It drive me crazy when people spread the lie that Republicans are anti-immigrant. They are not. They just want to see the immigration laws followed. I did a little research and found that at least six of the Republican candidates are either sons or grandson of immigrants; Rubio, Cruz, Jindal, Pataki, Kasich and Santorum.
“The U.S. immigrant population reached a record high of 42.4 million according to a new analysis of census data — and the growth rate of the foreign-born population is accelerating.
A new Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) report shows the legal- and illegal-immigrant population grew by 2.4 million since 2010, with more than a million new arrivals in 2014.
The dramatic increases in immigration are evident in both absolute numbers of the foreign born and as a share of the U.S. population. “Immigrants (legal and illegal) comprised 13.3 percent or about one out of eight U.S. residents in 2014, the highest percentage in 104 years,” the report notes.
And the growth in the immigrant population is accelerating rapidly, from an increase of a half million immigrants per year between 2010 and 2012 to over a million from 2013 to 2014. The immigrant share of the population has more than doubled from what it was in 1980, when illegal and legal immigrants together made up just 6.2 percent of the country.”
“Last week Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Chuck Grassley hit back against Obama’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) after the agency pushed through, during a congressional recess, a major immigration item that has long been on the technology lobby’s wish list. According to a new “policy memorandum,” Obama’s immigration authorities will now be redefining the term “specialized knowledge” as it applies to the L-1B visa, a program previously aimed at bringing over highly sought-after “intracompany transferees” from American firms’ affiliated companies abroad. No doubt burned by Congress’s “stubborn” refusal to raise the cap on annual cap on H-1B visas (which are “skilled” temporary non-immigrant worker visas) the Obama administration, at the behest of Big Tech lobbyists, has told its agency lawyers to think up a clever alternative. In a strongly worded letter to Obama’s immigration authorities, Grassley, a 35-year Senate veteran, closely outlines the legal and practical faults of the new policy and demands answers from the agency regarding its purported authority for the move.
The L-1B visa, a cousin of the H-1B, applies to so-called “specialized knowledge” employees, usually in the IT industry, who may be transferred to the U.S. from their foreign affiliated employer to work here for up to five years. Often, as with H-1B holders, these “temporary” workers obtain sponsors and apply for permanent status. When President Obama announced his general plans to “reform” the program last spring, he stated that his goal was to allow more workers to move from foreign offices into the U.S. “in a faster, simpler way.” Americans should get behind the proposal, he stated, as it “could benefit hundreds of thousands of nonimmigrant workers and their employers,” which “in turn, will benefit [the] entire economy.”
Setting aside concerns about whose “economy” will actually be benefited — the public’s or the special interests’ — the problem with this new “reform” is that the L-1B intracompany-transferee program was never meant to be a mass temporary-worker program. On the contrary, as Grassley’s letter states, Congress’s intent was to ensure that the class of persons eligible for such visas would be “narrowly drawn.” This would seem to comport with the purpose of the program, which is to attract only “key employees” with “specialized knowledge.” Grassley backs this up by noting a statement from the acting deputy director of U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) under George W. Bush, Robert Divine, who stated in 2006 that there’s no indication that Congress ever intended to depart from its position that the visa is intended for “key employees” only and that the “class of persons eligible for such nonimmigrant visas is narrowly drawn and will be carefully regulated.” As Grassley reasonably asks, how can a company “have many L-1B workers doing identical ‘specialized knowledge’ work?” In other words, can everyone be considered special?
DHS’s move on the issue is rooted in the complaints Big Tech lobbyists and immigration attorneys have long made about their L-1B applications, specifically that the number of denials and “Requests for Evidence” they receive is simply too high, while adjudications of those applications are too restrictive. Ideally, of course, they want the number of rejected applications to be zero — that would bring industry wages collapsing down. But rejection rates aren’t a “real problem,” says Grassley’s letter. In 2013, the letter notes, a DHS inspector general’s report concluded that USCIS was “not unduly restrictive” in L-1B adjudications. The problem with decreasing standards and adopting a more “liberal definition of specialized knowledge,” the IG report noted, would be to “open the category to an unlimited number of foreign workers.” “Exactly,” a Big Tech lobbyist or immigration attorney might say.”
I am against bring in 100,000 people who have allegiance to something other than the US constitution and want to be other than Americans.
We need to be very careful.
Ben Carson was right.
“The federal government can tell you how many “Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islanders” stole a car, the precise number of “American Indian or Alaska Natives” who were arrested for vagrancy or how many whites were busted for counterfeiting in any given year. But the government agencies that crunch crime numbers are utterly unable — or unwilling — to pinpoint for the public how many illegal immigrants are arrested within U.S. borders each year.
In the absence of comprehensive data, FoxNews.com examined a patchwork of local, state and federal statistics that revealed a wildly disproportionate number of murderers, rapists and drug dealers are crossing into the U.S. amid the wave of hard-working families seeking a better life. The explosive figures show illegal immigrants are three times as likely to be convicted of murder as members of the general population and account for far more crimes than their 3.5-percent share of the U.S. population would suggest. Critics say it is no accident that local, state and federal governments go to great lengths to keep the data under wraps.
“There are a lot of reasons states don’t make this information readily available, and there is no clearinghouse of data at high levels,” said former Department of Justice attorney J. Christian Adams, who has conducted exhaustive research on the subject. “These numbers would expose how serious the problem is and make the government look bad.”
“FoxNews.com did review reports from immigration reform groups and various government agencies, including the U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Sentencing Commission, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Government Accountability Office, the Bureau of Justice Statistics and several state and county correctional departments. Statistics show the estimated 11.7 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. account for 13.6 percent of all offenders sentenced for crimes committed in the U.S. Twelve percent of murder sentences, 20 percent of kidnapping sentences and 16 percent of drug trafficking sentences are meted out to illegal immigrants.
There are approximately 2.1 million legal or illegal immigrants with criminal convictions living free or behind bars in the U.S., according to ICE’s Secure Communities office. Each year, about 900,000 legal and illegal immigrants are arrested, and 700,000 are released from jail, prison, or probation. ICE estimates that there are more than 1.2 million criminal aliens at large in the U.S.”
Chas, as husband explained it to me when I was wondering why we would not extend hospitality to our enemies: the Christian Syrian refugees we have applied to take would be more accurately portrayed as asylum seekers. They will not have a home to go back to. They are seeking safety and a new life. Refugees have the anticipation of going back. Muslim refugees would have the intent of keeping their beliefs and traditions in place, making a Muslim community and then demanding laws be changed to reflect their beliefs. Their beliefs include Sharia Law. Christians believe in loving God and one’s neighbor. Big difference.
If our nation was strong and able to say no to things like that, hosting a Muslim family would be fine. But our nation is not able to say, no, we will not change our laws to suit your political interests. So it is best for us at this time, to say only Christians.
Mumsee, Obama, that means the State Dept. and US policy, is not to give preference to Christians. It would be ideal if the refugees could come here and assimilate into the culture and become American Christians.
That is not happening in Europe. What is happening in Europe is what Obama wants to happen here. Friendly AVE BC, in Greensboro has taken a group of people from Burma. (They have a name, but I have forgotten it.)
They, according to the pastor’s report, are becoming strong Christian Americans. There is nothing back there that they want.
That’s the way it was when my, and your, ancestors came over. They wanted to be Americans.
“If we don’t overthrow capitalism, we don’t have a chance of
saving the world ecologically. I think it is possible to have
an ecologically sound society under socialism.
I don’t think it is possible under capitalism”
– Judi Bari, principal organiser of Earth First
“We’ve got to ride this global warming issue.
Even if the theory of global warming is wrong,
we will be doing the right thing in terms of
economic and environmental policy.“
– Timothy Wirth, President of the UN Foundation
“…one has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. Instead, climate change policy is about how we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth…” IPCC official Ottmar Edenhofer.
“For those unaware, the Quran outlines using mass migration as a form stealth jihad to conquer nations, which is considered a meritorious act in Islam. In the Quran it says, “And whoever emigrates for the cause of Allah will find on the earth many locations and abundance.”
Sadly, this preacher’s idea could very likely happen, especially with the left pushing harder than ever to bring “multiculturalism” into our nations. However, despite the fact that there’s overwhelming evidence this “crisis” could permanently change our nations, such as the video above, our warnings will continue to fall on deaf ears until something bad happens, and by then, it will be too late.
The fact that Arab nations are largely refusing to take in any of their own should have been a major red flag to begin with. But after seeing videos like the one above, there’s little doubt as to what the entire thing is really about – exploiting the kindness of Western nations in order to infiltrate them with Islam.”
It’s also why the majority, around 72%, are overwhelmingly young males. One need only look at what is happening already in open borders UK and France. In no time at all, I’m guessing my lifetime, said populations will take over the ruling bodies, and the countries, without ever firing a shot. They already have Sharia in their areas, and a pedophile problem as well due to the same “cultural attitudes” we are reading about in Afghanistan. The leaders who should be stopping it are too cowed by PC adherence to state the obvious and do something about it in both cases. In fact those so-called leaders even fund it all, with taxpayer dollars.
If you prefer the thoughts of a cultural icon, consider what singer Art Garfunkel said. As reported by the Daily Mail, Garfunkel noted that Muslims are transforming Europe. He referenced Reflections of the Revolution in Europe, a 2009 book by Christopher Caldwell, which argues, “that mass immigration by Muslims is altering the culture of Europe because of their reluctance to join the culture of their new homelands.” The book claims Muslims do not so much enhance European culture as supplant it, and are “patiently conquering Europe’s cities, street by street.”
Is that bigotry, or reality? Is it bigotry to quote what various Islamic leaders say are their intentions when it comes to establishing a worldwide caliphate and replacing the U.S. Constitution with Sharia law, or is it a warning we should take seriously and respond to as we would react to any other invasion?
________________________________________
72% of the refugees are young males?
No, there is a pretty even division between men and women, as would be expected. The UNHCR’s demographic breakdown of registered refugees: http://data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees/regional.php
My attitude on the Syrian immigrants is along the lines of, I’ve helped the homeless but I wouldn’t bring one I didn’t know to my house where my child sleeps.
Well Roscuro the UN seems to be releasing conflicting info.
Although down 3%, the number still sits at 69%. Your link appears to be referring to immigrants to Turkey and other Islamic countries, mine for the Mediterranean region confirms what I said, with an updated 3% difference.
Anon, those are the immigrants trying to get into Europe via the boats, and that demographic is exactly what one would expect to see. The men are leaving their families in the refugee camps and taking the dangerous journey (those boats are dangerous) to Europe to claim asylum and then bring in their families. Also, only 54 percent of the Mediterranean refugees are Syrians. Others are joining them on their journey, including some from Afghanistan.
As for why the neighbouring countries aren’t taking in the refugees, a look at the UNHCR’s map reveals that they have. Tiny Lebanon (which is not an Islamic country) has over 1 million and Jordan has over 600,000. To put that into perspective, I have a publication from a missions agency working in the area, published in Jan 2014, before ISIS exacerbated the already precarious situation in Syria. At that time, Lebanon had over 900,000 Syrian refugees, making up, as the publication pointed out, a quarter of the total population of Lebanon. The number of Syrian refugees in Jordan made up 10 percent of its population, and the numbers in both countries have increased since that publication. Turkey now has nearly 2 million. Iraq has over 200,000 and that on top of their own displaced people from ISIS. Lebanon already has the Palestinian refugee camps. Egypt, which really is not neighbouring Syria, has over 100,000, and has its own problems. The only two nearby countries who are not on the list are Saudi Arabia, Iran – surely nobody would suggest that either are good alternatives – and Israel.
” … Toward the beginning he appealed to a spirit of welcome to immigrants, which I think resonates with most Americans. But he did not say anything specific about current political debates, either here or in Europe. Those debates have to do with the practical, political limits that even the most welcoming society must sometimes put on immigration. Pope Francis’s recent comments about the migrant crisis in Europe indicates that he’s aware of these limits and respects the need for political leaders to grapple with them…..
“Overall:
“Francis gave no support to Catholics who have fought abortion, the redefinition of marriage, doctor-assisted suicide, and other cultural issues. He also made no mention of threats to religious liberty. …
” … Next stop New York and the United Nations. That’s a very different audience. It will be interesting to hear what he says.”
______________________________________________________
I see that 7 percent of the Mediterranean refugees are Eritrean. Many of them would be Christians, since being a Christian in Eritrea can get you sent to what are effectively death camps. They originally came to Libya, finding work on the oil fields, and when everything collapsed there, they were stuck. In fact, those coming from Libya would be another reason that such a high percentage are men, since they were migrant workers caught up in the collapse.
Wandering Views 
Everything is about the Pope today.
Therefore, no comment.
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It drive me crazy when people spread the lie that Republicans are anti-immigrant. They are not. They just want to see the immigration laws followed. I did a little research and found that at least six of the Republican candidates are either sons or grandson of immigrants; Rubio, Cruz, Jindal, Pataki, Kasich and Santorum.
LikeLiked by 5 people
Well since KBells mentioned immigration….
Republicans don’t dislike immigrants. They dislike lawbreaking illegal immigrants. There’s a big difference.
Democrats seem to prefer the illegal type.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/424400/us-immigrant-population-record-high
“The U.S. immigrant population reached a record high of 42.4 million according to a new analysis of census data — and the growth rate of the foreign-born population is accelerating.
A new Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) report shows the legal- and illegal-immigrant population grew by 2.4 million since 2010, with more than a million new arrivals in 2014.
The dramatic increases in immigration are evident in both absolute numbers of the foreign born and as a share of the U.S. population. “Immigrants (legal and illegal) comprised 13.3 percent or about one out of eight U.S. residents in 2014, the highest percentage in 104 years,” the report notes.
And the growth in the immigrant population is accelerating rapidly, from an increase of a half million immigrants per year between 2010 and 2012 to over a million from 2013 to 2014. The immigrant share of the population has more than doubled from what it was in 1980, when illegal and legal immigrants together made up just 6.2 percent of the country.”
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And we don’t like lawbreaking Presidents who re-write laws without the authority to do so.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/424326/immigration-deception-obama
“Last week Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Chuck Grassley hit back against Obama’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) after the agency pushed through, during a congressional recess, a major immigration item that has long been on the technology lobby’s wish list. According to a new “policy memorandum,” Obama’s immigration authorities will now be redefining the term “specialized knowledge” as it applies to the L-1B visa, a program previously aimed at bringing over highly sought-after “intracompany transferees” from American firms’ affiliated companies abroad. No doubt burned by Congress’s “stubborn” refusal to raise the cap on annual cap on H-1B visas (which are “skilled” temporary non-immigrant worker visas) the Obama administration, at the behest of Big Tech lobbyists, has told its agency lawyers to think up a clever alternative. In a strongly worded letter to Obama’s immigration authorities, Grassley, a 35-year Senate veteran, closely outlines the legal and practical faults of the new policy and demands answers from the agency regarding its purported authority for the move.
The L-1B visa, a cousin of the H-1B, applies to so-called “specialized knowledge” employees, usually in the IT industry, who may be transferred to the U.S. from their foreign affiliated employer to work here for up to five years. Often, as with H-1B holders, these “temporary” workers obtain sponsors and apply for permanent status. When President Obama announced his general plans to “reform” the program last spring, he stated that his goal was to allow more workers to move from foreign offices into the U.S. “in a faster, simpler way.” Americans should get behind the proposal, he stated, as it “could benefit hundreds of thousands of nonimmigrant workers and their employers,” which “in turn, will benefit [the] entire economy.”
Setting aside concerns about whose “economy” will actually be benefited — the public’s or the special interests’ — the problem with this new “reform” is that the L-1B intracompany-transferee program was never meant to be a mass temporary-worker program. On the contrary, as Grassley’s letter states, Congress’s intent was to ensure that the class of persons eligible for such visas would be “narrowly drawn.” This would seem to comport with the purpose of the program, which is to attract only “key employees” with “specialized knowledge.” Grassley backs this up by noting a statement from the acting deputy director of U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) under George W. Bush, Robert Divine, who stated in 2006 that there’s no indication that Congress ever intended to depart from its position that the visa is intended for “key employees” only and that the “class of persons eligible for such nonimmigrant visas is narrowly drawn and will be carefully regulated.” As Grassley reasonably asks, how can a company “have many L-1B workers doing identical ‘specialized knowledge’ work?” In other words, can everyone be considered special?
DHS’s move on the issue is rooted in the complaints Big Tech lobbyists and immigration attorneys have long made about their L-1B applications, specifically that the number of denials and “Requests for Evidence” they receive is simply too high, while adjudications of those applications are too restrictive. Ideally, of course, they want the number of rejected applications to be zero — that would bring industry wages collapsing down. But rejection rates aren’t a “real problem,” says Grassley’s letter. In 2013, the letter notes, a DHS inspector general’s report concluded that USCIS was “not unduly restrictive” in L-1B adjudications. The problem with decreasing standards and adopting a more “liberal definition of specialized knowledge,” the IG report noted, would be to “open the category to an unlimited number of foreign workers.” “Exactly,” a Big Tech lobbyist or immigration attorney might say.”
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I am against bring in 100,000 people who have allegiance to something other than the US constitution and want to be other than Americans.
We need to be very careful.
Ben Carson was right.
LikeLiked by 1 person
The frightening toll of illegal immigrant criminals. And the levels our so-called leaders go to in order to mask their crimes.
And you could argue that all illegals are criminals, since they’re breaking the law just being here.
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015/09/16/crime-wave-elusive-data-shows-frightening-toll-illegal-immigrant-criminals/
“The federal government can tell you how many “Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islanders” stole a car, the precise number of “American Indian or Alaska Natives” who were arrested for vagrancy or how many whites were busted for counterfeiting in any given year. But the government agencies that crunch crime numbers are utterly unable — or unwilling — to pinpoint for the public how many illegal immigrants are arrested within U.S. borders each year.
In the absence of comprehensive data, FoxNews.com examined a patchwork of local, state and federal statistics that revealed a wildly disproportionate number of murderers, rapists and drug dealers are crossing into the U.S. amid the wave of hard-working families seeking a better life. The explosive figures show illegal immigrants are three times as likely to be convicted of murder as members of the general population and account for far more crimes than their 3.5-percent share of the U.S. population would suggest. Critics say it is no accident that local, state and federal governments go to great lengths to keep the data under wraps.
“There are a lot of reasons states don’t make this information readily available, and there is no clearinghouse of data at high levels,” said former Department of Justice attorney J. Christian Adams, who has conducted exhaustive research on the subject. “These numbers would expose how serious the problem is and make the government look bad.”
“FoxNews.com did review reports from immigration reform groups and various government agencies, including the U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Sentencing Commission, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Government Accountability Office, the Bureau of Justice Statistics and several state and county correctional departments. Statistics show the estimated 11.7 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. account for 13.6 percent of all offenders sentenced for crimes committed in the U.S. Twelve percent of murder sentences, 20 percent of kidnapping sentences and 16 percent of drug trafficking sentences are meted out to illegal immigrants.
There are approximately 2.1 million legal or illegal immigrants with criminal convictions living free or behind bars in the U.S., according to ICE’s Secure Communities office. Each year, about 900,000 legal and illegal immigrants are arrested, and 700,000 are released from jail, prison, or probation. ICE estimates that there are more than 1.2 million criminal aliens at large in the U.S.”
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http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2015/09/two-clues-for-the-gop.php
1. Half in U.S. Continue to Say Gov’t Is an Immediate Threat
2. Republicans Favored on Issues Despite Worse Image
“Memo to the GOP presidential field: Even the slowest-witted ought to be able to figure out how to connect these two results in an effective way.”
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Chas, as husband explained it to me when I was wondering why we would not extend hospitality to our enemies: the Christian Syrian refugees we have applied to take would be more accurately portrayed as asylum seekers. They will not have a home to go back to. They are seeking safety and a new life. Refugees have the anticipation of going back. Muslim refugees would have the intent of keeping their beliefs and traditions in place, making a Muslim community and then demanding laws be changed to reflect their beliefs. Their beliefs include Sharia Law. Christians believe in loving God and one’s neighbor. Big difference.
If our nation was strong and able to say no to things like that, hosting a Muslim family would be fine. But our nation is not able to say, no, we will not change our laws to suit your political interests. So it is best for us at this time, to say only Christians.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Mumsee, Obama, that means the State Dept. and US policy, is not to give preference to Christians. It would be ideal if the refugees could come here and assimilate into the culture and become American Christians.
That is not happening in Europe. What is happening in Europe is what Obama wants to happen here. Friendly AVE BC, in Greensboro has taken a group of people from Burma. (They have a name, but I have forgotten it.)
They, according to the pastor’s report, are becoming strong Christian Americans. There is nothing back there that they want.
That’s the way it was when my, and your, ancestors came over. They wanted to be Americans.
LikeLike
Yes, it IS all about redistribution of wealth:
“If we don’t overthrow capitalism, we don’t have a chance of
saving the world ecologically. I think it is possible to have
an ecologically sound society under socialism.
I don’t think it is possible under capitalism”
– Judi Bari, principal organiser of Earth First
“We’ve got to ride this global warming issue.
Even if the theory of global warming is wrong,
we will be doing the right thing in terms of
economic and environmental policy.“
– Timothy Wirth, President of the UN Foundation
“…one has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. Instead, climate change policy is about how we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth…” IPCC official Ottmar Edenhofer.
Edenhofer is also a Catholic, and one of Pope Francis’s advisors on climate change: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/damian-carrington-blog/2015/jun/18/will-pope-franciss-encyclical-become-his-miracle-that-saved-the-planet
LikeLiked by 1 person
“A chilling video has surfaced of a top Muslim imam speaking to those fleeing the Middle East in droves”
http://patriotupdate.com/chilling-top-imam-tells-muslim-refugees-how-to-conquer-nations/
“For those unaware, the Quran outlines using mass migration as a form stealth jihad to conquer nations, which is considered a meritorious act in Islam. In the Quran it says, “And whoever emigrates for the cause of Allah will find on the earth many locations and abundance.”
Sadly, this preacher’s idea could very likely happen, especially with the left pushing harder than ever to bring “multiculturalism” into our nations. However, despite the fact that there’s overwhelming evidence this “crisis” could permanently change our nations, such as the video above, our warnings will continue to fall on deaf ears until something bad happens, and by then, it will be too late.
The fact that Arab nations are largely refusing to take in any of their own should have been a major red flag to begin with. But after seeing videos like the one above, there’s little doubt as to what the entire thing is really about – exploiting the kindness of Western nations in order to infiltrate them with Islam.”
LikeLiked by 1 person
Interesting piece on the future (or lack thereof) for Christian doctors:
http://www.worldmag.com/2015/09/death_sentence_for_doctors
LikeLiked by 1 person
Tychicus,
It’s also why the majority, around 72%, are overwhelmingly young males. One need only look at what is happening already in open borders UK and France. In no time at all, I’m guessing my lifetime, said populations will take over the ruling bodies, and the countries, without ever firing a shot. They already have Sharia in their areas, and a pedophile problem as well due to the same “cultural attitudes” we are reading about in Afghanistan. The leaders who should be stopping it are too cowed by PC adherence to state the obvious and do something about it in both cases. In fact those so-called leaders even fund it all, with taxpayer dollars.
Welcome to the invasion.
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On Islam, immigration and Ben Carson from Cal Thomas
http://www.worldmag.com/2015/09/ben_carson_s_warning
_______________________________________
If you prefer the thoughts of a cultural icon, consider what singer Art Garfunkel said. As reported by the Daily Mail, Garfunkel noted that Muslims are transforming Europe. He referenced Reflections of the Revolution in Europe, a 2009 book by Christopher Caldwell, which argues, “that mass immigration by Muslims is altering the culture of Europe because of their reluctance to join the culture of their new homelands.” The book claims Muslims do not so much enhance European culture as supplant it, and are “patiently conquering Europe’s cities, street by street.”
Is that bigotry, or reality? Is it bigotry to quote what various Islamic leaders say are their intentions when it comes to establishing a worldwide caliphate and replacing the U.S. Constitution with Sharia law, or is it a warning we should take seriously and respond to as we would react to any other invasion?
________________________________________
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72% of the refugees are young males?
No, there is a pretty even division between men and women, as would be expected. The UNHCR’s demographic breakdown of registered refugees: http://data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees/regional.php
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My attitude on the Syrian immigrants is along the lines of, I’ve helped the homeless but I wouldn’t bring one I didn’t know to my house where my child sleeps.
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Well Roscuro the UN seems to be releasing conflicting info.
Although down 3%, the number still sits at 69%. Your link appears to be referring to immigrants to Turkey and other Islamic countries, mine for the Mediterranean region confirms what I said, with an updated 3% difference.
18% Children
13% Women
69% Men
http://data.unhcr.org/mediterranean/regional.php
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Anon, those are the immigrants trying to get into Europe via the boats, and that demographic is exactly what one would expect to see. The men are leaving their families in the refugee camps and taking the dangerous journey (those boats are dangerous) to Europe to claim asylum and then bring in their families. Also, only 54 percent of the Mediterranean refugees are Syrians. Others are joining them on their journey, including some from Afghanistan.
As for why the neighbouring countries aren’t taking in the refugees, a look at the UNHCR’s map reveals that they have. Tiny Lebanon (which is not an Islamic country) has over 1 million and Jordan has over 600,000. To put that into perspective, I have a publication from a missions agency working in the area, published in Jan 2014, before ISIS exacerbated the already precarious situation in Syria. At that time, Lebanon had over 900,000 Syrian refugees, making up, as the publication pointed out, a quarter of the total population of Lebanon. The number of Syrian refugees in Jordan made up 10 percent of its population, and the numbers in both countries have increased since that publication. Turkey now has nearly 2 million. Iraq has over 200,000 and that on top of their own displaced people from ISIS. Lebanon already has the Palestinian refugee camps. Egypt, which really is not neighbouring Syria, has over 100,000, and has its own problems. The only two nearby countries who are not on the list are Saudi Arabia, Iran – surely nobody would suggest that either are good alternatives – and Israel.
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First Things on the pope’s speech today:
_______________________________________________
” … Toward the beginning he appealed to a spirit of welcome to immigrants, which I think resonates with most Americans. But he did not say anything specific about current political debates, either here or in Europe. Those debates have to do with the practical, political limits that even the most welcoming society must sometimes put on immigration. Pope Francis’s recent comments about the migrant crisis in Europe indicates that he’s aware of these limits and respects the need for political leaders to grapple with them…..
“Overall:
“Francis gave no support to Catholics who have fought abortion, the redefinition of marriage, doctor-assisted suicide, and other cultural issues. He also made no mention of threats to religious liberty. …
” … Next stop New York and the United Nations. That’s a very different audience. It will be interesting to hear what he says.”
______________________________________________________
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I see that 7 percent of the Mediterranean refugees are Eritrean. Many of them would be Christians, since being a Christian in Eritrea can get you sent to what are effectively death camps. They originally came to Libya, finding work on the oil fields, and when everything collapsed there, they were stuck. In fact, those coming from Libya would be another reason that such a high percentage are men, since they were migrant workers caught up in the collapse.
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More on the Eritreans, from 2009 – and nothing has changed for them, except Libya is no longer an option (bad as it was then): http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2009/jun/20/eritrea-refugees-misghina
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