The refugee issue is of course one aspect of our immigration policy, and we've run plenty of commentary on it here at VDARE.com across the years. Refugees haven't been much talked about recently, however, because the Biden Rush of illegal aliens flooding in over our southern border has monopolized our attention.

The refugee issue merits attention, though. It's one area of immigration policy where humane considerations do carry some weight, especially in situations like Southeast Asia in the 1970s or Afghanistan currently where the refugees are a by-product of U.S. foreign policy.

So sure, there is a valid moral case for admitting refugees; but when it comes to deciding how many, from where, selected by what criteria, the refugee issue quickly descends into politics. The Eric Hoffer Principle comes into play and refugee resettlement turns into a cash racket.

Once I started thinking about it in those terms the name Ann Corcoran came to mind. For many years — starting in 2007 — this lady ran a blog called Refugee Resettlement Watch offering news, analysis, and spirited commentary on the refugee rackets from a national conservative point of view. In 2015 she published a book which you can buy at Amazon, title Refugee Resettlement and the Hijra to America.

Ann Corcoran contributed to VDARE.com. If you click on the "Writers" tab at the top of our main page you'll see her listed there among the rest of us. Her contributions were, I think, all cross-postings from her blog, Refugee Resettlement Watch.

The last item she posted at VDARE, also a cross-posting from her blog, is dated February 14th last year, 2022. At that point Ann stopped posting. Nothing on her blog, nothing at VDARE.com.

That was fourteen months ago. Why did Ann stop posting? I asked the speaker at  a Wednesday evening CIS event I attended. The speaker wasn't sure, but she'd heard that Ann had fallen into despair after Biden won the presidency, and had just given up when it was clear he was going to throw open the border.

That's not implausible. All of us working for rational immigration laws strictly enforced, we've all encountered the demon Despair a couple of times. We argue, we expose, we write books and give talks year after year — in the case of VDARE.com, actually decade after decade — trying to make our case, and things just get steadily worse. It's frustrating.

I checked with the boss here, Peter Brimelow, to see if he'd heard anything different. Peter had Ann's email address in his files, so he just asked her. She replied that the blog had been taking too much of her time; she wanted to concentrate on her family business.

That's a pity. Refugee Resettlement Watch was a fun blog: serious and well-researched, properly indignant about the inconvenience and social disorder imposed on working-class and middle-class Americans by the refugee rackets and their enablers, prompting wider, more general reflections on the rottenness of our nation's politics.

I haven't written or spoken much on the refugee resettlement issue myself, but Ann's critical approach needs to be kept alive. I'll try to keep it in mind and bring news stories to your attention as they come up