Yes! This month we celebrate our 8th anniversary!
Refugee Resettlement Watch was created at the end of June 2007 and we had 7 visitors that month and (LOL!) that was us figuring out how to post. The following month, July 2007, we published 47 posts and had an average of 37 readers a day. We have now posted 6,628 posts and in late May we had our biggest day ever with over 15,000 visitors helping to make May 2015 our top month ever!
I know we aren’t like some of the really big blogs, but considering our narrow focus, we think that is great!
Harangue of the week! (of the year!). Use your free speech while you have it!
Everywhere I go, people ask what can they do and I say the number one thing you must do is do your research, get your facts and WRITE a blog or website so the good information you are finding gets out to people in your state—people you have never met, people not in your circle! Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we had 50 or 100 blogs focused on how immigration of all kinds is destroying America!
It might be overused, but it is true! Information is power! It does no good to unearth documents and reports and news generally on immigration issues where you live if the information never goes beyond your little group and is eventually lost!
And, don’t worry about how well-done your investigative blog is, RRW is amateurish-looking and pretty messy now (my techie son tells me so!), but it still gets the job done!
And, would someone please write an investigative blog on Food Stamp Fraud at immigrant-run stores! You would have a winner right out of the chute!
After you begin doing your research and getting the facts out far and wide, we need to talk about ‘community organizing’ — that will be my harangue for next week!
One more thing! If you didn’t see our first Youtube video (here), it is now at almost 600,000 views and we have a new one on Syrian refugees (here), please help get it outside of our circle!
Here are the Top Three Posts of the Week (top daily posts are in the right hand sidebar):
1) Minnesota Somalis: we would rather be in Somalia
2) Alabama: Massive food stamp fraud bust; some of your money went to Yemen
Here are the Top Ten Countries in descending order from which visitors arrived this week (excluding the US):
UK
Canada
Australia
Sweden
Germany
Netherlands
Norway
India
Malaysia
South Africa
For new readers!
Since we get new readers every day, here is my usual spiel with two points I need to continue to make:
First, we do screen our comments (sometimes I don’t get to them right away!) and I don’t post any that threaten any kind of violence or ones filled with foul language. An occasional expletive might slip in if the comment is otherwise a good one. You are always free to disagree with our point of view if you follow those two simple rules.
And the other thing I want to mention is about e-mails that come to you every time we post. They come directly from wordpress to subscribers. We don’t send out e-mails. So, if we are posting too much for your e-mail inbox, then just unsubscribe and visit RRW when you have the time. I understand completely about too many e-mails! You might want to simply follow us on twitter or on facebook (below).
This is where you can find information (in addition to our fact sheet). We have over 6,500 posts.
* See our categories (left hand sidebar)
* See the tag clouds (right hand sidebar)
* Also, we have a great search function and since neither the categories nor the tags go all the way back to our first posts more than seven years ago, use the search window with a few key words. You might want to first try your city, state, or country to see what we have reported from there over the years.
Readers from Europe should search for key words ‘Invasion of Europe’ for all of our many posts on the migration crisis on the Continent.
By the way, our category entitled ‘where to find information’ is filled with reports and documents, but with 348 posts archived there, it is pretty unwieldy now.
Past weekly roundups can be found in our category entitled ‘blogging.’
If you wish to be notified when we post, consider subscribing or follow us on twitter (@refugeewatcher) or facebook (RefugeeInfoResource). ‘Like us’ on facebook! (We are no longer posting every story we write at RRW to facebook so as not to overload your facebook feed either.) We also have some content on facebook that isn’t posted here first, so like us and follow us (I do have a volunteer helper at facebook—Kelly Monroe Kullberg).
And apologies to all who e-mail and comment, sorry if I don’t respond much, there are just not enough hours in my day!
Thanks to all of you for following RRW. The subject is on fire (maybe you have noticed)!
P.S. I have added two photos of myself to our About page, if you need one for any reason.