Reminder! Get your testimony in to the US State Department within the next ten days!

Editor: Below is a repost of a post from April 23rd.  A reader suggested I remind you that as of tomorrow you have ten days to get your testimony/comments to the US State Department.  You should take a few minutes and do this.  You don’t have to say much, but whatever you say, be polite! (and copy anything you say to your elected representatives at all levels of govt!).
Also, if yours is not a resettlement site yet, you need to be watching for any hints that they are working in secrecy to tag your town as a new site. They are running out of places and Obama plans to announce at least 100,000 for FY2017 (he has one more shot at this in September).  We recently reported on three new sites that we know of:  Missoula, MT, Ithaca, NY and Rutland, VT.
(Reposted from April 23)
This is the official launch of the preparations underway for the Obama Administration’s last Refugee Admissions plan to be sent to Congress in September of this year.  Obama has already signaled that he wants 100,000 refugees seeded into your towns in FY2017.
Each year at this time, the US State Department takes testimony from the public on how many refugees (and from where) that you, the taxpaying public, thinks we should admit.  From past experience, we know, of course, that your testimony goes down a black hole!

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)
Address your testimony to: U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees, and Migration Anne C. Richard

For probably decades this testimony was taken in public and was dominated by federal contractors. However, we attended in three consecutive years, but starting last year, there was no longer an opportunity to go face-to-face to the State Department to tell them what we think.  Why is that? Because in that last year where a PUBLIC hearing was held, the opposition to the program dominated the pro-open borders resettlement contractors and they didn’t like it one bit!
If you would like to see what some of your fellow critics of the program said in the past, go here, here and here (when you click each of these, scroll down for all the posts in the category). These are our archives for any discussion of hearing years 2012 (for FY13), 2013 (for FY14), and 2014 (for FY15).  The only reason we obtained any of that testimony is that some of you sent it to us and we attended the hearings in person and were given the testimony.

That testimony is not made public because secrecy has always been the watchword of the program!

I doubt that any Member of Congress or Senator has ever attempted to make that testimony public and I’d bet a million bucks (if I had it!) that no Members/Senators have ever asked for that testimony! Shameful!
Anyway…..

Here (and below) is the Federal Register Notice for FY2017.  You have until 5 p.m. on May 19th to submit written testimony!  

I’m asking all of you to prepare and send in testimony by the May 19th deadline. You don’t have to do some deep analysis of the program, just tell them what you think, and what is happening where you live. (Please be professional and polite!)
I know I said it goes into a black hole, but you can use your testimony in other ways. Use it to do press releases and letters to the editor.  Use it to ask your concerned local elected officials to send in testimony too.
Be sure to send your testimony to all of your elected officials at all levels of government (cc them on the testimony). When sending your testimony to your elected Washington representatives, ask them to do something in your cover letter so that they are at least put on notice that you want a response from them.

Federal Register Notice:

The United States actively supports efforts to provide protection, assistance, and durable solutions for refugees. The U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) is a critical component of the United States’ overall refugee protection efforts around the globe. In Fiscal Year 2016, the President established the ceiling for refugee admissions into the United States at 85,000 refugees.

As we begin to prepare the FY 2017 U.S. Refugee Admission Program, we welcome the public’s input. Information about the Program can be found at http://www.state.gov/g/prm/. Persons wishing to submit written comments on the appropriate size and scope of the FY 2016 U.S. Refugee Admissions Program should submit them by 5 p.m. on Thursday, May 19, 2015 via email to PRM-Comments@state.gov or fax (202) 453-9393.Show citation box

If you have questions about submitting written comments, please contact Delicia Spruell, PRM/Admissions Program Officer atspruellda@state.gov.

 

Simon Henshaw,

Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, Department of State.

[FR Doc. 2016-09267 Filed 4-20-16; 8:45 am]

Kenya to close massive refugee camps! Will we be expected to take more?

You betcha!

dadaab cholera
Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya. Photo is from a story about a cholera outbreak there late last year. http://crofsblogs.typepad.com/h5n1/2015/12/msf-cholera-outbreak-spreads-to-dadaab-refugee-camp.html

A very large number of the Somali refugees arriving in the US come from camps, like Dadaab, in Kenya.  If Kenya goes through with closing the camps this time (they threatened it a year ago, but they look more serious now), you can bet we will be expected to take even more!
We are taking Somalis at the rate of 750 a month right now, see here.
Before you read the story, visit the State Department Data base here and then click on this:

You will see that Kenya is our second highest processing country.  We don’t take Kenyans so surely most of these are Somalis from camps there.  The top three processing sites in the world all involve Muslim ‘refugees.’
The numbers in parenthesis are those we admitted to the US from those locations in 7 months:

Malaysia (4,694)

Kenya (3,280)

Turkey (2,692)

From Deutsche Welle (I don’t blame Kenya one bit!):

The Kenyan government has announced the closure of two refugee camps, including one of the world’s biggest, citing financial challenges and a lack of security. Rights groups have condemned the closure plan.

On Friday, Kenyan authorities said the camps were having an adverse affect on the country’s economy. Officials said the international community should take responsibility for the humanitarian needs of the refugees.

Kenya has hosted refugees for nearly 25 years, with a number of its neighboring East African countries facing protracted civil wars.

The government also disbanded the Department of Refugee Affairs, which worked with humanitarian organizations for the welfare of the refugees.

“The government of the Republic of Kenya, having taken into consideration its national security interests, has decided that hosting of refugees has to come to an end,” said a statement released by Interior Ministry official Karanja Kibicho.

[….]

The camps that will be shut down are Daadab and Kakuma. There are more than 328,000 refugees in the Daadab refugee camp in eastern Kenya – mostly the Somali refugees escaping an al-Shabab-led Islamist insurgency in their country. The Kakuma camp hosts 190,000 refugees, mostly from South Sudan.

Continue reading here.
The article goes on to say that rights activists think Kenya should integrate these hundreds of thousands of Somalis etc.  Well, gee, what would happen to Kenya and Kenyans then? Kenya would turn into an expansion of Somalia!
Finally, you should know that the Somali government is encouraging the return of Somalis to rebuild their country, here.  It just isn’t fast enough for the Kenyans!

Little Lewiston, ME has 34 languages in the school system!

And, one in four students is in an ELL class.
We haven’t mentioned Lewiston much recently (no Somali kids have burned down apartment buildings there in the last few years).
This is your usual fluffy story about coming to America and I’m just posting it to tell you about the school system challenges your town will face if it “welcomes” refugees this year.

Trying out headscarves
Changing America one town at a time. Photo: http://www.ci.lewiston.me.us/Index.aspx?NID=469

Besides the expense to the school system, this family obviously entered the US illegally and are in Maine where the welfare is good for so-called ‘asylum seekers.’  They are hoping to persuade an immigration judge that they are legitimate refugees and they have been told to go to Maine to wait out the legal process.
BTW, the article tells us Dad had a job selling cellphones and computers throughout Europe, so why didn’t he simply take the kids on one of his trips to Europe and ask for asylum there?  There must be much more to his ‘story.’
From the Lewiston-Auburn Sun Journal:

LEWISTON — Joao Rodrigues and his children moved to Maine this past winter from Africa.

His children are among the city’s 1,374 students in the English Language Learner program. One out of every four Lewiston students is in the ELL program; most are Somali children, but ELL students speak a total of 34 languages.

[….]

Speaking Portuguese and communicating through an interpreter, he shared how he and his children fled their native Angola, a country of unrest and violence. They escaped to the Democratic Republic of the Congo before making their way to the United States. [“making their way” is code for arriving through questionable means—ed]

They arrived in New York in January with nothing. A pastor there recommended he take his family to Maine, where there are African communities and where he could get help.

See our very large archive on the Somali capital of New England—Lewiston—here.  And, click here, for much more on Maine the welfare magnet where the governor was trying to slow the giveaways to non-citizens, but not sure he ever succeeded.