Friday, November 27, 2020

GLOBAL MURDERERS - MUSLIMS AND THEIR DICTATORS - Erdogan’s Endless Wars: How Turkey Is Spreading Too Thin

 A prayer to Allah to “destroy the enemies of Islam, and annihilate the heretics and the atheists” is not just a request directed to the deity. The Qur’an explicitly says that Allah will punish people by the hands of the believers: “Fight them; Allah will punish them by your hands and will disgrace them and give you victory over them and satisfy the breasts of a believing people, and remove the fury in the believers’ hearts.” (9:14-15) Thus Kathrada may be issuing a call to action to believers who think it incumbent upon themselves to heed this Qur’anic directive and become instruments of Allah’s wrath.

 Erdogan’s Endless Wars: How Turkey Is Spreading Too Thin

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan (R) prays next to a Turkish soldier wearing a ottoman uniform during a third anniversary commemoration rally at the Ataturk International Airport in Istanbul on July 15, 2019. - Turkey commemorates, on July 15, 2019 the third anniversary of a coup attempt which was followed …
OZAN KOSE/AFP via Getty Images
10:05

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has never made a secret of his ambition to become a historic regional leader. His nostalgia for the Ottoman Empire long ago became a source of concern for observers who think he might seriously attempt to bring it back.

His detractors mock him as “Sultan Erdogan,” but he might not find that name insulting. Erdogan flexed his military muscle in several recent conflicts. He might be warming up for something bigger, or he may have already overtaxed Turkey’s military strength.

Erdogan has been a populist, nationalist, and Islamist throughout his career, although he began as a “reformer” with a considerably softer approach. He long dreamed of abandoning Turkey’s postwar legacy of secularism and remodeling the country as an aggressive Islamic power. He declared war on the secular elite of Turkey when they threw him in jail for inciting religious hatred in 1997. 

Erdogan apparently emerged from that experience with a strong desire to be the one who gets to throw people in jail for disagreeing with him. As soon as he talked himself into national power, he made certain no one would ever be able to talk him out of it. He is generally a splendid example of an authoritarian leader who took pains to dynamite the path he took to power behind him so that no upstart opponent would be able to follow it and usurp him.

Erdogan had a very hostile relationship with the military in his early career, denouncing it as corrupt and domineering. After the unsuccessful 2016 coup attempt against his rule, he purged the military of political adversaries and remodeled it into his “private army,” as Foreign Policy described it in 2017. Erdogan’s defeat of the coup is now celebrated in Turkey as a national holiday.

Veteran Turkish journalist Burak Bekdil lost his job at Turkey’s top newspaper Hurriyet in 2017 for writing an article that criticized post-coup Erdogan as an aspiring “conqueror” eager to revive the Ottoman Empire’s “law of the sword.” The Turkish president is now enmeshed in military conflicts across the Middle East, and he seems willing to kick off a few more.

Syria: Turkey invaded Syria in 2019, launching an operation called “Operation Peace Spring” against Kurdish militias operating near the Turkish border. Turkey accused these militia groups, which Western allies saw as crucial allies against the Islamic State, of working with the violent PKK separatist organization in Turkey. 

Erdogan threatened to attack the Syrian Kurds again on Wednesday after a suspected Kurdish militant carried out a suicide bombing in a Turkish border town. According to the Turkish president, Kurdish armed forces have not yet withdrawn from the buffer zone in Syria he demanded in 2019, so Turkey has “a legitimate reason to intervene at any moment we feel the need to.”

Iraq: Turkey also periodically bombs Kurdish positions in Iraq, to the growing annoyance of the Iraqi government. Iraq strongly protested Turkish bombing runs and ground missions against PKK camps near the border over the summer, calling them a “dangerous violation of Iraqi sovereignty.” Erdogan was unmoved by Iraq’s warnings, even after Turkish air raids killed several Iraqi military officers.

Russia: Turkey’s incursion into Syria brought conflict with Russian forces working to keep dictator Bashar Assad in power. When the Russians first moved into Syria, Turkey accused their warplanes of violating its airspace, leading to Turkey downing a Russian attack plane in November 2015. 

The two nations came to the brink of war, patched up their differences, and then returned to the brink as their proxy forces in Syria fought a vicious battle for the key province of Idlib. Dozens of Turkish soldiers have been killed during an offensive by the Moscow-supported Syrian government against the province. 

Erdogan worked out an Idlib ceasefire deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin in March, but on Wednesday he denounced a Russian airstrike against Turkey-supported Syrian rebel forces, calling it “a sign that lasting peace and calm is not wanted in the region.”

Libya: Russia is also critical of Turkey’s military involvement in Libya, where Erdogan gave crucial support to the government in Tripoli – controversially including thousands of Syrian jihadis employed by Turkey as mercenary shock troops – while Russia supported Tripoli’s rival for power, Gen. Khalifa Haftar. Turkey was able to break Haftar’s siege of Tripoli and turned the tide of the Libyan civil war, in part by aggressively deploying anti-aircraft weapons that made the Russians and other Haftar supporters nervous. 

Egypt: Also unhappy with the Turkish presence in Libya is Egypt, which insists on its own defensive buffer zone against Turkish troops and militia proxies, much as Turkey demands a buffer against Kurdish forces in Syria. In October, Egypt and its allies in Libya criticized Turkey for scheming to seize Libya’s oil wealth, much of which happens to reside in the area Egypt claims as a security buffer. Erdogan has responded by denouncing Egypt’s involvement in Libya as illegal.

Greece and Cyprus: The Atlantic Council noted in October that Libya is a stepping stone for Erdogan to project power into the Mediterranean, where his ambitions could develop into a military conflict against Egypt, Greece, and Cyprus. 

Libya’s Government of National Accord (GNA) repaid Erdogan for his support by giving Turkey access to valuable offshore energy resources also claimed by Egypt and Greece, which loudly denounced the GNA-Turkey agreement and signed their own accord to create an exclusive economic zone in the eastern Mediterranean in August. Greece made major weapons purchases in September – its largest in twenty years – to underline its willingness to fight over its claims in the Eastern Mediterranean.

Tensions were high between Greece and Turkey long before Libya entered the picture. The two nations are bitterly at odds over Cyprus, an island with a complex history divided between a government that favors Turkey and a government that favors Greece. In the most recent flare-up between them, Erdogan accused Greece and the Greek Cypriot government of spitefully arranging the interception of a Turkish vessel bound for Libya.

Greece and Turkey are also at odds over islands and offshore resources in the Aegean Sea. Pessimistic observers believe air and naval forces from the two countries are in perpetual danger of opening fire on each other, especially during periods of heightened tension when both sides are determined to demonstrate their strength in the Aegean. 

The Turks have a nasty habit of acting like they might shoot down Greek officials during visits to the disputed islands. In May 2020, Greek and Turkish warplanes engaged in a mock dogfight after Turkish jets threatened a helicopter carrying Greek Defense Minister Nikos Panagiotopoulos and his staff. The engagement, like many others preceding it, came perilously close to not being “mock” anymore. 

Turkey’s tensions with Greece have a strong religious dimension, as Greek Orthodox Christians were outraged by Erdogan’s decision to convert the fabled Hagia Sophia into a mosque last year. Greece was similarly enraged when Erdogan did the same thing to another cathedral with deep significance to the Orthodox Christian faith, the Church of Chora.

Israel: Egypt, Greece, and Greek Cyprus belong to a cooperative called the East Mediterranean Gas Forum (EMGF), based in Egypt. The EMGF pointedly told Turkey not to expect an invitation to join any time soon. Turkey responded by calling the EMGF an “alliance of evil” that seeks to unfairly block Turkey from its “blue homeland.”

Another member of EMGF is Israel. Israel is very interested in building a gas pipeline in the Eastern Mediterranean, a project Turkey opposes because it would interfere with Ankara’s plans in the region. Erdogan is hostile to the Israeli government and considers its membership in EMGF provocative.

Erdogan makes a great show of supporting the Palestinians against Israel, although he recently remarked that instead of Israelis and Palestinians squabbling over who owns the holy city of Jerusalem, they should both remember that it really belongs to the Ottoman Empire.

After years of belligerence, Erdogan and his Islamist party grew relatively quiet about Israel in the bottom half of 2020, leading some Israelis to suspect Erdogan is biding his time and preparing renewed hostilities against them after the strongly pro-Israel U.S. President Donald Trump leaves office.

Armenia: Turkey intervened in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan last month, to the horror of Armenians who remember Erdogan’s beloved Ottoman Empire making a spirited effort to exterminate them a century ago. Turkey made no bones about its willingness to support Azerbaijan in every way possible, from diplomatic and financial assistance to military intervention. 

Turkey has ambitions in the South Caucasus that go far beyond helping Azerbaijan push the Armenians out of a few disputed provinces. The region is another point of contention between Turkey and Russia, which appears to have outmaneuvered Erdogan by emerging from the Nagorno-Karabakh battle with a stronger position in both Armenia and Azerbaijan.

France: Relations between Turkey and France turned extremely sour after French President Emmanuel Macron spoke out against Islamism in the wake of a jihadi beheading a French schoolteacher. Erdogan responded to Macron’s defense of free speech by suggesting the French president belongs in a mental hospital.

France was already lined up against Turkey in every one of the disputes mentioned above. Erdogan’s renewed vitriol against France is probably a play to shore up his nationalist and Islamist bases; some observers noted that Turkish media, which Erdogan now fully controls, scarcely reported on the French schoolteacher’s beheading, making it easy for Erdogan to paint Macron as an unreasonable bigot who lashed out against Islam for no good reason.


California Jihadi Planned to Kill 

People, Then Read Qur’an Until 

Police Arrived

Mon Nov 23, 2020 

Robert Spencer

 

32

Yet another blow to the establishment media narrative came Wednesday. The Associated Press reported that Faisal Mohammad, who in 2015 stabbed four people in a classroom at the University of California, Merced, where he was a freshman, “planned to praise Allah while slitting the throats of classmates and use a gun taken from an ambushed officer to kill more.” Then he planned to call 911 to report the killings, “read the Quran until he heard sirens, and then ‘take calm shot after shot’ with the gun” when the police arrived. All this happened while the U.S. government was institutionally and thoroughgoingly committed to the proposition that Islam is a peaceful and tolerant religion that has nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism. And even after four years of President Trump, that institutional culture hasn’t changed.

The detailed plan that Mohammad sketched out for his attack has just been released; it “included putting on a balaclava at 7:45 a.m. and saying ‘in the name of Allah’ before stepping into his classroom and ordering students to use zip-ties he provided to bind their hands. Mohammad also planned to make a fake 911 distress call to report a suicidal guy [sic; this is how they write at AP these days] and wait for police outside the classroom before ambushing from behind ‘and slit calmly yet forcefully one of the officers with guns.’”

It was during that wait that he planned to sit down and spend some time in spiritual reading. Yet Mohammad’s attack, as The College Fix reported back in November 2015, was characterized as “revenge for being kicked out of a study group.” The establishment media gave scant attention to the fact that “Mohammad was found to have an image of the ISIS flag, a handwritten manifesto with instructions on how to behead someone, and reminders to pray to Allah.”

The university where this jihad attack took place was even worse. The College Fix reported that instead of waking up to the reality of Islamic jihad, many at the University of California-Merced mourned for the attacker, with a Facebook “R.I.P” tribute to Faisal Mohammad “gaining massive support among the campus community.”

Even worse, UC Merced faculty hosted a “teach in” that about 200 students attented, entitled “Don’t Turn Our Tragedy Into Hate” that was “conspicuously devoid of discussions of radical Islam, and instead delved into topics such as how society’s notions of masculinity pressure men.” Among the topics discussed at this “teach in” were “What does mental health have to do with this?”; “Why are men more likely to be perpetrators of violence?”; “How do we define our community – what lives are grievable?”; and “What do race and religion have to do with this?”

One speaker suggested that the attack was all about men not being allowed to be weak, self-centered, weepy narcissists: “Anger, that is really what we think about when we think about emotional men. They are subject to social sanctions if they deviate from masculinity. If you are perceived as failing at it, you are subject to being called a fag, a pussy, a wimp, pretty much what women are, right? So when you have this limited ability to sort of express your emotions and possible feelings of emasculation, of low self esteem, how do you really [deal with] that? A lot of times they … engage in violence. They need to compensate for their loss of masculinity in the most manly way they have access to, and unfortunately, a lot of times that’s violence.”

Yes, you see? Faisal Mohammad stabbed four people just because he was a sensitive soul in a world that was too harsh for him. Why, what other explanation could there possibly be? According to one student who attended the teach in, “‘Islamophobia’ was cited as the reason people want to call it a terrorist attack….‘People were quick to sympathize with the attacker and assume anyone who thought this was related to radical Islam was a xenophobic racist.’”

The University of California Merced is no different from any other campus all over the country today: full of indoctrinated bots who have been thoroughly imbued with the notion that when Islamic jihadists attack us, it is our fault. All too many even among law enforcement and counterterrorism officials assume the same thing. No number of Faisal Mohammads, and there will be many more, will convince them otherwise. Nonetheless, it is unfortunate but true that eventually all this denial and willful ignorance is going to blow up in everyone’s face. We can only hope that this doesn’t happen literally.

Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of 21 books, including the New York Times bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His latest book is Rating America’s Presidents: An America-First Look at Who Is Best, Who Is Overrated, and Who Was An Absolute Disaster. Follow him on Twitter here. Like him on Facebook here.

 


MELTDOWN! - CALIFORNIA'S HOMELESS AND 15 MILLION ILLEGALS - The state of California is home to more illegal aliens than any other state in the country. Approximately one in five illegal aliens lives in California, Pew reported.

 

Some California counties winding down hotels for homeless

A man stands near tents set up on a sidewalk in San Francisco, Saturday, Nov. 21, 2020. Some counties in California are pushing ahead with plans to wind down a program that's housed homeless people in hotel rooms amid the pandemic, despite an emergency cash infusion from the state aimed …

Some California counties are pushing ahead with plans to wind down a program that’s housed homeless people in hotel rooms amid the coronavirus pandemic

Some California counties winding down hotels for homelessBy JANIE HARAssociated PressThe Associated PressSAN FRANCISCO

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Some California counties are pushing ahead with plans to wind down a program that’s moved homeless people into hotel rooms amid the coronavirus pandemic despite an emergency cash infusion from the state aimed at preventing people from returning to the streets in colder weather as the virus surges.

Gov. Gavin Newsom recently announced $62 million for counties to move hotel guests into permanent housing or to extend hotel leases that were part of “Project Roomkey,” which he rolled out this spring as a way to protect some people experiencing homelessness from the virus. The Federal Emergency Management Agency agreed to pick up 75% of the cost.

But counties say that with federal relief funding expiring soon, it’s time to transition residents from expensive hotel rooms to cheaper, more stable housing. Officials hope to offer a place to every resident leaving a hotel, though they acknowledge not everyone will accept it and affordable housing is difficult to find.

California is one of several states, including Washington, that turned to hotels to shelter homeless people as the virus took hold. Homelessness has soared nationwide during the pandemic, and it was already at a crisis level in California because of an expensive housing market and a shortage of affordable options. The nation’s most populated state has by far the highest number of people on the streets, though other places have a higher per capita rate.

In San Francisco, advocacy groups and some officials are outraged by the mayor’s plan to start moving hundreds of people out of hotels around the holidays. They say it’s ridiculous when thousands of people are still sleeping on sidewalks and in cars, and they don’t believe the city can find enough virus-safe housing for 2,300 people living in more than two dozen hotels.

“It makes absolute zero sense. It is outrageous, it’s irresponsible, and it basically tells people experiencing homelessness that you’re not a priority for the city,” Supervisor Hillary Ronen said as she and other leaders announced proposed legislation to slow the move and ensure every resident is offered alternative housing.

The Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing said in a statement that money from the state will provide “more flexibility and time” but would not say if San Francisco had changed its timeline. The department has said it plans to move homeless people out of all 29 hotels by June.

“We will continue to work with city staff and our service providers to deliver on our commitment to get people housed and ensure no one in our hotels gets moved back on the streets,” the statement said.

An estimated 150,000 people experiencing homelessness live in California, and there are signs that number will only increase with an economy ravaged by the pandemic. Newsom has awarded $800 million to cities and counties to buy hotels and other properties to convert into housing, saying he didn’t want to squander an opportunity to get more people indoors.

At times, connecting homeless people to shelter, work, medical care and social services boils down to finding them in time, and the hotels have been a huge help, advocates say. They say hotel residents have flourished with regular checkups and meals.

“If this were to be taken away from us at this time, it really would be like having a carpet pulled out from under us in a really major way,” said hotel resident Nicholas Garrett, who appeared with the San Francisco supervisors.

Dr. Danielle Alkov spoke of one of her patients, a transgender woman who has blossomed after being brought indoors. But her hotel is scheduled to be among the first to close.

“She’s thriving, she’s engaged in medical care, she’s very future-thinking for probably the first time in a long time, thinking about her career goals, her educational goals,” Alkov said. “The idea of her not having a stable place to go, and losing all the progress that she’s made, would be devastating.”

In Los Angeles, the Homeless Services Authority said nearly 600 people have moved out of hotel rooms and into interim housing, with 62 others in permanent housing. About 3,400 people remain in hotel rooms, and while the agency has received funding from the city to extend leases at several hotels, it will keep moving people into other housing, spokesman Christopher Yee said.

Alameda County, which includes Oakland, hopes to use state money for rental subsidies and to extend leases on hotel rooms but will continue with plans to close five of nine hotels between December and February. Over 1,000 people are in hotels there.

It’s much more cost-effective to use the money “for permanent housing with leases than to continue the hotel program indefinitely,” said Kerry Abbott, director of the county’s Office of Homeless Care and Coordination. And while some people have chosen to return to a shelter, “our goal is to make sure everyone has a housing offer. Most people will take a housing offer.”

The hotels won’t go away entirely. Abbott said the county plans to operate a 98-room quarantine and isolation hotel for six months next year and keep an additional 240 hotel rooms open through 2021 for residents who require the extra care.

By year’s end, Sacramento County plans to close trailers housing 46 people either recovering from the virus or awaiting test results. But county spokeswoman Janna Haynes said shelter hotels will stay open through early next year and nobody will be forced to leave without a place to go.

Even though the program is ending, Abbott, of Alameda County, says people have benefited deeply, with some able to start addressing issues that have kept them out of stable housing.

“Many people have been inside for the first time in a decade or longer, and have stayed inside, and have benefited from a place to stay, the services and the food and even the community our providers have put in place,” she said.

Democrats Give Housing to Illegal Migrants, Penalizing Black Americans

Spencer Platt/Getty Images

28 Aug 202023

3:30

President Donald Trump’s campaign used the issue of illegal immigration on Thursday to seek votes from working-class blacks.

A short video released by the Trump campaign Twitter account highlighted the president’s record on improving public housing in New York and other cities.

“My name is Judy Smith,” said one black woman, who continued:

I live in New York City public housing. I’m grateful for the spotlight that President Trump is putting on New York City public housing. I think it’s wrong that the Democrats put illegal immigrants before black Americans. How is it that we have people waiting on the waiting lists for New York City public housing for 10 years or more, but yet we have illegal immigrants living here? Something is wrong with that picture.

President Trump is bringing real solutions to real problems.#RNC2020 pic.twitter.com/3Q7s2ZEchE

— Team Trump (Text VOTE to 88022) (@TeamTrump) August 28, 2020

The comments were likely aimed at working-class blacks in many swing states, including several Midwest states.

“Working-class African Americans are significantly more supportive of policies that seek to: decrease the number of immigrants coming to the United States, increase the federal role in verifying the employment status of immigrants, and attempts to amend the Constitution’s citizenship provisions,” said a 2013 peer-reviewed study by Tatishe Nteta, a professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. The study continued:

For African Americans who lost a job to an immigrant, working-class membership resulted in a 13 percentage point increase in the probability of support for an increased federal role in workplace oversight [against employment of illegal immigrants] when compared to middle-class African Americans who experienced a similar loss.

Numerous polls show that blacks — like all other groups — say they wish to welcome migrants, but strongly prefer that Americans get jobs before companies import more migrants.

Nationwide, the expanded supply of new migrants also cuts Americans’ disposable wages by inflating their housing costs. That reality is recognized by investor groups who are urging more immigration. For example, the Economic Innovation Group says, “The relationship between population growth and housing demand is clear. More people means more demand for housing, and fewer people means less demand.”

Mike Bloomberg’s pro-migration advocacy group, New American Economy, pushed the same argument:

The research shows that an increase in the absolute number of immigrants in a particular county from 2000–2010 results in corresponding economic gains—increased demand for locally produced goods and services, a corresponding inflow of U.S.-born individuals—that are reflected in the housing market.

The video also included comments from other blacks in New York:

My name is Manuel Martinez … Under the Trump administration, New York City Housing Authority has received an influx of cash that it has not seen since 1997.

My name is Claudia Perez  I’m the resident council president of Washington Houses, which is in Spanish Harlem. [New York Mayor] Bill de Blasio and the way he has dealt with public housing residents is disgraceful. President Trump administration has opened their ears and has listened … [and] is bringing real solutions to real problems.

The video ends with the claim, “More Funding: Better Housing: Promise Made: Promise Kept.”

Donald Trump's labor & immigration promises for a 2nd term are vague but useful.
They are also better for ordinary Americans than Joe Biden's business-backed, open-ended inflow of wage-cutting & rent-raising blue-collar workers & college-
graduates. https://t.co/OmE4tRPf4T

— Neil Munro (@NeilMunroDC) August 26, 2020

  

Another line they cut into: Illegals get free public housing as impoverished Americans wait

 

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/04/another_line_they_cut_into_illegals_get_free_public_housing_as_impoverished_americans_wait.html

 

By Monica Showalter

Want some perspective on why so many blue sanctuary cities have so many homeless encampments hovering around?

Try the reality that illegal immigrants are routinely given free public housing by the U.S., based on the fact that they are uneducated, unskilled, and largely unemployable. Those are the criteria, and now importing poverty has never been easier. Shockingly, this comes as millions of poor Americans are out in the cold awaiting that housing that the original law was intended to help.

Thus, the tent cities, and by coincidence, the worst of these emerging shantytowns are in blue sanctuary cities loaded with illegal immigrants - Orange County, San Francisco, San Diego, Seattle, New York...Is there a connection? At a minimum, it's worth looking at.

The Trump administration's Department of Housing and Urban Development is finally trying to put a stop to it as 1.5 million illegals prepare to enter the U.S. this year, and one can only wonder why they didn't do it yesterday.

According to a report in the Washington Times:

The plan would scrap Clinton-era regulations that allowed illegal immigrants to sign up for assistance without having to disclose their status.

Under the new Trump rules, not only would the leaseholder using public housing have to be an eligible U.S. person, but the government would verify all applicants through the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database, a federal system that’s used to weed illegal immigrants out of other welfare programs.

Those already getting HUD assistance would have to go through a new verification, though it would be over a period of time and wouldn’t all come at once.

“We’ve got our own people to house and need to take care of our citizens,” an administration official told The Washington Times. “Because of past loopholes in HUD guidance, illegal aliens were able to live in free public housing desperately needed by so many of our own citizens. As illegal aliens attempt to swarm our borders, we’re sending the message that you can’t live off of American welfare on the taxpayers’ dime.”

The Times notes that the rules are confusingly contradictary, and some illegal immigrant families are getting full rides based on just one member being born in the U.S. The pregnant caravaner who calculatingly slipped across the U.S. in San Diego late last year, only to have her baby the next day, now, along with her entire family, gets that free ride on government housing. Plus lots of cheesy news coverage about how heartwarming it all is. That's a lot cheaper than any housing she's going to find back in Tegucigalpa.

Migrants would be almost fools not to take the offering.

The problem of course is that Americans who paid into these programs, and the subset who find themselves in dire circumstances, are in fact being shut out.

The fill-the-pews Catholic archbishops may love to tout the virtues of illegal immigrants and wave signs about getting 'justice" for them, but the hard fact here is that these foreign nationals are stealing from others as they take this housing benefit under legal technicalities. That's not a good thing under anyone's theological law. But hypocrisy is comfortable ground for the entire open borders lobby as they shamelessly celebrate lawbreaking at the border, leaving the impoverished of the U.S. out cold.

The Trump administration is trying to have this outrage fixed by summer. But don't imagine it won't be without the open-borders lawsuits, the media sob stories, the leftist judges, and the scolding clerics.

 

Los Angeles County Pays Over a Billion in Welfare to Illegal Aliens Over Two Years

 BY MASOOMA HAQ

In 2015 and 2016, Los Angeles County paid nearly $1.3 billion in welfare funds to illegal aliens and their families. That figure amounts to 25 percent of the total spent on the county’s entire needy population, according to Fox News.

The state of California is home to more illegal aliens than any other state in the country. Approximately one in five illegal aliens lives in California, Pew reported.

Approximately a quarter of California’s 4 million illegal immigrants reside in Los Angeles County. The county allows illegal immigrant parents with children born in the United States to seek welfare and food stamp benefits.

The welfare benefits data acquired by Fox News comes from the Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services and shows welfare and food stamp costs for the county’s entire population were $3.1 billion in 2015, $2.9 billion in 2016.

The data also shows that during the first five months of 2017, more than 60,000 families received a total of $181 million.

Over 58,000 families received a total of $602 million in benefits in 2015 and more than 64,000 families received a total of $675 million in 2016.

Robert Rector, a Heritage Foundation senior fellow who studies poverty and illegal immigration, told Fox the costs represent “the tip of the iceberg.”

“They get $3 in benefits for every $1 they spend,” Rector said. It can cost the government a total of $24,000 per year per family to pay for things like education, police, fire, medical, and subsidized housing.

In February of 2019, the Los Angeles city council signed a resolution making it a sanctuary city. The resolution did not provide any new legal protections to their immigrants, but instead solidified existing policies.

In October 2017, former California governor Jerry Brown signed SB 54 into law. This bill made California, in Brown’s own words, a “sanctuary state.” The Justice Department filed a lawsuit against the State of California over the law. A federal judge dismissed that suit in July. SB 54 took effect on Jan. 1, 2018.

According to Center for Immigration Studies, “The new law does many things: It forbids all localities from cooperating with ICE detainer notices, it bars any law enforcement officer from participating in the popular 287(g) program, and it prevents state and local police from inquiring about individuals’ immigration status.”

Some counties in California have protested its implementation and joined the Trump administration’s lawsuit against the state.

California’s campaign to provide public services to illegal immigrants did not end with the exit of Jerry Brown. His successor, Gavin Newsom, is just as focused as Brown in funding programs for illegal residents at the expense of California taxpayers.

California’s budget earmarks millions of dollars annually to the One California program, which provides free legal assistance to all aliens, including those facing deportation, and makes California’s public universities easier for illegal-alien students to attend.

According to the Fiscal Burden of Illegal Immigration on United States Taxpayers 2017 report, for the estimated 12.5 million illegal immigrants living in the country, the resulting cost is a $116 billion burden on the national economy and taxpayers each year, after deducting the $19 billion in taxes paid by some of those illegal immigrants.

BLOG: MOST FIGURES PUT THE NUMBER OF ILLEGALS IN THE U.S. AT ABOUT 40 MILLION. WHEN THESE PEOPLE ARE HANDED AMNESTY, THEY ARE LEGALLY ENTITLED TO BRING UP THE REST OF THEIR FAMILY EFFECTIVELY LEAVING MEXICO DESERTED.

New data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows that more than 22 million non-citizens now live in the United States.