Day: September 10, 2014

Who is working in Tennessee?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Grassroots citizen activists in Tennessee are doing the grinding work of pulling facts and figures together in one place so Tennesseans will be better informed.

The ‘tn council 4 political justice’ has published a two-part answer to that all important question—who is working in Tennessee?  And, the short answer is that refugees and other immigrants are getting the jobs and it’s all about the political power and cronyism of their well-connected friends (all the way to the Governor’s office and beyond!).

We come for the jobs says Mohamed-Shukri Hassan (TN coordinator American Muslim Advisory Council). Photo: http://www.lipscomb.edu/www/archive/detail/101/27858

Here is how Part I opens:

An August 2014 Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) analysis of Tennessee’s employment growth since 2000 shows that the jobs have gone to legal and illegal immigrants.

“Tennessee’s working-age immigrant population grew 176 percent from 2000 to 2014, one of the highest of any state in the nation. Yet the number of natives working in 2014 was actually lower in 2000.”

CIS used the same data the government uses to determine labor market participation.

Who are legal immigrants in Tennessee?

Refugees are legal immigrants that are brought to Tennessee by federal contractors like Catholic Charities. They come with work authorization and access to all forms of public assistance including TennCare, SSI and cash welfare, if they meet the eligibility requirements. Federal contractors like Catholic Charities always say that the federal government pays the full cost of the resettlement program. That is not true. The federal government has admitted many times that they have shifted the bulk of the program’s cost to the States.

More….

Part II is here:

The August 2014 Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) analysis can tell you who isn’t working in Tennessee. Their conclusion based on the same data the federal government uses to determine labor market participation shows that the jobs in Tennessee are going to legal and illegal immigrants:

 “Tennessee’s working-age immigrant population grew 176 percent from 2000 to 2014,  one of the highest of any state in the nation. Yet the number of natives working in 2014 was actually lower in 2000.”

With Chamber of Commerce support for both amnesty and refugee resettlement, this should come as no surprise.

Bridge Refugee Services is a refugee resettlement agency in Knoxville. It partners with Church World Services (CWS), one of the nine national resettlement organizations. A volunteer refugee advocacy group has posted the complaints they received about Bridge’s treatment of refugees. One post addresses four reported worksite injuries in over eight months that the refugees claimed Bridge did not help them address. The volunteer that works with the refugees opined that the “agency even sided with the temporary employment agency that placed the refugees, and is more concerned about keeping up their employment placements than they are with the refugees’ welfare.”

In the federal resettlement contracting business, employment numbers are very important, however illusory they may be, as exposed by a former Bridge Refugee Service caseworker. Despite any reported problems, Bridge continues to receive federal grant money. The last publicly available report in 2010 shows $902,445 in taxpayer funds.

Keep reading…. We come for the jobs!

For new readers we have an entire category devoted to posts about news from Nashville, here.  And here is our entire Tennessee archive. By the way Tennessee is a Wilson-Fish state and so the US State Department contractor Catholic Charities is running the refugee show there.

Dumb website asks: Should the US “welcome” 1 million Syrians?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

And a college professor from Northern Virginia says yes (sort of!).

Here is the question at Quora:

Should the U.S welcome 1,000,000 Syrian refugees?

The United Nations estimates that about 6,5 million people have been displaced as a result of the Syrian Civil War. Of those 6,5 millions about 3 millions have fled to countries outside Syria, with Lebanon receiving most, more than 1 million. Should the US as a larger and richer country than Lebanon, Jordan etc. help out with the situation, also as a way to gain goodwill and trust in the Muslim word?  [barf!–oh sure they are going to love us then!–ed]

Here is the answer from college professor Al Carroll.

Virginia History professor Carroll.

Note that Carroll starts to get wobbly about the 1 million number.  It is always amusing to see open borders Leftwingers squirm when you reach certain high numbers of migrants and refugees indicating that they too know there must be a limit, but are unwilling to say exactly what that number might be that could push America over the cliff.

Al Carroll, My name is Al Carroll. I’m a historian, history professor at Northern VA Community College, and author of Presidents’ Body Counts.

If the US were truly a Christian nation, this would not even be up for debate. Of course you help out those need, facing death by war, displacement, and repression. That is needed far more than more bombs or sending guns. You help out because it’s the right thing to do.

For those of us who try to be good Christians (I’m Catholic) ethnicity or religion or country of origin should not matter. For those  people who are anti immigrant or anti Muslim or anti Arab or Middle Eastern people, you can claim to be many things. But you cannot claim to be a Christian without being seen as a hypocrite when you fail to help your fellow man.

I don’t know that 1 million refugees is the right number, that this many would choose to come here. There is no reason that this number could not be split with countries in Europe that have an equally noble tradition of taking in refugees. When I was traveling in Sweden I was impressed with how many Chileans the Swedes took in during the time of Pinochet’s dictatorship. But since the crisis in Syria was partly created by US support for ISIS rebels earlier and the instability brought by the US invasion of Iraq, it seems only fitting. I thought it shameful and hypocritical of GW Bush that he did not make a special effort to aid Iraqi refugees caused by his war of choice.  [LOL! No criticism of Obama who has been in charge of our Syria policy for six years and has so far brought less than 100 Syrians to the US?—ed]

See our post of last week where we reported that the US State Department has announced that the Syrians are coming.  How many will it be?

Lebanese retaliate against Syrian refugees as Syrian Sunnis behead another Lebanese soldier

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This story is all over the news in the last few days so I thought I better post on it.   Lebanon has shouldered a large percentage of the burden of caring for Syrians (mostly Sunni Muslims) fleeing violence in Syria, but now as Syrian rebels (ISIS) captures Lebanese soldiers and police (reportedly beheading two), the Lebanese people are retaliating.

Of course nothing here should be considered to be a reason that the West is thus required to take in the various Muslim religious sects bringing centuries-old sectarian squabbles to your neighborhood.

This is an outdated map, but it gives you an idea. Take note that Saudi Arabia takes no refugees.

From Yahoo News:

Baalbek (Lebanon) (AFP) – The kidnap and murder of Lebanese security forces by jihadists from Syria has sparked new tensions in Lebanon, including a backlash against Syrian refugees and a string of sectarian kidnappings.

Relatives of the missing soliders and policemen, who were kidnapped during fierce clashes in the Lebanese border town of Arsal last month, have blocked roads in protest and even carried out counter-kidnaps.

[….]

The hostage crisis and beheadings have inflamed tensions in Lebanon, which is hosting more than 1.1 million Syrian refugees, and where tensions were already soaring over the four-year conflict in Syria.

The crisis has prompted a backlash against Syrian refugees in parts of Lebanon, with tents in informal camps being set alight and hundreds of Syrians sheltered in the Bekaa valley fleeing for fear of attack.

The Syrian conflict has exacerbated existing sectarian tensions in Lebanon, where most Sunni residents back the Syrian uprising and Shiites generally support Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad.

Read it all.

Endnote:  Our post of late last week about the UN picking Syrian refugees for resettlement in America has gone ballistic on the internet.

The US will take thousands of Syrians this coming year unless citizens rise up in mass against the State Department’s soon-to-be-announced plan, but resettling even 15,000 now will make no dent in solving Syria’s or Lebanon’s problems!

See also Judy’s post yesterday—utter disaster.

Update:  British charity Oxfam says rich countries must take 5% of the 3 million Syrian refugees this year.  That comes to 179,500.  But, what strikes me as so interesting is that in articles like this one they never mention the US as among those nations.  Why is that?