Category: blogging

We are celebrating!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Refugee Resettlement Watch is one year and one month old today!   This past week we have passed several milestones.

We passed the 100,000 visitors mark a few days ago and had our best month ever.   We had 15,118 visitors in the month of July!   This is not much compared to some blogs but we are tickled to be reaching that many people on such a specific subject.

We have also been very regular in posting and have to date posted 902 stories.  In addition to noting our categories, you might want to try our search function, it is pretty good.  You can put in a couple of words and find posts that we have written on subjects that might be of interest to you.

You can also e-mail us at that address at the right.  (It’s spelled out to eliminate some spam.)

Tell your friends about us because we are the only news outlet in the country for information on refugees that the politically correct mainstream media is not telling you about.

Oh, and in case you are wondering—we are true volunteers, no one pays us for our volunteer work!  It is a labor of love.

I need some computer geek to tell me what is up!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I admit I am completely ignorant about the inner workings of the internet.   Would someone please tell me why I cannot access any link at the Office of Refugee Resettlement?   Every time I try to get to one of the databases or reports there, or in fact even the main page for ORR, I get an error message.    This has gone on for weeks and I even get the error message coming from google.  Am I just incompetent or paranoid (or both!)

I don’t see how it is possible, but tell me, is it possible for someone to block me?   Are any of the rest of you having problems accessing the Office of Refugee Resettlement?

Happy First Anniversary to us!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Just one year ago today, Judy and I launched Refugee Resettlement Watch.   Our original purpose has not changed—we want to help you, our readers, learn more about this government program which very likely is affecting or will affect your lives.    We also believe very strongly that the program is in need of serious scrutiny and reform which we think can only begin when enough people have a complete picture of Refugee Resettlement. 

Someone sent a comment not too long ago and said something like:  why don’t you write about the good things about refugees?   We figure we don’t need to do that because the mainstream media is busy doing puff pieces every day.   Our goal is to give you the rest of the story.

My one regret is that I haven’t done as good a job as I would have liked in giving you basic information on your state, but promise to work on that section of RRW soon.  I see some daylight coming in my schedule!  Like so many people advocating reform, we are not paid to do this work and must squeeze it in between other work and family duties.

On this July first, we have had just short of 90,000 readers this past year.  That is nothing compared to the big blogs but we are really pleased with the readership and hope you will put us on your daily ‘must read’ list.  Once educated, then please become politically active to help change how all immigration (legal and illegal) is handled in the United States.  Frankly, it’s a mess! 

Today’s Washington Post ‘Storm’ story made me laugh

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This isn’t a story about refugees or immigration, it’s about blogging, addiction and some serious things too.  The Post article I could laugh about this morning is entitled “Storms’ Fury Cuts off Data lines that bind.”

Yes, I could laugh moments after the power came back on this morning.   I was reading the Washington Post on the porch with my convienence store cup of coffee in hand, just as I’ve done for a couple of mornings this week, ever since we lost the power in a freak storm on Wednesday.   

I wasn’t laughing as I tripped and stumbled up our farm lane that first afternoon—a lane that had become completely impassable with downed trees and saw our storm ravaged farm.   I wasn’t laughing either when I had to figure out how to haul in hundreds of gallons of water for livestock in ninety degree heat.   And, I can assure you I wasn’t even giggling a little when I packed garbage bags full with our food from the refrigerator and freezer to take to the dump.

All I could think of was how to survive day to day.  Yes, I know it was only two and a half days!    It felt like two and half years without the computer.   That was what was so funny about the Post story.  One more night and I would be checking into a hotel room (like the family in the article) just to have internet service and get back to the news and your e-mails and of course, researching posts for RRW.

It all seems very funny now.   But, it isn’t.   It really hit me this week how vulnerable we are.   My whole town was not affected by this not-quite-tornado and certainly I am not comparing our situation to those who have lost much more in recent real tornados.     I could still get in the car and get what I needed (like my morning cup of coffee), and neighbors not hit so hard came with chainsaws and a bobcat to help clean up, but imagine if our power system was destroyed on a large scale.    (I’m not telling terrorists anything they don’t already know!)  Chaos would follow.

For two and a half days I can assure you I wasn’t thinking about immigration or Iraq, or the latest from the Hillary-Obama-McCain show.   I was cut off from my addiction to the world wide web’s minute by minute news and the security it appears to provide—somehow just knowing what is going on helps one feel somehow in control (I know that doesn’t make sense). 

So, just give it all some thought and prepare your families a little.  It might not be much worse for you than me—trying to figure out what food wasn’t spoiled and could go on the backyard barbecue grill—but then again it could be very very bad and we need to be sure we are ready.  Back in January I wrote about how we all need to get a blog to save free speech and a gun to keep America safe.   To those two essentials I’ll add—-get a grill.

WordPress takes it upon itself to add links to RRW

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

For your information you might have noticed that we have a new feature at the end of some articles called “possibly related articles”.   WordPress began this feature out of the blue recently.   You might find it useful to learn more about a particular issue, but we want to assure you that some linked articles that appear are not necessarily views that we hold.