No time to do this justice as I’m dashing out to appointments, but wanted to get this posted quickly….. More newsin Breitbart’s series on Tuberculosis in the US refugee population. This is an update of previous information on Colorado. By the way, Colorado is a so-called Wilson Fish state, one of more than a dozen states where elected officials have virtually no say in how taxpayer money is expended on refugees there. Colorado Gov. Hickenlooper: We love our refugees in Colorado! I wonder did he go to Davos to schmooze with the big international corporations backing the free flow of immigrant labor around the world? A little TB here and there shouldn’t stand in the way of making money! Right?
From Michael Patrick Leahy and just breaking on Drudge:
The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment admits that sixteen refugees were diagnosed with active TB between 2011 and 2014.
The admission comes one month after Breitbart News reported ten recently arrived refugees in Colorado were diagnosed with active tuberculosis (TB). Between 2011 and 2014, 16 out of 7,754 refugees were diagnosed with active TB at the time of their initial medical screening.
[….]
Colorado is one of fourteen states that have withdrawn from the federal refugee resettlement program. Under the statutorily questionable Wilson Fish alternative program, the federal government has hired a voluntary agency (VOLAG) to run the program there.
Though Tennessee, another state that has withdrawn from the federal refugee resettlement program, is suing the federal government on Tenth Amendment grounds over the resettlement of refugees in the Volunteer State, Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, a Democrat, is unlikely to add his state as a plaintiff in that lawsuit.
Continue reading here. Are health care providers and volunteers who work with refugees being briefed on health threats from newly arrived refugees? That is what I want to know!
This is post number 313 in our health issues category.
Update: Breitbart has just learned that the Vermont Health Dept. has treated 17 cases of ACTIVE Tuberculosis in the refugee population placed in that state by the US State Department.
I’ve been remiss in not reporting on the drama in Rutland, VT last week as the Aldermen there voted on whether to place a referendum seeking the public’s approval (or disapproval) of the city becoming Vermont’s next federal resettlement site. The Aldermen of Rutland, VT are asking Richard (Asst. Sec. of State for Populations, Refugees and Migration) for more information on the plans for the city. The nerve of them!
I am woefully behind on the Vermont news (although I did post on the latest regarding ACTIVE TB in the state here), so forgive me if more important things have happened since the vote. HereWatchdog.org reports on the vote (they voted to not put the referendum on the ballot).
By the way, the focus has been on Syrian refugees resettling there, but once an office is open, a smattering of many other ethnic groups will be brought in—Somalis, Congolese, Burmese, Iraqis and so forth—making assimilation even harder as each ethnic group creates its core community. Myriad ethnic groups also increase the expense to local tax payers for the school system and even the health department as interpreters must be provided for each group.
You shouldread Watchdog.org for all the details of the debate, but I wanted to emphasize one thing mentioned by one of the Aldermen:
David Trapeni, a two-time mayoral candidate and the organizer of the petition drive, criticized the resettlement plan as too open-ended.
“It’s not a hundred — it’s hundreds of refugees that come,” Trapeni said. “Once you open that door that’s it — you’re going to get hundreds, and you’re not going to have any say.”
I cannot stress enough how significant Trapeni’s comment is. He is exactly right! You cannot shut the spigot off once the pipeline starts to flow. You can’t next year say, well, that doesn’t work for us and expect the feds and their contractor to shutter the office they opened and fire the staff. This program builds on itself because first, the agency is paid by the head to resettle the refugees, and secondly they are hellbent on bringing in the family members once the original seeds are planted.You will be even more vilified when you say we don’t want families reunited.
In the controversy in Spartanburg, SC a year ago, the contractor/feds promised to bring in only 50 refugees, now the plan for next year is 150 (I didn’t check the exact number, but it is at least that many). It will not end, just ask the mayors of Manchester, NH or Amarillo, TX who have been trying for years to close the spigot!
Aldermen ask Asst. Sec. of State Anne Richard for more information
This (news) is a very interesting turn of events and frankly I have to give this local body a thumbs-up for even taking an initiative like this. Basically they are signaling that local governments have a right to all the facts. That is the last thing the refugee industry wants to set a precedent about. The arrogant feds and contractors are so accustomed to operating in secrecy that they don’t want to be in a position to answer questions. A word of caution…
However, when pressed they have been able to put on shows for the public as they did in Spartanburg, SC and in Twin Falls, Idaho where they came to town and held private meetings (Spartanburg) or held a stacked public meeting as they did in Twin Falls and gave their positive spin on refugee resettlement. (So Rutland should be prepared for such a propaganda initiative from Washington.)
Nevertheless, every city government should be so audacious as to demand more answers from the federal government. After all, your town will be changed forever!
I’ll be very interested to see how Ms. Richard responds to the letter (read it here). Will she decide the controversy in Rutland isn’t worth pushing any further and move on to another (weaker) target town in Vermont? Or, will she put up a fight here as a show of power by bringing in her dog and pony show? Read the whole story at the Times Argus.
Our Rutland archive is here (for new readers!).
No Syrian Muslims have been placed in Washington DC!
There isn’t much new and useful in this AP story from Saturday, but wanted to mention it only because once again the feds are telling concerned governors to go fly a kite—the UN/US State Dept. is speeding up the Syrian refugee processing in Jordan and Turkey. Governors are impotent to stop it is the message. Remember Simon Henshaw as the State Department official charged with assuring you that Syrians they admit are all good and decent people (like the sexual deviant arrested in Massachusetts last week?) Henshaw’s bio is here: http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/biog/bureau/213334.htm
There is a little nugget here that I didn’t know about: Apparently the DEMOCRAT mayor of Roanoke, VA did not want Syrians resettled in an already refugee-overloaded city. We’ve written a few times about Roanoke perhaps most famous for the refugee gang found guilty there for planning to kidnap and ransom some prominent women in the town, here in 2009. (Gee, I wonder if they were deported when they were released after their short prison sentence?) Associated Press(at the Washington Post):
Dozens of Syrian refugees were settled in Maryland and Virginia in June, part of a sharp nationwide increase as the U.S. government scrambles to meet its goal of admitting 10,000 refugees in fiscal 2016.
The surge has come despite opposition from more than half of the nation’s governors, including Maryland’s Larry Hogan (R), all of whom say they are not satisfied with the federal government’s assurances that refugees are carefully vetted and screened.
[…..]
The pace of refugee resettlement has quickened in part because processing facilities in Istanbul and in Amman, Jordan, have been upgraded and more Department of Homeland Security teams have been deployed to interview refugees, a State Department official said.
“We pushed all those things together so they would happen sequentially and more quickly,” said Simon Henshaw, principal deputy assistant secretary of the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration.
In Maryland, 78 Syrians were settled in June – bringing the total to 115 since October. Sixty-seven arrived in Virginia last month, out of 87 resettled in the state this year. Fifteen of them have been placed in Roanoke, where the Democratic mayor attracted national controversy last fall for citing the internment of Japanese citizens as a reason to bar Syrian refugees.
No refugees have been brought to the District of Columbia, according to the State Department data. [No, of course not!—ed]
Continue reading here.
Photo: My reference to the Syrian charged with sexual assault refers to this story. And, here, Breitbart has Pamela Geller’s reaction to the latest refugee sex crime. Regarding my title!In truth, Gov. Hogan and other of the governors concerned about the program could do something about it if they had the political will, but most don’t. It is easy to say they don’t like what is happening to satisfy voters, but quite another to put on the state’s rights fight that would be necessary.
Oh gee, one more “story” that doesn’t fit the Left’s narrative about refugees! (The Hive needs to get busy!)
You knew it had to happen sooner or later—a 22-year-old Syrian refugee has been arrested for making sexual advances to a young girl at a public swimming pool. She reportedly told him she was just a kid, so leave me alone.
From the Lowell Sun(hat tip: Joanne):
LOWELL — A 22-year-old Syrian refugee is behind bars after only two months in the United States after he was accused Thursday night of inappropriately touching a 13-year-old girl at a state-run swimming pool in Lowell.
Emad Hasso
In Lowell District Court on Friday, Emad Hasso, of Lowell, was ordered held on $25,000 cash bail after pleading not guilty via an interpreter to one count of indecent assault and battery on someone under 16.
Judge Stacy Fortes set the bail over the defense attorney’s objections, because Hasso’s only ties to this country are his family members with whom he lives.
Prosecutor Sam Miller said that around 5:30 p.m. on Thursday, the 13-year-old Lowell girl was at the Raymond Lord Memorial Pool at the North Common Park in Lowell when she said a man approached her, touched her upper thigh and asked her age.
For more details,continue reading here.
Hey Rutland, VT, and Reno, NV! He was likely resettled by the same federal contractor, US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (the federal contractor in Lowell), wanting a toe-hold in your towns. USCRI is in charge of Twin Falls, Idaho too!
What are the odds that this guy is going to become an upstanding American citizen? An afterthought: So is this the contractor’s fault for not telling their new charges that this sort of behavior is illegal in America? I think it is!
Of course consider the source of this glowing tale of how Baltimore’s economy is on the mend thanks to the large numbers of refugees and immigrants helping to revitalize the community. The fluffy story is being peddled by non-other than Think Progress (think George Soros and John Podesta!).
But, first don’t miss the news from Reuters just two days ago about how Baltimore can’t find enough policemen for a dwindling force while the murder rate skyrockets. One reason Baltimore is in deep trouble. Photo: http://moralmatters.org/2015/04/30/baltimore-mayor-stephanie-rawlings-blake-obama-political-puppet-suck-up/
Does it ever occur to the social engineering geniuses in the refugee resettlement industry/open borders movement that social unrest in inner cities could be coming from forcing ethnic diversity on a struggling African American community? Do the American citizens see the special treatment refugees receive and does that cause some of the simmering anger to explode? (Remember we learned here that rioting blacks targeted the Arab-owned stores in those riots last year.) Hereis the Think Progress story that begins with the usual warm and fuzzy tale of a refugee ‘making it’ in Baltimore. (Don’t forget our news from yesterdayabout the storytelling propaganda campaign being spearheaded by the UN’s ‘The Hive.’)
We know from our research that refugees receive special grants and other loan programs that allow them to purchase homes and businesses—programs not available to the local African American community. Refugees also have special auto purchasing programs funded by you.
Some local politicians see refugee resettlement as a way to revitalize their cities and to harness talent and skills for entry-level jobs that many native-born Americans may not necessarily want to do. [What is this, ‘may not necessarily want to do?’ Might they necessarily want to do it if wages were higher? Aren’t wages depressed when large numbers of low-skilled refugees move in?—ed]
[….]
Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake has seen the value in resettling refugees in her town. Foreign-born workers earned about $1 billion in wages in 2011, with immigrants holding more than 27,000 jobs. They also own 21 percent of the city’s businesses, about three times more than the native-born population, a Baltimore City government report found. Beyond Baltimore, many other cities have found that resettling refugees could help grow the economy by allowing refugees to buy homes, learn English, and eventually become citizens. [Think Progress of course does not report on how much the immigrants take from the community in social service costs, school expenses, and certainly the criminal justice system!—ed]
So the star of this story came to the US after being an illegal alien in Malta!
Switching subjects! This is the first time I have seen a media reference to the fact that ever since the Bush Administration the US State Department has been scooping up aliens/economic migrants who came to the island nation of Malta from North Africa ILLEGALLY, and presto-chango declaring them refugees! I’ve been writing about this subject for almost nine years, this is just one recent post.
Do you know that when someone lands in Europe (for example) and asks for asylum that they are to be granted asylum in the first country in which they land (or rejected for asylum). But, the George Bush State Dept. changed all that for Malta. We now take hundreds of Malta’s illegal aliens/economic migrants off their hands and transport them to America! So, the star of Think Progress’s story was not a real refugee. He was an alien who got to Malta and was living there for several years before, as he says, he chose to come to America! WTH! (See here, he was not a refugee!)
Admitted as a refugee to the United States in April, G.T., who asked for his real name to be withheld because he still has family back in Eritrea, didn’t always have a life this consistently American. He spent nine months trudging through Eritrea to Sudan, then another four months to Libya. From there, he took a perilous journey by boat to Malta, where he worked for three years and four months. While his own journey to Malta happened a few years before the European Union began facing a crush of refugees from Africa and the Middle East, his trek was hardly different from the one undertaken by millions of refugees traveling across the Mediterranean Sea.
In Malta, G.T. was happy “when I heard that there was a chance to go to America. Everyone knows that America has good opportunities,” G.T. told ThinkProgress in a phone interview. “That’s why I prefer to choose to come here.
Endnote:Think Progress ironicallyillustrates its story with a photo of Baltimore’s Inner Harbor which was created when some very rich and powerful developers, working in collusion with elected officials, condemned the homes and apartments of many of the city’s poor (including African Americans!) to develop the Inner Harbor. So poor people got the shaft and the supposed champions of the poor at Think Progress are apparently too dumb to know. One more reminder that ‘humanitarianism’ is only the cover used by the rich and powerful to line their pockets.
