They are changing America by changing the people
….and continues to be a top post almost every day.
Which post is it? This one entitled: How did we get so many Somali refugees—the numbers are telling. There is no evidence in the stats to tell us where so many hits come from every day, people must just be forwarding it to friends. It’s a mystery to me.
Just a reminder that in the right hand sidebar (scroll down) you can see which posts have been the most heavily read in the last few days, check it out once in awhile.
That is the gist of an excellent piece by Don Barnett published in The Tennessean yesterday. I can’t believe, that of all newspapers, The Tennessean would publish anything with this much information about the refugee program.
We’ve written a lot about “welcoming” Nashville and how businesses there looking for cheap labor (hotel workers and meat packers in particular!) and Lefties looking for Democrat voters have pretty much controlled the message coming out of The Tennessean. The paper has also done “hit pieces” (here is one) on anyone daring to ask why so many Muslims are going to Tennessee and what their agenda might be. (We have an entire category here on Nashville and you will see what I mean.)
Anyway, here is the whole opinion piece from Barnett (published in its entirety because it will be a handy guide for all of you to keep for future reference and because I fear that the link may not be available for very long at this newspaper).
Barnett:
Refugee resettlement in America has traditionally been the responsibility of sponsors — families who housed the refugees, charitable organizations which provided assistance and employers with jobs.
Until the federal Refugee Act of 1980, refugees were explicitly barred from accessing public welfare. Sponsors had to provide at least a year of lodging and support including medical coverage.
This is not the system we have today.
Today, refugee resettlement is almost entirely the responsibility of the taxpayer — both state and federal; the sponsors have become federal contractors. One of the main tasks of the contractors — misleadingly called Voluntary Agencies or Volags — is to link refugees with social services programs. The contractor/sponsor responsibility ends after just three months in most cases. Needless to say, with such a short period of engagement, assimilation is not on the agenda, even when assimilation is the desire of the refugees themselves.
Thirty days after arrival, refugees are eligible for all forms of public assistance on the same basis as a U.S. citizen.
This has resulted in staggering welfare dependency rates, despite laughable statements about refugee “self-sufficiency” found in official Volag reports.
Sen. Richard Lugar, R.-Ind.*, commissioned a report in 2010 entitled “Abandoned Upon Arrival: Implications for Refugees and Local Communities Burdened by a U.S. Resettlement System That Is Not Working.”
The report concludes that the federal government too often brings refugees to U.S. communities with inadequate resources and little planning who “place demands, sometimes significant, on local schools, police, hospitals and social services. Local governments are often burdened with the weight of addressing the unique assistance refugees require, yet they rarely have an official role in influencing how many refugees are resettled by local voluntary agencies and often are not even informed in advance that new residents will be arriving.”
The report recommends modifications to “Enhance formal consultations with state and local leaders, improve accountability and promote community engagement which improves chances of assimilation.”
Likewise, the National Governors Association (NGA) regularly pleads for more state involvement “in the congressional consultation process through which new refugee admissions levels are determined to ensure that program funding is provided to support the level of refugee admissions.”
On its website, the NGA speaks of “a major federal policy change that shifts fiscal responsibility for meeting the basic needs of refugees and entrants from the federal government to states and localities.”
Further, “governors continue to be concerned about the lack of adequate consultation on the part of the voluntary agencies (Volags) and their local affiliates in the initial placement of refugees and on the part of the federal government in the equitable distribution of refugees.
States have continually urged the federal government to establish a mechanism to ensure appropriate coordination and consultation. However, significant progress has not been made. …”
Tennessee is the first state in the nation to pass a bill which will address this issue. The Refugee Absorption Capacity Act (RACA)* provides common-sense guidelines which promote consultation between Volags and the U.S. State Department on one hand and local communities on the other.
The law also provides a mechanism for localities to request a slowdown or a moratorium in resettlement based on the capacity limits of social service providers, public schools, public housing, public health services and so on. The law is very modest in that a community may merely make a request, not assert a right, to refuse resettlement.
Hopefully, it is the beginning of a process where affected communities are granted a say in the resettlement program.
Don Barnett is an information technology professional and free-lance writer in Brentwood.
*We told you about the Tennessee law here, and about Senator Lugar’s damning report here.
In FY2011 the goal for the number of refugees to be admitted to the US from the Obama Administration was 80,000 but it looks like they will be way lower than that — in the 50,000s. I suppose in some vague recognition of our bleak jobs outlook they are going to shoot for 76,000 in FY 2012.
Thanks to reader ‘Wanderer’ for sending us the official document from the President to Congress. It is only supposed to be the proposed numbers but to my knowledge Congress just rubber stamps the thing! The pdf is here. You can find some interesting numbers on page 5. I look forward to reading the whole document but wanted to get the link out to any of you who are eager to do your own reading.
It looks like the State Department is expecting the family reunification program from countries like Somalia to be reopened (it was closed in 2008 when they found widespread fraud—people were lying about family members, yes, can you believe it!).
Funny, it was only yesterday that we learned that the number of people living in poverty in the US is skyrocketing, but with tens of thousands of refugees admitted to the US each year we are importing more poverty. Go figure! See the Reuters story here.
The Pew Research Center has come out with a new study of American Muslims (the previous study was in 2007). Admittedly I only scanned the summary, but did go to the original report to check a few things which I’ll tell you about below.
Pew says basically Muslims are assimilating and are just your average happy-go-lucky Americans (sorta like American Christians).
The study entitled, ‘Muslim Americans: No Signs of Growth in Alienation or Support for Extremism,’ tells us there are 1.8 million Muslim adults, 2.75 million of all ages in the US and that number is up by a whopping 400,000 since 2007.
Based on data from the survey, in combination with U.S. Census data, Pew Research Center demographers estimate that there are about 1.8 million Muslim adults and 2.75 million Muslims of all ages (including children under 18) living in the United States in 2011. This represents an increase of roughly 300,000 adults and 100,000 Muslim children since 2007, when Pew Research demographers used similar methods to calculate that there were about 1.5 million Muslim adults (and 2.35 million Muslims of all ages) in the U.S.
By the way, since the population increase involved 300,000 Muslim adults that means at minimum we admitted 300,000 Muslim immigrants since 2007. I say “at minimum” because there are many thousands more who came illegally and are now hiding in the shadows.
Then we are told that ONLY 19% believe violence is justified sometimes to defend Islam. So using only the adult head count—1.8 million times 19% equals only 342,000 American Muslims could justify violence sometimes!
About eight-in-ten American Muslims (81%) say that suicide bombing and other forms of violence against civilians are never justified in order to defend Islam from its enemies.
If we take 19% (who think violence is O.K. sometimes) of the 300,000 Muslim immigrants since 2007 then 5,700 of those immigrants think violence is justified sometimes. However, I bet that number is low because you can be sure that most of the 300,000 immigrants refused to answer any questions from some Pew researcher probably figuring it was the FBI calling!
Pollsters also asked how many have a favorable view of al-Qaeda and found only 5% admitting to some sympathy there. Again, 5% of 1.8 million means that 90,000 think favorably of al-Qaeda. Wow! Only 90,000 (and those are the ones who admit it!).
Muslim Americans continue to express extremely negative views of al Qaeda: Just 5% have a very or somewhat favorable opinion of al Qaeda. [Don’t you just love how Pew reports this!—ed]
When you go look at the report and the methodology, I think you will be struck by the same thing I was—-how many more radical Muslims simply hung up the phone on the researchers? The questions are many and probing and surely only the most moderate and Americanized Muslims (who speak English well) would even answer them, thus skewing the results right out of the box.
Here are a few other things that jumped out at me in my quick reading of the results:
Most Muslims came to the US in the last ten years:
Most of the foreign-born Muslims came to the United States after 2000 (40%) or during the 1990s (31%). An additional 16% arrived in the 1980s. Just 12% arrived before 1980.
They are poorer then Americans:
But differences emerge in the middle of the scale: 40% of Muslim Americans report family incomes between $30,000 and $100,000, compared with 48% of the general public. And a higher percentage of Muslim Americans than the general public report that their annual household earnings are less than $30,000 (45% among Muslims, 36% among the general public).
Unemployment is higher:
But underemployment is more common among Muslims than in the general public; 29% of Muslims are either unemployed and looking for work or working part-time but would prefer to have full-time employment, compared with 20% of adults nationwide who are in these circumstances.
There might be questions about welfare usage but I didn’t see them in my first quick look. They did ask if Muslims recycle! That is very important to know. If you see welfare usage stats, direct me to them.
The survey also finds that Muslims in the U.S. tend to have somewhat higher fertility rates than the general public. Among women ages 40 to 59, who largely have completed their childbearing years, Muslim women report having had an average of 2.8 children each, compared with 2.1 among all U.S. women. In general, the pattern of higher fertility among Muslim Americans is similar to that seen among many other immigrant groups in the U.S. [So what is the fertility rate????—ed]
I went to the full report to see if they were hiding the numbers for the fertility rate for the younger Muslim women in their childbearing years and could not find anything other than this stat for the old women. Who the h*** cares about what the old women are reporting. How many babies are the young women reporting? If any readers find the number for the Muslim fertility rate in this report—for the women under 40—please direct us to it!
Readers, this is the KEY concern in the immigration battle going on in Europe—will Europe become a Muslim continent because Muslim population exceeds the British, French, Dutch, German and Spanish native populations through immigration and through higher fertility rates?
This link is filed in our archive (where to find information) which contains 175 posts to date.
Here is an article with links to several studies all confirming Europeans, for the most part, are unhappy with immigration, especially immigration from Muslim countries to Europe.
From Hudson New York:
A new opinion survey shows that more than half of all Europeans believe there are too many immigrants in their countries and that immigration is having a negative impact on their lives.
The findings – which come as Europeans are waking up to the consequences of decades of mass immigration from Muslim countries – point to a growing disconnect between European voters and their political masters regarding multicultural policies that encourage Muslim immigrants to remain segregated rather than become integrated into their host nations.
The survey results mirror the findings of dozens of other recent polls. Taken together, they provide ample empirical evidence that scepticism about Muslim immigration is not limited to a “right-wing” political fringe, as proponents of multiculturalism often assert. Mainstream voters across the entire political spectrum are now expressing concerns about the role of Islam in Europe.
The “Global Views on Immigration” survey was conducted by the London-based Ipsos global research firm and published on August 4. It polled citizens in nine European countries: Belgium, Britain, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Spain and Sweden.
The poll shows a close correlation between the views the natives of a given country have about immigration and the number of, and level of, integration of Muslim immigrants in their countries.
For example, the poll finds that Belgians and Britons hold the most negative views on immigration; these countries also have some of the least integrated Muslim populations in Europe. The poll also shows that among Europeans, Poles have the most positive views on immigration and immigrants; Poland happens to have Europe’s smallest Muslim community, which comprises less than 0.1% of that country’s total population.
The Ipsos poll shows that as a whole, more than 56% of Europeans believe “there are too many immigrants” in their countries: Belgium (72%), Britain (71%), Italy (67%), Spain (67%), Germany (53%), France (52%), Hungary (50%), Sweden (46%) and Poland (29%).
I see they didn’t poll Norwegians, but I would guess the number is close to Sweden’s. Here is an idea—how about if those countries who do have a problem just flex their sovereign muscles and say NO! to more. If Sweden, Poland and Norway are happy with their Muslim populations, let them do what they want (until their own citizens wake up).
There is a lot more (with links to more studies) at that Hudson New York report. Read it all.
By the way, for new readers, we have a category entitled ‘where to find information’ where many reports, studies, statistics are archived. You might want to have a look there from time to time.