Nearly 2,200 immigrants and refugees headed for America have tested positive for tuberculosis under a more-sensitive exam that, before bolstering, would have missed the illnesses, U.S. health officials said Monday.
In 2012 alone, overseas physicians using the tougher screening identified 629 additional cases of TB among people bound for U.S. borders, according to a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The article does not say they would be prohibited from coming to America at some point in the future.
See our archive on TB,here. And see our Ten Things your town needs to know if considering “welcoming” refugees. Health issues will be a major concern for your local health department (Who will be responsible for monitoring them to assure they stay on their meds?).
Our ‘health issues’ category is here. See 269 previous posts on mental and physical health issues affecting refugees and immigrants.
The federal Office of Refugee Resettlement has sent out an announcement about a US Justice Department webinar on how to stop FGM in populations of refugees coming from certain African and Middle Eastern countries.
Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (FGM/C) in the United States
On March 18, 2015, from 2 to 3:30 p.m. ET, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) will host “Keeping Kids Safe: Preventing Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting in the United States.” Experts from the U.S. Departments of Justice and Education, Sanctuary for Families, and Johns Hopkins University will provide an overview of female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C); highlight the U.S. government’s response to FGM/C; discuss its physical, psychological, and emotional impacts; provide resources for practitioners and educators; and explore laws to keep children safe.
Learning Objectives:
Raise awareness and understanding of issues that some young girls and women face in the U.S. and abroad related to FGM/C
Present information on the physical, psychological, and emotional effects of FGM/C
Provide tools and resources to identify and prevent FGM/C in at-risk young girls and a toll free phone number and e-mail for reporting tips about persons at risk for FGM/C
Explain the legal consequences of FGM/C as a federal crime and a reportable child abuse offense in most states
Register here for “Keeping Kids Safe: Preventing Female Genital Mutilation in the United States.”
Please note: Adobe Connect must be installed on your device in order for you to register or watch the webinar. If you have never attended an Adobe Connect meeting before or have not installed the necessary add-in, test your connection by clicking here.
Here is my idea on how to stop it—-after saving the girl, deport any family caught promoting this practice in any way and put in place a moratorium on any new refugees coming from countries and cultures where this horrific practice is common!
As we have been writing ad nauseam lately, the Obama Administration is now out of the shadows with its plan to “seed” towns and cities across America with diversity.
‘Seed’ is their word! Your community is the soil into which the migrants of all sorts (legal and illegal) are being planted according to Obama’s Task Force on New Americans. It begs the questions: Are we being colonized? Do they plan to replace us some day? Sound far-fetched? Knowing Obama, are you willing to gamble on that?
President Barack Obama, flanked by Cecilia Muñoz, director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, left, and senior White House adviser Valerie Jarrett are changing the people by ‘planting’ immigrant “seedlings” in towns across America!
We have long maintained a ‘fact sheet’ about how the UN/US State Department’s Refugee Admissions and Resettlement Program works, click here to learn more.
But, I realized yesterday, while thinking about the newest proposed seed community*** in Rep. Trey Gowdy’s backyard in Spartanburg, SC, that we needed a quick primer on what elected officials and citizens should know if they are being pressured to ‘welcome the stranger‘ (this guilt-tripping language is one way they pressure your town!).
So here are my Ten Things you need to know!
1) In most cases, the United Nations is choosing our refugees. Topping the list right now are Iraqis, Burmese, Congolese, Somalis and Bhutanese. The UN is pressuring the US to take a large number, 10,000 or so, Syrians. We are bringing in refugees from countries which hate us. Your town does not get to choose who you get! You will receive racially, culturally and religiously diverse people, usually very different from your local population and very different from each other. That old ‘melting pot’ concept is dead because the numbers are too high.
2) Often the US State Department’s chosen resettlement contractor for your town, sounds like a church group, or other benign-sounding non-profit. They may have a religious-sounding name, but know that they are being paid by the head from the federal treasury to bring refugees to your town. It is not the case that they are passing a plate on Sunday morning to pay for this very expensive program. Here are the nine major contractors which have 350 subcontractors working for them (headquartered in over 180 cities so far).
3) The contractor’s job is to get the refugee family their “services.” That means they hold the refugees’ hands until they are settled usually in tax-payer subsidized housing, get them signed up for most forms of welfare including food stamps and other cash assistance, sign them up for health care and enroll the kids in school. This special class of legal immigrant is entitled to welfare! The contractor is also paid with your tax dollars to give refugees job counseling and training. The contractor may also be working closely with some big business (and the Chamber of Commerce) nearby which is looking for cheap labor.
4) The contractor’s job ends in 3-6 months at which point they move on to bringing in the next fresh group of “clients,” often the relatives of the first group. Earlier, and still struggling, refugees are left in the care of your social services department. At this point the contractors are entrenched in your town and will call you racists, rednecks and xenophobes if your citizens want to slow the flow.
5) Your town will never get out of the program once the contractor has an office set up and staff to pay. Many cities are trying to get out now and can’t: Manchester, NH, Springfield and Lynn, Mass, Amarillo, TX come to mind. Because there have developed “pockets of resistance” (their words), the State Department is desperately out scouting for fresh territory.
6) The greatest impact on your local social and economic welfare will be felt first in the school system, followed usually by the shortage of government subsidized housing. Your school system may end up with 50 or more languages represented in the student population. The number-one language of refugees entering the US right now is Arabic, Somali is number four.
7) Refugees are permitted entry into the US with HIV/AIDS and Tuberculosis among other medical problems. Physical and mental health challenges will most likely overburden your local health department.
8) Your local government is responsible (Clinton-era Executive Order) for providing costly interpretersfor the myriad languages being spoken in the school system, the health system and the criminal justice system should problems arise.
9) Refugees who do find work, work at entry level jobs and minimum wageso they will still be able to benefit from many welfare programs open to low-income Americans. Elder refugees are eligible for SSI. The refugees are Legal Permanent Residents and can begin the citizenship process quickly.
10) If they say they are coming to your town with the first group of refugees, there is only one thing you can do! ASK QUESTIONS IN PUBLIC. Demand that your elected officials get involved. Demand that a community meeting be held, for the US State Department, the Office of Refugee Resettlement (in HHS), your state refugee office (if there is one) and their contractors, to answer questions from the citizens of the town or city. Get your Member of Congress and US Senators involved too! Don’t forget your state legislators! The State Department and its contractors HATE to answer questions! Tell your local elected officials you want a public hearing! Tell your elected officials that you want the federal government and its contractors to provide a plan!
You want them to answer questions such as these below.
Remember you have every right to know what is being planned for your town. They will bully you, call you names and say you can’t stop them anyway, but refuse to be bullied!
Demand answers (in public)!
Who is coming? From where and how many?
Will they stop the resettlement if the town is becoming economically or socially stressed?
What security and health screening have the refugees undergone?
How many will come each year?
Who is paying for their health care?
Who is paying to educate the children who don’t speak English and may never have attended school?
Does your town have an adequate supply of government-supported housing? Will demands for housing crowd out American elderly, poor or disabled citizens?
Where will they work? Do we have high unemployment already?
I’m sure you can think of others. After getting answers (good luck!) and having a vigorous public discussion, then your town can decide based on all the facts whether you will eagerly “welcome” New Americans to your community, or not.
Endnote: There are other refugee experts in the country, so let me know if I’m missing anything here and I’ll add it!
Update!!! Call this #11: an experienced researcher just reminded me that concerned citizens must form a citizens’ groupto research the structure of the program in your state to obtain the FISCAL and legal facts about the program as the structure can vary from state to state.
*** This post (on Spartanburg) brought in the highest number of readers we have ever had for one post over a brief two days! P.S. I will be in South Carolina this coming weekend, here.
An afterthought: If you should get a public meeting/hearing be sure to educate yourselves on the Delphi Technique, a strategy often used by government agencies wishing to control the outcome of a meeting. Go hereto see what Judy said about it in advance of the public meeting held in Hagerstown, MD in September 2007.
Our many new readers may not know that the US State Department has agreed to a UN request to resettle 50,000 or so impoverished, uneducated, (mostly) women from DR Congo over a period of several years.
Congolese women and children waiting for their turn to come to America.
This is an informative article from Episcopal News Service that basically reports how needy these refugees are.
It is also interesting to me because we rarely see articles about refugee resettlement contractor Episcopal Migration Ministries, one of the top nine. Apparently they are less media savvy as they rarely turn up in news stories (like this one) intended to be puff pieces on refugees.
We previously reported on the great need for mental health services for women from DR Congo, here.
A Congolese refugee, Zaburiya arrived in Tucson seven months ago with five children, aged 10 to 26, after spending 18 years in a refugee camp in Rwanda.
Illiterate and not speaking a word of English, she became a member of a women’s empowerment group operated by Refugee Focus, which receives support from The Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society’s Episcopal Migration Ministries service through funding from the United States government’s Office of Refugee Resettlement.
(The Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society is the legal and canonical name under which The Episcopal Church is incorporated, conducts business, and carries out mission.)***
[….]
Through Episcopal Migration Ministries, the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society partners with 30 resettlement affiliates in 26 dioceses nationwide. It is one of nine agencies working in partnership with the U.S. Department of State to welcome and resettle refugees to the United States.
For the umpteenth time, the UN is picking our refugees!
In 2014, the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society and its partners worked to resettle 5,155 of the tens of thousands of refugees who came to the United States through the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ (UNHCR) screening process.
[….]
Over the next several years, UNHCR plans to resettle 50,000 refugees from the Congo, with 70 to 90 percent to be resettled to the United States,said Kurt Bonz, Episcopal Migration Ministries’ program manager…
[….]
“Most of the refugees have been in camps an average of 20 years, education is low, and many are single women with children who continue to experience trauma related to living in the Congo, the journey out and living in a refugee camp,” he said.
So who are these refugees from DR Congo and where are they going?
I checked the State Department’s data base for the following dates: 10/1/2012 through 2/28/2015 and this is what I found:
We resettled 9,022 Congolese refugee “seedlings” in that approximate 2 and 1/2 year period. Most were Christians of some sort, but I was surprised to learn that 356 were Muslims (from DR Congo?).
Then here is a list of the states that received over 200 Congolese refugees over that same 2 and 1/2 year time period (apparently all of these states have run out of American poor people to care for):
Arizona (862)
Colorado (290)
Florida (236)
Georgia (398)
Idaho (303)
Illinois (339)
Kentucky (405)
Maryland (259)
Massachusetts (322)
Michigan (417)
Missouri (301)
New Hampshire (260)
New York (325)
North Carolina (379)
Ohio (288)
Pennsylvania (445)
Texas (1078) Working hard to turn Texas blue!
Utah (200)
Washington (273)
*** When you visit this post, you will see more about why this structure of the Episcopal Migration Ministries makes it hard to track their finances. They must be claiming they are a ‘church’ and as such do not have to do a Form 990.
More news that unvaccinated refugees are helping spread measles in Germany. No surprise as Germany has virtually opened its doors to refugees from throughout Eastern Europe, Africa and the Middle East. If anyone dares challenge the government on this open door policy, one is immediately labeled a Nazi. Wave bye-bye to Germany?
Refugees headed west from the former Yugoslavia. http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-eu-31154596
There have been 447 cases of measles confirmed in the first seven weeks of 2015, as Berlin comes to grip with the biggest measles outbreak since 2001,reported the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) earlier this month.
The outbreak is being traced back to a community of refugees from Serbia as well as Bosnia and Herzogovina, where routine vaccinations were not carried out during the Yugoslavian civil war.
