Swamp isn’t going to be drained, so it’s time to return to local action on refugee program

I have to admit, I thought Donald Trump would come in to office and take a forceful position on the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program and tell Congress to investigate the program (and the contractors!) with an eye to trashing or reforming the whole system.

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Looks like Trump has thrown in the towel on refugee program, it is now up to you where you live!

With his capitulation on the annual determination, with a substantial 45,000 refugees to be admitted in the next 12 months, Republican leaders (with the Chamber of Commerce cheering) gave a sigh of relief.

It is still enough cheap labor and no one is going to force them to investigate how taxpayer dollars are spent and no one will call them heartless racists.

(Although there is still one glimmer of hope. The 45,000 is a CEILING and the Trump Admin can come in substantially lower than that and be within the law. No executive order is needed to stay well below the ceiling!)

So, where does that leave you in the pockets of resistance that have formed over the last few years?  It means back to work (or continuing to work in your communities) exposing the system, exposing the contractors, and electing people to local office who don’t want Washington dictating the future demographic makeup of your towns and cities.

(By the way, I am very aware of many of you who never quit working hard, but won’t name you here now.)

For those of you who are advanced in your work, please forgive the following list of things that need to be done locally. We have new readers asking what they can do, so this is mostly for them.

My list of suggestions below is in no particular order:

~Learn all you can about the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program. You might start with my Frequently Asked Questions, here.

~Call your state refugee coordinator and politely ask for information on who came to your state in the past and who is coming in the future.  Ask for your state’s refugee plan.

~Learn how to use Wrapsnet (I’m going to have a tutorial shortly) so you know which ethnic groups are coming to your town.

~Find the subcontractor (s) working near you Go here. Find your state and city (if you live within 100 miles of one of these offices, your town is fair game).  Note the abbreviation in the left hand corner. That stands for one of the nine major federal contractors***

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Some cities are such large refugee resettlement sites that more than one contractor is working there.  Bidding for bodies?

 

~Call your closest subcontractor office and ask for the R & P Abstract for FY18.  They will dodge and weave and may even tell you they don’t know what you are talking about.  Be persistent.  You may ultimately have to use your state’s public information laws to get the abstract out of your state coordinator.  (You will likely never get a FOIA answered by the US State Department, however.)

The Abstract, in addition to other research you do, will lead you to the employers who want the cheap migrant labor because they are usually cited in the Abstract. Expose them.

~The local refugee contractor is required to hold quarterly “stakeholder” meetings.  They work very hard to keep the general public out.  Call them and your state coordinator and ask to be included.  If you get a runaround that is one more thing to publicize.  This program can only run with your money, therefore YOU are a stakeholder.

~Become friendly with people in your local health department and other social service agencies.  You may find them willing to tell you more about the mode of operation of the contractor/subcontractor working in your community and/or problems related to the refugees themselves (eg. high TB rates).

~Become familiar with the impact the refugee program is having in your local school system which is usually the first place we see problems erupting.

~I would expose every case you find where the subcontractor/contractor had left a refugee family or families in the lurch.  Keep your focus on the government agencies and the contractors and possible malfeasance there rather than being aggressively anti-refugee. Keep in the back of your mind, that some refugees have been sold a bill of goods and wish they could go home.

~Get as much as you can into your local newspaper/TV/radio show. If they are all pro-Open Borders you will have to write your own blog or facebook page to get the information you are finding out to a broader audience.

~If you have someone in your group (yes, it would be good to form a little group) who could do youtube, or small documentary films that is another option to reach more people.

~Speak up in your churches if they are affiliated with the nine major contractors*** Tell your church leaders that it isn’t Christian charity to take millions from the US taxpayers.

~Some grassroots activists have successfully taken to the road with powerpoint presentations to be shown to local civic groups.

~Arrange for expert speakers to come to your towns to educate a wider audience.

~All of the above, and more that I’m not thinking of, is to educate your community with the goal of electing mayors and council members who are on your same wavelength.  The Left has been electing mayors for years and that is how many cities are in the pickle they are now in!

~Consider running for elected office yourself.  Even if you think you can’t win because it is another way to publicize your views.

~Educate and put pressure on your governors and your state representatives, because if you can agitate them enough there will be a trickle-up effect on US Representatives and Senators who don’t want to hear a buzzing of bees back in the district.

~As the 2018 election year gets underway, make sure you have people ready to ask tough questions of your US Congressmen/Senators as they visit your town.

~When you earlier identified those industries and global corporations pushing for cheap labor, you should be working to find out which elected officials at all levels of government are getting campaign contributions from them as well. Use that information in 2018.

~If you are a member of one of the big three immigration control groups (CIS, FAIR, and NumbersUSA) and/or the Heritage Foundation you will need to keep pressure on them. Since they are in the swamp they may not have a good understanding of how the USRAP is affecting you and thus trade-off the refugee program for something they want.

And, one final thing for right now, don’t get discouraged if you can only find a few people to work with you, just plug away with a plan a little every day and look to your key helpers for moral support and a little help!

I’m sure there is more I’m not thinking of right now… I’ll update later.

*** These are the nine federal resettlement contractors paid by the head to place refugees in your towns.  They are also ‘community organizers’ who call upon their supporters to lobby Congress etc.  They are rolling in millions of tax dollars.

I’m thinking that one thing that Trump’s slightly lower cap for FY18 will do to them is to force them to tighten their belts and, as they do, tensions within the fake non-profits could rise—watch for it!

This post is filed in my ‘What you can do’ category, click here for more.

Rutland, VT mayor defeated over his plan to seed city with Syrian refugees

“[W]hat happened here in Rutland….should be used as a template for the rest of country!”

Don Cioffi (Rutland First!)

It wasn’t only the plan—there are lots of mayors pushing for refugees to be placed in their towns—but it was the way he went about it that riled citizens there in VERMONT, of all places!
Thanks to all who sent me one of the many many stories written in the last 24 hours about his defeat at the ballot box.  We mentioned the upcoming election on Sunday, here.  Leo Hohmann writing at World Net Daily quoted that post.

Representatives of the federal resettlement contractor, USCRI, field questions from standing room only crowd in Rutland last year. Photo: http://news4security.com/posts/2016/09/rutland-first-vermonts-homegrown-opposition-to-syrian-resettlement/

(Just as I am writing this post this morning, Fox & Friends is reporting on the mayor’s election loss due to his support of the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program.)
Update: Michael Patrick Leahy at Breitbart weighs in here.
Mayor Christopher Louras’ defeat should be a wake-up call to mayors around the country that pushing the refugee program in collusion with a paid refugee contractor and the US State Department, while trying to keep the plan secret from the public, is not a good model for success.
Not only did Mayor Louras lose his reelection bid, but the federal resettlement contractor, USCRI in this case opened an office there for 2 families that they will now surely have to close, and their friends in the liberal media—see the New York Times hyping the Rutland resettlement—who were working to make Donald Trump look bad in advance of his inauguration, show how weak they have become.
For our many posts on Rutland going back to (I think) last May, click here.
The Rutland, Vermont model for all of you!
From Leo Hohmann at WND:

The people of Rutland, Vermont, have gained a measure of revenge against former President Obama’s forced influx of Syrian refugees, voting out the five-term mayor who helped negotiate the controversial resettlements with a federal contractor.

Rutland is Vermont’s third-largest city but still very small, with a population of 16,500.

The candidacy of Mayor Christopher Louras went down in flames in Tuesday’s election as he was defeated by the refugee program’s most ardent opponent on the board of aldermen. David Allaire won with 52 percent of the vote to 34 percent for Louras.

“That’s not just a win, that’s a drubbing,” said Don Chioffi, an activist who supported the upstart candidate Allaire.

Louras came out last April and “announced,” much to the surprise of his residents, that the city would be taking in up to 100 Syrian refugees [98.5% of the Syrians entering the US are Muslims—ed] in fiscal 2017 along with others from Iraq.

The announcement divided the city among those who wanted to welcome the refugees – no questions asked – and those who thought the refugee program was being dictated without any local input and with very little information. Protests and counter-protests were organized, attracting national media attention.

Unfazed by the division it caused in Rutland, a State Department contractor opened an office and started placing Syrians into the community.

The Leftist media doesn’t give you a fair shake, so go around them!

Hohmann continued:

Local activist Don Chioffi, an ACT for America chapter leader in Rutland, said Allaire got no help from the local media. But supporters bypassed the newspapers and TV stations by using social media, meetings and a conservative radio host to get their message out.

“The people we talk to always react positively, but you would never know that from the media coverage we get,” Chioffi told WND.

“In their sacrilegious and diabolical effort to squelch the truth, they won’t put it out there, so it’s hard to emphasize how important this victory is because the leftist media just doesn’t give you a fair shake, and we went into it expecting that. We knew we wouldn’t get a fair shake.”

[….]

“What won this race in Rutland is we concentrated on principles of democracies and how far we’ve strayed from those principles when a private, nonprofit agency is taking people’s rights away from them, using secrecy, getting government funding, all of the things about this refugee program that have been taken away from the people.”

Chioffi said his group’s requests for public-record documents were rejected by USCRI, which claimed the information was proprietary, even though it was doing the government’s work as a contractor.

Amila Merdzanovic, Director for USCRI of the Vermont Refugee Program: If we go public too soon “…all sorts of people will come out of the woodwork.”

“We said we have questions and we want answers,” he said.

The group’s big break came when the USCRI director of the state resettlement program stumbled in trying to answer a question about why the refugee plan for Rutland was so secretive.

In an April 14 email to Mayor Louras, USCRI Director Amila Merdzanovic wrote in an email “if we open it up to anybody and everybody, all sorts of people will come out of the woodwork, anti-immigrant … anti-anything.”

“When they came out and said they don’t’ think this should be made public because ‘too many people would come out of the woodwork,’ we just pummeled her and branded her,” Chioffi said.

Chioffi said Rutland is a microcosm for what happened nationally on Nov. 8 with the election of Donald Trump.

“We the people spoke, and we were sick and tired of being dictated to and people making decisions on our behalf. And we’re certainly sick of being dictated to by a private, nonprofit agency,” he said. “Since when do you turn over your local government to a 501c3 private contractor, which then denies you public information? So the lack of transparency was the focus of our campaign against this mayor.”

 There is much, much more including quotes from our friend James Simpson, continue reading here.
***Update 2*** See my latest on USCRI here.

Texas immigration control citizen activists must lead!

Just now I saw this headline story at The Hill:
Sure we all agree that it makes sense that a mixture of measures be included in the border security plan, but Cornyn is chairman now of the subcommittee in the Senate that was so ably run by then Senator Jeff Sessions.
Sen. John Cornyn has been in the Senate for nearly 15 years, and apparently has never done anything of significance on the issue (please correct me if I am wrong!).

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Cornyn in the catbird seat! If you want to see the Refugee Admissions Program reined-in and reformed, Texans need to pound Senator Cornyn!

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) is pushing back against the Trump administration’s call for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, arguing in some areas it wouldn’t be the best option.

“There’s parts of our border which it makes absolutely no sense,” the Senate’s No. 2 Republican told a Texas ABC station on Wednesday. “But what is helpful [is] to have fencing, for example, is places like San Diego, it’s a large urban area.”

Cornyn added that he thought border security needed to include a mixture of personnel, technology and infrastructure.

There is more, but the border wall isn’t the point of this post.

The point is that if you want to reform the US Refugee Admissions Program (and control illegal immigration), Texas Washington Reps should be the focus.

We look to citizen activists in Texas to lead the charge.

Senator Cornyn as Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee (now renamed Subcommittee on Border Security and Immigration) is the key Senator to focus on.  Senator Sessions had called this same subcommittee—Immigration and the National Interest—which spoke volumes about what Senator Sessions was trying to accomplish.
See the makeup of the critical subcommittee below (Texas Senator Cruz is on it too!):
 
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Donald Trump will not be able to get immigration/the refugee program under control without Senator Cornyn’s active involvement in a supporting role.
Then over in the House, Texans have Rep. Brian Babin, the chief architect of refugee reform legislation, who needs support.
And, Texas citizens have Rep. Michael McCaul as Chairman of Homeland Security and see that the House Appropriations Committee  has several Texans in key positions. Cutting funding for the USRAP is one way to skin the cat!
So, again, if Texans could get organized to focus on a couple of key representatives in Washington, you could not only save Texas, but all of America!
By the way, Texas Governor Abbott withdrew the state from the USRAP but it is pretty much a useless move since the program there is now run by private contractors. He could sue the feds on State’s Rights grounds, but so far there doesn’t seem to be the will.  (Even as Texas continues to vie with California as the number one resettlement state in the nation!)
This post is tagged ‘Where is Congress,’ see all of my posts on the subject.  By the way, for the most part members of Congress and Senators are hiding while Donald Trump gets beat up on the subject!

Majority of Americans support Trump immigration 'ban' from terror hotspots

You are not alone!
Check it out!  Vox (the website that LOL! featured my work recently, here) reports that the majority of Americans support President Trump’s Executive Order to keep us safe from immigrants coming from certain parts of the world—keep us safe from terrorists trying to enter the country.
But, if the pollsters throw in mumbo-jumbo about “refugees” and phrases like “in keeping with US’s founding principles” they get more respondents to oppose the order.   The key message that resonates is one that uses the word “terrorism.”
Read it here.  Very interesting as Vox sends a message to its mostly Leftwing and Open Borders readers on how to use certain language to make their case.

I haven’t seen anything like this on mainstream cable media have you?

 
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Don’t waver Donald!
CNN and other Left-leaning news sites will show us non-stop clips of protesters opposing this EO making us all believe that we are in the minority, but never reveal that average Americans agree with Donald Trump on this! It is, as Trump says, “common sense!”
Sick of it? You can join like-minded Americans at upcoming rallies.  Go here (Spirit of America Rallies) and see if one is scheduled near you!

Open borders left, refugee contractors plan days of action

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Josh Hoyt is the director.

Replacing ‘old Americans’ with ‘new Americans!’

On Monday hundreds of liberal activists and refugee resettlement agency operatives (you pay their salaries with your tax dollars) held a conference call to plan political action against President Donald Trump’s order, that calls for a moratorium for 4 months on refugee resettlement, and his order to improve vetting for  immigrants coming from dangerous terror hotspots around the world.
***Update*** I see that Breitbart also reported on this news, here yesterday with more detail.

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Chicago community organizer Josh Hoyt moderated the call. You may recall that Hoyt joined ACORN organizer Wade Rathke in 2011 when they they traveled to Egypt to organize there during the Arab Spring. That worked out really well! https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2011/09/05/its-september-time-for-wade-rathke-and-the-union-boys-to-organize-egypt/

(Below are some of the groups that participated.)
If President Trump is cutting off federal funding to sanctuary cities how about cutting off funding for resettlement agencies who could be using federal dollars to organize against him.
The call was moderated by Joshua Hoyt, we have reported on him over the years, click here, to learn more.
They will whine about refugees.,but when you look at this list (below) and know what they are planning, it is open borders they are really pushing for—illegals, legal immigrants, it is all the same to them.
Look for the whine-fest!
In fact, on the call they said they would link their national policy agenda to emotions by using individual refugee sob stories! Refugees as pawns for their radical political agenda?
I’m going to have more about the call, but I want to get these two important dates out to you:
This Friday, February 3, they will be joining mosques around the country for a day of solidarity.
If you have a mosque near you, you might want to go out at noon and get some photos of your local activists.  They want to show loud and clear that they stand against Islamophobia! I do not recommend any counter demonstrations at the mosques.

And then on February 22nd they plan to pound Congress in their home districts with demonstrations “in their offices” to pressure them to speak out against the Trump EO.  For those asking me what to do, you should go to your local Congressional offices and counter the radicals.

I’ll have more on this later, but if I accomplish anything in the weeks and months ahead I hope it is to get you, ‘old Americans’ to understand that the pressure must be on Congress now! NOW!  The RINOs and all those who want open borders for cheap labor are undermining Donald Trump at this very minute.

These community organizers UNDERSTAND that they must focus their energy on Congress. You need to understand that too!

Here are some of the groups that participated. Most annoying is that the IRC, run by British national David Miliband, is here too!
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And here are the speakers on the call:

Maria Rodriguez, Florida Immigrant Coalition / NPNA / FIRM

Jen Smyers, Church World Service

Suzanne Akhras Sahloul, Syrian Community Network

Rev. Russell Meyer, Florida Council of Churches

Hans Van De Weerd, International Rescue Committee; Chair, Refugee Council USA

Monica Fuentes, Welcoming America

Stephanie Teatro, Tennessee Immigrant Rights Coalition / NPNA / FIRM

Linda Hartke, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service

Oscar Chacon, Alianza Americas

Selena Sujoldzic, LIRS Leadership Academy, refugee from Bosnia

Naomi Steinberg, Refugee Council USA

Tell Donald Trump (here) what they are doing and tell him to cut off any federal funding to those groups possibly using federal money to organize against the President. Nothing would hurt them more!

If they succeed and get Donald Trump and Congress to back down, you will never see reform of the refugee program in your lifetime and by then it will be too late for your children, grandchildren and great grandchildren!
Remember 57% of you support Trump’s EO on a refugee moratorium!