Category: The Opposition

Manchester, NH mayor: resettlement contractor breaks promise

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The International Institute of New England (also a Limon family enterprise) says they never intended to slow the flow of refugees to overloaded Manchester beyond one year.  Readers new to Refugee Resettlement should know that resettlement occurs on a fiscal year basis that begins on October 1 and runs to September 30th of the following year.

That means that there will be a big push from now to the end of September to get large numbers of refugees distributed to your towns and, then starting October 1, they will be working to fulfill the President’s determination (his wishlist!) for the number to be resettled in FY 2014.   (Remember when so many of you testified to the State Department back in May, that was to get your input, which will be generally ignored, to the plan for 2014.)

From the Manchester Union Leader (hat tip: Joanne):

International Institute’s Benedict-Drew: No deal for FY2014!

Another 200 refugees will be resettled in Manchester in the coming months, a number that Mayor Ted Gatsas said breaks an agreement he had reached with a refugee resettlement organization.

However, the International Institute of New England said the agreement was only for a 12-month period that lapses next month. And the projection for the coming 12 months — 200 refugees for Manchester — is the same as the current period. An additional 50 will be placed in Nashua.

Carolyn Benedict-Drew, the director of the Boston-based International Institute of New England, said the refugees entering New Hampshire starting in October will most likely be Bhutanese and Iraqis.

They are really brazen about it—-turning refugees into VOTERS and turning red states blue!

Benedict-Drew said Bhutanese started settling in Manchester in 2008, and the first wave are in the pipeline to become citizens, about 300.

“These are going to be voting members of our community who will be building the economic base in New Hampshire,” Benedict-Drew said.

Report from USCRI (Lavinia and Peter Limon) says Manchester has lots of taxpayer supported health-care goodies for refugees including mental health and HIV/AIDs treatment:

A recent report by the International Institute of New Hampshire prepared for the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants said that the state’s two largest cities have a favorable economic forecast, medical clinics and facilities to treat refugees with mental health and physical problems, including HIV/AIDs, and access to state funding for English classes.

Mayor Gatsas says he still wants a moratorium and is following what is going on in Springfield, MA.

The abstract report described Gatsas as neutral on the additional 200 refugees.

But Gatsas said that’s not the case, and he continues to favor a moratorium on refugee resettlement. He noted the Democratic mayor of Springfield, Mass., has asked for a moratorium.

Benedict-Drew:  We call the shots, not the duly-elected Mayor

Benedict-Drew said the agreement only covered the current year.

“There was never an agreement for more than one year,” she said. “We honored it for one year.

So why are the contractors so unwilling to give Manchester a break.

First, they are driven by an agenda that includes diminishing the role of states (under the 10th Amendment) and bringing immigrant voters to traditionally conservative cities and states.  But on a practical level, they are paid by the head to resettle refugees and the various contractors are competing against each other to get their share of the clients (aka refugees).   If an agency can’t resettle a certain number of refugees, they will have to close offices and reduce staff.

Once they find a community into which they can pour the poor, they are reluctant to give it up.   Additionally, they are paid by the head to bring family members to join the relatives already in the ‘seed’ community.  Last year’s resettled Burmese, Somalis, etc. want to bring their extended family to join them and the contractors want to oblige them by placing them in the same town.

That’s why, if you don’t have refugees yet, but there is some word you might get some, raise questions in the local media right away.  I call that the squawk factor, if the feds and the contractors get the idea that the squawking (really the questioning) is not going to stop they will move on to a more “welcoming” target city.

Oops!  Update!  One more thing, go here Arrivals by Destination City by Nationality by FY as of July 31, 2013 to see what nationalities and how many refugees Manchester (or your city) has taken since 2001.

Western NGOs in warring Muslim countries: money is welcome, but not their ideas

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I expected this article at Strategy Page (‘The growing war in Syrian refugee camps‘) to be more of the same about the crime rampant in UN refugee camps like Zaatari in Jordan.  It started out that way, but evolved into a not-so-attractive picture of “do-gooder” non-governmental agencies (NGOs) who are ripe for the picking in the Muslim world.

Black Hawk Down: In 1993, NGOs called in the military to help with “humanitarian aid” to disastrous effect in Somalia.

From Strategy Page  (Emphasis is mine, and in some cases I’ve divided paragraphs for easier reading):

Aid groups are also beginning to confront the harmful side effects of their good works. The worst side effect is how rebels and gangsters sustain themselves by stealing food and other aid supplies, as well as robbing the NGO workers themselves. At first the main UN complaint is the increasing attacks on aid workers. In the worst cases aid workers are assaulted or robbed and that eventually escalates to some getting killed. This is a trend that has been on the march upward for several decades. Islamic radicals have been particularly active in terrorizing and killing the foreigners who are there to help them. UN aid workers are usually caught between different factions within the refugee camps. All factions see the UN and other aid workers as a source of income and supplies.

In the case of Syria there are also problems with Sunni Islamic radicals keen on chasing out all non-Moslem foreigners. The refugee camps for Syrians are particularly vexed by criminal gangs that prey on everyone, especially the women.

The “humanitarian industrial complex” has grown exponentially!

NGOs are, for the most part, charitable organizations that take money from individuals, organizations, and governments and use it for charitable work in foreign countries. The Red Cross is one of the oldest and best known NGOs (dating back to the 19th century), although the Catholic Church (and many other religious organizations) had been doing similar work for centuries. In the mid-20th century the UN (and its many aid agencies) became the largest NGO. In the late 20th century the number of NGOs grew explosively. Now there are thousands of them, providing work for hundreds of thousands of people. [And, largely funded by taxpayer dollars as we have learned on these pages—ed]

“Efficiency” is the reason given for governments contracting NGOs, but I think it goes deeper than that.

NGOs are not accountable to taxpayers in the way government employees would be and I think that is one of the top reasons this monstrosity has grown.  But, I also think that the power-hungry leadership, that wants to tell everyone else how to live, has managed to increasingly raid the treasury of Western governments.

The NGO elite are well educated people from Western countries that solicit donations, or go off to disaster areas and apply money, equipment, and supplies to alleviate some natural or man-made disaster. Governments have been so impressed by the efficiency of NGOs (compared to government employees) that they have contracted them to perform foreign aid and disaster relief work that was once done by government employees.  [Nah! Again it’s my opinion that its about not having to be accountable to the taxpayers—ed]

NGOs bring in a bunch of do-gooder outsiders with unwelcome ideas on how the locals should live.

Problems, however, have developed. The employees of NGOs, while not highly paid, are infused with a certain degree of idealism. These foreign NGOs bring to disaster areas a bunch of outsiders who have a higher standard of living and different ideas. Several decades ago the main thing these outsiders brought with them was food and medical care. The people on the receiving end were pretty desperate and grateful for the help.

But NGOs have branched out into development and social programs. This has caused unexpected problems with the local leadership. Development programs disrupt the existing economic, and political, relations. The local leaders are often not happy with this, as the NGOs are not always willing to work closely with the existing power structure. While the local worthies may be exploitative, and even corrupt, they are local and they do know more about popular attitudes and ideals than the foreigners.

NGOs with social programs (education, especially educating women, new lifestyle choices, and more power for people who don’t usually have much) often run into conflict with local leaders. Naturally, the local politicians and traditional leaders have resisted or even fought back. Thus the Afghan government officials calling for all NGOs in the country to be shut down. That included Afghan NGOs, who were doing some of the same work as the foreign ones. The government officials were responding to complaints from numerous old school Afghan tribal and religious leaders who were unhappy with all these foreigners, or urban Afghans with funny ideas, upsetting the ancient ways in the countryside. Moreover, the Afghan government wanted to get the aid money direct, so they could steal more of it.

NGOs help create more warfare by calling in the military.  New UN Ambassador and “humanitarian hawk” Samantha Power has a fancy name for this called “the responsibility to protect” which basically means one can go to war if one’s intentions are pure and it is to protect the downtrodden (whoever they are, I suppose determined in each case by the PC do-gooders).

NGOs are not military organizations but they can fight back. They do this mainly through the media, because they also use favorable media coverage to propel their fund raising efforts. NGOs will also ask, or demand, that the UN or other foreign governments send in peacekeeping troops in to protect the NGOs from hostile locals.

This had disastrous effects in Somalia during the early 1990s. Some NGOs remained, or came back, to Somalia after the peacekeepers left. These NGOs learned how to cope on their own. They hired local muscle for protection, as well as cutting deals with the local warlords. But eventually the local Islamic radicals became upset at the alien ideas these Western do-gooders brought with them and began to chase all NGOs out.

NGOs in the middle of civil wars!

This move from delivering aid to delivering (often unwelcome) ideas has put all NGOs at risk. The NGOs have become players in a worldwide civil war between local traditional ideas and the more transnational concepts that trigger violent reactions in many parts of the world. Now, concerned about doing more harm (or a lot of harm) than good, NGOs are at least talking about how to deal with some of the dangerous conditions their presence creates.

Readers these are largely Muslim civil wars.  How about if we follow the Palin Doctrine—let Allah fix it!  We would save ourselves a lot of lives, money and headaches!

 

Springfield, MA: Lutheran Social Services responds to Mayor’s criticism

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update on our post earlier today!

It’s not us putting refugees into slum housing! (Must be one of the other contractors)

That’s what a brief statement on behalf of their President Angela Wallingford Bovill says in response to the letter Mayor Sarno sent to Barbara Day at the US State Department in which the Mayor asked for what amounts to a moratorium on resettlement of refugees in Springfield.   Here is the letter (they say a more detailed response is in the works).  Hat tip: Joanne

Good afternoon,

Angela Bovill CEO of LSS of New England
Photo: Worcester Business Journal

The following statement is sent on behalf of Angela Bovill, President and CEO of Lutheran Social Services of New England. This statement is made in response to Mayor Domenic Sarno’s letter to Barbara Day in the U.S. State Department regarding refugee resettlement in Springfield, MA:

“Lutheran Social Services of New England (LSS) recognizes the City of Springfield as a supportive partner in humanitarian programs that help resettle refugees fleeing from unsafe homelands. Over the years, we have developed a solid working relationship with the City of Springfield and its various departments to successfully resettle newcomers to the Greater Springfield area.

LSS is aware of Mayor Sarno’s recent concerns about refugee housing conditions, and we have investigated the properties in question. LSS does not place any refugees in uninhabitable residences or unsafe conditions, and regularly monitors its clients during their resettlement period. Currently, LSS resettles less than 40 percent of its refugee clients to the City of Springfield.

We also want to acknowledge that several statements made in Mayor Sarno’s letter to Barbara Day in the U.S. State Department are inaccurate. LSS will respond to these statements in a letter with supporting facts sent to the Mayor’s office. We will continue to work collaboratively with local and state authorities to identify the best possible solutions for the City and its refugee families.”

Thank you.

Jodie Justofin

Vice President

Strategic Marketing & Communications

Lutheran Social Services of New England

14 East Worcester Street, Suite 300

Worcester, MA 01604

Angela Bovill

The Worcester Business Journal interviewed  LSS’s CEO Angela Bovill just this past June and here are a few things she said.

When asked if her previous experience in business helps LSS, she responded:

This is a business. Yes it is a nonprofit, but (in) a nonprofit, it’s even more critical that you understand how to manage it like it needs to be managed. We have 1,600 employees across six states. It’s a very complicated business, so if you don’t have the business background to run it, I’m not sure how you could succeed.

When asked what social issues are the most troubling to her, she candidly says they don’t have enough money from the government to do the job properly!

Bovill:

I think the most troubling is the funding source for the social issues that we deal with these days … the government. The government tends to pay for part of the solution to a problem (such as homelessness) and not all of it. And what I see and what troubles me the most is it doesn’t solve the problem. So, in fact, we, like many other nonprofits, become part of the problem, not a part of the solution. Because if all we’re able to do is just enough to keep people where they are, then what solution is that, really? So our mission and our vision is shifting dramatically this year, to leveraging what we get from the government but adding transformational and transitional programming and innovative solutions that take people from the end of the government funding and bring them to the point where they’re all the way on their feet.

As I always do when a refugee contractor is in the news, I checked to see what LSS’s finances look like there in New England.  Much to my surprise they haven’t submitted a Form 990 to Guidestar since the year 2000.  What is up with that?  Are they not filing 990’s with the IRS?   They do have a brief annual report on file for 2010.

No surprise there—they received $50 MILLION that year from you—the taxpayer, while receiving only $1.4 million in charitable donations.

Perhaps we should forgive Ms. Bovill, after all she was only about 6-years-old when Jimmy Carter signed Senator Ted Kennedy’s Refugee Resettlement Act of 1980 and so she might not know.  The original law said that resettlement was to be a PUBLIC-PRIVATE Partnership meaning that the non-profit was to also contribute cash to the venture, not pass the whole program off to the taxpayer with the non-profit basically laundering the money through its myriad offices and large staffs—1,600 in New England alone!

So here is what I think, if you don’t have enough (private charitable) money to do a quality job then the Mayor is right—-don’t send more refugees!

And one more thing:  Note in the story that AmeriCorps “volunteers” are doing yard work for LSS—that is you paying for that side benefit too!

For new readers:  Check out more on their parent organization—LIARS, here in Baltimore.  96% of their funding comes from you!  And, they are expecting more payola if the Gang of Eight/Obama amnesty is signed into law.

Is Rush reading RRW?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I caught a bit of Rush Limbaugh’s discussion today of the story we reported yesterday—-the one about “asylum-seekers” flooding the US border one day last week.  All said the same thing, that they wanted asylum because they had a credible fear of persecution by Mexican drug cartels.

Narco refugees!

This idea is not new.  I checked our archives and see that in 2012 we wrote about a Texas immigration lawyer working to expand the definition of asylum to include people some call “narco refugees.”    Immigration lawyers like Carlos Spector, and he is not alone, are looking to fatten their wallets while changing America.

Imagine if lawyers like this guy prevailed, we would have people on the border expecting to be granted asylum from every crime-ridden country in the world!

***Update*** Looks like the O-man has already expanded the definition, here.

***Update August 13th***Commenter to this post, pungentpeppers, alerts us to more on the story—we give them hotel rooms and all are not Mexicans!

Here (below) is some of what Rush had to say.  He doesn’t get all the nuances of the asylum process, but that doesn’t matter.  The words “asylum” and “refugee” were heard by millions of listeners who may in the future pay a little more attention to what I believe has been an immigration law (Refugee Resettlement Act of 1980 thanks to Carter, Kennedy, Biden) misused and abused by too many, for too long.

If Rush only knew that the Obama–Gang of Eight amnesty bill will make receiving asylum easier and put more cash in the pockets of the refugee contractors whose job it is to hook the new refugees and asylees up with social services he would probably have a heart attack.  (See Rand Paul: “They bring’em in and sign’em up for welfare!).  And, don’t tell him those same contractors, largely funded with tax dollars, are also busy lobbying for passage of S.744!

Limbaugh:

“Just this past Monday, Border Patrol agents say about 200 people came through the Otay Crossing claiming a quote: ‘credible fear’ of the drug cartels.  So many were doing this that they had to close down the processing center and move the overflow by vans to another station.  ‘They are being told if they come across the border, when they come up to the border and they say certain words, they  will be allowed into the country,’ said a person who did not want to be identified on camera.  ‘We are being overwhelmed.’  Pete Nunez, former U.S. Attorney and immigration expert says, ‘This will swamp the system.’ ‘To make our system even more ridiculous than it has been in the  past,” he adds.  ‘There are no detention facilities for families, so the family would have to be split up. We don’t want to split families up, so we end up releasing people,'” out into the wild, essentially.

So what this essentially is, folks, is refugee status.  And refugee status is about the best status you can have, living in America.  Being a refugee is right up there with being a citizen, because benefits for refugees include food stamps, housing vouchers, English language training, job training, transportation passes, Medicaid, supplemental security income assistance, SSI, as well as other public and private benefits.  I mean, the Tsarnaev family were refugees.  They landed in America either at Logan or JFK, and they claimed asylum.  And that’s all you have to do.

Now, theoretically you’re kept track of, but if you come in claiming oppression, political asylum or, in this case, a credible fear of the drug cartels, then you’re admitted.  And somebody has come up with this idea.  Now, it’s not known who, obviously, but somebody’s come up with this.  What are the odds that whoever has come up with this is either a Democrat or a Democrat activist?

And then he said this—-the Syrians are coming!

Now, look, we’re already taking in thousands upon thousands of Mexicans and Hispanics, and there’s a companion story here about Syrian refugees are now pouring into the United States.  And there hadn’t been anything signed.  There’s no new immigration bill.  All this happened, the Republicans didn’t sign on to some 1,000 page bill.  There are plenty of laws on the books to overwhelm the country with new immigrants without any amnesty bill taking place.  So while we’re all debating that, this new influx just continues.

That is right!

Read it all!  Limbaugh links this story to one about taxpaying Americans fleeing the country.

Church World Service organizing lobbying event for October

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

They will be pushing for passage of the Comprehensive Amnesty bill (the Gang of Eight’s bill) that is presently stalled in Congress.  If S. 744 is signed into law, or some form of it, there is expected to be a big cash payout (aka slush fund) to the refugee contractors whose job it will be to get the newly legalized aliens signed up for social services (an extension of what they do now for refugees).

Here is what CWS says on its website about the October lobbying push (day 1: they get everyone on the same talking points, and day 2:  they hit the Hill):

Our goal is to gather more than 200 prominent national and local faith leaders from key states together in Washington, D.C. on October 7 and 8.

These pastors, lay leaders and grassroots organizers will join together for a day of learning and community. Strategic workshops will address immigration legislation and provide an opportunity to commit to advocating with policy makers.

Their agenda for the two days is here.

I wouldn’t be surprised to find that others among the major federal refugee contractors were also holding events in Washington around that time.   For new readers who might be wondering, the contractors and the feds (holding on to a myth I suppose) refer to these groups as Volags (short for Voluntary Agencies). However, they are now largely paid to do their ‘good works’ by you—the US taxpayer.

Just a reminder, it is Church World Service, as a member in good standing of the religious Left, which brought the Muslims to Lancaster, PA (see report yesterday).   That is why this post is also filed in our “community destabilization’ category.