by Michael Patrick Leahy1 Dec 2015468

The nine contractors receiving huge payments from the White House’s $1 billion U.S. Refugee Resettlement Program have launched an aggressive PR campaign to crush what they call “pockets of resistance” to the Muslim migration into the United States.

That campaign is led by Welcoming America, a “non-profit” immigrant advocacy group run by “Ashoka Fellow” David Lubell. His group received its first funding in 2007 from the George Soros-financed Four Freedoms Foundation.

The Obama administration intends to bring at least 10,000 Syrian refugees, almost all Muslim, to the U.S. in FY 2016, unless Congress decides this month to restrict the program’s use of taxpayers’ funds.

As Breitbart News reported previously, five of these nine “voluntary agencies,” dubbed VOLAGs, are Christian non-profit organizations. They include Catholic Charities, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, Church World Service, Episcopal Migration Ministries, and World Relief Corporation, which is an arm of the National Association of Evangelicals.

The phrase “pockets of resistance” first entered the vocabulary of the State Department and the subcontracting VOLAGs in 2013, as Ann Corcoran of Refugee Resettlement Watch wrote at the time. But its origins can be traced to the founding of Lubell’s Welcoming America, which was financially aided by George Soros.

The connection between Welcoming America and George Soros began in 2007 when his Four Freedoms Foundation helped provide the organization’s initial funding. Here is a summary from Welcoming America’s website about how the organization got its start, with the help of George Soros:

The history of ‘Welcoming America’:
In 2005 the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition (TIRRC), inspired by the Iowa campaign’s message and approach, started to make plans for a “Welcoming Tennessee Initiative” (WTI). Since launching in 2006, The Welcoming Tennessee Initiative – the model for all subsequent welcoming initiatives – has substantially improved the climate for immigrants within the state.
Statewide polling by Middle Tennessee State University has demonstrated an increase in positive opinions towards immigrants, and thousands of Tennessee residents have become active supporters of Tennessee’s increased diversity as a result of the project. In 2009 WTI was awarded the E Pluribus Unum Prize for exceptional immigrant integration initiatives. . .
The success of Welcoming Tennessee inspired several additional immigrant support organizations across the country to follow its lead. In July of 2007, seven organizations interested in starting Welcoming campaigns met to combine efforts and expand Welcoming campaigns past Tennessee. Hosting the meeting was Four Freedoms Fund, a funding collaborative that has played a crucial role in the formation and development of Welcoming America.

Welcoming America has scrubbed the link to George Soros and the Four Freedoms Fund that was once on its website. The screenshot showing that connection, however, can still be found using the Internet Wayback Machine here.

In June 2012, Welcoming America got a grant from the Department of Health and Human Services’s Office of Refugee Resettlement. The office funds “a number of grants to organizations with technical assistance expertise.”

The purpose was to fund the group’s “Fostering Community Engagement and Welcoming Communities Project.”

That project “provides technical assistance to the nation’s refugee resettlement network, offering new tools and support to create a robust community of practice across refugee agencies, mainstream providers and geographic communities; enhance and sustain resettlement work in local communities; build new partnerships; promote a positive community climate; and ensure the successful integration of refugees in cities and town across the United States.” (emphasis added)
The first fruits of that project were unveiled at the 2013 Pennsylvania Refugee Conference that featured talks from the Office of Refugee Resettlement’s Director of Placement, Mitiku Ashebir. Welcoming America’s Susan Downs-Karkos also spoke at the event.

As Ann Corcoran of Refugee Resettlement Watch, who attended that conference, described it, the federal government’s Ashebir unveiled a new mission for the program—to crush local “pockets of resistance”:

Before Susan Downs-Karkos from ‘Welcoming America’ spoke, we had been alerted by the Office of Refugee Resettlement’s Director of Placement, Mitiku Ashebir that (gasp!) “three pockets of resistance against new arrivals” had developed. He assured the gathering it was not widespread and that Pennsylvania, thankfully, was not one of them. Drum roll please! Here are the pockets of resistance and Mr. Ashebir’s brief description of the unwelcoming problems:
New Hampshire—some mayors have problems, said Ashebir
Georgia—budget reductions for some service providers
Tennessee—they want to control arrival numbers! Imagine that! . . .
Downs-Karkos described her organization’s job as “promoting understanding and support for refugees.” The whole concept is that YOU must improve your attitude to your new neighbors, not that the refugees must learn to fit into American society. ‘We are a Nation of immigrants, they are coming, so get used to it’ was the basic message.

However, lopsided majorities of Americans strongly oppose the migration of Muslims to the United States. Muslim migrants tend to be unskilled, heavily reliant on taxpayer-funded welfare programs, reluctant to integrate into Americans’ society, are under intense pressure from fellow migrants to preserve their own mix of religion, culture and politics, relatively likely to join jihad groups — 56 Muslims were indicted on jihad charges in the first 11 months of 2015 – and to support pro-jihad political groups.

Yet the federal government is set to increase their population in the United States up to 6.2 million by 2030. For example, a record 680,000 migrants from Muslims countries were granted Green Cards from 2009 to 2013. Also, two million people from Muslim-majority countries were admitted to the United States since the jihad atrocity on 9/11, 2001.

That the VOLAGs have, in effect, run the U.S. Refugee Resettlement Program as well as benefited from it has been known since 2000, when David M. Robinson, who would later become the Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees, and Migration, wrote this in a memo:

The agencies [the resettlement contractors] form a single body [that] wields enormous influence over the Administration’s refugee admissions policy. It lobbies the Hill effectively to increase the number of refugees admitted for permanent resettlement each year and at the same time provides overseas processing for admissions under contract to the State Department. In fact, the federal government provides about ninety percent of its collective budget. If there is a conflict of interest, it is never mentioned.
[Its] solution to every refugee crisis is simplistic and the same: increase the number of admissions to the United States without regard to budgets or competing foreign policy considerations.

In the immediate aftermath of the Paris attacks in which ISIS terrorists killed more than 120 innocent civilians, Welcoming America went into action, leading the way for the Christian “non-profit” VOLAGs that live on the $1 billion a year Refugee Resettlement program.

On November 18, Welcoming America released this statement on its website:

This past week has been one of great loss, and all of us at Welcoming America are deeply saddened by the tragic events in Paris, Beirut, Nigeria, and other parts of the world. It is particularly at times of tragedy and fear – when our values and resolve are most tested – that we must redouble our efforts to live up to our ideals, including serving as a beacon of hope to the persecuted. We must demonstrate our welcoming character because This is Who We Are.
Families from Syria who are seeking a better life embody American values that have guided our country since its founding — packing up everything and moving to a new place takes courage and resilience. They’ve defied all odds to arrive in a safe place, and we have the opportunity to reaffirm our values by responding with compassion. Moreover, communities are stronger when they are welcoming.
We are deeply heartened by declarations of welcoming toward Syrian refugees coming from all corners of the country, from community members to religious leaders to mayors and governors. These voices, largely emanating from local communities, have unfortunately not been fully heard by many in this country. At Welcoming America we will be working to elevate the voices of the compassionate majority, reminding America and the world that this is who we are.
To that effect, we have created a This is Who We Are page where we are compiling a list of statements and actions coming from communities is support of Syrian refugees, and we invite you to help us grow this list. If you have an inspiring quote or story of welcome, please share it with us.

Democratic politicians — and the “faith leaders” tied to VOLAGs and the $1 billion in funding — quickly added their voices to the Welcoming America statement.
“More than a dozen governors [all Democrats, including Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York] have come out in support of Syrian refugees and are welcoming them into their states,” Welcoming America proclaimed.
A similar number of mayors, including embattled Rahm Emanuel of Chicago, Bill de Blasio of New York City, and Stephanie Rawlins-Blake of Baltimore, also joined in.
Three “faith leaders,” all associated with VOLAGs, joined in as well, offering these statements of support for continuing to fund the $1 billion U.S. Refugee Resettlement Program:

Bishop Eusebio Elizondo, Chairman of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Migration [corresponding VOLAG-Catholic Charities]: “We must work with the world community to provide safe haven to vulnerable and deserving refugees who are simply attempting to survive. As a great nation, the United States must show leadership during this crisis and bring nations together to protect those in danger and bring an end to the conflicts in the Middle East.”

Leith Anderson, President, National Association of Evangelicals [corresponding VOLAG-World Relief]: “We are horrified and heartbroken by the terrorist atrocities in Paris, but must not forget that there are thousands more victims of these same terrorists who are fleeing Syria with their families and desperately need someplace to go.”
Reverand Michael Curry, Presiding Bishop and Primate, The Episcopal Church [corresponding VOLAG-Episcopal Migration Ministries]: “Refugees from places like Syria seek to escape the precise same ideological and religious extremism that gave birth to the attacks in Paris. They seek entry into our communities because their lives are imprisoned by daily fear for their existence. Just as Jesus bids us not to be afraid, we must, in turn, pass those words of comfort to those who turn to us for help.”

Despite the concerted PR efforts of Welcoming America, Democratic politicians, and “faith leaders” associated with the VOLAGs, there is a growing variety of “pockets of resistance” by normal Americans to this massive wave of Muslim migration.
As Refugee Resettlement Watch’s Corcoran wrote recently:

You’ve heard me often refer to “Pockets of Resistance,” those towns/cities and states where activists are demanding answers to the many questions citizens have about the United Nations/US State Department colonization of their towns by third worlders through the Refugee Resettlement Program.
We did not coin that phrase, the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement did here in June 2013 (or at least that is the first place I heard it) when they also announced that they had hired ‘Welcoming America’ to head off new ones, and get those already existing ones under control.
In 2013, ORR specifically mentioned that there were ‘Pockets of Resistance’ in New Hampshire, Tennessee and Georgia.
By the way, it was at that meeting that I first heard the information about “seeding” our towns and cities with immigrants.
Now we can report there are growing pockets in the following states in addition to the three just mentioned: Idaho, Ohio, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, South Carolina, Texas, and Virginia (that I know of!). I know I risk tipping off Welcoming America agitators to head to those states, but if I don’t mention this, many of you might get discouraged thinking you are alone.

As more light is shed on the close connection between the Obama administration, George Soros, and the non-profit Christian VOLAGS, those “pockets of resistance” are likely to become even more widespread.