BT! Church World Service working hard to get Syrian Muslims placed in Lancaster, PA

01/02/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

BT=Before Trump
This is the first of two posts (second one is here) on Lancaster, PA this morning. I’ve been interested in Lancaster ever since that city’s refugee program was linked to Church World Service’s (CWS) placement of refugees in my county seat. Those were mostly Meshketian (Russian Turkish Muslims) back in 2007.
Five years later, I traveled to Lancaster to a meeting of the refugee industry there—the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement was meeting with refugee contractors and advocates in 2013. A federal ORR employee shocked me by referring to any of the communities questioning the program as “pockets of resistance.” He was happy to tell the gathering that Pennsylvania was ‘welcoming’ and didn’t have any PORs.

cws-mccullough-arrest — Church World Service does not just resettle refugees, but they advocate for illegal aliens as well. CWS CEO Rev. John McCullough being arrested in Washington, DC protesting in support of Obama’s executive amnesty. Photo and story here: http://njfon.org/2015/04/08/faith-groups-challenge-fifth-circuit-court-on-presidents-immigration-actions/ McCullough pulls down an annual salary of over $300,000 a year from his CWS work and from “related organizations.” Page 13- 14 http://www.guidestar.org/FinDocuments/2015/134/080/2015-134080201-0c44e710-9.pdf

If you would like to get some background on Lancaster before reading this below, click here for our Lancaster archive.
This is the news that appeared in the New York Times and reposted here in Vermont newspaper. Church World Service (with the NYT) is trying so hard to make everything look so perfect in Lancaster. But, it isn’t and you will see what I mean in my next post.

Their [Syrian family—ed] imminent arrival explains all the commotion inside this slate-colored house in the small city of Lancaster, in south-central Pennsylvania. The state may have gone to Donald Trump, who likened the Syrian resettlement program to a “a great Trojan horse” for terrorists. But he isn’t president yet.

[….]

He [Josh, CWS’s 26 year old housing guy—ed] scours a government checklist of housing requirements for a resettlement [Contractors sign contracts to provide essential items for the refugees’ new home—ed], mindful that whatever he spends is deducted from a refugee’s one-time government grant of no more than $1,125. A family’s combined grants must cover its rent and other expenses until the nonprofit has helped the adults acquire Social Security numbers and jobs.

I want you to know (and the NYT doesn’t) that it is $1,125 per family member, so the Syrian family of 6 being discussed here will get $6,750 (plus welfare) and that CWS will get another approximately $6,750 as their share (of your tax dollars) to resettle this family (for their salaries and overhead).

Such encounters [Josh meets a refugee at Walmart***] happen often in Lancaster, whose rich history of acceptance is rooted, in part, in the influence of the Mennonites, Amish and other faiths. A glimpse of the local worldview came in January when a supportive rally of more than 200 people drowned out a much smaller anti-immigrant protest outside the Church World Service office in Lancaster. [See our report on the resistors rally, here.]

Sheila Mastropietro, the group’s longtime supervisor in Lancaster, took heart in the moment. It reflected a communal understanding of both the global refugee crisis and the rigorous screening process that refugees undergo before coming to the United States. [The communal understanding is wearing thin as you will see in my next post.—ed]

The big question for the resettlement contractors is: What will Trump do and when will he do it?

Still, given a president-elect who seems averse to the country’s modest commitment to refugee relocation, Mastropietro says, “We don’t know what to expect.”

[….]

Last fiscal year, the Lancaster office of the Church World Service helped to resettle 407 of the 85,000 refugees admitted to this country; this fiscal year, its target is 550 of a hoped-for 110,000.

“We are acting as if the numbers are going to be the same — until we hear something different,” she says.

Lancaster a happy “medley of cultures” (then why did Lancaster County go 57% for Trump):

Decades of resettlement work have transformed the Lancaster area into a medley of cultures so rich that Amer Alfayadh, 34, a senior case manager, struggles to name them all: “Syrians, Iraqis, Somalis, Congolese, Ukrainians, Belorussians, people from Kazakhstan. Then, of course, Lebanese, Palestinians. Bhutanese, Nepalese, Burmese, Sri Lankans …”

***I would love to know what the deal is with Walmart. Wherever I traveled on my middle America tour this past summer, I heard that Walmart was a gathering place for Muslim refugees. Is Walmart giving them gift cards or other goodies? Does anyone know?

Texas Rep. Brian Babin calls on President-elect Donald Trump to honor his promises to pause refugee resettlement

12/29/2016 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

You must watch Rep. Brian Babin of Texas skillfully deflect Fox News’ Ed Henry’s efforts to sucker him into some Christmas season mumbo jumbo about separating out and helping the good refugees coming in from the Syrian conflict.
After you watch, send this video far and wide! (It only had 24 views early this morning).
Henry is sitting in for Tucker Carlson. It is too bad Carlson himself wasn’t there for this interview, because of anyone on Fox, Tucker ‘gets it’ about Muslim migration to Europe and to America.
Pay special attention around the 2:00 minute mark where Henry begins with something like: ‘you do want to help’ (something like that). Watch Henry’s face! And, don’t miss Rep. Babin calling on Donald Trump to “honor his promises!” (watch beginning around 3:45 for that comment).
(If the youtube video below doesn’t play for you, you can find it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHQw16iSc1M )

Stop Obama’s Trojan Horse!

See our Rep. Brian Babin archive by clicking here. The bill Babin mentions in the interview is one that Speaker Paul Ryan and the Republican leadership never allowed to come up for a vote. It effectively died with this past Congress. New bills will be submitted beginning in January.

Nearly 100,000 Bhutanese refugees later we help UN clean out camps in Nepal

12/28/2016 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Lesson! When the Department of State welcomes an ethnic group to America expect the resettlement to be larger and longer than they initially said it would be.

We have followed the process of cleaning out UNHCR camps in Nepal of Bhutanese refugees ever since the Bush Administration said: ‘come on in’ we well take 60,000. This resettlement was planned to last for five years (as we now approach ten!). I suspect it was UNHCR Antonio Guterres (now Secretary General of the UN) who talked the Bush State Department in to this!
***Update*** More news here: UN says the movement of over 100,000 third worlders to first world countries was a great success.
The so-called “Bhutanese” are people of Nepali ethnicity that were pushed out of Bhutan when the Bhutanese government basically said, we want Bhutan for Bhutanese and you Nepali people who have moved in here for decades need to leave. To learn more about what happened, check out wikipedia, here.
bhutan-map
When we began posting on this group of mostly Hindu people back in 2007, most did not want to be resettled anywhere but back in Bhutan. And, obviously Nepal wasn’t welcoming their kinsmen home.

So, how did this become our problem?

Why did the US decide to resettle tens of thousands and scatter them around America? Frankly, with our economic muscle certainly we could have prevailed on either Bhutan or Nepal to work this out! Or, did we simply acquiesce to pressure from the United Nations? And, was the refugee industry looking for more paying clients and big business looking for cheap labor?
So here we are almost ten years in. We said we would resettle 60,000 and so I checked Wrapsnet.org (2007 to December 15, 2016) to see exactly how many we have taken since 2007. The answer is 91,713! But according to this article in the Katmandu Post we will be closing the program in 2017 (I guess to make more room for the Muslim Syrians, Iraqis and Somalis).
For ambitious readers, visit our archive on the Bhutanese by clicking here. Some have done well in America, but for years they had an extremely high suicide rate that worried the resettlement industry. One of many morals to this story is that when the US State Department gives you a number that will be resettled, expect the resettlement to be much larger and much longer than they said it would be!

Many forced to choose resettlement against their will!

Here is the story from before Christmas from the Katmandu Post (notice that many are still holding out hope that they will go home to Bhutan):

Dec 15, 2016- More than 100,000 Bhutanese refugees have been resettled in various countries under the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugee (UNHCR) third country resettlement programme. But some the remaining refugees in eastern Tarai are still putting their feet down for repatriation.

Around 2,000 of the remaining 11,000 refugees, put up at various camps in Jhapa and Morang, are refusing the third country resettlement and willing to return their own homeland in Bhutan, according to a source at the UNHCR. The repatriation campaign has come closer to end after the UN body’s resettlement programme. The repatriation campaign has been weakened as the leaders spearheading repatriation themselves opted for third country resettlement. And the majority of the remaining refugees are also in resettlement process, giving up hope of repatriation.

Bhampa Rai, Balaram Poudel, among other refugee leaders, are still campaigning for repatriation, though. They blamed the government of Nepal for its failure to take any initiatives for their cause. “Nepal could neither convince Bhutan to take back refugees nor pressure the international community over the issue,” said Rai, claiming that hundreds of refugees had been forced to choose third country resettlement against their will.

[….]

According to the UNHCR, 107,000 refugees are already resettled in various host countries, including the US, Australia and Canada. Another batch of around 9,000 refugees are in the process of resettlement, officials at the UNHCR said.

The UNHCR’s third country resettlement programme will come to an end in 2017.

So where are they in America? (Or, at least where were they originally resettled). Map is from Wrapsnet.org.

screenshot-104 — States cut off in my screenshot are Hawaii (0), Alaska (148) and Florida (671)

Here are the top ten states where the Bhutanese were resettled:

screenshot-103 — Inds stands for Individuals.

One of the things I’ve always wondered about is this: The UN was so anxious to close these camps (to deny these people a ‘right of return’) while they never had any interest in resettling the Palestinians around the Arab world, but has kept the Palestinian camps (really cities) open for over 60 years. I’m actually not wondering. I really do know the answer! It was (and is) to keep a thorn in Israel’s side.

New Mexico: Lutheran resettlement contractor puts brakes on new Sante Fe refugee program

12/23/2016 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

With Trump win, Santa Fe’s refugee program on hold

(Albuquerque Journal headline)

Hurrah! We found another*** of the supposedly 47 sites the Obama Administration has (secretly!) approved or was working on approving for the massive numbers of refugees they expected to resettle had Hillary won the election rather than Donald Trump.
Here is the sad tale from Sante Fe (a city yearning for more diversity). After an initial heartwarming intro:

In less than a year – and largely through the efforts of Santa Fe’s faith communities – what snowballed into a group calling themselves Welcoming Santa Fe were able to get the city designated a refugee resettlement site by the U.S. State Department.

“We were elated,” Dickenson [Nancy a Sante Fe filmmaker who spear-headed the effort] said.

NEW YORK, NY - DECEMBER 08: Santa Fe, New Mexico Mayor Javier Gonzales attends a press conference after attending New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio's Mayor's summit on immigration reform on December 8, 2014 in New York City. The summit focused on how cities can best utilize President Obama's executive action on immigration reform. (Photo by Andrew Burton/Getty Images) — Sante Fe Mayor Javier Gonzales wanted more diversity for Sante Fe. He was one of 18 mayors who demanded Syrian refugees for their cities in 2015. See here: https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2015/10/14/act-for-america-launches-citizen-action-campaign-urging-18-mayors-to-re-think-their-demand-for-more-syrian-refugees/

But that was in October. Weeks later, on Nov. 8, Donald Trump won the presidential election. He campaigned on a strict immigration policy that included building a wall on the southern border to stop illegal immigration. He also proposed a temporary ban on allowing Muslims into the country, a message he repeated Wednesday in response to this week’s terrorist attack in Berlin that was allegedly perpetrated by a Tunisian asylum-seeker.

No one knows what a Trump presidency will mean for immigration policy. And that’s what caused Lutheran Family Services, an affiliate of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service – one of nine national organizations that work on behalf of the U.S. government to resettle refugees in different parts of the country – to put on hold using Santa Fe as a refugee settlement site.

One hundred refugees, including up to 20 families and 30 children mainly from Central Africa but also from the Middle East and South America, were scheduled to make Santa Fe their new home next month. The startup of a refugee resettlement program was mentioned at a recent meeting of the city Immigration Committee and notice had been issued for a fundraising concert.

Money is the main reason it is on hold!

Burnett [Tarrie Burnett, program director for Lutheran Family Services in Albuquerque] said future funding is also a major concern. Trump has talked about scaling back the nation’s admissions program for refugees, defined by the State Department as people who face persecution in their native lands.

[….]

Burnett said her office operates on a budget of about $1 million, about 75 percent of it coming from the federal government. The rest comes from various grants, pass-through funding, donations and other sources.

Much more here at the Albuquerque Journal.
Bottomline! Resettlement subcontractors like Lutheran Family Services (LIRS is the major resettlement contractor) are not going out on a limb now to open offices, pay rent, and hire staff when Donald Trump could drastically cut the number of refugees arriving beginning on January 21st.

The contractor’s initial federal funding is paid out by the number of ‘clients’ they place. It is a per head payment!

*** We can now add Sante Fe to our list!

Below are new sites we have identified so far of the supposed 47 the Obama Administration is (or has been) trying to get established.

One of the first things the Trump Administration must do is to make all of this information public information. Here are some of the sites we have identified so far by just keeping an eye on local news reports:

Asheville, NC (not decided yet)

Rutland, VT (approved, waiting)

Reno, NV (open)

Ithaca, NY

Missoula, MT (open)

Aberdeen, SD (not now)

Charleston, WV (approved, see Senator Capito as the Frau Merkel of WV!)

Fayetteville, AR

Blacksburg, VA

Pittsfield, MA

Northhampton, MA

Flint, MI

Bloomington, IN (dead for now)

Traverse City, MI

Poughkeepsie, NY

Wilmington, DE

Hudson, WI (dead for now?)

Watertown, NY (maybe)

Youngstown, OH (maybe)

Storm Lake, Iowa

Sante Fe, NM (approved but on hold)

Obama State Department approves 100 Syrian Muslims for West Virginia state capitol

12/22/2016 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Where were you WV Republican Senator Shelley Moore Capito and Republican Rep. Alex Mooney? Only two choices!—either asleep-at-the-switch or in support of this move by a local ‘interfaith’ group to be named a federal subcontracting agency for the purpose of beginning a new refugee resettlement site in the state. (Charleston previously received a few refugees through Catholic Charities, but no where near this scale).
If Capito and Mooney had put up significant opposition, we would have heard about it and this decision might have turned out differently.
Does Obama think he can stick it to West Virginia (Trump territory) voters in his final weeks in office? And, where is Joe [Manchin]? He must be all for it too!

Just this morning we reported that in Wisconsin, Republican Rep. Sean Duffy sent a strongly worded letter about plans to begin placing Syrians in his district and here a few days ago we learned that the plan for Bloomington, Indiana was shelved because opposition had grown there and because it is expected that Trump will make some move after January 20th to slow (or stop) the flow of refugees to America (money for resettlement is drying up as well).
So why go ahead with this new site at the West Virginia state capitol?
For new readers we have followed the growing controversy in Charleston extensively for months, see here.
From the West Virginia Gazette-Mail (emphasis is mine):

The U.S. Department of State has approved an application to establish a refugee resettlement program in Charleston, officials announced Wednesday. But that decision could be reversed by the incoming administration, according to an expert on refugee resettlement law.

The West Virginia Interfaith Refugee Ministry, which also is the name local organizers have been informally using to describe their humanitarian effort, will begin as a program of the Episcopal Diocese of West Virginia.

In a statement issued Wednesday, the Rev. Canon E. Mark Stevenson, director at Episcopal Migration Ministries, announced that the West Virginia Interfaith Refugee Ministry had been approved to join its network of 30 refugee resettlement sites throughout the country.

[….]

In October, they submitted an application for a resettlement agency to place 100 refugees in Charleston in the first year.

David Ramkey, chief financial officer for the Episcopal Diocese of West Virginia, said the refugees should be a “welcome addition” and “very productive part” of the community.

[….]

Neil Grungras, executive director of the nonprofit Organization for Refuge, Asylum and Migration, said the Donald Trump administration could reverse the decision.

“The State Department is never obligated to allow even an approved refugee into the U.S.,” Grungras said. “The answer, with regard to the 100 approved, is that it probably depends where they are in their processing. [I will bet a buck that the Obama Administration is packing as many as they can into that pipeline right now!—ed]

[….]

Lynn Clarke, a local organizer, said the group had been told that, if they were approved, the refugees would likely begin arriving this summer. She said the group anticipates refugees fleeing from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq, but she said they also could be from other countries. –

As I said in a previous post, I don’t know why this ‘interfaith’ group was so hot for Syrian Muslims (apparently Iraqis and Afghans too), they usually don’t get to pick their favorite ethnic groups, but actually get a little bit of everything.