee people. What would you say to the victims of this “generous” immigration policy? The ones who are blown up, shot up, raped, sexually assulted, intimidated? I think these kind, Bible quoting Christians want everyone to believe they are “nice”. That’s why they want to be so generous with other people’s lives, other people’s chastity, other people’s modesty, other people’s money. One wonders how a feelings-driven religious leader like Russell Moore, who supports illegal immigration and Muslim refugees, would handle it if he or someone close to him were the victims of crimes committed by illegal immigrants or radical Muslims? I guess he probably hasn’t thought about that beyond the level of feelings and people-pleasing.

News

Whose policies are responsible for the Islamic State terrorist attack against children?

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Muslim populations in Europe
Muslim populations in Europe

First, the news story from the UK Telegraph.

Excerpt:

Salman Abedi, 22, who was reportedly known to the security services, is thought to have returned from Libya as recently as this week.

Devout Muslim:

He had become radicalised recently – it is not entirely clear when – and had worshipped at a local mosque that has, in the past, been accused of fund-raising for jihadists.

Abedi’s older brother Ismail had been a tutor at Didsbury mosque’s Koran school. The imam last night said that Salman Abedi, who wore Islamic dress, had shown him “the face of hate” when he gave a talk warning on the dangers of so-called Islamic State.

A family friend described him as “very religious”.

Parents were Islamic refugees:

Born in 1994, the second youngest of four children, Abedi’s parents were Libyan refugees who fled to the UK to escape Gaddafi.

Well educated:

Abedi went to school locally and then on to Salford University in 2014 where he studied business management before dropping out.

He lived in a “red-brick terrace” home with his parents. No poverty to speak of.

Wall Street Journal says:

Islamic State on Tuesday claimed responsibility for the attack, the deadliest in the U.K. since 2005.

[…]In a statement published online, Islamic State said the attack was revenge for “aggression toward Muslim countries” and identified the assailant as a “soldier of the caliphate.”

The root problem is, of course, the open borders immigration policies enacted by the Labour Party of the UK. It was their attempt to tilt the electorate away from the free enterprise system, towards government dependency. And it worked. Of course, if a few UK citizens have to die for the far left Labour Party to win election after election… so be it, right?

Sober-minded Christian writer David French commented on this story at National Review:

While it’s impossible to predict any given terror attack, there are two laws of terrorism that work together to guarantee that attacks will occur, and they’ll occur with increasing frequency. First, when terrorists are granted safe havens to plan, train, equip, and inspire terror attacks, then they will strike, and they’ll keep striking not just until the safe havens are destroyed but also until the cells and affiliates they’ve established outside their havens are rooted out. Second, when you import immigrants at any real scale from jihadist regions, then you will import the cultural, religious, and political views that incubate jihad. Jihadist ideas flow not from soil but from people, and when you import people you import their ideas.

Let’s look at how these two ideas have worked together in both Europe and America. The map below (from AFP) charts significant terror attacks in Europe (including Turkey). You’ll note a significant increase in activity since 2014, since ISIS stampeded across Syria and into Turkey and established a terrorist caliphate in the heart of the Middle East. There existed a safe haven and a population to inspire back in Europe. The result was entirely predictable:

This is the predicable result he mentions:

Map of terrorist attacks in EuropeMap of terrorist attacks in Europe

And this is significant:

What about the United States? A similar phenomenon was in play. This Heritage Foundation timeline of terror attacks and plots documents a total of 95 incidents since 9/11. The numbers are revealing. After the implementation of the (now) much-derided Bush strategy, there were a grand total of 27 terror attacks and plots — almost all of them foiled.

After the end of the Bush administration, the numbers skyrocketed, with 68 plots or attacks recorded since. A number of them, including the Fort Hood shooting, the Boston Marathon bombing, the San Bernardino mass murder, and the Orlando nightclub massacre, have been terrifying successful. Indeed, there have been more domestic terror plots and attacks since the rise of ISIS in the summer of 2014 than there were in the entirety of the Bush administration after 9/11. And make no mistake, jihadist terrorists are disproportionately immigrants and children of immigrants.

What did Bush do that was so successful? He not only pressed military offensives in the heart of the Middle East, he fundamentally changed the American approach to immigration and implemented a number of temporary measures that, for example, dramatically decreased refugee admissions and implemented country-specific protective measures that have since been discontinued.

You’ll recall that Islamic State was caused by Barack Obama’s decision to retreat from Iraq. The refugee crisis worsened because of his other failed interventions in Libya and Syria. This is what happens when people are carried away by a happy-sounding “anti-war” message. Wiser voters thought about what would happen if we pulled out of Iraq, and voted against Obama. The wiser voters lost.

Speaking of Democrats, I wonder if Barack Obama and his Democrat supporters will call this terrorist attack “workplace violence”, like he did with the Fort Hood terrorist attack by Major Nidal Hassan? I’ve talked to a few Democrats about immigration from countries with a significant population of radicalized Muslims, and they are all in favor of increased immigration from those countries. Democrats are more scared of pro-marriage, pro-life Christians than of Islamic terrorists. After all, it’s not them dying in these attacks. Give them their gay marriage and their free birth control.

But I’m also noticing a lot of Christians trying to appear generous and compassionate lately, by embracing the same open borders policies as the progressives. They’re claiming generosity and compassion in public by spending other people’s money and risking other people’s lives. This is especially popular among Christians in academia, seeking to curry favor with their secular colleagues. For many Christian leftists like Russell Moore, embracing open borders immigration policy, is a quick way to avoid charges of lacking compassion. Except nobody ever asks these pious Christians who has compassion for the victims of their policies.

Finally, national security expert Andrew C. McCarthy notes that the current Republican administration’s efforts to vet incoming immigrants from Muslim countries has been opposed by Democrats in the judiciary, and far-left civil rights groups. Republicans are trying to prevent terrorist attacks like this at home, but they are opposed at every turn by naive Democrat voters who are more interested in feeling good and looking good than in protecting the victims of terrorist attacks. You can’t have it both ways when it comes to national security.