Category: The Opposition

Is the Governor of Wyoming calling RRW racist?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I don’t think so.  He is a Republican (right?) and that is something out of the Democrats’ play-book!  Any time someone disagrees with them on the issue of immigration, and they want to shut up the critics, out comes the “r” word.  It happens so often, it has become a joke!

Matt Mead and wife
Governor Matt Mead with wife sworn into office in 2011.

If he, or anyone on his staff, had followed our work over the last almost seven years, he would know that, first and foremost, we inform the public about a federal program that in our opinion has gotten way out of control and acts, to a great degree, in secrecy, while spending your tax dollars!

Our driving motivation is to inform you of the details of the US State Department’s refugee program so that you and your community may have a thorough discussion about what it is that the federal agencies (including ORR in Health and Human Services) in conjunction with a private contractor (Lutheran Family Services Rocky Mountains, in this case) have in mind for your town or city.

The most important thing the governor said in the Casper Star-Tribune interview over the weekend is this:

At this point, Mead is working with volunteers to gain more information about establishing a refugee program in the state. Wyomingites will get to comment on a program as it’s developed, he said.

Please!  Anyone with concerns should ask to be involved as one of the “volunteers” he is working with and then Wyomingites should insist, at the very least, that hearings or public meetings be held in the Wyoming cities which are being targeted for refugee placement.

Here is more of what the Casper Star-Tribune reports from an interview with the governor:

CHEYENNE — Some of the opinions on the Internet about refugee resettlement in Wyoming are inaccurate and racist, Gov. Matt Mead said.

[….]

For instance, a blog called Refugee Resettlement Watch has a picture of a Gillette man and his family with the headline “The man who started the Wyoming refugee controversy.”

Refugee Resettlement Watch, run by a Maryland resident, also lists crimes committed by refugees throughout the United States, and in one place the site asks, “Are you ready for this in Wyoming?”

“In terms of the comments, I’ve seen some of those, too, in particular, the racist comments,” Mead said. “I don’t think that represents Wyoming. But it is hard to see and hard to read. And some of them, frankly, I will not read.”

Refugee resettlement in Wyoming is a worthy debate, Mead said.

“Let’s not have the debate in terms none of us would be proud of,” he said.

[….]

Ann Corcoran, who runs Refugee Resettlement Watch, did not respond to an email from the Casper Star-Tribune.

I’m so sorry to have missed that e-mail.  As regular readers know, I’m pretty awful about getting to all of my e-mail (what I wouldn’t give for a secretary or an intern!).  I apologize and going forward I should have more time to be more responsive to readers. I will e-mail the reporter today.

Then near the end of the article we learn this:

Mead’s spokesman, Renny MacKay, said Friday that the discussion of a program is in its preliminary stages. The governor’s office is looking at federal laws to understand the program. Mead doesn’t want to spend state money on it. Wyoming would work with the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement.

Just a reminder in case you (new readers) are confused:  The US State Department (in conjunction with the United Nations) chooses and admits the refugees.  Working with their major contractors***, the US State Department (Barbara Day) plays the significant role in deciding where the refugees will initially be placed.  They are running out of “welcoming” communities and they need Wyoming!

The Office of Refugee Resettlement in the US Department of Health and Human Services doles out grants to contractors (rarely to state or local governments) to care for refugees for a short time.  Because the program responsibility is divided by two major agencies of the federal government, it makes it more difficult for the average citizen or even state and local government officials to understand.

The program will cost the state of Wyoming money, but how much is always the ‘$64 thousand dollar question.’  Some states are attempting to figure out exactly what refugees do cost their state and local taxpayers (schools, healthcare, housing, crime etc.),  but the feds make getting that information very difficult.

Our coverage of the Wyoming controversy is here.  See for yourself if it’s “racist.”  And, don’t miss the opinion piece by Don Barnett that the Casper Star Tribune published last month.

The Casper Star Tribune has very early on editorialized in favor of refugee resettlement for Wyoming, here.

If the governor really wants to know how the program works, he might visit our fact sheet, here.  And, if he and his staff are ambitious, then they should check out our over 200 posts in a category we call ‘where to find information.’

***Nine major federal contractors, all others subcontract to the nine. In most cases these contractors (below) operate on 90 plus% federal funding.  No longer may they be considered private charitable enterprises.  They are also not financially audited, so between the major contractors and the 300 or so subcontractors it makes it hard to follow the (your!) money:

Massachusetts professor wants to know what’s holding up Syrian flow to US

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

In a letter to the editor, professor Robert McAndrews (Salem State U.) wants to know what is stopping Obama from flinging open the gates to America for Syrians.

I would like to know that too (not that I want it! McAndrews obviously does), because in the face of lobbying pressure we haven’t seen on the refugee front since they beat George Bush into submission on Iraqi refugees, Obama hasn’t made a move that we know of.

McAndrews even points out that the deadline for Syrians in the US to sign up for Temporary Protected Status (TPS) has come and gone some months ago.  Readers, they should take the word “temporary” out of TPS because how it works is that any Syrian in here for any reason when the turmoil began in Syria can apply for TPS and frankly stay forever!  TPS is not supposed to be available for anyone sneaking in now.

Here is McAndrews’ letter (Hat tip: ‘pungentpeppers’).  We have been reporting on the media campaign to bring thousands of Syrians to the US this year, but something. or someone, is thankfully, so far, blocking the way.

From the Boston Globe:

The United Nations reports that there are more than 1 million Syrian refugees in Lebanon and more than 600,000 in Jordan (“One million Syrian refugees flooding Lebanon,” April 4). The Assad regime has terrorized its citizens, killing more than 100,000 people and displacing 6.5 million of its citizens. The United States has generously provided nearly $2 billion in aid for humanitarian assistance for the refugees and displaced families. However, according to Human Rights First, the US government has provided only 121 refugee visas for Syrians to enter the United States. This is unconscionable. The message is: We will donate money to relief agencies, but we will not open our border to provide a safe haven for the refugees.

In addition, Citizenship and Immigration Services, the US agency responsible for the administration of granting temporary protected status for Syrians who are already here on a temporary visa, essentially closed the registration for initial filings in December. Does this make any sense?

The other option for Syrians in the United States is to apply for asylum, and thousands living here have done so. This can be a yearslong and legally arduous option, leaving asylum seekers in limbo and often without work authorization.

Syrian refugees need our help now, and the Obama administration must wake up to the moral urgency of this crisis.

LOL!  Back in the Bush years, the last line of the letter wouldn’t say ‘Bush administration,’ it would have thrown the blame completely on George W. Bush personally!

Oshkosh, WI reaches out to refugees with “welcoming smile” as State Dept comes for a visit

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Barbara Day, the US State Department’s chief resettlement officer, visited Oshkosh on Tuesday presumably to make sure the community (the media!) was getting the right message about the next batch of refugees to arrive in Oshkosh.  She was essentially shoring-up the base.

Remember there was a flurry of opposition this past January when a city alderman in nearby Appleton raised a ruckus.

Barbara Day wants to be sure Oshkosh stays on board with refugee placement.

Oshkosh and Appleton are 25 miles apart and as is often the case, when a city begins to overload with refugees, there is spillover into another nearby city.  When the State Department does family reunifications they like to stay within a hundred miles of the family or ethnic group enclave.

This is a public relations visit by Day to be sure the Oshkoshers stay on track with “welcoming” the “new Americans.”  You see, they are running out of suitable places to resettle refugees and since there are so many “family” members coming now who want to be with their families that towns quickly get overloaded, especially when the secondary migrants arrive on top of the newly resettled.

From the Northwestern (emphasis is mine):

Oshkosh is expected to continue to be a hub for the resettlement of refugees who are coming to Northeast Wisconsin to establish new roots after fleeing their home countries.

Like previous years, about 70 refugees are expected to arrive in Oshkosh and call the city home in 2014. Most of the refugees will be Iraqis, Congalese or Burmese, said Myriam Mwizerwa, Oshkosh director for World Relief Fox Valley.

[….]

“Refugees can’t survive in a community without knowing other people and becoming involved in the community itself,” said Barbara Day, the Domestic Resettlement Section Chief at the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration.

[….]

Day spoke to members of the Oshkosh Refugee Resettlement Task Force Tuesday at the Oshkosh Public Library.

Once a seed community of certain ethnic groups are established in your “welcoming” community, the resettlement contractors, like those mentioned here from World Relief/Evangelicals (one of the top nine federal contractors), are paid to process the paperwork for “family members” to join the original group. It puts your town or city in a bad light if it suddenly wants to stop the flow (how dare you block families reuniting!)  That is what the following reference is to:

In 2013, 69,926 refugees resettled within the United States, with between 70 and 75 percent of them moving to places near family or friends.

“That fact really drives placement,” Day said. “They’re coming to join family and close friends who are already here.”

World Relief’s regional representative wraps up the piece with a little slap down to other towns that are not ‘welcoming the stranger.’

Another US media propaganda campaign: no more detention for asylum seekers

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

While Australia and New Zealand increase the number of detainees—migrants who have arrived illegally on their shores and asked for asylum, in the US the Open Borders lobbyists, including federal refugee contractors at the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services, if it were up to them, want no one detained.

Is there (more) money in it for the contractors? That is what I want to know!

Keegan Hamilton (a freelance reporter from NYC who writes for the Village Voice) has picked the wrong poster boy for his detention sob story published at the Houston Press!

Reporter Keegan Hamilton really lays it on thick in this propaganda piece.

Hussein Mohamed, the Somali star of the story, had a legal pathway to America (see yesterday’s post, 3,708 Somalis came to the US legally in the first six months of this fiscal year).  He was living safely in Kenya (not Somalia) when he launched his trek to America.  And, it strains credulity that he had a life savings large enough to pay traffickers the cash needed for his half way around the world travels to the Mexican border.

From the  Houston Press  ‘For Many Refugees, the Journey to America Ends in a Cold Jail Cell’ (wahhhhhh!):

Hussein Mohamed took a hard road to America. Born into a minority clan in a nation rife with ethnic conflict, the boyish 24-year-old with gangly limbs and intense brown eyes describes fleeing his village in Somalia in 2012 after gunmen threatened to kill him. Mohamed says he was forced to quit his jobs as an English teacher and taxi driver and escape to neighboring ­Kenya. After making his way to South Africa, he forked over his life savings to human smugglers, who shipped him across the Atlantic to Brazil and guided him north through the jungles of South and Central America into Mexico.  [I bet if you gave this one paragraph to the average American and asked if he should be detained while his asylum claim is adjudicated, 90% of those asked would say ‘incarcerate him.’—ed]

When he finally arrived at a border crossing in Brownsville, Texas, this past summer, Mohamed thought he’d safely reached the end of a harrowing ten-month journey. He had no inkling of the ordeal awaiting him on the other side of the Rio Grande.

Mohamed approached a U.S. Border Patrol agent and recounted his story. He explained that he wanted to seek asylum, a classification of refugee status granted to people who arrive in the United States having fled persecution in their homeland. He was immediately handcuffed and placed in immigration detention: a cold, cramped cell in a privately owned and operated prison facility. Soon after, along with hundreds of other detainees, he was herded onto a cargo plane and transferred without explanation to a jail in Newark, New Jersey.   [Newark—eeek!—ed]

Then we are told about his dreams of a job and a family in California—blah! blah! blah!

Instead, he will likely be deported, shipped back to the war-torn country on the Horn of Africa he worked so hard to escape. Mohamed’s request for asylum was denied because he lacks a passport or other documents to confirm his identity. [He could be al-Shabaab—ed] He has filed an appeal, and his detention ticks on indefinitely.  [He is safe and is fed, right!—ed]

There are no statutory limits to the amount of time a non-citizen like Mohamed may be held in immigration detention. When the process goes smoothly, asylum seekers tend to be released in a matter of weeks. Many end up imprisoned for much longer.  [Obviously for a reason!—ed]

So how many ‘poor souls’ like Mohamed are in detention?  A measly 6,000 (in the last three years) out of the tens of thousands who arrive each year asking for asylum.

Approximately 6,000 survivors of torture — exiles from Iran, Myanmar, Syria and other nations with brutal regimes — were detained in immigration jails while seeking asylum over the past three years, according to a 2013 report by the Center for Victims of Torture.

Now, are you ready for it!  Below is the most revealing paragraph in this whole pathetic propaganda story!    The Lutherans have a contract to get asylum seekers out of detention and house them in your neighborhoods.

The Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIARS oops! LIRS) is a federal refugee contractor (96% of their income comes from you!) and they seem now to have parlayed that role into one where they are the guardians of people like Hussein Mohamed in several US cities.   Recently they lobbied the administration for a relaxation of detention for illegal aliens, are they looking for future ‘clients’ for their ‘services’?

Thirty two detainees have been released into the care of LIRS (and signed up  for welfare) in the last 20 days in the trial project! They say they aren’t being paid yet for this effort (although remember 96% of their funds already comes from taxpayers, did Keegan know that? Did he ask how they would pay for this pilot project?), they want to convince Congress that this is what should be done—halfway houses you might call them—for thousands eventually.  LOL! Like any good business they are expanding their client base!

Though the political climate looks bleak for advocates of asylum reform, an ongoing pilot project offers a glimmer of hope. The project allows Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials at facilities in New York City, Newark, San Antonio, Chicago and Minneapolis-St. Paul to release select detainees seeking asylum into a program coordinated by the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service. As of March 31, the program has helped secure temporary housing and social services for 32 people, including survivors of torture, victims of domestic abuse and LGBT individuals, all of whom would otherwise have remained jailed indefinitely.

Read it all, Keegan does eventually discuss the frauds in the asylum racket, but having chosen Hussein Mohamed (if that is his name because he came with no papers), he obviously thinks Mohamed (with the gangly limbs and intense brown eyes) can’t possibly be a fraud.

 

So who has been coming to America via refugee “recruitment” this fiscal year

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We are half way through fiscal year 2014 (it began on October 1, 2013).

By the way, “recruitment” is the word being used by opponents of Gov. Matt Meads idea to resettle refugees in Wyoming, and I like it.  The word “resettlement” is getting stale and I’ve noticed the refugee industry using it less and less as well.  They seem to be favoring the word “placement” instead.

Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society wants 75,000 Syrians admitted to US over 5 years. https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2014/03/29/hebrew-immigrant-aid-society-us-should-bring-75000-syrians-to-us-over-next-5-years/

President Barack Obama set a cap of 70,000 refugees to be placed in your cities and towns for this fiscal year in his annual determination letter of Oct. 2, 2013.

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

The admission of up to 70,000 refugees to the United States during fiscal year (FY) 2014 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 2014 with Federal refugee resettlement assistance under the Amerasian immigrant admissions program, as provided below.

The 70,000 cap does not include asylum seekers/asylees which number in the tens of thousands, those receiving temporary protected status (TPS), and diversity visa lottery winners (another 50,000!).

Note that there is a 2,000 unallocated reserve which is where some get the number of Syrians that we might admit.  Many Syrians are getting into the US by other means and signing up for TPS or asking for asylum, but we have not begun, nor has the President announced, how many Syrians we are going to take.  I read that as something must be going on behind the scenes for the flood gates not to have been opened yet.

So, six months in, where are we?

Check out this database at WRAPS.net.  In an effort to keep you in the dark, the feds have removed some data bases that previously were available to the public.  One missing set of data that I found especially useful was the one with ‘arrivals by city and country’ (where you could see which ethnic groups were being resettled in your city).  At least they still have the ‘arrivals by state and country’ so you can see how many you are getting in your state and from where they are coming.

For my purposes right now, I’m looking at ‘map arrivals by nationality.’   For the first six months of the year the US State Department admitted 32,810 refugees.   This is the order for the top countries, smaller numbers come from dozens of other countries.  Iraqis top the list as they did last year.

Iraq:  9,394

Burma:  6,781

Bhutan: 4,424

Somalia:  3,708

Cuba:  2,154

Iran:  1,470

Dem. Rep. Congo: 1,381

Sudan:  861

Eritrea:  842

Afghanistan:  382

A couple of other countries of interest are Colombia (204) and we admitted 90 Palestinians.

Where are the Syrians?

26 Syrians have been admitted so far this year.  The US is under enormous media pressure generated by the ‘human rights industry’ to admit Syrians, so again, there must be some serious squabbling going on behind the scenes in the the State Department and the Dept. of Homeland Security for this number to be so small at this point in the year.  Maybe there are members of Congress flexing some muscle (for a change!)?

By the way, Brenda Walker writing at VDARE has an excellent report earlier this week on the media push for Syrian ‘refugee’ admission to the US.

Walker begins:

The top newspaper in our capital city, the Washington Post, is mouthpiecing a Refugee Industry campaign to convince Congress to welcome thousands of Syrians fleeing their civil war. But you can bet they won’t be resettled in Georgetown.

Read it all!