Michigan: Do we see a new trick by the US State Department to keep information from citizens?

For new readers, and for seasoned activists too, we have been telling you for several years to obtain your R & P Abstracts for your city.

The R & P Abstract (Reception and Placement Abstract) is prepared by your local resettlement agencies each year in advance of the new fiscal year which begins October 1 (we are now in FY18) which outlines a kind of wishlist for the number of refugees your city has the ‘capacity’ to absorb, from where they will come, and what amenities your community has to offer.

Those amenities include housing, jobs, medical care, schools, etc.

To see examples of these important planning documents, see here about Reno, Nevada, and here about St. Cloud, MN.

The Abstract is prepared by a local non-profit group refugee office and then goes up the chain to one of nine major federal resettlement contractors*** who present them to the US State Department in order for the DOS to prepare the President’s Annual Determination and for the contractor to get its federal bucks (on a per refugee head basis).

You will find the Abstract very informative, that is, if you can get it!

Keeping the Abstracts from the public is part of the secrecy game going on with the US Refugee Admissions Program!

If you call your local resettlement office (see list here) they will either tell you that you can’t have a recent Abstract (ask for FY18) or will pretend they don’t know what you are talking about.

Now to Michigan….

fbi-raid-dearborn
Everyone should visit Dearborn once in your life!

After running in to the roadblocks set up by the refugee contractors, the leaders at Secure Michigan have in the past gotten their Abstracts by doing a state public information act request (like the Freedom of Information Act at the federal level).

Not this year!

Incredibly the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees a state refugee coordinator, told Secure Michigan that quote:

“We do not have the resettlement agency proposals you are requesting.  We no longer receive them.”

Just think about that, the Michigan DHHS is not able to see the plans that some non-profit contractors have with the federal government to place refugees in Michigan cities.

The state is not permitted to know what nationalities are coming, where refugees will likely work, what housing opportunities are available in various cities and so forth?

And, here is the takeaway for me: If the state doesn’t have the Abstracts, they can’t be obtained by you—taxpaying citizens—through public information act requests!

The MDHHS went on to say:

The US Department of State chart is the only data we have regarding his request” 

Here are the raw (anticipated) numbers for Michigan:

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At the present rate of entry, Michigan will be lucky to get 600-800 refugees this year. Resettlement contractors will be hurting for taxpayer dollars. 

 

I just checked Wrapsnet and so far this fiscal year, just short of two months, Michigan has received a grand total of 96 refugees. If this pace continues, Michigan would be looking at 600-800 for the year.

If you would like to try to get your FY18 R & P Abstract, go here and find which offices are operating in your city (remember they can place refugees from 50-100 miles from this office).

Call those local offices and ask for the R & P Abstract for this year, FY18.  If they refuse, then call your state refugee coordinator (list here) and ask that person. If the coordinator gives you a runaround then consider doing a freedom of information request using your state’s laws (you should be able to find templates for that request on line).

Don’t forget Congress!

And, to make your elected officials earn their keep. Contact your US Congressman’s office and ask him or her to get you the FY18 R & P Abstract for whichever resettlement offices are working where you live.

To have even more fun, call your local elected officials (mayor, council, etc) and ask them if they have the plans, the R & P Abstract, for your town or city. I’ll bet they don’t and I will bet that they have no clue what you are even talking about—dereliction of duty in my opinion!

By the way, not to hammer the point too hard (but I will!), the Heritage Foundation clearly has no clue about the resettlement process and the secrecy surrounding it as there is no mention of YOUR issue (the problems impacting you where you live) in their “reform” proposal that focuses on America looking good to foreign governments!

This post is filed in my ‘What you can do’ category, here.

***These are the nine federal refugee contractors (paid by you) making plans for your towns and cities. See that Michigan has six of the nine bidding for bodies from the US State Department.

Pope Francis arrives in Burma, will he use the ‘R’-word—Rohingya?

We will be watching!

By the way, in Burma (aka Myanmar), the majority Buddhist population does not think the group of people referred to as Rohingya are anything more than Bangladeshi ethnics who got in to the Buddhist country from Muslim Bangladesh over decades.  That is why the word, setting them aside as some special ethnic group, should the Pope utter it, will not sit well with his hosts.

From Malta Today:

Pope Francis has arrived in Myanmar, becoming the first pope to ever visit the southeast Asian nation.

POPE MYANMAR LEADER
Pope Francis exchanges gifts with Burmese leader Aung San Suu Kyi who has been a greatly admired human rights activist. However, in recent years she has refused to promote the meme that the Rohingya are completely blameless in the violent clashes between Buddhists and Muslims and thus has been vilified by the Human Rights Industrial Complex.

The world’s most high-profile Christian takes center stage in a staunchly Buddhist country accused of horrifying acts of brutality against its Rohingya Muslim minority.

The Pope previously decried the violence against the Rohingya, calling them his persecuted “brothers and sisters.”

Experts warn that this trip will require balancing a uniquely complicated set of humanitarian, diplomatic and religious questions. Even his own cardinal has advised the Pope to steer clear of the word Rohingya for fear of stalling his message of reconciliation before it has even begun.

Aaron Connelly, research fellow at Australia’s Lowy Institute, said that there was little chance the Pope’s visit to Myanmar was going to be a “generic Papal visit.”

“Clearly the thing that motivated this visit was always a desire to talk about the Rohingya,” he said.

“The question is … is he going to do that in a way which is less confrontational and engages?” Connelly added. “Or is he going to say, this is outrageous, these people have a right to be in Myanmar?”

Reading almost like an afterthought, here is the last line of this news:

While Pope Francis’s stance on the Rohingya crisis will likely dominate headlines, the Pope is also expected to push for greater rights for the several million members of Myanmar’s Christian minority.

Why does all of this matter to you in America? We have already admitted nearly 20,000 Rohingya ‘refugees’ in the last ten years.  I’ll be updating numbers soon.

For more on Rohingya, see my Rohingya Reports category here with 214 previous posts.

Heritage Foundation finds over 100 missing comments late today; most very critical of refugee program

Earlier today we told you that many of you had contacted me to say you had commented at the Heritage Foundation website where the venerable Washington DC think tank had sought comments on its proposal to “reform” the US Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP), but that your comments were only visible to you (the author).

Trump at Heritage foundation
The President spoke at the Heritage Foundation last month. Heritage may be right on a lot of issues, but they are way off base on the USRAP—an issue on which they have had very little experience.

See my post here yesterday and here this morning where we speculated that Heritage either had technical difficulties or was deliberately shadow-banning comments.

However, sometime late this afternoon, without explanation, the comment counter jumped from 28, where it had hovered all day, to 137 (where it is now).

Please go here to see that the vast majority of those commenting want a serious reform of the USRAP or a complete halt to the program, not the ‘reform’ prepared by Heritage Foundation experts that sounded more like a product drafted by the US State Department espousing its foreign policy goals with no consideration for the impact on US taxpayers and citizens in refugee-stressed towns.

In addition to concerns over refugees, many of those who commented demonstrated what we already knew from the election of Donald Trump last fall—American citizens want immigration brought under control and they want a wall!

It isn’t too late to comment so please do that, here.

Tell the President! Not foreign policy objectives first, America first!

But, more importantly, it is imperative that you take a few extra minutes and write to the White House and alert the President that the Heritage Foundation Refugee Reform proposal, that was presented to the National Security Council last week, is way off the mark and must not be given serious consideration by members of your Administration.

I guess the Heritage Foundation doesn’t want to hear from you after all

Update #2:  Here is what I said about the missing comments being found.

***Update***  Happy news and happy reading! Some of you went to work today and just now I see that there are 137 comments posted (while the number had hovered around 28 since yesterday)!  All of you who contacted me are now posted for all to see!  Here !

Yesterday I told you about that completely inadequate “reform” proposal for the US Refugee Admissions Program that the Heritage Foundation took to the White House last week.  If you missed the story click here.

Heritage invited comment from the public on its plan, but has apparently failed to post many of your comments.  

I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt until tomorrow morning that their failure to post comments, or more accurately let the commenter believe his or her comment was posted, but then not make it visible for the general public is because they had a technical malfunction and that all comments would be posted on Monday when they return to work…..

However, the other scenario is that Heritage was practicing what is called “shadow banning” (a highly questionable trick in the tech world) where the commenter can see his comment as if it had been posted, but no one else can.  I wrote about it here in August when obviously twitter had briefly shadow-banned me.

Again, we will see what happens tomorrow when DC workers return to their offices and Heritage checks its system.

(I do know that Heritage says they screen comments and reject some, but if so, why do they appear to some readers and not to others if they had been outright rejected? And, if you are immediately thinking they are rejecting comments they don’t like, it doesn’t make sense.  Some of those that have disappeared don’t seem any more critical than some they did post for all to see. And, besides, is it reasonable to assume that a Heritage worker, knowledgeable about refugees, was screening comments on Saturday of a holiday weekend? No.)

This is why I suspect shadow-banning is possibly going on. It would be very shameful if the estimable Heritage Foundation is engaging in that unfair practice.  After all, they were soliciting comments!

Here is what they asked:

What do you think should be done about America’s refugee program?

Several readers wrote to me to tell me that they had posted comments, but I couldn’t see those comments. Some reported that they hadn’t seen mine.  Strange, I thought, because mine is right here in front of me.  This is a screenshot of what I saw.  (At that time there were about 16 comments and as of this writing there are 28.)

I was the first commenter on November 25th right under Ron and before Gail:

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I then tried something else.  I opened the site in another browsing window and what do you know, I was gone!  See screenshot below. Who is now missing between Ron and Gail? Me!

 

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So, dear readers, how many of you can see my comment, and how many can’t?

About six other people reported that they had posted comments that they could see, but  were not visible to me.  Here are two of those.  Tell me, can you see Margaret Starry or Richard Falknor’s comments?  I can’t (other than in the screenshots they shared with me below)!

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Look for her just before Thomas Stark, do you see her comment?

How about Richard Falknor’s?

Shadowbanners!_LI

Can you see Richard Falknor’s comment immediately following Stephen Palmer? Mr. Falknor could obviously see it in order to take this screenshot.

Since so many comments are missing, there is no way for me, or anyone!, to know if you posted a comment. Please send me an e-mail here:  refugeewatcher@gmail.com and I will tell you if your comment is visible.  I have already received e-mails from a few of you who sent me your comment’s text and I confirmed that it is not visible to me.

If you can, get a screenshot of your ‘posted’ comment and send it to me.

Or, ask one of your friends to go to Heritage’s comments and see if they can see your comment!

And, tomorrow if Heritage has a good explanation we will report that—stay tuned!

Minnesotan does some homework on refugee employment issue; comes to unexpected conclusion

Editor: From time to time I post guest columns from readers whose work adds significant new information to our discussion about how the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program is having an impact on your wallets and your quality of life.

Here reader Bob Enos crunches numbers about Somali employment in Minnesota and finds some very interesting data leading to an unexpected conclusion.

THE PARALLEL SOCIETY

First, my thanks go out to Minnesota refugee resettlement expert Ron Brantsner for putting me on to the 2016 report on the animal slaughtering and processing industry in central Minnesota, presented by the MN Department of Employment and Economic Development. A review of the report, for me, shed much light on both the stated objectives of refugee resettlement in the United States, and the unstated subtext.

st_cloud_somalis (1)
Is a parallel society coming to a town near you?

The American people are constantly told that refugee resettlement serves to fill the labor needs that go unmet, due to low birth rates, an aging population, and the unwillingness of Americans to perform certain kinds of menial labor.

How does this mantra square with the data reported by federal and state government?

Federal data tells us there are roughly 30-40k Somali refugees residing in central and west central Minnesota. The populations of these regions reside primarily in Stearns and Kandiyohi counties, of which St. Cloud and Willmar are the county seats, respectively.

The MN DEED report states that about 4,000 people are employed in animal slaughtering and processing in the region. It goes on to say that, from 1995 to 2016, the percentage of “black employees” (read: Somali refugees) rose from 1% to 10% of total employment in the sector. From this data, it can be inferred that at least 400 Somalis work in the industry in this region.

Statistics on fertility rates from the World Health Organization and the federal government suggest that the typical Somali nuclear family – as American society defines nuclear families – includes nearly eight children. Therefore, infer that at least 3,000 adult Somalis in the region are eligible for employment.

The most recent report on performance indicators of refugee resettlement from the US Office of Refugee Resettlement suggested that the unemployment rate among Somali refugees nationwide is about 50%. Applied to the western/west central Minnesota region, this suggests at least 1,500 of the region’s work-eligible Somalis are unemployed. This leaves at least 1,500 Somalis participating in the region’s labor force.

Now, this is where things get interesting.

If 1,500 Somalis are eligible for employment and, of these, 400 are employed in the “livestock” sector, then at least 1,100 Somalis engaged in employment of some other kind have yet to be accounted for.

Anecdotal information suggests that Walmart is a significant employer of Somali refugees in the region. This region contains SIX Walmart stores.

Does it seem reasonable that six Walmart stores have 1,100 Somali employees? Not likely.

Consider an alternate scenario.

The lion’s share of the 1,100 Somali workers who, so far, are unaccounted for are likely working in support capacities for other Somalis: translation services for schools, law enforcement, health care, health and human services, refugee resettlement agencies, and transporting fellow Somalis to locations where they partake of these services. A few are owners and operators of storefronts which cater exclusively to…Somali shoppers.

What we are witnessing and financing with public dollars is a closed, parallel society in America.

If an economic goal of importing Somali and other refugees to the US is filling jobs which are going unfilled by America’s current population of Americans, then the refugee resettlement program will go down in history as the most bloated, inefficient, wasteful, expensive job service the United States has ever produced.

But, this hypothesis begs a larger question. Has refugee resettlement REALLY been about filling low wage, unskilled jobs? The data, at least in Minnesota, does not support the premise.

No, what the economic objective seems to be is to redistribute the world’s poverty among wealthy, industrialized countries in the Western world. In this social experiment, however, the United States, for the first time, has willingly embraced a population that, at least, shows no collective interest in assimilating to, and embracing the American Way of life; and, at worst, is hostile to it. Furthermore, our leaders have evidently sanctioned the concept of an unassimilated, parallel society in America. How do we know that? Just take a look at President Barack Obama’s Committee for Welcoming New Americans, and its 2015 report to the president. In it, we find the committee quite intentionally omits the use of the word “assimilation” anywhere in the report, and replaces it with the word “integration.” What’s more, “integration”, in the New Normal, seems to share more in common with what Baby Boomers were taught is, actually, segregation.

And what might be the quid pro quo for America’s two political parties? If employment is presumably suffering for a lack of eligible workers, then the same can be said for a lack of eligible voters. And let’s face it, the Democratic Party has a long tradition of building its voting ranks with new immigrants.

The trade-off, then, is more refugees, in exchange for new Democratic voters. But what is new this time around, my fellow Americans, is that, in the New Normal, taxpaying Americans pay an exorbitant price in the bargain, in public finance, cultural identity, and quality of life. Or, as our friend Ann Corcoran often reminds us, “changing America by changing its people.”

And, as any salesperson knows, one has to be prepared to walk away from the sale when the price is too high.

This post and others like it are filed in my category entitled: Comments worth noting/guest posts (here).  Other posts by, and about, citizen activist Bob Enos are here.