So, why am I writing about this? If you are a relatively new reader, you probably don’t know that I followed food stamp fraud stories for many years as a sideline to my refugee research work. (We had a bust in my county just as the refugee arrivals began in earnest.)
I first became interested in it when I noticed that the majority of busts I was reading about, mostly at small grocery stores and convenience stores, were of immigrant owners and managers.
One recent bust in Maine: http://fox23maine.com/news/local/portland-shop-owner-pleads-guilty-to-welfare-fraud
If you click hereyou can see many years worth of stories on food stamp fraud here at RRW. Many are million dollar frauds involving trafficking perpetrated by frankly many Middle Eastern/Asian immigrants some of whom sent the money they ripped off out of the country. Here is a storyabout a recent report from the Dept. of Agriculture on the extent of the fraud. Let’s hope Big Don will take care of these crooks!
Remember readers, trafficking involves big bucks, your money! It is not about people buying junk food on food stamps.
From CNS News:
(CNSNews.com) – The U.S. Department of Agriculture has published a report estimating that 35,891 food retailers around the country engaged in food stamp fraud, illegally “trafficking” more than $1 billion in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits annually over the three-year period from 2012 through 2014.
Most of the fraud is in small groceries and convenience stores!
CNS News continues….
“Retailer trafficking of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits occurs primarily when SNAP recipients sell their benefits for cash to food retailers, often at a discount,” the USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service said in a summary of the report.
“SNAP benefits are permitted for the purchase of eligible food items from authorized food retailers,” said the report. “The sale or exchange of SNAP benefits for anything other than food sold by an authorized SNAP retailer is illegal.”
[….]
“An estimated $1.077 billion in SNAP benefits annually were trafficked and thereby diverted from their intended purpose,” said the report.
“Overall, about 1.5 percent of total SNAP benefits were trafficked; and approximately 11.8 percent of all authorized SNAP stores engaged in trafficking,” it said.
[….]
“Trafficking is defined as buying or selling benefits for cash or consideration other than eligible food, and the penalty is permanent disqualification,” said the report. “Permanent disqualification occurs when a retailer’s authorization to redeem SNAP benefits is revoked.”
States where ‘diversity is beautiful’ have the highest number of illegal operations.
A breakdown by states showed that the largest number of retailers permanently disqualified from SNAP in fiscal 2016 were in New York (448), the second largest number was in Florida (175), the third largest was in California (133) and the fourth largest was in New Jersey (130).
Go get’em Donald!
Again, see my food stamp fraud archive byclicking here. There are some doozy stories there!
Amazing!
I am sure that when State Senator Neal Tapio proposed his bill and secured a hearing on it—a bill to slow refugee flow from certain countries to SD—he couldn’t have envisioned how that failed bill has now exposed so much about the fearful ‘leaders’ and the dishonest media in that state….
….’leaders’ who apparently aren’t afraid of jihadists, but of the power of BIG Business (like the meatpackers who want the cheap labor and call the shots) and Chamber lobbyists.
Did the newspaper there also bow to BIG MEAT power, or was it the Chairman of the committee who pressured the newspaper to change its story on the hearing in less than an hour? Chairman, Republican Senator Bob Ewing was clearly embarrassed when Hohmann said “you don’t want to hear the truth.” My guess is that he called the Argus Leader and had the original story taken down! Just a guess on my part! How fortuitous it was that Leo Hohmann, James Simpson and Phil Haney were all there to see it first hand.
They knew the local Argus paper had reported fairly in the first few minutes after they testified only to see that story removed and replaced (except for the url, LOL!) within the hour. So Senator Tapio didn’t get his bill advanced out of committee, but in fact gained much more in the fight to save western civilization. He exposed the feckless leaders in the legislature and the media’s dishonest complicity with them.
Be sure to see my two previous posts on Hohmann’s reports here andhere. (See the weak women ‘leaders’ selling us out!)
Then here is today’s newson how newspapers worldwide are doing the bidding of the global elites and attempting to reduce the natural and sensible resistance people have to being taken over by literally alien cultures.
A very disturbing story appeared in the European press this week that should concern all of us on this side of the Atlantic.
Stick with me while I explain why.
According to the Times of London, concerns have been raised about an “ethically dubious deal” between the government and national newspapers that involves journalists writing positive pieces about the Ireland 2040 plan.
The government’s “strategic communications unit” arranged for sponsored content to appear in local, regional and national newspapers including the Irish Independent and The Irish Times.
What is the Ireland 2040 plan, you ask?
It’s a €116 billion national development plan to prepare for an estimated population growth of one million people over the next two decades.
And where is this population growth going to come from, since Irish women have stopped having babies, as evidenced by their paltry 1.7 children per woman fertility rate?
More…
So how does this relate to South Dakota, continue reading here(I don’t want to give it all away).
But here is a hint, the (second) story the Argus Leaderreported about the Tapio bill hearing is entitled:
Citing concerns of discrimination, S.D. panel shelves refugee resettlement ban
But the url still shows what the original title was:
Hohmann had told the chairman of the committee something he didn’t want to hear (there were audible gasps in the hearing room) and you can see it in the url above.
“You don’t want to hear the truth!”
Read the full accountat LeoHohmann.com.
It is happening all over the world! But, unless you are carefully monitoring your media, you would never know! (Real) leaders looking for something to do?
Craft bills and resolutions even if you know they won’t go anywhere, but do it to expose your weak elected officials and your dishonest media like this bunch in South Dakota.
For more on South Dakota, you might want to visit my archive on the statehere. It is a state I visited in the summer of 2016 on my tour of western states where BIG MEAT rules!
….but the fear isn’t about fear for the safety of citizens of South Dakota, it is the fear the Left and Islamic supremacists know how to stir—the fear of being called names or appearing ‘unwelcoming’ that will be the death of the west! Hohmann asks: Does Morgan Evanson, stabbed in Minneapolis only a few months ago by a still at-large Somali man, feel she was enriched?
And, so they give us gobbledygook about the beauty of cultural diversity and enrichment, about the need for vibrant communities.
Leo Hohmann has penned a follow-up to his story of a few days ago about his eye-opening trip to the American heartland.
(If you missed Hohmann’s first account of his opportunity to testify before the South Dakota Senate, go here first, and then read on below). I’ll call my post:
As I walked through the state Capitol in Pierre, S.D., last week, I was struck by the magnificent beauty of the building, especially the murals that cover the interior walls and ceilings.
Debra Owens of the South Dakota Chamber of Commerce praised the cultural enrichment that Somalis bring to the state.
Many of the murals have a Christian theme.
The one right over the main Senate chamber depicts the settlers of this great state as they reached out to the Native Americans with the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
[….]
The very word “Islam” means “submission.” They push. We submit. This is the new norm in Western societies from Germany and Sweden to Canada, Australia and the U.S. This is how Western societies are being weakened from within.
As I sat through the senate hearings Wednesday on a bill that would have declared a moratorium on refugee arrivals from 10 Sharia-compliant nations, it became obvious that refugee advocates are skilled at dodging and deflecting questions/concerns South Dakotans have about the culture of violence being imported into their state.
It’s being imported to Sioux Falls and Aberdeen under the guise of humanitarianism and fixing labor shortages.
But perhaps the dumbest reason of all used to justify the resettlements was put forth by the Sioux Falls Chamber of Commerce, which sent lobbyist Debra Owens to the Capitol to tell the people’s legislature that refugee resettlement brings “cultural enrichment and diversity” that benefits South Dakota.
SD Republican Senator Kris Langer fretted that the state might look “unwelcoming.”
As if the South Dakota culture has not become sufficiently enriched over the last 100-plus years and needs Somalia to help it out. Give me a break. That was an insult to the intelligence of every citizen of this wonderful state, including the Native Americans.
Hohmann lists and rebuts the many excuses he heard from legislators and those testifying on behalf of bringing more Somalis to South Dakota.
He asks?
Did Morgan Evenson, 24, benefit from cultural enrichment and diversity when she was stabbed 14 times by a Somali migrant while walking home from work in downtown Minneapolis?
I’ve only given you the bare bones of Hohmann’s story, go hereand read it all.
Then you might want to visit my archive on South Dakotahere. It is a state I visited in the summer of 2016 on my tour of western states where BIG MEAT rules! Endnote: You should see this story todayat ‘Progressives for Immigration Reform’ on how wages are rising for low-skill workers now that immigration is slowing.
The meatpackers of South Dakota will have to (boo hoo!) pay more for their slaughterhouse slave laborers if this keeps up!
It is an unnecessarily long article written by Politicoreporter Meredith Hoffman. You can read the whole thing. But, I do want to make a point or two before I move on to other things (like Leo Hohmann’s lateston his trip to South Dakota). The article begins as usual with a sympathetic case (star of the story) of an African woman who got in to the US and is now separated (because of Trump) from the children she left behind.
It goes in to the usual stuff we have been hearing about—the ban, Trump’s low refugee ceiling, the refugees trickling in, the ‘hardship’ the contractors are facing, but it mentions an issue I found most interesting.
The Trump Administration has shifted a focus away from sending USCIS officers abroad to interview prospective refugees and sent them instead to the border and elsewhere in the US to process the huge backlog in US asylum claims that piled up as Obama shifted these officers abroad. Asylum a huge and growing problem!
Other than Mexicans, extra-continentales, arranging their movement to the US border, getting travel advice and information about immigration lawyers! From: https://newrepublic.com/article/146919/this-route-doesnt-exist-map
Readers, the asylum issue is huge and will become an even greater challenge if this horrifying story at The New Republic (hat tip: Judy) is any indication…..
….many thousands of migrants who can’t get in to an increasingly unwelcome Europe are headed to South America with the goal of reaching our southern border.
These are all clever people who know that if they are caught at the border, they will ask for political asylum (there will be an immigration lawyer waiting for them) and will spend years here as that process slogs along.
Now to Politicoand the usual whinefest. This is only a small bit of the story.
I see that Barbara Strack, after ‘retiring,’has begun talking to the media. (Emphasis is mine, along with paragraph breaks for easier reading.)
….workers’ [the usual cabal] impression of engineered chaos comes as the State Department is already using low numbers of refugees to justify the closure of dozens of offices of resettlement agencies, which are private nonprofits that contract with the federal government***. The resettlement agencies and employees still standing are left with the question of how to do their jobs under an administration that at best is making resettlement a very low priority.
[….]
In a year in which the president simply banned whole groups of refugees from entering the United States, it’s far from unexpected that arrivals would be below those of previous administrations. But Trump’s high-profile executive orders halting refugee admissions last year are just part of the resettlement program’s disruptions.
More than a year after the original ban, resettlement workers paint a picture of chaos and confusion, and a field that has been upended by dramatic, sometimes seemingly arbitrary, changes.“If the refugee resettlement program were an assembly line in a factory, it works efficiently because every station knows what to do and how to do the handoff,” said Barbara Strack, who was chief of the Refugee Affairs Division at the U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services (USCIS) in the Department of Homeland Security until retiring three weeks ago. “What the administration has done this year is break that assembly line in multiple places at the same time.”
Trump is prioritizing asylum processing and that makes them all pretty angry, but should please those (like you and me!) who don’t want to see asylum seekers allowed to roam free until their cases are heard.
It’s not just the bureaucratic re-routing that is holding up the process. Another dramatic impetus for the drop in refugee arrivals is that USCIS is assigning about half of its Refugee Affairs Division officers to the border and to asylum offices in the U.S. interior instead of abroad, Strack said, which has a dramatic effect on USCIS’ capacity to do refugee interviews.
Under past administrations the reverse has been true: Asylum officers were occasionally sent abroad to help screen refugees, especially under the Obama administration, which ordered as many asylum officers as necessary to help screen enough refugees to reach the ceiling, she said. (The Obama administration came just shy of its 85,000 ceiling in fiscal year 2016, with 84,994 refugees.)
Readers might remember that Obama was hellbent to get as many Syrians in to the US as possible during his last year in office and hired many more officers to get them processed. Politico continues….
With only half the resettlement officers working abroad as usual, the Department of Homeland Security has had to cut back drastically on trips for employees to screen refugees in those countries, known as circuit rides.
DHS cut its circuit rides to fewer than five locations abroad in the first quarter of this fiscal year, which began in October, resettlement sources said. That’s less than one-third the usual amount in that same time period in previous administration.
The rides were also shorter, staffed with fewer officers and included none to the Middle East, multiple resettlement sources confirmed. And while DHS has added more locations to its second quarter, the rides will remain much shorter than their usual six-to-eight-week duration, and still include no Middle East locations.
Then this! Trump: A ceiling is a ceiling, it is not a goal!
As we have said ad nausea, the Refugee Act of 1980 describes a ceiling chosen by the President in advance of the fiscal year. A ceiling is a cap, not a goal to be achieved. The refugee industry has for decades attempted to make it a goal to be reached!
…..the people I spoke to in the resettlement world all agreed on one thing: The Trump administration is more than happy to stay far below that 45,000-refugee ceiling. “Past administrations have looked at the ceiling [wrongly—ed] as a goal,” said Strack, who served in the federal government 26 years and in refugee resettlement the past 12. “That’s not the case for this administration.”
So to conclude… They can call it “engineered chaos”, but I see what the Trump Administration is doing is pretty clear.
Why process more people abroad when wannabe ‘refugees’ are piling up at the US border, or are already here and have never been screened?
Sounds like there is a clear goal here to keep us safe and create order out of the chaos Obama left us with!
***These are the private contractors that are paid by the head to place refugees in your towns and cities. Come on Politico why can’t you tell your readers how many millions they are paid annually to do their ‘charitable good works!’
The number in parenthesis is the percentage of their income paid by you (the taxpayer) to place the refugees and get them signed up for their services (aka welfare)! From most recent accounting, here.
They must have found something at the USCIS or a thousand Burmese living in the US right now wouldn’t have gotten a letter to report to a USCIS office.
Was there fraud in transit country, Malaysia???
(Checking WrapsnetI see that since FY06 we have admitted a whopping 167,583 Burmese people and they were coming before 2006 and are still coming, see map below.)
Here is a short article at the Des Moines Register about the “summons” Burmese living in Iowa have received:
Dozens of refugees in Iowa received letters from immigration officials asking them to appear for an interview and provide information that validates their status.
The refugees are from the country formerly known as Burma, a group that has grown in the past five years to include more than 8,000 living in Iowa.
[….]
Abigail Sui, program manager of Ethnic Minorities of Burma Advocacy and Resources in Des Moines. http://www.embarciowa.org/
She [Abigail Sui] said at least 50 refugees in Iowa, all who came from Burma and to the U.S. through Malaysia, got the letter from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Department that requested the in-person interview. One letter required travel to Indianapolis, while a refugee from Indiana appeared at the USCIS offices in Des Moines for an interview Monday, according to EMBARC.
[….]
“A current USCIS investigation has raised concerns about identity and biographic information provided to USCIS in a number of cases involving Burmese refugees, including many who have resettled in the U.S.,” said Sharon Rummery, a USCIS public affairs officer based in San Francisco.
She said in an email that the USCIS sent 1,000 requests for interviews nationwide that “will help determine the refugee’s immigration status or eligibility for future immigration benefits.”
The interviews are voluntary, but Sui said that she thinks consequences are possible if the refugees do not go.
Already facing resettlement hardships, the refugees would have to fund a trip to the interviews and take time off work, said Sui. In addition, no interpreters would be made available.
Can you hear the immigration lawyer stampede now—no taxpayer-funded interpreters is a big no-no! And, how dare the Trump Administration dig more deeply into the US Refugee Admissions Program. More here.
Here is a map from the US State Department’s Refugee Processing Centershowing where the 167,583 Burmese have been placed since FY06. Obviously there is an error as there is no number on the dark blue Indiana. Texas takes top honors.
New readers may not know that Wyoming is the only state with no refugee program.
My archive on the Burmese may be found by clicking here.
Most of the Burmese are not Muslims but in the last few years, the US has begun admitting larger numbers of the so-called ‘Rohingya,’ Muslims from Burma and Bangladesh.
