Category: Nashville

Tennessee: housing market “unkind” to refugees/immigrants

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Do we see a trend developing here!  It appears that the Open borders activists must have sent out talking points—tell the media that there is unfair treatment of refugees/asylum seekers and other migrants rampant in America!

We just now posted on the not-so-nice Minnesotans, here.  And, we have a story from Portland, Maine last week that we didn’t get to about problems asylum seekers are having with landlords there.

Hawa Abdullahi: We would like more low-income housing for our people. http://www.centerforrefugees.org/our-team/

Now comes the news from Nashville, a major resettlement site for Catholic Charities, that they are having problems with “fair housing” in that ‘welcoming’ city and surrounding counties.

Not mentioned, of course, are the problems that impoverished or disabled native Nashville area citizens are likely having getting housing when they have to compete with the immigrants!

From The Tennessean  (Hat tip: Joanne).  Emphasis is mine:

Immigrants and refugees in Nashville have more help than ever finding stable housing, but forces beyond their control have made life tougher in recent years.

Increasing apartment rental costs have been hard on international newcomers, said Hawa Abdullahi, social services coordinator with the Center for Refugees and Immigrants of Tennessee, at a conference on fair housing in Nashville.

“We have seen a lot of rent going up, which is hard for people to cover,” she said. “We see a lot of people getting pushed … moving to Antioch, Smyrna, and places like that. It’s really getting hard right now to find apartments.”

Abdullahi spoke about immigrant housing experiences as part of the Fair Housing Matters Conference. The fight against housing discrimination has taken on new urgency locally and across the nation because of increased federal funding and new directives meant to make housing available to all people.

Abdullahi described how the refugee families she works with struggle to get by on wages that rarely top $10 per hour.

The panelists said immigrants struggle to find housing because of language barriers, discrimination, poor credit histories, and limited options near public transit.

And refugees, in particular, arrive with debt. People approved by the U.S. government to move into America to escape persecution in their home countries, they receive financial assistance for eight months but must pay back the travel costs that move them to America in the first place.  [This plane fare issue is bogus—many just walk away from the debt.  What they never tell you is that the ‘church contractor’ (in this case Catholic Charities) gets to keep a portion of the loan if it is repaid!  Only a small portion of your tax dollars are reimbursed to the US treasury.–ed]

About 1,300 refugees are resettled in and around Nashville each year — with more than two-thirds joining families that already live here.   [Just a reminder readers, that when yours has become a “welcoming” city, the first refugees arriving apply to bring their family members.  It is called chain migration—ed]

[….]

“The city of Nashville is getting better. Definitely (officials) are aware Nashville is a destination for immigrants,” Morales said. “For surrounding counties, that’s a different story.”

Nashville has been such a hot spot over the years that we have a whole category designated just for Nashville, here, with 65 previous posts.  Nashville was recently chosen by the federal government as a “preferred community” for refugee resettlement, here.

Is yours a “welcoming” city or state? If not, expect a visit from Lubell and company

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Clarkston, Georgia has signed up!

Yesterday, I gave you the latest ‘diversity is strength’ alert from Nashville, TN (Muslim immigrants busted for selling drugs from convenience stores), and I mentioned “Welcoming America” again which is the spawn of David Lubell* and “Welcoming Tennessee.”

Check out this useful graphic I found at “Welcoming America’s” website:

 Clarkston, GA!

Also, their top story was one we missed from earlier in the month—Clarkston, GA, an overloaded refugee resettlement city, has become their 29th “Welcoming City,” this at the same time that the Governor has persuaded the feds to stop sending refugees there.

Learn more about the refugee and immigrant overload in Georgia by clicking here (A pocket of resistance in the land of Jimmy Carter).

It is amazing to me how ballsy propagandists are, the average person would have no idea of the problems that Atlanta and its suburbs have experienced as the refugee and immigrant population explodes.  To read this one would think everything is just, well, beautiful.

“Welcoming America” is a federal contractor of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (Health and Human Services) so this is being done with your tax dollars.

From “Welcoming America” regarding Clarkston:

Clarkston Becomes 29th City in Nation to Join Decatur, Georgia based Welcoming America’s Welcoming Cities and Counties Initiative

Mayor Terry: Looking forward to working more with ‘Welcoming America’

Clarkston Mayor Ted Terry signs Welcoming resolution for the city.

On March 4th, 2014, Mayor Ted Terry and members of the Clarkston City Council passed a Welcoming Resolution, committing the city to building a welcoming and neighborly community in which diverse residents, including immigrants, are welcome, accepted and integrated.

Through the resolution, the City also joins Welcoming Cities and Counties, an initiative of Welcoming America that supports locally-driven efforts to create more welcoming, immigrant-friendly environments that maximize opportunities for economic growth and cultural vitality and position communities as globally competitive, 21st century leaders. Welcoming America is a nonprofit organization based in Decatur, Georgia that works across the U.S. to create inclusive, immigrant-friendly communities that expand prosperity for all residents.

The resolution (full version available here) recognizes that a welcoming community is critical to economic success for all residents, and identifies that Clarkston is committed to “enhancing its cultural fabric, economic growth, global competitiveness and overall prosperity for all individuals in the current and future generations who choose to make their home in the city.”

Said Clarkston Mayor Ted Terry, “I’m gratified that this was a grassroots effort. The residents of our city got together and worked out the details – and our government has responded in full support of Clarkston becoming a truly Welcoming community. In light of recent events, over the criminalization of gays and lesbians, in Uganda – our city felt it was important to add language that codified ALL people are welcome in Clarkston, including gay, lesbian and transgendered folks. It is incumbent upon our government to provide opportunity for all residents of our city. And I am looking forward to working with Welcoming America on a framework for the future welcoming policies of Clarkston.”

“This is a wonderful affirmation that the diverse character of Clarkston is indeed one of its great strengths,” commented Emily Pelton of Refugee Family Services, a refugee resettlement agency that works in the Clarkston community.

* See Lubell’s bio here.  La Raza gave his Tennessee group an award.

We recommend that if your state has a ‘welcoming affiliate’ that you find out more about it and sign up for any news they send out to their supporters.  Here is information on how to “join” them.

Nashville: More immigrant entrepreneurs busted!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment
David Lubell

Diversity is strength!  Right Mr. Lubell?

Nashville, Tennessee is the premier Bible belt destination city for refugee and immigrant migration thanks to people like David Lubell and his old friends (Avi Poster and Tom Negri) at ‘Welcoming Tennessee.’

Regular readers know that Lubell used his ‘Welcoming Tennessee’ franchise to turn it into ‘Welcoming America’ and now gets a grant (in addition to funding from George Soros) from the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement to travel America and tell about Nashville’s successful immigrants.  And, if you are a new reader, it is Catholic Charities that runs the entire refugee placement program in Tennessee.

You can read more about ‘Welcoming America’ on the technical assistance page of  ORR’s ‘Key Indicators for Refugee Placement FY2014‘ (page 2).

We have a whole category on Nashville’s plight.  Here is one important post about turning red states blue.  Nashville has the fastest growing population of the foreign born of any city in America.

Mohammed Amer

This is not the first time the Nashville police have had to crack down on Muslim store owners.  I would be surprised to learn if this pair are refugees (asylees maybe), but the point is once your city is “welcoming” they will come.

From News Channel 5  (hat tip: ‘pungentpeppers’):

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Police shut down and padlocked a business in Nashville on Thursday as part of an ongoing investigation into synthetic drug sales.

Metro Police said Rum Wholesale at 1305 Dickerson Pike was deemed a public nuisance for repeated distribution of synthetic opiates.

The owner, 40-year-old Mohammed Amer,*** was arrested Wednesday and charged with possession of counterfeit controlled substances with intent to sell. He will also be charged with felony tampering.

On March 17, three convenience stores in Nashville were shut down for allegedly selling liquid relaxation shots that contained mitragynine, a chemical specifically banned by Tennessee law because of its opiate characteristics.

Rabea Aldheleai

At that time, the stores, which included Discount Tobacco & Beer on Robinson Road, Madison Discount Tobacco & Beer on N. Gallatin Pike, and Litton’s Corner Market on Gallatin Pike, were declared public nuisances and padlocked by order of the court.

During the investigation, detectives learned that Rum Wholesale was a supplier of the liquid shots. When they went to the business on March 17, they found an employee, 27-year-old Rabea Aldheleai, loading boxes of the illegal liquid shots into a BMW.

If you are wondering how it is that a liquor store is run by Muslims—it is a twofer.  First they make a lot of money with schemes like this one and then there is the secondary benefit of potentially destroying the lives of infidels (encouraged in Islam).

Do you have a ‘Welcoming America’ affiliate in your state?

***That’s funny!  Amer is one of the perps in our February story, but The Tennessean link is now dead—what is up with that?  We know The Tennessean has pimped for more multiculturalism for Nashville, but are they removing stories that make Nashville’s Muslims look bad?

Nashville: David Lubell’s immigrant entrepreneurs busted for selling illegal drugs …

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

…..from, what else, their convenience stores!

David Lubell of ‘Welcoming America’ founded ‘Welcoming Tennessee’ and now works for ORR and George Soros promoting immigrant entrepreneurs, among other multi-cultural joys.

Who is David Lubell?  He is the much bally-hood founder of ‘Welcoming Tennessee’ and now he runs a partially government-funded non-profit (they get funds from GEORGE SOROS too!) called ‘Welcoming America’ that has been hired by the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) to get YOUR minds right about immigrants.  We first showcased them here in June of 2013.

Keep in mind this is not a community organizing group geared toward encouraging refugees and other immigrants to try to fit in to your cities and towns, they are working on YOU (the “receiving community”), to make you more “welcoming” to the diversity coming your way. 

Two days ago, Lubell was showcased at the New York Times blog which tells us that without David Lubell and his ‘Welcoming Tennessee‘ there would be no ‘vibrant’ immigrant city—Nashville— filled with foreign ‘entrepreneurs’ (one of their favorite themes involves immigrants bringing new business to your pathetic city) and ‘vibrant diversity.’

Nashville has the fastest growing foreign-born population in the US, here.

I have a pressing question, as do some of our readers:  If immigrants were bringing economic boom times to beleaguered cities then why aren’t these cities—Lewiston, ME, Manchester, NH, Clarkston, GA?—clamoring for more immigrant entrepreneurs?  Instead they are begging for less! LOL! Welcoming America and ORR calls these “pockets of resistance.”

Why, also, are those who resettle refugees always out scouting new fresh unsuspecting territory in which to place refugees—-like Wyoming!

So to the New York Times…..

First some stats that blew me away.  Surely you are all familiar with the great wave of immigrants that came to America in the late 1880’s to early 1900’s (there was no welfare for them by the way, they had to survive and learn English or go back to where they came from and most were Europeans).

The wave was so great that the US cut off immigration to any large extent for decades following the 1920’s so that there might be time for the huge flood to assimilate, and to allow time for the American voters to calm down.  Get this!  We have allowed more immigration in the last 20 years than we did in 40 of the great wave.

From the NYT blog:

The need has rarely been greater. From 1990 to 2010, the United States immigrant population increased by 20 million, roughly the same number of people who entered the country during the great wave of immigration between 1880 and 1920. Today, there are about 40 million foreign-born people in the United States (about 46 percent are naturalized citizens).

Unlike the immigrants of the past, the new immigrants are more diverse and more scattered — many living in midsize cities like Boise, Idaho; Louisville, Ky.; Dayton, Ohio; and Memphis, where, until recently, the foreign-born populations were small.   [Cities cited here are sites of refugee resettlement, immigrants just don’t “find their way” from Africa or the Middle East to Boise or Memphis!—ed]

Mohammad Amer busted in Nashville for drug sales out of a liquor store—Lubell immigrant entrepreneur?

Lubell’s Nashville entrepreneurs:

You can read the rest of the opinion piece, a paean to David Lubell, yourself because I want to tell you about some of Lubell’s Nashville entrepreneurial stars–Ebrahim Fahim, Maged Youssef Milkhail and Mohammad Amer!   Word on the street in Nashville is that some of those charged are Egyptians who received asylum claiming religious persecution back home (are they among the 70% found to be frauds?)

From The Tennessean earlier this month:

Two convenience stores could go out of business after their owners — one of which has now been busted twice — admitted in court Friday that they sold a liquid form of synthetic marijuana

Metro police in January padlocked First Discount Tobacco & Beer and Dolphin Market Discount Tobacco & Beer on Lebanon Pike after they say the owners sold a liquid designed to get electronic cigarette users high. The products were sold for $40 per bottle with names such as “Relax” and “Maui Maui.” A worker at Dolphin Market marketed the drug to one customer as a way to get high.

It wasn’t the first time First Discount has been accused of selling illegal, synthetic marijuana. The store was shuttered in 2012 after they were found selling products called “7H Kush” and “Purple Diesel” marketed as “incense” but designed to get people high.

On Friday, that business’ owners, Said Ebrahim Fahim and Maged Youssef Milkhail, pleaded guilty to contempt of court charges for violating an order stemming from the 2012 raid. Criminal Court Judge Steve Dozier, who had made the 2012 order, ruled that the pair would avoid jail time, but First Discount would be padlocked for 90 days. He ordered that Dolphin Market, which had no priors, be closed for 30 days and forfeit $14,000.

Nashville police shut down 20 such businesses (at least temporarily)!  I hope they were investigating food stamp fraud too!

With the help of a 2012 law, Nashville’s police and prosecutors have used public nuisances statutes to shut down nearly 20 businesses found to have been selling these illegal drugs, which are typically synthetic variants of marijuana, ecstasy or amphetamines marketed as incense or bath salts.

What’s a good Muslim entrepreneur (see photo of Mohammad Amer) doing running a liquor store?  I guess that is a question for another day.  But, here is the other bust reported in Nashville recently.

Once your city is deemed “welcoming,” get ready for more immigrant schemers (oops! entrepreneurs!) like these!

Tennesseans going around the mainstream media with “justice” website

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

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.

From TCPJ:

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.