Maine to Minnesota, residents of small cities overloaded with Somalis happy with Trump

“I think he’s doing a lot, every day I’m turning on CNN to see what he did and who he pissed off.”

Mainer Jim Nelson

They may not be protesting in the streets, but voters in towns seeing their communities transformed by refugees almost overnight, support Donald Trump’s efforts to rein-in immigration from certain countries.
No time to thoroughly analyze both reports, but here is a bit of the story from Lewiston, Maine where many residents are happy with President Trump’s temporary slowdown of refugees from certain countries.  I don’t know this guy, but he speaks common sense, and I know exactly how he feels about watching CNN!
From Maine Public Radio:

I think he’s doing a lot,” says Jim Nelson. “Every day I’m turning on CNN to see what he did and who he pissed off.”

Somali women and their children walk through downtown Lewiston, Maine, Tuesday, in a May 8, 2007, photo. Over the past six years, as many as 3,500 black refugees from the wartorn African country have settled in this nearly all-white, heavily French-Canadian and largely Roman Catholic city of 36,000, giving Lewiston the highest concentration of Somalis anywhere in America."Their children are the only assets they have. They left everything else in Somalia," said Said Mohamud, manager of the Mogadishu Store. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)
As we reported here years ago, it was generous welfare in Maine that drew the first Somalis up from places like Atlanta, GA.  https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2009/11/22/somali-migration-to-maine-its-the-welfare-magnet-stupid/ (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

 

Nelson says he voted for Trump and he’s happy he did. He says doesn’t always like how the president acts, but that Trump is quickly fulfilling campaign promises.

That includes the president’s recent travel ban, which affects immigrants from seven countries, including Somalia.

“This country was made on immigrants. I mean, that’s exactly why the United States exists. We’re a melting pot. We can’t lose sight of that,” Nelson says.

But he says he’s truly mystified by the local protests sparked by Trump’s order.

“On the front page of yesterday’s paper you got this little girl crying, and she’s a Somalian (sic) and she can’t see her grandmother, and ‘Oh, my God.’ You know, she can’t see her grandmother for six months. What about the people that got blown up down in Florida? What about those people? They can’t ever see their people again.” Nelson says.

More here.
We have a huge archive on Lewiston, see here.

Faribault, Minnesota:

Here is the Minneapolis Star Tribune about reactions in Faribault, another small city being overloaded with Somali refugees.  By the way, the population of Faribault was 23,594 in 2014, and Lewiston was 36,299 in 2014 (it had lost 293 residents since 2010, wonder why?).

FARIBAULT, MINN. – In her years of selling burgers and omelets in the heart of downtown Faribault, Janna Viscomi has seen changes she never expected.

[….]

For Viscomi, the new travel ban ordered by President Donald Trump that suspends refugee resettlement for 120 days and blocks entry for 90 days for citizens of seven predominantly Muslim countries comes as mostly welcome news.

“I think slowing things down would be good,” she said this week, taking a short break after the lunch rush. “I don’t want to see families separated, but in the other regard, there needs to be somebody saying, ‘Hey, Let’s breathe here. Let’s breathe.’ ”

jennie-o
Like so many other towns I’ve visited in Minnesota, large meat and poultry companies are transforming small cities as their desire for cheap legal immigrant labor drives refugees to the area.

Reporter then describes pro-immigrant rallies in big cities. (Faribault is Trump country as was Lewiston on November 8th!)

Yet in other places, such as Faribault, the move has been welcomed by residents who feel the cost and pace of immigration is too much too fast. Trump won Faribault’s precincts with 50.4 percent of the vote in November, compared with 41.5 percent for Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Faribault, like other small- to medium-sized cities throughout Minnesota in recent years, has seen its mostly European ancestry make room for new arrivals from Cambodia, Laos, Mexico, Central America and Somalia.

And, of course, like much of Minnesota we see Somalis are supplying the cheap labor for BIG MEAT!

In many places, it’s the food processing plants that draw immigrants eager for work. It’s no different here, where the Jennie-O Turkey Store operates.

Continue reading here.
See our previous post on the welfare costs of refugee resettlement.  Somalis are among the greatest users of welfare including benefits provided at the state and local level.

So next time you are tempted to say that you want your meat to be cheap, remember it isn’t! Your tax dollars for refugee welfare subsidize the meat industry!

Lost in security concerns are the economic costs to taxpayers of refugee resettlement

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I told you recently that the Office of Refugee Resettlement had published its 2015 Annual Report to Congress (a year late, but much better than when it was three years late earlier in RRW’s history).
If any of you citizen investigators want a winter research project, study the whole document and see what other information you can find. (Look back at some previous reports too, see here).

Below are some charts from the report (beginning on page 16) that are very instructive. And, remember readers they survey refugees and often don’t hear back from them, so I expect the numbers could even be worse then they are here (from “responding household,” those willing to talk)—and here they are bad!
By the way, when the Leftist Open Borders gang publishes economic studies that claim that refugees bring economic boom times to struggling communities, they surely don’t factor in the cost of welfare use by refugees (or the education costs, or the criminal justice system costs). LOL!, maybe they figure federal welfare dollars (grown on trees in Washington) flowing to certain communities are income to the community.
 
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Let’s take SNAP for example (that is food stamps).  Note that 92.5% of refugees who arrived in 2015 went on food stamps, but of those admitted in 2011, 60% are still on food stamps 5 years later!
Interesting too is the figure for housing assistance. Newly arriving refugees get very little, but after they have been here for awhile (see 2011) they find the housing assistance.
Also, note that as they are here longer, more refugees find SSI (for aged, blind, disabled or poor people generally).

Are you listening ‘welcoming’ communities?

“General assistance” is described as ‘benefits’ provided by state and local governments (taxpayers!).

Take special note of the 23% who used that state and local aid.
Aren’t we told REPEATEDLY that refugees do not cost state and local taxpayers anything! (And, this figure likely does not include the cost of educating the children).
There is graph on page 18 worth looking at which shows the same numbers in a different way.

Then here on page 19 we see a comparison between various ethnic groups and their use of welfare.

Although we are admonished by ORR to not compare statistics by country of origin, I ask, then why bother reporting this data yourself since it begs comparison?
Welfare use was highest for refugees arriving from predominantly Muslim countries in 2015—Iraq and Somalia—as shown in this table from page 19.  See that they sure knew how to suck up the state and local “general assistance” as well.
(If you are wondering, the Bhutanese are mostly Hindu, the Burmese mostly Christian, but we are admitting Rohingya Muslims from Burma now, Cubans of course are mostly Christians, Iraqis mostly Muslim, and Somalis all Muslim).
 
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This post is filed in our ‘where to find information’ category and in our ‘refugee statistics’ archive.

Ninth Circuit allows migrants from terror hotspots to resume entering the country

It is confusing and hopefully later there will be more clarity, but reportedly, overnight, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has ordered both sides (the Washington State court that stopped Trump’s temporary halt of certain migrants and the US Justice Department) by tomorrow to prepare briefs supporting their arguments.

obama-trump
Double standard by the Left! (and CNN!) Obama could, with a pen, control who comes and who stays in America, but don’t dare let Donald Trump use that Constitutional authority!

So, if those bureaucrats working in the US State Department attempt to resume bringing refugees in to the US, they risk leaving refugees stranded in airports (again)—pawns for their political agenda.
From the Daily Mail:

President Donald Trump has lost an appeal against a court ruling blocking his travel ban on certain travellers and all refugees.

The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco instead asked both the state of Washington and the Trump administration early on Sunday to file more arguments by Monday afternoon.

More here and we can add more links as the day goes on.
As usual CNN this morning was on the side of stripping President Trump of his power to control immigration, while during the Obama Administration they were overjoyed and supportive as Obama said immigration was his prerogative under the Constitution.  The double standard is maddening to behold.
And, to further my annoyance level this morning. They are blasting Trump for saying something derogatory about the US in his O’Reilly interview when they said not a peep when Obama went on his apology tour of the Middle East and Africa early in his Administration.
By the way, where is Congress?  We have three branches of government. Can’t they do more there to support the President?

So what happened at yesterday's solidarity-with-mosques day?

Leo Hohmann (author of the best selling book ‘Stealth Invasion) tells us here at World Net Daily. See my post on their plans here a couple of days ago. And, see what I said here (below)!
Hohmann at WND:

‘Christian’ activists head to mosques to resist Trump

A national coalition with ties to George Soros was behind a national day of “solidarity” with Muslims Friday that included rallies at airports and prayer vigils at mosques.

stealth-invasion
Must read! Hohmann’s ‘Stealth Invasion’ which is moving up on Amazon’s best sellers lists.

The National Partnership for New Americans sponsored a “day of action” to protest Donald Trump’s 90-day moratorium on travel from seven countries – Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Sudan and Yemen – which the groups are calling “unconstitutional” and a “Muslim ban.”

The NPNA was funded with a $200,000 grant from Soros’ Open Society Foundations in 2011.

Friday’s action is to be followed up by another on Feb. 22 when the NPNA coalition plans to flood congressional offices with protesters at the district level, sending an army of advocates for immigrants and refugees.

But Friday’s event was no ordinary protest. Many non-Muslims entered mosques and joined Muslims in the Jummah prayer, which is the most heavily attended prayer of the week at mosques around the world and widely referred to as the “Friday call to prayer.”

Some of the secular and ostensibly Christian activists posted on social media that they felt “inspired” to join in the prayers to Allah.

One mosque that attracted ‘Interfaith’ supporters yesterday was  the Islamic Society of Western Maryland!

At some mosques, such as the Islamic Society of Western Maryland in Hagerstown, visitors observed Islamic gender rules.

This was reported by the Hagerstown Herald Mail:

“We are extremely grateful and appreciative for this show of concern,” Faruq Post, the society’s resident scholar, told the men, women and children, who were asked to segregate by gender. Most women covered their heads with scarves.

By the way the Herald Mail story says 100 were in attendance, but never tells us how many were regulars at the mosque. Three from the INTERFAITH group are quoted.

The NPNA coalition includes a large swath of the interfaith movement in America – a blend of Christian, Muslim and Jewish groups – teaming up with immigrant rights activists.

Federally-funded refugee contractors were involved in organizing the solidarity event.

Hohmann continues….

Allying themselves in this project with Muslim groups such as CAIR and the Council of Muslim Organizations are various Christian organizations such as Church World Services, the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, World Relief and others involved in the resettlement of refugees in the United States. These volunteer agencies, also called VOLAGs, are paid $2,050 for every refugee they resettle in America, with more than half of that fee flowing into their coffers and the balance going to the refugee. [For new readers it was Church World Service subcontractor, the Virginia Council of  Churches that brought refugees to Hagerstown in 2007 and inspired me to write this blog!—ed]

[….]

These groups present themselves as charitable advocates for the downtrodden when in fact the vast majority of their budgets are funded by federal grants, not donations by church members.

muslim-mafia
If you missed it in 2009, it is not too late to read it. In fact, the timing could not be better!

“It’s not charity if you are taking other people’s money by force, through public tax dollars, and using it to do what you consider to be the Lord’s work,” says Ann Corcoran, who follows the refugee industry and blogs at Refugee Resettlement Watch.

[….]

“They will whine about refugees but when you look at this list and know what they are planning, it is open borders they are really pushing for—illegals, legal immigrants, it is all the same to them,” wrote Corcoran. “In fact, on the call they said they would link their national policy agenda to emotions by using individual refugee sob stories. Refugees as pawns for their radical political agenda?”

As of Friday there were 14 states and the District of Columbia listed as hosting rallies in support of Muslims. Cities on the list included Chicago, New York, Nashville, Los Angeles, Miami, Greensboro, North Carolina; Fairfax and Alexandria, Virginia; Reading, Pennsylvania; Billings, Montana; Bloomfield Hills, Michigan; Silver Spring and Hagerstown, Maryland; and Boise, Idaho.

The Hagerstown Herald Mail could never bring itself to write about allegations made in 2009 in ‘Muslim Mafia’ even though CAIR has never been able to prove any of the information is false having been taken directly from documents CAIR had warehoused.
WND’s story continues…..

One of the participating mosques that welcomed non-Muslim supporters to join it for Friday prayers was the Islamic Society of Western Maryland in Hagerstown. This mosque was identified as having connections to radical Islamic elements in the undercover investigative book “Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That’s Conspiring to Islamize America” by David Gaubatz and Paul Sperry.

The FBI was investigating this predominantly Pakistani mosque for suspicious activity in 2004 and the imam immediately brought in a CAIR lawyer Shama Farooq to help coach him on how to answer the investigators’ questions.

To learn what happened, continue here.
As we know well, citizens have every right to support mosques and organize protests, but when it comes to federally- funded organizations possibly using tax dollars to do it then we have every right to demand an accounting.
By the way, Esam Omeish former head of the Muslim America Society (a Muslim Brotherhood spin-off group) is a member of this mosque. Look what he said in Hagerstown in 2008:

In a sermon during Monday’s holiday prayer service, Omeish encouraged Muslims to establish themselves and break new ground where they live in much the same way Abraham is said to have founded monotheism in Arabia.

Yahya Hendi has spoken here as well. See what Hendi told the Saudis in 2007. Why would Muslims be pushing for the election of Muslim mayors across America? If they are here to assimilate why do they need Muslim mayors?

Comment worth noting: What one reader said to President Trump

Editor:  This is from a reader named Paul. He took my suggestion and wrote to the White House comment page.
Before you read it (below) consider this:

Since we have no idea if our comments to the White House website go down a black hole, use whatever you tell the President more broadly.

First, copy what you told Pres. Trump to your member of Congress and two US Senators. For good measure send it to your governors and your state and local elected representatives. Always ask those elected officials, especially your Washington, DC reps, a question so that they MIGHT feel compelled to respond to you.
Then you can use your comment as a part of a letter to the editor to your local newspaper. Simply say, Dear Editor, this is where I stand on President Trump’s Executive order and I believe there are many people in our community who feel the same way.  Be sure to make it clear it is a ‘Letter to the editor.’
Finally send your comment to any groups you participate in, your e-mail lists, and send it to your facebook page too. Ask everyone to go to the White House website (more then once if they want to!) and do the same!

In other words, don’t waste your comment, but make it go far and wide!

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https://www.whitehouse.gov/contact#page

Here is what Paul said to Donald Trump a couple of days ago:

So far, I’m disappointed with Trump’s actions on immigration. They’re not nearly muscular enough.

DACA and DAPA should have been cancelled on Day 1. Refugee intake should simply be on moratorium, not just in abeyance for a few months. And asylum should be shut down, too, since it’s almost entirely fraudulent.

One important, discrete thing to do is to turn off the federal money to the nine national refugee-resettlement agencies …

Church World Service (CWS)
Ethiopian Community Development Council (ECDC) (secular)
Episcopal Migration Ministries (EMM)
Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS)
International Rescue Committee (IRC) (secular)
US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) (secular)
Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services (LIRS)
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB)
World Relief Corporation (WR)

.. which are essentially federal contractors. Many of their names suggest that they’re charitable organizations, funded by donations from generous American citizens. Instead, the vast bulk of their money comes from us taxpayers, who have no choice about the exactions.

It’s time for any remaining refugee intake to be done solely by private parties on their own nickel. And they should also be made responsible for the well-being of any such refugees after they arrive — as it is now, most of the refugees are dumped into our welfare programs, and they wind up being an even bigger expense — MUCH bigger — to us taxpayers than the resettlement agencies.

Tell everyone you know to contact the White House website and leave a polite message for President Donald Trump! Click here.  Then put your comment(s) to good use!

This post is filed in our ‘Comments worth noting/guest posts’ archive here.
Don’t miss my previous post this morning about how panic has set in among the contractors listed in Paul’s comment. Trump is breaking their rice bowls (taxpayer-funded jobs going bye! bye!).