If Trump only knew Utica, NY story, says resettlement agency employee, he wouldn't be so misguided

11/19/2016 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

But what is the real Utica story?

Easily one of my greatest concerns about the whole resettlement process in the United States, is how can there be such widely divergent views on whether refugees have brought a “robust” economy and multicultural nirvana to a community, or not!

town-that-loves-refugees — Read the 2005 UN propaganda report used to entice (embarrass) other cities into ‘welcoming’ refugees. http://www.unhcr.org/publications/refugeemag/426f4c772/refugees-magazine-issue-138-town-loves-refugees.html

Is there no real investigative journalist willing to go to Utica, spend a little time, talk to everyone involved and report an accurate story about what has happened in the ‘Town that Loves Refugees’ (according to a 2005 United Nations propaganda campaign).
This is one more in those warm and fuzzy stories about how everything is copacetic in Utica. Of course the election of Donald Trump is the news hook for a reporter to once again tell the ‘good’ news about rebuilding cities with refugees.
Take a side trip now to Politico’s county by county breakdown and see that Trump actually won most of New York state including Oneida County (Utica) by a large margin. Presumably Trump’s views on refugees and immigration are in line with the largest numbers of voters in most of the state. Surely if the ‘good’ news on Utica was true after 11 years of beating that drum, the citizens there should all be on the side of more refugees. They apparently are not!
Back to Utica and yet another account of how refugees have supposedly brought boom times to the struggling city.
From the Gloucester Times:

UTICA — More than anywhere else in New York, this city in the Mohawk Valley has embraced people fleeing strife-torn countries.

[….]

But, now, Donald Trump’s election as president is stoking fear among refugees and their advocates, given his anti-immigrant rhetoric and focus on curtailing immigration.

A wall proposed for the Mexican border was a rhetorical fixture of Trump’s campaign, and he’s called refugees a “Trojan horse” whose ranks are infiltrated by “terrorists.”

“It is concerning to us,” said Shelly Callahan, director of the Mohawk Valley Resource Center for Refugees, which coordinates the resettlement of newcomers here. [Mohawk Valley Resource Center is a subcontractor of primary federal resettlement contractor Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service—ed]

[….]

Over the past three decades, Utica has rolled out the welcome mat to an estimated 16,000 refugees.

Here we go again with Chobani Yogurt changing America to supply its labor needs (with the help of a fake ‘charity’):

In Utica, foreign-born people and their children account for about a quarter of the city’s population of 62,000, earning it the United Nations’ distinction as “the town that loves refugees.”

Refugees represent a new pool of immigrant labor, which Callahan said has been a major asset for regional businesses looking to expand or simply trying to fill jobs shunned by workers already living here.

In some cases, businesses that hire refugees are targeted.

One upstate employer that has taken on some refugees living in Utica, the Chobani yogurt plant in Chenango County, has been sharply criticized in recent weeks by a right-wing, pro-Trump website, Breitbart, for hiring Muslim immigrants.

Those reports have unleashed racist rants against Chobani and its founder, Turkish immigrant Hamdi Ulukaya.

[….]

assemblyman-anthony-brindisi — Democrat Assemblyman Anthony Brinidisi: we have “robust” small business growth. But would someone please do a real unbiased economic and social impact study about Utica. LOL! I should do a post just on their favorite words, robust is near the top of the list. Everything from business start-ups to security screening is robust!

In the last decades of the 20th century, Utica shed more than 20,000 jobs with the closings of two nearby General Electric plants, Griffiss Air Force Base in nearby Rome and a Lockheed Martin plant.

Its population of 100,410 people in 1910 had shriveled to 60,000 by 2010.

“Without them, we would have a city with less population, less cultural diversity and not as robust in terms of small business growth as it has been over the past couple of decades,” Brindisi said in an interview.

More here.
I have all sorts of questions and suspect that some economic growth (if it does exist) may well be that federal welfare dollars (remember when Nancy Pelosi famously said food stamps boost the economy!) are flowing to Utica with the refugees which is not real growth but just a redistribution of wealth from one group of taxpayers elsewhere to supply social services for the refugee flood to Utica.

And, here is why I’m posting this story:

There is not one bit of anything negative in here about what changes have been brought to Utica that are not welcome. Reporter Joe Mahoney must not know how to google! (And, this is why local newspapers are going belly-up! The NYT too!)
Where is the mention of how the school system there had to sue the state for more money to manage all the kids in the school system?

Think about Utica, NY before you jump on the “welcoming refugees” bandwagon

Utica (the town that loves refugees) is suing the state of NY for their refugee-generated school funding crisis

How about the story from last summer where the feds gave grants to the Utica area for summer jobs for special teenagers (refugees):

Utica: Give refugees summer jobs or pay for it later

Then, how about:

Utica NY: Latest concern is refugees driving drunk

Utica, NY: Burmese Karen refugee murdered

Large numbers of refugees bring food stamp scammers to town:

More Muslim food stamp scammers arrested, Utica, NY this time

From elsewhere in New York state:

Syracuse, NY refugee story confirms imported immigrant poverty does not revitalize cities

In refugee-saturated Buffalo, NY, violence leaves Burmese refugee paralyzed

New York boosts school budget $1.1 billion to cope with refugee overload

Buffalo, NY: Christians and Jews declining in number, Muslim population increasing

Syracuse: Catholic Church becomes mosque update

Heads up Poughkeepsie, New York: ‘Christian’ charity to bring you Syrian Muslims likely before January 2017

You know what! Go back and look again at how red New York state is, here. Someone in New York should be writing a blog about the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program and pulling all this together!

Report: Charleston, WV pro-Syrian Muslim resettlement rally held

11/17/2016 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

“I don’t think they should be brought here, period!”

(citizen activist Brenda Arthur)

As I told you a few days ago a Charleston ‘Interfaith’ group was planning a rally to push for the resettlement of Syrian refugees to the state capitol. And, as I mentioned then, I am struck by the fact that the rally for refugees was so specific about Syrians when we bring refugees from all over the world (and resettlement contracting agencies don’t get to pick only those ethnic groups they prefer).
Why are they so concerned about Syrians? Why is the Charleston, West Virginia group so discriminatory against other ethnic groups?

And here are my bigger questions: Where is Alex? Where is Shelley? Where is Joe?

manchin — Come on Joe! Even if the Republicans are too squishy to speak up, surely you get it!

Considering that the controversy about the resettlement of Syrian refugees in American towns is one of the major issues that pushed Donald Trump over the finish line last week, shouldn’t we expect elected officials like Rep. Alex Mooney (R) in whose district this rally occurred and US Senators Shelley Moore Capito (R) and Joe Manchin (D) to have the guts to say where they stand on the issue!

Are they for or against this plan from Washington?

One story about the rally is here. There was a counter-rally, so no one can say any longer that there is no opposition to the plan to expand the resettlement of Syrian Muslims (99% of all Syrians entering the US are Muslims) in to West Virginia.
See some of the opposition’s arguments reported at the Charleston Gazette-Mail:

During last year’s rally supporting Syrian refugees, Brenda Arthur stood across the street in protest. She learned of the rally only hours before it was scheduled to begin. She was then one of only two people protesting against it.

This time, she brought a few friends. To them, the reasons to not bring refugees seem endless.

“We had the June flooding disaster, we’ve lost jobs, there have been cuts in school funding and then there’s the drug epidemic,” Arthur said. “We’ve got all of these major problems to deal with. How does it even make sense to bring people here from halfway around the world that are going to need every form of government assistance?”

Arthur, 65, gathered with about a dozen other people in protest of the rally. Their main complaints about settling refugees in Charleston is the fear that they might be sent by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and that tax money would be used to resettle them.

But even if it didn’t cost taxpayers anything to bring refugees to West Virginia, and even if officials could be completely sure that the refugees weren’t sent by ISIS, Arthur still doesn’t want them here.

“I don’t think they should be brought here, period. We should take care of them in their homeland,” Arthur said. “A lot of these people, you know, they’ve been in their tribal land for thousands of years, and now they’re uprooted, brought to a new culture — in many cases a culture that has nothing to do with them. Our values are antithetical to a lot of things that they believe.”

See our complete archive on the West Virginia controversy by clicking here.

Donald Trump, please try to stop this now! We are about to take 1,800 failed asylum seekers that Australia has rejected

11/12/2016 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

When I wrote about this the other day, I didn’t really think our Department of State could be serious, but obviously the Obama Administration is going to shove it down our throats! How many more outrages will we see regarding refugees before January 20th when Donald Trump will be setting US immigration policy?
Watch the 2013 news about the asylum seekers, angry with Australia and the slow processing of their claims, burn down the asylum center. Link here if this doesn’t open: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoL6dASFh8M

German press (Deutsche Welle) is reporting that we are going to transform Australia’s failed asylum seekers, mostly Muslims, into legitimate refugees bound for Anytown, USA.
I would like to know, from the ‘brains’ at the US State Department, how these 1,800 boat people were vetted. And, most of all, why Australia turned them down!
Deutsche Welle:

The US has agreed to accept 1,800 refugees held at Australian-funded camps in Nauru and Papua New Guinea, according to media reports. Human rights groups have criticized the conditions in the camps. [What? And, that means because conditions are supposedly bad in an Australian camp, its inhabitants become our problem!—ed]

The Australian newspaper reported on Friday that the US and Australia were close to announcing an agreement for up to 1,800 mainly Muslim refugees from the Middle East, Africa and Asia on the island nations of Nauru and Papua New Guinea.

Prime Minster Malcolm Turnbull declined to comment on negotiations with the US. “There’s always speculation about these things” Turnbull said on Melbourne Radio. “And we never comment on them.”

[….]

An agreement struck with the administration of President Barack Obama could be opposed by his successor, Donald Trump who has called for tight restrictions on Muslim immigration into the US.

Human rights groups have condemned the conditions in the camps which they have condemned as an abrogation of Australia’s responsibilities as a signatory to the United Nations Refugee Convention. There have been street protests over the treatment of the refugees (photo).

Immigration Minister Peter Dutton said this week he was looking for countries that would accept all asylum seekers bound for Australia, including those who have had their refugee claims rejected, but who refuse to go home.

Donald Trump really can’t do anything yet, but your Washington reps can!

Call your US Senators and member of Congress!

I’ve been preaching for weeks/months that there is only one place right now (before January 20th) where you can have an impact if you choose to do the work! That is Congress. Call your representatives in Washington on Monday (they should be back to work on Tuesday, but their staffs should be working) and complain about this outrage. Use it as an example of how out of control the UN/US State Department Refugee Admissions Program is.
Tell your representatives to call the US State Department (the Asst. Secretary of State for Population, Refugees and Migration) to put a halt to this sheer insanity!
And, while you are at it, tell your members of Congress to DEFUND the RAP in the FY2017 budget that will be before them beginning on Tuesday.

Poughkeepsie: Church World Service official spins about refugee Islamic terrorists

11/12/2016 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We told you on October 28th that Church World Service is planning to bring refugees, mostly from Syria and the Middle East, to Poughkeepsie, NY, and the plans were kept secret from the city elected officials and the public in general until very recently. The arrival of the first Syrians is apparently only a month or so away.

Because most citizens don’t fully understand how costly resettlement is and they don’t know (because all mainstream media is silent) how disruptive to the social make-up of communities large numbers of refugees have been, they don’t know enough to ask enough good questions so they naturally focus first and foremost on the security issue. They want to know if Islamic terrorists could be hiding among them?
Refugee industry spokesmen are quick to make a joke, asking why would a terrorist want to go through such a lengthy process to get here, when they can simply fly in or walk across the border (a question which invariably brings laughs in the audience).
One thing we never hear about outside of certain circles is the fact that some Muslim refugee children in America have grown up to be jihadists—-dozens of them from the Somali community in Minnesota, for example, have thumbed their noses at your good will and left for battle in Africa or the Middle East. Others have tried to show their jihadist ‘skills’ here.
Read about the Poughkeepsie meeting and pay close attention to how an official of Church World Service attempts to answer security concerns.
From the Times-Herald Record:

Former refugee Erol Kekic, executive director of the Immigration and Refugee Program, told attendees that refugees are vetted vigorously, especially those from Syria.

“We have not had one single refugee commit an act of terrorism,” Kekic said to a large round of applause.

mohamed-mohamud — Mohamed Mohamud a Somali refugee who came to the US as a child is serving a 30 year sentence for planning to blow up a Christmas tree lighting ceremony in Portland, OR. https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2014/10/01/portland-or-somali-christmas-tree-bomber-to-be-sentenced-today/

Apparently no one in the audience was knowledgeable enough to ask the follow-up question:

How many refugees have been arrested and convicted of planning terrorist attacks—arrested before they could commit the act?

The answer is a larger number than we should find acceptable!
Off the top of my head: There were the Iraqis men arrested in Kentucky in 2011 who were working with Al Qaeda in Iraq (doing life in prison now). ABC News did cover this story! Indeed the whole Iraqi flow to America was disrupted for a year or so in the wake of that revelation and all Iraqis on the way in were re-screened.
Then here are some of the kids you welcomed:
There was the Somali Christmas tree bomber sentenced in 2014.
Most recently there was the Iraqi refugee who admitted to planning an ISIS bombing in Houston, here.
And, we can’t forget an ISIS sympathizer (Somali refugee) who was successful in attacking and wounding shoppers in a mall in St. Cloud, MN, here.
Although they have never admitted it (to my knowledge), I believe the Chattanooga killer’s family was a resettled refugee family, see here.
There are others, visit our crimes category here with over 2,000 refugee crimes and terror attacks/attack planning from all over the world.
I know many of you will cite the Boston Bombers. Yes, they were ‘refugees’ who entered the US with their parents who were granted political asylum (which made them refugees). Kekic would argue that they don’t count because they didn’t come through the UN/US State Department Refugee Admissions Program run by contractors like Church World Service.
Be sure to revisit my post of last week on Church World Service’s finances. Poor Mr. Kekic is not being paid very well (he doesn’t make the top employees’ list on their recent Form 990) compared to other top execs of the organization. What’s up with that, he has been around for a long time—almost 17 years according to LinkedIn.

NumbersUSA prognostication on Trump Administration immigration/refugee policies

11/10/2016 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This morning I figured I would just go back to business reporting the news from across America and across the world on what was happening with refugees and specifically refugee resettlement here and abroad. But, all the news everywhere (typical of most of the media) was about immigrants/refugees (and groups like CAIR) freaking out. In the case of one particular story from Baltimore, The Sun article caused my computer to freeze up for about a half an hour. (Don’t you just hate those sites, even Breitbart does it, where they run videos that simply pop up and stall your computer!).

ted-and-joe — Does anyone think that a law created by Senators Ted Kennedy and Joe Biden (signed by Jimmy Carter) is worth saving? Is it in the best interests of your towns and cities? No! Tweaking the numbers is not sufficient. I say blow it up and start over!

So instead of sorting through all the scare stories, I read what Roy Beck (NumbersUSA) said about Trump on immigration, but will have to beg to differ if this is really what Trump plans on refugees.
Geez, is the honeymoon over already?
And, so begins a new phase for Refugee Resettlement Watch! Will we have to be the conscience—the nag—for an administration that purports to be on our side?
And what is my side? It is my job to advocate for what I believe needs to be done, not to find the compromise!
First, let me tell you what Roy Beck says in an otherwise good piece on immigration control and the American worker.
See here on Refugees:

Trump would continue refugee resettlement at more traditional lower numbers*** than the Obama Administration has sought and would emphasize a higher priority on helping more refugees in their home regions.

During Trump’s Phoneix, AZ speech in August 2016 he advocated for creating safe zones for refugees instead of permanently resettling them in the U.S.: “For the price of resettling one refugee in the United States, 12 could be resettled in a safe zone in their home region. Which I agree with 100 percent. We have to build safe zones.”

Trump has also said he will end the practice of forcing refugee resettlement on local communities against their wishes. [Easier said then done! What? take a vote in town? See who comes out with more activists in dueling rallies in the town?—ed]

Just lower the numbers? No way!

The entire structure of the Refugee Act of 1980 is flawed and my wish is for it to be scrapped altogether. The system of sending millions (billions!) of taxpayer dollars to non-profit ‘religious’ groups to, in cahoots with the US State Department, secretly place them (chosen by the UN!) in hundreds of towns and cities in 49 states is wrong!

explosian — Time to blow it up and start all over?

Now, if Congress with the President deem it in our national interest to admit some permanent refugees, then they must repeal the original act (build a new program) or completely overhaul it. I have ideas on what could be done, if that is what the soon-to-be-powers in Washington decide to do.
But, simply reducing the numbers and restricting a few countries won’t cut it! This entire flawed system must be blown up first and I will continue to advocate for that outcome.

***If you want to talk “traditional” numbers, the refugee industry will be quick to say that the RAP (Refugee Admissions Program) admitted much higher numbers in the past, in some years twice what we bring now under Obama. So you can’t stick to the strict ‘reduce numbers’ meme with this program. And, indeed, if Trump is turned out of the White House in 4 years, then the next administration will simply up the numbers again.