Lancaster, PA where we are told that the Amish welcome one and all

10/15/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update October 16th: Today I used Lancaster as my example of what you should be doing as a first step locally if you are unhappy with the secrecy surrounding the refugee program where you live. Click here to see what you need to do! Hold your mayor’s feet to the fire!

We are told that by the big German publication, Deutsche Welle which claims Lancaster is “dubbed America’s refugee capital.”

It is probably written to make Germans concerned about the migrant invasion of their homeland feel bad by encouraging them to think everything is sweetness and light in America (well, except for Trump!).

It is the same old story line….

Welcoming people

Welcoming mayor

Refugees supposedly contributing to economy

Kind-hearted ‘Christian’ resettlement agency

Worries that the flow is slowing

Evil Donald Trump

Yawn!

But, I am posting it as background for my next post (either later today or tomorrow).

Deutsche Welle:

As the US isolates itself under President Donald Trump, one rural town in Pennsylvania keeps rooting for refugees. The Amish and Mennonite communities of Lancaster County say “refugees welcome.”

[….]

Lancaster Mayor Rick Gray explains that welcoming refugees by supporting religious freedom and tolerance “is in [Lancaster’s] genes.”

[….]

Stephanie Gromek, who works for Church World Service***, one of nine refugee resettlement agencies in the US, says that in the past year alone, the organization has resettled almost 700 refugees here. The Amish “worked so hard to keep their culture, and that’s what we hope for with our refugees,” she says. [Islamic ‘culture’ too?—-ed]

[….]

Gromek deals with cases from around the world in her work and says that in recent times there has been an influx of people from Syria, Somalia and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

[….]

But changes in US policy doesn’t bode well for the countryside community. President Trump’s push to put limits on the number of refugees admitted into the US will likely leave its mark on Lancaster, says Jonathan Charles. [Charles is just some local guy they quoted. Bet you could find a local guy with the complete opposite view—ed]

Stephani Gromek — At least Gromek is being honest! No new refugees means no federal money for her non-profit ‘Christian charity.’

“This current president is not a person we are very fond of. We haven’t had any new arrivals since [Trump] became president. And it will take a few years to see how much it impacts us. But I’m sure that it will.”

Fewer than half as many refugee resettlements are expected this year as compared to last year, says Stephanie Gromek. Still, she remains optimistic: “If we don’t get any refugee arrivals, our organization doesn’t get funding. However, the reasons for what the administration is trying to do are not holding. There’s no weight, no justification for what Trump is trying to do.”

Mayor Gray, however, is worried there might be more at stake and is paying attention to what the migrant community has to say about the political developments in the US. “Some refugees I spoke to are now afraid of what’s going on a national level. They say they’ve seen this kind of thing happening before in their own countries.

“I really hope they’re wrong.”

More here.

See my archive on Lancaster. There are a lot of posts there. Don’t miss the one where I attended an Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) meeting in Lancaster a few years ago and first learned that the feds were referring to communities (where citizens were asking questions) as ‘Pockets of Resistance.’ They reported happily that Lancaster and PA generally had no such resisters.

*** Church World Service is the federal government contractor whose subcontractor, Virginia Council of Churches, sent the first refugees to the county where I live in Maryland beginning in about 2006. We were told we were getting spillover from Lancaster of Meskhetian Turks (Sunni Muslims) because there had been some problem in Lancaster. (We never learned what that was, but we heard that from our sheriff at the time.)

You can learn more about CWS’s finances here.

They are 71% funded by the US taxpayer. So much for Christian charity!

Guest column: Unlikely that today’s refugees will be like yesterday’s self-reliant immigrants to America

10/15/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Reader Bob Enos sent us his thoughts after reading Ms. Wolfe’s paean (in Foreign Policy) to grandpa (in which the author takes the opportunity to, like all good Leftists, use hot button words to describe RRW). See my post here with a link to “journalist” Lauren Wolfe’s opposition to the idea of “assimilation.” (You may be able to get the Foreign Policy article the first time without registering.)

Enos tells us this:

The article penned by Ms. Lauren Wolf – a New York liberal presumably of Russian Ashkenazi Jewish extraction – for Foreign Policy magazine was yet another piece of revisionist history designed to obscure a 27 year-old change to immigration policy that the American public neither understood nor asked for.

In her fantasy depicting Russian Jewish immigrants as ethnic culturists fiercely holding on to cultural identity in contrast to the American “melting pot,” she conveniently omits the major difference between then and now: the concept of the “public charge.” Her ancestors entered the United States, as did mine, with three pre-conditions in place. One, they were represented by American citizens acting as sponsors – often a rabbi or parish priest. Two, private, unsubsidized housing had been arranged ahead of time. Three, the new immigrants had jobs arranged for them ahead of time. The concept was a simple one: entrance to the United States is a privilege, not a right. Freedom of opportunity provides the means to support oneself, to “sing for your supper,” and to pose no burden to your new home country.

Screenshot (981).png — In 2015, Enos spoke about refugees. Last time I checked this video had over 61,000 views. Read about it and watch it here: https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2015/07/14/minnesota-concerned-citizen-speaks-to-county-government-leaders-about-refugee-resettlement/

The Immigration Act of 1980 abandoned the 100+ year-old standard of the public charge – at least for refugees.

This is the story of my paternal grandparents, Manuel and Maria Ignacia, from the island of St. Michael, in the remote chain of archipelago islands called the Azores, 1,000 miles off the coasts of both Europe and America in the North Atlantic Ocean. The Portuguese language was spoken in the home. My grandfather worked full-time in the Glenwood Stove factory, and part-time for a local Jewish merchant and landlord, Mr. Steinberg, who rented apartment and sold home furnishings to “green horns” fresh off the boat. My grandparents were Roman Catholic, but Mr. Steinberg’s religion meant nothing to my grandparents. “Mr. Steinberg is like a god to us!”, my grandmother exclaimed, more than once.

Once my grandparents learned the ropes from Mr. Steinberg, they began investing their savings in their own tenement houses and became landlords. During World War II, they bought a meat market, selling what my “vo-vo” (Nana) called “midnight meat” – black-market meat sold out the back door, in the middle of the night, to circumvent rationing restrictions during the war. I’d often thought that, had my grandmother been born in the US about 50 years later, she would have been running General Motors.

Now, to the assimilation part of the story. As in many Portuguese homes in the area, there were four portraits adorning the living room walls. First, a portrait of Jesus Christ. Second, the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church. The church is at the center of family life in traditional Portuguese households. Third, a picture of Cardinal Umberto Medieros, the Archbishop of the Boston Diocese, the first Archbishop of an American Catholic diocese of Portuguese extraction. And last, a portrait of President John F. Kennedy.

One running quip was that Portuguese men preferred smoking Winston cigarettes and drinking Carling-Black Label beer, because the packaging contained the colors of the American flag.

Once, as a teenager, I asked vo-vo if she and voo-voo (grandpa) ever thought about returning home for a visit. She laughed at me; “Ai, cuzao (don’t ask)! Go where? Sao Miguel? Whadda you talkin’ about? I know what it looks like! THIS is our home!”

Enough said.

My grandparents never became citizens. I don’t know why. They were proud of the United States and grateful to be here. It could be that, Portugal having been ruled by a repressive military dictatorship for many years, my grandparents simply distrusted government. They never had a bank account. My grandmother accepted public assistance only once. A bureaucrat from city hall called her at home. Vo-vo was a widow by now. Vo-vo was asked if she would like 100 gallons of home heating oil for free. “Sure,” she replied. When my parents learned of this, they were mortified. They asked her, “why did you take that?” She laughed, “I didn’t ask for nothing. I didn’t call them, they called me!” Of city hall, she said they were idiots.

Both of my grandparents died in nursing homes, one at a time. They financed their nursing home stays with their own money. They came to the US with no money. They died in the US with no money. They left no money to bequeath; only mementos of sentimental value and memories. What they did leave, the really important stuff: opportunities for their progeny to thrive in the greatest land of opportunity the world has ever known.

Our family has been, and continues to be, grateful for the opportunities this wonderful social experiment called the United States has provided us. Today, my grandparents have one grandchild who is a retired Wall Street executive, one grandchild who is chief financial officer and treasurer for one of the most important technology companies in America, and a great-grandchild who graduated with honors from Yale University, and is an associate at the investment bank Goldman Sachs.

This story, my friends, is one that, sadly, is largely lost on the current crop of refugees, in my opinion.

And for those of my fellow Americans who insist that the current crop of refugees will blend in and thrive, no different than previous immigrant waves, I refer you to the caveat of every legitimate stock broker and investment advisor: “past performance is no guarantee of future returns.”

This post is filed in my Comments worth noting/guest posts category.

See another guest column by Mr. Enos about the issue of refugees and the public charge, here.

A refugee designation is the most desired form of entry to the US for wannabe immigrants because it is the only category where the immigrant is legally (there may be migrants receiving illegally) allowed to receive welfare within weeks of arrival. In fact, the major job of the resettlement contractors is to get their assigned refugees enrolled at local welfare offices ASAP.

Comment worth noting from St. Cloud, MN

10/14/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Editor: From time to time I post comments more prominently that I think are important but would get little notice otherwise. This is a comment I received about my post two days ago, here.

Update October 19th: Don’t miss all the breaking news on St. Cloud today, here.

From St. Cloud Guy:

I have lived in St Cloud for a long time and I can’t believe how fast the city is going down. The housing market in St. Cloud is falling way behind all the surrounding cities because of the excessive refugee population. Also the schools have become some of the worst ones in the entire state of Minnesota. The Star Tribune estimated over 30% of St Cloud Apollo High School is Somalian now and the other high school St. Cloud Tech has a larger refugee population in its area. They have only been coming to St. Cloud in large numbers the last decade and a half. What will happen in another 10 years? Plus all the extra kids they have? 80%?

St_Cloud_Somalis

It’s very upsetting and frustrating that St. Cloud was a nice normal town that we could raise families here and go to decent schools. Now that is all gone and we have to take huge losses to sell our houses to get out of here. I really wish we would have a say in this since tax money is used for it. We almost have to move out of state, because any decent size city in Minnesota has or is starting to have problems with excessive refugees and poverty.

I don’t care if people want to migrate here but we need to stop paying for it with our tax money and let them get over here on their own and take care of themselves. That’s what all our ancestors did and that’s what made America so strong. At least that way the people that do migrate here on their own will be hard working and motivated to live the American dream not just sit at home collecting welfare checks and having babies.

See more comments worth noting and guest posts, here.

All nine federal resettlement contractors support Oct. 18th #NoMuslimBanEver rally

10/13/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

That is a rally partially sponsored by the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) to be held in Washington, DC this coming week. (As of this writing they have 847 confirmed planning to attend, here.)

I told you about it here when the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society was pushing its groupies to attend.

Curious about whether the other eight federal refugee contractors (some receiving nearly all of their funding from the US Treasury)*** were involved, I asked in that post if anyone knew.

I got my answer just now at twitter when the lobbying arm of the refugee industry (Refugee Council USA) put out this message:

Screenshot (969)

So who are the members of the refugee lobbying consortium. Here they are:

Screenshot (970)

Screenshot (971)

Screenshot (972)

***Check out those logos, below are the nine contractors. Where is Congress? Shouldn’t there be a law that if you take most of your funding from taxpayers, you shouldn’t be marching in the streets against the President and us!

Think about it! All nine contractors (the Catholic church included!) are telling their people to march against the President and for CAIR!

Why don’t they just take good care of the refugees they are being paid to care for!

LOL! I’m on a roll today, energized by Ms. Wolfe!

JW: US Dept. of State says they have NO records on refugee travel loans/repayment (really?)

10/13/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

From time to time over the years we have mentioned that refugees are required to repay their airfare loans they receive from you, the US taxpayer.

Citizen watchdog, Judicial Watch, reported yesterday that they asked, through the Freedom of Information Act, for records on those loans. No information was received and JW sued. Now in response to legal filings, the DOS (Trump’s State Department!) says they have no records!

How could that be! We know that the resettlement contractors are tasked with sending the dunning notices to impoverished refugees and that the contractors—including those kind souls at the US Conference of Catholic Bishops—keep 25% of what they collect for themselves. So someone must be keeping records!

I’m guessing the mystery relates to the fact that the public (if fully informed) would react negatively to finding that the repayment rate is pretty low and that the contractors*** put a quarter of anything repaid in their pockets (so they can teach ‘new Americans’ all about debt!).

Judicial_Watch_Logo

(First Judicial Watch, then see below, what a coincidence to see a sob story on airfare loans at NorthJersey.com just yesterday as well.)

Here is JW:

In response to a Judicial Watch lawsuit, the State Department claims in a legal document that it has no records involving refugee travel loans that the agency gives foreigners overseas to buy plane tickets to fly to the United States. The program is operated by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), an intergovernmental group that assists refugees worldwide with hundreds of millions of dollars from Uncle Sam. The money is channeled through the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM). In fiscal year 2016 the State Department gave IOM $477,257,564, according to the agency’s report on contributions to international organizations. That doesn’t even include millions more that the State Department gives the IOM for special refugee resettlement “platforms” that pop up throughout the year. [IOM is now part of the United Nations—ed]

[….]

In a federal court document responding to Judicial Watch’s lawsuit, the State Department writes that its “search did not retrieve any records reflecting the number of refugee travel loans furnished per year using U.S. Government funds, the number of such travel loans defaulted on annually, nor the amount of money written off per defaulted loan.” In a footnote the agency writes that it did retrieve some records reflecting IOM’s “general reporting” on refugee travel loans, but none of it contained the “specific information sought” by Judicial Watch. This is outrageous because it suggests that the State Department can’t account for money American taxpayers are lending to foreigners to fly here to declare themselves refugees. A source with inside knowledge of the matter confirmed to Judicial Watch that the records exist and years ago a State Department insider provided figures that show only about half of the travel loans have been repaid since the program was launched in the 1950s, representing a loss of hundreds of millions of dollars to American taxpayers. Judicial Watch viewed the records, which span from 1952 to 2002 and reveal that the IOM issued $1,020,803,910 in “transportation” loans and recovered only $584, 219,453.

Continue reading here at JW’s “Corruption Chronicles.”

Now check this out! Coincidence? Just yesterday (JW’s news was yesterday) NorthJersey.com reports on poor Syrian refugees who can’t repay those loans!

Clearly this is a State Department program, so how can they possibly say they don’t keep records. In fact, how do the contractors get their 25% cut if no one is keeping records?

WE have to teach these refugees about borrowing money so that will help them be better Americans say contractors!

Headline and story at NorthJersey.com:

For refugees, escape to U.S. comes with a cost

The travel loan program is supposed to help families build a positive credit history in the United States, advocates say. But families like the Al Samakehs worry that the reverse will be true and that they’ll be saddled with debt and a bad credit rating.

The State Department established the travel loan program after the passage of the Refugee Act of 1980, setting up a revolving fund for the continued support of refugees. Before they travel, refugees agree to repay the interest-free loans for travel costs within four years, including a six-month grace period.

The agencies that resettle and help refugees in their new lives also oversee repayment, collecting a 25 percent commission.

Erol Kekik 2 — It helps refugees build good credit. Most pay the loan back. How do we know, if there are no records?

Sean Piazza, a spokesman for U.S. Programs at International Rescue Committee, one of the resettlement agencies, said the arrangement teaches refugee families financial literacy and helps them build a credit history. That, he said, “can later help realize huge steps in a family or individual’s self-sufficiency, including automobile or home ownership.”

Erol Kekic, executive director of the Immigration and Refugee Program of Church World Service, said the travel loan program is controversial, but that building good credit could help refugees. He also said that clients get financial counseling and that most pay back loans on time.

“They go into it knowingly and they try to honor their responsibility,” he said.

So, the State Department had records in 2015!

Nationally, around 70 percent of loan balances are repaid within five years and 78 percent are repaid within 10 years, the State Department reported in 2015. The average loan amount is $1,200 per person.

screenshot-671 — This is from the annual report of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops Migration Fund in 2014 showing clearly the travel loan collection fee of over $3 million. More recent financial docs show a similar pot of money. So, if the DOS has no records on travel loans, how do the Bishops determine their income from collecting loans (from getting the money out of the impoverished refugees they “serve.”)

Still, some critics say the agencies’ [the volags, the contractors—ed] role poses a conflict of interest. Steven Sacco, an immigration attorney at a New York City nonprofit legal organization, said a debate about the loan program had been stifled because the agencies that are primary advocates for refugees also make money from the program.

“They’re trying to support themselves and their mission, but because they are short on cash they guard their income sources,” Sacco said. “It’s a conflict of interest because it’s a burden on the people they serve.”

Sacco argued that the loan program should be illegal because it amounts to a tax on refugees.

More here.

This is one more reason that Congress should be investigating the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program.

*** Here are the contractors who monopolize all refugee resettlement in America. Six consider themselves ‘religious charities.’

By the way, back in 2007 when resettlement contractor Church World Service came to the county where I live, one of the first revelations to me came when an English language instructor told me about some poor refugee who didn’t speak English coming to her to ask about a letter he didn’t understand—it was his letter from the contractor to begin repaying his airfare loan through them. It came as an unhappy surprise to him.