The answer is no, but there isn’t any reason it shouldn’t. It is only about 75 miles from the state’s largest resettlement site—Milwaukee. (Any town within a hundred miles of a federal contractor’s office is fair game).
Janesville, Wisconsin is Speaker Paul Ryan’s hometown and a reader asked me recently, that since he is so gung-ho for refugees to come to America, does he have them where he lives?
Maybe a few have moved from other resettlement cities in Wisconsin—Milwaukee or Oshkosh, but there is no federally funded resettlement office there.
Since I checked the data for our inquisitive reader, here are a few facts about the numbers going to Wisconsin.
I started my search in the fall of 2008 (just as Obama was being elected) and ended the first of May.
Wisconsin ‘welcomed’ 7,143 in those nearly 8 years. That is a small number compared to the the big states like Texas which resettles that many in one year.
In Ryan’s 1st District, none went to Janesville, but a tiny number, about 30 went to Waukesha, just outside of Milwaukee. Only a handful went to Racine.
Of the 7,143 who went to the state of Wisconsin, the breakdown is as follows: Burmese (4,029), Iraqis (1,083) and Somalis (811), in addition to smaller numbers of many other ethnic groups.
According to the Washington Post the impact on his family might not be so great anyway since his kids all attend private Catholic School.
Schools are where ‘welcoming’ towns first experience the cultural and economic pressure a few years after opening their doors to the UN/US State Department Refugee Admissions Program.
What? No mosque, no interfaith group as we learned about this morning in Charleston, WV pushing for Syrians to be seeded into Janesville?
So, why not Janesville? Maybe there is a cheese factory nearby in need of cheap immigrant laborers?
Endnote: Republican Paul Nehlen is hoping to upset Ryan in the upcoming primary there on August 9th.
Month: May 2016
West Virginia you are up next as expanding federal refugee program looking for fresh territory
And, West Virginia is fresh indeed! It is one of the states the UN/US State Department program forgot (until now). Other states with tiny refugee populations are Joe Biden’s Delaware, Bill Clinton’s Arkansas, a few states in the deep south and of course Montana and Wyoming. I always assumed that Democratic Senator Bobby (“Sheets”) Byrd had kept the program out of West Virginia, but he is gone.
I just now checked the State Department data and since 2008, West Virginia ‘welcomed’ 156 refugees with the largest number being Iraqis (59), Burmese (46) and Eritreans (40). Tiny numbers of course compared to states which receive in the thousands each year. Guess the low-wage refugee workers will now be competing with out of work coal miners.
Here is the news from the Charleston Gazette-Mail (emphasis is mine):
They all think that economic boom times will follow the refugees (it doesn’t, all of you citizens of West Virginia, please learn from what happened in Utica, here).
As Charleston’s population continues to decline, a refugee resettlement service is considering opening an agency in the city that would assist hundreds of refugees in moving to the area.
Episcopal Migration Ministries [one of nine top federal contractors—ed] a refugee-resettlement agency, sent Jeffrey Hawks and Allison Duvall to Charleston to learn more about the city this week. Hawks is a consultant for the organization, while Duvall is an employee.
The West Virginia Interfaith Refugee Ministry [remember my warning about these ‘interfaith’ groups!—ed] a group that started to create greater understanding of the plight of Syrian refugees, is working to turn Charleston into one of the Episcopal Migration Ministry’s “resettlement communities.” The ministry has 30 of those communities in cities throughout the United States.
The agencies work with local organizations in each city to assist refugees with translation, food, clothing, housing, education, mental health support, medical services, job training and community orientation.
Anti-Muslim sentiment is rampant throughout the country. Donald Trump, the Republican candidate for president, has called for a ban on Muslims entering the United States. Many have called for preventing Syrian refugees, fleeing the carnage of civil war in their country, from entering the country. A West Virginia lawmaker even started a petition to ban them from West Virginia.
However, a group of Charlestonians sat in a meeting room at St. John’s Episcopal Church Thursday afternoon and took turns trying to convince Hawks and Duvall that Charleston would be an ideal place for refugees from Syria and other places to live…
More evidence that the federal contractors are out looking for fresh territory in which to seed Syrians (and other refugees).
But they didn’t have to do much convincing. Episcopal Migration Ministries has already researched Charleston and decided it would be a good fit for refugees. Ultimately, whether the city can be selected as one of the ministry’s resettlement communities will be up to the U.S. Department of State, Hawks said.
Now check this out! The local Islamic Center is one step ahead of you all with their propaganda campaign (gotta fill that new building!):
Hawks and Duvall met a friendly crowd Thursday evening as well. They attended “The Refugee Experience” at 7 p.m. at the Islamic Association of West Virginia, in South Charleston. At the community event, refugees spoke about their experiences resettling in Charleston.
And, then this is new! I have never heard of a federal contractor expecting up front money from a wannabe subcontractor. They must really be stretched to get Obama’s 85,000 refugees in here by the end of the year and be ready for his proposed 100,000 for next year.
…those in Charleston organizing the effort will need to raise about $90,000 for upfront costs. They will need to pay for the salary of at least one employee of the agency for every 75 placements.
Continue reading here.
I can’t guarantee that Trump can save us, but I know for sure that Hillary Clinton will put the refugee program on steroids if elected in November!
P.S. It is Sunday morning, maybe it’s time for any of you Episcopalians reading this to have a word with your priests and church leaders about what they are doing in the name of your faith!
An afterthought: It occurred to me right after I hit ‘post’ that this story might bring in new readers who don’t know that we have been writing about several new sites to be colonized including Missoula, MT, Ithaca, NY, Reno, NV, Rutland, VT and Fayetteville, AR. Many more will be popping up soon as they prepare for the new fiscal year which begins Oct. 1.
Some states are pretty secretive about refugee health data—Tennessee is one of them
Michael Patrick Leahy (Breitbart) continues his series on Tuberculosis and other communicable diseases entering the US with the refugee population with this news from Tennessee.
Citizens of the Volunteer State are not given information about the health status of their new ‘refugee’ neighbors.
We have a tendency to focus on the Islamic terrorism angle with refugees and migrants to the US generally, but in addition to the cost to the taxpayer is this oft-forgotten worry about refugees—-we are very lax about refugee health.
However, if you are a different sort of legal immigrant or adopting kids from abroad, you know how rigorous that health screening is and how many immunizations must be given abroad or immediately upon arrival.
Not so with refugees as we are learning from Leahy’s investigative work.
Breitbart yesterday:
NASHVILLE, Tennessee—Both the Tennessee Department of Health and the VOLAG (voluntary agency) that administers the refugee resettlement program in the Volunteer State, Catholic Charities of Tennessee’s Tennessee Office for Refugees, are failing to make public critical information on refugee tuberculosis (TB) health care.
Breitbart News asked the two organizations to provide the following refugee TB healthcare data, which several other states make public on an annual basis, but neither provided it:
• The percentage of refugees who successfully completed medical screenings within 90 days of their arrival, as recommended by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).
• The percentage of refugees who tested positive for Latent Tuberculosis Infection (LTBI).
• The percentage of refugees who tested positive for LTBI who completed medical treatment.
• The number of refugees who were diagnosed with active TB upon their arrival in Tennessee.
Tennessee is one of fourteen states that have withdrawn from the federal refugee resettlement. In those states, the Office of Refugee Resettlement has selected a VOLAG to run the refugee resettlement operations under the statutorily questionable Wilson Fish alternative program.
The Tennessee General Assembly passed a resolution in April to sue the federal government for its operation of the refugee resettlement program on Tenth Amendment grounds. In May, Gov. Haslam chose not to veto the resolution, so a lawsuit is in the works, though Tennessee’s embattled Attorney General Herbert Slatery could raise an objection impacting the Tennessee General Assembly’s standing.
At least seven states that are not part of the Wilson Fish alternative program, California, Utah, Arizona, Texas, Minnesota, Indiana, and Florida, regularly report on the health data, tuberculosis and otherwise, of refugees resettled in their states.
Go here for more of this very thorough report.
All of you working in ‘pockets of resistance’ should start checking whether your state collects refugee health data. There are several diseases and parasites the come in with refugees in addition to TB.
We have 297 previous posts on refugee and immigrant health issues archived at RRW.
Top posts of the last week
Hope you are all having a nice Memorial Day weekend with family and friends and take a few minutes to remember and honor those in the military who have kept you safe.
As I mentioned last week, several readers have asked that we let you know which posts garnered the most attention here at RRW over the preceding week. Here they are:
Think about Utica, NY before you jump on the “welcoming refugees” bandwagon
Too funny! Mayor of Rutland, VT says we got our heroin epidemic under control, so now let’s take some Syrian refugees
Speaker Paul Ryan complicit in Syrian migrant surge to America
We reached a milestone this past week at twitter.
We passed the 3,000 followers mark! That’s not much compared to some of you, but it was a milestone I was tickled to have reached! (See my twitter feed in the right hand sidebar because even if you aren’t on twitter, you can still access the news stories I post there.) I am @RefugeeWatcher.
We have 20,000 likes at our facebook page, here.
Bowling Green, KY pastor: 'we need to have more faith in the process'
…..but does he know what that process is?
We are only about one month away from this blog reaching its 9th birthday. Most of what we have been writing for those nearly 9 years is about “the process,” so on this 90 degree day (I am hot already!) I want to blow a gasket over the ignorance still surrounding the UN/US State Department Refugee Admissions Program.
It’s not that I expect every American to have been to this blog (nearly 5 million have!), but I am furious that the mainstream media and cable news have been so disgustingly uninterested in investigating and reporting about how the program works! So, years after Bowling Green, KY has been a preferred resettlement site for refugees of all kinds, there are still many citizens who are shocked to learn that the federal government is dumping diversity on your town whether you like it or not!
And, we still have pastors like this one who hasn’t been reading the news. If he had he would know that WE ARE ONLY RESETTLING A TINY FRACTION OF THE TRULY PERSECUTED CHRISTIAN SYRIANS!
Publications like CNS News (a Christian news network) with its report this week, is getting its information directly from government data bases. They are not making this up! These are the facts in its headline!
Record 499 Syrian Refugees Admitted to US So Far in May Includes No Christians
Bowling Green will NOT be getting Syrian Christians but primarily Syrian Sunni Muslims! Sunni Muslims are the persecutors of the Christians! Sheesh!
Here is what Pastor Blais is quoted as saying at the Bowling Green Daily News about the meeting last night (hat tip: Robin):
The Rev. Fr. Jason Blais, a pastor at the Holy Apostles Orthodox Church, said many Syrian refugees are Christians displaced by genocide, and said the United States bears some responsibility for the current situation in Syria.
Although Christians face persecution, Blais said, his church’s mission goes beyond helping one group.
“It’s important for us to be able to help whoever comes because in no small way they’ve contributed to growth of our faith in the country of Syria over the past 2,000 years,” he told the Daily News following the meeting. “If it weren’t for them there wouldn’t be an orthodox here on these shores.” [He is talking about Syrian Christians who will not be coming to the US in any numbers!—ed]
Blais also responded to what he described as “animosity” toward refugee resettlement at the meeting.
“I think a lot of it is maybe birthed out of the political climate,” he said. “What was really disappointing to me is when the facts were given and people said ‘Well I don’t want to belief that. That’s not true.’ ” [I repeat! They are not getting all the “facts” and I think they know it!—ed]
“I think we need to have a little bit more faith in the process,” he said.
Faith in the process! I’m sure the good reverend doesn’t know what that is! But, maybe he can still learn!
Continue reading here.
In addition to 40 Syrians, Bowling Green is going to get 400 other refugees! That is a huge number. I sure hope the Mayor and Council have asked for the R & P Abstract (it will look like Reno, Nevada’s) the contractor (USCRI) has sent to Washington which would tell how many others and from what parts of the world BG is going to get.
And, for all the folks in Bowling Green who didn’t know what was going on there in the last decade with the arrival of thousands of refugees, see our archives on your town by clicking here. And, did you know that there is a national grassroots network of ‘pockets of resistance’ to the resettlement program.?
You will see in the archive that a few years ago there was a huge controversy there because the resettlement contractor was accused of ignoring the needs of hundreds of Burmese refugees resettled in BG and placed in substandard housing.