Category: Where to find information

Is yours a “welcoming” city or state? If not, expect a visit from Lubell and company

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Clarkston, Georgia has signed up!

Yesterday, I gave you the latest ‘diversity is strength’ alert from Nashville, TN (Muslim immigrants busted for selling drugs from convenience stores), and I mentioned “Welcoming America” again which is the spawn of David Lubell* and “Welcoming Tennessee.”

Check out this useful graphic I found at “Welcoming America’s” website:

 Clarkston, GA!

Also, their top story was one we missed from earlier in the month—Clarkston, GA, an overloaded refugee resettlement city, has become their 29th “Welcoming City,” this at the same time that the Governor has persuaded the feds to stop sending refugees there.

Learn more about the refugee and immigrant overload in Georgia by clicking here (A pocket of resistance in the land of Jimmy Carter).

It is amazing to me how ballsy propagandists are, the average person would have no idea of the problems that Atlanta and its suburbs have experienced as the refugee and immigrant population explodes.  To read this one would think everything is just, well, beautiful.

“Welcoming America” is a federal contractor of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (Health and Human Services) so this is being done with your tax dollars.

From “Welcoming America” regarding Clarkston:

Clarkston Becomes 29th City in Nation to Join Decatur, Georgia based Welcoming America’s Welcoming Cities and Counties Initiative

Mayor Terry: Looking forward to working more with ‘Welcoming America’

Clarkston Mayor Ted Terry signs Welcoming resolution for the city.

On March 4th, 2014, Mayor Ted Terry and members of the Clarkston City Council passed a Welcoming Resolution, committing the city to building a welcoming and neighborly community in which diverse residents, including immigrants, are welcome, accepted and integrated.

Through the resolution, the City also joins Welcoming Cities and Counties, an initiative of Welcoming America that supports locally-driven efforts to create more welcoming, immigrant-friendly environments that maximize opportunities for economic growth and cultural vitality and position communities as globally competitive, 21st century leaders. Welcoming America is a nonprofit organization based in Decatur, Georgia that works across the U.S. to create inclusive, immigrant-friendly communities that expand prosperity for all residents.

The resolution (full version available here) recognizes that a welcoming community is critical to economic success for all residents, and identifies that Clarkston is committed to “enhancing its cultural fabric, economic growth, global competitiveness and overall prosperity for all individuals in the current and future generations who choose to make their home in the city.”

Said Clarkston Mayor Ted Terry, “I’m gratified that this was a grassroots effort. The residents of our city got together and worked out the details – and our government has responded in full support of Clarkston becoming a truly Welcoming community. In light of recent events, over the criminalization of gays and lesbians, in Uganda – our city felt it was important to add language that codified ALL people are welcome in Clarkston, including gay, lesbian and transgendered folks. It is incumbent upon our government to provide opportunity for all residents of our city. And I am looking forward to working with Welcoming America on a framework for the future welcoming policies of Clarkston.”

“This is a wonderful affirmation that the diverse character of Clarkston is indeed one of its great strengths,” commented Emily Pelton of Refugee Family Services, a refugee resettlement agency that works in the Clarkston community.

* See Lubell’s bio here.  La Raza gave his Tennessee group an award.

We recommend that if your state has a ‘welcoming affiliate’ that you find out more about it and sign up for any news they send out to their supporters.  Here is information on how to “join” them.

CIS: US asylum system fosters fraud

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Hot off the presses at the Center for Immigration Studies is a new report: ‘Asylum in the United States: How a finely tuned system of checks and balances has been effectively dismantled.’

Here is what CIS says about it in a press release today:

WASHINGTON, DC (March 26, 2014) — The erosion of checks and balances in the U.S. asylum system, designed to prevent fraud, has led to the nearly tripling of claims for asylum. A Center for Immigration Studies report examines the increased applications as well as the rubberstamping of these applications.

The number of applicants passing the preliminary “credible fear” test nearly tripled from 2012 to 2013, and has increased nearly 600 percent since 2007. Once the applicant receives asylum, they receive access to all major welfare programs.***

Author of the report, Dan Cadman, a retired INS/ICE official: They have learned how to game the system.

Fraud accounts for much of the increase. According to a DHS internal report, 70 percent of asylum applications examined were fraudulent or had strong indicators of fraud. With such a high rate of fraud, it is alarming that DHS statistics show a positive credible fear finding in 92% of all cases decided on the merits.

The CIS report finds that the Senate comprehensive immigration bill would do much to exacerbate the existing problem. Among the list of changes would be the allowing of previous asylum fraudsters to re-apply and allowing asylum to be granted instantly upon application, before any vetting occurs.

Dan Cadman, author of the report and fellow at the Center, said, “Many illegal immigrants have learned how to game the system by applying for asylum as a means of prolonging their time in the United States. If a claimant can pass the preliminary credible fear test they can buy themselves months, often years, living and working legally in the United States. A system designed to stem fraud and abuse has been undone by executive action, agency inaction, and judicial activism.”

Cadman provides nine recommendations of how Congress and the Department of Homeland Security can curb abuses, and set the asylum program on track to function as it was intended. He endorses, for example, a program of routine audits of both credible fear findings and formal asylum grants, which would include investigations of cases found to involve fraud or the withholding of material information.

“Gaming the system” is a worldwide problem as we have learned recently in our “invasion of Europe” series.

***An afterthought:  once someone is granted asylum, as mentioned here, they are given all of the same access a refugee has to welfare goodies, and they can expect ‘service’ from the federal refugee contractors.  Thus those contractors are lobbying for the so-called Comprehensive Immigration Reform bill because it means an expansion of their “services” and more federal grants coming their way!

Is your state attracting “secondary migrants?” Minnesota tops the list

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Secondary migrants are refugees who were settled first by the US State Department and a contractor in one state, but choose to move usually because they want to be with their own kind of people, or they find employment and/or social services more desirable elsewhere.

When we first began writing this blog in 2007, we were told it was impossible to track the secondary migrants because it’s America and no one has to report where they move to.  Indeed over the last 40 years we have admitted over 3 million refugees, so no one could possibly track them.  So, I was surprised to see that in ‘Key Indicators for Refugee Placement FY2014’ the feds are reporting that they have tracked secondary migrants, but surely (the numbers are so small) it must be the most recently resettled ones that are being tracked.

I don’t know what they mean when they say “states report” (page 9).  Who in the “state” is keeping track, the non-government contractors, or some agency of state government?

  Each year states report on the number of refugees and entrants who moved to a different state outside of their original resettlement location.

Check out the list!

Top five states with the most out-migration are:  Arizona, California, New York, Texas and Pennsylvania  (but as a percentage of the huge numbers resettled in CA, NY and TX these numbers are probably not that meaningful).

States with the most in-migration of secondary migrants are:  MN (by a huge margin), OH, Iowa, FL and OK.

Secondary migrants are surely the reason the St. Cloud, MN Somali population is booming.

Our previous posts on this important document, Key Indicators…., are here.

Handy resource: Code of Federal Regulations for Refugee program

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment
Thank Teddy and Jimmy!

We’ve written about this before, but it’s been a few years ago.

Any lawyers out there, or anyone interested in going deeper about how the Refugee resettlement program works—maybe some Wyomingites who would like to see that the state does have responsibility for refugee social services—go here (scroll back to page one for table of contents).

Also, see our fact sheet on the program here.

This post and others like it are archived in our ‘where to find information’ category.

The expansion of Medicaid is a “key indicator for refugee placement”

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment
Got Obamacare?

If your state is one of those which has expanded Medicaid as a result of Obamacare then yours is a prime target for refugee resettlement.

I don’t know when they did it, but the feds and their contractors seem to have chosen the word “placement” over “resettlement” in their government lingo.

Whatever they are calling it, they are on the hunt for new “welcoming” locations to start seed communities of refugees because many of the old places are saturated and complaining—think Lewiston, ME, Manchester, NH, Nashville, TN, Atlanta, GA and most recently Amarillo, TX.  All “pockets of resistance!”

So, back to ‘Key Indicators for Refugee Placement FY2014’.…

One of their key indicators for the desirability (the “capacity”) of your community as a placement site  is whether your state has expanded Medicaid!

From the Introduction:

Affordable Care Act

ORR [Office of Refugee Resettlement] considers placement to be a key element in facilitating a refugee’s successful adjustment. One major factor that may affect placement is the implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Accordingly this year’s data has incorporated information on heath access determinants including updates on states that plan to expand Medicaid during the final implementation phase of ACA, and states that have ruled Medicaid expansion out.

Then check out the handy data on which states have and which states haven’t expanded Medicaid (pages 11, 12, 13).