Category: The Opposition

Is Minnesota's welcome mat still out for refugees?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

That is the question that the Twin Cities Pioneer Press seeks to answer in a longish article published yesterday.
(Was it ever really out, or were Minnesotans kept in the dark and never asked?)
Employing a technique we have become accustomed to seeing, reporter Bob Shaw uses a family as his ‘poster family’ that seems to be the kind of people America can absorb—hardworking, speak English, grateful—so as to get your sympathy juices flowing.  But otherwise, I think it is was a pretty balanced and generally factual piece.
It’s long and chock-full of information.  Here are some snips that interested me and I wanted to comment on (emphasis is mine):

Minnesota has the highest number of refugees per capita nationwide, according to the U.S. Census and refugee-support agencies. With 2 percent of the nation’s population, Minnesota has 13 percent of its refugees.

[….]

The cutback in the refugee inflow has shaken Minnesota’s network of sponsoring agencies.  [I don’t believe we are told in this article that the “sponsoring agencies” are handsomely paid for their ‘charitable works.’—-ed]

Kim Crockett
Kim Crockett (Center of the American Experiment) said residents often don’t speak out or even ask questions of the process for fear of being called racists.   https://www.americanexperiment.org/about/kim-crockett/

They say the more refugees, the better. They argue that refugees boost the economy, diversify our state and eventually pay back the costs of their resettlement.

Yet, refugees cost an estimated $107,000 each in food aid, medical expenses and other services, according to one researcher. Communities have no control over the in-flow of refugees, yet they must share the cost of supporting them. And, according to Kim Crockett, vice president of the Center of the American Experiment, a conservative think tank based in Golden Valley.

“No one ever asks taxpayers: ‘Do you want to support this?’ ” she said. “When we question this, we are told that is mean-spirited, bigoted and xenophobic.”

Refugee advocates made a huge mistake!

I’ve been giving this above a lot of thought lately and have concluded that the refugee industry made a huge blunder years ago in its treatment of local citizens.  Of course the refugee advocates and contractors*** thought they could go on forever keeping information secret from the local people and now once the locals see that they have been kept in the dark and are reacting, the only thing left for the industry is to pull out the “racist” label, thus making locals even angrier.
Pioneer Press continues with more on that Notre Dame study which doesn’t seem to me supports the idea that more refugees are good for Minnesota. Twenty years! It is going to take twenty years for taxpayers to be repaid for their generosity!

Refugees are free to apply for taxpayer-funded government aid, like any other residents. Nonprofit groups often help them apply.

A 2017 Notre Dame study on the economic outlook of refugees said that after 20 years, refugees are more likely than native-born residents to be receiving welfare and food-support payments — and they are also more likely to be employed.

What does that tell you? Employed at what? Obviously work (like meatpacking in MN!) that doesn’t pay enough to allow them to get off of welfare!
Crockett thinks that initial outlay is too high as well and points out that although this is a federal program, the feds have dumped huge costs on the taxpayers of Minnesota:

The refugee resettlement program is a federal effort, but the federal government “does not compensate Minnesota, or the local school districts, cities or counties, who may find themselves coping with large concentrations of refugees,” Crockett says. So when many refugees end up enrolled in Medicaid or assistance programs such as those for housing or transportation or language study, Minnesotans absorb the extra costs.

This next bit is always said in understanding tones—refugees want to live with their own kind of people, near their own cultural and ethnic kindred spirits and relatives. 

Little Mogadishu
The Star Tribune posted a glowing account of life in Little Mogadishu (Minneapolis) last year.  Can you ever imagine such a story about a neighborhood that was proud of (and attempted to retain) its Christian English roots.  Why aren’t there calls (using words like racist and xenophobic) for Somalis to “welcome” diversity to their neighborhoods?   http://www.startribune.com/inside-little-mogadishu-no-one-is-an-outcast/414876214/

But, here is what I want to know—-why is that same understanding not given to people with European roots? Why are we told we aren’t permitted to seek out our kind of people, but it is so acceptable for say Somalis (and other refugee groups) to develop enclaves?  

Why isn’t that Somali, who wants to live with his kind, never called a racist?

The state doesn’t keep track of refugees who arrive in the U.S. and then move to Minnesota. But the federal government does.

Minnesota accepted 4,523 refugees in the two-year period ending Sept. 30, 2015, according to the federal Office of Refugee Settlement. But at the same time, a second wave arrived — 3,864 refugees who moved from other states to Minnesota.

Minnesota’s secondary migration was larger than all other states combined. Second-place Iowa had 442 refugees moving from other states. [The story doesn’t tell you that most of the secondary migrants are Somalis and a few other African ethnic groups.—ed]

In other words, as soon as they have a choice of where to live, many refugees choose Minnesota.

“Minnesota has been a magnet,” said Bob Oehrig, director of Arrive Ministries in Richfield, an agency that handles refugees. He said Minnesota has what refugees want — jobs, good social welfare programs, and plenty of people from their home country [Somalia!—-ed].

There is much more here for you to chew on!

Strategic error!

***These (below) are the nine major federal contractors making decisions about who comes to your towns and cities. They are paid by the head to place refugees and are now in budgetary panic-mode as the Trump Administration slows the flow to America.
At some point in the last three decades they made a strategic (fatal?) error when they chose to act in secrecy and treat local communities and citizens with disdain and vilification instead of trying to be honest and understanding of concerns people have for their security, their culture and their wallets.  As a result the backlash against them is real and growing!

Media Research Center Prez: "Shadow-banning most sinister threat to free speech in history"

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

It is bad, but I’m not sure it is the worst threat to free speech.  In fact, if you aren’t a Twitter user you might not know what all the fuss is about.
If anyone asked me, I would say the worst threat is the kind of silencing that people like South Dakota’s Taneeza Islam use when they bully venues to shut down speaking events she and her ilk disapprove of by frightening owners/managers in to cancelling events. And, often frighten speakers in to silence.
That kind of intimidation is mean and personal and causes people to fear for their safety.
In America we have a right to speak and we have a right to gather!

bozell
Brent Bozell sent a letter to Twitter’s CEO demanding he address censorship by the social media platform.    https://www.cnsnews.com/blog/craig-bannister/bozell-letter-calls-twitter-ceo-condemn-address-shadow-banning-censorship

That said, let’s talk more about the stunning revelations this week from James O’Keefe who got the dirt on Twitter and shadow-banning—a less personal, but nonetheless serious threat to free speech.
And, it isn’t just about Twitter! Shadow-banning can be used in all sorts of situations where social media is taking the pulse of citizens’ views, as we mentioned when we talked about shadow-banning possibly being used by the Heritage Foundation, here.
Breitbart (Twitter Censorship!) has a good explanation here, but simply put this is how it works:

You post a comment, or tweet something, and you can see on your computer screen that the comment posted and you think your remark is being seen by the world, but no one else sees it but you!  

As Breitbart  says, the very best, most skillful, shadow-banning is when you are never the wiser about the fact that you are speaking to an audience of one!
Here is CNS News on Brent Bozell’s comments on O’Keefe’s latest :

Twitter’s practice of “shadow banning” conservative posts, exposed Thursday in a new James O’Keefe undercover video, constitutes “the most sinister threat to free speech in history,” Media Research President Brent Bozell warns in a statement reacting to the news.

The Project Veritas video, featuring current and former Twitter employees describing the social media giant’s shadow banning censorship tactics, prompted the previously-skeptical Bozell to issue a warning to all Americans:

“I have been a critic of some of James O’Keefe’s work in the past, so I have the credentials to say the following: What O’Keefe has produced is not just extraordinary but it demands national attention.

“If social media is the communications vehicle of the future — and it is — then this represents the most sinister threat to free speech in history. That is no exaggeration.

“The radical left is out to censor the voices of all with whom they disagree. O’Keefe has proven it. Every American needs to watch this — if, of course, Twitter will allow it.”

I’ve been shadow-banned by Twitter on a couple of occasions (maybe more times than I know before I caught on!), so now I am wise to them!
Without getting too deep in to the weeds and techie details, here is what I have found and what I do.
After each tweet that I consider important, I check the feed for my tweets and the analytics which is where each tweet is recorded and statistics are gathered. If it is missing there, I quickly go to the tweet on my screen (before it is lost in hundreds of new incoming tweets) and get a screenshot.
Then I do this as I did yesterday when I tweeted about the President’s supposed comments on certain countries.
I bring attention to the fact that Twitter shadow-banned me and I put a screenshot of the original tweet into a new tweet.  Like this…
 

Screenshot (1244)
By putting a photo of the tweet that ‘disappeared’ in another tweet, I alert my followers to dirty tricks by Twitter! And, likely end up with more interest than if Twitter had published it in the first place! So far, they haven’t shadow-banned my second attempt to get the message out.

 
If you are on Twitter, follow me (@RefugeeWatcher).  I tweet a lot of information that I have no time to write about in a post here at RRW.  And, you can see what I’m tweeting in the right hand side bar when you visit my blog directly.
This post is filed in my “free speech” category and in “blogging.”

US News and World Report takes notice of South Dakota refugee controversy

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

“Refugee resettlements and interfaith dialogue is a part of a war.”

(State Senator Neal Tapio)

If you missed it, please visit my previous post on South Dakota, here.
Update January 12th: See what happened at the ‘Interfaith’ rally, here.  Also, see this incredible research on Taneeza Islam, here.
In preparation for reading this you might also visit the work of Islam expert Steve Coughlin on how “Interfaith” groups came to be used by the Muslim Brotherhood in their work to promote Islam in America.  See my 2016 post here.

Screenshot (142)_LI
Here in November of last year (after Taneeza Islam shut down several speakers she disagreed with in SD, denying them of their First Amendment rights) she was granted a forum at the University of South Dakota for HER free speech and she said this: “Islamophobia and anti-immigrant, refugee bigotry has been rampant and largely unnoticed by South Dakotans until this past year.” http://www.usd.edu/news/2017/human-rights-advocate-and-immigration-lawyer-to-speak-on-usd-campus#

Members of South Dakota’s “Interfaith” community descended on the capital in Pierre to protest any possible consideration of a plan to study the cost of refugee resettlement in the state being proposed by State Senator Neil Tapio.
See how clever they are to immediately spin the issue of the economic impact of refugees on the state’s economy as one of a threat to freedom of religion.  I suspect that is the work of Taneeza Islam, a clearly well-trained community agitator.
Islam was formerly the CAIR-MN Civil Rights Director and one can get an insight on her previous work by clicking here.
LOL! I wonder if hard core Leftists hold training programs for promising Islamic supremacist activists on how to sucker the mainstream media and the average citizen.
Oh, and by the way, since there aren’t enough people converting to Islam in America, in order to build their population (and increase their political power) they need high birth rates and immigration (thus the huge attention Muslim activists are paying to President Trump and the roll back on the refugee program). See my Pew Research post here.
Here are a few snips from the AP story at US News:

PIERRE, S.D. (AP) — Clergy and members of several religions gathered Wednesday at the South Dakota Capitol to meet lawmakers and urge them not to denigrate people of faiths different than their own.

Screenshot (140)
Lutheran Bishop Zellmer leading his South Dakota sheep.

The prayer and outreach come after some state lawmakers last year pushed measures targeting refugee resettlement in South Dakota. David Zellmer, bishop of the South Dakota Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, said the gathering was about “lifting up” that the freedom of religion guaranteed in the First Amendment is for everyone.

[….]

Taneeza Islam, executive director of the nonprofit South Dakota Voices for Peace, said she hopes lawmakers recognize the diversity in the state. She said it’s important they understand the decisions made at the Capitol affect everyone in South Dakota.

[….]

Tapio, who is preparing to run for U.S. House, called the interfaith group a “political movement.” Tapio has said he will form an unofficial legislative work group to examine state immigration and refugee resettlement programs in South Dakota.

[….]

“We have a domestic threat that’s going on right here in our country,” Tapio said after the prayers. “Refugee resettlements and interfaith dialogue is a part of a war. It’s a silent part. It’s a part about taking away the Christian fabric of our nation. Now, some people are OK with that. That’s their prerogative, but there’s American patriots that want to fight.”

Continue here.
Just like when the US Catholic Bishops talk about their charitable good works for refugees and never mention their pecuniary interest, so too do the Lutheran Bishops never mention that there is federal boodle involved with refugee resettlement.
So what can you do? Wherever you live, pay attention to your local “Interfaith” group promoting Islam as somehow special and in need of protection.  If you are brave, infiltrate the group. Then figure out what is the best way to expose their agenda to the general public.
Concerned South Dakotans need to immediately check out Islam’s group, South Dakota Voices for Peace. Find out if it is properly incorporated. Find out who is on its Board of Directors. Find out who funds it, etc. Is it just CAIR with a squishy sounding name?
Unfortunately we have to learn to fight like the Left!
See my ‘What you can do’ category for a whole bunch of ideas!
 

Lawrence Bartlett, State Department refugee chieftain sidelined?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The federal refugee contractors, that altogether receive over a half a billion a year of your money to place refugees in your towns and cities, must be using reporters at Reuters to get their messages out to the public.

Screenshot (1242)
I laughed when I saw that Reuters used a shot from when Bartlett headlined the Heritage Foundation ‘educational’ panel discussion on the US Refugee program last September. I had planned to do the same thing (use a shot from the panel discussion). When Heritage held this event, with inside the beltway types, I knew they had no clue about what was really happening with refugees in your towns and cities.   https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2017/09/14/is-the-heritage-foundation-selling-you-out-on-unus-refugee-admissions-policy/

 
Here we have news that Lawrence Bartlett, some of you have seen his advocacy for more refugees (and antipathy to local citizens) first hand, has been sidelined at the US State Department.  Later in the Reuters story he says, not so fast!
 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A U.S. official who has been a defender of refugees has been sidelined within the State Department in what some advocates and former officials fear is part of the Trump administration’s goal of limiting refugee resettlement in the United States.

Lawrence Bartlett, head of refugee admissions at the State Department’s Population, Refugees and Migration bureau, is now on a temporary assignment at another office, a State Department spokeswoman said.

Bartlett’s future leadership of the refugee office has been in doubt for months. He is now a temporary senior adviser at the State Department office that handles requests for information under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

Sending a civil servant of his experience and rank to that office is unusual, according to current and former U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.

A current official described such a re-assignment as a form of internal exile like being sent “to Siberia.” 

Really! Is that why the State Department has an abysmal record and reputation for not answering FOIA requests?  Either they do nothing there or they work really hard to figure out what not to tell you. When they do tell you, it is YEARS later! Is that why it is like Siberia?
Bartlett says he has “NOT been permanently reassigned.”

Yeganeh Torbati
The Reuters go-to gal for Hans?   https://twitter.com/yjtorbati

Bartlett did not respond to a range of questions about his new role, but did say he has not been told the assignment is permanent.

“I can assure you that I have NOT been permanently reassigned from my position with the refugee program,” Bartlett wrote in an e-mail to Reuters.

Refugee advocates say Bartlett was a strong and effective advocate for the resettlement program inside the Trump administration.

I found this little nugget (below) interesting. Here we learn that the State Department Bureau of Population Refugees and Migration bureaucrats chit-chat via e-mail regularly with their contractors.  Hey! what about us! We pay for all this, why can’t we see those e-mails.
Gee maybe we could FOIA them!

Since approximately November, Bartlett has not been included on communications between the State Department and outside refugee agencies that he normally would have been, one person involved in refugee resettlement said.

Keep reading here.
Reuters quotes Hans (again). So is Hans Van de Weerd the conduit for getting anti-Trump messages out of the DOS and Homeland Security and to Reuters?
See my complete Lawrence Bartlett archive here. Prior to being assigned to the FOIA office, Bartlett was in Puerto Rico for a month, here.

Federal refugee resettlement contractors blast Trump for ending 'temporary' status for Salvadorans

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The Temporary Protected Status (legal!) program is designed to give a break (usually 18 months) for nationals, from another country who are already in the US when the natural disaster or civil war happens, to stay here until the country is on its feet again.
In March, Salvadorans (and El Salvador), will have had a 17 YEAR break.
For 17 years hundreds of thousands have had time to produce nearly 200,000 more children, get jobs, drivers licenses (and I will bet vote!).  See USCIS on TPS for El Salvador here.
Calling the program ‘temporary’ is a joke.
It has to end sometime and the Trump Administration has decided that September 2019 is it!
The Leftwing Open Borders activists, including obviously refugee resettlement contractors***, have been working toward amnesty for a decade or more and the Salvadorans would have been a recipient of such an amnesty.

Matthew Soerens
Matthew Soerens of World Relief says El Salvador will be destabilized when they lose all of those US dollars Salvadorans send home—US dollars that leave the US economy! 

In the Gang of Eight bill they would have been essentially hired by the feds to do for the newly amnestied what they do for refugees—get them signed up for their services (aka welfare). And, it would have expanded their Left-leaning political power through their immigrant dependents.
So it is no surprise to see them complaining now!
Here is the Christian Post reporting on our old pals:

Christian leaders and organizations are speaking out against the Trump administration move on Monday to terminate protected status for thousands of El-Salvadoran immigrants who have been allowed to live and work in the United States for over a decade. [For over a decade, you mean nearly two decades!—ed]

Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen on Monday made a decision to terminate “Temporary Protected Status” that has allowed El-Salvadoran immigrants to legally work and live in the U.S. since two earthquakes struck the Central American country in 2001. The move could affect up to nearly 200,000 people and it’s a move that prominent evangelical leaders pressured the Trump administration not to make.

The administration claims the decision, which takes effect in September 2019 after an 18-month transition period, was made after an “inter-agency consultation process” determined that “the original conditions caused by the 2001 earthquakes no longer exist.” Yet, human rights advocates are warning that El Salvador is not economically able to sustain a massive return.

“But the reality is that El Salvador is among most violent countries in the world & among poorest in Western Hemisphere,” Matthew Soerens, the director of church mobilization for the evangelical refugee resettlement organization World Relief, tweeted on Monday. “It will be significantly destabilized by sudden insertion of so many returnees & by sudden halt of remittance money sent home by workers in US.”

Bishop Joe S. Vásquez
Bishop Joe S. Vásquez

So how long must we be blackmailed by threats of a destablized El Salvador? How long must we watch US dollars leave the US economy in the form of remittances? And why should refugee contractor World Relief care?  These are NOT refugees.
But, if they do care so much, World Relief (and the US Bishops) could do the really brave thing and instead of living in comfort/collecting handsome salaries and bullying Americans into ‘welcoming’ the stranger, go to El Salvador and help the people where they live!

And, of course the US Bishops whine! (See that they got $95 million from taxpayers in 2016 for their Christian charity for migrants, here.)

“The decision to terminate TPS for El Salvador is heartbreaking. As detailed in our recent delegation trip report to the region, El Salvador is currently not in a position to adequately handle the return of the roughly 200,000 Salvadoran TPS recipients,” Bishop Joe S. Vásquez, chairman of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ committee on migration, said in a statement, adding that the decision will “fragment American families.

Fragment American families! The families could go together to their homeland!
For my Evangelical readers, you may not know that there is a Leftwing Open Borders Evangelical consortium.  You need to do a little research to see if your church is involved.

The Evangelical Immigration Table, a coalition evangelical organizations that represent millions of believers across multiple denominations, also pressured the Trump administration to extend the TPS program for El Salvador until a permanent legislative fix can be enacted through Congress.

More here.
***These are the nine federal contractors who are paid by you to place refugees in your towns. If there were millions given amnesty in the coming years those groups listed below would be hired by the feds to help them get settled and get their taxpayer-supplied stuff.

There can be no immigration reform as long as taxpayers finance these political agitation groups masquerading as humanitarian charities: