Category: Where to find information

Tennessee Counties Feeling Betrayed by ‘Biblical Bill’ Planning Rebuke

~ Ann Corcoran ~ 5 Comments

When Tennessee Governor Lee foolishly caved to pressure from Leftwingers and asserted that Yup! Tennessee would welcome a fresh batch of refugees in the coming year, many Republicans who elected him felt betrayed.

TN Gov Bill Lee joins ‘religious Left’ in opposition to the President on refugee resettlement!

In other states where your Republican governor has turned against the President on refugees, you might feel betrayed too, but in Tennessee passions are apparently much higher.

During the term of Tennessee’s previous governor, the state filed a Tenth Amendment lawsuit against the feds over the refugee program there and Lee said, while campaigning for his new job, that he supported that case still winding its way through the courts.

Now, Lee (dubbed ‘Biblical Bill’  by a Tennessee-based website), conservatives feel has double-crossed the people who put him in office.

Breitbart  reporter John Binder reported late last night that action against the governor is underway.

Exclusive: Tennessee Counties Consider Rebuking Gov. Bill Lee’s Approval of More Refugee Resettlement

About a third of Tennessee’s 95 counties, thus far, are considering rebuking Republican Gov. Bill Lee’s approval for the State Department to resettle more refugees in the state next year, Breitbart News has exclusively learned.

[….]

Last week, Lee gave official approval to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to resettle more refugees in the state of Tennessee next year despite a high-profile Tenth Amendment lawsuit that questions the constitutionality of the refugee resettlement program.

Now, at least 31 counties in Tennessee are considering adopting a resolution that rebukes Lee’s approval for more refugees and demands that refugees not be resettled in non-consenting counties. The resolution contends that even if some counties do not consent to refugee resettlement, neighboring consenting counties will be allowed to resettle refugees in those non-consenting counties’ borders.

That reference to non-consenting counties potentially receiving refugees refers to the US State Department rule that contractors may place refugees within a one-hundred-mile radius of their local subcontractor’s office.

The Dailyrollcall.com published this map to show how the 4 federally contracted resettlement offices operating in the state in fact are allowed (according to the feds!) to spread refugees in almost the entire state!

I reported on the map here.

Breitbart continues….

Breitbart News exclusively obtained the resolution, which reads:

BE IT RESOLVED that [County Name] does not want to be forced into participating in the federal refugee resettlement program due to either Governor Lee’s consent and/or being within the permissible placement radius of a resettlement agency office. [Emphasis added]

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that [County Name] requests that Governor Lee retract his consent for initial resettlement in Tennessee for both the one year period of time as stated in his letter and/or the actual consent period required by the Funding Notice. [Emphasis added]

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that [County Name] requests that in the event Governor Lee does not retract his consent for initial refugee resettlement, that [Lee] submit a revised letter of consent to U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and to Lt. Governor Randy McNally and House Speaker Cameron Sexton exempting non-consenting counties from forced participation in the initial resettlement of refugees in Tennessee. [Emphasis added]

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that [County Name] requests that Governor Lee by written notice inform the resettlement agencies which maintain offices and operations in Tennessee that they may not place arriving refugees in non-consenting counties. [Emphasis added]

Read it all.  

Whether you live in a Democrat run state or in one of the 15 states where the Republicans have turned on the President, you too could use this resolution model where you live. Obviously change the names and some of the facts.

I wasn’t going to list the states where Republican governors have gone against the President until they appeared on the US State Department’s official list, but since the DOS is dragging its feet getting its list up-to-date, below is the list of Rs who are welcoming more poverty to your state.

You might well characterize these Republicans as particularly dumb for consenting long before they have to according to the Funding Guidance, but I suspect they thought they might get brownie points from the Open Borders agitators led by the refugee resettlement contractors in their states.

I’m hoping that you won’t hold back in telling them what you think!

BTW, I should have made it clear above that according to the Funding Guidance, counties must opt-in as well as the governor.  If the governor is out, than that settles it for a small portion of FY2020 (from June to end of September), no refugees would be permitted placement (with a few exceptions).

From Daniel Horowitz here yesterday:

There could be more weak Republicans this morning turning on the President on a key 2016 campaign promise.  I haven’t looked yet.

Suck-up Letters from Republican Governors Causing me to Start Swearing

~ Ann Corcoran ~ 2 Comments

And, if governors like Arkansas’s Asa Hutchinson are an example, their Leftwing Refugee contractors aren’t even very appreciative of the caving that one Republican governor after the other is doing—-I suspect at the behest of Secretary of State Pompeo who is (I believe) attempting to undermine his nemesis in the White House Stephen Miller (more on that later).

Hutchinson abandons the President on refugee program! Caves to the Religious Left! (Or was it to Tyson Foods?). He could have kept his letter simple, but oh no, he had to demonstrate his ignorance and suck-up to the ‘religious’ Leftwingers in his state.

As the Republicans are lining up to oppose the President (yes, that is what they are doing!), I said I wasn’t going to write about each capitulation, but a few might be worth it to demonstrate the governors’ ignorance of the refugee program that Trump wants to seriously bring under control.

This just in: 15 Republican Governors have turned against the President so far!  See if yours is one of them!

 

Check out Hutchinson’s ‘kiss-ass’ comments at Arkansas Online:

At least he could have been honest and mentioned that he has to keep Tyson Foods happy (See Lutherans in Arkansas get a $50,000 grant from Tyson Foods!) just like ol’Bill Clinton did when he supplied Big Meat with refugee labor.

Refugee order appreciated, state advocates say

FAYETTEVILLE — A leader with Canopy Northwest Arkansas on Tuesday welcomed Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s executive order that Arkansas will continue to accept legally immigrating refugee families.

Faint praise for the governor who capitulated:

“I don’t want to make it more than it is, which is that we will continue to do what we are doing, but we appreciate the governor’s support,” said Clint Schnekloth, chairman of the board of Canopy, a refugee assistance nonprofit group.

Clint Schnekloth

An executive order from President Donald Trump allows states to refuse further refugees. The U.S. Department of State coordinates refugee relocation with nine charitable organizations [federal contractors—ed]*** through agreements [aka federal contracts—ed] with the government.

The Northwest Arkansas group worked with two of those nine groups — Catholic Charities Immigration Services and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service — to get the region accepted in 2016 as a refugee resettlement site. [This was the period at the end of the Obama Administration when his State Department was rapidly expanding resettlement sites—ed].

“Previously, there was no coordination with the state and little awareness,” Hutchinson said in a statement Tuesday. “Under the new executive order, the state will have more visibility. The approval will need to be each year, and the state will be able to assure the refugees are assimilating into the community and have access to jobs, education and job training. I have confidence that local communities will provide the support necessary, but we will be able to monitor.”

WTH the state will be able to assure the refugees are assimilating. Really? Monitor how? And, if you, governor, somehow figure out that they are not assimilating will you have the backbone to say NO next year?

States have until Jan. 21 to declare whether they will allow placement of refugee families through the federal admissions program under the executive order. More than 30 governors have agreed to accept refugees, according to The Associated Press.  [Only a tiny fraction of the consent letters have been received by the State Department as of this writing.  What! bureaucrats on vacation?—ed]

[….]

Schnekloth said the Canopy group appreciates the degree of support and clarity in Hutchinson’s decision to beat the deadline by a month and to reiterate the importance of helping legal refugees. The governor announced his decision Monday in a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Dumb Asa didn’t have to send any consent for at least another month and the squishy language of the funding guidance allows even more foot-dragging by governors beyond January 21, 2020.

The Contractors wanted quick consents so they can prepare their requests for YOUR money by January 21st.

“While we fully support control of our borders and oppose illegal immigration, we also value the contribution of immigrants and understand the importance of America continuing to be a welcoming nation for those truly seeking refuge and following the legal path to our land,” reads Hutchinson’s letter to the secretary. [Contractor boiler-plate language!—ed]

“To that end, I have received confirmation from local municipalities, members of the faith-based community, as well as members of the nonprofit community, confirming they will coordinate support and facilitate employment opportunities for refugees that are approved for relocation to Arkansas,” the letter says. [More contractor boiler-plate language—ed]  

How does Hutchinson plan to monitor the “faith-based community” to make sure they will support and find jobs for refugees?

And, in reference to his earlier opposition to the Obama plan for a mass movement of Syrians to America, he says this:

The family-by-family relocation by the admissions program is not the same, and recent efforts by the administration “enhancing security checks to ensure proper screenings are carried out” in the program are appreciated, the governor’s letter says.

It is the same program Obama used! 

There is nothing new because the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program HAS NOT BEEN REFORMED.  And, in this, one small effort by Trump to rein-in the dysfunctional program, we have spineless governors kissing-up to ungrateful (anti-Trump) Lefties.

 

***For new readers these (below) are the nine federally-funded refugee contractors that operate as a huge conveyor belt monopolizing all refugee placement in America.  For decades they have decided in secrecy where to place refugees and they don’t want to lose that power because even as they pontificate about their religious convictions and humanitarian zeal, they are Leftwing political activist groups working to change America by changing the people and using your money to do it!

And, they do not limit their advocacy toward only legal immigration programs, but are heavily involved in supporting the lawlessness at our borders.

The question isn’t as much about refugees per se, but about who is running federal immigration policy now and into the future?  

(I plan to say this once a day from now on!)

I continue to argue that these nine contractors are the heart of America’s Open Borders movement and thus there can never be long-lasting reform of US immigration policy when these nine un-elected phony non-profits are paid by the taxpayers to work as community organizers pushing an open borders agenda.

Refugee Resettlement Used as a [Expletive] Bargaining Chip! Do I Smell a Quid Pro Quo?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ 6 Comments

“It’s a bargaining tool: We’ll take a certain number of refugees. These are the things you will do for us.”

(Melanie Nezer, Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society)

This is just a quick post as I am researching WTH Secretary of State Pompeo was doing when he had a little chit-chat about refugees with the now under- fire Tennessee Governor Bill Lee in October.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo

Before I get to the little nugget I discovered in a 2018 Politico article about Pompeo, I want to remind long time readers, and inform new readers, that way back seven years ago (and long before that) the US State Department annually invited comment on the coming years refugee plans.

However, when those so-called scoping meetings began to be dominated by those of us who want the refugee program dumped or reformed, they stopped having the annual (albeit phony) ‘hearings.’

The Trump State Department has had no such opportunity for public input.

I regularly sent in testimony demanding a moratorium on the program and listed ten reasons, most are still applicable today.  See them here.

Here is my Number 7:

7)   Congress needs to specifically disallow the use of the refugee program for other purposes of the US Government,especially using certain refugee populations to address unrelated foreign policy objectives—Uzbeks, Kosovars, Meshketians and Bhutanese (Nepalese) people come to mind.

Now check this out at Politico in August of 2018.

Refugees as pawns and your community be damned!

“Pompeo is the critical stakeholder,” one refugee advocate said.

Melanie Nezer of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. (One of nine federal refugee resettlement contractors.)

Now that he’s served both as CIA director and secretary of state, activists hope that Pompeo has earned an appreciation for the diplomatic leverage having a robust refugee program can give the U.S. in negotiations with other countries.

“It’s a bargaining tool: We’ll take a certain number of refugees. These are the things you will do for us,” explained Melanie Nezer, a top official with HIAS, one of several organizations that helps refugees.

It is time to shut up about the humanitarian BS!  A refugee should be someone who is in legitimate need of protection, not a chip in a foreign policy poker game.

Think about that!  Your community will be changed forever (while you pay for it with your tax dollars) because refugees being admitted to the US are pawns in US foreign policy wheeling and dealing!

White House Supposedly Blindsided as Republican Governors Cave on Refugee Resettlement

~ Ann Corcoran ~ 9 Comments

“‘If I sign to let refugees in, is that going against the President?’ ” 

(Refugee lobbyist Jen Smyers said elected officials want to know!)

The Answer:  Yes!

When the White House designed their September Executive Order to give governors and county commissions the ultimate say on whether refugees would be placed in their states, they miscalculated on (at least) two fronts.

First they had apparently no idea of how networked and politically savvy the resettlement contractors*** are as their very survival is dependent on their federal funding.  (Just for the record, no one in the administration asked those of us who know the operational structure of the contractor network for any advice.)

And, America Firsters! have no national grassroots network to begin to compare with the nine contractors and their friends.

But, most importantly, the supposed reformers working for the President apparently did not have a firm understanding of how weak most Republican governors are on immigration issues of any sort.

Open Borders Inc. has so thoroughly trained most elected officials to get in line with their agenda, or be called racists and xenophobes, and God forbid, nationalists, that most governors were shocked when they heard they were being forced to go on record on whether they would be ‘welcoming’ poverty and cultural diversity to their states or not.

One positive that might come from this exercise is that Americans, who have had enough of supporting migrants of all stripes, are going to have a list of those who are going against America First!

Yesterday New Yorker reporter Jonathan Blitzer provided details on how the governors are falling one-by-one in line against the President on a key 2016 campaign promise.  Of course we don’t know if Blitzer has all of his facts straight, but he sure sounds like someone with an inside track—a track that we don’t have!

How the White House Is Trying—and Failing—to Keep States from Resettling Refugees

One of the chief priorities of the Trump White House has been to dismantle the refugee system, which has existed, with broad bipartisan support, since 1980. Within the first week of Trump’s Presidency, his Muslim ban temporarily froze the resettlement of refugees in the U.S. and cut the over-all number of people whom the federal government would allow into the country. Every year since, the White House has lowered the annual refugee “ceiling,” which now stands at eighteen thousand, down from more than a hundred and ten thousand, at the start of 2017. But the President hasn’t limited his attacks on the system to Washington. A provision of the Muslim ban, for instance, specified that individual states and localities should be allowed to refuse to accept refugees. At the time, it wasn’t clear how states could do so, but the premise was obvious: if the White House could turn refugee resettlement into a partisan wedge issue, Republican-controlled states might abandon the program and side with the President.

Jen Smyers works for Church World Service. CWS is suing the Administration to stop the Executive Order. They have for decades decided where refugees will be placed in America and they don’t want any governor or local government messing with their power to change your community by changing the people.

On September 26th, Trump issued an executive order requiring that every local and state jurisdiction sign a consent letter in order to resettle refugees. If a governor or county commission failed to produce a letter, the U.S. State Department, which oversees the process, would effectively consider that jurisdiction ineligible for resettlement. The order was designed to put additional pressure on local officials, by forcing them to opt in to the resettlement program rather than opt out. “A lot of governors and state officials don’t want to make this decision,” Jen Smyers, of Church World Service, a resettlement agency, told me. “Immigration has always been the jurisdiction of the federal government, and they don’t believe it’s their role. At first, some officials would also say, ‘If I sign to let refugees in, is that going against the President?’ ”

Yes, of course it is going against the President! The President made it clear at a Minnesota rally that he wanted to curtail refugee resettlement in America.

 

These questions intensified after Trump, at a campaign rally in Minnesota, in October, complained about the number of Somali refugees who have settled in the state in recent years. “Leaders in Washington brought large numbers” of them, he said. The crowd booed, on cue, then cheered when the President announced that he would give states and cities an opportunity to prevent more refugees from coming. “No other President would be doing that,” he said.

Each year, nine refugee-resettlement agencies across the country bid for contracts with the government [LOL! bid for bodies!—ed] This time, at the behest of the White House, the State Department added a caveat to the application: the federal government would not resettle refugees in a particular place unless consent was provided in accordance with the executive order.  Meanwhile, a few weeks after Trump signed the order, officials at the State Department told resettlement groups that they planned to contact mayors and governors to request consent letters from them. But the department never did; a month later, the resettlement groups had to start conducting outreach on their own. “The best way to get someone not to write a letter is to not tell them they need to do it,” Smyers said.

Lo and behold, the contractors went to work in October with a massive lobbying campaign in key states and counties and began racking up consent letters.  The best prizes of all are the Republican Governors!

The Trump Administration was caught off guard by the positions taken by Republican-controlled states. Just before Thanksgiving, after the governor of North Dakota submitted his consent letter, the White House organized a phone call with governors’ offices to “enhance state and local involvement” in resettlement. Those invited to participate were given only a few days notice.

Continue reading to see what happened.

And, see what a prize Tennessee’s governor was for the contractors.

Blitzer reported also that the lawsuit the contractors have filed against the Executive Order will be heard by a friendly to them federal judge on January 8th.

Not mentioned by Blitzer, because he likely has no clue, is that big globalist corporations and Chambers of Commerce are lobbying the governors for more refugees to enhance the low wage labor pool especially in the heartland riddled with BIG MEAT slaughterhouses.

But that doesn’t fit the narrative that the likes of the New Yorker want to portray which is humble humanitarians vs. the menace in the White House.

We are seeing numerous news accounts of which governors are going against the President.  Early next week we will post on which Republican governors have gotten their consent letters to the US State Department.

Before Monday, I might post on South Dakota’s Republican Governor Kristi Noem’s welcome announcement because of who is cheering her consent.

If you have opened RRW for the first time with this post, please see my category ‘Where to find information’ for all the news on the President’s Executive Order.

 

***For new readers these (below) are the nine federally-funded refugee contractors that monopolize all refugee placement in America.  For decades they have decided in secrecy where to place refugees and they don’t want to lose that power because even as they pontificate about their religious convictions and humanitarian zeal, they are Leftwing political activist groups working to change America by changing the people and using your money to do it!

And, they do not limit their advocacy toward only legal immigration programs, but are heavily involved in supporting the lawlessness at our borders.

The question isn’t as much about refugees per se, but about who is running federal immigration policy now and into the future?  

I continue to argue that these nine contractors are the heart of Americas Open Borders movement and thus there can never be long-lasting reform of US immigration policy when these nine un-elected phony non-profits are paid by the taxpayers to work as community organizers pushing an open borders agenda.

Tennessee Republican Governor Bill Lee Caves, Says Tennessee Will Invite More Refugees

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

But, he is up against a buzz saw—likely the most significant “Pocket of Resistance” anywhere in the country.

A what? A pocket of resistance?

That is a term one of Obama’s federal Office of Refugee Resettlement employees used at a 2013 refugee contractor pow-wow in Lancaster, PA to describe the citizens who were asking questions about the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program.

I was in the audience and wrote about it here:

[T]he keynote speaker talked about how ‘Welcoming America’was working to get YOUR minds right about your new refugee neighbors (and, they received a federal grant from ORR to do it!).

Originally from Tennessee, David Lubell launched Welcoming America, a non-profit the feds hired to tamp down what they termed as ‘pockets of resistance.’ Lubell was later awarded Obama’s ‘Champion of Change’ award.

Before Susan Downs-Karkos from ‘Welcoming America’ spoke, we had been alerted by the Office of Refugee Resettlement’s Director of Placement, Mitiku Ashebir that  (gasp!) “three pockets of resistance against new arrivals” had developed.  He assured the gathering it was not widespread and that Pennsylvania, thankfully, was not one of them.   Drum roll please!  Here are the pockets of resistance and Mr. Ashebir’s brief description of the unwelcoming problems:

New Hampshire—some mayors have problems, said Ashebir

Georgia—budget reductions for some service providers

Tennessee—they want to control arrival numbers!  Imagine that!

As far as I know the resistance in Georgia and New Hampshire has been brought under control by Leftwing refugee industry activists, but they have not been able to quell the rebellion by Tennessee patriots who are hopping mad at the governor for going against the President and saying—send us more poor people from across the world.  (Lee caves here.)

Consequently, see this mornings news about the uprising against the governor, a governor conservatives put their faith in and now feel he has betrayed them.

From the Dailyrollcall.com (every state should have a publication like this one to keep especially your Republicans accountable):

Bill Lee Tithes For the Federal Refugee Resettlement Program With Taxpayer Money

 

Why do millionaires like Bill Lee feel so free to use state tax dollars to live out their personal religious beliefs?

Remember when Bill Lee was campaigning and trying to dazzle gullible voters with his “brilliant” idea for an Office of Faith-Based & Community Initiatives?

Good ol’ country boy Bill Lee bows to Leftists that run the big urban centers of Tennessee.

Once elected he launched this initiative and it may end up being the vehicle for Bill Lee to funnel more state dollars to pad the pocketbooks of federal refugee contractors and other groups that want to get into the lucrative refugee resettlement business.

In fact, Bill Lee told us as much while he was on the campaign trail:

“My wife has worked in a ministry that serves Kurdish refugees, I’ve been to Kurdistan and served with refugees from ISIS in refugee camps,” Lee replied. “I believe that the work of nonprofits is powerful and important, and that’s what this is about. And I am a Christian, so my experiences and my work with non-profits that are doing effective work has been Christian organizations, so that’s what I talk about, because I talk about my experience, and I will support works that are doing, meeting some of the greatest challenges in our community that I believe government shouldn’t meet, it’s not the role of government to do that. But it is the role of the nonprofit community and I would encourage that kind of work, for sure.”

But he might just use the government to provide the greenbacks – we’ll get to that in a minute.

So why is anyone surprised that when offered, he jumped at the chance to say “YES!” I want to put Tennessee back into the refugee resettlement program!!!

And because of the 50-100 mile placement rules from the four urban centers where the federal resettlement contractor offices are located, when he consented for Tennessee, he pretty much put every county in the state up for grabs.

Please continue reading, and then see this….

Judith Clerjeune an immigrant activist in TN is thrilled with the governor. But you can bet they still won’t vote for him next time around. https://www.tnimmigrant.org/judith

Conservatives in Tennessee who put Bill Lee in office get a lump of coal for Christmas while the radical left TN Immigrant & Refugee Rights Coalition (TIRRC) congratulates it’s lobbying effort on the consent push:

“We thank Governor Lee for his moral clarity and leadership in making his decision today…‘Refugee communities across Tennessee have played a powerful role in defending not only the resettlement program but the values and aspirations of this country’, said TIRRC Policy Officer Judith Clerjeune. ‘We will continue to work with refugee leaders and partner agencies to advocate for a robust and generous resettlement program.”’

During Bill Lee’s campaign his first major policy initiative was his “Roadmap for Rural Tennessee” which he highlighted by riding around on a tractor and talking about “his farming roots” and about how Tennessee is just one generation away from losing this way of life.

Not sure what happened to all that rural love, because what we have now, is the rural governor scrooging Tennessee’s rural counties in deference to the urban-based federal contractor resettlement agencies.

Read it all here.

As of this writing, Lee’s ‘welcome refugees’ letter is not on file at the US State Department.  See if your governor is here.

The nine federal refugee contractors salaried workers are working day and night to get those consents into the State Department by Christmas.  Therefore….

Shame on You if You Don’t Take 15 Minutes to Do This!