Refugee Resettlement Watch is two weeks away from our 9th anniversary!
Where has the time gone? I had to laugh (sort of) just now when I looked at an early postduring our first week in July 2007. I was asking about whether it was a good idea to begin to bring in large numbers of Iraqi refugees. Well we are now over 100,000, maybe even 150,000 Iraqis (mostly Muslims) spread out across America. (We can’t give you the exact number at the moment because I fear that the State Dept. has withdrawn their data base from public view!) Has it all been a waste of time?
No, not at all! I couldn’t have imagined a year ago that the word ‘refugee’ would be on the nightly news and indeed is becoming a critical Presidential election year issue. So I hope this blog has played some role in educating you about what we are up against. A few housekeeping issues….
I’ve had some questions lately about sharing buttons. When you subscribe to RRW, wordpress sends you an e-mail which includes the text of the post. Many of you have asked for a place to tweet or send the text you get to facebook. If you go to RRW itself (and I recommend that) each post has sharing buttons at the bottom so I am not sure what else I can do to facilitate your request.
Also, if you are on twitter, and so am I, know that everything I post I also tweet. So follow me @RefugeeWatcher and retweet my post if you like. (For those not on twitter, you can still see all the stories I tweet in my right hand side bar.) Making hay when the sun shines and why I can’t always answer your e-mails!
For our facebook page click here. I don’t put every post on facebook, but I do share the ones I consider most important there. Know that I have a partner at facebook who places stories as well that she thinks will interest you.
And one more thing before I get to the top three most-read posts of the week—did you send US State Dept. testimony I have not yet posted? I apologize but again my in-box is so completely jammed that I can’t find more testimony in the mess. If you still would like your POLITE testimony published please resend it.
My e-mail address is refugeewatcher@gmail.com, but please have pity on me and don’t send me e-mails morning, noon and night on every issue facing America at the moment! I would love to chat with you all day, I just can’t or nothing would ever get written.
And, for all of the new readers especially in towns where you’ve gotten the word that the federal government is going to place refugees in your community, be sure to see our Frequently Asked Questions, here. And, see this post which I recently re-posted: Ten things your town needs to know!
P.S. RRW is a blog, a news site, a library of sorts, not an organization with staff and interns and offices etc. etc. You may have noticed that I finally broke down and installed a ‘donation’ button, but we are not a 501(c)3 designated non-profit, so your kind donations are not tax deductible.
Editor: If that title looks familiar, then you must be a long time reader. But, it occurred to me just this morning, answering an e-mail from a reader, that since we get new followers every day and since we have now posted 7,624 articles here at RRW, that maybe re-posting some of those from time to time might be useful. I do want to remind you that the search function here at RRW is very good, so please use it! (Upper left hand side bar) You might first search for your city or state and see if we have written about it previously. Since the Obama Administration is in crunch time to get as many refugees (especially the Syrians) seeded into your towns as they can, I thought this post from March 2015 would be useful.
Ten things your town needs to know:
As we have been writing ad nauseam lately, the Obama Administration is now out of the shadows with its plan to “seed” towns and cities across America with diversity.
Changing America by changing the people. President Barack Obama, flanked by Cecilia Muñoz, director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, left, and senior White House adviser Valerie Jarrett are changing the people by ‘planting’ immigrant “seedlings” in towns across America!
‘Seed’ is their word! Your community is the soil into which the migrants of all sorts (legal and illegal) are being planted according to Obama’s Task Force on New Americans. It begs the questions: Are we being colonized? Do they plan to replace us some day? Sound far-fetched? Knowing Obama, are you willing to gamble on that?
We have long maintained a ‘fact sheet’ about how the UN/US State Department’s Refugee Admissions and Resettlement Program works, click here to learn more.
But, I realized yesterday, while thinking about the newest proposed seed community*** in Rep. Trey Gowdy’s backyard in Spartanburg, SC, that we needed a quick primer on what elected officials and citizens should know if they are being pressured to ‘welcome the stranger‘ (this guilt-tripping language is one way they pressure your town!). Update: Gowdy lost, assuming he ever tried, and Spartanburg is now an established resettlement site.
So here are my Ten Things you need to know!
1) In most cases, the United Nations is choosing our refugees. Topping the list right now are Iraqis, Burmese, Congolese, Somalis and Bhutanese. The UN is pressuring the US to take a large number, 10,000 or so, Syrians. We are bringing in refugees from countries which hate us. Your town does not get to choose who you get! You will receive racially, culturally and religiously diverse people, usually very different from your local population and very different from each other. That old ‘melting pot’ concept is dead because the numbers are too high.
2) Often the US State Department’s chosen resettlement contractor for your town, sounds like a church group, or other benign-sounding non-profit. They may have a religious-sounding name, but know that they are being paid by the head from the federal treasury to bring refugees to your town. It is not the case that they are passing a plate on Sunday morning to pay for this very expensive program. Here are the nine major contractors which have 350 subcontractors working for them (headquartered in over 180 cities so far).
3) The contractor’s job is to get the refugee family their “services.” That means they hold the refugees’ hands until they are settled usually in tax-payer subsidized housing, get them signed up for most forms of welfare including food stamps and other cash assistance, sign them up for health care and enroll the kids in school. This special class of legal immigrant is entitled to welfare! The contractor is also paid with your tax dollars to give refugees job counseling and training. The contractor may also be working closely with some big business (and the Chamber of Commerce) nearby which is looking for cheap labor.
4) The contractor’s job ends in 3-6 months at which point they move on to bringing in the next fresh group of “clients,” often the relatives of the first group. Earlier, and still struggling, refugees are left in the care of your social services department. At this point the contractors are entrenched in your town and will call you racists, rednecks and xenophobes if your citizens want to slow the flow.
5) Your town will never get out of the program once the contractor has an office set up and staff to pay. Many cities are trying to get out now and can’t: Manchester, NH, Springfield and Lynn, Mass, Amarillo, TX come to mind. Because there have developed “pockets of resistance” (their words), the State Department is desperately out scouting for fresh territory.
6) The greatest impact on your local social and economic welfare will be felt first in the school system, followed usually by the shortage of government subsidized housing. Your school system may end up with 50 or more languages represented in the student population. The number-one language of refugees entering the US right now is Arabic, Somali is number four. (Update: Somali has moved to number 3, here.)
7) Refugees are permitted entry into the US with HIV/AIDS and Tuberculosis among other medical problems. Physical and mental health challenges will most likely overburden your local health department.
8) Your local government is responsible (Clinton-era Executive Order) for providing costly interpretersfor the myriad languages being spoken in the school system, the health system and the criminal justice system should problems arise.
9) Refugees who do find work, work at entry level jobs and minimum wageso they will still be able to benefit from many welfare programs open to low-income Americans. Elder refugees are eligible for SSI. The refugees are Legal Permanent Residents and can begin the citizenship process quickly.
10) If they say they are coming to your town with the first group of refugees, there is only one thing you can do! ASK QUESTIONS IN PUBLIC. Demand that your elected officials get involved. Demand that a community meeting be held, for the US State Department, the Office of Refugee Resettlement (in HHS), your state refugee office (if there is one) and their contractors, to answer questions from the citizens of the town or city. Get your Member of Congress and US Senators involved too! Don’t forget your state legislators! The State Department and its contractors HATE to answer questions! Tell your local elected officials you want a public hearing! Tell your elected officials that you want the federal government and its contractors to provide a plan!
You want them to answer questions such as these below.
Remember you have every right to know what is being planned for your town. They will bully you, call you names and say you can’t stop them anyway, but refuse to be bullied!
Demand answers (in public)!
Who is coming? From where and how many?
Will they stop the resettlement if the town is becoming economically or socially stressed?
What security and health screening have the refugees undergone?
How many will come each year?
Who is paying for their health care?
Who is paying to educate the children who don’t speak English and may never have attended school?
Does your town have an adequate supply of government-supported housing? Will demands for housing crowd out American elderly, poor or disabled citizens?
Where will they work? Do we have high unemployment already?
I’m sure you can think of others. After getting answers (good luck!) and having a vigorous public discussion, then your town can decide based on all the facts whether you will eagerly “welcome” New Americans to your community, or not.
Endnote: There are other refugee experts in the country, so let me know if I’m missing anything here and I’ll add it!
Update!!! Call this #11: an experienced researcher just reminded me that concerned citizens must form a citizens’ groupto research the structure of the program in your state to obtain the FISCAL and legal facts about the program as the structure can vary from state to state.
*** This post (on Spartanburg) brought in the highest number of readers we have ever had for one post over a brief two days!
An afterthought: If you should get a public meeting/hearing be sure to educate yourselves on the Delphi Technique, a strategy often used by government agencies wishing to control the outcome of a meeting. Go hereto see what Judy said about it in advance of the public meeting held in Hagerstown, MD in September 2007.
The US State Department has said they won’t go where they are not wanted, but they are desperate now (too many refugees coming in and too few ‘welcoming’ towns) and are shoving refugees down the throats of reluctant communities, but you still mustn’t roll over and give up! You do have a right to determine the character of your community and how your tax dollars are spent, so continue to speak up. Thank God, we aren’t Europe yet!
As the November elections approach make this issue a top priority whenever you have an opportunity to meet candidates at all levels of government. You can be sure if Hillary Clinton is elected President this program will never be reformed, but will be put on steroids.
Reader TipTipTopKek asked the following in a comment to the post last night with the map of the US. He/she wants to know which states receive the most refugees on a per capita basis.
I would love to see these raw numbers reconfigured in two different ways:
First, as a per capita number based on the total population of the State
Second, as a per capita number based on the NON-HISPANIC WHITE population of the State
My suspicion is that, generally speaking and with Wyoming as an obvious exception, the highest RAPEfugee flows have been into the WHITEST States.
Maybe some one of you is good with numbers, I’m not, however we have previously posted the map below which shows the distribution of refugees to states on a per capita basis, but we don’t know which states are the whitest. I’m guessing the Dakotas, Nebraska, Idaho and Vermont are examples of states with large white populations and they definitely are getting more than their share of refugees. There is no doubt there is a method to the madness—the UN/US State Dept. is seeding diversity.
What is this you ask? It is a map distorted to show which states are disproportionately receiving refugees based on their overall populations for years 2009-2012. The number in each state is the number of refugees resettled per existing residents of the state. http://www.humanosphere.org/basics/2014/02/map-day-refugees-accepted-us-states-population-adjusted/
Editor: All of our ‘comments worth noting’ arearchived here.
I was looking for something else and found this map. Don’t you just love that white hole in the middle—Wyoming!
As we have reported many times, the top states resettling refugees are Texas, California, New York, Florida and then Michigan, Illinois, Arizona and a couple of others vying for the #5 spot.
The map is for FY2006-FY2015:
Someone asked me today where to find the number of refugees who were resettled in each state in the US over the years and it reminded me that we have many many new readers every day who are just beginning to try to get a handle on how the UN/US State Department Refugee Admissions Program works. Most recent Annual Report to Congress
Very useful documents are the Office of Refugee Resettlement Annual Reports to Congress*** which are full of all sorts of data, not just the statistics on how many refugees were resettled in your state, but they include data on welfare use, employment, housing, and medical assistance, among other things.
They also include reports from the VOLAGs (the federal contractors) and discussions of special problems that some refugee populations encounter here. And, of course there is information about the myriad grants these contractors receive each year. I can’t say it enough, but knowledge is power. If you want to begin to understand what is happening in your towns and cities, start by looking at one of these documents. Click here for a list of available reports.
By the way, the Refugee Act of 1980 specifies that this report should be completed and sent to Congress by the end of January following the close of the fiscal year. Thus, the 2015 Annual Report should be available, but they are behind in producing it.
So what else is new! At one point a few years ago, they were three years behind!
For new readers we have a category entitled ‘where to find information,’ and you might want to have a look at it from time to time.
P.S. I just spent a few minutes examining Table 1 (of the Appendix) in theFY2009 Annual Reportwhere it cataloged how many refugees and from what countries were resettled in each state between 1983 and 2009. Wow! Amazing!
***This is not to be confused with another report to Congress that accompanies the President’s proposal for the upcoming fiscal year. That report also has much useful data but is not as comprehensive as the reports found here.
Refugee Resettlement Watch is two weeks away from our 9th anniversary! 
