Update June 6th: World Net Daily wrote about this yesterday, here. Also, be sure to see the exchange of comments to this post which we highlight here.
It is not really World Relief so much as the Obama State Department and Secretary of State John Kerry. Gowdy had asked that no refugees be resettled in his district until his many questions had been answered to his satisfaction. See our post yesterday about the inadequate response Gowdy has received so far.
The refugees from DR Congo*** resettled in Spartanburg apparently about a week or so ago could just as easily have been taken to any one of 190 (more!) cities in the US, but clearly the State Department is sending a message to Gowdy—(expletive you!).
As we said previously, Spartanburg is pivotal in the battle for determining who controls the resettlement process—will the UN/US State Department ram third-worlders down the throats of small town America, or will cities and states play any role in the present secretive resettlement process?
Just a reminder! Rep. Trey Gowdy is not just any Congressman with concern for his district, he is Chairman of the House Judiciary Subcommittee responsible for the refugee program!
If anyone has any power in Congress on this issue, it is Gowdy. The question is, is he willing to exercise his power?
Here is the latest from GoUpstate.
In this pivotal showdown, score one for Secretary of State John Kerry!
Spartanburg churches are welcoming refugees who recently arrived here.
Jason Lee, director of World Relief Spartanburg, said two refugees from the Congo arrived in Spartanburg in late May. He would not provide a specific date, citing security reasons. He pointed out that they are persecuted.
Meanwhile, Rep. Trey Gowdy called the U.S. State Department’s response to his latest questions about a resettlement agency’s plan to sponsor refugees in Spartanburg “sorely inadequate.”
Gowdy has invited the federal agency to brief elected officials on the refugee resettlement.
The Republican congressman issued a statement Wednesday after receiving the State Department’s response.
Gowdy has written the federal agency twice to obtain details about plans to sponsor refugees in Spartanburg. World Relief, a faith-based refugee resettlement agency, opened a Spartanburg office earlier this year. The state Department of Social Services approved Spartanburg as a new refugee resettlement site, according to the State Department’s response.
World Relief Spartanburg has been authorized to resettle up to 60 refugees in the 2015 fiscal year. [FY2015 ends on September 30, 2015, so they should be coming in pretty quickly now—ed]
There is a lot more, continue reading here.
Here is my question: Is the US State Department getting even with Gowdy over Benghazi?
***The Congolese
We are assuming that Jason Lee is referring to refugees from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo), a poor corrupt country in central Africa, and not simply the Congo.
In 2013 Asst. Secretary of State Anne Richard reported that the UN wants 50,000 from the DR Congo resettled over the next few years and that we will take most of them.
If you visit the State Department’s data base, here, we have admitted only 34 refugees from the Congo this fiscal year, but 2,921 this fiscal year so far from DR Congo. So again, we assume Spartansburg’s new American “seedlings” are from DR Congo.
The majority from the DR Congo are not Muslims although a few are as we reported here.
A large number from DR Congo are abused women and children. We learned, here, that many of the women need extensive mental health care due to the abuse they have suffered.
By the way, the UN is always in a hurry to clean out its camps and send refugees to the first world rather than waiting out conflicts and then returning refugees to their homes or to countries with a similar culture. However, in the irony of ironies, they are not in any hurry to resettle Palestinians (that is good for us!) leaving them in ‘camps’ on the border of Israel in order to harass that country for the last 6 decades.
For new readers, our original post on Spartanburg, with updates, may be found here.