Day: October 2, 2015

World Relief targeting Northern Idaho for refugee resettlement!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update October 9th: Local paper confirms—no refugees to N. Idaho for now.  However, great additional information here.
Important Update October 8th:  World Relief Spokane has notified us that they have NO PLANS to resettle refugees in Northern Idaho, see here.
Update October 3rd:  Readers I am traveling so not much time to post, however, wanted to mention that this post has gone through the roof in the last 24 hours!  Who knows why, but hopefully the citizens of St. Maries and Coeur d’Alene are passing it around!  Reminds me to tell you to read ‘Ten things your town needs to know’ by clicking here.
People ask me all the time—how do I know if my town is targeted?  I tell them, sorry, you will get no public announcement until plans are well underway, but if you watch very closely, you may see something that will tip you off!

Idaho map
Sorry I couldn’t find a better map, but I wanted to show you how close Spokane is to Coeur d’Alene, so it is no surprise that World Relief Spokane would move its excess refugees to Idaho. The map shows the other two resettlement sites in Idaho—Twin Falls and Boise.

Back in August we asked if St. Maries, Idaho was going to be a new resettlement site.  Now, reader Barbara directs our attention to this tiny mention in a local church bulletin (Grace Bible Church, September 27 bulletin).
This is likely all the notice the communities near Coeur d’Alene will get (St. Marie’s is close by) and they wouldn’t even get this if Barbara hadn’t spotted it!

MINISTRY OPPORTUNITY!

World Relief has been helping refugees settle in Spokane and would like to involve Coeur d’Alene as well. If you are interested in learning more about how you could be involved in such a ministry, please see Paul. Thanks!

Regular readers know that it is World Relief  (Evangelicals!), one of nine major federal contractors calling the shots about the future of your towns and cities (see here), that opened an office in Spartanburg, SC this year which is embroiled in controversy since a ‘Pocket of Resistance’ has developed there.  See all of our posts on Spartanburg by clicking here.
World Relief has an office in Spokane (here), Washington and Coeur d’Alene is only about 35 miles away making it an excellent spillover site (within the US State Department’s magic 100 mile radius for resettlement).
Everyone reading this post who wishes to find out if your town could be next to be colonized (because frankly they don’t have enough sites for the thousands of Syrians and additional Africans they plan to resettle in FY2016 which, by the way, began yesterday), go to first this list of resettlement subcontractors and see this map.  If one of these offices is anywhere near you, you are fair game!
People ask me all the time, what the legend is on the map.  The abbreviations for the nine major contractors are represented in the legend.

So back to Northern Idaho—you have early notice now that they have plans for your towns! What will concerned citizens do?

We have an extensive archive on the conflict over refugee resettlement in Twin Falls, click here.  To learn more about what citizens are doing there, visit those posts.
This post and hundreds more like it are posted in our ‘where to find information’ category which I urge all new readers to visit.  I know it’s hard for new folks to grasp all of this, but please use that category and our search window to look around for useful information.  I apologize in advance for not being able to answer all of your inquiries.

Germany: Diversity not so beautiful after all

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Invasion of Europe news…..
Reader ‘domstudent11’ directed us to this Washington Post story yesterday—The Washington Post is actually reporting this! That is probably the big news!

tent city near Berlin
Tent city being constructed near Berlin. If this was happening in America, citizens would not tolerate it!

Germans not so welcoming now as ethnic groups clash in tent cities!

CALDEN, Germany — This German town renowned for its rococo palace threw open its doors to arriving waves of refugees.

Donations from clothing drives filled four garages. The volunteer fire department pitched in to build a tent city at the airport that now teems with 1,400 migrants.

But like other Germans in a country that has rolled out the welcome mat for Europe’s largest wave of asylum seekers since World War II, residents here are having second thoughts.

That is especially true after the riot. In this quaint municipality of 3,000 inhabitants, the chaos started at lunchtime Sunday when a 19-year-old Albanian cut in the food line at the town’s new tent city, prompting a reprimand from a 43-year-old Pakistani.

Pushes degenerated into punches. Soon, 300 migrants wielding pepper spray and metal pipes were attacking each other in rival mobs.

A caravan of ambulances and SWAT team vans careened down streets lined with gawking residents. More than 50 police officers struggled for hours to restore order, with three hospitalized with injuries, according to witnesses and local officials.

“You know, when the refugees started coming, I was one of those who saw people needing help and I thought we have to help,” said Harry Kloska, 46, a shaggy-haired instructor in the skydiving club based at the airport. He and his stunned clients huddled inside his office as the violence flared, Kloska said.

“But it’s been weeks [since the refugee camp opened], and I have a different opinion now,” he said. “I am not sure that we’re going to be able to do this, to help so many people from so many different countries.”

No kidding!
Read it all here.
More here at the BBC.
See our complete archive on the ‘Invasion of Europe’ by clicking here.  All of our posts on Mama Merkel’s mess are here.

Senate Oversight hearing on Refugee Program very revealing! Senator Sessions did a masterful job

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

For all of you who had to do something productive yesterday afternoon, like go to work! here is a link to the C-span video of the hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest that ran a little over two hours.

FILE - In this Jan. 30, 2013 file photo, Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala. speaks on Capitol Hill in Washington. Senators weighing a landmark immigration bill defeated an effort by Republicans Tuesday to require biometric identification _ such as fingerprinting _ to track who is entering and leaving the country. The amendment by Sessions would have required a biometric system to be in place before any immigrant here illegally could obtain permanent residency or citizenship. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)
Senator Jeff Sessions, Chairman Judiciary Subcommittee Immigration and the National Interest

As far as we can tell this is the first Congressional oversight hearing held on the refugee program since 911!
Everyone in ‘Pockets of Resistance’ must watch it!  You will learn so much!
See our post here on the hearing so you know the background and who the players are.
I’ve got way too much to do before I leave for travel today, but there are a few things that interested me (among many!) that I want to draw your attention to when you watch the video.
If any readers would like to write a short commentary on what you found most informative/shocking or whatever, please send it my way and I’ll post when I return from Tennessee.
Below, not necessarily in order either time-wise or in importance.  (If anyone has time to send me the time stamps for these exchanges, I would be very grateful.)

Somali fraud!

Witness Barbara Strack (USCIS) actually mentioned the widespread fraud discovered in the family reunification portion of the program back in 2008.  She deserves credit for mentioning it, but of course most listeners probably did not know what she was talking about.  This was in response to Senator Blumenthal (D-CT) suggesting family reunification be expanded.
Here is the background!  First revealed by the Wall Street Journal in 2008, the US State Department learned that thousands of Somali refugees had entered the US by lying on their applications about family relationships.  The so-called P-3 program was suspended for years as a result!  None of the fraudulent entrants were ever deported.  Go here to see links for the news.
So all the discussion about “interviews” as part of the process of gaining entry into the US is suspect because, guess what!  They lie!

Consultation is a joke!

Near the end of the hearing, Senator Sessions asked about whether there was consultation with the communities that would be receiving the refugees, and Lawrence Bartlett (US State Department) said with a straight face that there are quarterly consultations with stakeholders and elected officials.
He did not mention that the taxpaying public is prohibited from attending!  He did not mention that if elected officials are hostile, they aren’t invited.  He did not mention that in many communities there is no quarterly meeting.  He did not mention that the meeting usually only involves ‘stakeholders’ that are friendlies.  Go here to a post we wrote in May about the efforts by citizens in St. Cloud, MN to get into a ‘quarterly consultation’ (while ‘leaders of the Somali ‘community’ had been invited), but were told initially that they were not permitted to attend.  (After a public outcry, a few representatives of the concerned public did eventually gain entry to a sanitized meeting.)

They really don’t know who the Syrians are!

Perhaps the most embarrassing moments of the hearing for witnesses were when Mr. Matthew Emrich (Associate Director, Fraud Detection And National Security Directorate of the USCIS) could not tell Senator Sessions how they could possibly collect data on the Syrians who have left their failed state.  When we get a bit of the video pulled for that exchange, we’ll link it. ***Update*** here (thanks to reader Robin) is the exchange between Senator Sessions and Mr. Emrich.

Boston Bombers exchange

If you were confused by the exchange on the Tsarnaev (Boston Bomber family) and Ms. Strack’s assertion that they were not “refugees,” she was technically correct.  We bring refugees into the country after we/UNHCR select them.
It was widely reported after the bombing that the family had been granted asylum (under the provisions of the Refugee Act of 1980). That means that one of them (the Dad we suspect) got into the US through some other means (perhaps overstayed a tourist visa) and applied for asylum and was successful and thus was allowed to bring in the family.  As asylees (successful asylum seekers) they are then generally referred to as ‘political refugees’ and can (and did!) avail themselves of all the same welfare goodies that refugees receive.
The fact that they were travelling back and forth to their place of supposed persecution should have been a red-flag to immigration officials.
Senator Sessions needs to press Ms. Strack further in follow-up questions to identify the exact LEGAL program the Tsarnaev’s used to enter the country, unless, and this would be headline news, they were here illegally (and being supported on the taxpayer’s dime).
See also, Brenda Walker’s take on the hearing, here at Limits to Growth (she posted Senator Sessions wrap-up statement).
I’ll add additional media reports here as they come in today (before I leave if possible).
Be sure to see Leo Hohmann at WND here on the hearing.