Category: Refugee Resettlement Program in Maryland

Blogs are blossoming!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Look out Tim Rowland.   It appears that the Herald-Mail is getting competition daily, as are mainstream newspapers across the fruited plain.   Someone just brought this Maryland blog to my attention.  It’s called Red Maryland and it too has a post about how “unwelcoming” we are here in Hagerstown (aka Hicksville), USA.  

I’ve been thinking, wouldn’t it be ironic someday if struggling Hagerstown became a booming town because it had rejected the multicultural/diversity-is-great myth.    Maybe we could even sell it as a city that had old-timey redneck values; a sign out on the dual highway could read:  “Welcome to the most unwelcome city in America.”  

Inviting Perspectives

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

If you were at the Refugee Resettlement Forum in Hagerstown on September 19, and if you have some knowledge or insight you would like to share about the issues that were discussed or anything else about the Forum, please send your comments to us. We will publish short posts — no more than three paragraphs — in a new feature called Perspectives on the September Forum. If you were not heard at the Forum, or have not been able to get your letters or phone calls on the refugee issue into the Herald-Mail, this is an opportunity for your voice to be heard.

Send to:  refugeeresettlementwatch@vigilantfreedom.com

More on Hagerstown snow storm—how to trick the public

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

As I mentioned previously,  I had high hopes for straight answers at the Hagerstown Refugee Resettlement forum on September 19.    Here is an example of how government officials confuse the public:  

The question, asked of the US State Department, went something like this (shortened here):  Doesn’t Refugee Resettlement cost the taxpayers about one billion a year?   But, the questioner made the fatal error of using the word “grants” in the question somewhere.    This allowed the federal representative to say, according to her numbers the grants were around $500 million, not a billion.   

The average citizen has no clue about various funding mechanisms in differant agencies of the government,  and isn’t expected to know that there are government grants and contracts,  in addition to other funding categories. 

This is how the question should have been answered truthfully:   The grants portion is primarily a function of the Dept. of Health and Human Services and is in the vicinity of $500 million (actually I think its closer to $600 million this year), and our (State Dept.) portion includes contracts etc. and is around $200 million right now.   Homeland Security expends about $12  $20 million for its portion of refugee resettlement.  And then, yes, there are other expenses borne at various levels of government (school, medical and so on).   Then look the questioner in the eye and say YES, the cost for Refugee Resettlement is around one billion a year.   

Is that so hard?    Why play a little game of semantics?   Stop insulting us, and tell us the truth!  When you don’t, people ask, well what else are they not telling us?

See the September Forum category to follow our coverage of this meeting.

It snowed in Hagerstown last night

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Whew,  finally a few minutes to report on the snow-job in Hagerstown last night.   O.K. I’ll say it, I’m naive.   I thought the forum would be a good idea to get facts out in the public and thus allow our community to weigh all sides of the issue.   To all of you who warned me that they wouldn’t give us straight answers, I apologize, you were right.   

But, the meeting wasn’t a complete waste.  Judy and I look forward to writing about it for weeks to come.   We will try to keep each post short adding it to a new category called September Forum, so that eventually a newcomer to RRW could follow our whole analysis.

This afternoon I’m commenting on the first, actually funny (sort of funny), non-answer.  Someone more knowledgable than I about refugee resettlement told me that if we asked about the repayment of the airfare loan (refugees fly here on the taxpayer’s dime and are expected to repay the loan) the response would be:  “The repayment rate is better than for student loans.”    Yup, you guessed it!  That is exactly the response we got the first time the question was asked of the US State Dept. representative.

The second time the question was asked the amount of the backlogged unpaid loans was not known (we hear hundreds of millions)  but it was confirmed that the volags can pocket 25% of the loans they can wring out of refugees, and afterall we are told that is the going rate for debt collecting.   Call me crazy, but I get an image of a mobster-minister-type putting the squeeze on some poor soul making $8 an hour who doesn’t even understand English well enough to read his dunning notice.  

Have you no shame, Herald Mail?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

It is unbelievable.  Yesterday we told you that the Hagerstown (MD)Herald-Mail and Virginia Council of Churches staged a publicity stunt to manipulate public opinion in advance of the forum next week—a forum intended to inform the public about how Refugee Resettlement works.   Today, Herald-Mail Editorial Page Editor, Bob Maginnis, published this piece:

Thumbs up to the half-dozen Burmese refugees who spent part of their Wednesday feeding and entertaining a group of residents at Holly Place in Hagerstown, an assisted living home for elderly people who cannot afford other accommodations. We hope they’ll attend the Sept. 19 forum on refugee resettlement at Hagerstown Community College, so more local folks can meet them.

At a meeting earlier in the week to plan for the forum, the suggestion was made and dismissed to parade refugees into the meeting.  Anyone with any sense would see that such an exhibition would very likely just embarrass or hurt refugees’ feelings.   The original intent of the meeting was to have a serious policy discussion with government officials,  non-profit groups, and the public.  It was never intended as a hearing for two sides to give testimony.   My original hope for the meeting was that all facts would be presented and citizens of the community could weigh the pros and cons of bringing more refugees to Hagerstown.  The meeting is not intended to make the present refugees feel unwelcome.   Every day it becomes clearer and clearer that the original concept is being perverted.

It is a shame that the Herald-Mail ,with apparent support from VCC (because they were present at the planning meeting), sees fit to advance their agenda by using refugees as exhibits. 

I guess for people like this, the ends always justify the means.