Kentucky is in the top ten refugee resettlement states in the nation, but between the President’s reduction in the number of refugees that can be admitted and the present suspension of the refugee program due to the Coronavirus crisis, the resettlement agency in Bowling Green, International Center of Kentucky, is not seeing many new arrivals and is now trying to educate their ‘clients’ about the virus and help many with their unemployment problems.
Before I get to the story, I hope all of you are well. I don’t know about you but even with more time, I’m not being as productive blogging here and at ‘Frauds and Crooks’these days as I should be. But, one good thing is that there is more time to communicate with family and with friends, especially elderly friends, in my community.
Pandemic disrupts refugee resettlement by International Center
Before the rise of the coronavirus pandemic, Bowling Green’s refugee resettlement agency planned to welcome 400 arrivals this year.
Albert Mbanfu director of the International Center in Bowling Green will be helping refugee ‘clients’ get their unemployment insurance.
Now, with more than 500,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 reported worldwide, those plans have been thrown into chaos. International Center of Kentucky Executive Director Albert Mbanfu said Thursday that he expects the center will resettle less than half of the refugees it did last year.
“They will be barely trickling in,” Mbanfu said, speaking to a group of community representatives who assist with resettlement efforts.
[….]
Now, Bowling Green’s International Center has largely pivoted to assisting refugees who’ve been laid off work and informing the local community what steps they need to take to protect themselves from COVID-19, the respiratory disease that coronavirus causes.
Through social media and on its website, Mbanfu said, the center has been sharing videos in various languages like Swahili and Arabic to help inform Bowling Green’s refugee community about the virus and its effects.
Leyda Becker, Bowling Green’s international communities liaison, said the city also has resources in multiple languages online at bgky.org/ coronavirus.
Local refugees have also been impacted by business closures spurred by the pandemic. Mbanfu said Trace Die Cast, a top employer for local refugees, has laid off “almost all of our clients.” The employer is filing for unemployment insurance on their behalf, Mbanfu said.
I wonder why a company that makes automotive parts is laying off so many workers?
Mitch McConnell: money is on the way!
A representative from U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell’s office said during the meeting that a $2 trillion stimulus package passed by the Senate and headed for House approval on Friday will offer some relief.
“If the day of Vice President Haley ever arrives, Trump’s base should have no illusions about the flatlining vital signs of the America First moment.”
(Pedro Gonzalez)
I am a one issue person—how we handle immigration is all that matters for the future of the US as we know it.
Nikki Haley may have impressed many of you, but she was soft on refugees when the issue became a hot one in South Carolinaa few years ago, and I won’t forgive her for it.
You’ve probably seen the circulating stories about how the President might dump VP Mike Pence in favor of Haley in the coming months.
Frankly, no matter how exciting Haley might appear for some so-called conservatives, I doubt this is even in anyone’s dreams (maybe Bill Kristol’s!) right now.
Why?
I don’t know about you, but I think Pence has been a good and steady voice and apparently a competent manager of the Trump coronavirus team and it wouldn’t look good to give him the heave-ho now.
Here is a post at American Greatness by writer Pedro Gonzalez from a couple of days ago about the Haley for Veep thinking (just in case you are one of those hearing a siren song!).
Rumor has it President Trump is considering swapping Vice President Mike Pence with former American ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley. “This is not a prediction,” said CNN political analyst Paul Begala, “it’s a certainty.” Haley would be a great choice—if Trump intends to utterly abandon the agenda that got him elected.
[….]
Pitting Haley against Trump would mean certain political suicide for her, but seeding her in the White House would, in a Machiavellian twist, boost her profile and afford her countless opportunities to subvert the America First agenda. From immigration to foreign policy, Haley has been no friend to MAGA.
[….]
Trump would do well to remember his own rebuke of Haley in response to her shot across the bow: “She’s very weak on illegal immigration and she certainly has no trouble asking me for campaign contributions because over the years she’s asked me for a hell of a lot of money in campaign contributions.”
Indeed, Haley is at odds with Stephen Miller on immigration, the last man in the White House who is true to the America First immigration mandate.
Sympathy in the Congo is one thing, but bringing the Congo to America is another.
When Miller brought together senior officials in 2018 to discuss a plan to reduce the number of refugees admitted to the United States, Haley was deliberately excluded, presumably for her previous opposition to drastic reductions of refugee resettlement numbers. A spokesperson said Miller’s discussion was conducted “in consultation with all appropriate government agencies.” Likely as a result of her views on immigration, then, Haley was kept out of the discussion.
[….]
Haley has all the hallmarks of someone who operates with political expediency as a rule. Appeals to emotion, comic displays of faux strength, radically different stances on the same issue depending on the times. But there remains a remarkable consistency and cunning through it all.
She has maneuvered herself into a good light with the president and his supporters, despite remaining ideologically opposed to the America First agenda. Haley has gone from being the GOP’s Obama—the quintessential anti-Trump Republican—to a favorite of Trump supporters and now a potential replacement for Mike Pence. If the day of Vice President Haley ever arrives, Trump’s base should have no illusions about the flatlining vital signs of the America First moment.
Go hereto read all of the many reasons, Haley as Vice President would signal the end of this administration’s even nominal efforts to reduce immigration numbers.
Many of us are already worried that once re-elected the President might succumb to those voices within the Republican party clamoring to open our gates wide to a steady supply of third world workers.
And, as I said at the outset, nothing else matters for the future of our great country than how we manage immigration.
Editor’s note: As RRW approaches its 13th birthday, there are over 10,000 posts archived here at Refugee Resettlement Watch. Unfortunately, it is just me here with no staff and so it has become virtually impossible to answer all of the basic questions that come into my e-mail inbox or to RRW’s facebook page every day. I don’t want to appear rude—I simply haven’t enough hours in the day.
Please take time to visit RRW (don’t just read posts in your e-mail) and use the search window in the right hand sidebar and see if you can find the information you need. Also see my series that I wrote in recent months entitled Knowledge is Powerwhich explains some basic principles of how Refugee Resettlement is carried out in the US.
And, lastly, I don’t write that much every day, so if you made a habit of reading my posts here on a daily basis, you would eventually catch on to what is happening because I do link back to previous posts as much as possible. LOL! Thank you for helping me not go crazy!
Rarely do we get any reports on how many citizens take time to contact elected officials about their unhappiness with the refugee admissions program.
Governor Little with Mr. Chobani Yogurt in Twin Falls. Twin Falls is number 10 in the top cities in the nation ‘welcoming’ refugees on a per capita basis.*** Any wonder why the governor jumped on the bandwagon for more refugees for Idaho.
So it was interesting to see that in Idaho citizens took action in a big way to criticize their Republican governor when he encouraged the US State Department to send Idaho more refugees and thus went against the President’s reform effort.
Unfortunately I can give you only a tiny snippet of this story as it is behind a paywall. Surely some Idahoans will subscribe to the Idaho Press for the whole story.
Records show opposition to refugees, Gov. Little’s work to support resettlement program
Gov. Brad Little’s decision to continue to allow refugee resettlement in Idaho wasn’t out of step with his colleagues elsewhere, writes Post Register reporter Nathan Brown. Nineteen Republican governors told the Trump administration in December and January they wanted to keep taking refugees, with just Texas Gov. Greg Abbott asking to opt out.
Not everyone was happy with it. Facebook comments and Twitter replies on Little’s accounts quickly filled with people angry at his decision, and hundreds of people contacted his office to express their displeasure.Documents provided in response to a public records request show both the scale of the blowback and his administration’s work to present facts to justify the governor’s decision.
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There was a time, a decade ago, when an article like this would not have been written.
The image of a refugee resettlement agency was that of a purely humanitarian organization working with little funding solely to save the globe’s downtrodden with the help of generous volunteers.
Now they are right out in the open making it clear that they are working to help globalist companies like the big meatpackers that are changing America by changing the character of the heartland through a greedy desire for cheap migrant labor.
Let me be clear, Americans previously did work in the meat and poultry industry and would do so again if wages reflected the difficult work, but once the meat giants discovered what amounts to captive slave labor that doesn’t dare complain, can’t go home, and is willing to work for far less than Americans, there was no going back.
Pay attention! If your town is getting a Tyson Foods plant, you WILL be getting third worlders of all stripes, changing the character of your town forever!
Trump’s latest immigration ban threatens Tyson labor pool
The latest anti-immigration proclamation by U.S. President Donald Trump could directly impact the ability of Tyson Fresh Meats in Perry to hire laborers.
Trump’s Jan. 31 executive order suspends immigrant visas for nationals of Eritrea, Kyrgyzstan, Myanmar and Nigeria starting Feb. 22. It will also restrict diversity visas for citizens of Sudan and Tanzania, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and U.S. State Department.
Refugees from Eritrea and Myanmar have been the most frequently hired workers at the Tyson’s Perry plant in recent years.
Alberto Olguin, human resources director at Tyson Fresh Meats, said he is unsure whether the latest immigration ban will have an effect in Perry.
“We do hire refugees,” Olguin said. “We hope this will not have any effect, but we will see. It’s hard to tell at this point. Maybe by March or April we will know more. It’s still early.”
Holy cow! Look at these numbers!
Tyson is the largest employer of refugees in Dallas County. The company currently employs 1,368 workers at the Perry plant, and about 800 of the employees are refugees, with 400 each of Africans and Asians.
[….]
Annette Sheckler, director of communications for U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI), said the Trump administration’s immigration policies are “selectively discriminatory” because they are based on the religions and nationalities of immigrants and refugees.
“USCRI strongly opposes the administration’s alarming efforts to drastically cut immigration to the U.S.,” Sheckler said. She said Trump’s anti-immigration policy is harming employers around the country, and the latest ban will aggravate the condition.
“Definitely, it’s going to have an impact,” she said. “In many smaller communities around the country, and especially in industries like meat packing, which is kind of rough and dirty, American workers are not applying for jobs there.
It’s our new Americans, the refugees and immigrants, who are taking these jobs. Tyson’s has a huge workforce made up of Somalis, Eritreans and people from Myanmar, disproportionate to the number of people they hire.”
Heck, here USCRI’s Sheckler sounds like she is shilling for the Chamber of Commerce.
“We settle refugees in communities that are likely to have employment,” she said, “and certainly the agro-industry is one of these industries where there’s job openings. The communities want the labor. And then you’ve got a whole new community with many coming into the family. They’re buying cars. They’re buying houses. They’re buying groceries. They’re opening up little businesses. So communities are actually contacting us and asking us to settle refugees.”
[….]
Trump’s latest round of exclusions partly frustrated Iowa’s recently expressed state and local willingness to accept refugees for resettlement.
The states and localities know they need the workers, Sheckler said, but Trump’s immigration czar, Stephen Miller, has other ideas for America.
Someone could write a modern day version of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle using the dozens and dozens of posts I have archived over the years.
A starring role could go to the phony refugee racketeers!
Endnote: Another blogger recently used the phrase the “Slaughterhouse Nine” to describe the nine federal refugee resettlement contractors. I like that!
John Binder does excellent work on the immigration/refugee beat for Breitbart and this is one post I missed (lost in my overflowing e-mail inbox).
Thanks to reader Robert for bringing it to my attention.
More confirmation that we aren’t only dealing with liberal Open Borders types on immigration, but must battle Chamber of Commerce Republicans who are shilling for businesses looking to make money off of the immigrant population either as cheap labor or consumers.
As one of my readers once quipped—refugees buy used cars.
Ohio GOP Chair Defends Republicans Importing Refugees to Fill U.S. Jobs
Chairwoman of the Ohio Republican Party, Jane Timken, is defending Republican governors like Ohio’s Mike DeWine for asking the federal government to continue resettling refugees in their states.
[….]
Coupled with the refugee reduction, Trump signed an executive order that gives localities, counties, and states veto power over whether they want to resettle refugees in their communities.
DeWine, along with 18 other Republican governors, announced he would continue allowing refugee contractors to resettle refugees in Ohio — a decision that Timken is now defending using widely circulated talking points, which Breitbart News exclusively reported.
Here are the 19 Republican governors who thumbed their noses at President Trump and said—send us more impoverished people willing to work for low wages and for our taxpayers to support!
An orange X indicates those who quickly dissed the Prez, and the pink X marks the second wave of Republican governors who told Trump they want more refugees. Of course Governor Abbott of Texas is the only governor to say NO (so far).
In a statement to Ohio Republicans, Timken said she is “supportive of Governor DeWine’s decision” to bring more refugees to Ohio, declaring without evidence that the refugee vetting process has been fixed and thus previous national security concerns are no longer valid:
“Accusations that the federal government is letting dangerous individuals into the country through poor vetting are no longer accurate. President Trump’s administration approves every refugee resettled into Ohio, and the process is now very stringent. We can now be confident in how the federal government is vetting refugees.”
Vetting is only one issue, what about Ohioans who need jobs?
Does the President know she opposes his refugee reform effort?
Like so many other state officials she doesn’t know how the program works.
We get a lot of Chinese asylum seekers (who get across our borders without any vetting and then apply for asylum), but vetted Chinese refugees are rare.
Timken also said refugees arriving in the U.S. today “are truly victims of oppression,” citing that “an example of someone who would be able to seek refugee status would be a Christian in China who is being persecuted by the Chinese government for her religious beliefs.”
That example, though, is not indicative of the refugees who are often resettled in Ohio. Since Trump’s inauguration in 2017, only 18 refugees from China have been admitted to the U.S. and none have been resettled in Ohio.
Ohio, since 2017, has resettled nearly 4,500 refugees in areas like Cleveland Heights, Columbus, Cleveland, and Cincinnati. The majority of these refugees have arrived from Bhutan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Eritrea, Iraq, Somalia, Syria, and Ukraine.
[….]
Today, there are more than 242,600 unemployed Ohioans — indicating that Ohio has the sixth-largest unemployed state population in the U.S. just behind Pennsylvania with an unemployed population of about 293,000. Likewise, Ohio’s unemployment rate of 4.2 percent remains above the national average.
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