I’m dashing off this post as I run out the door to make it to the next city this morning on my RRW road trip…
This is your usual fluffy puffy piece about happy, grateful refugees.
However there is a little nugget in here that I didn’t know. Apparently governors are being notified by the feds about who is coming and how many. It is not clear if they are being notified where they will be placed.
If they are being notified, this is new news and a demonstration that our complaints about the secrecy of this program are changing how the US State Department and its contractors have operated for decades.
From the Omaha World-Herald:
During June alone, 2,406 Syrian refugees arrived — more than the previous six months combined. Such numbers appear to have the Obama administration on track to meet its stated budget year goal of resettling 10,000 refugees in the United States by the end of September.
Nebraska’s Syrian refugees arrived without fanfare, which was by design.
Local agencies settling the families on behalf of the U.S. government said they didn’t treat these arrivals any differently from the hundreds of other refugees they help relocate each year.
[….]
The Ricketts administration — which despite its protestations last November has acknowledged being powerless to stop the federal government’s resettlements — was aware that Nebraska had received its first Syrians. The governor receives a monthly report from the federal government with general information on refugees settled in the state, including nationality, gender and age.
In a statement to The World-Herald last week, Ricketts called on President Barack Obama to answer his and other governors’ calls to tighten security checks on new refugees.
More here.
Gotta run. We have lots of previous posts on Nebraska especially interesting is one where a town rejected a meat packing plant because they didn’t want the disruption of immigrant/refugee labor. Type the word Nebraska in our search window to learn more.