Testimony to the US State Department from Paul in Montana

Editor: I am still combing through my hundreds of e-mails to find the testimony you sent to the US State Department in response to the DOS request for public comment on the “size and scope” of the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program for FY2017.
The day before the deadline for submission of testimony I noticed (maybe you were all ahead of me and noticed!) that the dates were wrong in the Federal Register.  I happened to see a comment sent by lawyers to the DOS asking that the comment period be re-opened because citizens, who might like to have testified, didn’t think the notice was for a comment period this year, but for last year.   See here.
From Paul who says when the federal government demonstrates such incompetence in so many areas, how could we expect any competent fix for the complicated UN/US State Department Refugee Admissions Program:

To Whom It Should Concern:

The United States exists to benefit our own citizens, and public policy should be made with that concept foremost in mind, not based upon uninformed sentiment and emotion. In the current instance, this means ending the refugee resettlement program, for many irrefutable reasons.

First, going back decades and even ignoring the obvious concerns about terrorists embedded in “refugee” influxes, U.S. asylum programs have been fraud-ridden (which is the reason that quotation marks should usually enclose the word “refugee”). A notable example was the discovery in 2008, via DNA testing, that many “refugee” “families” from Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda, Guinea, and Ghana weren’t families at all, just unrelated people who’d spotted an opportunity to move to the U.S.

Then there’s the matter of costs. In the experience of many small cities around the country (e.g. Amarillo, Texas; Springfield, Massachusetts; Manchester, New Hampshire), the resulting local impacts can be daunting and onerous. After a spell, they find their schools and social-services agencies begging for relief from the influx.

Dinka dictionary
A Dinka dictionary is not adequate. Feds expected Manchester, NH school system to provide a Dinka interpreter when a student from S. Sudan acted up in high school there. Local taxpayers must foot the bill!

Consider, for example, the ordeal of Lynn, Massachusetts, a city of 90,000 just north of Boston with a school district serving 15,000 students. Lynn’s schools took in about 500 students from Central America between 2011 and 2014. One might think such an increase in school population of “only” 3.5 percent wouldn’t be a big deal, but that’s not how it’s worked out for the city.

As Lynn’s Mayor Judith Kennedy told an audience at the National Press Club in August 2014, her health department had to curtail inspection services to afford the surge in immunizations needed by the schools’ new arrivals. She had to end an effective, gang-suppressing community-policing program to free up resources for the schools. With many of the arrivals illiterate in any language, the schools needed many more classroom aides along with interpreters. (The school district’s website broadcasts the availability of translation services in Arabic, Creole, Khmer and Spanish.) Altogether, Mayor Kennedy had to shrink every other department’s 2015 budget by 2 to 5 percent from its 2014 level to accommodate a 9.3 percent increase in school funding.

(Yes, Lynn’s influx includes—besides “refugees”—illegal aliens and ordinary immigrants, but all three categories of arrivals from third-world countries impose comparable burdens on taxpayers.)

Such costs for translators and interpreters are an unfunded mandate the national government levies on states and localities, applicable to court proceedings, too. The requirement is open-ended. For example, in 2014 Manchester, New Hampshire, got in trouble with federal bureaucrats in a school-expulsion case by failing to provide an interpreter for Dinka, the language of South Sudan.

Dinka!!!

Finally, beyond the specific matter of refugee resettlement, our national government demonstrates seemingly universal incompetence, from Transportation Security Administration airport screeners’ 95 percent failure rate at intercepting test contraband to the slack immigration vetting of San Bernardino shooter Tashfeen Malik to the Environmental Protection Agency’s flooding Colorado’s Animas River with orange, toxic mine waste. So who believes that, with hard-to-investigate “refugees,” suddenly the feds will perform?

In short, it’s time to end it, not try to mend it, as mending anything complicated is manifestly beyond the capabilities of the ever more feckless federal bureaucracy.

This is the sixteenth testimony in our series leading up to the deadline for comments to the Dept. of State on May 19th.  Go here for where they are archived to see what your fellow citizens have said.
I intend to keep posting testimonies, a few a day, until I have exhausted my long list! I had no idea so many of you would respond to my offer!  But, thank you for your hard work!
P.S. I should have mentioned it, but I have been adding photos and other images just to jazz up the plain text, I hope you all don’t mind!

It's getting testy in Tennessee over states' rights lawsuit on refugee program

Republican State Senator Mark Norris criticizes Republican Gov. Bill Haslam in exchange characterized as the ‘gloves coming off.’
Readers, it is astounding to me, there is so much incredible (and critical) news about the federal Refugee Admissions Program in recent days and weeks and nary a word about it on any mainstream or cable media that I’ve seen.
In fact there will be a big public meeting in Rutland, VT this week and I’m seeing nothing in the media about it!
Back to Tennessee and another report from Breitbart’s star refugee reporter, Michael Patrick Leahy.  For new readers, please go here to read the background of this hot issue involving a Republican governor refusing to go along with his Republican legislature.
Leahy at Breitbart:

NASHVILLE, Tennessee—State Senator Mark Norris (R-Collierville) is sharply rebuking Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam for mischaracterizing the Tennessee General Assembly’s Tenth Amendment lawsuit against the federal government for its operation of the refugee resettlement program to the state’s Attorney General, Herbert Slatery.

Mark Norris 2
TN Senator Mark Norris, standing up for the Tenth Amendment!

In a letter sent on Monday, Norris, the co-sponsor of Senate Joint Resolution 467, which passed both houses of the Tennessee General Assembly by wide margins, took the gloves off against the state’s Republican governor.

“I am troubled by the statement you released on Friday concerning SJR467,and I am uncomfortable with your mischaracterization of this important Resolution,” Norris wrote.

“The federal government must not do indirectly what it cannot lawfully do directly, and the Tennessee General Assembly must have the opportunity to approve, or disapprove, specific expenditures through the appropriation process,”

[….]

Norris then blasted Haslam for his poor understanding of the federal statutes and regulations upon which the federal refugee resettlement program is based.

Tennessee’s refugee lawsuit against the federal government “is not about ‘dismantling the Refugee Act’ as you said. It is about enforcing it,” Norris wrote….

There is much more here.
Come on governors of Wilson-Fish states, stand up for your states!!!  Where are you Chris Christie and Sam Brownback?

TB controversy continues as refugees and their advocates protest TV station in Fargo, ND

Questions surrounding the admission to the US of refugees with Tuberculosis are growing.
See last night’s latest report from Michael Patrick Leahy at Breitbart.
We knew that refugees with latent TB were being admitted to the US, but we didn’t know that a significant percentage of those with latent TB become active TB cases.  Of course you are paying for their treatment (if they even get it!).
In a typical attempt to silence anyone in the media who dares to question our US refugee policy, a demonstration was mounted on Sunday against Valley News Live.

Del Rae Williams
Moorhead, MN mayor Del Rae Williams supports more refugee resettlement for North Dakota and Minnesota.

Here is a report of what happened!  Local elected officials joined the protesters who were removed by the police from private property. (Emphasis is mine)

FARGO, N.D. (Valley News Live) A small protest that was advertised as a “peaceful demonstration” by a local Somali activist group turned into a confrontation outside the Valley News Live studios on Sunday.

Protestors confronted a Valley News Live photographer as she attempted to shoot video of the event.

Fargo Police removed the protestors from the KVLY property.

Moorhead Mayor Del Rae Williams and Fargo’s Deputy Mayor Mike Williams also showed up for the event. Both support refugee resettlement in the area.

The group demonstrated because they said they were upset over reporter Bradford Arick’s story on the risk of latent tuberculosis in local refugee communities.

Our story presented data and facts from the CDC, State of Minnesota and State of North Dakota on the numbers of latent TB cases in the refugee population.

The State of Minnesota says 22% of refugees in that state carry latent TB while only active TB cases bars someone from entering the country.

The Fargo Forum newspaper criticized Valley News Live’s reporting as blatantly false. Forum Communications owns our competitors WDAY and WDAZ. [These competitors should just do their own investigation and report on the issue rather than encourage the silencing of any other media—ed]

Fargo Deputy Mayor Mike Williams addresses the crowd of protestors outside of the Valley News Live offices in Fargo, North Dakota, on Sunday, May 22, 2016. Nick Wagner / The Forum
Fargo Deputy Mayor Mike Williams (wants more refugees too) addresses the crowd of protestors outside of the Valley News Live offices in Fargo, North Dakota, on Sunday, May 22, 2016.
Nick Wagner / The Forum

The newspaper also interviewed Cass County Health Department’s Dr. John Baird.

Baird told the forum that TB is quote “not a major problem” in the area but later admitted that Cass County Health is treating active TB cases in the community.

[….]

Valley News Live stands by the story and we plan to continue looking into the issues surrounding refugee resettlement in North Dakota and Minnesota.

Good for Valley News Live!  

Don’t let them intimidate people and silence speech!
Here is Valley News Live’s contact information!  Maybe some of you should write to them and tell them to hang in there, that they are doing a great service for America!
Fargo Office 1350 21st Avenue South Fargo, ND 58103 mail@valleynewslive.com
We have written a whole lot about North Dakota over the years, it is one of the top states for refugee resettlement on a per capita basis, go here for our previous posts.  By the way, it is a Lutheran federal contractor running the resettlement program there.
About the photos:  Are these elected officials related or are there just a lot of people with the ‘Williams’ last name out there? Just wondering!

Utica: Give refugees summer jobs or pay for it later

Egads!
Yesterday we told you about the mess in Utica, New York, a city in refugee overload with increasing poverty and stressed-out schools. We also told you about the Obama Labor Dept. (Tom Perez! Watch for him, bad news!) and the department’s special $2 million dollar grant to Utica to give summer jobs to a special subset of the impoverished—-refugees! (But wait! Haven’t we been hammered with the propaganda for years that refugees add to the local economy?)

Perez
This special treatment for a class of immigrant has Labor Secretary Tom Perez’s fingerprints all over it. If you don’t know that name, bone up because he is a man on the move. There have even been rumors that he could be a Hillary Veep pick. Bio here: https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/author/secretary-thomas-e-perez

Now the Daily Caller tells us those special teens will be learning to build drones. How many American young people, engineer wannabes, would die for a summer job like that!
Here is the Daily Caller (hat tip: Julia):

The Department of Labor has awarded Utica, New York, $2 million to teach young refugees how to build drones as part of a summer jobs program.

About 400 teenage refugee students living in the city will get part-time summer jobs through the program, as well as tutoring in English and Math. Those who demonstrate academic competence will then take part in a year-long drone building challenge during the school year, as the work and tutoring continues.

Sounds like discrimination to me! Discrimination against white and black American teens!

“It was just a population we chose to target,” Alice Savino, executive director of the area Workforce Development Board that applied for the grant, told The Daily Caller News Foundation, speaking to the decision to direct the funds specifically to refugees. “These kids are here, and they need help.”

[….]

“The prime focus will be refugee youth in the city,” the grant application abstract reads. “About 1 in 6 Uticans is a refugee from another nation. State data shows this group has the highest dropout rate, lowest college-ready rate in the city.”

One local commenter is reported by the Daily Caller making this remark:

“So legal Americans are not worthy of summer jobs? Can’t wait for November,” another added.

Now get this! So, remind me why we are bringing tens of thousands of refugees to America each year!

Savino, however, told TheDCNF she has not heard negative comments from the local community. “If we don’t help [the refugee kids] be productive now, we’re going to pay for it later,” she said. “The local community is extremely supportive.”

There is more, continue reading here.
Our Utica archive is here.