Rutland, Vermont refugee program officially dead (for now)

01/19/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Since I’m on the subject of Vermont—see machete attacker is son of Somali refugee in my previous post.
And, since I told you about the shake-up at USCRI (the federal refugee contractor in charge of Vermont) yesterday, I figured that you might want to know the latest from Rutland where a huge public battle over a new refugee office was waged over the last couple of years.
New readers might want to see my archive on Rutland by clicking here.
From The Rutland Herald yesterday. The tone of the article suggests the media is miffed that they weren’t informed of the meeting with USCRI’s new top dog, Eskinder Negash. Par for the course that refugee discussions are done in secrecy and who knows it better than the citizens of Rutland!

Rutland is not expecting any more refugees during the current fiscal year, according to the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants.

A letter dated Jan. 4, from Eskinder Negash, acting chief executive of the refugee organization, said USCRI officials were asked by the State Department Bureau of Populations, Refugees and Migration to revise its placement plan for the current fiscal year, which ends on Sept. 30, based on “several executive orders.”

“Based on PRM’s instructions and our analysis, we regrettably write to inform you that USCRI will ‘zero out’ its refugee arrival target for Rutland, VT, until we hear further notice from PRM on the resumption of refugee arrivals,” Negash said in the letter.

Mayor David Allaire posted the news on his Facebook page Wednesday in a post that was not initially made public and was only available to Allaire’s Facebook friends. The post was updated to be made public Thursday afternoon.

Allaire, along with Alderman Chris Ettori, attended a meeting at the Community College of Vermont’s campus in downtown Rutland on Wednesday. Negash and Amila Merdzanovic, director of the USCRI program in Vermont, also attended.

The Rutland Herald learned of the meeting and developments from USCRI from someone who attended the meeting. There are no indications the media was invited to the meeting or informed in advance that it was taking place.

Phil_Scott_2017 — Republican governor Scott welcomes refugees and immigrants to the Green Mountain state (aka Green card state!). Including machete man?

Attempts to reach Negash and Merdzanovic on Thursday afternoon were unsuccessful.

[….]

While the recent work by USCRI officials to bring refugees from Syria and Iraq to Rutland has been controversial, USCRI has been relocating refugees to Vermont for 30 years.

Did they resettle the Somali machete hacker family?
Rutland Herald continues…..

Negash also said USCRI leaders “greatly appreciate Gov. (Phil) Scott’s strong support for refugee resettlement.” A call to a Scott representative was not returned Thursday afternoon.

On Jan. 29, 2017, Scott issued a statement in response to President Donald Trump’s executive order restricting immigration and refugee resettlement.

“I can’t imagine what Vermont, or our country, would look like today, had we refused to allow immigrants from all reaches of the world to experience this wonderful country the way most of us have, simply because they were not born here or didn’t share our exact religious view,” the statement said.

Much more here.
See more of my posts on Vermont generally by clicking here.
The US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) is one of nine federal contractors with hundreds of subcontractors under them that monopolize all resettlement in the US. USCRI has staked out Vermont for itself. (Numbers in parenthesis after each is the percentage of their funding you give them via your tax dollars.)

Vermont machete attacker was the son of a Somali refugee (chain migration!)

01/19/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

That is what the Daily Caller has learned from the Dept. of Homeland Security, but I still have questions.
See my previous posts here and here about the violent attack on a Vermont woman at a hotel for the homeless.

machete — Photo: http://www.wcax.com/content/news/Police-respond-to-Shelburne-standoff–468162783.html

But, first, in every community where a person commits a crime, all of you should be demanding that your local authorities and local media answer this question:

What is the immigration status of the alleged perp?

Citizens have a right to know if a violent “man” like this one is here legally or illegally, and, if legally, through which legal program he slipped in. As I enter my 11th year of writing about the refugee program, it is getting better and we are learning when the alleged criminal is a refugee, but it still is mostly a guessing game.
Here are a few snips about what reporters at the Daily Caller have learned about Abukar Ibrahim:

A man accused of violently assaulting an elderly volunteer worker with a machete outside a homeless shelter in Vermont earlier this month is the son of a Somali refugee, the Department of Homeland Security told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

Abukar Ibrahim, a 32-year-old immigrant, assaulted 73-year-old Meals on Wheels volunteer Johanne LaGrange with a machete outside Harbor Place in Burlington, Vt., in early January after vandalizing vehicles and threatening other individuals nearby. Ibrahim “willfully, deliberately and with premeditation, and with intent to kill” assaulted his victim, Shelburne News reported, citing charges detailed in the court records.

He then barricaded himself in a room for hours, reportedly threatening to slit the throats of the responding police officers. Ibrahim, who ultimately surrendered to authorities, has pleaded not guilty to the charge of attempted first-degree murder, which carries a life sentence. A local court judge has ordered that Ibrahim’s sanity be evaluated.

The violent incident in Vermont was widely reported by many different media outlets, but the attacker’s country of origin and immigration status were not included in the initial reports. Working with DHS, TheDCNF was able to obtain this information.

“DHS can confirm that Abukar Ibrahim is a foreign-born naturalized United States citizen who initially entered the United States as the derivative child of a Somali refugee,” a DHS spokesperson told TheDCNF….

The DHS spokesperson goes on to say this is why we need better screening. Mental health screening too we presume!
Continue reading for more details on Ibrahim’s rampage that day and mentions of Ibrahim’s previous run-in with law enforcement.
And, inquiring minds want to know if he shouted Allahu Akbar when he was shouting at police during the stand-off.
Here are my additional questions and comments:
If he came as a “derivative” child then he would have been under 21 (and has been here a minimum of 11 years), so tell me why he still needs a costly court interpreter which we learned in previous reports?

US State Department (2008) closes all family reunification for Somalis!

But more importantly, I want to know if he was among the 20,000-30,000 ‘family reunification’ Somalis who got in to the US when they lied on admission applications for this form of chain migration.
Longtime readers may remember that stunningly in 2008, the US State Department shut down all family reunification for Somalis when they did some random DNA testing and found that literally tens of thousands of Somalis, both here and abroad were lying about their family connections. The program was subsequently closed for years.
And, I remember very well hearing from an anonymous State Department employee who told me how stunned they were to find the fraud so widespread.
Here is one of many reports at RRW about the family reunification fraud involving Somalis. The program was closed for 4 years and reopened with DNA testing. In 2010 the Open Borders Left opposed DNA testing.
As far as I know, none of the tens of thousands of liars were rounded up and removed when the fraud was discovered.

Makes me wonder: Where is the ‘Dad’ or ‘Mom’ who helped the machete attacker get in? Maybe a little DNA testing is now in order!

After all, last November we learned that the Dept. of Justice was planning to deport some other Somali liars, see here. More cases to follow???

Long time refugee advocate and refugee agency CEO is gone

01/18/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This isn’t exactly breaking news!
Lavinia Limon stepped down as head of the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) last October according to a statement by the head of its board of directors. However, it may not have been a voluntary retirement. Someone recently reported to me that she was “forced” out during a period of growing “panic” among the nine federal contractors who are seeing their budgets shrink as refugee arrivals slow.
USCRI is presently being led by her longtime sidekick, Eskinder Negash.
This is a portion of the statement (about her ‘retirement’) from Board Chairman attorney Gene DeFilice:

Message from the Chairman of the Board of USCRI

Dear USCRI staff and partner agencies,

Lavinia Limon, CEO and President of USCRI has decided to retire from USCRI effective October 13, 2017. The Board appreciates Ms. Limon’s over four decades of service to refugees and immigrants, and her contribution to USCRI, thanks her, and wishes her the best in her future endeavors.

lavinia-and-chobani — A picture worth a thousand words. Limon was Bill Clinton’s Director of ORR and here she is with Mr. Chobani Yogurt. USCRI is the agency bringing refugee labor to Twin Falls, Idaho which benefits globalist Chobani!

The Board of Directors has appointed Mr. Eskinder Negash as acting Chief Executive Officer. The Board is currently in the process of conducting a national search, which includes the consideration of Mr. Negash.

Mr. Negash, a refugee himself, has devoted his entire distinguished career to addressing the needs of refugees and immigrants. Mr. Negash brings nearly 40 years of experience working on behalf of refugees and immigrants and managing non-profit social service agencies. Prior to joining USCRI, Mr. Negash served as Director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), within the Administration of Children and Families, at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services from 2009-2015. With a budget of over 1.5 billion, the ORR is the largest government-funded refugee resettlement organization in the world. During Mr. Negash’s tenure, the ORR provided essential services to more than 850,000 vulnerable people through its Resettlement Program, Rescue & Restore anti-trafficking campaign, and the Unaccompanied Children’s Program.

Additionally, Mr. Negash served as Vice President and Chief Administrative Officer of the International Institute of Los Angeles for 15 years, and the Chief Operating Officer of USCRI from 2002-2009.

[….]

As we thank Lavinia for her service, say good-bye, and wish her well, please join me in congratulating and supporting Eskinder as he assumes the position of acting Chief Executive Officer of USCRI.

Sincerely,

Gene DeFelice

Chairman of the Board of Directors of USCRI

(There was no mention of retirement party or farewell gala.)
If you are a longtime reader of RRW, you know that both Lavinia Limon and Eskinder Negash have been gracing our pages for years.

Lavinia-Eskinder-Full-e1450277904628 — Negash and Limon in happier days!

Click here for a huge archive on Limon and here for Negash. I don’t have the time (or patience) for a rundown on their whole careers.
However, just a few key bits of information on Limon.
She was Bill Clinton’s Director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement and I believe a key player in promoting the idea of refugee labor for BIG MEAT (and eventually BIG YOGURT) that began with Clinton admitting large numbers of Bosnian Muslims for his friends in the Iowa beef industry during her leadership of the Office of Refugee Resettlement in HHS.
It is actually a clever scheme: Bring in cheap captive labor ($$$) for your industry pals and wear the white hat of humanitarianism as you do it!
Michael Leahy at Breitbart chronicled Limon’s career here (a must read!).
As for Negash, he left his post as Director of the ORR (note both of them revolved in and out of government) under strange, never explained, circumstances, see here.

Again, I have no idea why this shakeup at USCRI, but it is more evidence that Donald Trump’s refugee policies are breaking up old alliances and power structures in the swamp.

USCRI’s finances….

You can imagine that they are hurting. They are one of the nine federal contractors*** that is almost completely federally funded. See a discussion of their finances here from last March. I put them (at that time) at about 94% funded by the government (you). Limon was making a largely federally funded salary/related income of over $300,000!
And then see here when I analyzed all nine contractors a few months later, I put them at 98% government funded. I was using facts provided by Charity Navigator which told me that this agency could not be evaluated because:

This organization is not eligible to be rated by Charity Navigator because, as a service for individual givers, we only rate organizations that depend on support from individual contributors and foundations. Organizations such as this, that get most of their revenue from the government or from program services, are therefore not eligible to be rated.

Go here to find an USCRI subcontractor office near you.

And, this reminds me, speaking of CEOs leaving, I wonder what is happening over at Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service that was undergoing a shake-up at about the same time, see here.
Did Hartke survive?
*** These are the nine federal contractors largely funded by you. In parenthesis, after each, is the percentage of their income funded by Congress out of the US Treasury. They are paid by the head to resettle refugees, so as the Trump Administration slows the flow into the country, their budgets are being strained to the breaking point.

Trump Administration cuts funding for special UN agency for Palestinian 'refugees'

01/18/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

International refugee industry heads are spinning as the Trump team has withheld funding for UNRWA. That is the United Nations special agency that we have funded for more than 60 years that supposedly takes care of those who were displaced when the modern state of Israel came into being.
They should have long ago been resettled in other Sunni Arab countries, but their demand for a “right of return” to the land Israel occupies is responsible for the continued unrest in the Middle East.

yossi Beilin — The New York Times found one-time liberal politician Yossi Beilin to refer to Donald Trump as “ignorant.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yossi_Beilin

If they want a “right of return” then Christians and Jews can demand a “right of return” to all the places (they once lived) that have been taken over (through violence) across the Middle East and North Africa by marauding Muslim hordes.
As I said in a previous post on the topic—tell me at what time in world history were the lands of the world fairly distributed.
Believe it or not, the New York Times has a fairly balanced article on the subject once you get past the usual sob-story about a hungry ‘refugee.’ (Is this J-school 101: start with a sob-story to emotionally soften up readers?).
Here are a few paragraphs, you can read the rest yourself. Of course they found someone willing to call the President “ignorant.”

The United States, its [UNRWA’s] biggest donor, announced this week that it was withholding $65 million from a scheduled payment of $120 million. The Trump administration said it was pressing for unspecified reforms from the agency, while also seeking to get Arab countries to contribute more. [US taxpayers want to know why any of this is our financial responsibility!—ed]

[….]

The Trump administration’s move, which added to a deficit of around $150 million on the agency’s budget of nearly $1.25 billion, brought new attention to a sprawling agency that functions as a quasi-government in some areas of the Middle East and has courted controversy throughout most of its history. And it revived politically loaded questions about just who should qualify as refugees — and what is the proper role of the organization charged with caring for them.

The agency, known by the acronym Unrwa, was set up in 1949 to aid those who fled or were expelled from their homes during the Arab-Israeli war of 1948. Meant to be temporary, it defined refugees loosely and expanded that definition over time. One key difference between it and the office of the United Nations high commissioner for refugees, critics say, is that the agency routinely allows refugee status to be passed down for generations. Another is that it does not remove people from its list who have acquired citizenship in a new country, so the number always increases.

Further down there is an explanation about why Lebanon won’t give citizenship to Palestinians.

Very few have been granted Lebanese citizenship for fear that taking in so many Sunni Muslims would upset the country’s delicate sectarian balance. And many Lebanese have long argued that giving them rights and services would lessen the pressure on them to return to what is now Israel.

That is it in a nutshell! No country (either Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu or Shiite) wants large numbers of Sunni Muslims as citizens!

Sunni Arab countries like Saudi Arabia don’t take them either, why…..
….because by leaving the Palestinian Arabs in perpetual limbo the pressure continues on Israel.
Read the whole story here.
In my view, it is this type of dramatic move by the Trump Administration that could finally force a resolution to the conflict. At least it is worth a try!
See my whole category ‘Israel and refugees’ here.

Message about your e-mail notices

01/17/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I’m sorry if you signed up and subscribed to RRW and then without explanation you stop receiving those e-mail notices each time I post.
Know that I can’t control those e-mails and have complained on many occasions to WordPress. Another reader today alerted me to the problem. She, like most readers who stop getting the e-mails, think that I am (for some reason) not writing.
Additionally, some of you have said that you attempted to re-subscribe and cannot.
I don’t know if this is being done on purpose by WordPress, or your e-mail server has decided they don’t like my work, or simply a case of lousy service from WordPress.
But…..
I can’t emphasize this enough: please please just come to RRW directly and see what I have posted that day or the day before (or the day before that….). You don’t need to wait for an e-mail! And, besides there is so much more here at the blog itself than you get in an e-mail. Check out Frequently Asked Questions in the header for example.
Just put this in your favorites and visit every day (or every few days):
https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/
Or, if you are on twitter, follow me because I put all of my posts there, plus a whole lot more news you can use! I am @RefugeeWatcher (you will find me also by searching for Ann Corcoran).
Thank you!
Ann