Asst. Secretary of State Anne Richard will answer questions about refugees in Spartanburg, SC this coming week….

08/22/2015 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

….but, only to small selected groups! And, she will meet separately with each one according to the latest from Go Upstate.

Update August 24th: For more information on what is happening, contact Dr. Christina Jeffrey. christininakfjeffrey@gmail.com

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees, and Migration Affairs Anne Richard arrives for a press conference at a hotel in Putrajaya, Malaysia Monday, June 1, 2015. Richard said resettlement in a third country is not the answer to the swelling tide of boat people in Southeast Asia and called for Myanmar citizenship to be given to Rohingya Muslims fleeing persecution there. (AP Photo/Joshua Paul) — Anne C. Richard was formerly a vice president (for advocacy) at one of the nine federal resettlement contractors—the International Rescue Committee now headed up by Brit David Miliband. http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/biog/188212.htm

A trip by the Asst. Secretary of State for Population, Refugees and Migration frankly signals that the State Department is going to fight for each prospective town or city (or state!) that they want to be relocation sites for refugees in the coming year. And, frankly, they are running out of ‘welcoming’ places so they need to suppress any resistance where they find it now.
For new readers, be sure to visit our first post on Spartanburg where we have updated readers as often as we could about how the resistance was developing there.
Pay particular attention to this idea apparently from the State Department to have separate meetings with those for and against the plan. I’m surprised that Rep. Trey Gowdy’s office fell for this technique which leaves Ms. Richard in the position of spinning what each of the ‘stakeholders’ and taxpayers (not considered stakeholders) groups concerns might be.
From GoUpstate.com:

Assistant Secretary of State Anne Richard will visit Spartanburg next week to address concerns surrounding a plan already underway to resettle refugees in the area.

Richard, in coordination with U.S. Congressman Trey Gowdy’s office, plans to meet with local government leaders, community groups, concerned constituents and others.

Richard also will meet with World Relief, a faith-based organization that is leading efforts to assimilate refugees in Spartanburg as part of the U.S. Refugee Resettlement Program. She plans to hold individual meetings Monday and Tuesday at the Mary Black Foundation on East Main Street in Spartanburg to discuss refugee resettlement and the admissions program, said Danna Van Brandt, a spokeswoman for the State Department.

Van Brandt said Richard opted to meet face to face with select groups at scheduled times to better answer in-depth questions.

Continue reading here.
I say, why not let everyone in Spartanburg who has an interest in this issue hear what each side has to say (and what elected officials have to say)!

Quick note on Wyoming!

It looks like they are going to fight to get a refugee program open in Wyoming or why else is a piece like this running at Wyoming Public Radio?
As I said they need every town, city or state they can get as they are running out of places for the tens of thousands of refugees being brought in each year. I expect next year to be huge because they will surely expand the program for the Syrians the UN is pushing on America (and Europe).
One last note: South Carolina has only taken a small number of refugees in comparison to its surrounding states—North Carolina, Georgia and Kentucky. Wyoming has taken none and the State Department and its contractors need to break open these states!
This post is archived in our new ‘Pockets of Resistance’ category.

Feds won't say exactly what the invasion by Unaccompanied Alien Children cost US last year

08/22/2015 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Julia Hahn at Breitbart has another excellent story with details about the impact on America of refugees, asylees, and this time those Unaccompanied Alien Children who are given over to the care of the Office of Refugee Resettlement.

border boys — The majority of the ‘children’ spread throughout the US were teenage boys.

Here is her story from this week (trying to post a few things from afar when I catch a few free minutes):

Illegal aliens who show up at the border have been resettled all across United States of America instead of being detained and deported, as Donald Trump recently called for in his new immigration plan.

According to data from the Justice Department obtained by Breitbart News, 96 percent of Central Americans caught illegally crossing into the country last summer are still in the United States. Now Breitbart News has learned exclusively that a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from a pro-security group about the cost of this operation is being stonewalled.

In January of 2015, the Immigration Reform Law Institute, on behalf of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), filed a FOIA request to discover the cost of accommodating the tens of thousands of illegal unaccompanied minors who came across the border encouraged by President Obama’s 2012 executive amnesty for illegal youths.

The FOIA letter made five requests of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency: that the federal agency detail (1) the costs of building of family detention centers; (2) the costs of apprehending, processing and detaining unaccompanied minors; (3) the costs transporting, transferring, removing and repatriating unaccompanied minors; (4) the costs related to ICE’s representation of government in removal procedures involving unaccompanied minors; and (5) the number of instances where objections to the return of unaccompanied minors were raised by the governments of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.

The federal agency, however, refused to answer many of these questions– instead only partially answering two of the five requests.

There is more, continue reading here.
All of our coverage of the ‘unaccompanied minors’ catastrophe is here. ‘Unaccompanied minor’ was the earlier terminology used for the ‘children’ and we have followed the issue for years so everything we’ve written is archived using that term. The US Conference of Catholic Bishops and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service are two of the nine major refugee resettlement contractors who are paid to help care for the ‘children.’

State Department: 8,000 Syrians to arrive in US in FY2016

08/21/2015 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

That is according to Breitbart (hat tip: Rosemary). It is a huge number, but I think they will go for even greater numbers since their contractor friends and 14 US Senators are recommending 65,000!

Turkey Syrian camp — Many of the thousands of Syrian refugees that the US will resettle will come from Turkey.

Here is Breitbart:

The State Department is anticipating that the U.S. will admit up to 8,000 Syrian refugees in Fiscal Year 2016.

In written responses to the Senate Judiciary Immigration and the National Interest Subcommittee Republicans obtained by Breitbart News, the State Department reveals that it is expecting the U.S. will accelerate its acceptance of Syrian refugees next year.

“As of July 30, the United States has admitted 1,042 Syrian refugees in FY 2015 and anticipates admitting a total of 1,500-1,800 Syrians this fiscal year. We anticipate admitting 5,000-8,000 Syrian refugees in FY 2016,” the State Department wrote.

The Obama administration’s effort to resettle thousands of Syrian refugees into the U.S. has come under fire as a potential national security risk.

Here is David Miliband, CEO of US resettlement contractor the International Rescue Committee, pushing for 65,000 (mostly Muslim) Syrians to be sent to your towns and cities before Obama leaves office.

Away message (maybe)

08/19/2015 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update August 23rd: Yippee have found internet connections good, so am able to post a bit when I find a few free minutes.
I’m traveling again today. This time it will be out of the country. Not sure what I will find in terms of internet access. I’m hopeful I will be able to continue to post because there is so much happening right now.
However, this might be the last day you hear from me until August 28th or 29th.
That means that your comments won’t be posted until I get back.
If you are arriving here for the first time, or are a regular visitor who might not have ever looked around, just use our search function by typing in key words. I think you will be amazed at what is here in over 6,000 posts and eight years of blogging history. You might learn some things that happened right where you live, but had never heard about, so try it!

Last minute urgent update!

We have learned that Asst. Secretary of State for Population, Refugees and Migration Anne Richard is headed to Spartanburg, SC next week to address community concerns in that Pocket of Resistance. She will be there August 24 and 25. This is a big deal PR move for the State Department. Contact Christina Jeffrey at christininakfjeffrey@gmail.com for more information!
Or, find her on facebook, here.

Cool map tells us which immigrant ethnic group holds demographic dominance in each state

08/19/2015 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

A reader, Phillip, sent us this very interesting map. It is a little annoying to have to figure out in some cases which flag is depicted on certain states, but it is nonetheless informative. States with dominant populations of Burmese, Bhutanese, Somali, Cuban, Ethiopian, Iraqi or Vietnamese got that way through the Refugee Admissions Program since they are all major refugee-sending countries.
Somalis are dominant in Minnesota and Maine; Iraqis in Tennessee, Michigan and Idaho.
We don’t take many refugees from the Philippines, China, Dominican Republic, India or of course Canada. They get in here through other means. However, the Chinese are the largest group of asylum seekers who successfully get in.
The map makers excluded Mexico (don’t know why). And, I would have guessed the Salvadorans would dominate Maryland.
Here is where Phillip got the map, I don’t have time to examine it further, but you might.