Fed agency now serves 'Americans,' not 'nation of immigrants': report

foxnews.com - America a "nation of immigrants"? Not anymore. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service has eliminated the phrase from its mission statement, according to an internal memo.

The document, obtained by the Washington Post, also says that those seeking immigration benefits will no longer be called “customers.”

The new mission statement reads:

“U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services administers the nation’s lawful immigration system, safeguarding its integrity and promise by efficiently and fairly adjudicating requests for immigration benefits while protecting Americans, securing the homeland, and honoring our values.”

By contrast, the old statement claimed that “USCIS secures America’s promise as a nation of immigrants by providing accurate and useful information to our customers, granting immigration and citizenship benefits, promoting an awareness and understanding of citizenship, and ensuring the integrity of our immigration system.”

The memo’s contents were confirmed by a USCIS spokesman who said the new mission statement is effective immediately, but denied the move was directed by the Trump administration.

"The White House did not direct USCIS to change its mission statement. It was developed and debuted within the agency by USCIS Director [Lee] Cissna during his first senior leadership conference with USCIS staff, and reflects the director’s guiding principles for the agency,” the spokesperson told the Washington Examiner.

“The new mission statement also has the support of the secretary of Homeland Security,” it added.

Cissna, 51, who started in the job in October, told the agency’s employees that the new statement is “simple, straightforward” and “clearly defines the agency’s role.”

“The American people, through Congress, have entrusted USCIS with the stewardship of our legal immigration programs that allow foreign nationals to visit, work, live, and seek refuge in the United States,” Cissna wrote in the memo. “We are also responsible for ensuring that those who naturalize are dedicated to this country, share our values, assimilate into our communities, and understand their responsibility to help preserve our freedom and liberty.”

According to Cissna, the term “customers” was scrubbed because it promotes the view that the agency’s purpose was to provide “the ultimate satisfaction of applicants and petitioners, rather than the correct adjudication of such applications and petitions according to the law.”

He added: “Use of the term leads to the erroneous belief that applicants and petitioners, rather than the American people, are whom we ultimately serve.

“All applicants and petitioners should, of course, always be treated with the greatest respect and courtesy, but we can’t forget that we serve the American people.” ContinueReading

OOPS: Norway "Anti-immigrant" group mocked after mistaking empty bus seats for women in burqas

sfgate.com - A Norwegian anti-immigrant Facebook group is the laughingstock of the internet after some members of the group thought a photo of an empty bus showed six women in burqas.

Fedrelandet viktigst, or "Fatherland first" in Norwegian, is a private group with over 13,000 members. The group was thrown into turmoil when a user posted an image of a bus allegedly packed with burqa-wearing women.

"What do people think about this?" the image was captioned.

"It looks really scary, should be banned," one user commented. "You can never know who is under there. Could be terrorists with weapons."Seems unlikely, considering we do know what was "under there": An empty bus seat.

The optical illusion-turned-xenophobia-test went viral when Facebook user Sindre Beyer posted screenshots from the group on his public page. The post has nearly 2,000 shares and plenty of comments making fun of Fedrelandet viktigst.

"This is the best thing I've seen from blind racists since The Chappelle Show," one person commented.

"I think I passed the test because the first thing I saw was a group of Darth Vaders," wrote another.

According to the Washington Post, journalist Johan Slattavik posted the original photo as a "little practical joke" to see how riled up the group would get.

"I ended up having a good laugh," Slattavik told WorldViews.

Fedrelandet viktigst members called his photo "frightening" and "tragic," which is also how their negative reaction to burqa-clad women on public transit was described by detractors.

"People see what they want to see and what they want to see are dangerous Muslims," Norwegian Centre Against Racism head Rune Berglund Steen told The Local, an English-language Norwegian news site. "In a way, it's an interesting test of how quickly people can find confirmations of their own delusions." (ontinueReading
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Related: Idiot Islamophobes Mistake Empty Bus Seats For Burqa-Wearing Women

‘Competitive Victimhood’ Among Racial Minorities Backfires, Study Finds

Multiculturalism: A Failed Concept

Vatican worried about Trump immigration order

Reuters - The Vatican said on Wednesday (Feb. 1) it was worried about U.S. President Donald Trump's moves on immigration, in the Holy See's first comment since his executive order banning travel into the United States by citizens of seven majority-Muslim countries.

"Certainly there is worry because we are messengers of another culture, that of openness," the Vatican's deputy secretary of state, Archbishop Angelo Becciu, told an Italian Catholic television station in answer to a question about Trump's order.

Becciu, who ranks third in the Vatican hierarchy, was asked about the executive order as well as Trump's promise to build a wall on the U.S. border with Mexico.

"Pope Francis, in fact, insists on the ability to integrate those who arrive in our societies and cultures," he told TV2000.

Some Roman Catholic leaders in the United States have criticized Trump's executive order. Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago said on Sunday it was "a dark moment in U.S. history" and that it was "contrary to both Catholic and American values".

Last February, while returning from a trip to Mexico, Pope Francis said then-candidate Trump's view about building walls was "not Christian". (ontinueReading

German population hits record high of 82.8 million due to migrants

Like Florida, Germany should control they borders..

Reuters - Germany's population grew by some 600,000 last year to reach a record high of 82.8 million people due to the number of migrants who have arrived in the country, the Federal Statistics office said on Friday.

In a preliminary estimate for 2016, the statistics office said the population had eclipsed the previous record high of 82.5 million recorded at the end of 2002, even though the number of deaths in 2016 exceeded the number of births by between 150,000 and 190,000.

Deaths have exceed births in Germany since 1972, with a total of more than 5 million fewer births than deaths.

However, countering that trend, more than a million people fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East, Africa and beyond flocked to Germany in 2015 and 2016, drawn by its strong economy, relatively liberal asylum laws and generous system of benefits.

Since the height of the euro zone debt crisis, Germany is also attracting many migrants from other European countries such as Greece and Spain.

The figures used to calculate net migration were based on numbers signing up at registration offices. Asylum seekers are initially housed in reception centers and generally only registered later.

Steady economic growth since 2010 and generous pro-family policies by successive governments in recent years have helped lift the birth rate but it is still below the death rate.

German government support for refugees has climbed in recent years. For 2016 and 2017 the government set aside 28.7 billion euros ($30.64 billion) in funding to accommodate and integrate the more than one million asylum seekers who entered the country, the ministry said.

Three Kansas men calling themselves ‘Crusaders’ charged in terror plot targeting Muslim immigrants

(WashingtonPost - Three Kansas men have been accused of plotting attacks targeting an apartment complex home, a mosque and many Muslim immigrants from Somalia, authorities said Friday.

Curtis Allen, Gavin Wright and Patrick Eugene Stein face federal charges of conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction, the Justice Department announced.

“These charges are based on eight months of investigation by the FBI that is alleged to have taken the investigators deep into a hidden culture of hatred and violence,” acting U.S. attorney Tom Beall said in a statement. “Many Kansans may find it as startling as I do that such things could happen here.”

According to the FBI complaint made public Friday, the investigation was prompted by a paid confidential informant who had attended meetings with a group of individuals calling themselves “the Crusaders” and had heard plans discussed for attacks on Muslims, whom the men called “cockroaches.”

The three men charged Friday were ultimately identified as the architects of the attack plan through a combination of recordings, social media and reporting from the confidential informant, according to the complaint.

The members of the group routinely expressed their hatred for Muslims, Somalis and immigrants. In one call, Stein allegedly said the country could be turned around only with “a bloodbath.” The individuals said they wanted to “wake people up” and inspire other militia groups to act.

The FBI says that as part of this alleged plot, the men conducted surveillance in Garden City, Kan., a small city about 200 miles west of Wichita, and other places in southwestern Kansas.

At one point, Stein was being driven around by the confidential informant, who told the FBI that Stein yelled and cursed at Somali women in traditional garb.

During the period of surveillance, Stein was armed with an assault rifle, extra magazines, a pistol, a ballistic vest and a night vision scope, the complaint said.

The three men had been plotting “to use a weapon of mass destruction” since February, according to the FBI complaint.

More Mexican immigrants leaving U.S. than entering: Pew

CHICAGO (Reuters) - More Mexicans are leaving the United States than entering it according to a report released on Thursday, at a time when some Republicans, including presidential candidate Donald Trump, have taken a hard line on illegal immigration.

Most Mexicans leaving the United States are doing so voluntarily to reunite with their family or to start one, the report by the Pew Research Center showed.

From 2009 to 2014, more than one million Mexicans and their families left the United States for Mexico, while more than 865,000 entered the United States, Pew said. The figures include unauthorized immigrants.

An increasing share of Mexicans says life north of the border is neither better nor worse than life in Mexico, Pew said.

The overall flow of Mexican immigrants between the two countries is at its smallest since the 1990s, Pew said. (Full Text)

Study: Asians to become largest US immigrant group

(dailyrecord.com) WASHINGTON — In a major shift in immigration patterns over the next 50 years, Asians will have surged past Hispanics to become the largest group of immigrants heading to the United States, according to estimates in a new study of immigration patterns.

The study looks in detail at what will happen by 2065, but the actual tipping point comes in 2055.

An increase in Asian and Hispanic immigration will also drive U.S. population growth, with foreign-born residents expected to make up 18 percent of the country’s projected 441 million people in 50 years, the Pew Research Center said in a report being released Monday. This will be a record, higher than the nearly 15 percent during the wave of immigration from Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Today, immigrants make up 14 percent of the population, an increase from 5 percent in 1965.

The actual change is expected to come in 2055, when Asians will become the largest immigrant group at 36 percent, compared with Hispanics at 34 percent. White immigrants to America, 80 percent back in 1965, will hover somewhere between 18percent and 20 percent, with black immigrants in the 8 percent to 9 percent range, the study said.

Currently, 47 percent of immigrants living in the United States are Hispanic, but by 2065 that number will have dropped to 31 percent. Asians currently make up 26percent of the immigrant population, but in 50 years that percentage is expected to increase to 38 percent.

Integration Failing in America

(thetrumpet.com) 4/10/15 - Increasing numbers of immigrants are clinging to their own culture rather than assimilating into American society.

More than 25 percent of Boston’s residents were born outside the United States.

“You can’t find a place in Boston that doesn’t have a growing immigrant population,” said Alejandra St. Guillen, director of Boston’s Office of New Bostonians.

But it isn’t just Boston. Whole communities that cannot speak English are popping up across America. Washington, D.C., and six Maryland and Virginia school districts spend $2.4 billion on sources and programs related to Limited English Proficiency (LEP). Alexandria, Virginia, devotes 45.8 percent of the school systems’ budget to LEPstudents.

A January 2015 study by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), indicates that in some metro area counties in Maryland, Virginia and the District of Colombia, 20 to 30 percent of the population is foreign born. That means approximately a quarter of the population of the nation’s capital was not born in the U.S.

And the refusal or inability of immigrants to integrate is widespread.

In March, St. Cloud Technical High School in Minnesota showed a prime example of the effects of non-integration when more than 100 Somali students walked out of classes. The walk-out was supposedly in response to a picture posted on the Internet implying a Somali student could be a terrorist. Tensions became so high that another school in the district had to be locked down for safety.

”Situations regarding race and culture are in the forefront at this moment. It’s a hot topic,” Willie Jett, superintendent of the St. Cloud school district said. “At times, can there be conflict? Definitely.”

Somali leaders say the school is racist and needs to hire more minority teachers to be able to relate to immigrant students. Former prospective St. Cloud City Council Candidate Abdul Kulane said that the Somali community needed to be involved in deciding how the school is run. He said that reports of the school district’s inability to find minority teachers is just an excuse.

It’s a truism that a house divided against itself will fall.