Wow! I didn’t know, but since I’ll be in DC next week I might just have to stop at the National Archives for this important display.
I sure hope it is still there since it opened last November (but could find no information when the display would close). Got to give them credit, they are working hard on their PR campaign!
By the way, you might want to have a look at what Senator Ted Kennedy had to say about his baby—the bill that was ultimately signed into law by Jimmy Carter, here.
Kennedy wasn’t alone, here are the other chief Senate sponsors of the bill:
Sen Biden, Joseph R., Jr. [DE] –
Sen Boschwitz, Rudy [MN] –
Sen Hatfield, Mark O. [OR] –
Sen Javits, Jacob K. [NY] –
Sen Levin, Carl [MI] –
Sen McGovern, George [SD] –
Sen Moynihan, Daniel Patrick [NY] –
Sen Pell, Claiborne [RI] –
Sen Randolph, Jennings [WV] –
Sen Ribicoff, Abraham A. [CT] –
Sen Riegle, Donald W., Jr. [MI] –
Sen Sarbanes, Paul S. [MD] –
Sen Tsongas, Paul E. [MA] –
Sen Williams, Harrison A., Jr. [NJ]
I wrote about the law herein 2013.
If you plan to visit, call the archives first to be sure the law, that is changing your cities and towns, is still being showcased!
To get Obama’s promise of 10,000 Syrianson US soil by September 30th fulfilled, resettlement contractors like World Relief (and eight others)must resettle about 358 a week for the remaining weeks of this fiscal year. Is this story from Memphis indicative of what is happening in your town as more and more refugees are dropped off? “Welcoming” Memphis! Syrian refugees dumpster-dive to support families. Where are all the charitable and good Evangelical Christians at World Relief? When the RAP was created, these federal contractors were supposed to match the federal dollars with private charitable giving. The private share is almost non-existent now.
The Refugee Admissions Program (RAP) of the UN/US State Department already costs American taxpayers over $4 billion and this is what you get for your money! Where is all the money going? I expect to offices and staff at the nine federal contractors!
From the Memphis Mirror:
After a lengthy lead-in about the troubles the Alkani family had in leaving Syria, check this out!
Today, Alkhani’s strife is drastically different. He is not surrounded by warfare, but struggles every day to make his family’s next dollar with no English language skills and a sixth grade education.
His worries about money started immediately. He owed the U.S. Department for their flight fares – a total of $6,000.***
Refugee families receive a one-time welcome payment of $925 per person from the U.S State Department, or $4,625 total for this family, that was channeled to them through World Relief Memphis. [Most people, especially the refugees, don’t know that World Relief, as the middleman, gets a cut of the money —-ed]
World Relief Memphis was the Alkhani’s first American contact and provided the family with the basics to get them started in Memphis. The money for basics like couches, kitchenware, and beds was deducted from their welcome money. [And, World Relief couldn’t get those items donated and save the cash?—ed]
“The World Relief Organization took care of the migration process,” Alkhani said. “We were supposed to get $4,500 in welcome money. We only received $900 of it.”
World Relief Memphis also provides English lessons for refugee families. But Alkhani, like other refugees, said he did not learn much.Alkhani gave up after three months because the teacher only spoke English, and he could not understand anything. [Your tax dollars paid for those English lessons!—ed]
Rami Alhomsi is another Syrian refugee who gave up on the English classes that World Relief Memphis provided.
“None of us benefited from these lessons. We all quit school after sixth grade,” Alhomsi said in Arabic to an interpreter. “We don’t know any English.”
[….]
Because of the language barrier, Alkhani has trouble finding a permanent job. He works for people in the Arab community whenever someone needs an extra hand. He also collects items thrown out in dumpsters and on sidewalks and sells them in a flea market on Summer Avenue.
By the way, World Relief has been advocating that 100,000 Syrians be admitted to the US. For what? So they can compete with poor Americans in dumpster diving?
*** One thing most of you don’t know is that when World Relief collects the airfare loan money they get to keep a portion of it for themselves for running the collection service. All of your money does not return to the US Treasury.
Meet the staff at World Relief Memphis by clicking here.
Editor’s note:I’ve been away for several days and so am terribly behind on the refugee news. I was in Albany to receive an award from the NY State Federation of Republican Women—their Woman in the Forefront award. It was quite an honor! And, I took the occasion for a mini-vacation to visit family and friends. Now back to work!
Yesterday, Leo Hohmann at World Net Dailyreported that in order for Obama to reach his goal of placing 10,000mostly Sunni Muslim Syriansin your towns by the end of the fiscal year (Sept. 30, 2016) he has to get them security and health screened and distributed at the rate of 358 per week. See Hohmann’s excellent reporthere. Obama, John Kerry, Samantha Power and Susan Rice have been working over the last many years to flood American towns and cities with needy third-worlders. This is their last year to get it done! However, if Hillary is elected she will continue the seeding process unabated. So I thought I would have a look at how Obama is doing with the increased number of all refugees to be admitted.
In previous years Obama set the ceiling on refugee admissions at 70,000, but this year it is 85,000 from around the world with 10,000 of that number being Syrians. It appears he and his team at the US State Department are way behind.
Checking the data as of yesterday (12 days past the midway point in the year which was March 31), we have admitted 30,632 which leaves 54,368 to go.
To reach that goal in a little over 5 months we are looking for an arrival rate of nearly 10,000 a month! Yikes!
Will your town be a new resettlement site?
Before I get to the top states, we reported that they are going to have to find new ‘welcoming’ cities (such asIthaca, NY and I heard they were back in my county seat trying to make inroads there where the program was halted for mismanagement in 2007). Watch for efforts being made in your towns and cities to get a federal resettlement contractor office open. They will be scouting towns/cities with cheap subsidized housing which I think is probably their major limiting factor.
So here is the US resettlement map so far for Fiscal Year 2016 (source: Refugee Processing Center):
Here are the top ten states for resettlement in FY 2016. Remember these are only resettled “refugees” not the much larger category of migrants you pay for which are now called by the feds “humanitarian arrivals”whose total number is ranging around 200,000 a year now.
Texas (2,826)
California (2,816)
New York (1,742)
Ohio (1,452)
Washington (1,412)
Arizona (1,363)
Michigan (1,265)
Pennsylvania (1,163)
North Carolina (1,129)
Georgia (1,104)
And the next three (all over 1,000) are Florida, Illinois, and Minnesota.
LOL! And, I am sure it didn’t escape your attention that Washington, DC has received zero as has VP Joe Biden’s Delaware (and it isn’t the size of the state because tiny Rhode Island got 111 so far this year). Remember ol’ Joe was one of the Senators, along with Senator (don’t bring them to Hyannis) Ted Kennedy, who created this program over 35 years ago.
How do I begin to understand what is happening to my city, my state?
It will take a little work and persistence! Go here to see where to begin your research!
So, how do you find out and what do you do?
I could use ten of me! There are so many stories popping up everywhere across the country which indicate that a full-court press is well underway to “fast-track” thousands of refugees into towns across America before September 30th. See Syrian surge,here. (99% of the Syrians admitted so far are Sunni Muslims.)
And, unfortunately I am going away for a few days and will be woefully behind in my blogging by early next week. I urge all of you to follow my twitter feed in the right hand side bar here at RRW or at American Resistance 2016!because I hope to keep up somewhat in getting news to you that way. Or, follow me directly on twitter @RefugeeWatcher.
It occurred to me in the last 24 hours, after writing aboutIthaca, NYthat I should do a summary post about where to find things if you get wind that your town is targeted as a new resettlement site (they are wearing out their welcome in many existing sites!), or, if you are in an existing site and have just figured that out! The Obama Administration is looking to resettle 85,000 or more refugees this year from around the world and for Obama’s last opportunity to submit a proposal, he is aiming for 100,000 in FY2017.
Knowledge is power!
This is where you can learn more about what is happening to us:
Go here for Obama’s Fiscal Year 2016 Report to Congress (very valuable information in here!)
Go here for my post of last year entitled, “Ten things your town needs to know.“
Go here for a list of the nine major federal resettlement contractors.
Go here to find out if your city is already a major resettlement site, and see who the federal contractors and subcontractors are who are seeding your town or city.
ORR Indicators for Refugee Resettlement Stakeholders! You are a stakeholder too! Very useful document: http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/orr/resource/key-indicators-for-refugee-placement-fy2016-report-released
Go here to see the existing resettlement sites on a US map. Remember your town is fair-game if it is within 100 miles of any of these offices.
Go here for a list of the state refugee coordinators. Call yours and ask if new towns are being chosen.
Go hereto learn about the R & P Abstracts that must be prepared for each resettlement site by the subcontractor each year. Call the contractor/subcontractor in your city (see list) and ask for the recent ones for your town including the one for FY2016. You will learn from that document how many are coming and what amenities your town is offering. Be prepared to be stone-walled. They want to keep all this secret from taxpaying citizens and will try to tell you to use the Freedom of Information Act to obtain it—that should not be necessary, they just want to make you go away. Tell your city/county elected officials that they must get this document. They probably won’t dare turn down an elected official.
Go hereto learn about the required quarterly consultations. Contact your local elected officials and ask if they participate in the consultations. And, no matter what they say, you, the taxpayer, are a “stakeholder.”
Go here to see the most recent Annual Report to Congress from the Office of Refuge Resettlement. It is a treasure-trove of information especially useful to see how high the welfare use of refugees is.
Go here for the most recent “Key Indicators” for refugee resettlement, another great source of information about especially refugee employment (unemployment!) etc.
Go here for the US State Department’s data base on arrivals (you will have to play around with it, but it is worth the time!)
And, last, but not least, search our archives of over 7,000 posts by typing a few key words into our search window! So, again, if you don’t see many posts in the next few days, know that I’m traveling! But, you have plenty of homework above to keep you busy!
I suspect this is going on all across America now asObama has put the pedal to the metal to get his 10,000 Syrian Sunni Muslims resettled on top of the 75,000 (more than in recent years) other refugees from around the world. The existing180-190 contractor offices are probably all struggling to find housing for the huge flood expected by September 30th. Refugees are already being placed in all of these cities, but they need fresh “welcoming” territory! This article at Ithaca.com makes it all sound so nice, so welcoming, so easy.
What a joke that they will get these impoverished people on their feet in three months and it won’t cost local taxpayers a dime! Oh yeh! What about the kids in schools, what about health care, what about housing for poor and disabled Americans—this is all FREE! Who knew!
For all of you near Ithaca, please read my post from earlier in the week about what is happening in those other cities in New York state that are overloaded!
(Come to think of it, maybe the Catholic Church in Ithaca has an unused church that they can sell for a mosque!). Calling Donald Trump! They are pouring the Middle Eastern and African refugees into New York in a big way— before you can get to the White House!
From Ithaca.com:
Catholic Charities of Tompkins and Tioga counties is applying to become a refugee resettlement agency.
That designation means the not-for-profit will get federal funding to help prescreened refugees from wartorn countries start their new lives in America. [Remember, we just learned that instead of 18-24 months of screening we are now down to 3 months for Syrians!—ed]
http://www.catholiccharitiestt.org/
Sue Chafee and Laurie Konwinski of Catholic Charities appeared before Common Council on Wednesday night to explain the program, which proposes to resettle up to 50 people during the 2017 fiscal year – beginning on October 1, 2016. [They will not stop at 50!!!—ed]
“We have a lot of say in who we’re going to select,” Chafee said. [No, she doesn’t. She doesn’t select!—ed] “There is an option to bring single people, but it’s easier to house families in Ithaca because you can pool the money going to each member of the family and cover rent for four or five months.” [If you are wondering what she means by pooling money, it is because they are paid by the head for each refugee, so a family of six or eight brings in a lot more money than a single refugee. And CC gets to pocket some of it.—ed]
The countries of origin which Catholic Charities expects to focus on locally include Syria, as well as the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Bhutan, along with anyone en queue from communities already well established in the Ithaca area, like the Burmese.
Who might be available in the area as translators is an important consideration, Konwinski said. For example, since Syracuse has large Sudanese and Somali communities, refugees from those countries tend to go to where their home folks already are.
Officially, federal monies would be for three months of services provided by Catholic Charities to new Americans. [And, what are the odds that they will be supporting themselves in 3 months—zero!—ed]
Here is the contact informationfor the Ithaca Common Council if you are concerned about this proposal.
And, see our ‘Ten things your town needs to know’ by clicking here.
You should all be on your toes wherever you live watching for stories like this one! If you hope to have any say in what they are doing, you must get into the fray now!
You have every right to question what Washington has planned for your city or town!
One more thing….I saw news that there is a push on to get refugees seeded in White Plains, NY, but haven’t had a chance to write about it.
