You bet they are!
Why else send a high level delegation to the state last week to chat it up with those who drafted a bill that was ultimately signed into law that tells the feds they must do what federal law already says—coordinate with local officials before refugees are resettled into a particular state.
I reported on this little mission to the Bible-belt last week here, but the Shelbyville Times-Gazette has a more thorough look at what the meetings were about. By the way, if you are a new reader and wish to know more about all the problems in recent years in Shelbyville with mostly Somali refugees, just type ‘Shelbyville’ into our search function. We have dozens of posts on the subject.
First, here is some background from yesterday’s story by Brian Mosely:
A top representative of the U.S. State Department was in Tennessee this week to discuss a law dealing with the state’s refugee resettlement program.
The Refugee Absorptive Capacity Act, which originated from the desk of State Sen. Jim Tracy, became law last July. It’s the first bill of its kind.
It requires the state’s refugee program agency, Catholic Charities, to meet four times a year with local governments to plan and coordinate “the appropriate placement of refugees in advance of the refugees’ arrival …”
The law also allows local communities to apply for a “moratorium” on refugee resettlement if those agencies overload local resources, and so far, Tennessee is the only state that has passed this type of legislation.
A number of refugees from a variety of countries, such as Somalia, Burma and Egypt, have moved to Shelbyville in recent years to be closer to jobs at the Tyson Foods facility.
State Senator Tracy: “We had to codify something in state law to get their attention.”
On Wednesday, David Robinson,* acting assistant secretary of the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, met with Tracy and other parties to discuss the law passed last year, the state senator told the T-G.
“That was the whole purpose of the visit, and they thought the bill was fine,” Tracy said, but he added that even though provisions in the new state refugee law passed last year was already codified in federal law, it had not been enforced.
“If you are going to bring refugees into a community, you need to meet with community leaders, mayor, councilmen, commissioners, school superintendents, hospitals, anyone that an influx of a refugee group would affect,” Tracy said, explaining the reasons for the law being passed last year.
Tracy said that the State Department representatives had no problems with the law and were complimenting them on the bill, but Tracy said he “thought it was interesting that we had to codify something in state law to get their attention.”
[….]
“It was interesting that they (the State Department) would travel to Tennessee to talk about the legislation that we passed last year and I really take it as a compliment,” Tracy said Friday. “I think they were already supposed to be doing that, and in Tennessee, they have to be doing that now.”
There is more, read it all, here.
* Robinson is about to be replaced at the US State Department by a George Soros protege’, here. The reason there is so much unwillingness to listen to local concerns over flooding communities with poverty is that there is a larger plan in place to “change” America—-US citizens be damned.