Soros wants Baltimore to be more “welcoming” to refugees

Update:  What a coincidence! There is a big expose on Soros, the godfather to the Left, here, at the Media Research Center yesterday.

Yesterday the Baltimore Sun published a letter from Jill Pardini who works for George Soros Open Society Foundation in Baltimore.  Ol’ one worlder and open borders advocate Soros himself isn’t mentioned of course, but Pardini who runs a Soros-funded soccer program for refugees wrote to the Sun and admonished Baltimore to be more “welcoming” to, and find more “resources” for, the thousands of refugees who have arrived there in recent years.

It is not often that my interest in the Refugee Resettlement Program of the US State Department comes in handy in Maryland.  Oh, make no mistake, we have a burgeoning refugee resettlement program here, but the folks who run it are pretty media savvy so they keep the newsworthy problems under control.

How does the refugee program work?

Before I get to Pardini’s plea (they are very good at using things like kids soccer teams to build their message), just a little background.  Nine major federal contractors including the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), the International Rescue Committee, and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services (LIRS) are paid by the US State Department to resettle third world refugees.   Refugees don’t simply “find their way” to Baltimore.

LOL! I just went to grab the photo of the Lutheran’s ostentatious refugee headquarters office building in Baltimore and see it is now gone from their website!  It used to be right there at the top of the page.

The average person who reads that Catholics or Lutherans are resettling refugees assumes that their funding comes from the private charity of their parishioners and church members—not so!  Have a look at the LIRS IRS Form 990 for 2010.  It used to be right up front on Page 1—that is, how much of their funding comes from the US taxpayer in the form of government grants, but the IRS has kindly helped these NGOs and moved the pertinent information to page 9.  There we see that out of an overall income of $39,352,833, are you ready! $38,183,471 is from government grants—from you!

The USCCB gets much much more funding from the feds than the Lutherans, it is just that tracking it through myriad Catholic agencies is more complicated.

Where did this program come from?

Senators Ted Kennedy and Joe Biden (and Senator Paul Sarbanes) got the Refugee Resettlement Act of 1980 through Congress and it was signed into law by Jimmy Carter (guess that is all you need to know!) and it has become a boondoggle ruled by these federal contractors.   And, one feature of the refugee program that you should know about is that refugees are entitled to social “services” upon arrival—not so for other legal immigrants.

How many refugees have come since records were kept beginning in 1983? 

2.5 million through 2008 have arrived nationwide.  Maryland was at 32,986 as of 2008 (ORR Annual report Appendix Table 2).  Compared to California, Florida (tens of thousands of Cubans annually) and New York it doesn’t seem like much.   California is near a half a million and Florida and New York have passed the quarter of a million mark.  However, hypocrisy alert!  Ready for a laugh!  Joe Biden’s Delaware—774!   That is right, only 774 in almost 30 years!   In case you are interested other states with really low numbers are:  Wyoming (156), West Virginia (412), and Montana (980).

So, what is this all about?

We are told it is about humanitarian protection of the world’s poorest of the poor, the persecuted and the downtrodden, but I have come to think of it as Cloward and Piven in action.   You know, swamp the welfare system with poor people in need of “services” and “resources” in order to bring down the economic system of the US (right up George Soros’ alley isn’t it!).

Baltimore politicians think they can rebuild cities with immigrants.

But frankly, as I said here in January, the only income coming into cities from the immigrant population is welfare funding/food stamps and special loans and grants for immigrant-run businesses coming from the feds—from the federal taxpayer.

I’m seeing this wrong-headed idea all over the country—it is the latest excuse to build immigrant enclaves in failing cities (Buffalo, NY and Detroit, MI come to mind immediately).  The theory is that immigrants grow cities.

Have a look at the latest news from Buffalo.  The city is still poor and the Catholic and Jewish population is declining as the Muslim immigrant population increases.  (Indeed Mayor Bloomberg of NYC has also fallen for the ‘immigrants will rebuild crumbling cities’ theory.)   I guess you could call what is happening to Buffalo the “systemic change” that the Open Society Foundation/Soros is aiming for.

And, before some reader says that immigrant communities built American cities of the past remember those immigrants of a century ago came with skills and had to make it on their own.  They generally had some education and if they couldn’t make it, they went back home!  Today’s third worlders come with an entitlement mentality—they have come to expect stuff and they come from cultures that are diametrically opposite of the open liberty-loving culture we have.  A large number come from failed and failing Muslim countries in the Middle East and Africa.

So, now to Ms. Pardini’s plea to Baltimore (which begins by putting guilt on the reader by suggesting it is white people who are unwelcoming in Baltimore):

“Welcome to America.” It’s a traditional greeting that implicitly embodies notions of acceptance, hope and opportunity.

But that simple phrase can also be used as a taunt, as I witnessed during a youth soccer game in Baltimore where the teams were starkly divided by race, religion and language.

“Welcome to America” served as a derisive cheer hurled across the field when the fairer-skinned team scored against a team made up of refugees and asylum seekers from Nepal, Bhutan, Iraq, Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, Eritrea, Tanzania and Guinea. It was perhaps the most creative insult (but far from the first) we have experienced since forming our teams of young refugees in 2009.

Many Baltimoreans may be surprised to learn that our city is home to a significant and rapidly growing number of refugees. On any given day, kids from these families face a barrage of challenges, beginning with language difficulties and cultural differences.

To be clear, the refugees live in poor crime-ridden black neighborhoods because their “church” resettlement contractors place their “clients” there.   You should know that American blacks and new refugees (Somalis and American blacks are particularly hostile to each other) are in conflict in many American cities as the blacks see the refugees getting stuff and taking jobs.

The neighborhoods they live in make them so anxious that when they are home, they often sit with the lights off to avoid contact with the outside world. When forced to face the city for school or work, they fear petty theft and bullying. In some cases, refugees face assault and even death, as we saw in the murder and robbery last summer of a Bhutanese refugee who had been here only two months.

Baltimore mayor:  thou shalt be more welcoming!

There has been a lot of talk about Baltimore becoming more open and welcoming to new Americans — both refugees and immigrants. An executive order signed by the mayor encourages support for newcomers. But if the experiences I have seen, both on the soccer fields of Baltimore and in the surrounding communities, are typical, we have a lot of work to do.

Ms. Pardini continues:  No “resources” (that is code for goodies and government-funded stuff)!  Then they will leave Baltimore for more welcoming cities.

But without additional resources and a deeper commitment from the city government and community leaders, we will fail these kids and these families. They will eventually move along to other communities that are more welcoming.

Readers should know that Somali refugees in particular are ready and willing to move where the welfare is better—notably Minnesota and in the past (before they got a conservative governor) Maine.  Here is how the Somalis got to Lewiston, Maine (they left Georgia where they had been resettled and the welfare wasn’t as good and where American blacks were more hostile).

So for Marylanders, by all means have sympathy for the refugees and their kids, but know this isn’t about you being a racist, or about America being a good and decent humanitarian country, this is about “systemic change” and the refugees are the pawns in Soros’ one-world government game.