Why you should send testimony to Senator Sessions' Immigration Subcommittee

O.K. I’ve been hearing a lot of excuses about why some of you don’t want to be bothered doing this!
Sorry folks, but saving America is going to be hard work and this is the least you can do—spend an hour writing a proper, polite letter to Senator Sessions who held a hearing last week on Obama’s final determination as President to bring in 110,000 refugees this fiscal year (the new flow began yesterday!).  Go here for a report on the hearing. The security issues were front and center.
And, here is my post from Friday on sending testimony (a letter) to the Subcommittee.
no-excuses
I don’t want to hear about the postal service and how slow it is! I don’t want to hear that they don’t listen to us anyway! I don’t want to hear, why can’t we send postcards (make it easy for us)! Or, that the deadline is too soon and you don’t have an hour today or tomorrow! No excuses are acceptable.

The reasons to write are as follows:

~Senator Sessions took time to hold a hearing (only the second since 9/11) and should know that you care and appreciate that by taking time to write a real letter!

~Senator Sessions needs to know how many of you are working hard and are seriously concerned enough to write a letter (not just blast off an angry e-mail or send a pre-printed post card).

~Senator Sessions is an advisor to the Donald Trump campaign and maybe through your efforts this week, a message may be sent to the campaign about how much this issue matters to so many of you.

~Senator Sessions needs to hear that based on your experience you have suggestions for reforming the program.

~Your Senators and Member of Congress (however useless they are) must be copied on the testimony so they know that you are serious about your opposition to how the program is being administered. Attach a note to your testimony and ask that your representative respond that they received it.

~The Subcommittee can keep the hearing record open longer, but whether you make it into the record is not the important point (hardly anyone ever looks at the published document two months from now anyway). Just get something off in the mail tomorrow or use the fax number I provided here (or do both fax and mail).

~Your testimony now should be used by you locally to energize your fellow activists and it will be a good reason to get some local media. Send a letter to the editor of your local paper and say that you testified in writing to a Senate committee and summarize what you said.

~You are not expected to be an expert on the law, or sound like you are a lawyer!

~Your testimony does not need to be a monster summary of your situation and your concerns.  You can pick one or two key points about why you believe the UN/US State Department program needs to be halted/reformed.*** They are spending your money for it!  There is no wrong or right thing to say, just be polite.  Hint! If you don’t have a problem yet where you live, then find some specific thing you’ve seen here at RRW that is particularly concerning. 

Believe it or not, regular readers here probably know more about problems with the program than most Senate staffers do! You are educating them!

I am not a Pollyanna who thinks that Congress is going to save us tomorrow or this week.  I am not raising your expectations that your letter will make THE difference, or any difference.  I am saying that by not saying anything (by making excuses about the postal system) that you are giving up already.
Many of you talk big about how angry you are, you rant and rave at Obama and Hillary, you get into squabbles on social media, you are reading news all over the net all day and sending news to me, you send me ideas on what Congress should do, and then you tell me you haven’t an hour or two to write a letter to Senator Sessions, one of the few friends you have ever had in the Senate! 
This is one easy thing to do, and if you can’t do it, you are not ready for the major battles ahead.
Endnote:  I have gotten some copies of excellent letters to Senator Sessions over the last two days and I’m thinking about posting some of them (with permission of course). And, LOL!, I have a confession! I will have to force myself to write my letter today when I would rather be posting hot news here or tweeting or whatever!
***Update: For example, for those of you having problems (which is most of you) getting a copy of the FY2017 R & P Abstract, tell Senator Sessions about that.  I will bet that most Senate staffers will have no clue what you are talking about, so you will be educating them!

Roundup for the week ending September 30, 2016 and for the month of September

In a little over 5 weeks everything with the UN/US State Department Refugee Admissions Program will change.

Either Donald Trump is elected and hopefully reform of the program will be launched and Congress will be more agreeable to rein-in funding, or Hillary Clinton wins the White House (further neuters Congress) and follows the lead of her role model, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, opening the floodgates with a flow of migrants and refugees into the country like we have never seen.
congress
But, rather than sit around wondering, those of you concerned about the secretive and out-of-control refugee program, this 5 week window is the best opportunity you will have (maybe ever) to organize and put pressure on the group of people who are really in charge of the program—-your Member of Congress and your US Senators who hold the cards because they control the money!
Those elected officials might be attempting to throw the blame off on Obama when you contact them about how disruptive the program has been for you and your community, but they are to blame for what is happening to you, to us. 
They can cut the funding for it when the budget is revisited in November; and in the new year they can begin to rewrite refugee law for America.  So, I’m going to be a broken record on this subject.
(Everything I’ve written in recent weeks on the budget issue and Congress may be found filed under the tag ‘Where is Congress.’)
The first thing you need to do is send testimony to the Senate Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest, go here for instructions.  I’ll have a separate post on that again shortly and will have much more on what you should do to make the most of the weeks up until Congress returns after the election.

Back to the roundup!

Here are the Top Three Posts of the week (daily top posts are in the right hand side bar):

Senators Cruz and Sessions let loose in yesterday’s Senate hearing on FY17 refugee plan

Comment worth noting: NY state reader is one heckuva brave guy!

Maine has a sexual assault problem in its Somali community

The Top Three Posts for the whole month of September are these:

Lutheran Social Service of Minnesota is responsible for the Somali chaos in St. Cloud

HUGE! Food stamp fraud bust in Baltimore, check out the names, see a pattern?

Heads-up Aberdeen, South Dakota! New resettlement site being proposed

We also have thousands of readers arriving monthly from around the world.   Here (below) are the top ten countries for the month of September from which visitors arrived here.  BTW, September was our second highest month for readers in nine years as about a quarter of a million of you visited. (That is small by big blog standards, but I am thrilled since this is a narrowly focused single topic blog site).
Top Ten Countries:

Canada

UK

Australia

Germany

South Africa

Norway

India

Netherlands

Malaysia

France

For new readers!

I know there are a lot of you, so rather than simply repost information for new readers, please visit the August roundup and scroll to the new reader section to find out how best to use the information archived here.  There is one change and that is that we have now posted 7,913 posts since 2007.
See my newest video, It is about the issue of Congress and the budget.