Day: March 5, 2012

New Hampshire refugee moratorium bill defeated in committee

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Regular readers know that Manchester, NH is in refugee overload and its Mayor has been asking the US State Department and its paid contractors to hold off on resettling more refugees in the city that is having difficulty coping with the newly imported impoverished people unlikely to find work at this time (or maybe anytime for years to come).

It seems that the State Legislators were swayed by testimony alleging the unconstitutionality of telling the feds to slow the flow.  We know that secondary migrants can move anywhere in the US, but I would suggest the feds have no constitutional right to impose their program involving refugees selected largely by the United Nations (with unfunded mandates) on a state or city.  So, if there is any constitutional issue it would seem to be a tenth amendment one in favor of the state.

No more Live Free or Die! state—-it’s more like do what the Feds say and die anyway!

From the Union Leader:

No help with refugees: If Manchester Mayor Ted Gatsas and other city officials expected lawmakers to help with the city’s refugee resettlement problems, they were very disappointed.

[,,,.]

Gatsas, Alderman and Rep. Pat Arnold and Manchester Reps. Win Hutchinson and Mike Ball all spoke in favor of the bill which would have allowed a one-year moratorium on refugee resettlements.

Gatsas has pushed federal officials for a moratorium, which he says is needed until the refugees who are here settle into the system, get jobs and become productive citizens. “We need to take a breath, step back and figure out how to do this right,” Gatsas told the committee last month.

Friday, Gatsas called the committee’s action “too bad. They need to understand the people here need to get an opportunity to succeed, but when there are 200 or 300 more refugees every year, there is no opportunity. They don’t know the language, they have a hard time finding a job and they put pressure on the schools, but we still have to test them.”

He noted there are 13 communities in the state designated under the federal resettlement program, and they all could face what Manchester does now.

My suggestion is to get a grassroots campaign going involving those other 13 communities, make lots of noise and bug the hell out of your Representatives in Washington.  The State Legislature is always going to wimp out on issues like this—well, except for maybe Tennessee!

Large numbers of Iraqis resettled in El Cajon, CA not finding work

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Gee, I wonder why.  Just one more in a long list of stories about the large number of Iraqis being resettled in the US and then not finding employment.

From Prospect Journal:

When these refugees arrive in the country, the U.S. federal government provides them with a monthly stipend of around $800 to help them get situated. However, the payments expire after eight months, which is assumed to be an adequate amount of time to resettle, gain employment, and assimilate into the local community. Not surprisingly, this does not happen in most cases. Instead, refugees become increasingly reliant on non-profit organizations like the International Rescue Committee and Catholic Charities to provide assistance in a number of tasks ranging from the complicated immigration process to filing online job applications in the service sector. [The writer doesn’t know that these two supposed non-profits are actually the government contractors responsible for the resettlement in the first place.  They are being paid by the federal government to assist the refugees-–ed]

The quest for employment can be long and defeating. Of the few employers that are hiring in the midst of an economic downturn, few are hiring middle-aged refugees without a native grasp of the English language or experience in the American workforce. Yalda has filed numerous online and in-person job applications, but has yet to receive a follow-up call from a single employer. The refugees that do gain employment usually find work in the low-level service industry, which primarily consists of jobs in the hotel, retail, and manual labor sectors. These industries offer poor wages and poor prospects for job mobility.

What!  No meat-packers in El Cajon.  By the way, disgruntled Iraqis have gone home to Iraq.  It is possible to do.  As a matter of fact, I’ve advocated that the US State Department fly them home (or to the Middle East somewhere) if they are unhappy and on welfare here.  In fact, it wouldn’t be unprecedented.  Remember in 1999 we brought about 15,000 unhappy Kosovars here and shipped about 10,000 back the following year, here.

The price of the return airline ticket would sure be less costly to the taxpayers in the long run.

Immigration and jobs continued: foreign college students taking low wage jobs

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

If you are wondering why the unemployment rate is so high for teens and college students looking for summer jobs—look no further than the State Department’s Summer Work Travel program that imports 100,000 kids from abroad each summer.  They work cheap and are described as virtual slaves to big business.  The Center for Immigration Studies will hold a panel discussion on the program in Washington, DC on March 13th.   Read all about it here.

If you are trying to help legitimate refugees find scarce jobs you should be telling your legislators in Washington that this program stinks!

When did the US State Department become the headhunter for big business?

Food stamp fraud making the national news (finally!)

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I’m going to have more later today (or tomorrow) on this story, but for readers who have followed RRW for years, you know this subject has been one of great interest to me.  Convenience stores, gas stations and other ‘mom & pop’ grocery stores have been for YEARS ripping off the taxpayer by buying food stamps at ‘fifty cents on the dollar’—the store owner/manager gives the food stamp recipient often half the value of his/her benefit and then turns around and gets the full value from the federal government.

Some of these scams have netted the crooks hundreds of thousands of dollars.

If you search ‘food stamp fraud’ here at RRW you will see dozens and dozens of these stories—the large majority are stores owned and run by immigrants.  In some cases the money they took from the taxpayers went to Muslim countries. Honestly, I think there is some training program abroad where they get the seed money, get into the US through treaty investor visas, and set up these fraudulent enterprises.

Here Rep. Daryl Issa tells Fox News about the scam (brought to light by real investigative reporters from Scripps Howard News Service).  Issa will hold hearings in the House of Representatives this week.

Issa is wrong about one thing he said in that Fox News interview—he said its happening under this Administration, implying that somehow Obama’s people are turning a blind eye.  Let me assure you it was on-going during the Bush Administration too and probably long before that.