As Isaid here, the swamp is not going to be drained anytime soon, so my best advice to all of you concerned about the economic and cultural disruption in your communities fostered by the US State Department and its contractors choosing your town/city as a resettlement site (and the lack of transparency by federal government contractors in the process) must renew your efforts at the state and local level.
Here we have an excellent example of citizen action to get their local mayor and council to pay attention to their concerns. The citizens are asking for a moratorium on resettlement until their questions and concerns are addressed.
Watch the council meeting here. Begin at 13:45 to hear private citizens and then here again at 1:17:50 to hear Councilman Jeff Johnson say that he will be placing a resolution before the board at the next meeting. (Hat tip: Ron)
You too can do this!
Again, go here to play the video: http://stcloudmn.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=2&clip_id=1324
I had to laugh, check out their rule that a citizen may have 2 minutes only two times a year to address the high and mighty. And, they only take 5 commenters at each meeting.
You can learn more about the St. Cloud council at their website, here. They said at the meeting that they accept letters and e-mail commentary.
Let me be clear, there is nothing in refugee law now to address the issue of a city having any power to halt resettlement to their city. However, the State Department has repeatedly said they will not place refugees in communities that don’t want them. So, if the council were to ask the federal government for a moratorium, it would (should!) carry significant weight!
But, if the council turns down a resolution for a moratorium, it becomes a very important educational opportunity for the community. If council members votes are recorded, the political stance (in support of, or opposition to, more resettlement and continued secrecy) of each council member becomes clear to the whole city.
Again, see mypost here. Some of you in St. Cloud might decide to run for mayor or council based on what happens next. Even if you don’t win, the exercise will educate even more voting citizens.
Please visit my post yesterdaywhere I told you about the ‘stakeholder meetings (quarterly consultations)’ held without the public, and the R & P Abstracts that are kept secret from the public.
You should be demanding that your mayor and council members (or whatever local govt. format you have) attend those meetings and receive the planning documents before they go to Washington and make an opportunity available for the public to comment on the plans before they are submitted to Washington each year!
Just fyi, I have been to St. Cloud twice in recent years. You can see my whole archive on the controversy there by clicking here.
I think RRW’s first mention of St. Cloud was by Judy in 2008 when she wrote about Somali students harassing a fellow student’s service dog, here.
Lutheran Social Services of Minnesotais the primary contractor in St. Cloud responsible for placing large numbers of Somalis there.
This post is filed also in my category entitled ‘What you can do.‘
Because frankly the Washington swamp is alive and well! Some important swamp creatures are the Chamber of Commerce and other business lobbyists looking for more customers and cheap labor! Do not be fooled! Refugee resettlement is not, first and foremost, driven by humanitarian zeal!
….transparency, transparency, transparency should be your mantra!
The ‘quarterly consultation’ is required by law and the US State Department has confirmed that the general public is permitted to attend.
One of the most important elements of the consultation is the discussion that should be held in public about how many refugees could be placed in your town in the coming year.
As I said here the other day, since the President has flubbed his great opportunity to push reform of the entire UN/US Refugee Admissions Program in late September, citizen efforts must necessarily now return to local action.
Lawrence Bartlett is still running things at the US State Department because Trump has failed to put his people in place to supervise the career bureacrats. Here Bartlett told Senator Jeff Sessions that there are community consultations open to the public. https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2015/10/02/senate-oversight-hearing-on-refugee-program-very-revealing-senator-sessions-did-a-masterful-job/
Shortly, I will tell you the latest about how citizens in St. Cloud, MN are doing just that, but because others of you are reporting a lack of cooperation from resettlement contractors to your requests to be notified to attend QUARTERLY consultations, we will walk down memory lane.
I wrote this post on October 12, 2015(this is just a portion of it). Disregard the portion about contacting Trey Gowdy, he is no longer the chairman of the subcommittee responsible.
(LOL! I urge serious students to open the links and read related stories, so that I don’t go nuts having to repeat things!)
It has only been in the last year or so [2015] that we have been made aware that QUARTERLY CONSULTATIONS with community “stakeholders” were being held quietly, out of public view. In fact, I wondered why I hadn’t heard about them and now I know why!
The citizens of St. Cloud, MN, here and here, brought the issue of exclusion of taxpaying citizens from the meetings where the ‘non-profit’ refugee resettlement agency meets with local elected officials, fire/police, education, health departments etc. to assess how things are going with the refugees, and they discuss how many to bring in the upcoming year. [Open both of those links at the beginning of this paragraph, please!—ed]
According to a State Department spokesman (unnamed!) doing a press briefing for reporterson September 11th, we learn that they have only been doing these QUARTERLY CONSULTATIONS since 2013! WTH! [Press briefing is no longer available so its a good thing I copied this bit of it.—ed]
And, they are lying! “Private citizens” have not been welcome.
These agencies (‘non-profit’ resettlement subcontractors) work very hard to hold these meetings secretly and out of the view of local concerned citizens—the ultimate stakeholder, the taxpayer! Yet, we have a State Department official (why no name?) telling the mainstream media that private citizens can attend!
Why is the spokesman unnamed?
We are pleased to have [name and title withheld] with us today.Moving forward, [State Department Official] will be called State Department official for the purposes of this call. Again, this call is on background.
So much for Obama’s much ballyhooed transparency! Now here is what ‘name and title withheld’ told a special group of reporters:
In addition, starting about two years ago, I believe it was FY13, we required that all of our resettlement agencies conduct quarterly consultations with stakeholders in their communities. So that means that not just once a year when they’re preparing a proposal, but every quarter they have to reach out to a wide variety of stakeholders. And that would include other community organizations. That could include the police department, the school, the mayor’s office, the fire department, other agencies that have a stake in refugee resettlement, and private citizens can be invited as well. And they hold those quarterly conversations and that is taken into account when we are making placement plans for the entire year and throughout the year.
You know Larry Bartlett told Senator Sessions this basic untruthhere in the Senate hearing the week before last as well.
It gets worse!
We need lawyers on our team! Have they been breaking the law for 33 of 35 years? Or, have the states, which are supposed to prepare a plan every year and hold the meetings, not done their required duty to hold the quarterly meetings with communities?
Provide that the State will, unless exempted from this requirement by the Director, assure that meetings are convened, not less often than quarterly, whereby representatives of local resettlement agencies, local community service agencies, and other agencies that serve refugees meet with representatives of State and local governments to plan and coordinate the appropriate placement of refugees in advance of the refugees’ arrival.
What should you do now?
So, for all of you working in ‘Pockets of Resistance’(and others too!). Go here, and call the closest refugee resettlement office near you and tell them you want a schedule for the upcoming quarterly consultation! Ask them as well for the FY2016 [now FY18—ed] R & P Abstract which will tell you their plans for your town/city this year.
If you get a runaround, find a local lawyer willing to send the resettlement agency a letter on behalf of you—taxpaying citizens (stakeholders!). And, also make all the noise you can through whatever media you have available—tell the public that the program is being run secretively between a refugee contractor and Washington.
To all of you who have gotten this far, please send this to your fellow citizen activists. I don’t want to sound too cranky, but, if year after year, we reinvent the wheel, we will get nowhere!
Church leaders say the event is purely religious, but there are concerns it could be seen as endorsing the state’s refusal to let in Muslim migrants.
The feast day marks the anniversary of a Christian victory over Ottoman Turks at the sea battle of Lepanto in 1571.
People were bussed in from more than 300 churches to points all along the border.
They stood in lines, some on beaches on the Baltic Sea, some in fields and some in towns.
[….]
We want our Catholic faith to continue, to keep our children safe, that our brothers from other countries can understand that our faith is unwavering and that we feel safer, not only in Poland but also in the world.”
[….]
Halina Kotarska, 65, said she was expressing thanks for the survival of her son in a car crash, but also praying for the survival of Christianity in Europe.
“Islam wants to destroy Europe,” she said, quoted by the Associated Press. “They want to turn us away from Christianity.”
Some priests and Church commentators said the event could be seen as support for the government’s refusal to accept Muslim migrants, a policy backed by a majority of Poles.
[…..]
Poland, along with Hungary and the Czech Republic, refused to take part in an EU deal in 2015 to relocate refugees from frontline states Italy and Greece.
The Polish position has put it at odds with the Vatican….
If you want to learn more about this last great sea battle to turn back the Muslim invasion of Europe and about the later land battle at the Gates of Vienna (victory thanks to a Polish king), go here.
The Poles get it! Puzzling how few Europeans (and Americans) can’t grasp the lessons of history.
For my lengthy archive on the Invasion of Europe, click here.
Addendum!What a coincidence that the Poles kicked off their prayer for Europe on the same day US Bishops launched their PR campaignto get Americans’ minds right on more migration to America!
I have to admit, I thought Donald Trump would come in to office and take a forceful position on the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program and tell Congress to investigate the program (and the contractors!) with an eye to trashing or reforming the whole system.
Looks like Trump has thrown in the towel on refugee program, it is now up to you where you live!
With his capitulation on the annual determination, with a substantial 45,000 refugees to be admitted in the next 12 months, Republican leaders (with the Chamber of Commerce cheering) gave a sigh of relief.
It is still enough cheap labor and no one is going to force them to investigate how taxpayer dollars are spent and no one will call them heartless racists.
(Although there is still one glimmer of hope. The 45,000 is a CEILING and the Trump Admin can come in substantially lower than that and be within the law. No executive order is needed to stay well below the ceiling!)
So, where does that leave you in the pockets of resistancethat have formed over the last few years? It means back to work (or continuing to work in your communities) exposing the system, exposing the contractors, and electing people to local office who don’t want Washington dictating the future demographic makeup of your towns and cities.
(By the way, I am very aware of many of you who never quit working hard, but won’t name you here now.)
For those of you who are advanced in your work, please forgive the following list of things that need to be done locally. We have new readers asking what they can do, so this is mostly for them.
My list of suggestions below is in no particular order:
~Learn all you can about the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program. You might start with my Frequently Asked Questions, here.
~Call yourstate refugee coordinatorand politely ask for information on who came to your state in the past and who is coming in the future. Ask for your state’s refugee plan.
~Learn how to useWrapsnet(I’m going to have a tutorial shortly) so you know which ethnic groups are coming to your town.
~Find the subcontractor (s) working near you. Go here. Find your state and city (if you live within 100 miles of one of these offices, your town is fair game). Note the abbreviation in the left hand corner. That stands for one of the nine major federal contractors***
Some cities are such large refugee resettlement sites that more than one contractor is working there. Bidding for bodies?
~Call your closest subcontractor office and ask for theR & P Abstract for FY18. They will dodge and weave and may even tell you they don’t know what you are talking about. Be persistent. You may ultimately have to use your state’s public information laws to get the abstract out of your state coordinator. (You will likely never get a FOIA answered by the US State Department, however.)
The Abstract, in addition to other research you do, will lead you to the employers who want the cheap migrant labor because they are usually cited in the Abstract. Expose them.
~The local refugee contractor is required to hold quarterly “stakeholder” meetings. They work very hard to keep the general public out. Call them and your state coordinator and ask to be included. If you get a runaround that is one more thing to publicize. This program can only run with your money, therefore YOU are a stakeholder.
~Become friendly with people in your local health department and other social service agencies. You may find them willing to tell you more about the mode of operation of the contractor/subcontractor working in your community and/or problems related to the refugees themselves (eg. high TB rates).
~Become familiar with the impact the refugee program is having in your local school system which is usually the first place we see problems erupting.
~I would expose every case you find where the subcontractor/contractor had left a refugee family or families in the lurch. Keep your focus on the government agencies and the contractors and possible malfeasance there rather than being aggressively anti-refugee. Keep in the back of your mind, that some refugees have been sold a bill of goods and wish they could go home.
~Get as much as you can into your local newspaper/TV/radio show. If they are all pro-Open Borders you will have to write your own blog or facebook page to get the information you are finding out to a broader audience.
~If you have someone in your group (yes, it would be good to form a little group) who could do youtube, or small documentary films that is another option to reach more people.
~Speak up in your churchesif they are affiliated with the nine major contractors*** Tell your church leaders that it isn’t Christian charity to take millions from the US taxpayers.
~Some grassroots activists have successfully taken to the road with powerpoint presentationsto be shown to local civic groups.
~Arrange for expert speakers to come to your towns to educate a wider audience.
~All of the above, and more that I’m not thinking of, is to educate your community with the goal of electing mayors and council members who are on your same wavelength. The Left has been electing mayors for years and that is how many cities are in the pickle they are now in!
~Consider running for elected office yourself. Even if you think you can’t win because it is another way to publicize your views.
~Educate and put pressure on your governors and your state representatives, because if you can agitate them enough there will be a trickle-up effect on US Representatives and Senators who don’t want to hear a buzzing of bees back in the district.
~As the 2018 election year gets underway, make sure you have people ready to ask tough questions of your US Congressmen/Senators as they visit your town.
~When you earlier identified those industries and global corporations pushing for cheap labor, you should be working to find out which elected officials at all levels of government are getting campaign contributions from them as well. Use that information in 2018.
~If you are a member of one of the big three immigration control groups (CIS, FAIR, and NumbersUSA) and/or the Heritage Foundation you will need to keep pressure on them. Since they are in the swamp they may not have a good understanding of how the USRAP is affecting you and thus trade-off the refugee program for something they want.
And, one final thing for right now, don’t get discouraged if you can only find a few people to work with you, just plug away with a plan a little every day and look to your key helpers for moral support and a little help!
I’m sure there is more I’m not thinking of right now… I’ll update later.
*** These are the nine federal resettlement contractors paid by the head to place refugees in your towns. They are also ‘community organizers’ who call upon their supporters to lobby Congress etc. They are rolling in millions of tax dollars.
I’m thinking that one thing that Trump’s slightly lower cap for FY18 will do to them is to force them to tighten their belts and, as they do, tensions within the fake non-profits could rise—watch for it!
Immigration reporter Caitlin Dickerson writing at theNew York Times magazine pretends to write the definitive story on what is happening to Twin Falls, Idaho.
“How Fake News turned a small town upside down”
Her story is huge, but missed a lot, either on purpose, or possibly her editors skewed the story she submitted.
I have no intention of taking her on point by point (it would take all day). But, I wanted you to know this is out there and to say just a couple of things….
First, Chobani Yogurt lawyers attempted to silence many media outlets, not just Breitbartand Infowars. (Although most will never admit it.)
Ms. Dickerson says of Mayor Barigar: “His even keel and the air of sophistication he picked up while living in a comparatively big city have made him popular politically.”
Secondly, she spends an inordinate amount of time on Lee Stranahan, a former Breitbart reporter impugning his character and motives, but she only touches on the mayor (in glowing terms) who played an instrumental role in luring Chobani Yogurt (which brags about its huge refugee workforce) to Twin Falls in the first place in his leadership role at the Chamber of Commerce. (Not mentioned by Dickerson).
And, finally, she sees nothing wrong with the local newspaper editor’s role in driving his Leftist view of the world by attempting to coerce elected city officials to write opinion pieces supporting refugee resettlement.
Part of the reason a fear of Islam has persisted in Twin Falls is because the local leadership refused to defuse it, according to Matt Christensen, 36, the editor of The Times-News. While Brown wrote articles that sorted out the truth about the Fawnbrook case, Christensen was publishing commentary that castigated the people who were spreading falsehoods. He told me that he had closed-door meetings with city officials, in which he asked them to write guest editorials doing the same, but none of them did. Christensen suspected that they were afraid of one of the most reliable political dangers in the region, the same force that leads would-be Democrats there to register as Republicans: being outflanked on the right is the quickest way to lose your job.
Matt Christensen is the only newspaper editor who ever attempted to silence me through legal intimidation.
“Behind closed doors, they would all tell you they were pro-refugee, and we [Who is we? —ed] wanted them to step forward and make that declaration in a public arena, and it just never really happened,” he told me. “That was frustrating to us especially at the beginning because it really felt like the newspaper was out there all alone.” He continued: “There were days where we felt like, Godammit, what are we doing here? We write a story and it’s going to reach 50,000 people. Breitbart writes a story and it’s going to reach 2, 3, 4, 5, 10 million people. What kind of a voice do we have in this debate?” [Obviously Matt has the NY Times now!—ed]
This isn’t the first time we have written about Christensen and his blatant and shameful effort to use his position as editor of a small town paper to push his world view.
In ten years, he is the only newspaper editor who ever legally threatened me, a small time blogger (in 2015, long before the rape ever happened), see here.
And, he played the controlling role as moderator in that dog and pony show sponsored by his paper that brought the US State Department/ORR to Twin Falls, see here.
I contend that the number one purveyor of fake news in all of this is The Times-News!
As much as the New York Times would like to put this story to rest, they haven’t and they won’t. Someone should write a book about Twin Falls as a microcosm of how American cities are being changed forever to satisfy the cheap labor desires of huge global corporations. Twin Falls has it all!
(And, if it is true that Breitbart pulled back reporter Stranahan, they made a huge error in judgement!). Again, Twin Falls has it all!
See my archive on Twin Falls going back several years, here.
