On Friday, The Tennessean published a letter from Don Barnett a Nashville resident and expert observer of the Federal Refugee Resettlement Program critical of Republican Governor Haslam’s plan to expand Medicaid in Tennessee.
Did you know that Obama got his idea to give away “free” junior college tuition from Tennessee’s Republican Governor? I sure hope Obama isn’t bringing Haslam to Washington on Tuesday for the State of the Union as an example of his willingness to work with Republicans! Photo: http://www.courierpress.com/news/obama-to-propose-national-program-similar-to-tennessee-promise
New readers of RRW might not know that your state will be “welcoming” more refugees if you are expanding Medicaid.
Last March we reportedon an Office of Refugee Resettlementreport (Key Indicators for Refugee Placement FY2014) that seeks to identify the best places to resettle refugees. Medicaid expansion is a key indicator that yours is a welfare-rich territory.
There is a second, more recent, Key Indicators report here (a very useful map on page 19 of the newest Key Indicators shows which states have expanded Medicaid and which haven’t as of April 2014).
Here is TheTennessean on the Haslam call for a special session of the legislature. Barnett’s response follows (emphasis is mine):
It is downright strange that a Republican governor would propose expanding Medicaid under a plan worked out with the feds on the basis of a “verbal agreement” while withholding specifics of the plan from legislators expected to decide on its merits.
The last time Tennessee took part in an experiment with Medicaid, the rolls swelled to the point where nearly 1 in 4 Tennesseans were in the program. It took a Democratic governor, Phil Bredesen (2003-11), to put the brakes on the program by reducing benefits and removing more than 170,000 from the rolls.
One sure effect of Medicaid expansion will be to increase the number of refugees that come to Tennessee, a state that already takes more than its fair share of refugees on a per-state basis. The refugee resettlement contractors have publicly stated they will expand resettlement in those states that expand Medicaid coverage.
Tennessee’s main refugee contractor, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and its local affiliate Catholic Charities, was instrumental in stopping a Tennessee bill that would have required resettlement contractors to merely inform the state of the numbers of refugees they place in Medicaid/TennCare.
The last time they released this data — in 2011 — 59 percent of refugees had gone into the program upon arrival for the year. An additional 36 percent of refugees went into a separate taxpayer-funded health program for refugees. When the refugee program started in 1980 the feds promised to cover state Medicaid costs for refugees for three years, but soon withdrew all support — and that promise was in writing.
Why would the General Assembly approve any program before considering all the costs?
Sheesh, and what is going on with these Republican governors? What good is it for Republicans to brag about their larger number of governors when they act like Democrats!
By the way, refugees have huge medical and mental health problems, see our Health Issuescategory to see what I mean.
Daresbury Park Hotel in Cheshire is owned by Alex Langsam. Asylum seekers are intimidating to female guests, according to reports at the Daily Mail.
What is the matter with these European leaders (and Obama too) that they are so tone-deaf when it comes to dealing with Islam and the huge numbers of Muslim ‘asylum seekers’ and ‘refugees’ flooding Europe and the US.
Have they all taken a symposium on how to really really bring out the anger in their citizens?
Maybe it is some sort of psychological experiment to see how far they can push us!
It wasn’t too long ago that we heard of a German local government purchasing a luxury hotelin Cologne for asylum seekers, and now we learn that the UK government is funding housing in four-star hotels in Britain for what really amounts to illegal aliens who have been crashing almost every European border!
No wonder they are piled up in Calais, France wanting in to the UK (be sure to open this link!)!
From the UK Daily Mail (hat tip: ‘Cool Tolerance’).
Emphasis is mine:
Guests at a luxury spa hotel have complained after discovering they were sharing their break with asylum seekers.
Around 35 migrants were checked into the four star Daresbury Park Hotel in Warrington, Cheshire, at an estimated cost to the taxpayer of £2,000 a night for the group.
One disgruntled guest wrote on review site Trip Advisor: ‘I cannot believe that we had to queue up with asylum seekers for our meals! If you want a soup kitchen atmosphere, with a little bit of intimidation thrown in, then this is the place to stay.
‘As long as these poor refugees are getting full bed and board at this hotel at our expense, I think we will find somewhere else to spend our hard earned money.’
Hotel magnate Alex Langsam has a sweetheart deal with the British government to house ‘refugees’ in his 47 hotels! Photo: http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/business/business-news/britannia-buys-carrington-house-hotel-5715743
From human traffickers to hotel owners, to landlords, to “religious charities” the world over, it is all about the money—government money to special people in the lucrative refugee industry.
(And, heck, they get to wear the white hat of humanitarianism while they are at it!)
The Daresbury is part of the Britannia hotel chain, owned by Alex Langsam.
In October MailOnline reported that in a deal costing the taxpayer tens of thousands of pounds a week Mr Langsam is putting up hundreds of migrants in his chain of 47 hotels.
Another guest, part of a group of four women who stayed at the hotel, wrote: ‘What we hadn’t known about were the number of African male asylum seekers who were residing there.
There is a very informative article today about what is happening in Turkey where it is believed that the Paris ‘wife’ (Hayat Boumeddiene) of one of the recent Muslim killers easily slipped into Turkey and then equally easily crossed into the IS stronghold in Syria.
We previously heard that Obama’s only real pal in the world was Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. I wonder if they are still best buds? Here with their wives in 2009. Photo: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Recep_Tayyip_Erdogan_with_Obamas.jpg
Compounding the terrorist detection problem is the deteriorating relationship of other European countries with Turkey.
The story is from an Australian paper called the Bega District News and written by Middle East Correspondent Ruth Pollard.
Here are some snips relating to the very real problem that the refugee population there surely harbors Islamic State infiltrators.
Setting the stage:
It is a conduit for money, weapons, oil and fighters – and it rarely discriminates.
Whether you’re a moderate rebel or an Islamic State jihadist, Turkey’s 900-kilometre border with Syria has long been a vital supply route for those fighting on the front lines of Syria’s brutal civil war. More than 1.5 million refugees have also fled across this border.
But Turkey’s hope that any fighter – no matter how extreme – would help opposition rebels bring down the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has proven unfounded.
Instead, Assad remains in power, while extremist groups such as the Islamic State and al-Qaeda backed Jabhat al-Nusra have gained significant ground at the expense of what’s left of the Free Syrian Army and the other groups fighting to overthrow the regime.
And all the while, the terror these extremist groups practise is creeping ever closer towards Turkey.
Then near the end:
It is naive to believe that all the refugees who cross from Syria into Turkey are genuinely fleeing the regime, Sadik (Assistant Professor Giray Sadik from the Yildirim Beyazit University) says.
“It is almost inevitable that there will be some fighters in the almost 2 million refugees we have hosted since the eruption of the Syrian crisis. There is a need for enhanced security cooperation and also emergency humanitarian cooperation with the EU – on both sides it is far from being satisfactory.”
One thing is certain, he says. Turkey, like Europe, is vulnerable to attack because of its borders and the presence of foreign fighters on its soil.
Back in September 2014 we reported that the US State Department sent Simon Henshaw to discuss taking Syrian refugees from Turkey, here. We haven’t resettled too many Syrians yet, only a few hundred, but I see in State Department statisticsthat we have processed 1,340 refugees through Turkey in only the first three months of this fiscal year (Oct-Dec 2014). I wonder who they are.
In those three months of FY2015 only three other processing countries supplied larger numbers of refugees to America than did Turkey: Iraq (2,881), Malaysia (2,130) and Thailand (1,390).
Kuwait’s Gruesome Gift to Britain: Hajji Wannabe, with Four Wives, Murdered One While Koran Played
It isn’t just in London where the Brits have a problem with Islamic cultural ways.
Thahi Harroba Manaa, 37, a refugee from Kuwait, is on trial in Sheffield, England, for the gruesome murder of his second wife, Sara Al Shourefi, 28, the mother of four of his children. During the 105-minute attack – that started over a disagreement about about a wooden shelf – Manaa inflicted 270 bodily injuries on Sara with a variety of weapons including two metal bars, a knife, and an electric drill which he used to puncture her brain through her eye socket.
The murderer may have also tried to cut off her head: Sara’s neck had been cut across with the knife. Perhaps the knife was too small or its blade too dull to finish the beheading.
Two of their children were in a separate area of the house – and must have heard their mother being tortured to death. Also present was the murderer’s mother. She did nothing to stop the attack, nor did she telephone for help during Sara’s terrible ordeal.
The Koran Played Loudly While Sara Was Being Murdered; Killer Interrupted His Torture to Plan a Hajj to Mecca
During the nearly two-hour long torture of Sara, neighbors reported they heard angry shouting and the Koran playing at full blast. Evidently, Manaa fully expected his wife would die at his hands: an estimated 17 minutes into the attack, he called his travel agent to follow up on prior arrangements to travel to Mecca for the Hajj. He told the agent he wanted his papers made ready that same day. Then he resumed the deadly torture that lasted well over an additional hour.
Once poor Sara suffered through her last and final breath, Manaa called the travel agent again to verify that his travel document was finished and waiting for him. He also telephoned his sister to arrange for childcare.
Manaa then summoned his nephew by telephone and asked his help to put Sara’s body in a cupboard under the stairs. The nephew, in horror, fled the house and rang a friend who notified police.
Does Four Wives a Refugee Make?
What brought the murderer to Britain? Manaa, while he was still living in Kuwait, may have seen in Britain an answer to financial problems stemming from supporting several wives and a growing family. His first wife was one of Sara’s cousins. She failed to become pregnant, so he married Sara in 2004. When Sara did not become pregnant immediately, he married a third wife named Kholoud. Sara and Kholoud both became pregnant. Later, he married his fourth wife, Nadia. The stress of polygamous family life may have prompted him to take drastic action.
In this quiet neighborhood, residents heard high-pitched screams despite attempts to muffle them. http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/01/14/24B1F9BE00000578-2910285-image-a-2_1421260063880.jpg
By 2010, around the time Sara gave birth to her third child, Manaa moved to Britain and obtained permission to stay. Sara arrived in the U.K. the following year, and gave birth to her fourth child. [It is not clear what happened to wives Nadia and Kholoud, or the first wife, or the other offspring.] Presumably, the immigrant family became entitled to British taxpayer-paid benefits, thus relieving financial stress on the man with multiple wives.
Britons must be wondering why their government allows people who practice harmful foreign customs, such as polygamy, to enter their country. The answer lies in the magic word “refugee”.
Manaa came to Britain from Kuwait where he had been living as a “Bidun” – a stateless person.*** Not to be confused with nomadic Bedouin, the “Bidun” (also “Bidoon” or “Bidoun”) reside in Middle Eastern countries without the benefit of citizenship. “Bidun” means “without”; it is shorthand for “without citizenship”. Often Bidun families have lived in countries for generations, but because their illiterate ancestors failed to register when citizenship rolls were taken decades ago, these descendants are denied citizen status. Perhaps eventually DNA testing could establish lineage and rights to citizenship. Meanwhile, some of the “Bidun” take advantage of their unusual situation to apply for refugee status in Western countries where – like this Kuwaiti – they can cause trouble and mayhem.
Isolated, Knowing No English, Without Family, Sara’s Situation Was Dire
Manaa has pleaded guilty to manslaughter but denies murder. The spin of his defense is that he suffers from diminished mental capacity that drives his extreme jealousy, paranoia, and abusive behavior. While she was alive, Manaa did not allow Sara to have a telephone, leave the house on her own, or to learn English. Completely isolated in Britain, she was only permitted to contact her sister in the U.K. or her family living abroad, through her mother-in-law – the same woman who refused to summon help while she was being brutally murdered.
Now Sheffield is gripped by the murder case. Will the mother of the murderer face charges? Can one blame certain religious practices? Why did no one do anything about the ongoing abuse in that house? Was the crime the result of the wrong kind of immigration? The trial continues.
*** Editor’s note: The UN High Commissioner for Refugees has, in the last year, really been pushing this notion of “statelessness” and demanding that countries resettle those with that label. It will be one of the reasons for moving many Rohingya Muslims from Burma/Bangladesh around the world.
In response toour post earlier about the unhappy Bhutanese refugees in America, commenter CW suggested we establish a fund to repatriate them.
It is a brilliant idea! The Bhutanese are not the first who came to America with ideas about how wonderful life would be here only to become disillusioned. It must be an awful shock for these quiet (mostly Hindu) people who have been born and raised in camps to be dropped off in rough American cities, expected to work at the most menial jobs, maneuver through the welfare system, and learn how to avoid the thugs they are often settled alongside.
This idea was one I thought about when a lot of Iraqis who came here a few years ago were so unhappy. I advised some to contact the Iraqi embassy in Washington to see if the embassy could finance their way home.
Here is CW’s tongue-in-cheek comment that is actually a really good idea for reforming the Refugee Resettlement Program:
Gives me an idea! How about we apply to the State Dep’t for grant to establish Repatriation Services? Sort of like a revolving door: Catholic Charities brings them in, and Repatriation Services escorts them out! RS also could take all those poor illegals who “were brought here through no fault of their own” and repatriate them, too!
How about it, Comrade?!?!
For those of you who say this would be expensive, I say, no it wouldn’t! It would be cheaper to provide a plane ticket and maybe a little start-up money then to provide years of social services (including the mental health services the unhappy Bhutanese are requiring).
By the way, the Bhutanese are really Nepali people, so we might work a little deal with Nepal (a little foreign aid perhaps) to take them there. (I wonder what we are paying the countries who are taking the Guantanamo prisoners—a bundle I bet!).
Do you know that right now, the refugees who are flown here are loaned the airfare money and must begin paying it back almost immediately. The contractors do the dunning letters and the collecting and get to keep a cut for themselves. Thus it is almost impossible for an unhappy refugee to ever gather the necessary money to buy their own ticket home.
Come on Congress, how about a Repatriation Fund and a little start-up money!
