The EU tried to pawn off 100,000 Syrian refugees on Brazil (the land of zika)

Doesn’t sound like it would have been a very humanitarian thing to do!  And besides isn’t Brazil in deep economic doo-doo?

Syrians in Brazil
Syrians in Brazil http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/192571#.V2XTDLgrK00

But who knew this was in the works! (No longer in the works!)
From Telesur:

Acting President Michel Temer suspended all talks with the EU over resettling refugees in Brazil.

The unelected coup government of Brazil, led by Michel Temer, suspended all talks with the European Union Friday over resettling Syrian refugees in Brazil, ending the “open arms for refugees” policy of President Dilma Rousseff which was put in place in 2013.

BBC Brazil was informed by two people involved in the negotiations over accepting refugees that the suspension was ordered by the new Minister of Justice, Alexandre de Moraes, and sent to advisors and diplomats at a meeting this week.

The refugee plan was initiated under the administration of former Justice Minister Eugene Aragon in 2013.

Brazil sought to obtain international resources to house about 100,000 people fleeing the conflict in Syria over a five year period.

The government of suspended President Rousseff was hailed by international aid organizations over its readiness to provide a home for thousands of Syrian refugees who are facing a strong tide of xenophobia and racism in Europe. (Maybe they were just looking for some cold hard European cash!)

The article goes on to say that the UN High Commissioner for Refugees was in on it too.
We have a small archive on South America and refugees, click here for other news.

Maryland Gov. Hogan says he is not voting for Trump; more refugees entering MD than during Dems control

Maryland Republicans were beside themselves with joy that in a blue, blue state they succeeded in electing a Republican governor in the fall of 2014.
The bloom is now off the rose as Governor Larry Hogan says point blank he will not vote for Donald Trump and doesn’t agree with most of what Trump says.  (By the way, Hogan owes some of his electoral success to help from NJ Governor Chris Christie an up front supporter of Trump, so who knows what is going on there!).

Larry Hogan
Looks like Hogan was all talk when he said he didn’t want Syrian refugees resettled in Maryland.

By saying what he did, he has now, for all intents and purposes, thumbed his nose at 248,000 Marylander Republicans who voted for Trump in the primary. See Blue Ridge Forum here (248,000 orphaned GOPers).
I don’t want to get too deep into the weeds of Maryland Republican politics, but long-time Republican observer and former staffer for Congressman Roscoe Bartlett said this (below) on her facebook page.
This would have been an excellent way for the Governor to respond to demands that he tell Marylanders where he stands in this fall’s election. My prediction is that Hogan has just guaranteed that he will be a one-termer.
Keep in mind that the man who wants the governor’s mansion two years from now is Congressman John Delaney, an uber-wealthy Democrat who is apparently already bored with Congress and has been hounding the Governor to say if he supports Trump. (Delaney wins this round!).
Here is the sensible thing Hogan should have said. Maybe it’s just as well he wasn’t smart enough to give a nuanced answer.
Sallie Taylor on facebook:

SCREAM! How hard would it be for Hogan to reply “I am certainly not going to be voting for the former Secretary of State who put all our safety at risk by setting up her own unsecured email system, who failed to protect her own people in Benghazi , who appears to have been selling government favors for contributions to the Clinton Foundation.” And then Hogan just needs to walk away. Unless he is joining O’Malley and is supporting Hillary Clinton for President then how he is answering makes perfect sense.

Enough of that…..
Since this is a blog about refugees, I decided to see how the numbers are looking during Governor Hogan’s Administration. Remember he was one of the 30 or so governors who declared that Obama shouldn’t resettle un-vetted Syrians in the state and then he went silent.
Maryland doesn’t get a huge number of refugees compared to states like Texas or Michigan, but a steady stream does arrive.

However, much to our surprise more entered in the year after Hogan was elected than in any one of Martin O’Malley’s years.

Editor: It is a good thing we checked these numbers yesterday because today that important data base maintained by the US State Dept. is not available.  We hope this is a temporary problem, but if by Monday it isn’t up and running, then we know the Obama Administration is blatantly blocking the public’s right to know who has been seeded into their towns. 

Yesterday I went back ten years in the data and found that in 2005, Maryland resettled 751 refugees with a gradual increase each year until 2015 when the number jumped to 1,453 (under the Hogan Admin).  In those last ten plus years, Maryland ‘welcomed’ 12,112 refugees.
In 2016, the state has, as of June 15th, received 137 Syrians  (35 in 2015 and 93 so far this year).  The Syrians were distributed to Baltimore, Ellicott City, Riverdale, and Silver Spring.
MD resettled Muslim refugees from Iraq, Burma, Afghanistan and Somalia among many others from around the world.
Here are the towns and cities where refugees were resettled this year (some got only a handful, others got large numbers with Baltimore and Silver Spring being the top destinations).

Arbutus

Baltimore

Catonsville

College Park

Dundalk

Ellicott City

Elkridge

Gaithersburg

Halethorpe

Middle River

Nottingham

Riverdale

Rockville

Silver Spring

Looking for fresh territory! Hagerstown?

Rest assured, the contractors are out scouting new sites in Maryland and may have their eyes on Hagerstown (again).
Back in April (when we were away for a few days) the Hagerstown Herald Mail reported that the local “interfaith” group invited Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (one of nine major resettlement contractors headquartered in Baltimore) to come and discuss bringing Syrians to Hagerstown.  See here.
Watch for it!  And, know that they don’t technically have to have an office in Hagerstown (as Virginia Council of Churches did in 2007 before the program was closed) because they can resettle within a hundred mile radius of an existing office.
See our archives on Baltimore refugees by clicking here.  Could the stress from forced multiculturalism be an important factor in why Baltimore is now a city out of control?

Missoula, MT refugee arrivals could begin in August, most will be Muslims

This is the latest from Montana, a state which hasn’t had any refugee flow for a number of years, but is now about to get its first resettlement office.  We have been following the controversy for months and urge you to go here and review the political strife in Big Sky Country over the plan.

Bob Johnson IRC
IRC’s Bob Johnson said he was instructed by his superiors in New York to not discuss recent Islamic terror attack against gay night club in Orlando. Photo: http://www.rescue.org/blog/bob-johnson-refugee-resettlement-director-seattle

Early on, suggestions were made by the proponents and those carrying the water for the International Rescue Committee (the primary federal refugee resettlement company in charge of the office), that there probably wouldn’t be Syrians in the initial flow. But, it seems all that has changed and that most of the refugees that could be chosen for Montana are in fact Muslims.
Here is the news at the Missoulian:

Bob Johnson, a senior adviser for the IRC’s Seattle office, returned to Missoula this week to make preparations for the reopening of a refugee resettlement office. He said the agency for whom he’s worked 40 years instructed its people to abstain from commenting publicly in the wake of the Florida shootings.

Announcement of the Missoula office’s executive director is still a couple of weeks away, and it now looks like it’ll be August before the first refugees arrive in town. In March the IRC contracted with the U.S. State Department to resettle up to 100 refugees in Missoula in the first year, a figure that can be adjusted up or down in subsequent years.

The State Department approved a staff of 2 1/2 in Missoula – the executive director, a caseworker and a half-time finance manager. The latter two jobs are still being advertised.

The IRC says it will give from two weeks to two months notice of where the first refugees will come from, said Mary Poole of Soft Landing Missoula, the volunteer organization that successfully made the case to the IRC to open the Missoula office.

[….]

What is clear is there’s a better chance than first thought that some of the refugees will come from Syria. The U.S. has been slow to meet President Barack Obama’s pledge to resettle 10,000 displaced Syrians this fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30. National Public Radio reported this week that so far that number is just 2,800, but a White House National Security spokesman said the U.S. remains committed to the president’s plan.

Virtually all Syrians arriving in the US now are Muslims. Of course Afghans and ROHINGYA*** are Muslims. Most of those from DR Congo are very needy, mentally troubled, but mostly non-Muslims. Does Missoula have good mental health facilities? 

An IRC official in April told a reception hosted by Soft Landing that because Missoula has no established nationality base of refugees, it’s likely that its first families will come from a population that has no family ties in the U.S. According to the Missoula Independent, those could be Syrian families of four to 10 members; Afghans; families and single-woman households from the Republic of Congo; or Rohingyas, an ethnic Muslim minority from Myanmar (Burma).

What a wonderful coincidence, the schools in Missoula have been teaching Arabic (the number one language of refugees entering the US) for a few years already!

The 6-year-old Arabic language and culture program in Missoula’s three public high schools was another unexpected asset to the IRC.

Continue reading here.
And, if you feel like it, visit reporter Jared Goyette’s piece from several weeks ago.  It is a typical warm and fuzzy, touchy-feely discussion about how one opponent of the plan got friendly with a proponent of the plan.  I have been meaning to write about it, but the only point I need to make is this:  Mary and Drew are nice people, but don’t fall for the emotional stuff that Jared is peddling.

You have every right to question, in a clear-eyed unemotional way, public policy in your state that will effect your wallet, your safety, your health and the social cohesion of your community forever!

***Learn more about devout Rohingya Muslims here.  We have 189 posts on this ethnic group and only yesterday we mentioned that we are admitting them to our towns and cities now by the thousands.  Remember this! The Rohingya are not our problem.  They have been fighting for decades with the Buddhists in Burma.  We did nothing to make the Rohingya our responsibility!  (Not that any others are ours either. But, the Left loves to tell us we are responsible for wrecking Iraq and so those are ours!).