Month: December 2019

In Fiscal Year 2020 Texas Continues as the Number One Refugee Resettlement State in Nation

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Have you taken 15 minutes to make your calls?

Just so you know—most of the country ‘welcomed’ some refugees in the first group of arrivals for FY2020.

Resettlement will continue as it always has until June 2020 when supposedly the Trump EO will be in effect.

As Open Borders Inc. continues on its quest to turn Texas blue, Texas is again numero uno in ‘welcoming’ Africans, Asians and Middle Eastern impoverished refugees to its towns and cities.

If (when!) the contractors convince Texas Governor Abbott to send a permission letter to the US State Department, the contractors will achieve a great victory.  So, I sure hope you Texans are working hard!

Have you taken 15 minutes to make your calls?

(See previous post  Kansas has thrown in the towel! Taxpayers will pay the price just so some meatpackers will get cheap labor!).

Below is where the US State Department and its nine contractors*** placed 1,488 refugees in the last month.

Nothing I can do about the tiny type. I told you all here how to use the Refugee Processing Center data.

The top ten ‘welcoming’ states have a few additions.  I haven’t seen Indiana or Minnesota in the top ten in recent times, and Kentucky is climbing up the ladder.

Texas, California, New York, Kentucky, Arizona, Washington, Indiana, Illinois, Minnesota and Florida are the top ten in that order.

Here is the map where 1,488 refugees were placed between November 1 and December 1, 2019:

 

Below are the top sending countries (in parenthesis after each is the number of Muslims in the group).   Take note of the fact that we are only bringing in a tiny number of Middle Eastern Christians from Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.

There is no Muslim ban.

DR Congo 509 (M: 17)  It is maddening when you consider that Obama said more than six years ago that we would limit our intake of DR Congolese to 50,000  and we are now at or near 60,000!

Burma 337 (M:37)

Moldova 94 (M: 0)

Afghanistan 91 (M:82)

Ukraine 78 (M: 0)

Iraq 50 (M: 35)

Syria 37 (M:32)  So much for saving the Syrian Christians!

Somalia 31 (M: 31)  Sixteen of these went to Minnesota over the last 4 weeks.

 

*** These are the nine federally funded contractors, all political Leftwing organizations, that at present are deciding where the UN-chosen refugees are being placed in America.

 

If you didn’t know, I have a category entitled, ‘where to find information.‘  You might find it useful to follow some of my recent posts on the President’s Executive Order.

 

Kansas: Governor Joins List of Governors Asking for Unknown Number of Refugees

~ Ann Corcoran ~ 12 Comments

Have you taken 15 minutes to make your calls?

 

On October 16th, refugee contractor the International Rescue Committee sent out a call to action to Kansans. https://www.rescue.org/announcement/how-make-sure-kansas-welcomes-refugees

 

The list is growing ever so slowly with the most recent addition being Kansas Democrat Governor Laura Kelly.  In agreeing to take an in determinant number of refugees she has agreed that she is okay with the high cost of the care of more impoverished people coming into the country from Africa, Asia and the Middle East and placing that cost on Kansas taxpayers.

When the Refugee Act  became law in 1980, Kennedy/Biden and Jimmy Carter said the cost would not fall on the states that ‘welcomed’ refugees, but over the years that is exactly what happened. The feds have shifted the cost to state and local taxpayers.  

Incoming refugees are eligible for all forms of welfare and the primary job of the contractors*** who place them is to get them signed up for their services—medical, housing, food, education, and English language/citizenship training—a large portion of which is funded by state and local taxpayers.

Governor Laura Kelly joins seven other governors (by my count) who have said to the UN/US State Department (or to the media), sure send us any number of refugees you want to send us and we will pay for them!

Here is the news from Voice of America:

Kansas Joins Other States in Accepting Refugees Under New Trump Rule

Kansas is the latest U.S. state to commit to resettling refugees under a new Trump administration rule that requires cities and states to opt in to the government’s refugee program.

The ultimate example of elections having consequences: Democrat Laura Kelly decides for Kansas rather immigration hawk Kris Kobach.

“I not only consent to the initial refugee resettlement in Kansas as per the terms of the Executive Order, I also welcome them into our state,” Democratic Governor Laura Kelly wrote to President Donald Trump in the letter, made public Wednesday.

With the letter, Kelly joins a small bipartisan list of governors to quickly respond to the new rule, issued in September.

Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Washington state — headed by Democratic governors — and Utah, led by a Republican, previously submitted similar letters to Washington officials.

Pay attention here!  For nearly 40 years the US State Department and its contractors (nine today) have called the shots about which would be refugee target towns and cities and the contractors are now fighting tooth and nail to keep that power!

Prior to the Sept. 26 executive order, refugees were either reunited with family or assigned a destination based on a quarterly meeting near Washington, D.C., between government officials and the non-profit organizations that handle resettlement.

They generally placed refugees in communities around the country where the non-profits have offices and staff to help refugees, especially during their first year in the U.S. [The Leftwing contractors have been deciding which communities to turn blue—ed]

While there have been some cities and states, like Tennessee, that in previous years attempted to block refugees, such cases are rare. Resettlement had occurred in every U.S. state, territory, and the District of Columbia since 2003, according to U.S. State Department arrival records.  [Wrong here!  Wyoming has never taken refugees, Hawaii gets very few and Biden’s Delaware is near the bottom of the list.—ed]

By requiring consent, the Trump administration is allowing states and localities to bar refugee resettlement in their areas.

 

If you thought that maybe your governor could say that you would take a certain number of Middle Eastern Christians, you are WRONG!  Again, by agreeing to ‘welcome’ refugees, your governor is saying your state will take any number from anywhere in the world!

Despite the consent requirement, state and local governments will not be able to choose which refugees it wants to accept, or to exclude certain groups.

[….]

The new rules will affect resettlement beginning June 1, 2020, according to an emailed statement from an agency spokesperson.

Written consent will be required from the state governor’s office and the chief executive officer of the county or county equivalent for each jurisdiction where refugees will be resettled, the spokesperson added.

Any cut-off date for the consent letters is unknown. The State Department did not respond to a request for clarification Thursday. [You need to get on this immediately, don’t wait to contact your governor and your county government.—ed]

More here.

Go to the VOA piece and see some of the governors’ letters.

I am keeping a list of governors who have publicly announced (some may not have sent their letter) that they will take on the financial burden of more impoverished people for their states in my right hand side bar here at RRW.

 

***These (below) are the nine federal resettlement contractors who might not get their funding for the later part of this fiscal year without approvals from the governor and the county in which they want to place incoming refugees.  I say might not because the funding guidelines have some squishy language.

These are the fake charities funded largely with your federal tax dollars to place refugees and they want to keep the federal money spigot flowing.  And, that is why their lobbying arm, Refugee Council USA, has created a “toolkit” for Open Borders agitators.

They could help refugees and immigrants out of their good hearts and private wallets,  but heck then they wouldn’t have the financial power to oppose the President.

Shame on You if You Don’t Take 15 Minutes to Do This!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ 19 Comments

Turn off the damn faux impeachment hearing! And, for goodness sake forget about shopping and whether Prince Andrew did something to a blond girl whenever.

The President heard your concerns about refugees being placed in your towns with no warning and no local approval and did something about it! Are you going to let him down now?

For those of you who spend the day reading news to inform yourself, stop reading for 15 minutes and do something—I’ll tell you what shortly.

The President listened to your concerns about having no role in the decision making process about where refugees are placed in America.

He has gone out on a (another) political limb and created an Executive Order back in September with the lowest determination for the number of refugees to be admitted to the US since the Kennedy/Biden/Jimmy Carter refugee program became law in 1980.

And, in that Executive Order, although imperfect, he directed the US State Department to collect approvals in writing from governors and county/city elected officials saying they will opt-in (and accept refugees) so that the federal contractors can get their funding to move the Africans, Middle Easterners, Asians, etc. to your towns.

The deadline is approaching and…

….those approvals are now coming in!

Open Borders Inc. and the federally-funded refugee resettlement contractors are turning the process into a referendum on the President and the Refugee Program and have pulled out all the stops as I have been reporting here for days.

My analysis:

Every county in America is up for grabs!

This is the National Association of Counties map that the lobbying arm of the refugee industry is directing its followers to use in order to find the contact information for county government leaders. https://ce.naco.org/

 

Even counties that haven’t previously received refugees are on their hit list. 

They are not sticking with the established resettlement sites I posted here a few days ago. And, mark my words, those approvals from far flung counties will be held by the contractors and used as political cudgels no matter who is President.

By the way, there are 3,242 counties and county equivalents available to be resettled! And, that is how they are turning red states blue—one county at a time.

Both the governor and the local elected body (county government seems to be the primary goal) or possibly a mayor, especially for big cities, must agree to the placement of the impoverished refugees in order for the refugee contractors to get their plans to the State Department and to ultimately be paid to do their work.

(See my right hand sidebar for the governors who have already said yes, or at least the ones we know of.)

The contractors are pushing to obtain the approvals by Christmas in order to get their proposals to the State Department by January 21st.

This is what the Refugee Council USA is telling its followers to do (I told you about it here).  You should follow their model except obviously with a different message:

Your State & Local Officials Need to Hear From You

When you engage your local officials, we encourage you to educate them about the existence and content of the EO and ask whether they will provide written consent to resettle refugees. Here are the top two ways to take action:

 

  • Tell Your Governor to Declare Welcome for Refugees: Click here to contact your governor and tell them to declare that they welcome refugees in your state. Ask them to provide the necessary written consent to the federal government stating that refugees are welcome. A template letter that can be adapted to your state is available here.

 

Letters should be addressed to: Secretary Michael R. Pompeo, U.S. Department of State; and Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary Carol T. O’Connell, Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, U.S. Department of State.

This is what Refugee Watchers Must do ASAP

For the sake of time, focus on your county government and your governor.

You can keep your message simple (choose any or all you like):

~Tell your elected officials that by agreeing to accept refugees they are agreeing that state and local taxpayers pick up the financial burden (refugees are eligible for all forms of welfare) that Kennedy once said would be a federal responsibility.

~Tell your elected officials that we have enough of our own poverty in America and that vulnerable Americans should come first.

~Tell them there are hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers (wannabe refugees) that must be processed first.

~Tell your elected officials that security screening is inadequate and that safety is an issue.

~Tell them that the ‘religious’ ‘charitable’ groups placing those refugees are actually federal contractors who depend on high numbers of refugees to receive their pay from the US Treasury.

~Tell them that the original law created an opportunity for states to opt-in or opt-out that has been ignored for decades.

~Tell them politely about any other concerns you have about the UN program that moves impoverished third worlders to your towns/cities.

If you haven’t been following RRW in recent days, go here, here, and here for more information.

Are you as tough as North Dakotans?   I guess we will soon find out!

Please spread this post far and wide, honestly if we can’t muster at least some small showing of support for the President’s efforts to slow costly, disruptive and possibly dangerous refugee resettlement to the far corners of America, then speaking for me, why should I bother to continue investigating and writing!

Endnote to readers in Ohio: A story here in September says your governor is on board with MORE refugees, but I haven’t seen anything in the last week or so.  Assume he hasn’t sent an official letter yet.

North Dakota: Cass County Caves to Lutheran Refugee Contractor; Votes for More Refugees

~ Ann Corcoran ~ 3 Comments

But, continue reading!  There is good news too!  Wait for it!

Remember that I told you here that North Dakota Republican Governor Doug Burgum went down the wimpy middle and said the state would take more refugees if local jurisdictions agreed.  So it looks like Cass County has given the governor his green light.

Read all about it here.

Cass County Commissioners Vote Yes to Refugee Resettlement

Unless the governor changes his mind, North Dakota taxpayers will be continuing to prop up a 4-decades-old federal program that was never supposed to be a burden on local and state taxpaying citizens.

If you are a new reader, be sure to see an important post yesterday where I explain what the Open Borders Left is doing to smash the President’s September Executive Order that gives state and local government an opportunity to opt-in or opt-out of being a refugee placement city or county.

Now to some good news!

Cass County might have caved, but the citizens of Bismarck came out in force to urge their county commission to say NO! to more refugees and the commissioners decided to postpone the decision.

Before I give you the news, know that it was 11 degrees in Bismarck last night!  Can you pull this off where you live?

So many people came out to oppose more refugees in Burleigh County that the Commissioners postponed their vote! https://www.kfyrtv.com/content/news/Full-house-at-Burleigh-Commission-meeting-Refugee-Resettlement-decision-postponed-565717621.html

From KXNET:

Decision On Refugee Consent Delayed

BISMARCK — People came from all over Monday evening in the hopes of making their voice heard to the Burleigh County Commission.

Bismarck Mayor Steve Bakken was in attendance.

With a heavy police presence, you could feel the tension in the air as most of the crowd was there to convince the commission to vote against giving consent to Lutheran Social Services of North Dakota for a refugee settlement.

The consent is necessary after President Donald Trump signed an executive order in September that requires state and local governments to give consent to whether they will accept refugees or not.

Some people KX News spoke with did not want that to happen.

“124 people statewide does not have an impact, however, if the 124 do a chain migration that could easily be 1,200. And in a state of 750,000 people, 1,200 is a lot,” said local resident Phillip Cohen, who’s against allowing the consent.

The problem was so many people turned up to the meeting, they couldn’t fit everyone inside, so in the interest of fairness, the commission decided to table the matter until a larger venue could be secured in the near future.

County Commission Chairman Brian Bitner

Brian Bitner is the chair of the commission and said he also has reservations about granting the consent for financial reasons.

“I haven’t seen anything in this package, anywhere, that tells me that we’re consenting to five or 50 or 500 or anything. So North Dakota is already the highest per capita state for refugee resettlement in terms of number of citizens, so in the absence of any sort of number, there’s no way we could know the cost to the state or the county, and I simply can’t support that,” said Bitner.

Opponents of the news said an increase in refugees could lead to a drain on government services and an increase in crime, something the pro-refugee crowd overwhelmingly denied.

[….]

But with no decision Monday, the clock is ticking, because agencies must submit their written consent by Jan. 21 or lose federal funds that could be used to reunite families and place refugees in places with jobs, and other supportive means.

More here.

As for the January 21 deadline, it is for the nine resettlement contractors and their subcontractors to have their plans submitted to the US State Department in order to get their federal funding.  At that time they need to have written permission from the governor and from the county government, or the city (if applicable), in hand.

(See the US State Department’s funding guidance here.)

They are shooting to get those approvals by Christmas, so you must get moving where you live!  As I’ll tell you in an upcoming post, the Leftwing refugee contractors and others in the Open Borders movement are putting every county in play!  (Not just those with existing sites, like these.)

This is not just a bureaucratic exercise! 

The Left has made it into a referendum on Donald Trump’s refugee policies in an election year.  The President is correct that state’s can choose whether to be a resettlement state or not. For us it is a referendum on state’s rights and whether local citizens will have a say in whether their communities will be changed (forever!).

Original Refugee Act: States have a Right to Opt-in or Opt-out of Refugee Admissions Program

~ Ann Corcoran ~ 1 Comment

Editor:  Thanks to David James for another excellent analysis of the vital question about the resettlement of refugees in the US—do states have any right to say no to the placement of UN/US State Department selected refugees within their borders?

James says yes, and explains that a Migration Policy Institute paper by a legal expert confirmed that in 2011.

Indeed the original Refugee Resettlement Act of 1980 foresaw an opt-in and in practice that opt-in has been ignored for nearly 4 decades, Trump is attempting to fix that as I have been explaining in recent days.
The primary reason you should be involved now is that you should have a say in how your state and local taxes are spent (not some federally funded NGO operating out of New York City, Washington or Baltimore).

 

Soros Funded Immigration Think Tank Said States Can Reject Refugees

The self-described non-partisan Soros-funded Migration Policy Institute (MPI), was light years ahead of President Trump about the limited authority of the federal government to force refugee resettlement in states which say no thanks.

In 2016 George Soros pledged to give $500 million to promote migration. Forbes reports that one of the beneficiaries is the Migration Policy Institute. https://www.forbes.com/sites/kerenblankfeld/2016/09/20/billionaire-george-soros-earmarks-500-million-for-migrants-and-refugees/#7815e75b3888

In 2011, the MPI issued a paper titled, The Faltering U.S. Refugee Protection System: Legal and Policy Responses to Refugees, Asylum Seekers, and Others in Need of Protection, written by lawyer Donald Kerwin, Exec. Dir. of Center for Migration Studies and former ED of the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, a subsidiary of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops.

The USCCB is also one of the busiest federal resettlement contractors whose last available financial statement in 2017 showed $50 million dollars in federal grants comprising 94% of the USCCB budget for migration and refugee services.

States have rights!

Kerwin wrote that states need to say yes to refugees before the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees & Migration (PRM) resettles refugees in any state:

Resettlement agencies (many affiliated with VOLAGs] meet with state and local officials on a quarterly basis regarding the opportunities and services available to refugees in local communities and the ability of these communities to accommodate new arrivals. They also consult with the state refugee coordinator on placement plans for each local site. PRM provides ORR and states with proposed VOLAG placement plans. If a state opposes the plan, PRM will not approve it.

During a 2010 U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, testimony from Fort Wayne, Indiana and Clarkson, Georgia city officials stated that they had never been consulted or given notice by resettlement agencies or PRM about upcoming resettlement plans.

There’s plenty of evidence that even if these consultations actually take place, they only happen between like-minded bureaucrats and not with say, state legislators on the finance committees.

Remember too, that in states which have withdrawn from the resettlement program, the state refugee coordinator is typically an NGO which has its own refugee resettlement program heavily dependent on keeping the federal cash flowing to its bank account.

Of course, there is no accounting for the state taxpayer dollars being forcibly taken to pay for the federal program, even if a state has already withdrawn.

Another dirty little secret about refugee placements is that decisions about “capacity” at the local level for resettlement is left up to the federal contractors whose financial well-being is directly tied to how many refugees they can bring in during the fiscal year.

The US General Accounting Office found that “capacity” can pretty much mean anything the contractor wants it to mean including its own “long-term funding needs.”

It’s not clear what Kerwin’s basis was for his concession to a state’s authority to reject a proposed refugee resettlement plan. But Tennessee’s lawsuit offers a legally viable and coherent explanation – the federal government’s admission to shifting the costs of its refugee program to state governments in violation of the Tenth Amendment and U.S. Supreme Court precedent.

Not only that, but the refugee resettlement program was designed originally as an opt-in. The 1980 Act has no language authorizing a replacement after state withdrawal but is structured as an opt-in program for states just like other federal spending programs. It wasn’t until 1994, that the state withdrawal/ORR replacement provisions were added to the regulations.

When a state chooses to withdraw from the federal program ORR, gave itself, by regulation, what the enabling legislation didn’t – the authority to appoint a replacement state designee. Importantly, appointing a replacement state designee, is permissive, not mandatory. In each state that has chosen to withdraw, however, ORR has appointed an NGO resettlement agency as the state’s replacement designee. This has resulted in forced state participation and forced state expenditures for the federal program.

President Trump’s Executive Order reads as if a state can override consent by local governments to bring in refugees. However, the operating details won’t be known until HHS and the State Department issue their guidance on the consent.

Of course, the activist judge who will be deciding the lawsuit  brought by the VOLAGs challenging Trump’s order will have to choose between following the law or legislating from the bench.

Local activists would do well to explain the real fiscal implications to their state legislators and governor of the state being forced to pay the federal freight that Congress has chosen to shift to the state, taking state funding priorities away from the state’s most vulnerable citizens.

 

This post if filed in my Comments worth noting/guest posts category.