Rutland, VT refugee plan kept secret from the public, only a few business people in on it

This is a long article at Seven Days all about the mayor on the hotseat in Rutland, VT.  If you are following the story closely you might want to wade through the whole thing, but below are some snips that jumped out at me.

rutland_mayor_chris_louras_june_2015_0-350x401
Rutland’s Mayor Louras is looking to bring cheap labor to the city. Get over the idea that this is all about humanitarianism. http://www.vermontbiz.com/news/april/rutland-opens-arms-syrian-war-refugees

I’m particularly interested this morning in two important points you should consider as your town is targeted and this article tells us about both.

First, the US State Department and its contractors operate in SECRECY! They don’t want the public to know what they are planning until they have literally brought in the first families. Why? Because they know that they can’t sell it to communities when the people know the facts!
Secondly, don’t get bogged down in the ‘humanitarian mushy stuff!’ Resettlement is largely driven by those who have a financial interest in cheap labor, landlords looking to fill their apartments, and members of Chambers of Commerce looking to sell used cars (etc.) to the new consumers.
Federal welfare follows the refugees and thus more welfare dollars enter the local economy. Remember when Nancy Pelosi famously said that food stamps grow the economy! (Nevermind that you are paying for it!).
From Seven Days: Wade through many column inches telling us about Mayor Chris Louras (will he fall on his sword for 100 Syrians?).
(Emphasis below is mine.)
Then here is how Louras sees himself:

Concluding that he’s a “technocrat, not a politician,” he returned to Rutland and rebranded himself as a nonpartisan fixer.

For new readers here is some of the background:

This year, there will be an estimated 60 million refugees and displaced people worldwide. The United States has agreed to take in 85,000, including 10,000 Syrians, though the country has fallen behind on its schedule to fulfill that pledge. VRRP, the organization tasked [stop the BS, not tasked, they are paid by the head!—ed] by the U.S. Department of State with settling refugees in the state, usually accepts 300 refugees a year. With the crisis in war-torn Syria, which has prompted millions of displaced people to flee to Europe, the VRRP is upping that number to 400.

It has quietly funneled most refugees who arrived in Vermont — Bosnians, Somalians, Bhutanese, Congolese, Burmese and Iraqis — to Burlington and Winooski. Burlington’s Old North End is full of restaurants and shops opened by refugees. More than 30 languages are spoken in Winooski, and more than 40 percent of Winooski High School students were born outside the U.S.

But the resettlement agency has long wanted to open up a second refugee hub in Vermont to be able to serve more people.

Last November, after the Paris terrorist attacks, several Republican governors across the country declared they would not welcome refugees fleeing Syria into their states, citing concerns about possible terrorist infiltration. Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin was among the first to declare that his state would welcome the Syrians.

Soon afterward, officials from Middlebury, Woodstock, Warren, Waitsfield, Brattleboro, Bennington and other communities reached out to VRRP, offering to help. Louras got in line.

The organization knew little about Rutland, and had never considered the city as a possible destination, director Amila Merdzanovic said.

In Rutland, refugees can do the dirty, grungy jobs:

“There’s a potential workforce here, not unlike lots of places, that isn’t interested in the sort of grungy, dirty, hardworking, entry-level jobs that are the sort of thing you will do because you’re glad for a fresh start,” said Notte. [ Board of Alderman President William Notte]

Merdzanovic
Vermont refugee contractor, Amila Merdzanovic (left) with VT Senator Patrick Leahy one of the leading US Senators in support of more Muslim refugee resettlement in the US. We have a lot on Leahy here at RRW. This is just one post for your review: https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2013/03/24/senator-leahy-cheered-on-by-the-human-rights-industry-introduces-bill-again-to-get-more-refugees-into-us/

Huebner [Tom Huebner, president of Rutland Regional Medical Center] said he has 120 vacancies at Rutland Regional Medical Center, from entry-level housekeepers and cleaners to nurses and technicians. [I guarantee there will be no nurses and technicians ready to go to work in the ‘refugee’ flow coming from the Middle East and Africa—ed]

“Ask any employer in town. They’d say their greatest problem is finding enough workers,” Huebner said. “When these folks start coming into our community … we’d love to work with them. We’ll see what skills they bring, but even if they don’t have English yet and don’t have health care skills, we would still work with them.”

With so many employers promising jobs, Rutland became Merdzanovic’s top choice. “And there’s ample housing,” she added, in contrast to the real estate markets in Burlington and Winooski. [We’ve been telling you that housing is a primary limiting factor in finding ‘welcoming’ towns—ed]

The ‘non-partisan fixer’ mayor didn’t tell the public (only a few business leaders!) what he was doing as he held private meetings and conversations with the federal resettlement contractor.  So much for the humanitarian mush. If this were all about welcoming the poor war refugees to town, wouldn’t he have included the do-gooder community from the beginning?
His actions also indicate he has zero concerns for the security of his constituents.  It is all about the money!
Seven Days continues:

It’s a moving message, but Louras didn’t think it would play well with the public. He told Notte and a few local business leaders about the refugees but left the rest of the board, along with the city’s legislative delegation and his constituents, in the dark.

Emails from a public records request show Louras and Merdzanovic considered announcing it but nixed the idea.

They engaged in secrecy for one simple reason — they feared that involving the public sooner would derail the effort. VRRP never announces refugee arrivals in Burlington or Winooski.

Continue reading here where (near the end) Louras takes a whack at Jim Simpson.

Then don’t miss Simpson’s Breitbart article on Rutland and Louras’s secrecy, here.

See our previous posts on Rutland here.

Bowling Green, KY townhall Friday night to explain plan for Syrian resettlement there

We’ve been reporting on the Rutland, VT ‘pocket of resistance’ to a new resettlement office in Bernie-land, but although there has been an office (of the same federal contractor—USCRI) in Bowling Green for a long time (we have a large archive on it because they have had many problems there over the years), now Syrian Muslims will join the Iraqi Muslims in Rand Paul-land.

Little notice for a public meeting to be held at 5 p.m. on a Friday evening!  What is up with that, unless the whole idea is to make sure few average working (taxpaying!) people can’t make it!

Mbanfu
Albert Mbanfu took over the leadership of this USCRI subcontractor in 2013 here: http://www.bgdailynews.com/news/mbanfu-taking-over-as-international-center-director/image_68ff7ec2-4d2b-5336-9f17-4e5f998865e7.html

And, as far as I know they have no one attending who will help develop the whole story as Simpson did in Rutland this week.
From AP at the Lexington Herald Leader (hat tip: Joanne):

BOWLING GREEN, Ky. (AP) — A plan to accept Syrian refugees in Bowling Green is raising concerns. In response, the organizations involved have scheduled a town hall to address any questions.

The Bowling Green International Center plans to help resettle refugees, including a group of 40 from Syria, in October.

Center Director Albert Mbanfu said he hopes to address concerns about the screening process and explain how these refugees come to the United States. [Bet you a buck he has already sent the plan to Washington—ed]

“My objective is that people will leave this town hall with a sound knowledge on how refugee resettlement works,” he said.

City Commissioner Melinda Hill has called the resettlement risky. [Commissioner Hill must demand to see the R & P Abstract prepared by USCRI! It should look like this one from Reno! because USCRI is the major contractor there too.—ed]

Sue Parrigan
Commissioner Sue Parrigan wants more immigrant workers in Bowling Green.

“This is not against the people,” Hill said. “Our federal government has not put in place a good vetting process.”

Mbanfu says the federal government won’t put the country at risk of potential terrorist infiltrators.

“The community deserves to come out and be heard,” said City Commissioner Sue Parrigin.

The Daily News (http://bit.ly/27SlBxp ) reports that the town hall is scheduled for 5 p.m. Friday at the Professional Development and Learning Center.

Follow that link in the last paragraph and learn more, including the statements by Commissioner Parrigin who says they need more workers in KY.
And, if you are new to RRW, or perhaps you live in the Bowling Green area, I will bet you have never seen all the news Bowling Green has made over the years with refugee overload and including the news about Iraqi refugee terrorists arrested (and now in prison) who had been resettled there.  Click here for background.  I bet we have stories there going back to 2008!
Somebody needs to make sure that Senator Rand Paul’s office is represented! This is his home town! You can forget Senator Mitch McConnell because he has turned a blind eye to the program for decades.  (Meatpacking and chicken plant money??? Just guessing!)

Think about Utica, NY before you jump on the "welcoming refugees" bandwagon

Two years before I started writing RRW, Utica, NY was dubbed the ‘town that loves refugees’ by the United Nations.  They even had some propaganda show they took on the road to embarrass other cities into ‘welcoming’ refugees just as Utica had!

town that loves refugees
Read the 2005 UN propaganda report used to entice (embarrass) other cities into ‘welcoming’ refugees. http://www.unhcr.org/publications/refugeemag/426f4c772/refugees-magazine-issue-138-town-loves-refugees.html

Now (11 years later) Utica has all sorts of problems.
Here in January 2015 we reported on the school system there suing the state of New York for more money. Why?  Refugee overload!
The school system can’t handle the numbers of refugees who speak over 40 languages in their schools.
From the Wall Street Journal:

Utica officials are grappling with high poverty rates, rising enrollment and big deficits.

Now, just a week or so ago, the school system lost a lawsuit filed by six refugee teenagers who claim they weren’t permitted to attend high school there.

Here is what the NY Times said about the case (by the way, typical of mainstream media reports on refugees, the NYT implies that the refugees simply made their way to Utica from the third world without explaining that the city was targeted as a resettlement site by the federal government and its contractors***!):

The Utica City School District settled a lawsuit on Thursday over its treatment of young refugees, who, the suit charged, were being excluded from the city’s lone high school because of their age and because they did not speak English.

The lawsuit, filed last year on behalf of six refugees by the New York Civil Liberties Union and Legal Services of Central New York, claimed that Utica shunted refugees who were older than 16 into lesser alternatives to high school, like a G.E.D. program only for English-language learners. New York law provides the right to a free public education until age 21.

Similar allegations, that refugee children are being excluded from public schools, have been leveled at districts elsewhere around the state and across the country.

Utica, in central New York, has become a magnet in recent years for those escaping persecution in their home countries. Today, nearly one out of six city residents is a refugee, according to the Civil Liberties Union.

Message to towns considering welcoming refugees—They do not bring economic boom times! Refugees bring poverty and social and cultural strife!

Utica mosque
Utica Methodist church becomes a mosque.

Special treatment for special people!
Further confirming that Utica has a problem with refugee overload, the White House has singled out Utica’s refugee teen population for $2 million worth of summer jobs! What about American kids who need summer jobs?
From Syracuse.com:

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Utica is among 11 communities nationwide that will share $21 million in grants for summer jobs programs aimed at helping disadvantaged youth, the White House and U.S. Department of Labor said Monday.

Utica will receive almost $2 million to help 400 students in the city’s refugee population receive summer work experience and part-time jobs the rest of the year, White House officials said.

Again, think about the BIG LIE that refugees will help your struggling city. They won’t! The only money they will bring in to your town is the money Washington throws the city through myriad welfare programs—food stamps, medicaid, section 8 housing, and now funding for summer jobs.  Washington doesn’t grow money on trees!  The taxpayers of America are propping up refugee saturated cities!

If you live in newly targeted refugee placement cities—Rutland, VT, Reno, NV, Missoula, MT and Ithaca, NY (and more!)—think long and hard if you want to be like Utica, NY some day!

Click here for our Utica archive.
*** The resettlement contractor in Utica is the Mohawk Valley Resource Center and that is a subcontractor of Baltimore-based Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (one of the US State Department’s top nine refugee contractors).

Tiny Nebraska town says no to chicken plant (migrant labor one important objection)

As reader Bob said in his subject line when he sent me this news a few minutes ago: “Great story!”

Nickerson,_Nebraska_downtown_1
Downtown Nickerson, Nebraska! I’m adding this town to my summer fact-finding tour for sure!

 
We have been reporting for years about how small towns throughout America’s heartland are being changed forever when meatpacking plants bring in transient migrant labor (and large numbers of refugees!) to work the low-skilled, low-paying jobs these meat giants pay. (I’m told that meatpacking once paid well before they discovered, first illegal immigrant labor, and now refugee labor.)
Three cheers for the citizens of Nickerson, Nebraska who sent the chicken processing plant and its plans packing!
From the Associated Press:

NICKERSON, Neb. (AP) — Half-ton pickup trucks crowd the curb outside the One Horse Saloon, a neon Coors Light sign in the window and rib-eye steaks on the menu, but otherwise Nickerson, Nebraska, is nearly silent on a spring evening, with only rumbling freight trains interrupting bird songs.

Regional economic development officials thought it was the perfect spot for a chicken processing plant that would liven up the 400-person town with 1,100 jobs, more than it had ever seen. When plans leaked out, though, there was no celebration, only furious opposition that culminated in residents packing the fire hall to complain the roads couldn’t handle the truck traffic, the stench from the plant would be unbearable and immigrants and out-of-towners would flood the area, overwhelming schools and changing the town’s character.

Nickerson Neb. map
Nickerson is close to the border of Iowa.

“Everyone was against it,” said Jackie Ladd, who has lived there for more than 30 years. “How many jobs would it mean for people here? Not many.”

The village board unanimously voted against the proposed $300 million plant, and two weeks later, the company said they’d take their plant — and money — elsewhere.

[….]

Nickerson fought against Georgia-based Lincoln Premium Poultry***, which wanted to process 1.6 million chickens a week for warehouse chain Costco. It was a similar story in Turlock, California, which turned down a hog-processing plant last fall, and Port Arthur, Texas, where residents last week stopped a meat processing plant. There also were complaints this month about a huge hog processing plant planned in Mason City, Iowa, but the project has moved ahead.

[….]

The question of who would work the tough jobs was at the forefront of the debate, though many were adamant they aren’t anti-immigrant. Opposition leader Randy Ruppert even announced: “This is not about race. This is not about religion.”

But both were raised at the raucous April 4 meeting where the local board rejected the plant. One speaker said he’d toured a chicken processing plant elsewhere and felt nervous because most of the workers were minorities.

No to Somalis!

More overtly, John Wiegert, from nearby Fremont where two meat processors employ many immigrants, questioned whether Nickerson’s plant would attract legal immigrants from Somalia — more than 1,000 of whom have moved to other Nebraska cities for similar jobs, along with people from Mexico, Central America and Southeast Asia.

More here at AP.
The story reminds me to ask the BIG MEAT headhunters at the US State Department this:
You are admitting over 700 Somalis a month to the US right now and then we have news from places like Minnesota (which you have overloaded with Somalis) where Somalis working in manufacturing are demanding sharia-compliance in the workplace.  Why would anyone in their right mind continue to hire Somalis and risk a lawsuit? And, why would any little town where citizens obviously are reading alternative media (like RRW!), want that for their town? And, so why do you let the UN continue sending them to America?
*** No time to research more now, but this company is part of Crider Foods with a history of using illegal immigrant labor. I’ll bet a buck that the owners are big donors to certain elected officials (a project for another day!).

Athens, GA mayor questioned resettlement proposal for the city, and so it never materialized

The Jungle 2016!

I have been wondering for the last year whatever happened to Athens, GA after the Democrat mayor there said, give us a “formal refugee integration plan” to the International Rescue Committee (one of the top nine federal contractors) and the US State Department before opening a direct resettlement site in Athens.

nancy denson
Athens, GA mayor Nancy Denson: Give me a plan first! https://athensclarkecounty.com/315/Mayor

Click here for several earlier posts on the controversy.  In one, the IRC representative in Georgia said the feds would send the refugees anyway! But, apparently they haven’t.
Two lessons here for towns being faced with new offices: the first is that mayors can “rebuff them” and keep planned direct resettlement offices from opening, and secondly, apparently the contractor and the feds DO NOT want to be in a position to prepare plans (set a precedent?) on how the resettlement will work! 
So, if they are coming to your town or city, make them give your town a plan (with public hearings!).

Here I see in the Flagpole, that nothing has moved forward (so far) on the office proposal.  

This is one of those long stories meant to play on your heart strings about the wonderful refugees (and I am sure this family is very nice) who have arrived in the area (as secondary migrants) to work in a chicken processing plant. 
One of those gushing in this account is a local real estate agent who has helped them buy homes (which they work 60 hours a week to pay for!).
LOL!  Gee sounds familiar! I’m re-reading Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle in preparation for a ‘Jungle’ revisited (100 years later!) fact finding tour this summer.  Although one big difference these days is that the US State Department and supposedly ‘humanitarian’ NGOs act as head hunters for BIG MEAT companies that are often foreign-owned!
So after wading through 24 warm and gushy paragraphs about the stars of the story—a hardworking Burmese Christian family—we come to the news I was looking for.  Apparently there is no movement toward opening a direct resettlement site in Athens, GA (although this story might have been placed as propaganda to begin the re-education of the community on the subject).
From the Flagpole (emphasis is mine):

All of the adults in the family work at the Pilgrim’s Pride poultry plant. Esther and her father work the night shift, while her husband and mother work the day shift. They do it this way so someone can always be home with the children.

pilgrims pride
Like some of the big beef processing companies in America, Pilgrims Pride is a Brazilian-owned company (JBS Swift!) which looks for cheap refugee labor in America. Some business model isn’t it when taxpayers subsidize their wages with welfare! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilgrim%27s_Pride

Most refugees living in Athens and Comer work at a poultry plant—the industry that provides the most jobs for refugees in Georgia. It’s tedious work and physically hard, but the poultry plants pay $10–11 an hour [Ha! wages would be at least $15 and hour if they had to pay Americans!—ed], more than you can get almost anywhere else for unskilled labor, and that makes it hard to leave.

Esther stands on her feet for eight hours, five or six nights a week, cutting chicken in the cold factory, moving fast to keep up with the conveyer belts. One day she’d like to get a job that’s not so hard, maybe in a retail store or daycare. “We don’t have much time to be social,” says Esther, laughing, “because sometimes we work 60 hours a week. On Sunday we go to church, and then the whole week is finished.” [Wow! The Jungle!—ed]

Last year the International Rescue Committee (a nonprofit refugee resettlement agency) proposed setting up a small office in Athens and bringing 150 refugees here, but it was rebuffed by local government leaders. Subsequently, an ecumenical group composed of clergy and other citizens formed Welcoming Athens, a group “working to nurture a culture of welcome for all people in Athens and the surrounding area.” Among other things, the group is advocating for the city to let the resettlement office come.

The main reason Mayor Nancy Denson gave for not wanting IRC in Athens was that resources are stretched thin, and her priority is “to take care of the people who are already here,” citing issues with homelessness and panhandling. But some in the U.S. also resist taking refugees because of a concern that some refugees coming in might be criminals, violent radicals or unable to adjust successfully to American culture.

“That’s not why they’re coming here,” says Drago, emphatically. “They’re coming here to work, to go to school and have a better future. Now, after having been here awhile, they’re also part of humanity, and some people do commit crimes, but no more than people from any country. But to say that people come here to sow discord and terrorism in our country, absolutely not. They’re fleeing that! They’re coming here because they want to live in a peaceful place.

Read it all.