Category: The Opposition

More on Rutland Vermont's refugee controversy

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update: Breitbart has just learned that the Vermont Health Dept. has treated 17 cases of ACTIVE Tuberculosis in the refugee population placed in that state by the US State Department.
I’ve been remiss in not reporting on the drama in Rutland, VT last week as the Aldermen there voted on whether to place a referendum seeking the public’s approval (or disapproval) of the city becoming Vermont’s next federal resettlement site.

Anne Richard UN seal
The Aldermen of Rutland, VT are asking Richard (Asst. Sec. of State for Populations, Refugees and Migration) for more information on the plans for the city. The nerve of them!

I am woefully behind on the Vermont news (although I did post on the latest regarding ACTIVE TB in the state here),  so forgive me if more important things have happened since the vote.  Here Watchdog.org reports on the vote (they voted to not put the referendum on the ballot).
By the way, the focus has been on Syrian refugees resettling there, but once an office is open, a smattering of many other ethnic groups will be brought in—Somalis, Congolese, Burmese, Iraqis and so forth—making assimilation even harder as each ethnic group creates its core community. Myriad ethnic groups also increase the expense to local tax payers for the school system and even the health department as interpreters must be provided for each group.
You should read Watchdog.org for all the details of the debate, but I wanted to emphasize one thing mentioned by one of the Aldermen:

David Trapeni, a two-time mayoral candidate and the organizer of the petition drive, criticized the resettlement plan as too open-ended.

“It’s not a hundred — it’s hundreds of refugees that come,” Trapeni said. “Once you open that door that’s it — you’re going to get hundreds, and you’re not going to have any say.”

I cannot stress enough how significant Trapeni’s comment is.  He is exactly right!  You cannot shut the spigot off once the pipeline starts to flow. You can’t next year say, well, that doesn’t work for us and expect the feds and their contractor to shutter the office they opened and fire the staff.  This program builds on itself because first, the agency is paid by the head to resettle the refugees, and secondly they are hellbent on bringing in the family members once the original seeds are planted. You will be even more vilified when you say we don’t want families reunited.
In the controversy in Spartanburg, SC a year ago, the contractor/feds promised to bring in only 50 refugees, now the plan for next year is 150 (I didn’t check the exact number, but it is at least that many).
It will not end, just ask the mayors of Manchester, NH or Amarillo, TX who have been trying for years to close the spigot!

Aldermen ask Asst. Sec. of State Anne Richard for more information

This (news) is a very interesting turn of events and frankly I have to give this local body a thumbs-up for even taking an initiative like this.
Basically they are signaling that local governments have a right to all the facts. That is the last thing the refugee industry wants to set a precedent about. The arrogant feds and contractors are so accustomed to operating in secrecy that they don’t want to be in a position to answer questions.
A word of caution…
However, when pressed they have been able to put on shows for the public as they did in Spartanburg, SC and in Twin Falls, Idaho where they came to town and held private meetings (Spartanburg) or held a stacked public meeting as they did in Twin Falls and gave their positive spin on refugee resettlement. (So Rutland should be prepared for such a propaganda initiative from Washington.)
Nevertheless, every city government should be so audacious as to demand more answers from the federal government. After all, your town will be changed forever!
I’ll be very interested to see how Ms. Richard responds to the letter (read it here).  Will she decide the controversy in Rutland isn’t worth pushing any further and move on to another (weaker) target town in Vermont? Or, will she put up a fight here as a show of power by bringing in her dog and pony show?
Read the whole story at the Times Argus.
Our Rutland archive is here (for new readers!).

More on Obama and his crony corporate pals doing an end-run on refugee program

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We mentioned this story here and here the other day when we wrote about Twin Falls Idaho and Chobani Yogurt, but now we are learning even more!
The Daily Caller (reporter Alex Pfeiffer) has relied on the work of Nayla Rush a refugee/immigration researcher at the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington to flesh out yet another of Obama’s creative (sneaky and unethical) ways of flooding the country with phony refugees.

Hamdi_Ulukaya_and_Bill_Clinton
Crony capitalism on full display at the Clinton Global Initiative. Chatting it up with Bill is Hamdi Ulukaya founder and CEO of Chobani Yogurt. Big companies need the federal government to supply them with cheap labor! Photo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamdi_Ulukaya

Below is a bit of the Daily Caller article (note that Chobani Yogurt is prominent among the financial giants working to change the nature of your towns!).
Do not be fooled! It is all about money and power (with a brushed on veneer of compassionate humanitarianism).

The White House announced last week that it is launching a “Call to Action” asking private businesses to help with the resettlement of refugees. This could be done without regard to the government cap of 85,000 total refugees, including 10,000 Syrian refugees, in 2016.

Fifteen founding corporations have teamed up with the Obama administration on the effort. These are: Accenture, Airbnb, Chobani, Coursera, Goldman Sachs, Google, HP, IBM, JPMorgan Chase & Co., LinkedIn, Microsoft, Mastercard, UPS, TripAdvisor, and Western Union. The Call to Action initiative is not only to help refugees in the United States, but all over the world.

[….]

These refugees will be coming outside the refugee resettlement program so they would not be counted under the government cap of 10,000. These ‘alternative legal pathways or sponsorships’ will be under employment visas, training, student visas and scholarships, visiting scholars etc,” Nayla Rush, senior researcher at the Center for Immigration Studies, told The Daily Caller.

Rush added, “remember, the aim is to bring as many Syrian refugees as possible. 10,000 is the limit this [Fiscal Year] under the refugee resettlement program. No limit to these ‘private sponsorships’, more importantly, no traceability.”

Read Rush’s full report here.
She mentions Chipotle and the major US resettlement contractor, International Rescue Committee, something we told you about here in May.

Say after me: It is all about money! It is all about money!……

inquiring mindsIsn’t it curious that Chobani Yogurt asked Bloomberg to take a sentence out of a report that Bloomberg posted on June 30th on the Obama Call to Action.
Bloomberg correction:

“Corrects to remove reference to Chobani yogurt hiring additional refugees in ninth paragraph, which the company has not announced.”

Are they saying they are (or are not) hiring more refugees for their plants in New York state and in Idaho? Inquiring minds want to know!

Creeps me out! UN helps create The Hive (a modern day propaganda machine)

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Hive_PrimaryOneColor_redoIf you’ve wondered how so many warm and fluffy stories are popping up on the issue of refugees, you might look to The Hive as one reason for the latest flurry.

Brian Reich
The Hive’s brain, Brian Reich. http://www.fastcompany.com/3054496/most-creative-people/a-un-agencys-radical-experiment-in-addressing-the-refugee-crisis

Truly I’m creeped-out when I read about the small group of social engineers hired by the United Nations, to create a narrative, to solve what they call the “most pressing issue” of our time—the “refugee crisis.”
Here (hat tip: Julia) is what they say about themselves (of course they don’t tell you what they really are—propagandists!):

THE HIVE AND A “MANHATTAN PROJECT FOR NONPROFITS”

So what is the Hive, and what does it do? It’s a team of 10 people working out of New York, exploring the universe of “persuadables” in the context of the refugee crisis. Reich and his colleagues are always asking, “Who can we get to engage around this issue that the UNHCR might not otherwise target? And how can we measure their behavior?” Its hiring practices are unorthodox, for the nonprofit world, at least. “We have the first full-time data scientist in a nonprofit in the U.S. focused on engagement,” says Reich.

And, here they describe one of their recent successes as they work for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (the agency choosing refugees for your towns!):

The Hive has a wide berth to experiment with things that an august body like the UNHCR might not typically try. It made a “Jesus Was a Refugee” bumper sticker, riffing on a line of the Pope’s, and distributed it around the time of his U.S. visit.

The average person just thinks a theme like that springs up from the ether.  Do a google search on ‘Jesus was a refugee’ and see how it is spread throughout social media.
Here is their facebook page: USA for UNHCR where they promote their memes such as the bumper sticker project they brag about.
And, here is what they say they are doing:

We’re building knowledge about issues relating to refugees so that Americans will grow more committed to solving the refugee crisis.

We’re using data science to identify and micro-target prospective supporters.

And we’re developing strategic partnership opportunities for corporations and brands that change everything we know about philanthropy and advocacy.

This is not about charity. We’re here to help the United States. We are here to help the United States solve problems that truly need the United States’ support.

We’re here to unlock the potential of the U.S. market – both in terms of fundraising and advocacy – in support of the most pressing issue of our time.

We can’t make change happen alone or over night – that is why we need you. We are bringing together the smartest and most innovative partners in the U.S. to help us reach, educate and engage American’s on today’s most pressing issue.

Storytelling!

One of the most important weapons they have in their propaganda arsenal is STORYTELLING!
The political Left loves stories: warm stories, family stories, children stories, stories of hardship overcome, stories about success and stories about how ethnic groups are reaching out to help each other with love and kindness.  Blah, blah, blah!
But, we have stories too! (and we don’t have millions of dollars and Manhattan brains promoting them).  We have stories about their angels wandering off-message (thus destroying their carefully crafted narrative) and raping little girls (Idaho!), becoming Islamic terrorists (Kentucky) or terrorizing suburbs (Minnesota).
And, therein lies the danger to the UN and its Leftist social engineers of blogs like Refugee Resettlement Watch and other on-line media daily messing up their narrative! by pumping out the “stories” that ‘balance’ their warm and fuzzy multicultural dream theme with some cold hard reality!

Viva La Free Speech!

Big news! Tennessee AG allows 10th Amendment lawsuit to be filed against feds!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

It has been a long time coming, but regular readers know that the Tennessee legislature voted earlier this year to file a lawsuit against the federal government’s refugee resettlement program being operated in the state as a so-called Wilson-Fish program.
I’m not a lawyer and have no time to get into the weeds on the case, but just know that for these 12 states*** this case is the worst nightmare for the refugee industry in America.  It seems the case prepared by the Thomas More Law Center will proceed as the last impediment to filing has been removed!

jan-reeves-holly-johnson
Holly Johnson of Catholic Charities (left) calls the shots for TN. On the right is Jan Reeves who has been making decisions on who comes to Idaho for over two decades. Idaho is also a Wilson-Fish state!

Here is a little bit of the Tennessean last night (LOL! trying to downplay the momentous decision):

The lawsuit will move forward because a resolution approved by the legislature earlier this year included a provision that allows the legislature to hire outside counsel to sue the government for noncompliance of the Refugee Act of 1980.

[….]

“This Office shares the General Assembly’s concern about unauthorized federal intrusion in matters that have historically legally resided within the exclusive purview of state and local officials,” Slatery (TN AG) wrote in a letter sent to the clerks of both legislative chambers. “The founders in adopting the United States Constitution created a series of checks and balances to ensure that no one branch of government would have unfettered power.”

The federal government working with Catholic Charities and NOT with the elected officials of the state of Tennessee is basically spending Tennessee taxpayers’ money with no authorization from the legislature!

Proponents of the measure have said the lawsuit is necessary because the federal government has failed to consult with Tennessee on the continued placement of refugees while suggesting that the feds have shifted the cost of administering the program to the state without lawmakers specifically authorizing the appropriation of funds.

This is not the same case that was filed in Texas and Alabama! This is a states’ rights lawsuit!

Texas and Alabama have sued the federal government over refugee resettlement, but Tennessee’s forthcoming lawsuit would be the first based on the 10th Amendment, which states that the federal government possesses only powers delegated to it by the U.S. Constitution and that all other powers are reserved for the states.

Continue reading here.
We will write more later as others weigh in on the exciting news.
For all of you working in ‘pockets of resistance’ this is huge news, but it is not by itself a silver bullet! There is no one silver bullet! Unfortunately we cannot count on Congress to abolish or even reform this program with the present leadership. So we must all continue working on all of the seemingly small things we do every day to bring attention to the refugee resettlement industry in America!  I’m confident a tipping point is near!

The New York Daily News had its say about the Tennessee case with a story filed on Saturday. As someone said, it reads like a “novella!”  Check it out here since it discusses yours truly being driven by Islamophobia.  I guess what went down in Lake Calhoun, MN last week can all be chalked up to Islamophobia too!
***Two other states are effectively Wilson-Fish states now as Kansas and New Jersey withdrew from the program, but it appears governors there are too chicken to make the next move and file a lawsuit just as Tennessee will now do.

The system is rigged against Christian Syrians; UN chooses Sunni Muslims for US

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We have told you about a zillion times that the United Nations is now choosing the majority of refugees admitted to the US and here is one more confirmation of that (if we needed it!).

Fillipo Grandi
Do you know who this is? This is Filippo Grandi, an Italian, the new UN High Commissioner for Refugees and he is deciding who will live in your towns! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filippo_Grandi

Patrick Goodenough, a reporter at CNS News, tells us every month what the stats look like for the number of Syrians entering the US and what their ‘religious’ persuasion is and here is his June update which includes these few paragraphs well into the report.

Sunnis make up the vast majority of the refugees admitted to date – 5,099 (98.3 percent) of the 5,186.

The proportion of Syrian refugees admitted this year who are Christians – 0.38 percent – is much smaller than the roughly 10 percent of pre-war Syrians who were Christian.

Refugee advocacy groups say this anomaly is at least partly the result of the fact Christians among the fleeing Syrians are loathe to enter U.N. camps in surrounding countries for fear of their safety – something the U.N. refugee agency itself concedes is happening.

Because the U.N. refers applicants at the beginning of the process of seeking refugee status in the U.S., this may mean fewer Christians are referred in the first place.

[….]

Christians, Yazidis and Shi’a have been specifically targeted by the Sunni jihadists of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS/ISIL), in what the U.S. government has determined is a campaign of genocide.

So, we are taking the Sunni persecutors in to the US (makes sense! NOT!).
More here and see their excellent graph.

There is nothing in refugee law to stop the US State Department from seeking out Syrian Christians/minorities. It is simply that we are now being led by the nose by the United Nations!  (which we largely support with your money!)