Author and columnist Ann Corcoran is the founder and longtime author of the Refugee Resettlement Watch blog (https://refugeeresettlementwatch.wordpress.com/). After years in obscurity, she has received some much-deserved attention in the press for her breadth of knowledge on the U.S. government’s refugee resettlement and asylum programs. Those of us aware of her blog have for a long time found it a singularly invaluable resource about these little-known programs. I know of no one, in or out of government, who has a better grasp of these programs and the issues surrounding them and is willing to talk honestly about it.
Ann has written a short (78 page) book, available at Amazon, titled Refugee Resettlement and the Hijra to America. This book is a must read for Americans concerned about our nation’s increasingly uncertain future—which is to say all Americans. It lays out the refugee resettlement program’s origins, its enabling legislation, the federal agencies and non-governmental organizations involved in the process, and the malevolent “Hijra” being pursued by Muslim radicals.
Hijra means migration, and, according to Islam’s doctrines and its quietly acknowledged organizational strategies, the goal of Muslim immigration today is not peaceful assimilation to the political system and mores of the host country. Instead, the goal is jihad by non-violent means—known as civilization jihad or Islamization. Ann states:
Jihad is a struggle against unbelievers. Immigration is a jihad on the West. It is a permanent jihad, creeping into every first world country, from the continent of Europe, to the Americas and to Australia and New Zealand. This jihad is happening every single day in the steady drip, drip, drip of mostly legal Muslim migration into western Judeo-Christian societies from largely Muslim countries across the globe.
Ann reveals how this strategy is being implemented through the refugee resettlement program. While most of America has focused with justifiable alarm on the illegal aliens flooding the southern border, refugee resettlement has flown under the radar. But like much we are learning about the government today, this program has grown wildly out of control, and is saddling communities with the huge problems refugee populations bring, without their say so and often, without even their knowledge. The Muslim population brings the potential for terrorism, and the inherent ambition to dominate the host country; the religion demands it.
Today, approximately 140,000 people from Muslim countries become legal permanent residents in America each year. Of these, approximately 100,000 enter either as refugees, asylum seekers, or family members of those already here. While many arguably are simply seeking a better life, their Imams and political leaders are plainly pursuing an agenda of cultural domination, not assimilation. Radical Islam is taught in many, if not all of the larger mosques, and radicalized Muslims are leaving to wage jihad in the Middle East and taking it to America’s streets.
Ann’s personal story is one of discovery. Living in a rural Maryland community, she first learned about refugee resettlement in 2007 with the sudden discovery that Church World Services, a subsidiary of the communist front National Council of Churches,[1] was resettling hundreds of refugees, including a large contingent of Russian-speaking Meskhetian Turks, in her community.
A large public meeting confronted the resettling agencies with many questions they didn’t want to answer: How much would this cost the community? Who would pay for it? Did the community have a say in the process? Why was the community not told? Instead of answering these questions, the agencies chose to move on, taking their refugees with them to a more “welcoming” community. The issue was resolved as far as Ann’s little town was concerned, but it piqued her curiosity and she began to research the issue, launching her now famous Refugee Resettlement Watch website.
Ann’s book exposes aspects of this program that literally no one—even the politicians supposedly overseeing it—understands. It describes how the program is being used by the Islamic radicals and corrupt American politicians, while the nine private “Voluntary Agencies” or VOLAGs, hired by the federal government to resettle refugees, have become highly paid lobbyists for the refugee program—all on our tax dollars.
The VOLAGs are key. These are nine private organizations, six of which are nominally religious:
Church World Service
Ethiopian Community Development Council
Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society
International Rescue Committee
Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services
Catholic Charities/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops
U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants
Episcopal Migration Ministries
World Relief Inc.
The VOLAGs complain that they get precious little for their hard resettlement work, usually about $1,000 per refugee—to settle 110,000 refugees, asylum seekers and their families each year. But they protest a bit too much. There are many other grants and programs through which VOLAGs rake in almost $1 billion per year from the government. For those not counting, that’s almost $10,000 per refugee. All paid for by you and I. Furthermore, the religious organizations also rely on parishioner tithes and donations from leftwing foundations.
While churchgoers surely have the kindest motives, the church organizations receiving this money have degenerated into nothing more than highly-paid government contractors, whose top managers earn healthy six-figure incomes and carouse on the brie and wine circuit. And like most organizations feeding off the government, they have become very protective of their franchise. They work behind the scenes in a secretive, duplicitous manner, refuse to disclose information when asked, and lobby for an ever-expanding refugee program so they can further engorge themselves on federal tax dollars— all under the pretense of good intentions.
The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, originally founded to resettle genuine Jewish refugees, is today one of the most aggressive Muslim resettling VOLAGs. They are currently pushing for the resettlement of 65,000 Syrians to the U.S., over 90 percent of which are Muslims. What would practicing Jews say if they knew synagogue dollars were being used to resettle populations that want to see them exterminated? As if suddenly self-conscious about this, the organization has rebranded itself as simply HIAS, Inc. HIAS President Mark Hetfield explains, “The word ‘Hebrew’ is so outdated, like using the word ‘colored’ to refer to African Americans.”
Sure.
But HIAS hasn’t stopped there. In 2013, it published a vicious little paper: Resettlement at Risk: Meeting Emerging Challenges to Refugee Resettlement in Local Communities. This paper identified Ann Corcoran’s blog as an example of resistance the resettlement agenda was facing from American citizens. The paper recommends a campaign of public vilification using organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center to defame anyone with the temerity to challenge the VOLAGs or anyone else over the issue. Even though we are the ones paying for it!
The biggest laugh is the assertion that resettling refugees, especially Muslim and other non-Christians, is an opportunity for church groups to evangelize. I spokewith Jim Goodroe, a well-known advocate for refugee resettlement and Director of the Spartanburg County (South Carolina) Baptist Network. He said, “I view it from a mission rather than political perspective.” In other words, he saw it as a premier opportunity to fish for converts. Unfortunately for that narrative, federal law prohibits VOLAGs from proselytizing refugees, and they know this perfectly well. So did Mr. Goodroe. He was lying to me. As we have heard countless times before, follow the money.
But the book focuses specifically on Hijra, and how Muslims in America plainly view Muslim immigration in this light. The book is seeded with little gems that prove Ann’s point. Like the time Imam Hendi, the Muslim chaplain at Georgetown University and Imam of the Islamic Society of Frederick, Maryland, bragged that the U.S. would have 30 Muslim mayors by 2015:
Mr. Hendi said U.S. Muslims were working on “nationalizing” Islam as part of the fabric of U.S. society, including cutting funding links to Muslim countries. “Last year, we elected the first Muslim to Congress, and I expect that by 2015, there will be three or four, as well as at least 30 mayors,” he said, adding that the number of Muslim lawyers in the United States has multiplied since September 11.
What would the press do if some Catholic priest bragged that the church would help elect 30 Catholic mayors, or if Pat Roberts stated his intention to seat 30 evangelicals? An ACLU lawsuit would be immediately in the works, and plenty of snarky articles and news stories would fill the airwaves.
Ann discusses population demographics and the role of birth rates in growing the Muslim population in target countries. And why are Muslim Imams so intent on building mega mosques in towns that don’t have enough Muslims to fill them? Most Imams preach in Arabic, though many Muslim refugees come from non-Arabic-speaking countries. They teach Arabic in the mosques, and sooner or later, demand it to be taught in public schools. In 2014, the Muslim Brotherhood established the U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations, the first Muslim Brotherhood political party in the U.S. Ann says,
…everything we see happening as the Muslim population grows is part of a carefully crafted and elaborate plan to bring about Sharia and ultimately the complete domination of our government and society by Islamic Law.
In the book’s conclusion, Ann offers some ideas about what actions we can take to stop this juggernaut. She suggests a moratorium on Muslim immigration and a number of other remedies. Communities will have to stand up and protest. The resettlement agencies abhor the sunlight of truth. Confront them with that—as the town did in Ann’s situation—and they seek greener pastures, taking their refugees elsewhere. But this is only a temporary measure.
Ultimately only a change to federal law will provide a permanent solution. But to build a groundswell of protest, people need to be aware of the problem. Ann has provided the necessary information. Get the book and take an afternoon to educate yourself about refugee resettlement, then consider getting involved.
[1] The communist front Federal Council of Churches was re-branded as the National Council of Churches in 1952. NCC is a subsidiary of the World Council of Churches, controlled by the Soviet KGB since the 1970s, according to former Romanian spy chief, Ion Pacepa.