New data from Pew: Americans turning more negative
on refugee resettlement, by Ann Corcoran 5/27/18
Another 45% of surveyed Catholics say we do not have a responsibility to resettle refugees. Wow! That is a lot!
Another 45% of surveyed Catholics say we do not have a responsibility to resettle refugees. Wow! That is a lot!
My
subtitle: Nearly half of US Catholics believe it is not our
responsibility to resettle refugees
Most
of the media blames the change in attitude on Trump’s rhetoric, but I think
there has been a sea change in media reporting. There is more and more
news available to the general public about the kinds of things I mentioned
in my previous post this morning—stories
about refugees scamming our welfare programs for example that previously were
not published, but are now spread widely by social media!
Erol Kekic of Church World
Service: “We
have seen an unfortunate rise in xenophobia globally.”
Ten
years ago (nearly 11 now) when I first began writing this blog, stories in the
media about refugees were in the genre I called ‘Refugees see first snow’ stories!
All were meant to paint refugees in only the most glowing terms.
Now
we do see more crime stories like food stamp fraud, Medicaid fraud etc, but
also stories about refugee-perpetrated violent crimes and terrorism in the US
and around the world.
Here
is USA Today on
the Pew numbers: Fewer Americans believe U.S. should accept refugees. Fewer Americans believe the U.S. has a
responsibility to accept refugees, a shift that has been spurred by President
Trump’s efforts to limit them from entering the country, according to a poll
released Thursday.
More than half of Americans — 51% — still believe the United States should
welcome immigrants fleeing violence and persecution in their home countries,
according to the poll conducted by the non-partisan Pew Research Center. But
that number is down from 56% during a similar survey in February 2017.
The
drop is mostly due to the changing attitudes of Republicans: 26% feel the U.S.
has a responsibility to accept refugees, a drop from 35% last year. That trend
is even more pronounced among self-described conservative Republicans: their
support for refugees has fallen to 19% from 33% last year.
The overall crash in the public perception of refugees coincides with
the Trump administration’s efforts to limit the U.S. refugee program in the
name of national security.
That constant barrage against refugees helps explain why so many
Americans have started viewing refugees with more suspicion, said Erol Kekic,
executive director of the immigration and refugee program at Church World
Service, one of nine groups that helps refugees resettle in the U.S.
Images in the media like this one from
Europe naturally scare people—sensible people who know from history that what
they are seeing is an invasion. This isn’t about “irrational fear” and
xenophobia!
USA Today continues….Kekic said it wasn’t just
Trump. Over the past 16 months, Kekic said Americans have seen the images of refugees fleeing wars and famine
pouring into countries around the world. And in
many cases, he said that’s led to a sudden, and irrational, fear of those
refugees.
“We have seen an unfortunate rise in xenophobia globally,” he said. “We
have seen that in European capitals, in Australia, and unfortunately we’ve seen
it in the United States.”
Kekic
also blamed a more polarized political climate in the U.S., and a poor job by
the media of navigating between those two sides. “We need to change the narrative.” [He means
they need to try to get back to the time when all the news was sweet and mushy
about refugees.—ed]
But Ira Mehlman, a spokesman for the Federation for American
Immigration Reform, said the new poll numbers show Americans are learning that
many people who apply for refugee status or asylum are simply taking advantage
of generous U.S. laws to sneak into the country. More here.
Now
here is the Pew story on its latest poll. They focused on Republicans as
the culprits for the negative drift:
Republicans turn more
negative toward refugees as number admitted to U.S. plummets
And,
then most of the other stories I see are blaming White Evangelicals, like in
this story at The Hill:
Most white,
evangelical Protestants say US doesn’t have responsibility to accept refugees: See
graph of responses to Pew’s questions in the original post at:
Look at the Catholic numbers! This is
one thing that jumped out at me: We (and the Bishops, I presume!) assume that
most Catholics are on the political Left and ‘welcome’ refugees and according
to Pew’s data only 50% do!
And,
I’ll bet if you saw the raw numbers (and not simply percentages) there were
likely more Catholics surveyed than White Evangelicals. (I tried to find the
raw numbers but could not!).
Here
is another possible headline (but it doesn’t fit the meme—it is Republican
white evangelicals that are the bigots!): Nearly half
of US Catholics believe it is not our responsibility to resettle refugees.
Pay attention USCCB!
These are the nine federal contractors that have a vested interest in
changing the narrative by getting the media back to writing all fluffy-puffy
refugee stories because they are paid, as contractors, to place refugees for
the UN and the US State Department.
The
number in parenthesis is the percentage of their income paid by you (the
taxpayer) to place the refugees and get them signed up for their services (aka welfare)! From most recent accounting, here.
If
you are wondering, I post this list every chance I get because we have new
readers daily and because I want
all of you to know that for reform to be possible these nine fake non-profits
have to go.
Ethiopian Community Development Council (ECDC) (secular)(93%)
International Rescue Committee (IRC) (secular) (66.5%)
US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) (secular) (98%)
Comments
Pew didn’t identify the political party of its respondents. I
suspect Democrats want more refugees and Republicans want none.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody
GA Tea Party Leader
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