Category: The Opposition

Connecticut Senator Blumenthal wants more Syrians here faster, proposes to eliminate some screening

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Colonizing Connecticut?

Update October 7th:  Follow-up post to the revelation that CAIR is behind (literally) Blumenthal’s proposal to lessen security screening for Syrian refugees, go here.
***Update*** Who is that sinister-looking man over Blumenthal’s left shoulder.  It is none other than the Executive Director of CAIR Connecticut.  Thanks to Kyle for identifying him.  You can bet his interest is not in saving persecuted Christians!  See bio below.
Here is the brief story at WTNH News 8:

Blumenthal_Has_Plan_to_Help_Syrian_Refugees_1200x675_539015235515
Senator Blumenthal making his announcement. Who is that guy looming over his left shoulder, does anyone know? http://www.nbcconnecticut.com/news/local/Blumenthal-Unveils-4-Point-Plan-to-Expedite-Strengthen-Refugee-Processing-330799512.html

HARTFORD, Conn. (WTNH) — All eyes are on the 4 million people who’ve fled a brutal civil war in Syria that’s been raging for four years. Several European countries are offering to take in many of the refugees. The United States has also offered to help by possibly taking in 10,000 people. Senator Richard Blumenthal wants to see the process sped up.

[….]

Currently, it takes 18 months to two years for a refugee to come to the United States because of the lengthy process that’s involved. Sen. Blumenthal will submit a four point plan later this week to the powers that be in Washington that will hopefully eliminate some of the red tape. He announced some of his plan Monday morning in Hartford. Some of the points include:

*Expansion of the ‘Priority 3″ program that allows refugees with relatives in the United States to apply directly to the United States government for screening and resettlement.

*Improve coordination to end the repeat security checks that expire while refugees are still being processed.

*Use of videoconferencing for security screenings to greatly reduce the need for expensive and logistically-difficult travel.

*Notification of families when some, but not all family members have been cleared to come to the U.S.

We mentioned the ‘expansion of P-3’ when we wrote about the Senate hearing last week. This must be vigorously opposed as P-3 fraud has been rampant over the years!
See our post on the 18 mayors telling Obama to bring 100,000 Syrians here.  The mayor of Hartford is one of the 18.  Also, see this post from a week ago where other Connecticut elected officials were out stumping for Syrians.  Any connection to all the Muslim money flowing to Yale.
Connecticut you are in deep trouble!
***Update***

Mongi Dhaouadi
Executive Director

Mongi S. Dhaouadi was born and raised in Tunisia. He moved to the US when he was 19 years old and studied Electrical Engineering at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. As The Executive director of CAIR-CT, he conducts civil rights workshops throughout the state of Connecticut under the title “Know Your Rights.” Also, he leads several workshops and discussions on Islamophobia and the Muslim experience before and after 9/11. He has participated in and led several media campaigns and press conferences on issues concerning the Muslim community ranging from discrimination cases to advocating for the change of racial profiling laws in the state of Connecticut. Dhaouadi was featured in countless local, national, and international media outlets including NPR, FOX News, and Democracy Now with Amy Goodman. During the summer, he runs a youth internship program during which high school and college students work on several projects ranging from preparing a toolkit on Islamic cultural competency for schools, to writing and publishing articles from a Muslim youth perspective in the local papers and publications. Dhaouadi leads a Connecticut delegation at the Capitol Hill visits; an event that is organized every year by CAIR National, where members of the Muslim community visit their representatives in Wasington, DC and advocate for issues of concern domestic and foreign. Prior to joining CAIR-CT on a full time bases Dhaouadi was the Head Administrator at SKF Academy in Hamden Connecticut. Dhaouadi is married with three children: ages 11, 14 and 18. He lives with his family in New London, Connecticut. His favorite past time is playing or coaching soccer.

World Relief targeting Northern Idaho for refugee resettlement!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update October 9th: Local paper confirms—no refugees to N. Idaho for now.  However, great additional information here.
Important Update October 8th:  World Relief Spokane has notified us that they have NO PLANS to resettle refugees in Northern Idaho, see here.
Update October 3rd:  Readers I am traveling so not much time to post, however, wanted to mention that this post has gone through the roof in the last 24 hours!  Who knows why, but hopefully the citizens of St. Maries and Coeur d’Alene are passing it around!  Reminds me to tell you to read ‘Ten things your town needs to know’ by clicking here.
People ask me all the time—how do I know if my town is targeted?  I tell them, sorry, you will get no public announcement until plans are well underway, but if you watch very closely, you may see something that will tip you off!

Idaho map
Sorry I couldn’t find a better map, but I wanted to show you how close Spokane is to Coeur d’Alene, so it is no surprise that World Relief Spokane would move its excess refugees to Idaho. The map shows the other two resettlement sites in Idaho—Twin Falls and Boise.

Back in August we asked if St. Maries, Idaho was going to be a new resettlement site.  Now, reader Barbara directs our attention to this tiny mention in a local church bulletin (Grace Bible Church, September 27 bulletin).
This is likely all the notice the communities near Coeur d’Alene will get (St. Marie’s is close by) and they wouldn’t even get this if Barbara hadn’t spotted it!

MINISTRY OPPORTUNITY!

World Relief has been helping refugees settle in Spokane and would like to involve Coeur d’Alene as well. If you are interested in learning more about how you could be involved in such a ministry, please see Paul. Thanks!

Regular readers know that it is World Relief  (Evangelicals!), one of nine major federal contractors calling the shots about the future of your towns and cities (see here), that opened an office in Spartanburg, SC this year which is embroiled in controversy since a ‘Pocket of Resistance’ has developed there.  See all of our posts on Spartanburg by clicking here.
World Relief has an office in Spokane (here), Washington and Coeur d’Alene is only about 35 miles away making it an excellent spillover site (within the US State Department’s magic 100 mile radius for resettlement).
Everyone reading this post who wishes to find out if your town could be next to be colonized (because frankly they don’t have enough sites for the thousands of Syrians and additional Africans they plan to resettle in FY2016 which, by the way, began yesterday), go to first this list of resettlement subcontractors and see this map.  If one of these offices is anywhere near you, you are fair game!
People ask me all the time, what the legend is on the map.  The abbreviations for the nine major contractors are represented in the legend.

So back to Northern Idaho—you have early notice now that they have plans for your towns! What will concerned citizens do?

We have an extensive archive on the conflict over refugee resettlement in Twin Falls, click here.  To learn more about what citizens are doing there, visit those posts.
This post and hundreds more like it are posted in our ‘where to find information’ category which I urge all new readers to visit.  I know it’s hard for new folks to grasp all of this, but please use that category and our search window to look around for useful information.  I apologize in advance for not being able to answer all of your inquiries.

With added Syrian numbers, are cities and states prepared to help pay for more refugees?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

That is not exactly the title of this excellent article at, of all places, the Huffington Post, but it’s my version of it!  I’m actually blown away that Pew Charitable Trust’s Stateline news service has really dug into how the Refugee Admissions Program works.  It confirms some things we knew, but that I had not seen so clearly revealed in print before.
Although it does skew toward advocating more resettlement to America (what else from a very far left foundation), someone did a lot of work.  All of you in ‘Pockets of Resistance’ must read this whole article!
By the way, decades ago I knew something about the environmental hard left and property rights, and at that time Pew infamously began a propaganda campaign called the ‘Greening of the Churches.’   It was a strategy they knew that they needed in order to advance the cause of environmental fascism—they had to infiltrate the churches with the green (global warming etc.) message so good churchgoing people would carry their message.  I digress, but that is my first encounter with Pew.  So, I’m a bit surprised at how useful this article will be to you!

Ed+Pawlowski+Obama+Speaks+White+House+Forum+tWSUAoB7Yyjl
Allentown, PA is going to get slammed with (mostly Muslim) Syrians thanks to welcoming message from Mayor Ed Pawlowski who admits to the Pew reporter that he has little say in how many get resettled in his city. Here is Pawlowski with guess who.

The article, besides some very useful information on how the program works, basically gives us the road map for slowing the flow—if the federal government does not have enough money appropriated for refugee resettlement (aka colonization), they can’t bring in large numbers of refugees for your town and state to care for.
Only problem (and it is a big one!) is that our do-nothing House of Representatives is too chicken to use their power of the purse.
From the Huffington Post (emphasis is mine):

The U.S. plans to increase the number of refugees it takes from 70,000 to 100,000 over the next two years. New York, Los Angeles and 16 other cities have urged President Barack Obama to accept even more refugees from Syria.

But is the country—along with the aid groups that help in resettlement and local communities that receive refugees—ready for an increase in arrivals? And where will the new arrivals go?

The increase could strain America’s sprawling refugee admissions program, a partnership between the federal government, international organizations like the United Nations, nine national nonprofits and their hundreds of local affiliates.

Cities and states may need to spend more money on social services for refugees, particularly if Congress doesn’t approve additional federal funding for resettlement.

The nine non-governmental (unelected) federal contractors meet every week in northern Virginia to decide the fate of your town.

Parceling out tens of thousands of refugees to U.S. communities takes advance planning. Each week, representatives of the nine nonprofit groups meet in the Rosslyn, Virginia, offices of the Refugee Processing Center, a State Department contractor. Some groups attend via conference call.

Staffers sit around a table and review a thick packet of refugee case files. The files contain the addresses of any family members the refugee wants to join in the U.S., medical information and other personal data. The nine staffers then talk through the cases and match each refugee (or refugee family) with a city and a local nonprofit that can help them adjust to new lives in America.

[….]

To decide how many refugees to send to, say, Allentown, Pennsylvania, each year, the State Department considers how many people local nonprofits say they can resettle there. Philadelphia-based Lutheran Children and Family Service (LCFS) settled between 100 and 200 refugees in Allentown, Lancaster and Philadelphia this year; Allentown’s allotment included 39 Syrians.

Pay attention Wyoming!  Governor Mead has been misinformed.  He says that the refugees won’t cost the taxpayers of Wyoming anything! See his preposterous statement here back in July.***  This Pew article (below) tells us why he is wrong and is thus misleading Wyomingites.

Every state except Wyoming has a partnership with the federal government and local nonprofits to provide aid to refugees (and Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead, a Republican, has supported starting such a resettlement program).

[….]

Although cities and states have the opportunity to weigh in on the resettlement process, they don’t have much control over how many refugees are settled where. “We really don’t have any say, to be honest with you,” said Allentown Mayor Ed Pawlowski, a Democrat.

[….]

The big national nonprofits that select and resettle refugees have called for the U.S. to help even more people: 200,000 refugees in fiscal 2016, including 100,000 from Syria.

[….]

The federal government spends a lot of money processing refugees overseas and then helping them to resettle. The State Department spent over $3 billion to assist and process refugees overseas in fiscal 2015 (including through grants to the U.N.) and to settle refugees in the U.S. (through grants to the nine nonprofits).  [$3 billion for the resettlement alone, not including welfare is much higher than we knew—-ed]

The $1,975 per refugee local nonprofits receive from the State Department covers 30 to 90 days of furnished housing, help buying food and clothing, and a case manager who can shepherd refugees through what can be bewildering first days in their new country, including tasks like applying for a Social Security card.

The Pew author fails to tell readers that upwards of half of that $1,975 goes to the resettlement contractor.

For all of you being told that the resettlement being decided for your town or state by NINE PRIVATE ORGANIZATIONS (not elected by you) will cost local and state taxpayers nothing, read this! 

Remember readers, this is Pew saying this, not RRW!

Federal aid doesn’t cover everything. “Refugees would never be able to resettle based on what’s available in the refugee resettlement pot of funding,” said Charles Shipman, state refugee coordinator for Arizona.

Private donations bolster the services local nonprofits provide [private donations are minimal and usually involve junk furniture and clothes contributions.—ed]. And states and local communities help pick up the tab, too, because refugees—who arrive with little more than the clothes on their backs—are immediately eligible for mainstream benefit programs like food stamps, Medicaid and cash assistance for low-income families. States play a role in funding some of those programs.

When the refugee resettlement program began, in 1980, the federal government reimbursed states for providing cash assistance, Medicaid and supplemental Social Security benefits to refugees for their first three years in the country, said Ann Morse of the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Now, the federal government only repays states for one service: providing eight months of cash and medical assistance to childless refugee couples or single adults, who don’t qualify for family-based benefits.

Read it all!
***Here are Wyoming REPUBLICAN Governor Matt Mead’s exact words back in July (click here).

The federal Office of Refugee Resettlement and the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees “pay 100 percent of the costs of refugee resettlement for many years. It’s not like we’re going to get stuck with an unfunded mandate,” he said…

It's official: Presidential Determination for FY 2016 published yesterday—85,000 refugees for the US starting tomorrow

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Obama sad
I think they are mad at me—85,000 isn’t the 200,000 they wanted!

Here is the White House announcement (posted in full below).
(I’m still looking for the very detailed report, like this one for FY 2015, that is supposed to have been available weeks ago.  If you see it let me know!)
One thing I would like to know, and you probably would too, is WHY ARE WE STILL BRINGING ANY ‘REFUGEES’ FROM CUBA?
Human Rights First (first out of the box) criticizes Obama, here.
Miliband al jazeer
The nerve of highly paid (by you, the US taxpayer) Brit David Miliband of the International Rescue Committee on Al Jazeera lecturing Europe and America to take more refugees. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEbAGZsJqYw

International Rescue Committee next in line to criticize the O-man.

Presidential Determination — Presidential Determination on Refugee Admissions for Fiscal Year 2016

MEMORANDUM FOR THE SECRETARY OF STATE

SUBJECT: Presidential Determination on Refugee Admissions for Fiscal Year 2016

In accordance with section 207 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (the “Act”) (8 U.S.C. 1157), and after appropriate consultations with the Congress, I hereby make the following determinations and authorize the following actions:

The admission of up to 85,000 refugees to the United States during Fiscal Year (FY) 2016 is justified by humanitarian concerns or is otherwise in the national interest; provided that this number shall be understood as including persons admitted to the United States during FY 2016 with Federal refugee resettlement assistance under the Amerasian immigrant admissions program, as provided below.

The admissions numbers shall be allocated among refugees of special humanitarian concern to the United States in accordance with the following regional allocations; provided that the number of admissions allocated to the East Asia region shall include persons admitted to the United States during FY 2016 with Federal refugee resettlement assistance under section 584 of the Foreign Operations, Export Financing, and Related Programs Appropriations Act of 1988, as contained in section 101(e) of Public Law 100-202 (Amerasian immigrants and their family members):

(Editor:  I have added the 2015 numbers in red for comparison)

Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25,000   (17,000)

East Asia. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13,000 (13,000)

Europe and Central Asia . . . . . . . . . . . 4,000 (1,000)

Latin America/Caribbean. . . . . . . . . . . 3,000 (4,000)

Near East/South Asia. . . . . . . . . . . . 34,000 (33,000)

Unallocated Reserve . . . . . . . . . . . . 6,000 (2,000)

The 6,000 unallocated refugee numbers shall be allocated to regional ceilings, as needed. Upon providing notification to the Judiciary Committees of the Congress, you are hereby authorized to use unallocated admissions in regions where the need for additional admissions arises.

Additionally, upon notification to the Judiciary Committees of the Congress, you are further authorized to transfer unused admissions allocated to a particular region to one or more other regions, if there is a need for greater admissions for the region or regions to which the admissions are being transferred.

Consistent with section 2(b)(2) of the Migration and Refugee Assistance Act of 1962, I hereby determine that assistance to or on behalf of persons applying for admission to the United States as part of the overseas refugee admissions program will contribute to the foreign policy interests of the United States and designate such persons for this purpose. Consistent with section 101(a)(42) of the Act (8 U.S.C. 1101 (a)(42)), and after appropriate consultation with the Congress, I also specify that, for FY 2016, the following persons may, if otherwise qualified, be considered refugees for the purpose of admission to the United States within their countries of nationality or habitual residence:

Persons in Cuba
Persons in Eurasia and the Baltics
Persons in Iraq
Persons in Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador
In exceptional circumstances, persons identified by a United States Embassy in any location
You are authorized and directed to publish this determination in the Federal Register.

BARACK OBAMA

If you are wondering what that last bit is about, it is this:  refugees by definition are supposed to have left the country of their persecution.  We are not supposed to be plucking them from the place they claim to be persecuted, but over time this list has expanded (like everything else with this program!).
Don’t forget, the first hearing (since 9/11!) to address refugee resettlement in either the House or Senate will be tomorrow.  Click here for more.

Syracuse citizens not happy with Mayor's invite to Syrians

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We told you, here, the other day about Syracuse mayor Stephanie Miner inviting more*** Syrian ‘refugees’ to Syracuse, but it appears her constituents are not thrilled.
Here is a portion of a letter to the editor (Mayor, how will we fund refugee resettlement?) that appeared at Syracuse.com in response to their earlier article.  I suspect that all over the country citizens are asking the same questions!
The most interesting thing is the huge number of comments the letter received, most also critical of the mayor.

Mayor Miner
Reader PistolPete wanted to know how many refugees the mayor was taking into her home. This is not the mayor’s home, but this is pretty funny. Apparently while campaigning for the job, the candidate took photos of ‘code violations’ (like this one) and posted them. Why not take photos of code violations that will surely be found in the slums where the refugees are living and post those on facebook. The refugee resettlement contractors (and the politicians that support them) must be called-out for causing the further decline of already impoverished minority neighborhoods. Photo: http://syracusesearch.pbworks.com/w/page/6360859/Syracuse%20Search%20%231%20-%20%235

Let’s take care of our own first! seems to be the common theme.
To the Editor:

This letter is in response to Mayor Stephanie Miner’s letter to President Barack Obama in her call for an increase of Syrian refugees. I currently work with refugees and have worked in a number of human service agencies. I commend her commitment to help those in need.

Last year Americans committed to resettle 70,000 refugees, and we fell short of meeting that number. This next year we have taken on an additional 10,000 refugees from Syria alone. With the ongoing dire circumstances in Syria and those around the rest of the world, we should absolutely do our part to help.

However, with all the letters and articles I have been reading lately, I have not seen a proposal of how we plan to financially support the resettlement of more refugees. How can we support those in need outside the United States if we cannot take care of our own? How does one decide whose life is worth providing resources to?

More….

Candice Fry

Now, check this out. Someone in the Syracuse area is doing his/her homework!

Do the same where you live!  Go on the offense and make them answer to you.  (Gino, get in touch with us to join with like-minded people in the growing grassroots network around the country!).  
From commenter GinoChalupa (emphasis added is mine):

Stephanie Miner and her friends at the Catholic Charities and Interfaith Works are talking out of both sides of their mouths. A few weeks ago they expressed collective shock and outrage that Syracuse has one of the nation’s highest poverty rates and that the number of census tracts with concentrated poverty tripled in a matter of a few years. It just so happened to be that the census tracts on the north side where these organizations have settled the vast majority of its refugees all had the highest poverty rates in the city with nearly 80% of the population below the poverty line. These north side census tracts had much lower levels of concentrated poverty in the 2000 census before the Catholic Charities and Interfaith Works began tripling the number of refugees settled in Syracuse. Beth Broadway, Executive Director of Interfaith Works told local reporters that the high rates of concentrated poverty among blacks, Hispanics, and Asians in Syracuse was unacceptable and a sign this community has much work to do. Stephanie Miner and a host of other groups which claim to share the same goal of alleviating poverty claimed the community would address this issue.

What Ms. Broadway of Interfaith Works, the Catholic Charities, and Stephanie Miner fail to acknowledge is that the high rate of poverty is driven in part by the influx of 10,000 refugees to the City of Syracuse since 2000. The vast majority of refugees settled by these organizations are from countries in Africa and Asia. It should come as no surprise that the percentage of black residents living in poverty and the percentage of black residents living in high poverty census tracts increased as thousands of the refugees settled from Africa are “black.” The 52% poverty rate among Asians in the City of Syracuse in the latest census should also come as no surprise as a plurality of the refugees settled are from Asian countries. The percentage of Asians living in poverty in suburban Syracuse is in the single digits (with the exception of the Town of Salina which has seen an increase in Vietnamese families relocating there due to the rapid deterioration of the north side).

According to monthly data posted on the website for the NY Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance, the number of welfare caseloads in Onondaga County has nearly doubled since 2007. In June 2015, the most recent month data is available, a total of 7,468 families in Onondaga County received temporary assistance. This is the equivalent of 16,054 people. In one month alone, the number of families receiving assistance increased by more than 200 from 7,237 families in May 2015 to 7,468 families in June 2015. The number of Medicaid caseloads has more than doubled in 10 years (this number had doubled before the Affordable Care Act was implemented, so the increase cannot be attributed to the increasing number of needy residents enrolling in Medicaid). Onondaga County had struggled with a growing welfare caseload in the 1990s and was able to whittle down the number of families enrolled in temporary assistance by the year 2000. It wasn’t until the mid 2000s, that welfare caseloads began to increase again. This increase was more than 3 years prior to the Great Recession of 2008. When comparing Onondaga County to other upstate counties with large urban populations (Albany, Erie and Monroe), Onondaga County is the only major upstate county that has not experienced a decline in the number of families receiving temporary assistance, Albany, Erie and Monroe Counties have seen declines during the past two years and the number of families receiving assistance is now back down to levels seen prior to recession. In Onondaga County, however, the number of families on welfare is at its highest level since records were posted online in 2001. Compared with the other major urban counties, Onondaga County has seen a much larger settlement of refugees. The latest census estimates also show that the percentage of residents lacking any formal education and the % that don’t speak English has increased significantly. Local governments and service providers that are already stretched thin are going to have to provide additional services that the community can ill-afford.

Interfaith Works [a subcontractor of the far Left Church World Service—ed] recently paid $1,024,520 for an office building on the 1000 block of James Street. The previous owner was a financial services company which left for the suburbs. It would appear that these organizations are heavily dependent on the $1,000+ administrative fee they are paid by the federal government for each refugee they settle. The City of Syracuse and Onondaga County cannot afford to allow these two organizations to balance their books and generate revenue at the expense of an already stretched social safety net. If Interfaith Works and the Catholic Charities were genuinely concerned about reducing poverty, they would not continue to exacerbate the situation by settling 1,200 to 1,400 refugees each year.

LOL!  Another reader PistolPete wanted to know how many refugees “Steffi” (the mayor) was taking into her two homes!
We have written a lot about Syracuse over the years, click here, for previous posts (Diversity is so beautiful! Catholic Church becomes a mosque, African Americans beat up Burmese refugees, convenience store fraud by Palestinians, refugees booted from sub-standard housing in which they were placed, etc.).
*** Syracuse has already started resettling Syrian refugees according to US State Department data, here.