Recently we told you that the Mayor of Manchester, NH wants a moratorium on refugee resettlement in that city. Now we learn that the Board of Mayor and Aldermen has voted 9-4 for the program to be halted to give the overloaded city a breather.
From the Union Leader:
Manchester’s Board of Mayor and Aldermen voted 9-4 on Tuesday for a moratorium on new refugee settlement in the city. On its own, the city cannot stop new refugees from settling here. But the vote is a needed and important step in trying to impose some common sense on an out-of-control resettlement operation that is doing a disservice to refugees by placing them in the city without enough cash, jobs or resources to stand on their own.
For years, the International Institute of New England has been sending refugees to Manchester. And for years, city officials have asked for a slow-down so the refugees don’t become a burden on the city. The institute has not been cooperative. A report commissioned by then-Mayor Bob Baines back in 2004 found that a fifth of the city’s population (5,500 people)* consisted of refugees. Many of them could not speak English and were even illiterate in their native language. But despite requests that the flow be slowed so the city could deal properly with refugees who were already here, hundreds more were sent here year after year after year.
The obstacles refugees faced a few years ago have been compounded by the economy. Job opportunities have been drastically reduced, and state and local budget cuts mean fewer services for refugees who need them.
Quakers quoted!
“Refugees are being placed into poverty,” Maggie Fogarty of the American Friends Service Committee told NHPR. “There are refugees who have been here five, six, seven years and can not earn their own income to live independently, which is what they want to do. There are refugees who are passing through the school system with their language needs unattended to. We are not doing a good enough job.”
Although I agree with the comments of the “Friend” Maggie Fogarty that refugees are not living independently…..
……From what I’ve learned about the American Friends Service Committee lately (supporting the Gaza Flotilla, here for example), the Friends (or Quakers in the common parlance) are hard Left political activists who are largely responsible for the tens of thousands of Central Americans (mostly communists) who fled to the US in the 1980’s. They called their movement “Sanctuary” or the “underground railroad.” They organized in Tuscson to bring thousands of illegal alien Salvadoran and Guatemalans out of Mexico and across our southern border calling them “refugees.” There were 5 “sanctuary” churches (or locations) in Maryland and I note in ‘God and Caesar on the Rio Grande’ that there was a drop point in New Hampshire as well. It was a Quaker (Bette Rainbow Hoover) who incorporated Maryland’s now multi-million dollar political advocacy group for illegal aliens—CASA de Maryland.
But I got sidetracked—keep the Quakers out of your refugee affairs!
New Hampshire folks should contact Eric P.Schwartz at the US State Department with complaints (Schwartz is a George Soros protege, but tell him anyway) and try contacting US Senator Rand Paul who has called for a hearing THIS WEEK on how Iraqi alleged terrorists got into the US through the refugee program. I’m not saying New Hampshire’s refugees are terrorists just that it is EXTREMELY rare for any elected officials to question the refugee program. Maybe plant a seed with Paul that there is something rotten here.
By the way, here is a post we wrote in 2010 on the same subject—Manchester trying to stop a subcontractor of USCRI (also the contractor in Bowling Green, so there is a connection that Senator Paul might find interesting). The head of the entire Office of Refugee Resettlement in the US government came from USCRI through the government/contractor revolving door.
And, remember, the US State Department did shut down the International Institute of Connecticut, here in 2008. So, we know it can be done!
*Be sure to read the comments. One commenter questions this number.