President Barack Obama is visiting Nashville next week to discuss his recent executive actions on immigration in a stop that will shine a spotlight on one of the nation’s fastest-growing immigrant populations.
The president, who will make his second trip to Davidson County in less than a year, will deliver his remarks Tuesday at Casa Azafran, an immigrant community centeron Nolensville Pike that opened two years ago.
His visit comes two weeks after he issued an executive order to provide temporary legal status and work permits to more than 5 million immigrants who are in this country illegally. Seventeen states have joined together in a federal lawsuit to challenge the constitutionality of Obama’s action, but Tennessee is not among them.
“With the number of foreign-born residents more than doubling over the past decade, Nashville has actively worked to welcome new Americans,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said. “Through community-based programs and government initiatives, the city is empowering and engaging New American community leaders. And the city’s actions are paying off.”
Nashville’s foreign-born population is nearing 12 percent, about double from a decade ago and fueling the city’s overall population growth during that span. Thirty percent of Metro’s public school students reside in homes where English is not the primary language, and 140 languages are spoken across the district. [Oh, aren’t they lucky! See school system a wreck!—ed]
[….]
Though the majority of Nashville’s immigrants are Hispanic, the city has welcomed large Kurdish, Somali and Burmese refugee groups as well.
Readers of RRW know well how Catholic Charities has resettled thousands of refugees in Nashville. In fact, in 2013, the ORR referenced Tennessee as a ‘pocket of resistance’ and we have an entire category devoted to ‘Nashville’here.
Tennesseans who disagree with Obama should be sure to voice their displeasure at his choice of Nashville for a pro- Open Borders speech by complaining in advance to their Governor and to their two US Senators. They are all three squishes on immigration, but all the more reason to give them an earful.
I wish now I had the time before I go away for a few days to post all the stories I had piled up about school systems across America in deep financial (and social) trouble due largely to the cost of educating immigrant children whose needs are enormous. I was planning a big post on the ‘towers of babel’ problem and wish now I had posted them individually.
Here is one, at the Nashville Scene (considered a far-Left publication) entitled: As Nashville’s immigrant population grows, Metro public schools are straining at the seamsthat just came in this morning and will leave it to you to read.
The Nashville public school system is deteriorating as it struggles to educate students speaking 38 languages (we have actually seen some school systems with more than that number of languages) and who come from impoverished immigrant homes, while Nashville citizens who can afford it, are pulling their kids out of the public schools.
Mishell [the immigrant star of the story—ed] attends Overton High School, considered one of the entry points for Nashville’s immigrant population into the public school system, and hence into American life. It’s a stone’s throw from tony private Franklin Road Academy, and just three minutes from the governor’s mansion.
But it might as well be in another country. The school is bursting at the seams, and a staggering 70 percent of its student body — that’s 7 out of every 10 kids — comes from a low-income family.
That hurdle is compounded by a vast communications gap. At Overton, which serves South Nashville’s sprawling mix of immigrant cultures, some 38 separate languages are spoken. At nearby high schools Glencliff and Antioch, according to the state report card, more than 1 in 6 students are trying to learn English while speaking another language at home.
For new readers we have an entire category (74 previous posts!) on the problems Nashville has had going back years as a preferred refugee resettlement site. I find reader shocked to learn that Nashville is so far gone, it is such an unlikely place for massive demographic change.
Photos: I am sure there are more I could post of those responsible for the travesty Nashville’s public school system faces, but I am running out of time before I go away—be back Monday (the 20th) to post your comments.
Editors note:This is an example of what you can do as American patriots to help get the message out that the refugee resettlement program of the US government is flawed and in need of immediate reform—become a citizen investigator and help spread the word.
If you are in the vicinity of Union City, please get to this meeting!
The following article by special features editor Glenda Caudle is published with permission from The Union City Daily Messenger.
(Emphasis below is mine.)
Tennessee’s Citizens Pay the Price for Resettlement of Refugees Here
Think the resettlement of refugees in Tennessee has no effect on you and your family? Think again.
Joanne Bregman, an attorney with experience in the appellate division of the National Labor Relations Board and on Capitol Hill, was a New York native and longtime liberal when she chose, with her U.S. Army veteran husband, to make a life in the South and settled in Nashville some years ago.
Although she has kept her license active, she has not practiced in the Volunteer State. But that doesn’t mean she has been uninvolved or is unaware. It means, instead, that she has focused her attention on needs that are paramount for her family and, through it all, she has not only changed many of her political opinions, but she has used the analytical skills she learned as a young attorney, coupled with the passion to do what is best for her own special needs daughter, to find a new way to use that expertise.
Mrs. Bregman will be in Union City Oct. 14 at 6:30 p.m. to talk about questions related to the state’s refugee resettlement program and to give local residents an idea how that program affects their lives. She will be the guest speaker at the Obion County TEA Party meeting in the family life center at Union City First United Methodist Church at 420 East Main St. There is a parking lot for the church and an entrance to the family life center behind the sanctuary on South Ury Street.
Refreshments will be served at 6:30, with the program to begin at 7.
The special guest for the local organization is a writer and speaker and a student of the federal-state relationship in the refugee resettlement program.
She is the granddaughter of immigrants who came to this country with no English language skills at a time when there were also no government programs to assist those seeking a new life.
Still, through hard work and determination, her grandfather found a job in a candle factory, while her grandmother stayed home to raise a large family, with the goal of having their children become Americans.
“Today, when I think about what they did, I feel we are taking a hand in our own destruction in this country with what we are abandoning,” Mrs. Bregman says. Describing herself as a previous “low information voter” with little knowledge of how political systems, in particular, work, she says circumstances forced her to become more politically astute and more thoroughly educated on how states and local communities are negatively affected by decisions at the federal level.
Assisting families with special needs children, she found herself unraveling some of the intricacies of TennCare on their behalf and, while she doesn’t consider herself an expert on the subject, she says she can hold her own in any discussion about the program.
She also found out about some of the problems those families were facing with an education system that was not always abiding by the rules and with a Department of Children’s Services whose background checks for employees working with nonverbal special needs children were often deficient.
That discovery and the resulting effort to see a bill passed that would address the problems served as her introduction to the Tennessee State Legislature.
“There were lots of legislators there who were very kind to us, because they understood we were just citizens. They led us and assisted us to get a good bill,” she says.
Two years later, she found herself assisting Tennessee Eagle Forum, a group with whom she shares some views, though not necessarily all. Her efforts were always as a citizen lobbyist, since her priority was in meeting the needs of a disabled daughter who required 24/7 care.
Along the way, she met Don Barnett, who has devoted years to working on the issue of refugee resettlement. Barnett, she says, was a prophet, who noted as early as 2004 that America would find herself in precisely the situation she does today, with thousands of children streaming across her southern border, because of changes in the law about dealing with minors.
Barnett requested her help with a thorny problem and, through this work, Mrs. Bregman says she was flabbergasted by the things she learned.
“It was so symbolic of where we are with our federal government today,” she says of the experience. It has been more than a year, she points out, since she was part of filing a freedom of information act request related to refugee resettlement, and she still has not received the documents; nor have representatives of legislative offices been able to shake them loose from federal clutches. The State Department denied ever having received the request, in fact.
“Things are so dysfunctional and entrenched in our federal government that it astounds me,” she says.
Nevertheless, she has pressed on in her effort to unravel information and what she has learned has continued to astound and distress her, even as it has aided in her understanding of states’ rights and the ways fiscal priorities are addressed by the government.
In 2013, she says, Gov. Bill Haslam said that healthcare costs for Tennesseans in need of assistance would gobble up 60 percent of all new state revenue. Then, a few weeks ago, he warned all departments in the state that they must prepare for 7 percent budget cuts across the board. “So he’s predicting some bad stuff, and maybe cutting some essential services,” she says.
Meanwhile, she knows first hand about the backlog of citizens with disabilities in Tennessee waiting for assistance from the state.
Tennessee has a Medicaid waiver program with a proposed two for one match of federal and state dollars that is designated to enable citizens with disabilities to live in their communities, rather than in far more expensive institutions. The problem is, the program has been a low priority and has never been adequately funded, even under Democratic leadership at the state level.
As a result there are more than 7,000 Tennesseans on a waiting list to get this important assistance.
By contrast, the State Department, relying on the selection “committees” of the United Nations, takes upwards of 70,000 refugees into this country every year and passes them on to the states. In Tennessee, these resettled refugees immediately become eligible for TennCare, while Tennesseans with desperate needs languish on a list.
In 2008, Tennessee withdrew from the federal refugee resettlement program, so the federal government simply contracted with Catholic Charities to run it, instead.
“When people in Tennessee say, ‘Stop. We don’t want this program,’ how is it possible that the feds simply go through a private agency after that?” she asks.
The refugees, she points out, don’t always come with reliable documentation about their histories, so it is impossible to tell if they have terrorist ties. Think the mention of that fact is a scare tactic? Then consider that two refugees in Bowling Green, Ky., were charged with providing material support to al-Qaeda, and that is only one example.
If the program worked the way the federal government optimistically describes it, Mrs. Bregman says, most of the money to help these refugees would come from private donations, with federal dollars simply augmenting the program. The fact is, however, private funding is far outstripped by dollars that come from the pockets of taxpayers in the states.
What would happen, Mrs. Bregman asks, if instead of spending the money on refugees, Tennesseans chose to spend it on their most vulnerable citizens?
There is no Constitutional authority for making the states responsible for the costs of the federal program, Mrs. Bregman contends, and yet, it happened anyway, and the feds continue to go around the state authority and contract with private agencies to get the refugees “settled.”The term encompasses sign-up for SSI and all public benefits, plus immediate entry into the education system. While the federal government offers this amazing largesse in the land of opportunity, however, the states pay the price — which means taxpaying citizens pay the price, both in dollars removed from their pockets and services lost or delayed for themselves and their families.
The refugee resettlement issue and other 10th Amendment concerns will be the focus of the Nashville citizen volunteer’s program locally.
The community is invited to attend and learn what the federal government is up to and what they can do to alter the picture, relying on the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Readers, Tennessee is at the forefront of challenging the federal refugee resettlement program. We need more people like Joanne Bregman and Don Barnett sounding the alarm—fearless citizens concerned for the future of America in all 50 states!
About Tennessee Governor Haslam’s budget shortfall, guess he didn’t read about the immigrants getting all the jobs in Tennessee,here. So, if the immigrants are working, where is the money going—overseas, as remittances, maybe?
See all of our extensive coverage on Tennessee byclicking here. See especially Tennessee is a Wilson-Fish state and learn what that means—feds and a private contractor circumvent state government.
Grassroots citizen activists in Tennessee are doing the grinding work of pulling facts and figures together in one place so Tennesseans will be better informed.
The ‘tn council 4 political justice’ has published a two-part answer to that all important question—who is working in Tennessee? And, the short answer is that refugees and other immigrants are getting the jobs and it’s all about the political power and cronyism of their well-connected friends (all the way to the Governor’s office and beyond!).
An August 2014 Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) analysis of Tennessee’s employment growth since 2000 shows that the jobs have gone to legal and illegal immigrants.
“Tennessee’s working-age immigrant population grew 176 percent from 2000 to 2014, one of the highest of any state in the nation. Yet the number of natives working in 2014 was actually lower in 2000.”
CIS used the same data the government uses to determine labor market participation.
Who are legal immigrants in Tennessee?
Refugees are legal immigrants that are brought to Tennessee by federal contractors like Catholic Charities. They come with work authorization and access to all forms of public assistance including TennCare, SSI and cash welfare, if they meet the eligibility requirements. Federal contractors like Catholic Charities always say that the federal government pays the full cost of the resettlement program. That is not true. The federal government has admitted many times that they have shifted the bulk of the program’s cost to the States.
The August 2014 Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) analysis can tell you who isn’t working in Tennessee. Their conclusion based on the same data the federal government uses to determine labor market participation shows that the jobs in Tennessee are going to legal and illegal immigrants:
“Tennessee’s working-age immigrant population grew 176 percent from 2000 to 2014, one of the highest of any state in the nation. Yet the number of natives working in 2014 was actually lower in 2000.”
With Chamber of Commerce support for both amnesty and refugee resettlement, this should come as no surprise.
Bridge Refugee Services is a refugee resettlement agency in Knoxville. It partners with Church World Services (CWS), one of the nine national resettlement organizations. A volunteer refugee advocacy group has posted the complaints they received about Bridge’s treatment of refugees. One post addresses four reported worksite injuries in over eight months that the refugees claimed Bridge did not help them address. The volunteer that works with the refugees opined that the “agency even sided with the temporary employment agency that placed the refugees, and is more concerned about keeping up their employment placements than they are with the refugees’ welfare.”
In the federal resettlement contracting business, employment numbers are very important, however illusory they may be, as exposed by a former Bridge Refugee Service caseworker. Despite any reported problems, Bridge continues to receive federal grant money. The last publicly available report in 2010 shows $902,445 in taxpayer funds.
For new readers we have an entire category devoted to posts about news from Nashville, here. And here is our entire Tennessee archive. By the way Tennessee is a Wilson-Fish state and so the US State Department contractor Catholic Charities is running the refugee show there.
We should have posted this news when it was hot earlier this week (thanks to all those who sent it), so you may already have seen it. I would love to see a similar study by the Center for Immigration Studies of some other states with an even higher immigrant load then Tennessee.
The Gang of Eight Senate immigration bill (S.744) passed last June would have roughly doubled the number of new foreign workers allowed into the country and legalized millions of illegal immigrants already in the United States. Both Tennessee senators — Lamar Alexander (R) and Bob Corker (R) — voted for it.
To put into context the possible effects of this legislation on Tennessee, the Center for Immigration Studies has analyzed recent government data on employment. The analysis shows that, since 2000, all of the net increase in the number of working-age (16 to 65) people holding a job in Tennessee has gone to immigrants (legal and illegal). This is the case even though the native-born accounted for 60 percent of the growth in the state’s total working-age population.
* The total number of working-age (16 to 65) immigrants (legal and illegal) holding a job in Tennessee increased by 94,000 from the first quarter of 2000 to the first quarter of 2014, while the number of working-age natives with a job declined by 47,000 over the same period.
* The fact that all of the long-term net gain in employment among the working-age population went to immigrants is striking because natives accounted for 60 percent of the increase in the total size of the state’s working-age population.