No it isn’t. Local governments want to pretend they have no role so as to get the monkeys off their backs!
St. Cloud on Monday evening. http://knsiradio.com/news/local/residents-sound-refugee-resettlement#.WYvzdZCv3y8.twitter
First, here is the newsabout citizens appealing to the city council for a study about the costs of resettlement. The council voted the proposal down by one vote and said this isn’t a local government issue.
Memory lane! In 2015 we learned that the US State Department had only begun holding so-called “stakeholder meetings” with local government agencies in 2013!
It has only been in the last year or so that we have been made aware that QUARTERLY CONSULTATIONS with community “stakeholders” were being held quietly, out of public view. In fact, I wondered why I hadn’t heard about them and now I know why!
Here Lawrence Bartlett, US State Department Refugee Program, told Senator Sessions that of course they consult communities and elected officials about numbers and impacts! https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2015/10/02/senate-oversight-hearing-on-refugee-program-very-revealing-senator-sessions-did-a-masterful-job/
The citizens of St. Cloud, MN, here and here, brought the issue of exclusion of taxpaying citizens from the meetings where the ‘non-profit’ refugee resettlement agency meets with local elected officials, fire/police, education, health departments etc. to assess how things are going with the refugees, and they discuss how many to bring in the upcoming year.
According to a State Department spokesman (unnamed!) doing a press briefing for reporters on September 11th [sorry, the briefing has been removed!—ed] we learn that they have only been doing these QUARTERLY CONSULTATIONS since 2013! WTH!
And, they are lying! “Private citizens” have not been welcome.
These agencies (‘non-profit’ resettlement subcontractors) work very hard to hold these meetings secretly and out of the view of local concerned citizens—the ultimate stakeholder, the taxpayer! Yet, we have a State Department official (why no name?) telling the mainstream media that private citizens can attend!
Such meetings are required under the Refugee Act of 1980 as succinctly outlined here at Let Freedom Ringblog (hat tip: Katherine). This is a must-read. No time to pull quotes from it because I’m going away for a few days and dashing around this morning.
There is a local government role whether the city council of St. Cloud likes it (admits it!) or not!
Sheesh! A few minutes ago we told youabout the huge US refugee contractor—the IRC—working with Starbucks to find refugee employees to make your morning coffees in the San Diego area, and up pops more news (not good news!) about the IRC there.
https://www.rescue.org/united-states/san-diego-ca
This sort of news will result in a cry for more start-up money for refugees. It will never result in formal questions being asked by Congress about whether we are bringing in more refugees than we can afford!
Three large refugee families that a local nonprofit helped resettle at an El Cajon apartment complex are being asked to move because they have too many people living in their homes.
Uh-oh!
They came forward after KPBS aired an investigation nearly two weeks ago about other refugee families who said the same resettlement agency — the International Rescue Committee in San Diego — put them into too-small apartments by encouraging them to sign leases that omitted the names of some occupants.
IRC’s national office in New York has said it is investigating the recent claims made by refugees. In an email Tuesday, a spokesman said the office is aware of the new cases, which it is also looking into, “and is supporting our clients through their next steps.”
What say you, David? IRC CEO David Miliband giving George Soros their highest award in 2013. https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2013/11/09/federal-refugee-contractor-gives-freedom-award-to-george-soros/
The three families, who moved into their two-bedroom apartments last year, said they received the 30-day notices to vacate a day after KPBS’s story was published on July 27. A manager for the complex, which is under new ownership, said only five people are allowed in a two-bedroom apartment. Two of the families have eight members, while another has seven.
Lalmir Hamdard, a refugee from Afghanistan who arrived here in September, said he relied on an IRC translator to help him sign the English-language lease. A copy of the document provided to KPBS showed five names on the lease instead of all eight members of his family.
“At the time, I didn’t understand it in English — even my daughters with little English didn’t understand,” he said in Farsi through a translator. “I only understood that it said here, ‘Write this, sign here, do this.’ And I did.”
Two neighboring Syrian families who speak Arabic shared similar stories. They would have to find a three-bedroom apartment, which would be more expensive, and they are already having trouble keeping up with rent on their two-bedroom units.However, even a larger apartment may not be big enough depending on a complex’s policy.
Nice to see some real investigative journalism for a change, but reporter needs to ask….
Where is the US State Department that oversees agreements with its contractors (the IRC is one of nine that contracts with the federal government to place refugees) which surely include rules about how many tenants are in each apartment or house?
We have a huge archive on the IRC and its head honcho—David Miliband—here. Go here to see my latest financial accounting for the IRC.
Michael Patrick Leahy at Breitbart called Starbucks to see if new refugee hires (see my post earlier) will be tested for TB as part of their employment screening. Surprise! No response!
Starbucks held a hiring event exclusively for refugees in El Cajon, California on Tuesday, part of its recently announced commitment to hire more than 10,000 refugees over the next five years.
See NBC7 report here about the event at the IRC office. Afghans, Syrians, and Somalis will be making your coffees. http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/california/Starbucks-Holds-Refugee-Hiring-Event-in-El-Cajon–439292923.html
El Cajon is located in San Diego County, where more than 20,000 refugees have have been resettled by the federal government in the past nine and a half years since the beginning of Fiscal Year 2008.
A 2013 study from a research team led by Dr. Timothy Rodwell, “an associate professor and physician in the Division of Global Health at UCSD [University of California at San Diego]” that “analyzed data from LTBI [latent tuberculosis infection] screening results of 4,280 refugees resettled in San Diego County between January 2010 and October 2012,” noted that “San Diego County, in California, is a leading refugee resettlement site, and it also has one of the highest rates of active TB in the country, with an incidence rate of 8.4 cases per 100 000 people in 2011.”
[….]
In other words, the incidence of active TB among the 4,280 refugees who were resettled in San Diego County between January 2010 and October 2012 was 327 per 100,000, more than 100 times greater than the incidence of active TB among the entire population of the United States in 2016.
Wow! I didn’t know this next bit! Refugee contractors*** repeatedly tell the public that only those with latent TB are admitted to the US, but even if that is all we are admitting, that is still a risk for public health.
About four percent of the entire population of the United States tests positive for latent TB infection. Around 10 percent of those with LTBI will develop active TB at some point in their lives. The triggering mechanism to activate latent TB is not entirely understood, but high levels of stress, crowded living situations, poor public health practices, the presence of other diseases that lower the immune system, and behavioral conduct–such as smoking–appear to increase the chances of activation.
The 21.4 percent of refugees in the San Diego County study who tested positive for latent TB infection is about five times the national average.
Breitbart News contacted Starbucks to learn if their refugee hiring process will include mandatory testing for latent and active TB, but has not received a response.
See my ‘health issues’ categorywith hundreds of posts on refugee health problems including mental health issues.
For those who ask me all the time—what can I do? Write to the White Houseand tell the Prez to tighten up admission requirements for migrants with communicable diseases. If terrorism doesn’t scare you, TB might!
*That video. After I watched the video linked under screen shot photo above, I kept getting an error message when attempting to open the link. I hope that doesn’t happen for you. If it does, search for: ‘Starbucks holds hiring event for refugees’ and it should be listed for NBC.
*** For new readers, the International Rescue Committee is one of the Federal contractors/middlemen/employment agencies/propagandists/lobbyists/community organizers? paid by you to place refugees in your towns and cities listed below. Under the nine major contractors are hundreds of subcontractors.
The contractors income is largely dependent on taxpayer dollars based on the number of refugees admitted to the US, but they also receive myriad grants to service their “New Americans.”
If you are a good-hearted soul and think refugee resettlement is all about humanitarianism, think again!Big businesses/global corporations like Starbucks depend on the free flow of cheap (some call it slave) labor.
And, I have a question for you: As a volunteer are you given instructions on how to spot communicable diseases like TB in the refugee community you are helping? (See symptoms at left).
The only way for real reform of how the US admits refugees is to remove these contractors/Leftwing activists/big business head hunters from the process.
