That is nothing new. Leahy has been a longtime advocate of the US Refugee Admissions Program, but what interested me was his remark that local communities needed more money to support refugees, and references Rutland.
But, wait, Rutland mayor Christopher Louras was just in upstate New Yorktelling those citizens that refugees revitalize and bring economic prosperity where they are resettled. Which is it? Frelick of Human Rights Watch: the backlash against this program now is unprecedented!
Or, is it possible that the only economic benefits a town or city will see is the federal welfare dollars that would come in to the community with the refugees?
Here is the news about Leahy at Vermont Digger:
RUTLAND — Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., is calling on the United States to strengthen its commitment to refugee resettlement on the eve of a congressional hearing on the Obama administration’s pledge to take in 110,000 refugees next year, an increase of 25,000 from fiscal 2016.
At the same time Leahy said additional resources need to be allocated to communities that receive refugees. His remarks come as the State Department weighs whether Syrian refugees will be placed in Rutland.
“As we have seen in Vermont for decades,” Leahy said in a statement Tuesday, “refugees can enrich and revitalize our cities and towns, but they also need our help, especially at first.”
When you get discouraged about how this program is so entrenched and impervious to reform, take note of what Human Rights Watch’s honcho says here. Things are changing!
Bill Frelick, director of the Refugee Rights Program at Human Rights Watch, called the recent backlash against refugee resettlement unprecedented. Frelick, who has worked in the field for more than 30 years, said that historically refugee resettlement has been an issue on which both political parties have agreed. That came to an end in November after the terrorist attacks in Paris, when more than 30 U.S. governors signed a letter saying their states would not admit Syrian refugees.
We have told you about the ‘Refugee Congress’ in past years (here the 2014 lobby campaign was run by the Lutherans). This is the time in September when the refugee contractors help to bring in refugees from all over the country to lobby Congress. It is always at this time of year because it is now, just before the new fiscal year begins that Congress (having not completed its budget work during the year) is in a crunch to get it done so they can go home. The lobbyists for the resettlement industry are not stupid (and they have a lot of money) and they know that bringing some very presentable refugees to DC now is a good move on their part. You know tug on the heartstrings, blah, blah, blah. Update: USCRI tweeted this photo of refugees on the Hill right now.
This year we see that the Refugee Congress is being funded largely by a new non-profit—USA for UNHCR—which is getting much of its funding from businesses who benefit from cheap migrant labor.
One of those (and proud of it) is Hamdi Ulukaya CEO of Chobani Yogurt. You know, that is the company that has caused social turmoil in Twin Falls, Idaho*** as it brings in, with the help of the US State Department and the refugee contractor USCRI, hundreds of refugee workers for its huge plant there (Chamber of Commerce loves this plant!).
I continue to wonder if any of the humanitarian do-gooders working with refugees ever think about how the refugees supply labor that keeps wages low for the benefit international corporate giants? Here is the Refugee Congress website (refugees were in DC for the last couple of days and are visiting their representatives today, looking for more money for the refugee contractors).
And, now go to the 2015 annual reportfor USA for UNHCR and see their corporate sponsors including their star of the year—Hamdi Ulukaya:
Some readers have asked recently what other companies are in on the refugee advocacy bandwagon, go here, to see a larger list (but certainly not a complete list).
***See our complete archive on Twin Falls, Idaho here.
If you live in New York’s North Country, beware, because the great minds at the Adirondack North Country Associationhave invited Mayor Christopher Louras down from Rutland to tell them all about how to best get some refugees for themselves (for your towns!).
I’m sure the folks in Rutland will be tickled to see what their mayor says about them when he leaves home. “…ignorant by design!”
KEESEVILLE — The outcry over Syrian refugees has shaped much of Rutland’s discourse this summer.
The dispute over whether to accept 100 asylum seekers has cleaved the city, pitting Mayor Chris Louras against constituents, city aldermen and other elected officials.
Rutland Mayor Louras told the gathering he got the idea to invite Syrians to Rutland from Gov. Peter Shumlin. Here the governor thanks seven of Vermont’s eight mayors for supporting his re-election bid, in Montpelier, Vt., Monday, Sept. 24, 2012. That is Rutland Mayor Christopher Louras to his immediate left. This photo identifies Louras as an Independent, but the Sun article says he is a Republican, which is it? Photo: http://bigstory.ap.org/photo/governor-mayors-1
As the five-term mayor waits for the Department of State to sign off on the expansion of the Vermont Refugee Resettlement Program into his city — a roadblock thrown up by peeved aldermen — Louras ventured to New York last week, where he briefed local leaders on his push to make the state’s third-largest city a host for escapees of the war-torn nation.
A decision may come as soon as 10 days, he said, with the first family arriving as early as December.
Bringing refugees into the city, he said, goes hand-in-hand with urban revitalization efforts.
Their entry, Louras believes, would breathe new life into an ailing city.
[….]
But the road to get here wasn’t easy. The mayor has come under fire for a perceived lack of transparency. Earlier this summer, city aldermen asked the department of state to examine the issue. A former political opponent also circulated a petition, which was nixed, asking the issue be brought to a vote.
Louras admitted he could have been more open.
“I keep trying to go back to the human element,” he said. [So is he saying secrecy and lying are o.k. if one is moved by one’s emotions to save the world’s downtrodden and in this case Syrian Sunni Muslims—ed]
[….]
The crowd at the Adirondack North Country Association’s annual meeting, the daylong workshop that acts as somewhat of an experimental laboratory for regional leaders to tinker with economic solutions to rural problems, was perhaps more receptive.
Louras joined other officials in Keeseville last week to share his experiences — and to offer advice for other communities exploring similar efforts.
When resettlement agencies zero in on a possible relocation site, they look at three main areas, Louras said:
Safe and sanitary housing, the availability of entry-level jobs and the English-language learning opportunities necessary to build skills.
Rutland, a city of about 16,500, has all three, the mayor said.
“We’ve got a workplace problem,” Louras said, “not a jobs problem. Our employers are looking for employees.”
There it is readers, once again, they hide under the humanitarian white hat, but it is all about labor (I’m guessing the Rutland Chamber of Commerce backs Louras?). Beware residents of the North Country, you could be the next resettlement site:
Discussions on accepting refugees have percolated this year in the North Country, and a number of organizations have been formed to explore the feasibility of the concept, including several in Essex County.
Then you can’t make this up, we have an immigration lawyer, Anas Saleh, a Syracuse-based lawyer who works directly with asylum seekers, telling us that refugees pay more taxes than they get out of the system in the form of welfare. Be sure to see this postfrom last year where we told you that a study by the Center for Immigration Studies tells us that each Middle Eastern refugee costs the US taxpayer over $64,000 per refugee over the first five years in the U.S. The Sun continues:
Saleh said refugees don’t pluck jobs from Americans.
Contrary to public belief, immigrants actually pay into social welfare programs more than they receive, he said. [He is flat-out lying!—ed]
Louras then tells the gathering that he doesn’t want to get into politics, but proceeds to call other elected officials and citizens opposing him in Rutland “ignorant by design.”
While Louras said he wanted to avoid politics during the roundtable discussions, he admitted to taking hits and incurring damage from a “small-but-vocal” group of opponents on his home turf.
Expect the national negative discourse to be replicated at the local level, he said.
Could he have facilitated the discussions more transparently?
Sure, he admitted.
But some people are ignorant “by design,” he said, and would have sabotaged the process — including the city’s treasurer, who the mayor said circulated misleading information about the impact of asylum seekers on property values.
“She’s helping create that fake narrative,” Louras said.
[….]
The mayor, a Republican, said his greatest frustration surrounding the debate was what he referred to as a “dearth of empirical analysis” among refugee populations. [We have some analysis, impact on taxpayers is $64,370 per Middle Eastern refugee over first five years in US. Middle Easterners use welfare at a higher rate then some from other regions of the world—-ed]
“Those numbers are validated through academia, but there’s not a lot of studies,” he said.
While his decision to make Rutland a beacon for Syrians stemmed from a discussion with Gov. Peter Shumlin following last year’s terrorist attacks in Paris — Louras said he was further miffed by a letter sent by 30 governors barring refugees from their states — he warned attendees that their efforts shouldn’t lean on the government, but rather a constellation of nonprofit agencies.
Grassroots efforts like Rutland Welcomes, the mayor said, were critical in laying down early infrastructure, creating “action-driven” plans that explored everything from transportation to language learning.
I urge all of you to visit The Sunarticle, especially all of you Vermonters and Upstate New Yorkers, it is really full of enlightening information that I couldn’t possibly analyze if I worked on this post all day. They use the really refugee-overloaded/stressed cities of Syracuse and Utica as model cities even! Sheesh!
The Refugee Act of 1980requires a hearing in both the House and Senate Judiciary Committees on the Presidential ‘determination’ on the number of refugees the President is proposing for the upcoming fiscal year—in advance of the fiscal year.
FY2017 begins a week from today!
We know that Senator Jeff Sessions scheduled a hearing and that the Obama State Department refused to attend (see here). ***Update*** Senate hearing postponed from last week is now scheduled for Wednesday the 28th of September. Details here. But where is the House? Rep. Trey Gowdy is Chairman of the subcommittee responsible for the Refugee Admissions Program. He did not sign the Babin letter where more than 30 of his colleagues (found the time to sign) are asking that funding be stopped for refugees coming from terrorist-producing regions of the world. We are told that Gowdy has since written his own PRIVATE letter to Speaker Ryan on the subject. If there is a letter (doubtful). Why the secrecy? I just checked the House Judiciary Committee hearing schedule and there is nothing scheduled this week on the largest and most dangerous number of refugees we have proposed to admit to the US probably ever!
Immigration Subcommittee Chairman Trey Gowdy has a hearing scheduled this week on how New Orleans became a sanctuary city, but nothing else.
(It is Gowdy’s subcommittee that would be responsible for reforming the UN/US State Department Refugee Admissions Program, but no one in 30 years, including Gowdy, has had the guts to tackle it.)
I’m sure that New Orleans illegal alien problem is a very important issue, but….
…no where near as important as 110,000 refugees (20,000-30,000 Syrians) arriving in the US beginning next Saturday!
And, so far, Chairman of the full committee, Rep. Bob Goodlatte, doesn’t have any hearing scheduled either when you know that the Administration will open the flood gates in October trying to get as many of their 110,000 in here before Obama leaves office in January.
Are Goodlatte and Gowdy going to sit by silently and watch?
I want you to have a look at the Congressional calendar (below) as it stands right now for the last few months and through the end of they year. They can’t wait to get that Continuing Budget Resolution (CR) done and get out of DC so they can campaign.
And, the reason we once again will be looking at a Budget rush-job is that Congress (under the leadership of Speaker Paul Ryan) once again did not get their work done in a timely fashion.
Look at this calendar! Frankly they shouldn’t be off for 6 weeks beginning this Friday!
Most recent calendar I could find, there may be an updated one.
But, don’t despair, you have perhaps one of the best opportunities to make their lives miserable as the majority of your representatives will be up for re-election on November 8th. You will need to reach them in their districts on this, in my opinion, the most critical issue this country faces—immigration and specifically refugee resettlement! Be at every townhall they hold. Picket their offices and their homes if you must to get their attention.
Don’t let any member of the House, or US Senator, tell you it is too late for this year! They will be coming back to finish the budget during the lame duck session and you need to ‘educate’ them at home because they can cut out funding for the refugee program in the lame duck! More on that later.
BTW, I don’t know where they are at the moment on the CR (short term funding of the federal government), but keep telling them you want the Refugee Admissions Program defunded (use the word moratorium!) because as frustrating as it is trying to get through to them, your persistence alone sends them a warning message about how important this issue is to you (and to the future of America!).
For any of you who want to read-up on the issue, everything I’ve written on Congress’ role as the branch of government that doles out the money for Obama’s programs is tagged ‘Where is Congress.’
Just to recap, Obama’s final ‘determination’ sent to Capitol Hill a week ago calls for a ceiling*** of 110,000 refugees from all over the world for Fiscal year 2017 which begins in 8 days. He did not indicate how many of those would be Syrians but recently we learnedthat 20,000-30,000 would likely be Syrian Muslims. Hillary and John Podesta (working for George Soros) started the Center for American Progress and you can bet if she gets in the White House, the two of them will open the floodgates to the third world. http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/printgroupProfile.asp?grpid=6709
Thanks to Richard at Blue Ridge Forum for spotting this story at the Center for American Progress (CAP) where the resettlement contractors and their friends spell out what they really want. They want the 110,000 to be a floor and not a ceiling and they want 100,000 Syrian Muslims on top of 110,000 other refugees.
They also drop some astounding numbers about how many billions of dollars they want from the REPUBLICAN Congress. Hereis the story from earlier in the week:
After a slow start in fiscal year 2016—in which, by the end of May, the United States had only resettled one-quarter of its stated commitment of 10,000 Syrian refugees—the administration announced on August 29 that it had hit its target. According to the administration’s report to Congress laying out its 2017 resettlement goals—the “Proposed Refugee Admissions for Fiscal Year 2017”—the administration now believes it will surpass its original goal, bringing in up to 13,000 Syrians by the end of September.
Most importantly, the report to Congress makes clear that the United States will surpass even the commitment made by Secretary of State John Kerry in September 2015 to bring in 100,000 refugees in FY 2017: It raises the target for resettlement in FY 2017 to 110,000 refugees.
[….]
Human Rights First, for example, has called for the administration to admit 100,000 Syrians next year in addition to 100,000 refugees from the rest of the world.
Whatever number of Syrians the administration ultimately decides to admit, it should view the commitment to resettling 110,000 total refugees in FY 2017 as a floor, rather than a ceiling, and should do everything in its power to increase the number of refugees admitted.
They know what we have been trying to say for weeks! Congress has the power to slow the invasion if they want to because the resettlement contractors have virtually no money of their own.
They need your money to change your towns!
CAP continues:
Funding is critical, and the ball is in Congress’ court
While the Obama administration has stepped up to raise the numbers of refugees to be resettled, Congress has not, to date, provided a corresponding increase in the funds available to ensure that these individuals are able to resettle smoothly, find livelihoods, and become self-sufficient soon after arrival—a key goal of the U.S. refugee program.
The funding Congress appropriated for FY 2016 was based on an estimate of only 75,000 refugees being resettled. When the administration raised its target to 85,000 refugees, Congress did not increase the funding to match. This means that over the past year, the government has had to resettle more refugees with fewer funds. To make matters worse, Congress will most likely only fund the government for the remainder of the calendar year using a continuing resolution—a stopgap, short-term funding bill rather than a full-year appropriation—likely holding the amount of funding for resettlement to FY 2016 levels. This will become all the more difficult to sustain as the number of refugees admitted grows to 110,000.
Take the Office of Refugee Resettlement, or ORR, as an example. This agency helps integrate newly arrived refugees into American life and society, providing financial and medical assistance, social work and case management, and language and job training programs. It also has primary responsibility for the housing and care of unaccompanied children who arrive in the United States. In FY 2016, the ORR received a little less than $1.7 billion to accomplish these tasks. With an increase in the numbers of both refugees being resettled and unaccompanied children arriving, however, ORR’s budget is stretched thin.
The Refugee Council USA (mentioned below) is the lobbying arm of the resettlement industry in Washington.
The administration’s FY 2017 budget, based on the original goal of resettling 100,000 refugees, calls for the ORR to receive about $2.2 billion, while Refugee Council USA—the main umbrella group for organizations working to resettle and protect refugees—has called for the ORR to receive $2.95 billion. Either way, Congress must come together to provide more funding to the agency.
The Continuing Budget Resolution as it now stands has barely half that much and we are urging Congress to cut even more deeply. Keep calling them and tell them that you know they, the Republican leadership, hold the cards—not Obama!
We have written a lot about the Refugee Council USA and also about the Center for American Progress, so please use our search function if you want to learn more.
***On this ‘ceiling’ issue: for all the time I have been writing this blog, the industry has been working to make sure the ceiling is met. But, it is only a ceiling. The President can, during the course of the year, go below the ceiling and in some earlier years a president has. So it strikes me that if Donald Trump is elected, he could very well just (at minimum) go way below the ‘ceiling’ (tell his Secretary of State to slow it down) after he is inaugurated without even initiating a battle (over Obama’s last determination) in the opening months of his administration.
