This is yet another reason that Congress should review the entire US Refugee Program with an eye to trashing it or at least reforming it.
How is it that the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement is in the business of housing illegal alien minors (so-called unaccompanied children) in the first place, let alone be in the position of facilitating abortions when the kids get pregnant?
They are not refugees!
Obama’s Director of ORR, Bob Carey, told Politico that he signed off on the use of federal funds for abortions three or four times a month during his tenure. Pictured here with Linda Hartke, CEO of the Lutheran resettlement agency which receives federal funding for unaccompanied minors.
Here is the story at Politicowhich I haven’t the time or energy to extensively analyze and comment on.
The gist of it is that the present ORR Director is saying the feds are not going to facilitate abortions for ‘minors’ in their care while the previous Obama Director (Bob Carey) did.
Of course all those interviewed for the story are lined up against Trump’s appointee.
AUSTIN, Texas — The Trump administration is preventing an undocumented, pregnant teenager detained in a Brownsville refugee shelter from getting an abortion in a policy shift with big implications for hundreds of other pregnant, unaccompanied minors held in such shelters.
She is not the first to be stopped, according to advocates who work with undocumented teenagers.
For the last seven months, the Health and Human Services Department has intervened to prevent abortions sought by girls at federally funded shelters,even in cases of rape and incest and when the teen had a way to pay for the procedure. The agency has instead forced minors to visit crisis pregnancy centers, religiously affiliated groups that counsel women against having abortions, according to documents obtained by POLITICO, interviews with sources involved in the Brownsville case and those familiar with the agency’s policy.
In some cases, a senior HHS official has personally visited or called pregnant teens to try to talk them out of ending their pregnancies.
“There is a pattern of unconstitutional overreach of power in a minor’s abortion decision,” said the teen’s lawyer, Brigitte Amiri of the ACLU.
The ACLU brought suit on Friday on behalf of the 17-year-old in the Brownsville shelter….
[….]
“What’s especially disturbing for us about this case, is that the child is in the custody of ORR [the Office of Refugee Resettlement], so she has no other choice, and she is stuck in a form of custody or detention,” said Michelle Brane of the Women’s Refugee Commission.
The “child” in question arrived illegally across our border, we expect her (all of them!) to be held in custody! But, that custody needs to be under a different federal agency—not one whose mission is supposed to be to care for refugees, not to care for illegal aliens!
By the way, you need to know that at least two federal contractors—the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service—receive money from you to take care of some of the ‘children.’ The UACs cost the US taxpayer at least $1 billion a year.
Normally a rally like this (supported by CAIR) wouldn’t be something I would write about, but when I learned that all nine of the federal refugee resettlement contractors (which are largely funded by you) were trying to gin up support for the rally, it became our business.
Remember folks, most of the nine quasi-government agencies*** whose job it is to take care of the arriving refugees could not exist without funding from you.
See here at the rally’s facebook page this morning, that only 907 people (out of tens of thousands of supporters of the nine contractors) have signed up to participate.
But, watch for it on the mainstream media where we will be led to believe the rally was huge even though we can see there isn’t much support for #NoMuslimBanEver!
If you live in DC or nearby, go check it out and let us know!
*** Nine federal resettlement contractors largely funded by you are Leftwing community organizers. At least 5 of the nine would fold immediately if they had no taxpayer funding:
You are going to get so sick of hearing this from me!
Reader Paul reminded me again of this quote by David Gergen reported in the NY Times in 1993, here.
I’m taking my cue from Richard Nixon!
What Nixon advised is likely the single most important thing that you can do to bring attention and possible change to the refugee resettlement industry where you live (or to any issue that concerns you!).
Gergen said of Nixon:
He learned the importance of saying the same thing, over and over and over: “Nixon taught us about the art of repetition. He used to tell me, ‘About the time you are writing a line that you have written it so often that you want to throw up, that is the first time the American people will hear it.’ ”
The more I think about this, the more I realize what masters the Left are at this: “Diversity is beautiful,” “America is a nation of immigrants,” “Refugees undergo ‘robust’ screening,” yada, yada, yada.
(LOL! btw, try to work that word ‘robust’ into anything you do. I want to barf whenever I hear it from the Left, so let’s have some fun with it!)
We don’t repeat things enough! Why is that? We tend to think our people are smart enough and will get it the first time? We aren’t willing to get to the barf stage?
Anyway, back to my headline….
For a few months, I had high hopes that we were going to see some significant demands for reform of UN/US Refugee Admissions Program in Washington. Dropping the ceiling to 45,000for this fiscal year is not significant. If no reform of the general structure of the program happens, as soon as Trump is no longer Prez they will just boost the number to make up for lost time.
Therefore….
As I have already said, our energy must now shift back to grassroots activism on the local and state level. And, first, don’t worry that you haven’t hundreds of people behind you, just get to work yourself (with maybe a friend or two, for help and support).
Lancaster, PA
Let’s use Lancaster, PA which I wrote about yesterday as a model for a step-by-step action plan.
First, go here and find your State Refugee Coordinator. The list is a little old but through these contact numbers you should find your state’s key people. (This link and many others are at my Frequently Asked Questions, here.)
Ask the coordinator politely for your State’s refugee plan (usually not of great interest because it’s likely written in a mealy-mouth format, but get it). Tell the coordinator where you live and ask to be included in (put on the list for notification of) the “QUARTERLY CONSULTATIONS.”
Obviously for our Lancaster model, find the coordinator for Pennsylvania (often these are employees of the State government).
Next, find out, which resettlement contractors/subcontractors work where you live. Find any office here that is within 100 miles (generally 2 hours drive time) from where you live. Refugees can be placed within that distance from the office. If you live on a state border, be sure to check the neighboring state.
For Lancaster, there are two contractors listed (one for Church World Service the other two for Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service). You might find numbers and addresses have changed because the feds are pretty lousy at keeping this up to date.
Contractors are the abbreviations in the left hand corner: Church World Service and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service
For folks in Lancaster, call all three subcontractor offices and politely ask forR & P (Reception & Placement) Abstractsfor FY16, FY17 and the new one for FY18. These are plans for your town. Of course the FY18 plan is most interesting, ask for three years for comparison.
And, so you understand, if you get one abstract from one contractor that will only be information on their batch of refugees. They ‘bid for bodies’ so in order to fully understand what the total number is for your town, you must add the abstract projected numbers together. There might be 4 or 5 contractors operating in the same city!
You will likely be told NO, you can’t have them. By the way, on FY18, until a couple of weeks ago, they might have said you can’t have that one because it is a document not yet approved by the State Department. But since the fiscal year began on October 1, that excuse is no longer valid. (See what the Abstract looks like here).
Welcoming Mayor Gray. Has he ever seen the Abstracts for Lancaster?
If you get a NO at the contractor’s office, go back to your state coordinator and ask him/her for those important documents. Be sure to say you want the entire document which includes more than just the pages with numbers and spells out the amenities your town is offering refugees.
At this point if you are still getting a runaround, you may have to use your state’s public information law to attempt to get them.
Put your mayor and council on the spot!
However, while waiting for that to work through the system, ask your Mayor and Council for the R & P Abstracts. Either your local elected officials will say they don’t have such documents, or they will say you can’t have them.
For Lancaster, contact “welcoming” Mayor Gray!
Now you have some excellent political ammunition if they don’t give you the R & P Abstract.
Either the mayor/council is completely unaware that a document like this exists or they keep it from you on purpose, and either way they are politically in a hot seat!
They are either so incompetent they didn’t know that a federal contractor was sending plans for their (your) town to Washington, or they did know and kept it from the citizens (aka voters). Lack of transparency/secrecy are words that you can use against them (until you want to barf!).
Republican Rep. Smucker. If he can’t get the Abstracts he should be pretty angry at the US State Department!
Next! Contact your Representative in the US Congress. It looks like for most of Lancasterthat is Rep. Lloyd Smucker.
You are going to report to his staff (try his local office first) that you are getting a runaround and can’t get the R & P Abstractsfor Lancaster and ask his staff to get them for you.
Again, this is an important exercise, not so much that the documents contain bombshells (although most I’ve seen are very interesting), but it will tell you something about the man representing you in Congress. If he can’t get the documents (and get you invited to quarterly consultations), he is weak, or he is lying.
You will do the same exercise with the US Senate offices of Pat Toomey an Bob Casey.
For additional fun contact your governor’s office too. See if the governor’s office is being kept informed by the state coordinator (who may actually be employed by the governor’s office).
Presumably you now have the documents and are on the list to be invited to the next QUARTERLY CONSULTATION (aka Stakeholder meeting). Look for another post from me on what to do next involving publicizing what you have learned and pushing for the Abstract to be made public BEFORE it goes to Washington next year!
If no transparency….
If you are still getting a runaround, you have some perfect ammunition to use in the next mayor/city council election (and in 2018 for your member of Congress!). They are all keeping you, taxpaying citizens of refugee resettlement towns and cities, in the dark about plans from Washington about your very neighborhoods!
Say that over and over and over again until you want to throw up!
This post is filed in my ‘What you can do’ category, here.
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).
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.”
[….]
Mayor Gray has presided over the huge refugee build-up in Lancaster since 2006. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Gray_(Pennsylvania_politician)
Lancaster Mayor Rick Grayexplains 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]
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.
See myarchive 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.)
This time it is a German ‘rescue’ ship bringing what they describe as many “unaccompanied minors” to Sicily.
Photo from this story in The Independent. “Unaccompanied minors?” Or, perhaps ‘Unaccompanied men’ would be a more appropriate description.
Here are a couple of commenters to the article at the Malta Independent:
Here is a bit of the same old story:
Some 600 migrants rescued at sea arrived Friday in Sicily — one of the biggest influxes since Italy struck a deal with Libyan authorities to limit migrant smuggling — raising concerns of a renewed surge on the Libyan human trafficking corridor.
President of the German “rescue organization.”
The migrants, including many unaccompanied minors from sub-Saharan Africa, were rescued in seven operations over 36 hours, and transported Friday to Palermo by the German non-governmental organization SOS Mediterranee.
[….]
SOS Mediterranee President Valeria Calandra told Sky TG24 that the renewed instability in Libya has only increased the desire of migrants to escape the lawless North African country.
“It was very improbable that from today to tomorrow you can stop everyone,” she said.
“I think this rescue is the first of many others that will arrive.” [she hopes it is!—ed]
