My overall quick impression of the NYT article from late last week (sorry I was away with no time to post) is that although it is still the New York Times it is a bit fairer than the article they posted from South Carolina about ten days ago. My take on that one is here. Here is just a short bit:
In an echo of the ferocious debate that is gripping Europe about the fate of the millions of Syrians thrown from their country by civil war, Twin Falls is grappling with the question of whether taking in a next generation of refugees from the Middle East is wise and safe.
Vicky Davis, right, before a community forum, said she wanted to close the refugee center. Credit Kim Raff for The New York Times
The announcement last month by the Obama administration that thousands of additional Syrians would be accepted into the system nationally galvanized opponents of the CSI Refugee Center here, as it is formally known, who were already circulating a ballot initiative aimed at forcing the College of Southern Idaho to cut its ties or shut down the program.
“There’s a lot of concern about radical Islam,” said Richard L. Martin Jr., a petition-drive leader who graduated from high school here in the mid-1980s. Back then, Mr. Martin said, Twin Falls was still taking in refugees from places like Laos, including a boy who became one of his best friends. “Now it’s something different,” said Mr. Martin, the owner of a small medical products repair company.
See the whole article here.
Most of America still has no clue about how we are admitting thousands and thousands of third world refugees each year, distributing them to towns that have no say in the matter and placing them on all forms of welfare, so every bit of media attention is good (even when it doesn’t give our concerns a serious look). Sad to say, but most mainstream reporters are making completely emotional appeals to readers who are driven by surprise!—their emotions. Those people and their reporter friends simply can’t mentally handle the practical considerations some of us are focusing on. This NYT reporter, Kirk Johnson, was not as bad as he could have been. Go here to read about concerned citizen Vicky Davis’s (see photo) analysis of her meeting with federal officials who traveled to Twin Falls to participate in the public “forum.” Thank goodness we still have other ways of reaching readers other than the NYT, Washington Post or LA Times! Click herefor all of our previous coverage of the on-going controversy about resettling more refugees, especially Muslim refugees, in Twin Falls, Idaho. An afterthought: I forgot to mention that our post of late last week on Northern Idaho being targeted for refugee resettlement is breaking all records. I don’t know who all is reading it, but I hope that the many thousands who are live in No. Idaho.
Update October 9th: Local paper confirms—no refugees to N. Idaho for now. However, great additional information here. Important Update October 8th: World Relief Spokane has notified us that they have NO PLANS to resettle refugees in Northern Idaho, see here. Update October 3rd: Readers I am traveling so not much time to post, however, wanted to mention that this post has gone through the roof in the last 24 hours! Who knows why, but hopefully the citizens of St. Maries and Coeur d’Alene are passing it around! Reminds me to tell you to read ‘Ten things your town needs to know’ by clicking here. People ask me all the time—how do I know if my town is targeted? I tell them, sorry, you will get no public announcement until plans are well underway, but if you watch very closely, you may see something that will tip you off! Sorry I couldn’t find a better map, but I wanted to show you how close Spokane is to Coeur d’Alene, so it is no surprise that World Relief Spokane would move its excess refugees to Idaho. The map shows the other two resettlement sites in Idaho—Twin Falls and Boise. Back in August we asked if St. Maries, Idaho was going to be a new resettlement site. Now, reader Barbara directs our attention to this tiny mention in a local church bulletin (Grace Bible Church, September 27 bulletin).
This is likely all the notice the communities near Coeur d’Alene will get (St. Marie’s is close by) and they wouldn’t even get this if Barbara hadn’t spotted it!
MINISTRY OPPORTUNITY!
World Reliefhas been helping refugees settle in Spokane and would like to involve Coeur d’Alene as well. If you are interested in learning more about how you could be involved in such a ministry, please see Paul. Thanks!
Regular readers know that it isWorld Relief (Evangelicals!), one of nine major federal contractors calling the shots about the future of your towns and cities (see here), that opened an office in Spartanburg, SC this year which is embroiled in controversy since a ‘Pocket of Resistance’ has developed there. See all of our posts on Spartanburg byclicking here. World Relief has an office in Spokane (here), Washington and Coeur d’Alene is only about 35 miles away making it an excellent spillover site (within the US State Department’s magic 100 mile radius for resettlement).
Everyone reading this post who wishes to find out if your town could be next to be colonized (because frankly they don’t have enough sites for the thousands of Syrians and additional Africans they plan to resettle in FY2016 which, by the way, began yesterday), go to first this list of resettlement subcontractors and see this map. If one of these offices is anywhere near you, you are fair game!
People ask me all the time, what the legend is on the map. The abbreviations for thenine major contractors are represented in the legend.
So back to Northern Idaho—you have early notice now that they have plans for your towns! What will concerned citizens do?
We have an extensive archive on the conflict over refugee resettlement in Twin Falls, click here. To learn more about what citizens are doing there, visit those posts.
This post and hundreds more like it are posted in our ‘where to find information’category which I urge all new readers to visit. I know it’s hard for new folks to grasp all of this, but please use that category and our search window to look around for useful information. I apologize in advance for not being able to answer all of your inquiries.
Invasion of Europe news…..
Reader ‘domstudent11’ directed us to this Washington Post story yesterday—The Washington Post is actually reporting this! That is probably the big news! Tent city being constructed near Berlin. If this was happening in America, citizens would not tolerate it!
Germans not so welcoming now as ethnic groups clash in tent cities!
CALDEN, Germany — This German town renowned for its rococo palace threw open its doors to arriving waves of refugees.
Donations from clothing drives filled four garages. The volunteer fire department pitched in to build a tent city at the airport that now teems with 1,400 migrants.
But like other Germans in a country that has rolled out the welcome mat for Europe’s largest wave of asylum seekers since World War II, residents here are having second thoughts.
That is especially true after the riot. In this quaint municipality of 3,000 inhabitants, the chaos started at lunchtime Sunday when a 19-year-old Albanian cut in the food line at the town’s new tent city, prompting a reprimand from a 43-year-old Pakistani.
Pushes degenerated into punches. Soon, 300 migrants wielding pepper spray and metal pipes were attacking each other in rival mobs.
A caravan of ambulances and SWAT team vans careened down streets lined with gawking residents. More than 50 police officers struggled for hours to restore order, with three hospitalized with injuries, according to witnesses and local officials.
“You know, when the refugees started coming, I was one of those who saw people needing help and I thought we have to help,” said Harry Kloska, 46, a shaggy-haired instructor in the skydiving club based at the airport. He and his stunned clients huddled inside his office as the violence flared, Kloska said.
“But it’s been weeks [since the refugee camp opened], and I have a different opinion now,” he said. “I am not sure that we’re going to be able to do this, to help so many people from so many different countries.”
No kidding!
Read it all here. More here at the BBC.
See our complete archive on the ‘Invasion of Europe’ by clicking here. All of our posts on Mama Merkel’s mess are here.
While looking for something else, I came across this articlefrom Der Spiegelfrom August in which it is made very clear that Angela Merkel’s welcome to the migrants is all about the cheap and abundant labor German industrialists need. (This was written before the invasion crisis began in earnest and there was still a certain glow to the notion of inviting ‘refugees’ to Germany).
As we highlighted in a story from Twin Falls, Idaho—just follow the money!
See Angela Merkel’s prospective workers arriving via Hungary (be prepared to be sick!) Hat tip: John
German Companies see Refugees as Opportunities!
The German economy is dependent on immigration, both from Europe as well as people entering the country due to asylum rights in Germany. With the German population shrinking, businesses are unable to fill many jobs, and specialized workers are increasingly rare. This trend will only be exacerbated in the coming years. It’s a development that jeopardizes the country’s future prosperity.
[….]
A smaller workforce translates into fewer people paying into the pension fund and health insurance systems, fewer people consuming and producing goods, and fewer people paying taxes to pay for expenses like schools and road construction. Fewer people also translates into a reduced potential for growth and less affluence.
[….]
The skilled trades have already started recruiting refugees and migrants. When Christoph Karmann is not sitting in his office in downtown Munich, he is visiting vocational schools, where he encounters young migrants with many questions. What can I do, they ask? What opportunities will I have? How does the vocational training system work in Germany?
As one of two so-called training canvassers with the Chamber of Commerce and Industryfor Munich and Upper Bavaria, Karmann places refugees and migrants in companies with training programs. Bavarian skilled manual labor enterprises are urgently in need of trainees and workers. This spring, the chamber of trade wrote to 7,000 businesses in Upper Bavaria to ask whether they would hire a refugee. In response, it received offers for 1,200 internship and traineeship positions.
There is much more, read it all. Obviously Germany is willing to trade its cultural and religious future for cold hard cash! What good is “future prosperity” if Germany becomes New Syria!
See our complete archive on the ‘Invasion of Europe’ by clicking here. All of our posts on Mama Merkel’s mess are here.
That is not exactly the title of this excellent article at, of all places, theHuffington Post, but it’s my version of it! I’m actually blown away that Pew Charitable Trust’s Stateline news service has really dug into how the Refugee Admissions Program works. It confirms some things we knew, but that I had not seen so clearly revealed in print before.
Although it does skew toward advocating more resettlement to America (what else from a very far left foundation), someone did a lot of work. All of you in ‘Pockets of Resistance’ must read this whole article!
By the way, decades ago I knew something about the environmental hard left and property rights, and at that time Pew infamously began a propaganda campaign called the ‘Greening of the Churches.’ It was a strategy they knew that they needed in order to advance the cause of environmental fascism—they had to infiltrate the churches with the green (global warming etc.) message so good churchgoing people would carry their message. I digress, but that is my first encounter with Pew. So, I’m a bit surprised at how useful this article will be to you! Allentown, PA is going to get slammed with (mostly Muslim) Syrians thanks to welcoming message from Mayor Ed Pawlowski who admits to the Pew reporter that he has little say in how many get resettled in his city. Here is Pawlowski with guess who.
The article, besides some very useful information on how the program works, basically gives us the road map for slowing the flow—if the federal government does not have enough money appropriated for refugee resettlement (aka colonization), they can’t bring in large numbers of refugees for your town and state to care for. Only problem (and it is a big one!) is that our do-nothing House of Representatives is too chicken to use their power of the purse.
From the Huffington Post(emphasis is mine):
The U.S. plans to increase the number of refugees it takes from 70,000 to 100,000 over the next two years. New York, Los Angeles and 16 other cities have urged President Barack Obama to accept even more refugees from Syria.
But is the country—along with the aid groups that help in resettlement and local communities that receive refugees—ready for an increase in arrivals? And where will the new arrivals go?
The increase could strain America’s sprawling refugee admissions program, a partnership between the federal government, international organizations like the United Nations, nine national nonprofits and their hundreds of local affiliates.
Cities and states may need to spend more money on social services for refugees, particularly if Congress doesn’t approve additional federal funding for resettlement.
Parceling out tens of thousands of refugees to U.S. communities takes advance planning. Each week, representatives of the nine nonprofit groups meet in the Rosslyn, Virginia, offices of the Refugee Processing Center, a State Department contractor. Some groups attend via conference call.
Staffers sit around a table and review a thick packet of refugee case files. The files contain the addresses of any family members the refugee wants to join in the U.S., medical information and other personal data. The nine staffers then talk through the cases and match each refugee (or refugee family) with a city and a local nonprofit that can help them adjust to new lives in America.
[….]
To decide how many refugees to send to, say, Allentown, Pennsylvania, each year, the State Department considers how many people local nonprofits say they can resettle there. Philadelphia-based Lutheran Children and Family Service (LCFS) settled between 100 and 200 refugees in Allentown, Lancaster and Philadelphia this year; Allentown’s allotment included 39 Syrians.
Pay attention Wyoming! Governor Mead has been misinformed. He says that the refugees won’t cost the taxpayers of Wyoming anything! See his preposterous statement here back in July.*** This Pew article (below) tells us why he is wrong and is thus misleading Wyomingites.
Every state except Wyoming has a partnership with the federal government and local nonprofits to provide aid to refugees (and Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead, a Republican, has supported starting such a resettlement program).
[….]
Although cities and states have the opportunity to weigh in on the resettlement process, they don’t have much control over how many refugees are settled where. “We really don’t have any say, to be honest with you,” said Allentown Mayor Ed Pawlowski, a Democrat.
[….]
The big national nonprofits that select and resettle refugees have called for the U.S. to help even more people: 200,000 refugees in fiscal 2016, including 100,000 from Syria.
[….]
The federal government spends a lot of money processing refugees overseas and then helping them to resettle. The State Department spent over $3 billion to assist and process refugees overseas in fiscal 2015 (including through grants to the U.N.) and to settle refugees in the U.S. (through grants to the nine nonprofits). [$3 billion for the resettlement alone, not including welfare is much higher than we knew—-ed]
The $1,975 per refugee local nonprofits receive from the State Department covers 30 to 90 days of furnished housing, help buying food and clothing, and a case manager who can shepherd refugees through what can be bewildering first days in their new country, including tasks like applying for a Social Security card.
The Pew author fails to tell readers that upwards of half of that $1,975 goes to the resettlement contractor.
For all of you being told that the resettlement being decided for your town or state by NINE PRIVATE ORGANIZATIONS (not elected by you) will cost local and state taxpayers nothing, read this!
Remember readers, this is Pew saying this, not RRW!
Federal aid doesn’t cover everything. “Refugees would never be able to resettle based on what’s available in the refugee resettlement pot of funding,” said Charles Shipman, state refugee coordinator for Arizona.
Private donations bolster the services local nonprofits provide [private donations are minimal and usually involve junk furniture and clothes contributions.—ed]. And states and local communities help pick up the tab, too, because refugees—who arrive with little more than the clothes on their backs—are immediately eligible for mainstream benefit programs like food stamps, Medicaid and cash assistance for low-income families. States play a role in funding some of those programs.
When the refugee resettlement program began, in 1980, the federal government reimbursed states for providing cash assistance, Medicaid and supplemental Social Security benefits to refugees for their first three years in the country, said Ann Morse of the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Now, the federal government only repays states for one service: providing eight months of cash and medical assistance to childless refugee couples or single adults, who don’t qualify for family-based benefits.
Read it all!
***Here are Wyoming REPUBLICAN Governor Matt Mead’s exact words back in July (click here).
The federal Office of Refugee Resettlement and the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees “pay 100 percent of the costs of refugee resettlement for many years. It’s not like we’re going to get stuck with an unfunded mandate,” he said…
