CAIR Texas angry that refugee numbers dropping under Trump

10/05/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

No surprise of course, but I thought my Texas readers might like to know.

If you missed it the other day, see my post about the numbers for fiscal year 2018 that just closed on September 30th.

Texas was the number one resettlement state in the nation in FY18.

From Houston Public Media:

Texas Sees Major Cuts in Refugees from Iraq, Syria in 2018

Texas welcomed 67 percent fewer refugees in fiscal year 2018 than in 2017, down to 1,697 people from 4,768.

Some of the starkest drops in refugee arrivals were from Iraq, Iran and Syria, majority Muslim countries.

Iraqi refugee resettlement dropped from 949 to 25 in Texas. The number of Syrian refugees went from 455 to just one in fiscal year 2018.

Sobia Siddiqui, CAIR TX https://cairtexas.com/about-us/who-we-are/

Sobia Siddiqui, communications coordinator for the Council on American-Islamic Relations Texas Chapter, said the cuts are discriminatory.

“Our president ran his campaign and one of his strongest and most vocal points is that he called for a ban on all Muslims,” said Siddiqui.

She said there are refugee families in Houston who can’t be reunited with family members facing dangerous situations abroad because of the ban.

“There’s a lot of anxiety and uncertainty about if people will be able to have their families rejoin them back here in the United States or even in Houston,” said Dan Stoecker, CEO of The Alliance, which offers refugee services in Houston.

More here.

The Alliance is a subcontractor of the Ethiopian Community Development Council, the smallest, and likely most vulnerable to a federal budget cut, of the nine refugee contractors that monopolize all resettlement to the US.

In 2016, I excitedly reported that the State of Texas withdrew from the US Refugee Admissions Program, but you can see that without a follow-up legal challenge by the state it was a meaningless move. The contractors now run the program in the state!

JBS Swift recalls 6.5 million pounds of beef tainted with salmonella

10/05/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

A week ago it was Cargill in Ft. Morgan, CO recalling beef that was believed to be responsible for at least one death and scores of illnesses from E.Coli. (See here that a Tennessee family is suing Cargill!).

We recently told you about Cargill here when they settled a religious discrimination suit with Somali refugee workers.

jbs-greeley — JBS Swift is headquartered in Greeley, CO. I took this photo in the summer of 2016 on my tour of refugee-overloaded towns. See here how worried JBS was when Trump lowered the refugee cap. Big Meat braces for refugee shortage: https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2017/02/09/bloomberg-trumps-refugee-ceiling-of-50000-could-hurt-big-meat/

This week it is JBS Swift headquartered in Greeley, CO that is recalling even more than Cargill.

Both JBS and Cargill hire extensively from the refugee population with the help of the nine federal resettlement contractors*** and the US State Department.

From Food Safety News: (hat tip: ‘ManxCatsRule’):

JBS in massive beef recall over 16-state Salmonella outbreak with 57 illnesses

Raw ground beef is the probable source of a new 16-state Salmonella outbreak involving 57 illnesses, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) announced Thursday, along with a massive recall.

The recall is for more than 6.5 million pounds of beef products from JBS Tolleson Inc. in Tolleson, AZ. The traceback investigation by FSIS, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and state health and agriculture agencies have identified JBS as the common supplier of the various raw, non-intact beef products.

[….]

Consumption of food contaminated with Salmonella can cause salmonellosis, one of the most common bacterial foodborne illnesses. The most common symptoms of salmonellosis are diarrhea, abdominal cramps, and fever within 12 to 72 hours after eating the contaminated product. The illness usually lasts 4 to 7 days. Most people recover without treatment. In some persons, however, the diarrhea may be so severe that the patient needs to be hospitalized. Older adults, infants, and persons with weakened immune systems are more likely to develop a severe illness. Individuals concerned about an illness should contact their health care provider.

[….]

Greeley, CO-based JBS USA is the American food processing company that is a wholly owned subsidiary of JBS S.A., a Brazilian company that is the world’s largest beef producer.

A Brazilian meatpacker is changing America!

More here.

See my file on JBS Swift by clicking here.

***Don’t miss this 2017 post! Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service is one of the nine federally funded resettlement contractors.

Foreign-owned Big Meat hires Lutherans to help them find and retain refugee labor

That is the crux of this story and not in my wildest dreams did I think that money was directly changing hands between the meat industry and a federal refugee contractor, in this case Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service headquartered in Baltimore, MD.

Also see my ‘health issues’ category here.

Trump has not yet signed refugee determination, therefore zero refugees being admitted to the US right now

10/04/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

“Whatever that number is, it will absolutely be driven principally by the capacity of my agency and the law enforcement, security, and vetting practices.”

(Francis Cissna, director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS))

Granted we are only 4 days into the month of October so things could change tomorrow or the next day, but so far zero refugees have been placed since the new fiscal year began on Monday (October 1).

Here we hear from Voice of America and a distressed resettlement lobbyist about the disappointment in the refugee industry.

Trump Administration Misses Refugee Admissions Deadline

The Trump administration has missed the end-of-fiscal-year deadline to set the maximum number of refugees that will be allowed in the United States in the next 12 months.

Mary Giovagnoli1 — An “extraordinarily disappointed” Mary Giovagnoli of the Refugee Council USA, the lobbying arm for the refugee contractors.

“Consultations and the subsequent Presidential Determination (PD) normally take place by Oct. 1. However, on some occasions, the consultations and subsequent PD have been completed later,” a U.S. State Department spokesperson said in an emailed statement to VOA. “We do not expect this will have any operational impact on the Refugee Admissions Program.”

The agency declined a request from VOA to provide a timeline for the consultations.

[….]

Last month, the administration proposed a record-low refugee ceiling for the 2019 fiscal year of 30,000 refugees. By law, Congress must be consulted about the cap before a final number can be issued.

“We are extraordinarily disappointed that the administration has failed to honor the spirit and the letter of the law when it comes to consultations,” said Mary Giovagnoli. executive director of Refugee Council USA. “For two years in a row now, the administration has just failed to take it seriously.”

President Donald Trump has dramatically cut refugee arrivals to the United States since taking office.

[….]

Francis Cissna, director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), said at a conference Monday that new vetting measures have increased processing times for refugee admissions.

He added that the suggested ceiling of 30,000 for FY2019 takes into account the “operational realities” of those measures for “national security and public safety.”

“The number is not final yet. The president has not signed the proclamation. Whatever that number is, it will absolutely be driven principally by the capacity of my agency and the law enforcement, security, and vetting practices,” Cissna said.

More here.

Click here for my complete file on RCUSA (Refugee Council USA).

State Department finally posts map where refugees are resettled in US

10/04/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

rpclogo Admittedly I haven’t checked for a few months, so I’m not sure when this map was made public, but here it is!

In order to fit it on these pages, I opted for the smaller version, but if you go here you can see it in an easier-to-read size.

See the legend which tells you which of the nine contractors*** are working in each ‘welcoming’ city. The sites with more than one contractor operating (often in competition!) are sites that obviously get much larger numbers of refugees.

And, notice that some sites that existed in 2016 (see that map) are now gone! I’m not seeing Huron, SD or Charleston, WV on the new map, others?

Screenshot (714)

Go here and see that Wrapsnet has maps back to FY11. You might find it as interesting as I did to see what sites were primary resettlement sites in your state then compared to the FY18 map above.

***Here below are the nine federal refugee resettlement contractors.

Faithful readers are probably sick of seeing this list almost every day, but a friend once told me that people need to see something seven times before it completely sinks in, so it seems to me that 70, or even 700 isn’t too much!

And, besides I have new readers every day.

The present US Refugee Admissions Program will never be reformed if the system of paying the contractors by the head stays in place and the contractors are permitted to act as Leftwing political agitation groups, community organizers and lobbyists paid on our dime!

(By the way, see my earlier post today on the Libertarian think tank—CATO—why on earth do they support this system of millions of federal taxpayer dollars being given out annually to non-profit groups for charity work?)

And, to add insult to injury they pretend it is all about ‘humanitarianism.’

The number in parenthesis is the percentage of their income paid by you (the taxpayer) to place the refugees into your towns and cities and get them signed up for their services (aka welfare)! And, get them registered to vote eventually!

From my most recent accounting, here. However, please see that Nayla Rush at the Center for Immigration Studies has done an update of their income, as has James Simpson at the Capital Research Center!

Libertarian think tank continues criticism of Trump refugee policy

10/04/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I really don’t get it—why a Libertarian think tank, the CATO Institute is so hot for more refugees for America. I can only assume it has to do with a pro-business orientation (the LEGAL worker issue again). I’m not going to try to figure it out today.

david-bier-cropped — CATO immigration policy analyst David Bier

However, they had a handy graph in a story yesterday criticizing Trump for reducing the overall number of refugees entering the US and pointing out that the number of Christians entering has declined (which is actually a function of the overall decline in numbers). Muslim entrants have declined at an even greater percentage.

This is the latest talking point from the refugee industry—that Trump isn’t admitting enough Christians—and CATO is carrying their public relations water.

Let’s have the debate!

I would really like to see a serious and honest public debate about the economic need for refugee workers, rather than the continued appeals to Americans’ emotions as CATO does here.

This is one of Bier’s wrap-up sentences:

By cutting the refugee program across the board, the Trump administration has not just violated a campaign promise to resettle more Christian refugees—it has condemned many more to desperate poverty, persecution, or death.

Have a debate about labor needs, but leave out the ‘humanitarian’ appeal because we know that isn’t was this is all about.

Here is Bier at CATO: