White House secret: Governors (even Democrat govs) can't find out where refugees are being resettled

However, the non-profit resettlement contractors*** and the US State Department key staff know because they sit down together every week and divvy them up as the cases come in!

Representatives of non-profit federal contractors are deciding which towns will “welcome” refugees.

Calif. Gov. Jerry Brown gestures as he campaigns supporting Proposition 30 at James Lick Middle School in San Francisco, Wednesday, Aug. 22, 2012. As Brown kicked off his campaign for Proposition 30 last week, he sought to emphasize that most of the revenue from the tax increases would come from Californians who are among the wealthiest; an extra $4,500 a year for millionaires, he said. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma)
California Gov. Jerry Brown was on the call and couldn’t get information, but apparently says CA will take them anyway! CA is the top receiving state so far in FY2016: https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2015/11/17/syrians-entering-us-in-first-six-weeks-of-2016-fiscal-year-98-sunni-muslim/

Think about how outrageous this is—governors can’t find out, but un-elected NGO operatives have the information!
As I have been saying for eight years, one of the major problems with the UN/US State Department Refugee Admissions Program is its SECRECY!
First here is the story at Bloomberg.  Obama Administration keeping it secret!

In a call with senior Obama administration officials Tuesday evening, several governors demanded they be given access to information about Syrian refugees about to be resettled by the federal government in their states. Top White House officials refused.

Over a dozen governors from both parties joined the conference call, which was initiated by the White House after 27 governors vowed not to cooperate with further resettlement of Syrian refugees in their states. The outrage among governors came after European officials revealed that one of the Paris attackers may have entered Europe in October through the refugee process using a fake Syrian passport. (The details of the attacker’s travels are still murky.)

The administration officials on the call included White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, State Department official Simon Henshaw, FBI official John Giacalone, and the deputy director of the National Counterterrorism Center John Mulligan. [Henshaw definitely knows where they are going!—ed]

On the call several Republican governors and two Democrats — New Hampshire’s Maggie Hassan and California’s Jerry Brown — repeatedly pressed administration officials to share more information about Syrian refugees entering the United States. The governors wanted notifications whenever refugees were resettled in their states, as well as access to classified information collected when the refugees were vetted.

“There was a real sense of frustration from all the governors that there is just a complete lack of transparency and communication coming from the federal government,” said one GOP state official who was on the call.

Now this is what you need to know!  Directly from the US State Department’s own website (emphasis is mine):

The Department of State works with nine domestic resettlement agencies that have proven knowledge and resources to resettle refugees. Every week, representatives of each of these nine agencies meet to review the biographic information and other case records sent by the overseas Resettlement Support Centers (RSC) to determine where a refugee will be resettled in the United States.

*** The nine major federal resettlement contractors determining the futures of your cities and states and which like to call themselves VOLAGs (short for Voluntary agencies)—a joke considering how much federal money they receive:

House Immigration Subcommittee to hold hearing on Syrian resettlement Thursday

This is a hearing we have been wondering about literally for months.  What took them so long?
Trey Gowdy is Chairman of the Subcommittee, go here for details.
Here is the witness list (what is this “invited,” haven’t they agreed to show up?):

Anne Richard cctv
Asst. Sec. of State for PRM Anne Richard. See bio: http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/biog/188212.htm

Ms. Anne C. Richard (Invited)
Assistant Secretary
Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, United States Department of State

Ms. Barbara L. Strack (Invited)
Chief, Refugee Affairs Division, Refugee, Asylum, and International Operations Directorate
United States Citizenship and Immigration Services

Mr. Seth Jones
Director
International Security and Defense Policy Center, RAND Corporation

Mr. Mark Krikorian
Executive Director
Center for Immigration Studies

Mr. Mark Hetfield
President and Chief Executive Officer
HIAS  (Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, one of nine federal resettlement contractors)

Go here to our archives to learn more about Anne Richard, and here for Mark Hetfield.
See Subcommittee members here.   I’m assuming the hearing will be televised by C-Span.

A reader suggests we repeat the appeal to sign the White House petition

So here is our post from a couple of days ago.  Heck if all the readers arriving at RRW today signed it, it would be close to being done!  You did a great job with governors today!  Don’t forget to call Congress (scroll down)!

Send the message to Obama that we don’t need any more colonization of our towns and cities.

Gates of Vienna reports that a petition in the wake of the Paris terror attack seeking the halt of all refugee resettlement to the US from Middle Eastern countries has been placed on the White House ‘We the People’ petition site.  Please go to GoV, see comments and follow links!
And, don’t forget that a sure fire way to stop the influx is to persuade Congress to use the POWER OF THE PURSE.  Go here for our post yesterday on that effort.  We must make our voices heard in a big way!
Sign the petition!
And, then call your members of Congress and US Senators and tell them to pull the plug on the funding!   Unload especially on Speaker Paul Ryan.  (Remember that US Senators Patrick Leahy and Lindsey Graham are pushing for $1 billion to be ADDED to a funding package to reach the Senate floor on or before December 11th to increase the Syrian flow to America).

OK everyone take a breath! The numbers are getting a bit wild!

I’ve been out all day but have had a chance to listen to talk radio inbetween other things (there is life away from the computer!) and some of the numbers I’m hearing talked about are just crazy—the craziest number I heard was Trump saying Obama wanted 250,000 Syrians in the US in the next year or so.  Now, perhaps deep down Obama would like nothing better, but he hasn’t said that yet!
Please consider that although this issue is extremely important, it is also important to be factual in our criticism.
And, just a reminder this has been going on for 35 YEARS through Republican and Democrat administrations.  It didn’t start last month or the month before that!
By the way, if you seriously want to know what Obama is looking for this year, read his State Department’s PROPOSED REFUGEE ADMISSIONS FOR FISCAL YEAR 2016 REPORT TO THE CONGRESS, by clicking here.
He is vastly underestimating the $1.2 billion price tag, but presumably Congress will be wrangling with him over that (Senator Lindsey Graham and Patrick Leahy want to add ONE billion to get more Syrians in here!)

 

Just a brief overview of where the numbers I’m hearing come from (in addition to the 65,000 the Jihad Caucus asked for and we reported on in the above June 2015 Youtube clip):

~70,000 is the number of refugees the Obama Administration has been proposing for resettlement in recent years, and they have been coming close to that (that is for refugees from all over the world).
~85,000 is the number of refugees he has proposed for FY2016 (from all countries). He said he would propose 100,000 for FY2017 which would be his last opportunity to set the ceiling, but he can’t and won’t do that until September 2016.
~10,000 of the 85,000 is earmarked for Syrians for FY 2016.  10,000 are not being sent to Louisiana.

We have brought around 2,000 Syrians since the civil war began (but I will next be rechecking that number)

~65,000 Syrians is a number that was initially proposed by the federal resettlement contractors (aka volags) earlier this year (and that was after an earlier proposal to bring in 15,000 for each of five years, which we reported here in 2014).  They wanted the 65,000 relocated here before Obama leaves office.
~65,000 Syrians is also the number 14 Democrat Senators*** (we called them the ‘Jihad Caucus’) proposed bringing in before Obama leaves office.
~100,000 Syrians is now the number being proposed by the refugee resettlement contractors.  They want them here before Obama leaves office.
~250,000 Syrians is what Pres. candidate Trump says Obama wants. ***Update*** a reader sends this, it is Hannity who was talking about 250,000 first.  See how Hannity gets to that number, here.
If anyone wants links for any of the numbers I’ve mentioned, please ask, because I don’t have the energy to put them all in here.
*** These are the 14 members of the Senate Jihad Caucus who last May (at the behest of the resettlement contractors) sent a letter to Obama indicating that 65,000 Syrians was a good number:

Dick Durban (D-IL)

Amy Klobuchar (D-MN)

Al Franken (D-MN)

Patrick Leahy (D-VT)

Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)

Patty Murray (D-WA)

Robert Menendez (D-NJ)

Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)

Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH)

Christopher Coons (D-DE)  LOL! Delaware hasn’t taken a refugee in a couple of years!

Tim Kaine (D-VA)

Edward Markey (D-MA)

Sherrod Brown (D-OH)

Mazie Hirono (D-HI)  LOL! Last I looked Hawaii took a whole 7 refugees last year!

I hope that helps clear up some confusion.  Let me know if more numbers are being bandied about so we can run those down too!

AP (After Paris) two Governors say don't send Syrian refugees to my state

….and a third, Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, wants answers from the federal government.
I had hoped to spend a lot of time this morning writing about the Governors, but unfortunately I have other duties today (of all days) that will keep me from posting all of the breaking news that is coming to us in the wake of the Paris massacre.  But, LOL!, there are so many people writing about refugees now that I can soon retire!
Here (below) is the NYT on the governors (we told you about Michigan yesterday, here).  What is so important about this news is that we are going to learn whether the governors have ANY POWER AT ALL TO SAY “NO” because we have long been told that they don’t by the federal refugee industry and its contractors.
If you are in one of these three states (Alabama, Michigan and Louisiana), you need to shore-up your governor now, because I suspect they are going to get hounded by the No Borders agitators and the refugee contractors (and so-called ‘church’ people) working there.   Even if no Syrians have been admitted, or only a small number, you must make your voice heard now!
From the New York Times:

The governors of Alabama and Michigan said on Sunday they would not allow refugees fleeing the conflict in Syria to be resettled in their states, citing the attacks on Paris.

robert-bentley-04b472a25452ea93
Alabama Governor Bentley: American citizens’ security comes first.

“As your governor, I will not stand complicit to a policy that places the citizens of Alabama in harm’s way,” Gov. Robert J. Bentley of Alabama, a Republican, said in a statement.

In Michigan, which has a sizable Arab-American population, Gov. Rick Snyder, also a Republican, said his state would not accept Syrian refugees, and he urged the State Department to review its procedures.

Syrians have already settled in Michigan, with one agency relocating about 200 of them in the past year, The Detroit Free-Press reported.

“Michigan is a welcoming state and we are proud of our rich history of immigration,” Mr. Snyder said in a statement. “But our first priority is protecting the safety of our residents.”

Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana has asked White House officials for information on how many Syrian refugees have relocated to his state, The Associated Press reported. Governor Jindal, a Republican, said he sought the information “in hopes that the night of horror in Paris is not duplicated here.”

I wish I had more time to talk to you about Alabama and Louisiana as so-called ‘Wilson-Fish’ states (learn what that means here) because in those states (there are 12 of them), the state government has been cut out of the refugee resettlement decision-making process altogether with the program administered from Washington through a non-profit group.  I’m not saying governors in other states have much (or any control), but in these 12 states, the state and local taxpayers are completely unprotected.
If Jindal and Bentley really want to do something they need to begin to understand the system in their states, and stop it!

We are going to see now if governors have any say at all!