Memo From Middle America: Trump Trumpets Truth—It Is NOT Evil, Unchristian And Un-American To Reject Muslim “Refugees”
12/07/2015
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Needless to say, Soros Evangelical Russell Moore was quick with a quote about Donald Trump’s proposed moratorium on Muslim immigration: "Anyone who cares an iota about religious liberty should denounce this reckless, demagogic rhetoric.” [American Muslims accuse Donald Trump of leading 'lynch mob', by Daniel Burke, CNN, December 7, 2015]

Well, I am a conservative Evangelical Christian and I think Trump’s idea is fantastic. They don’t have Muslim terrorism in Japan, do they?

And remember, before Trump spoke up, the Republican Congress was on the brink of approving an omnibus spending bill, only days after yet another Islamic terrorist attack, which Senator Jeff Sessions warns will give President Obama a blank check for more immigration and more Muslim refugees [Sessions: Omnibus gives Obama 'blank check' on immigration, Syrian refugees, by Paul Bedard, Washington Examiner, December 1, 2015].

And, once again, we see the Main Stream Media suddenly eager to inject Christianity into politics when it can be used to guilt well-meaning Americans into supporting suicidal polices.

On Thanksgiving Day, President Obama even tried to guilt-trip patriotic Americans by bringing up the Pilgrims:

Nearly four centuries after the Mayflower set sail, the world is still full of pilgrims – men and women who want nothing more than the chance for a safer, better future for themselves and their families.

Remember the Pilgrims, Obama says, in appeal for generosity to Syrian refugees, By Roberto Rampton, Reuters, November 26, 2015

(Of course, “better future” reveals that these are not “refugees” but economic migrants).

Maybe Obama and his speechwriters got the idea from a Daily Beast article published a day previously [The Pilgrims Were the Original Refugees, by Michael Daly, November 25, 2015]. I wish Leftists would make up their mind whether the Pilgrim Fathers were genocidal imperialists or oppressed immigrants.

The Pilgrim analogy is a sly trick but of course it’s inaccurate. The Pilgrims arrived as colonists, sponsored and financed by joint-stock corporations. They had no plans to assimilate to the culture of the Wampanoag or any other tribe. After all, they’d already proven their loyalty to Anglo-Saxon culture by refusing to assimilate to Dutch culture.

If anything, this analogy implies the Syrians are coming to colonize us—which may well be accurate.

Nonetheless, the MSM tells us “American religious leaders” are “in favor of welcoming Syrian refugees” and that they think it’s “the responsibility of Americans, and especially religious believers, to shelter those fleeing war and hardship, no matter the religion of those refugees [Paris Attacks: The Violence, Its Victims, and How the Investigation Unfolded, by Laurie Goodstein, New York Times, November 17, 2015].

One of those involved in this inter-faith group of guilt-trippers is Leith Anderson of the Soros Evangelicals, aka as the “Evangelical Immigration Table.” The Roman Catholic hierarchy is also heavily involved. Indeed, “Faith groups” are reportedly facilitating 70% of those “refugees” who are resettled [Syrian refugees, redux: This time, AP remembers to ask religious leaders, by Jim Davis, GetReligion, November 23, 2015].

How pious! But of course, these groups are also massively profiteering off this social crisis, making it hard to take such rhetoric seriously.

For example, the Evangelical organization World Relief receives 68% of its budget from government funding. Many other “religious organizations” are similarly de facto arms of the federal government [How much of your tax dollars are the federal refugee resettlement contractors receiving? By Ann Corcoran, Refugee Resettlement Watch, January 16, 2015]. World Relief also received Soros funds (see page 8 of the National Immigration Forum’s tax form here).

Regarding church finance, II Corinthians 9:7, states: “Every man according as he purposeth in his heart, so let him give; not grudgingly, or of necessity: for God loveth a cheerful giver.”

But a taxpayer is not generally a cheerful giver. These Christian organizations are taking taxpayer money and hypocritically acting self-righteous about it [Christian charities profit from $1billion federal program to resettle refugees, by Robert Spencer, JihadWatch, November 30, 2015]

Big Government and Christian charity are two separate things. Christian leaders who confuse them are misleading the flock. Christian charity is giving voluntarily in the name of Christ. Big Government uses taxpayer dollars for its own agenda—not Christ’s.

And these “refugees” aren’t just wandering over here. They are being deliberately imported.

As FAIR points out, our refugee system is antiquated and a relic of the Cold War:

Our refugee policies were codified 35 years ago under The Refugee Act of 1980. They were designed to address the political realities of the Cold War era, in which persecution was most often perpetrated by powerful and repressive central governments. These governments actively prevented their citizens from leaving.

[Immigration Basics: Refugees, FAIR, Accessed December 7, 2015]

Still, the argument that Christians are required to take in “refugees’ is well-publicized. But does resettlement actually help refugees? If Middle Eastern people are to be helped, the best place to do it is in their own region. And there are already regional options for true refugees.

People may not be aware of it, but there are a number of refugee camps in the Middle East, currently housing thousands more refugees. The largest is the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan, with tens of thousands of Syrians. And many other Syrians have moved to Jordanian cities [As Others Flee to West, Most Syrian Refugees Remain in Region, by Jodi Rudoren, New York Times, September 22, 2015]

A number of camps are operated by UNHCR, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. These camps are partially funded by fabulously wealthy Gulf Arab states which do not want refugee camps in their own countries but do help pay for them in poorer Arab countries such as Iraq and Jordan. A UNHCR map shows several camps in the region, even in Syria itself.

Presidential candidate Ben Carson, whom we can call a sincere Christian, recently visited a Syrian refugee camp in Jordan and reported that the camp was “quite nice” and that the desire of those refugees “is to be resettled in Syria.”

Carson explained that

…they are satisfied to be in the refugee camps if the refugee camps are adequately funded. Recognize that in these camps they have schools, they have recreational facilities that are really quite nice. And there (are) all kind of things that make life more tolerable.
Carson’s policy recommendation:
I believe that the right policy is to support the refugee program that is in place, that works extremely well but does not have adequate funding," Carson said. "If you do that, you solve that problem without exposing the American people to a population that could be infiltrated with terrorists who want to destroy us

[US presidential candidate Carson: Syrian refugee camps 'quite nice', By David Lawder, AOL, November 29, 2015]

Though I’m no great fan of foreign aid, I think money spent on refugees in the Middle East is better than bringing them here. After all, more than 90% of Middle Eastern refugees already in the United States are on welfare. The aim should be to help genuine refugees, not simply enable economic migrants.

Some have suggested that Christian migrants in particular should be admitted to the West. However, even that encourages the further de-Christianization of the Middle East. As presidential candidate Rick Santorum put it in an undated op-ed on his own website:

By ridding the region of Christians and Jews that have lived in these areas for 2000 years, we make it harder to stabilize the Middle East once ISIS is defeated. ISIS also wants to remove dissenters, including moderate Muslims—so they can run rampant across the Middle East and beyond. By bringing refugees to America, we are simply accommodating them.

[Halt Syrian Refugees in the U.S. by Rick Santorum, RickSantorum.com]

The best way to help Syrian refugees is to help them in their own part of the world. And the best way that can be done is by settling them in an area which best fits their particular ethnic and sectarian alignments. Assisting in the ethnic cleansing of Christians from their historic homelands doesn’t do that. And facilitating the mass migration of Muslims into the West, creating cultural tensions and a security nightmare, hardly augurs well for global stability.

The bottom line: these “Christian” arguments for resettlement are not being made in good faith. Many of those making them are more concerned with their own bottom line than the Bible. And celebrity Leftists and the Obama Administration simply see refugees as a way to overwhelm and replace the historic American nation with their own clients.

Compassion for those who suffer abroad is not inconsistent with American patriotism. But many who claim they want to “help the refugees” are in fact more interested in deliberately hurting the American people.

My fellow conservative Christians need to make sure weak-willed Republicans don’t go along with this dangerous agenda.

American citizen Allan Wall (email him) moved back to the U.S.A. in 2008 after many years residing in Mexico. Allan's wife is Mexican, and their two sons are bilingual. In 2005, Allan served a tour of duty in Iraq with the Texas Army National Guard. His VDARE.COM articles are archived here; his Mexidata.info articles are archived here ; his News With Views columns are archived here; and his website is here.

 

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