As you know, political leaders in several cities are voicing their concerns about the large numbers of refugees placed in their cities and as a result putting enormous strain on social service and school system budgets. We reported yesterdayabout requests for moratoriums on further refugee resettlement in several New England states. And, don’t forget earlier this year Amarillo, TX was also asking for a reprieve.
(An aside: I just saw an interesting perspective on World Refugee Day where a commenter wondered why anyone would celebrate the fact that the UN has utterly failed in its supposed mission to quell violence around the world.)
Americans First: Fighting for social and economic justice for US Citizens
What we didn’t know was that a budding organization called “Americans First”planned to pass out fact sheets at the event with information attendees need to know!
Go here for the excellent Fact Sheet! And, tune in to Americans First radio!
Thanks to everyone who has sent me one version or another of this story about calls for refugee resettlement moratoriums in Springfield, Mass, Lewiston, Maine, and Manchester, NH.*** Regular readers here know the problems in those three New England cities well, so it is not news to us.
However….
What is news is that the news (mainstream media) is actually paying attention and making connections! I don’t know which came first, the Fox News story(Fox does credit AP), or the AP story.
But, I’m thrilled to see the word “moratorium” used other than on the pages of RRW!
I haven’t enough time to analyze the articles for you, so please read them! There is one thing that caught my eye, however, that needs to be mentioned. The US State Department and its contractors choose resettlement cities with virtually no input from the locals (elected or otherwise), any reference to “stakeholders” usually means only FRIENDLY stakeholders (for the record, I hate that word)!
Daniel Langenkamp (right) Public affairs adviser at US State Dept. PRM http://www.linkedin.com/pub/daniel-langenkamp/1a/197/563
Once they have established a seed community of certain ethnic groups they then throw up their hands and say—what can we do? Families must be reunited and we can’t stop refugees from moving where there are ethnic enclaves of their kind of people. You see their cop-out in these stories when State Department spokesman Daniel Langenkamp says this:
Such requests [for a moratorium—ed] are rare, said Daniel Langenkamp, a department spokesman.
“We make every effort to work with local officials and other stakeholders to ensure the resettlement of refugees is acceptable,” he said. [If everything went so well there would never have been a RRW!—ed]
The Department, he said, does not place refugees unless an area is equipped to handle them. [LOL!–ed] The government’s work with refugees in Springfield is mostly about family reunification, and it cannot keep families from moving there if they are placed elsewhere, he said.
Note to any city contemplating “welcoming” refugees, remember this! Once a seed community is established, the extended family comes, and there is no stopping it! Any elected official calling for a slow-down or outright moratorium will be demonized!
See my ten reasonswhy a MORATORIUM is needed! —all the more important now that the border is being overwhelmed with mostly teenaged boys seeking “asylum.”
*** Search RRW for each of those three cities and find dozens of posts (spanning several years) on problems in each.
Reader ‘Jan Sobieski’ has launched a new blog critical of the Refugee Admissions Program of the US State Department and the Office of Refugee Resettlement (HHS) entitled Refugee Racket Exposed!
Editor: I’ve been complaining lately about the fact that this subject is becoming way too big for just a few of us to keep up with and report on, so we welcome Mr. Sobieski’s entry into the fray. As a matter of fact, I haven’t said it lately but we need MORE bloggers following all of our LEGAL misguided (insane!) immigration programs. I’m thinking particularly of the Diversity Visa Lottery and Temporary Protected Status and of course Refugee Resettlement. Please consider joining the blogger army—your help is desperately needed.
Here is what Mr. Sobieski says about his mission (emphasis is mine):
The purpose of Refugee Racket Exposed(RefugeeRacket.com) is simple – Expose the refugee and asylum system that has developed in the US and make Congress investigate the fraud and corruption and the negative impact the refugee racket industry has on America and Americans.
The Refugee Racket system is a multibillion dollar racket and controls the importation and/or settlement of over 150,000 refugees and asylum seekers into the US at taxpayer’s expense. I intend to expose the players who game and corrupt the system and to educate Congress about this abused program. Congress needs to dramatically scale back and reform the refugee and asylum industry. Taxpayers are on the hook for the refugees and asylum seekers resettlement in more ways than you can imagine. You pay for all of it. The Refugee Racket is the perfect example of the adage ‘The road to hell is paved with good intentions.’ In America today, it is dangerous to rock the boat. You will be attacked, and in some cases, physically harmed by those within the refugee racket. For this reason, I post under the pseudonym Jan Sobieski to protect myself and my family from harm. If you don’t know who Jan Sobieski is, google it.
Also, please see Mr. Sobieski’s excellent letter to Congress about why an investigation of the whole program must be forthcoming.
Visit Refugee Racket Exposed! You can reach Mr. Sobieski at refugeeracketwebteam@gmail.com.
We are adding Refugee Racket Exposed to our blogroll.
That is the title of a provocative piece at American Thinker brought to my attention by Judy this morning.
Migrants coming across US border in such high numbers now, Border agents cannot process them fast enough.
Author John Bennett begins with these opening paragraphs (below) and then proceeds to make his case about each country mentioned.
But, having followed issues relating to the ‘invasion of Europe, Israel and Australia’ over the last few years, I disagree with Mr. Bennett on one thing.
Here is how he begins (emphasis is mine):
Many Western nations are restricting immigration because of popular anger at the unwelcome changes brought about by mass immigration. America seems to be the rare country with the misfortune of having politicians who won’t stand up for citizens.
How many nations around the world have to be thrown into crisis and division for us to learn that mass immigration is not always [not always? NEVER!—ed] a positive? Israel, Great Britain, France, Switzerland, Italy, and Norway are just a few of the Western nations that energetically guard their territorial integrity, and some party leaders in those countries openly explain why they do so.
Here is where I disagree, in my opinion there are only two major first world countries that have (or more correctly are in the process of) “energetically” guarding their territorial integrity—Israel and Australia which did not make Bennett’s list!
The other countries Bennett lists all have popular anti-mass immigration political movements and in fact some have political parties built on an anti-immigration platform which have had some electoral success, however, one could never say that the country itself (implying the government) has such a policy at all. See our ‘invasion of Europe’ seriesand see what I mean.
But, I sure am not going to challenge Bennett’s primary question—where the hell is America’s sense of self-preservation! Heck, we don’t even have a defined popular movement/leader let alone a political party or two that seems at all concerned about mass immigration and territorial integrity! The Dems want open borders (more welfare recipients=more voters!) and the Republicans are chickens who look out for greedy businesses looking for cheap labor!
Everyone of you concerned with the cost to your state of federal initiatives like the US State Department’s Refugee Resettlement program should be taking a cue from activists in Tennessee where they have been tirelessly attempting to dig out the cost of the program to the taxpayers of their state. And, more importantly, they aren’t waiting for the big news outlets in Tennessee to carry their message.
‘Community organizers’ have taken a page from the Leftist playbook and have published their own website entitled, ‘tn Council 4 political justice’—justice for the taxpaying citizens of Tennessee.
Rep. Sanderson said ’60 Minutes’ story influenced him to choose more refugees over needs of Tennesseans.
Here is a recent post in which TN Rep. Bill Sanderson, a Republican, gets called out for supporting more refugees in Tennessee when Medicaid dollars are short for needy Americans.
It’s no news to anyone listening in Tennessee, that Governor Haslam is warning that projected revenue shortfalls will mean budget cuts.
Speaker Harwell acknowledged that with “revenues down a little this year, [balancing the state’s budget] will be tough. But we will stick to the principles of fiscal responsibility and balance it responsibly.”
On January 2, 2014, The Tennessean reported: “The governor has argued that the annual growth in Medicaid spending has put the squeeze on other programs the state would like to spend money on. ‘Medicaid takes up all of our new dollars, and that’s just the hard fact,’ the governor told reporters after a Rotary Club speech last month.”
The week of January 20, 2014, the newspaper ran a series titled “Broken Trust” about the 7,100 most vulnerable Tennesseans with developmental disabilities who are forced to go without needed services because of the state’s failure to allocate the funds.
The funds needed to provide these services are Medicaid funds. These are dollars that the State spends and the federal government matches.
Rep. Bill Sanderson believes that these state Medicaid dollars should NOT go to Tennesseans with developmental disabilities, but instead, to refugees who don’t even live in Tennessee yet. He’s referring to the refugees that are eventually brought to Tennessee by Catholic Charities, a federal contractor that gets paid a lot of taxpayer money to bring refugees to Tennessee.
When refugees are brought to Tennessee by the federal contractors, they are immediately enrolled into any and all public assistance programs, including, state-funded TennCare, SSI, and cash welfare. The federal government used to reimburse the state for 3 years worth of what it cost the state to provide these benefits. But typical of the federal government, they broke their promise to the states and stopped reimbursing the states for what the federal program cost.
Sanderson helped block a bill last year in the Tennessee legislature that simply sought to require refugee contractors and the agencies they work with to divulge various costs to Tennessee taxpayers from the resettlement program. If you’ve spent any time following this federal plan for your “welcoming” state you know those numbers are not readily available—on purpose!
Last year, a bill was brought to Rep. Sanderson’s committee that was designed to help Tennessee figure out how much it was costing the state to pay for the federal program, a program that the state withdrew from in 2008 and is now run by a federal contractor.
But Rep. Sanderson who scathingly accused the bill sponsors and advocates of going on a “witch hunt against Catholic Charities,” related how he had watched a “60 Minutes” segment about refugees and it convinced him that they needed our help. He enthusiastically joined up with the federal contractors and led the effort to not pass the bill out of the committee.
Take a lesson in community organizing from Tennessee activists and follow TCPJ (see ‘follow’ link on bottom of right hand side bar). Have you asked your state legislators what refugee resettlement is costing your state?
For more on Tennessee, see our Nashville category, here.
