St. Cloud controversy over refugees draws CAIR’s attention; CAIR draws media attention

10/19/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

And, of course, as I look around this morning I see that CAIR’s arrival on the scene draws the national media! A local Fox affiliate is reporting on the controversy surrounding one city councilman’s proposed moratorium on refugee resettlement and even the Washington Post is now reporting. I expect to see the spinners and liars from the New York Times arriving soon! LOL! the new ambulance chasing—CAIR chasing!

It looks like the showdown will be Monday, October 23rd when Councilman Jeff Johnson will propose that the mayor and council ask the federal government and its agent in Minnesota—Lutheran Social Services of MN—to give them a break until more is known about the economic impact of resettlement on the city and until there can be some assurances that the process going forward is transparent. Federal law does give a role to local governments to weigh in with their suggestions.

If this is the first time you are learning about the latest uprising in St. Cloud, see my posts here, here and here recently.

The moral of this story is if you can draw out CAIR (Council on American Islamic Relations) you can get some national attention for your efforts!

As I said in my previous post, CAIR must fight to keep Muslim refugees coming in to the US in order to continue to build their political power base. It is that simple!

Here is CAIR!

Screenshot (995)

How did St. Cloud get here?

Rather than go back over the resolution and what it could possibly do (or what might happen on Monday night at city hall), I think my best contribution to this story is to supply readers with background on how a small Minnesota city became ground zero for a battle, the results of which, will in fact help determine the future of literally every town and city in America in the decades ahead.

It’s the Lutherans in the case of St. Cloud.

We know that Somali refugees have been placed in Minnesota by the US State Department since the late 1980’s. By the early 1990’s the flood gates were opening as three major federal contractors: Catholic Charities, Lutheran Social Services of MN (whose ‘mothership’ is Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service where, by the way, rumor has it that some scandal is brewing), and World Relief saw Minnesota’s generous welfare as a real plus for the destitute Somalis. See my 2011 post here.

Not only was the generous welfare a draw, but big companies needed cheap labor (a window company in Owatona for example, or meat packing plants all over the state, including in St. Cloud!).

LSS as employment agency?

jodi harpstead — CEO Harpstead pulls down a salary and benefits package of over $300,000 annually to head the $91 million a year operation

Initially there was no direct resettlement of refugees in St. Cloud, that didn’t come until 2011. But, the so-called secondary migrants were moving to the city helped by an EMPLOYMENT OFFICE run by none other than Lutheran Social Services of MN. WTH!

Why was a non-profit ‘religious’ charity running an employment office to benefit large corporations? Was someone paying them to find refugee laborers for St. Cloud area businesses? Who? Taxpayers?

Here is an August 2010 story from Minnesota Public Radio announcing that in the coming year LSS of MN would be bringing 300 refugees directly to St. Cloud over the next 3 years.

But, we learn that since 2002 (right after 9/11), LSS was running an “employment office” there:

Kim Dettmer, Director of Refugee Services at Lutheran Social Services, said no one has an exact figure for the total number of refugees living in the St. Cloud area. Many community and nonprofit leaders estimate that the African population in St. Cloud is between 8,000 and 10,000–this figure includes people who came to the United States as refugees and who have since become naturalized citizen and no longer have refugee status. Lutheran Social Services learned that St. Cloud had a large and growing Somali population, so it opened an employment office in St. Cloud in 2002 to provide extra support.

Continue reading here.

One of those companies looking for cheap (Lutheran-supplied) labor was apparently Gold n’ Plump a St. Cloud-based chicken processing plant which found out that maybe cheap Somali Muslim labor isn’t cheap after all. It had to pay out an undisclosed cash settlement to Somali workers in a legal dispute discussed here in the Star Tribune.

In a landmark settlement that could change the way Muslims are treated in the workplace, St. Cloud-based Gold’n Plump Inc. has agreed to allow Somali workers short prayer breaks and the right to refuse handling pork at its poultry processing facilities.

The federally mediated agreement is among the first in the nation that requires employers to accommodate the Islamic prayer schedule and the belief, held by many strict Muslims, that the Qur’an prohibits the touching and eating of pork products.

Community organizers form Red-Green axis:

One of those involved in the settlement was community activist Mahmoud Mohamed. I told you about him and his ‘ethnic community based organization’ here in early 2010 and here again in December of that year where he claims to be part of the “we” who brought the first refugees directly from camps to St. Cloud. I don’t know if he is still active, or if SASSO is still calling shots in St. Cloud. And I don’t know if Mohamed is still working with the hard Left community organizer Luke Tripp. Someone needs to do a little research.

The controversy surrounding the resolution vote on Monday (and hopefully there will be a vote so that citizens there can see exactly how each council person votes) did not happen in a vacuum or come out of the blue. In addition to those events I just mentioned, a lot has gone down in St. Cloud over the years, including but not limited to:

A controversy about Somalis harassing an assistance dog, here. (my first introduction to St. Cloud)

Controversies in the high school, one of many posts here.

A huge zoning battle over the construction of a mosque in the middle of a neighborhood, here.

The knife attack by a Somali at the local mall, here.

Somali teen murders African American, here.

Muslim arrested for mosque vandalism blamed on citizens (Islamophobes!) originally, here.

Local paper did not like me visiting St. Cloud, here.

Go here for many more stories in my archive about St. Cloud.

Update! How could I forget this! MN Governor Dayton said in St. Cloud 2015: anyone who doesn’t like immigrants can get out of Minnesota, here.

Bottomline, Lutheran Social Services of MN is responsible for the exploding Somali population in St. Cloud and the chaos and controversy that has followed.

Not in my name!

What you can do: If you are of the Lutheran denomination, you need to let your ministers know exactly how you feel about changing America by changing the people in the name of your faith group (and for Caesar’s money)!

Each of you must get the planning documents and attend refugee “consultations”

10/16/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

You are going to get so sick of hearing this from me!

Reader Paul reminded me again of this quote by David Gergen reported in the NY Times in 1993, here.

I’m taking my cue from Richard Nixon!

nixon

What Nixon advised is likely the single most important thing that you can do to bring attention and possible change to the refugee resettlement industry where you live (or to any issue that concerns you!).

Gergen said of Nixon:

He learned the importance of saying the same thing, over and over and over: “Nixon taught us about the art of repetition. He used to tell me, ‘About the time you are writing a line that you have written it so often that you want to throw up, that is the first time the American people will hear it.’ ”

The more I think about this, the more I realize what masters the Left are at this: “Diversity is beautiful,” “America is a nation of immigrants,” “Refugees undergo ‘robust’ screening,” yada, yada, yada.

(LOL! btw, try to work that word ‘robust’ into anything you do. I want to barf whenever I hear it from the Left, so let’s have some fun with it!)

We don’t repeat things enough! Why is that? We tend to think our people are smart enough and will get it the first time? We aren’t willing to get to the barf stage?

Anyway, back to my headline….

For a few months, I had high hopes that we were going to see some significant demands for reform of UN/US Refugee Admissions Program in Washington. Dropping the ceiling to 45,000 for this fiscal year is not significant. If no reform of the general structure of the program happens, as soon as Trump is no longer Prez they will just boost the number to make up for lost time.

Therefore….

As I have already said, our energy must now shift back to grassroots activism on the local and state level. And, first, don’t worry that you haven’t hundreds of people behind you, just get to work yourself (with maybe a friend or two, for help and support).

Lancaster, PA

Let’s use Lancaster, PA which I wrote about yesterday as a model for a step-by-step action plan.

First, go here and find your State Refugee Coordinator. The list is a little old but through these contact numbers you should find your state’s key people. (This link and many others are at my Frequently Asked Questions, here.)

Ask the coordinator politely for your State’s refugee plan (usually not of great interest because it’s likely written in a mealy-mouth format, but get it). Tell the coordinator where you live and ask to be included in (put on the list for notification of) the “QUARTERLY CONSULTATIONS.”

Obviously for our Lancaster model, find the coordinator for Pennsylvania (often these are employees of the State government).

Next, find out, which resettlement contractors/subcontractors work where you live. Find any office here that is within 100 miles (generally 2 hours drive time) from where you live. Refugees can be placed within that distance from the office. If you live on a state border, be sure to check the neighboring state.

For Lancaster, there are two contractors listed (one for Church World Service the other two for Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service). You might find numbers and addresses have changed because the feds are pretty lousy at keeping this up to date.

Screenshot (987) — Contractors are the abbreviations in the left hand corner: Church World Service and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service

For folks in Lancaster, call all three subcontractor offices and politely ask for R & P (Reception & Placement) Abstracts for FY16, FY17 and the new one for FY18. These are plans for your town. Of course the FY18 plan is most interesting, ask for three years for comparison.

And, so you understand, if you get one abstract from one contractor that will only be information on their batch of refugees. They ‘bid for bodies’ so in order to fully understand what the total number is for your town, you must add the abstract projected numbers together. There might be 4 or 5 contractors operating in the same city!

You will likely be told NO, you can’t have them. By the way, on FY18, until a couple of weeks ago, they might have said you can’t have that one because it is a document not yet approved by the State Department. But since the fiscal year began on October 1, that excuse is no longer valid. (See what the Abstract looks like here).

Mayor Rick Gray — Welcoming Mayor Gray. Has he ever seen the Abstracts for Lancaster?

If you get a NO at the contractor’s office, go back to your state coordinator and ask him/her for those important documents. Be sure to say you want the entire document which includes more than just the pages with numbers and spells out the amenities your town is offering refugees.

At this point if you are still getting a runaround, you may have to use your state’s public information law to attempt to get them.

Put your mayor and council on the spot!

However, while waiting for that to work through the system, ask your Mayor and Council for the R & P Abstracts. Either your local elected officials will say they don’t have such documents, or they will say you can’t have them.

For Lancaster, contact “welcoming” Mayor Gray!

Now you have some excellent political ammunition if they don’t give you the R & P Abstract.

Either the mayor/council is completely unaware that a document like this exists or they keep it from you on purpose, and either way they are politically in a hot seat!

They are either so incompetent they didn’t know that a federal contractor was sending plans for their (your) town to Washington, or they did know and kept it from the citizens (aka voters). Lack of transparency/secrecy are words that you can use against them (until you want to barf!).

Screenshot (986) — Republican Rep. Smucker. If he can’t get the Abstracts he should be pretty angry at the US State Department!

Next! Contact your Representative in the US Congress. It looks like for most of Lancaster that is Rep. Lloyd Smucker.

You are going to report to his staff (try his local office first) that you are getting a runaround and can’t get the R & P Abstracts for Lancaster and ask his staff to get them for you.

Again, this is an important exercise, not so much that the documents contain bombshells (although most I’ve seen are very interesting), but it will tell you something about the man representing you in Congress. If he can’t get the documents (and get you invited to quarterly consultations), he is weak, or he is lying.

You will do the same exercise with the US Senate offices of Pat Toomey an Bob Casey.

For additional fun contact your governor’s office too. See if the governor’s office is being kept informed by the state coordinator (who may actually be employed by the governor’s office).

Presumably you now have the documents and are on the list to be invited to the next QUARTERLY CONSULTATION (aka Stakeholder meeting). Look for another post from me on what to do next involving publicizing what you have learned and pushing for the Abstract to be made public BEFORE it goes to Washington next year!

If no transparency….

If you are still getting a runaround, you have some perfect ammunition to use in the next mayor/city council election (and in 2018 for your member of Congress!). They are all keeping you, taxpaying citizens of refugee resettlement towns and cities, in the dark about plans from Washington about your very neighborhoods!

Say that over and over and over again until you want to throw up!

This post is filed in my ‘What you can do’ category, here.

Comment worth noting from St. Cloud, MN

10/14/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Editor: From time to time I post comments more prominently that I think are important but would get little notice otherwise. This is a comment I received about my post two days ago, here.

Update October 19th: Don’t miss all the breaking news on St. Cloud today, here.

From St. Cloud Guy:

I have lived in St Cloud for a long time and I can’t believe how fast the city is going down. The housing market in St. Cloud is falling way behind all the surrounding cities because of the excessive refugee population. Also the schools have become some of the worst ones in the entire state of Minnesota. The Star Tribune estimated over 30% of St Cloud Apollo High School is Somalian now and the other high school St. Cloud Tech has a larger refugee population in its area. They have only been coming to St. Cloud in large numbers the last decade and a half. What will happen in another 10 years? Plus all the extra kids they have? 80%?

St_Cloud_Somalis

It’s very upsetting and frustrating that St. Cloud was a nice normal town that we could raise families here and go to decent schools. Now that is all gone and we have to take huge losses to sell our houses to get out of here. I really wish we would have a say in this since tax money is used for it. We almost have to move out of state, because any decent size city in Minnesota has or is starting to have problems with excessive refugees and poverty.

I don’t care if people want to migrate here but we need to stop paying for it with our tax money and let them get over here on their own and take care of themselves. That’s what all our ancestors did and that’s what made America so strong. At least that way the people that do migrate here on their own will be hard working and motivated to live the American dream not just sit at home collecting welfare checks and having babies.

See more comments worth noting and guest posts, here.

City Mayors shirking responsibility regarding Refugee Admissions Program

10/13/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Yesterday it was St. Cloud, MN and today it is Rutland, VT!

Getting the monkey off their backs!

Mayors and Councils across America, when confronted by citizens with questions and concerns about the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program, brush off citizens with the usual garbage line—it is a federal program and they have no role in it.

monkey-on-your-back — Mayor attempting to get the citizen ‘monkey’ off his back by saying he has no power. This is a federal program!

Yes, they do! The Refugee Act of 1980 did give local governments a role.

And, repeatedly the State Department has said they don’t send refugees to places where they are not wanted. Mayors and councils could go on record with their opinions, but at minimum they should be attending QUARTERLY STAKEHOLDER MEETINGS. And, they should be involved in preparing the annual R & P ABSTRACT (see post yesterday).

Here we have news from Rutland, VT where the previous mayor was ousted by voters for working secretly with a refugee contractor and the new mayor depends on getting his news from a state bureaucrat. Does he attend their meetings? I bet he is not even aware of the plan the contractor in Vermont sent to the US State Department not too long ago, let alone have seen it.

Shame on any mayors who are not intimately involved in preparing the plans submitted to the State Department each year for the city or town he/she is responsible for!

From the Vermont Digger

RUTLAND – Rutland has recently received word that the number of refugees an agency plans to resettle in the city in this fiscal year has been reduced from 100 to 75.

[….]

Rutland Mayor David Allaire said Thursday that litigation and court action nationally associated with the president’s immigration orders raises uncertainty over just how many refugees will actually be resettled in the city this year.

In the prior fiscal year, three families, totaling 14 refugees, resettled in Rutland. The plan had called for up to 100 Syrian and Iraqi refugees to resettle in the city by Sept. 30, about a year after the city had been designated a resettlement site by the U.S. Department of State.

Why weren’t the mayor and aldermen in on the planning process? Do they even have a copy of the final R & P Abstract? Denise should give it to them! Or, do they have it and aren’t sharing it with the public. Either way it is not good!

Rutland first signs — Signs like this helped defeat previous mayor!

Denise Lamoureux, state refugee coordinator, recently sent an email Monday to leaders of community organizations in Rutland discussing the change.

The U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration “has approved a preliminary revised plan with an objective of 75 rather than 100 refugees for Rutland for federal fiscal year 2018 (10/1/17 to 9/30/18),” the email stated.

[….]

The issue of refugee resettlement had been a hot-button topic in Rutland during the mayoral election in March that saw Allaire win the job over longtime incumbent Christopher Louras.

The former mayor had been a strong supporter of the refugee resettlement program, while Allaire, then a veteran member of the city’s Board of Aldermen, had opposed it, citing a lack of transparency in the process. [Where is the transparency now?—ed]

For the past several months there has been little, if any, debate or discussion about refugee resettlement at city meetings.

“My feeling about this right along has been if indeed there are more families that are coming into Rutland, refugee resettlement families, I would welcome them as I would anyone else,” Allaire said Thursday. “This is a federal program, the Rutland government has no control over the numbers or anything else.”

See my Rutland archive, here. The major federal contractor operating in Vermont is USCRI. You will see a lot about them when you visit previous Rutland posts. Of all the arrogant contractors, they are near the top of my list!

And, don’t miss: Swamp not being drained so local citizen action required!

Lutheran Social Service planning to seed 225 additional refugees into St. Cloud this year

10/12/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

If they succeed they will be placing 27 more than they did in FY17 which ended on the 30th of September.

Checking Wrapsnet, here is a summary (below) of the refugees (mostly Muslims) who were placed by a subcontractor (Lutheran Social Service of Minnesota) of the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service mothership located in Baltimore.

Refugees who went to St. Cloud in direct resettlement (there are no reliable numbers on secondary migrants) last year are below.

Secondary migrants are refugees placed elsewhere who migrate (legally!) on their own to another town or city.

Minnesota does have the highest number of secondary migrants in the country as we learned a few years ago when such information was published.

In FY17 St. Cloud received 198 of the 1,623 refugees resettled in the entire state.

Burma (4)

Ethiopia (19)

Iraq (9)

Somalia (166)

St. Cloud had the second highest Somali resettlement after Minneapolis (364).

Here (below) is the FY18 R & P Abstract for St. Cloud.

This is the document that should be made available to the public BEFORE it goes to Washington. These numbers are determined by Lutheran Social Service in Minnesota (Harpstead’s organization) with the help of “stakeholders.” Stakeholders should include your local elected officials!

(See my post on St. Cloud yesterday)

Normally this document is kept from the general public, but we were fortunate enough to obtain it. Knowledge is power and that is the primary reason there is so little transparency with refugee resettlement. The feds and the contractors don’t want citizens to have all the facts!

I maintain that if the program is a good one for the community, they should be able to sell it with all the facts on the table!

Below are screenshots of the pages. Serious students should go to this post where I explained some of the numbers, categories etc. But, I am far from an expert!

Documents like this (reporting the capacity of your town to ‘welcome’ refugees and from where) come in to Washington from hundreds of towns and cities and are put together to become the basis for the Presidential determination which we know is a maximum 45,000 refugees for FY18 (which is now underway as of Oct. 1).

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Again, knowledge is power!

I leave it to you, again with the help of this post to examine the plans that Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service in conjunction with the US State Department and the US Department of Health and Human Services have in the works for St. Cloud.

LOL! Do you see that line in the last chart about voluntary hours/miles? What that represents is the number of hours and the miles that volunteers put on their own vehicles converted to a cash value. The contractor uses that figure to show the federal government that they have put some skin in the game (it is supposed to be a public-private partnership after all). I wonder do volunteers know that they are worth money to the contractor?

Check out the actual cash from foundations/corporations in FY16 and the enormous jump estimated for FY18. Is that realistic? Can they just make up numbers?

Housing specialist? So the refugees get a housing specialist? Do just regular poor Americans get one from LSS of MN?

The most recent Form 990 for LSS of Minnesota is here (or see LSS financials page):

file:///C:/Users/Ann/AppData/Local/Temp/Lutheran%20Social%20Service%20of%20MN%20-%20Public%20Inspection%20Copy-1.pdf

Other contractors are operating in other cities in Minnesota. See here:

https://refugeeresettlementwatch.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/acb67-publicaffiliatedirectory1-6-17.pdf

What can you do?

Citizens in St. Cloud, see my complete archive on what I’ve reported about your city since 2008.

Concerned citizens elsewhere, go to the list of contractor/subcontractors I linked above. Call one near you and ask for the FY18 R & P Abstract (Reception and Placement Abstract). Ask your local elected officials—mayor and council—if any of them have ever seen the plans for their town/city?

Addendum! If you get a runaround complain to your elected officials in Washington—your member of Congress and US Senators. If they can’t (or won’t!) get it for you, then you have even more to complain about!