Category: What you can do

I repeat: all concerned citizens must ask to attend ‘Quarterly Consultations’ held by refugee contractors in your communities….

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

….transparency, transparency, transparency should be your mantra!

The ‘quarterly consultation’ is required by law and the US State Department has confirmed that the general public is permitted to attend.

One of the most important elements of the consultation is the discussion that should be held in public about how many refugees could be placed in your town in the coming year.

As I said here the other day, since the President has flubbed his great opportunity to push reform of the entire UN/US Refugee Admissions Program in late September, citizen efforts must necessarily now return to local action.

bartlett with map
Lawrence Bartlett is still running things at the US State Department because Trump has failed to put his people in place to supervise the career bureacrats. Here Bartlett told Senator Jeff Sessions that there are community consultations open to the public. https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2015/10/02/senate-oversight-hearing-on-refugee-program-very-revealing-senator-sessions-did-a-masterful-job/

Shortly, I will tell you the latest about how citizens in St. Cloud, MN are doing just that, but because others of you are reporting a lack of cooperation from resettlement contractors to your requests to be notified to attend QUARTERLY consultations, we will walk down memory lane.

I wrote this post on October 12, 2015 (this is just a portion of it). Disregard the portion about contacting Trey Gowdy, he is no longer the chairman of the subcommittee responsible.

(LOL! I urge serious students to open the links and read related stories, so that I don’t go nuts having to repeat things!)

It has only been in the last year or so [2015] that we have been made aware that QUARTERLY CONSULTATIONS with community “stakeholders” were being held quietly, out of public view.   In fact, I wondered why I hadn’t heard about them and now I know why!

The citizens of St. Cloud, MN, here and here, brought the issue of exclusion of taxpaying citizens from the meetings where the ‘non-profit’ refugee resettlement agency meets with local elected officials, fire/police, education, health departments etc. to assess how things are going with the refugees, and they discuss how many to bring in the upcoming year. [Open both of those links at the beginning of this paragraph, please!—ed]

According to a State Department spokesman (unnamed!) doing a press briefing for reporters on September 11th, we learn that they have only been doing these QUARTERLY CONSULTATIONS since 2013!  WTH!  [Press briefing is no longer available so its a good thing I copied this bit of it.—ed]

And, they are lying!  “Private citizens” have not been welcome.

These agencies (‘non-profit’ resettlement subcontractors) work very hard to hold these meetings secretly and out of the view of local concerned citizens—the ultimate stakeholder, the taxpayer! Yet, we have a State Department official (why no name?) telling the mainstream media that private citizens can attend!

Why is the spokesman unnamed?

We are pleased to have [name and title withheld] with us today. Moving forward, [State Department Official] will be called State Department official for the purposes of this call. Again, this call is on background.

So much for Obama’s much ballyhooed transparency!  Now here is what ‘name and title withheld’ told a special group of reporters:

In addition, starting about two years ago, I believe it was FY13, we required that all of our resettlement agencies conduct quarterly consultations with stakeholders in their communities. So that means that not just once a year when they’re preparing a proposal, but every quarter they have to reach out to a wide variety of stakeholders. And that would include other community organizations. That could include the police department, the school, the mayor’s office, the fire department, other agencies that have a stake in refugee resettlement, and private citizens can be invited as well. And they hold those quarterly conversations and that is taken into account when we are making placement plans for the entire year and throughout the year.

You know Larry Bartlett told Senator Sessions this basic untruth here in the Senate hearing the week before last as well.

It gets worse!

We need lawyers on our team!  Have they been breaking the law for 33 of 35 years?  Or, have the states, which are supposed to prepare a plan every year and hold the meetings, not done their required duty to hold the quarterly meetings with communities?

Here are the federal regulations guiding the program (From CFR 400.5(h))

Provide that the State will, unless exempted from this requirement by the Director, assure that meetings are convened, not less often than quarterly, whereby representatives of local resettlement agencies, local community service agencies, and other agencies that serve refugees meet with representatives of State and local governments to plan and coordinate the appropriate placement of refugees in advance of the refugees’ arrival.

What should you do now?

So, for all of you working in ‘Pockets of Resistance’ (and others too!).  Go here, and call the closest refugee resettlement office near you and tell them you want a schedule for the upcoming quarterly consultation!  Ask them as well for the FY2016 [now FY18—ed] R & P Abstract which will tell you their plans for your town/city this year.

Continue reading here.

If you get a runaround, find a local lawyer willing to send the resettlement agency a letter on behalf of you—taxpaying citizens (stakeholders!). And, also make all the noise you can through whatever media you have available—tell the public that the program is being run secretively between a refugee contractor and Washington.

To all of you who have gotten this far, please send this to your fellow citizen activists. I don’t want to sound too cranky, but, if year after year, we reinvent the wheel, we will get nowhere!

This post is filed in my ‘what you can do’ category.

Scranton, PA school district struggling under weight of needy immigrant students, working poor

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The next time you see one of those head-scratching claims that assert that bringing more third world poverty to a dying city will revitalize it, think about this news from Scranton.  (Pennsylvania is usually one of the top ten states ‘welcoming’ refugees.)

And, instead of leaving this admonition to the end where you might miss it, here is what you need to do.  (See my post on focusing on local and state action where one of the targets of your political action should be mayors!)

First, try to get your paper to do a study like this one about your local education department, the place where a negative impact on your community usually shows up first.  It is really unusual to see an analysis like this one.  If the paper won’t do it—you should do it!

Then of course use the information to ‘educate’ your elected officials.

Here is the Times-Tribune:

Scranton classrooms seat more students today than they have in at least 25 years. With 10,222 students enrolled as of last week, the district is also experiencing:

Low-income enrollment of 82.5 percent. The number is the highest in the region and up from 60 percent in 2010.

Mayor of Scranton
Democrat Mayor Bill Courtright: we welcome everyone (who will become Democrat voters!) to Scranton even as we go deeper into debt and might have our school system taken over by the state. (He didn’t really say that last part!)  http://thetimes-tribune.com/news/global-tastes-dinner-welcomes-congolese-refugees-1.2107781

A record-high population of students requiring special education services. As of last week, nearly 23 percent of children are classified as special education students — up from 19 percent just three years ago.

A record-high enrollment of 902 students requiring English as a second language services, now called English learners, or EL. That number could climb to 1,000, or about 10 percent of the population, by the end of the year.

The growth creates unique issues, such as staffing and resources, as the district faces a deficit expected to reach $40 million by the end of the year.

“As a public school district, we are required to serve all our students, and to provide a quality education for all,” said Superintendent Alexis Kirijan, Ed.D.

[….]

District demographics mirror the city’s population. Scranton’s population has increased 1.5 percent from 2010, to 77,291, according to U.S. Census estimates released earlier this year.

The district now must educate more students as it faces growing financial problems. The state put the district on “financial watch” status in June, the first in a series of steps that could eventually lead to a takeover by a state receiver.

[….]

As enrollment increases, so do the number of students who speak a language other than English. Scranton students speak 36 different languages, and as of last week, 902 students received English support, or about 9 percent of the total population.

Some of those students escaped from war-torn countries, as their families sought a better life in the United States. Through the refugee resettlement program of Catholic Social Services, 140 refugee children were students in the Scranton School District during the 2016-17 school year. Students include former residents of Syria, Bhutan/Nepal, Sudan, Iraq, Afghanistan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Many lived in refugee camps, without access to education.

[….]

Over the last six years, low-income enrollment in the district has increased by 37 percent. According to data released by the Pennsylvania Department of Education last week, 82.5 percent of students in the district live in low-income households, meaning the students qualify for free or reduced-price lunches.

For a family of four, students qualify for reduced-price meals when the annual family income is below $45,510. The students receive free meals when the annual income is below $31,980. Last year, Scranton became part of a federal program for school districts with high poverty levels, which allows all students, regardless of family income, to eat breakfast and lunch at school for free.

As poverty increases, area social service agencies see more families seeking services.

At United Neighborhood Centers of Northeastern Pennsylvania, people come in looking for assistance with rent, utilities and other necessities, said Michael Hanley, the organization’s chief executive officer. Many of the jobs available in the area do not offer a wage able to support a family, he said.  [But, they keep pouring in refugees anyway!—ed]

“More and more of the people we see are the working poor,” he said. “They just can’t make it paycheck to paycheck.”

[….]

Languages spoken in the Scranton School District

Albanian, Arabic, Bulgarian, Cantonese, Chinese, Creole, Danish, Dari, English, Farsi, Filipino, French, Gujarati, Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Kannada, Kinyarwanda, Lao, Mandarin Chinese, Nepali, Pashto, Persian, Portuguese, Rohingya, Russian, Serbian, Slovak-Polish, Spanish, Swahili, Tagalog, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu, Uzbek, Vietnamese.

This post is filed in my ‘What you can do’ category.

Guest column: Feds shifting costs to states for refugee resettlement

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Editor: From time to time we post guest commentary. This is from Joanne Bregman. As we refocus our efforts at the state and local level, because we can’t count on Washington, this is an effective argument for you to make on the state level.

This is about States’ rights!

(emphasis below is mine)

Federal Cost Shifting of the Refugee Resettlement Program

Background

In 1980 the federal government formalized the refugee resettlement program by passing the Refugee Act of 1980. There was no mandate to force states to participate in this program. Federal appropriations to provide for medical and cash assistance for newly resettled refugees, was authorized for 36 months. Refugees were and still are, first required to use state Medicaid programs if they are eligible, before federal medical assistance funds are used.

When the federal law was passed, it provided that for each refugee brought to a state by a federal contractor, states would be reimbursed 100% for three full years, the state incurred cost of providing Medicaid and cash welfare. The law also provided, that for refugees who did not meet eligibility criteria for state Medicaid and cash welfare programs, they could instead, receive a federal subsidy – Refugee Medical Assistance (RMA) and Refugee Cash Assistance (RCA) for 36 months.

By 1991, even though the number of refugees being resettled was not decreasing, the federal government eliminated reimbursement to states for the state cost of resettling and supporting refugees with Medicaid and cash welfare.

In addition, the federal government reduced the RCA and RMA subsidy from 36 months to 8 months for refugees who do not qualify for state funded programs. States have no other choice but to assume the greater share of the voluntary federal program’s costs.

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The U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement told Congress early on in the program that the reason states were no longer being reimbursed for the state’s costs was because Congress didn’t appropriate enough money.

The 1981 Select Commission on Immigration and Refugee Policy convened by Congress also documented that even the initial 3 years of 100% reimbursement to states, was not sufficient to “minimize the impact of refugees on community services.” The Commission was specifically referring to schools, hospitals and community support services.

In 1990, the U.S. General Accounting Office documented that the reduction in reimbursement to states for the federal refugee resettlement program, “costs for cash and medical assistance have shifted to state and local governments.” The National Governors Association has also questioned the federal cost shifting, stating that “[t]hese reductions represent a major federal policy change that shifts fiscal responsibility for meeting the basic needs of refugees from the federal government to states and localities.”

As the resettlement industry has grown, so has the cost to both federal and state governments but only the federal government controls its costs by appropriating annually “as available” while each state’s cost is driven by how much of the federal cost Congress chooses not to pay.

Be sure to see my post from earlier this past week about what you need to do on a state and local level, here.

This post is filed in my ‘What you can do’ category and in ‘Comments worth noting.’

Swamp isn’t going to be drained, so it’s time to return to local action on refugee program

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I have to admit, I thought Donald Trump would come in to office and take a forceful position on the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program and tell Congress to investigate the program (and the contractors!) with an eye to trashing or reforming the whole system.

Trump shrug
Looks like Trump has thrown in the towel on refugee program, it is now up to you where you live!

With his capitulation on the annual determination, with a substantial 45,000 refugees to be admitted in the next 12 months, Republican leaders (with the Chamber of Commerce cheering) gave a sigh of relief.

It is still enough cheap labor and no one is going to force them to investigate how taxpayer dollars are spent and no one will call them heartless racists.

(Although there is still one glimmer of hope. The 45,000 is a CEILING and the Trump Admin can come in substantially lower than that and be within the law. No executive order is needed to stay well below the ceiling!)

So, where does that leave you in the pockets of resistance that have formed over the last few years?  It means back to work (or continuing to work in your communities) exposing the system, exposing the contractors, and electing people to local office who don’t want Washington dictating the future demographic makeup of your towns and cities.

(By the way, I am very aware of many of you who never quit working hard, but won’t name you here now.)

For those of you who are advanced in your work, please forgive the following list of things that need to be done locally. We have new readers asking what they can do, so this is mostly for them.

My list of suggestions below is in no particular order:

~Learn all you can about the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program. You might start with my Frequently Asked Questions, here.

~Call your state refugee coordinator and politely ask for information on who came to your state in the past and who is coming in the future.  Ask for your state’s refugee plan.

~Learn how to use Wrapsnet (I’m going to have a tutorial shortly) so you know which ethnic groups are coming to your town.

~Find the subcontractor (s) working near you.  Go here. Find your state and city (if you live within 100 miles of one of these offices, your town is fair game).  Note the abbreviation in the left hand corner. That stands for one of the nine major federal contractors***

Screenshot (921)
Some cities are such large refugee resettlement sites that more than one contractor is working there.  Bidding for bodies?

 

~Call your closest subcontractor office and ask for the R & P Abstract for FY18.  They will dodge and weave and may even tell you they don’t know what you are talking about.  Be persistent.  You may ultimately have to use your state’s public information laws to get the abstract out of your state coordinator.  (You will likely never get a FOIA answered by the US State Department, however.)

The Abstract, in addition to other research you do, will lead you to the employers who want the cheap migrant labor because they are usually cited in the Abstract. Expose them.

~The local refugee contractor is required to hold quarterly “stakeholder” meetings.  They work very hard to keep the general public out.  Call them and your state coordinator and ask to be included.  If you get a runaround that is one more thing to publicize.  This program can only run with your money, therefore YOU are a stakeholder.

~Become friendly with people in your local health department and other social service agencies.  You may find them willing to tell you more about the mode of operation of the contractor/subcontractor working in your community and/or problems related to the refugees themselves (eg. high TB rates).

~Become familiar with the impact the refugee program is having in your local school system which is usually the first place we see problems erupting.

~I would expose every case you find where the subcontractor/contractor had left a refugee family or families in the lurch.  Keep your focus on the government agencies and the contractors and possible malfeasance there rather than being aggressively anti-refugee. Keep in the back of your mind, that some refugees have been sold a bill of goods and wish they could go home.

~Get as much as you can into your local newspaper/TV/radio show. If they are all pro-Open Borders you will have to write your own blog or facebook page to get the information you are finding out to a broader audience.

~If you have someone in your group (yes, it would be good to form a little group) who could do youtube, or small documentary films that is another option to reach more people.

~Speak up in your churches if they are affiliated with the nine major contractors*** Tell your church leaders that it isn’t Christian charity to take millions from the US taxpayers.

~Some grassroots activists have successfully taken to the road with powerpoint presentations to be shown to local civic groups.

~Arrange for expert speakers to come to your towns to educate a wider audience.

~All of the above, and more that I’m not thinking of, is to educate your community with the goal of electing mayors and council members who are on your same wavelength.  The Left has been electing mayors for years and that is how many cities are in the pickle they are now in!

~Consider running for elected office yourself.  Even if you think you can’t win because it is another way to publicize your views.

~Educate and put pressure on your governors and your state representatives, because if you can agitate them enough there will be a trickle-up effect on US Representatives and Senators who don’t want to hear a buzzing of bees back in the district.

~As the 2018 election year gets underway, make sure you have people ready to ask tough questions of your US Congressmen/Senators as they visit your town.

~When you earlier identified those industries and global corporations pushing for cheap labor, you should be working to find out which elected officials at all levels of government are getting campaign contributions from them as well. Use that information in 2018.

~If you are a member of one of the big three immigration control groups (CIS, FAIR, and NumbersUSA) and/or the Heritage Foundation you will need to keep pressure on them. Since they are in the swamp they may not have a good understanding of how the USRAP is affecting you and thus trade-off the refugee program for something they want.

And, one final thing for right now, don’t get discouraged if you can only find a few people to work with you, just plug away with a plan a little every day and look to your key helpers for moral support and a little help!

I’m sure there is more I’m not thinking of right now… I’ll update later.

*** These are the nine federal resettlement contractors paid by the head to place refugees in your towns.  They are also ‘community organizers’ who call upon their supporters to lobby Congress etc.  They are rolling in millions of tax dollars.

I’m thinking that one thing that Trump’s slightly lower cap for FY18 will do to them is to force them to tighten their belts and, as they do, tensions within the fake non-profits could rise—watch for it!

This post is filed in my ‘What you can do’ category, click here for more.

Australia deal: Come on America speak up as Breitbart and Ann Coulter are doing….

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Just this morning I reread Nayla Rush’s indepth definitive report on the “deal” Obama set up and Trump is continuing that would bring as many as 1,250 illegal aliens held in detention (by Australia) on offshore islands to your town!

anne richard with UN seal
Rush reported that one of the architects of Obama’s dumb deal (now Trump’s dumb deal) was his Asst. Sec. of State Richard, formerly a VP at the International  Rescue Committee which had been contracted to do the initial screening of these men.

We reported the other day, here, that 50 are on the way to:

Georgia, Oregon, Colorado, Texas, and Arizona.

I want all of you to take a few minutes and read Rush’s report at the Center for Immigration Studies here.  You will see how truly screwed-up our refugee program has been and CONTINUES to be when you see the kinds of people we are admitting—-mostly single men, some held in detention for as long as 4 years, 80% of whom have been declared in need of serious mental health treatment, from countries like Iran, Somalia, and Afghanistan.

‘Extreme vetting?’ 

No way because instead of the 18-24 months the feds are always bragging about, their vetting was less than a year because the deal was announced only in September of 2016.  See one of our many posts where I reported that the on-again, off-again screening began in November and of course, in less than a year, here they come.

So, can we really expect these men to settle down to jobs in meatpacking towns, in apartments funded by you, collecting their welfare benefits and accessing your local mental health clinics on the way to becoming upstanding and contributing American citizens?

Here is Haaretz reporting on a Breitbart story and Ann Coulter’s response:

This Sunday, Breitbart, the publication run by former Trump adminitration chief strategist Steve Bannon, ran a “news report” which slammed President Trump for continuing an Obama-era deal for the U.S. to resettler Middle Eastern refugees held in Australia.

“The president has now broken two long-promised campaign pledges: Throwing out deals that don’t benefit Americans and stopping the flow of foreign refugees won’t benefit Americans and stopping the flow of foreign refugees,” wrote John Binder in Breitbart.

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Haaretz continued….

Ann Coulter, who has been critical of Trump’s lack of follow through on his hardline immigration promises, joined in Breitbart’s anger, Facetiously joking on Twitter, “This never would have happened if Trump had been elected!!!”

Breitart and Coulter were incised [they must mean ‘incensed’—ed] by reports a second group of about 30 refugees held in Australian-run detention centres on South Pacific islands will leave soon for resettlement in the United States under a controversial refugee swap deal.

The first group of 22, including men from Bangladesh, Sudan and Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar, left one of the camps on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea on Sunday…

I have a very large archive on the”dumb” Australia deal. If you really want to understand the sheer stupidity of the arrangement, click here.

It is no longer Obama’s “dumb deal,” it is Trump’s!

And, I don’t care what the justification of this deal is. This is an abuse of refugee resettlement law and I maintain that Australia needs us more than we need them!

Contact the White House and your elected officials in Washington and tell them what you think.  If you are in one of the five targeted states (listed above) for ‘welcoming’ the Australian rejected asylum seekers, let your governor know what you think as well.