Category: The Opposition

Missoula, MT: More secrecy now exposed with revelation about resettlement planning document

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

To all of you who have attempted (unsuccessfully) to get a copy of the important planning document the federal government uses to justify the number and ethnicity of refugees to be seeded in your towns, this should vindicate your frustration and anger (even if it doesn’t help you acquire yours!)

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Here they come. Is there a mosque in Missoula? Just wondering.

Editor: This is the third post this morning in my ‘secret Saturday’ series. See the previous posts here, and here.
So many of you have reported, for months, that you have called your state refugee coordinator or the local resettlement agency only to be stonewalled, denied the document and in some cases made to feel like an idiot when the contractor pretended that you didn’t know what you were talking about (what R & P Abstract?).  Some of you ultimately obtained the document using your state freedom of information law.

Bait and switch!

Yes, the R & P Abstract (Reception and Placement Abstract) exists and now the Missoulian writes about it here, like it was no big deal.  How many of you in Montana knew until recently that they weren’t planning for 50 or 100 refugees but more than that, year after year? And, as they told you, with a straight face, that they would be benign Christians from the DR Congo you were expected to believe that too.
Now we learn you are getting Somalis, Afghanis and Syrians, three of the most difficult to security-screen groups of Muslim refugees. In addition to more than a dozen other ethnic groups (btw, this makes the resettlement extremely costly to your school system that must cope with children speaking many languages).
Here is the Missoulian (I don’t know if one of the concerned citizens out there obtained an R & P Abstract and gave it to the paper, or the contractor decided it was best to release it, so as to get their own spin on the story first):

Missoula could resettle up to 150 refugees of as many as 15 nationalities in the next 12 months, but the biggest numbers will reflect the world’s most troubled spots.  (Troubled spots is code for Muslim countries!—ed)

A Reception and Placement Abstract filed in May with the U.S. State Department proposed up to 65 people from sub-Saharan Africa and 70 from the Middle Eastern countries of Syria, Iran and Iraq, as well as Afghanistan, during fiscal year 2017.

The first group includes those who’ve fled war or persecution from Burundi, Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, and Sudan and South Sudan.

Five families from the Democratic Republic of Congo – 27 people in all – arrived in town in August and September, according to wrapsnet.org, an interactive website of the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration.

They won’t count toward the 150 total for FY17, according to Molly Short Carr, executive director of the International Rescue Committee’s Missoula office.

[….]

An abstract also was filed for the remainder of fiscal year 2016, which ended on Sept. 30. It proposed a capacity of 100 refugees, though Missoula was clearly not in a position to receive that many.

For all of you, think about this! Every week these tax-payer funded contractors sit down with the Department of State (in Washington) and divvy up the refugees to be seeded in to your town.  Each contractor is ‘bidding for bodies’ as each refugee comes with a bucket of money attached per person.

The federal bureau uses information provided on R&P abstracts when it sits down each week with representatives of the IRC and the eight other resettlement agencies in the United States, a State Department spokeswoman told the Missoulian.

[….]

The IRC’s abstract touched lightly [does the DOS in DC try to verify the information contractors submit in their bids?—ed] on housing and employment in Missoula. Basing its figures on the latest Missoula Housing Report, it said the average monthly rent for homes or apartments with one, two and three bedrooms is $750, $950 and $1,200, respectively. Availability was listed as “always” for the two smaller homes and “sometimes” for three bedrooms.

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I visited Missoula on my RRW fact-finding trip this summer and learned that the contractor office was being kept secret. This is my photo of where I was told it was located.

Listed as available jobs for refugees in Missoula were construction, customer service, food service, health care, hospitality and retail. [Really! Customer service! Hospitality! they don’t speak ENGLISH!—ed] The average starting wage is $9.50 for full-time positions, while the starting wage of part-time positions and the percentage of positions offered benefits are “to be determined.”

On this issue of housing and jobs.  It has been reported to me that the contractor may have lied in the R & P Abstract about the availability of housing and jobs for very poor, non-English speaking refugees from places like the Congo. Also, it is pretty obvious that if (big if!) even one member of the family gets a job at $9.50 an hour they will need lots of welfare benefits just to survive.
As I said here, if you see any neglect of the refugees and/or abuse of contractual agreements with the DOS. Please report what you see. Come to think of it, maybe you could make a hotline phone number available in your community where citizens could anonymously report any refugee problems they see.
We have written a lot on Montana, click here to learn more.

Rutland, VT: More secret exchanges revealed by Judicial Watch FOIA

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Why should citizens have to use freedom of information act requests to find out how the federal government and its refugee contractors are planning to change the demographics (and the culture!) of hundreds of American towns and cities?

lavinia-and-chobani
When Ms. Merdzanovic refers to her HQ she is referring to Lavinia Limon. This is Lavinia Limon, CEO of USCRI, sharing the stage with Mr. Chobani (Hamdi Ulukaya) at the same Clinton Global Initiative gathering where Bill Clinton and Ulukaya thought it was a great idea to repopulate Detroit with Syrian refugees. Chobani Yogurt actively seeks refugee employees for their yogurt plants in New York and Idaho. Ms. Limon supplies the town of Twin Falls (Idaho) with refugees. Cozy huh? The good citizens of Rutland should find out and expose what business entities are driving the resettlement in Rutland.

Here is more news on ‘secret Saturday’ (see Hillary secret speeches) about how the Open Borders Left (including refugee resettlement contractors!) is working in collusion with certain local elected officials to hide information from the public.
From Judicial Watch yesterday:

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch today released 128 pages of documents it obtained from the mayor of Rutland, Vermont, showing a concerted effort by the mayor and a number of private organizations to conceal from the public their plans to resettle 100 Syrian refugees into the small southern Vermont town.

The documents include an April 14, 2016, email from Amila Merdzanovic, executive director of the Vermont Refugee Resettlement Program, to Mayor Christopher Louras, in which she wrote:

I want to share with you the concern my HQ has about holding a public forum. If we open it up to anybody and everybody, all sorts of people will come out of woodwork. Anti-immigrant, anti-anything. They suggest that the forum be invite only but make it as wide as possible. Work with faith leaders, United Way, etc… Perhaps, we could go back to the Congregational Church and continue the conversation there.

[….]

On April 10, 2016, she wrote to the director of the State Refugee Office about her coordination with the mayor to keep the resettlement program secret:

He did share with me that the Governor’s office called him after getting a frantic call from DOL [Vermont Department of Labor] inquiring about the plan to resettle ‘100 Syrians in the next month’ in Rutland. Again, I cannot emphasize enough the importance of not sharing the information even if it is confidentially. Please respect our process, you will have plenty of opportunity to share and take action once we have met with the stakeholders. At that point we can and will share it widely. It will not serve any one of us well if the community in Rutland learned about it through the grapevine and not directly from us. The above example shows that what people hear and how they interpret it is two different things.

Visit Judicial Watch here for more and especially if you want to follow links for the documents they received.
We reported here that the Department of State has given the green light for the first 100 Syrians to be placed in Rutland later this year. And, I am emphasizing the word ‘first’ because once your town gets a resettlement office there is no stopping the flow! (See ‘Ten things your town needs to know,’ by clicking here).
USCRI is 97% funded by you!
Go here for our complete Rutland archive.
By the way, the DOS has, we are told, identified 47 new resettlement sites in America to accommodate Obama’s proposed 110,000 refugees for FY2017 which began last Saturday.  These are the sites we know of so far. As we have said this is all  planned in secrecy, but if you can help identify others, please let us know!
Asheville, NC
Rutland, VT
Reno, NV
Ithaca, NY
Missoula, MT
Aberdeen, SD
Charleston, WV
Fayetteville, AR
Blacksburg, VA
Pittsfield, MA
Northhampton, MA
Flint, Michigan
Bloomington, IN
Traverse City, MI
 

Hillary Clinton tells big foreign bank (no surprise) she wants Open Borders

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This is the first of a few posts I have this morning (I’m calling it secret Saturday) about the Open Borders, pro-mass migration Left, and their goals that will effect you and coming generations profoundly.

WASHINGTON, DC - OCTOBER 12: U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (L) embraces Center for American Progress President and CEO John Podesta before addressing the centers' "American Idea: A More Perfect Union" conference at the Decatur House October 12, 2011 in Washington, DC. Clinton briefly addressed a plot the U.S. government said it foiled to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States by elements of the Iranian government. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
You do not want anyone named Clinton or Podesta anywhere near the Oval Office come January 2017!

First, you could hardly have missed the big news that broke last night that WikiLeaks has released thousands of e-mails from Hillary’s long time pal—John Podesta (we mentioned him here just last Saturday).
It gives me great joy this morning to know that it was Podesta who was hacked.
One of those hacked e-mails contained sections of her speeches to big banks that she steadfastly refused to release during the primary season when her opponent, Bernie Sanders, wanted them.
Here is Julia Hahn at Breitbart on the big release!

In closed-door remarks delivered to a foreign bank, Hillary Clinton declared that her “dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders.”

This statement from one of Clinton’s private paid speeches was discovered in leaked emails of Clinton’s campaign chair, John Podesta, which were made public by WikiLeaks.

One email, which provided partial transcripts of some of Clinton’s speeches, reads in part:

“Hillary Clinton Said Her Dream Is A Hemispheric Common Market, With Open Trade And Open Markets.”

“My dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders, some time in the future with energy that is as green and sustainable as we can get it, powering growth and opportunity for every person in the hemisphere.” [05162013 Remarks to Banco Itau.doc, p. 28]

Continue reading here.
We have written a lot about Podesta (Center for American Progress) over the years, click here for our Podesta file.

Lifelong Socialist, Islam apologist, chosen as new Secretary General of the UN, Antonio Guterres

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Longtime readers of Refugee Resettlement Watch will surely know the name since Guterres served for ten years as the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and his office was primarily responsible for the flow of refugees coming to the US now. He is responsible for the fact that most Syrians chosen by the UNHCR to come to America are Sunni Muslims, not Christians.

antonio-guterres-evil
Socialist Guterres, the new Secretary General of the UN. Why are we still funding an organization working for the destruction of the US?

I thought when I heard the news that his tenure as UNHCR ended in December 2015, that he would be disappearing into the sunset (or catching some rays on a Portuguese beach) after arguably helping create a migrant crisis (or at least his leadership did nothing much to stem it) that looks like it will ultimately swallow the European continent.
Frankly, as I read about him, saw him in person once***, and followed the UNHCR, I saw him as a sullen, lackluster, uninspiring socialist ideologue that he is.  But, he must have something going for him at the UN to be chosen over other more colorful, less ideological and more accomplished contenders. I’m guessing he was a favorite of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.
Perhaps my impression of him as an apologist for Islam was seared in 2009 when he wrote a forward to a study that maintains that it is Shariah law that underpins the world tradition of helping refugees, of welcoming the stranger—not Judaism and Christianity. I was stunned and wrote a post listing all of the Muslim countries headed by Saudi Arabia that do not welcome strangers, not even their fellow Muslims (none have welcomed the Palestinians!), and God forbid would never welcome Jewish or Christian refugees.
Here is the news story that I was responding to:

New York, 23 June (AKI) – The 1,400-year-old Islamic custom of welcoming people fleeing persecution has had more influence on modern international refugee law than any other traditional source, according to a new study sponsored by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

High Commissioner Antonio Guterres said that more than any other historical source, Islamic law and tradition underpin the modern-day legal framework on which UNHCR bases its global activities on behalf of the tens of millions of people forced from their homes around the world.

This includes the right of everyone to seek asylum as well as prohibitions against sending those needing protection back into danger, Guterres said in the foreword to “The Right to Asylum between Islamic Sharia and International Refugee Law: A Comparative Study.”

In the study, Professor Abu Al-Wafa, Dean of the Law Faculty at Cairo University, describes how Islamic law and tradition respects refugees, including non-Muslims; forbids forcing them to change their beliefs; avoids compromising their rights; seeks to reunite families; and guarantees the protection of their lives and property.

Now, again, check out my list from 2009 showing just how Muslim countries are NOT (in fact) helping resettle refugees but are moving them on to the West, Australia, and the US.
Since 2009, when I wrote about Guterres comments, several Muslim countries have taken in Syrian refugees (they had no choice as they flowed across borders). Countries such as Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey are flooded (Saudi Arabia still takes none).  However, whenever someone starts to give you that equivalence argument, always remember that the refugees in those countries will not become permanent, voting, citizens. Their residence is temporary. That is not so with refugees coming to the US—they come permanently and become citizens. And, it is the permanent requirement that Guterres has been pushing for years.

Back to Guterres

We are told in several news accounts that he became a member of the Socialist Party in his native Portugal in 1974 (at age 25).  By the way, Portugal, to this day, takes very few refugees.
Here is one account at the BBC:

Speaking earlier this year, Richard Gowan, a UN expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said insiders believed Mr Guterres, from Portugal, “could give the UN the kind of kick up the backside it needs”.

Mr Guterres was born in Lisbon in 1949. He studied engineering and physics at the Instituto Superior Tecnico, before going into academia after graduating in 1971.

But academia only held the fervent Catholic’s interest for a couple of years. He joined the Socialist party in 1974 – the same year five decades of dictatorship came to an end in Portugal – and soon became a full-time politician.
In 1995, three years after being elected the Socialist party’s secretary general, he was voted in as prime minister, a position he held until 2002.

Missing from this resume and other accounts I have read is that he was not only a Socialist in Portugal, but lead Socialist International as its President from 1999-2005, immediately preceding his tenure as UNHCR.  See more here at wikipedia.

anne-richard-and-unhcr
Guterres with Asst. Sec. of State Anne Richard. As a political appointee, Anne Richard should be among the first to go if Donald Trump is elected President of the United States.

Get out from under the United Nations’ thumb!

So it strikes me that this might be a good time for Americans to reignite a  demand that we begin to extricate ourselves (and our money!) from the United Nations.
Indeed we are placing refugees in your towns and cities that have been chosen by the United Nations for us and what do we see—a rapidly expanding increase in the Muslim refugees chosen for us.
And, btw, I don’t believe there is anything in the Refugee Act of 1980 that requires us to do what the UN says regarding refugees. We could pick our own refugees!
We know what the UN is and what they are up to, choosing Guterres as Secretary General is a clear indication that the UN is on a mission to change America by changing its people, and has placed one of the world’s greatest proponents of doing just that at its helm.
See our extensive archive on Guterres by clicking here.
***If you want to learn more, scroll down in this post about a big refugee pow-wow at Georgetown last year and read about Jim Simpson questioning Guterres about why so few Syrian Christians are being resettled.

State Department and refugee lobby group work on private sponsorship scheme to get more refugees into the US

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update October 19th: More on this scheme. Remember the purpose is to get more refugees in to the country because this private scheme would be in ADDITION to the present system.
So, as it is described by one commenter: Instead of buying a $10,000 car in the coming year, what the heck adopt a Syrian refugee instead.
I would be a proponent of private sponsorship if it accompanied the complete abolition of the present system that involves middlemen federal contractors (the VOLAGs) being paid billions of tax dollars, and required the sponsor to pay for all costs associated with the refugees for a year or two. Congress would, of course, have the final say on numbers, security screening and nationalities permitted entry to the US in my hypothetical re-write of refugee law.

matthew-lacorte
Matthew LaCorte (one of the brains behind the plan) thinks $10,000 will get him a refugee—what for a month or two! Then what? The refugee he sponsored is on us!

But, this plan, which they are apparently hatching within the State Department and in cooperation with the Refugee Council USA (the resettlement industry’s lobbying arm), is a plan to bring in additional refugees over and above what Congress is willing to pay for.
(For those of you who think we have no impact, this indicates to me that the industry knows there are limits to how much of your money the Congress is willing to shell out to bring hundreds of thousands of impoverished refugees to your towns.)
This really is a pretty audacious concept since they apparently think they can do this ‘in house’ and not involve rewriting refugee law.  (Congress writes the laws, or have they forgotten?)
Here is the jaw-dropping (Bloomberg, of course!) story at the Chicago Tribune (hat tip: Julia):

Americans might be able to bring a refugee to the U.S. on their own dime if talks between the Obama administration and the nation’s leading refugee advocacy group come to fruition.

The State Department is considering a pilot program that would let citizens sponsor a refugee from their country of choice by paying for airfare, housing, clothing, food and other resettlement costs. Conversations began in July and are expected to continue in the coming year, said Naomi Steinberg, director of the Refugee Council USA.

The program, modeled after a similar one in Canada, is designed to crack open new sources of funding as growing anti-refugee sentiment in Congress threatens to cut resettlement programs.

“It puts Americans in the driver’s seat,” said Matthew La Corte, policy analyst at the Niskanen Center***, a Washington-based libertarian think tank that was an early supporter of the program. “It allows them to say ‘I have a spare bedroom. I was thinking of buying a new car but I’ll instead take that $10,000 and put it toward bringing a Syrian refugee over.”‘

[….]

Such a program would mark one of the biggest structural changes to U.S. refugee policy in three decades, and would allow Barack Obama or future presidents to skirt opposition by shifting financial responsibility to everyday Americans.

[I’m all for shifting all of the costs to those who are promoting refugee resettlement—ed]

[….]

For fiscal 2016, Congress appropriated $3.1 billion for refugee and migration assistance programs, the same level as two years earlier, according to figures from the agency.

Private sponsorship “is a good option in terms of increasing numbers without increasing budget outlays,” said Kevin Appleby, senior director of international migration policy at the Center for Migration Studies in New York. [Appleby was formerly the lobbyist in DC for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, we have a lot on him here at RRW—ed]

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State Department’s Mark Storella: we will be working on it this coming year (when Hillary gets to the White House). Photo: http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/biog/bureau/259069.htm

Refugee Council USA and the state department began talks about private sponsorship this summer, said Steinberg, director at the Washington-based agency, which is an umbrella group for 22 organizations.

The State Department plans to work on the issue “in the year to come,” according to a statement from Mark Storella, a deputy assistant secretary. [Looks like they are pretty confident Hillary will be in the White House.—ed]

[….]

Before any program is launched, critical points must be addressed, said Steinberg. The group wants to ensure that sponsorship does not replace existing government programs.

“The only private resettlement program that we could support would be one that increases the number of refugees who arrive in the U.S., while at the same time maintaining and even strengthening the U.S. government commitments,” Steinberg said.

Continue reading here.

*** What is in it for the libertarians at the Niskanen Center—cheap refugee labor for big business? Would someone tell me!