Jessica Vaughan, Center for Immigration Studies: American communities need to brace themselves for the onslaught!
It occurred to me recently that the contractors, eager to set up offices in places like Spartanburg, SC, aren’t just doing it to take care of refugees who we admit to the US through the US State Department, but will be in place to help the ‘minors’ and ‘dreamers’ get connected with their services, do the paperwork to bring in their family members and help them through their citizenship process ASAP.
WASHINGTON, DC (April 1, 2015) — The Center for Immigration Studies reports that illegal alien juveniles and families continue to flood across the U.S. border. More than 2,000 illegal alien juveniles have been apprehended and taken into federal custody every month this year – the second highest level ever for arrests of illegal alien minors. Family units also continue to see an incentive to enter the U.S.; the Border Patrol apprehended 1,622 illegal aliens who arrived as part of a family unit in January and another 2,043 family members in February, and expect that March’s total could be as high as 2,700.
The overwhelming majority of juveniles apprehended are male teenagers, about one-third of whom claimed to be 17.
ICE has taken custody of illegal alien juveniles from 27 different countries so far this year. Nearly 90 percent were from four Central American countries (Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua, in that order); half were from Guatemala. However, 41 percent of the few sent home by ICE were from Mexico.
“These statistics show that the surge of illegal arrivals from Central America was never really over,” stated Jessica Vaughan, the Center’s Director of Policy Studies. “The incentives for people to have their children smuggled into the United States illegally have not changed – they know that under Obama administration policies they will be allowed to stay without consequences. American communities should brace themselves to accommodate more new arrivals.”
View the entire report at: http://cis.org/vaughan/influx-central-american-teen-and-family-arrivals-continues.
The numbers also show that few of those apprehended are being sent home. While taking custody of roughly 2,000 illegal alien juveniles per month since the start of the 2015 fiscal year last October, ICE reports removing well under 200 juveniles per month. Only 2,900 total detention beds are available for families and children, so most of the new arrivals are released and then melt into the larger illegal population. About 90 percent of the recent Central American arrivals who had hearings scheduled last summer and fall failed to appear at their immigration hearings and likely remain in the country.
Go here for our complete archive on ‘unaccompanied minors’ extending back several years. Obama is now working to magically transform these illegal aliens into refugees so that they can get all the welfare goodies refugees receive and get on the fast track to citizenship!
I repeat! Communities have little say about the amount of refugees they receive….
Update April 2nd: I’m told that Drudge posted this Concord Monitor story yesterday which says to me that the whole refugee issue and its impact on communities is starting to be noticed at a national level!
That is the headline of a piece that ran on Sunday in Concord, NH which is starting to feel the pain of increasing numbers of refugees being deposited there by the former Lutheran Social Service of New England (renamed Ascentria Care Alliance, why did they dump the word “Lutheran?”) and the US State Department.
Ask Manchester, NH Mayor Ted Gatsas about his Herculean efforts (largely unsuccessful) over many years to slow the flow of refugees to his city. Our extensive archive on Manchester is here: https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/?s=Manchester+NH
For years the city of Manchester, NH has been swamped with refugees (over 80 languages in the school system) and the Mayor has tried to get the flow slowed. The flow has only been slowed slightly as the contractor’s focus has shifted to neighboring cities in New Hampshire, like Concord!
So, anyone just getting started with your own “welcoming” refugee resettlement program (Spartanburg!) pay attention!
The federal resettlement program began 35 years ago, and today includes some 190 sites across the country.
In New Hampshire, four cities – Nashua, Manchester, Laconia and Concord – take in refugees, but the numbers are not evenly distributed. Nationally, nearly 70,000 refugees immigrated to the U.S. in the last fiscal year; 373 of those came to New Hampshire, and 189 of those came to Concord.
The city of Concord has minimal say, and minimal official responsibilities, over refugee resettlement. [Local elected officials will bear the brunt of public ire when the availability of subsidized housing declines, the schools are overloaded and the health department is swamped!—ed]
State and resettlement officials will typically share the information they receive about resettlement projections with local officials. [That is not always the case!—ed]
Concord, in turn, has an opportunity to provide some input on those projections. But as decisions are being made about how many new refugees will resettle here, there’s rarely a discussion – with Concord officials, at least – about the current status of the local economy and what kind of resources are available, according to City Manager Tom Aspell.
Below, when they say “states can comment,” they don’t mean elected state officials, they mean the state refugee coordinator who is ideologically in tune with the US State Department and the federal contractors working in the state and will not likely stand up to the contractors on behalf of an overloaded town or city!
The national refugee resettlement program runs as a partnership between the federal government and nine private resettlement agencies. Ascentria Care Alliance, which oversees resettlement in Concord, is a subsidiary of three of those private agencies.
Each year, the State Department announces resettlement projections for the coming fiscal year. States can then comment on those, raising concerns or requesting changes.
Barbara Seebart, New Hampshire’s refugee coordinator, said she regularly meets with school officials, health care workers, social service providers, state partners, volunteers, ESL teachers and local resettlement agencies to gather feedback.
She gathers feedback, big deal, does she ever stop the flow to New Hampshire?
Readers concerned about your state should make a point of contacting your state coordinator.
I suggest you be polite, uncritical, and find out as much as you can from the coordinators about what is going on in your state. BTW, the state coordinator knows how many new refugees are destined for your state and where they will be coming from.
Click here for the list of state coordinators! And, go here, for the list of sub-contractors working to seed your towns with third worlders!
Five years ago next month we wrote about Luke Tripp and now we see he is still busy agitating and creating tension in the latest incident in St. Cloudinvolving a high school and Somalis demonstrating and claiming they are being mistreated in the school system because of their race.
Community organizer Luke Tripp helps stir up trouble in St. Cloud. Photo: http://www.kvsc.org/podcast_item.php?id=96
Tripp is doing what Obama did (still does!) what Saul Alinsky taught—stirring up animosity to bring about “change.”
Did you ever wonder how it is that the Somali refugees are so good at creating tension—it is because of people like Luke Tripp mentoring them and keeping them in line. And, making sure the problems are never their fault for not trying to fit into American communities. It is always ‘whitey’s’ fault.
But, let’s be clear, some of the tension in Somali overloaded cities is between US-born African Americans and Somalis and Tripp is not telling you that!
Here is what I said about him FIVE YEARS AGO:
Luke Tripp and Mahmoud Mohamed are community agitators. What is happening in St. Cloud, MN now and for the last few years is a perfect example of Saul Alinsky’s (Rules for Radicals) strategy being put into motion to bring about “change” through creating crisis in communities. It is no coincidence that one of the most outspoken conservative critics of the king of community organizers (Barack Obama) happens to be the Representative for this Congressional district which includes St. Cloud—Michele Bachmann. Tripp is a race baiter and he is using the recent Somali unrest to get Michele Bachmann.
An aside:Readers, especially conservative readers, should study Saul Alinsky. Much of the reason that we are continually caught off guard by the ‘crisis creates change’ strategy is that we don’t think that way. We generally think that to solve problems and conflicts one should try very hard to work together in a quiet and dignified way. Not so for community organizers and union agitators—they must continually create chaos to move the so-called “community” to their far Left view of governance.
Please read it all and see how Tripp inflamed the situation then and is doing it again now!
From St. Cloud Times (‘Institutional Racism Plagues St. Cloud Schools’) where Tripp is making sure that anyone who opposes more Somali resettlement because the city can’t afford it, or because there is simply too great a cultural divide, is a racist. That is what race baiters do! Just a few snips:
Somalis are under attack in St. Cloud because of their race, their religion and their immigration/refugee status. With the recent influx of many Somali students, the St. Cloud public schools are facing a clash of cultures.
[….]
The Somali community continues to suffer numerous attacks at various levels and in all areas of social life, including schools, stores, workplaces, housing and the media.
[….]
The basic issue Somali students and the Somali community are calling attention to is the systemic and continuous failure of the district’s administration and board to seriously address the toxic anti-Somali climate and institutional racism – racial patterns that result from policies, rules and prejudice.
There are administrators and staff members and some board members who still do not seem to grasp the significance of the social transformation of their school system, as demonstrated by the recurring conflicts between Somali and non-Somali students and the high suspension rate of black students. [Ha! I think they grasp it just fine and don’t want to transform their school system!—ed]
[….]
Instead of denying that systemic racial problems exist, the board and administrators must act on the legitimate grievances of the Somali community and develop a strategic plan based on genuine diversity and social justice, and dedicated to systemically advocating, building and maintaining respectful, collaborative and reciprocal relationships.
So, where is Tripp’s op-ed telling the Somalis they must adjust (assimilate!) and build respectful and reciprocal relationships with Americans?
Remember! Besides Tripp the other big player responsible for conflicts in St. Cloud is Lutheran Social Service head honcho, Jodi Harpstead who brings in the new Somali population each year at the behest of the US State Department/UN.
Update and correction: Pastor Chris Pollard has asked us to make it clear to our readers that his organization, Come Closer Spartanburg, has not asked for nor received any federal funding for resettlement of refugees in Spartanburg. We are glad to report that his group’s Christian charity comes from their members and not the federal treasury. I wish we could say the same of World Relief. Here is his statement to us:
Please note that our partnership network, our individual churches, nor myself, have ever been approached about being used as a funnel for money from the federal government for refugee resettlement. We have not asked for, nor have we received any money. That statement is without basis and inaccurate.
Our recent post on an announcement that federal refugee resettlement contractorWorld Relief (National Assoc. of Evangelicals)plans to begin resettling third world refugees (they mention Syrians, Congolese and Bhutanese) in Spartanburg, South Carolina very soon, was one of the top-read posts of all time here at RRW.
Chris Pollard (right) the founder of Come Closer Spartanburg. So why isn’t it enough to minister to, and care for, the American impoverished people already living in Spartanburg? Is it because the refugees bring federal dollars with them? What was it Christ said about Caesar’s money? Photo at twitter: https://twitter.com/pastorjourney
The local organization that US State Department contractor World Relief has chosen to funnel funds to is ‘Come Closer Spartanburg’organized by Pastor Chris Pollard. According to ‘Come Closer’s’ websitethe Pastor Jason Lee, who will be employed by World Relief/US State Department to run the resettlement in Spartanburg, recently received training at World Relief headquarters in Baltimore, MD.
Jason will be traveling to World Relief Home Office in Baltimore, Maryland, for orientation and training during the month of March.
By the way, we learned that the plan for “seeding” refugees in Spartanburg had been in the works for some time before the citizens of the small city were ever informed.
The federal contractor (one of nine major contractors), World Relief, is approximately 68% taxpayer funded (2012 Form 990) as we reported here. That is not as awful as some of the others that are 98-99% funded by you, but nevertheless, little of their “Christian charitable” work with refugees comes from private charity. They are virtually an arm of the federal government!
They couldn’t exist at all without the massive infusion of federal dollars (approaching $39 million for World Relief in 2012).
Every new town or city faced with a proposal to become a refugee resettlement site, please pay attention.
You must insist, as citizens in Spartanburg are doing, that the federal government, its contractors and subcontractors prepare a comprehensive impact statement for your town as Ms. Jeffrey does yesterday at the Herald-Journal.
If they can’t sell the plan to the community with all the facts in plain view, then the resettlement plan isn’t one your town or city should accept.
Christina Jeffrey (emphasis is mine):
Recently, I was surprised to learn that there is a “Spartanburg faith group to help refugees resettle here,” (Herald-Journal, March 9 edition). Apparently an invitation was given a year ago to a refugee contractor, World Relief, to set up an office in Spartanburg and begin receiving refugees.
According to Herald-Journalstaff writer Kim Kimzey’s article, a community group called Come Closer Spartanburg issued the invitation to World Relief. On its website, Come Closer Spartanburg describes the city of Spartanburg as “home to what has been identified as the fifth most dangerous neighborhood in the United States. We have extremely high rates of unemployment, poverty and domestic violence. Overall, we were recently listed as the fourth most ‘miserable’ city to live in our country. It does not take long to realize that we are a city in need of transformation.”
Christina Jeffrey: Federal contractor must prepare impact statement before resettlement of refugees.
The group must believe that bringing refugees here will help transform what in its opinion is a poor, benighted city. But the question has to be asked: How can we be assured that this transformation will make Spartanburg safer? I, too, am concerned about safety in Spartanburg and somewhat alarmed by some of the statistics we’ve seen in recent years about crime in our area.
I looked into the issue of refugees and how they are being vetted. Refugees are identified by an agency of the United Nations, and the State Department has agreed to take 9,000 this year (with 500 already here) from Syria alone. The United Nations expects the number of refugees fleeing the violence in Syria to reach 4.27 million by December, and these refugees are now the largest group under the U.N. refugee agency’s mandate. Recently, Michael Steinbach, assistant director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, told the House Homeland Security Committee that there is no way to properly vet these refugees from Syria.
On March 16, I attended the South Carolina National Security Conference in Columbia. At the conference, there was a great deal of discussion about the refugee resettlement program and the problems it is causing for American communities.
Apparently contractors are well paid by the State Department to settle refugees, but after six months the newcomers are often on their own. If they settle here, the residents and taxpayers of Spartanburg County may be on their own to figure out how to help them, because by then World Relief may be taking care of a new crop of refugees.
Looking at other U.S. cities with new refugee communities, it appears that contractors often keep sending refugees to the same place until there is a community within a community. Unassimilated communities have created problems in Europe, and we are beginning to have similar problems here in the United States (witness Milwaukee, Wis., and Lewiston, Maine). [Minneapolis and St. Cloud, MN are really feeling the strain with an onslaught of Somali refugees. And remember! No matter what the contractor promises, your community is NOT GOING TO CHOOSE THE ETHNIC GROUPS YOU WILL GET!—Ed]
If our county is going to sponsor refugees, then the director of the new World Relief settlement office in Spartanburg, Come Closer Spartanburg and anyone or any group behind this project should work together on a plan for resettling any refugess they are expecting to bring here.
It is only fair to the refugees as well as the people of Spartanburg to have a detailed plan for the settlement and to provide impact statements for us. Impact statements should include plans for housing, transportation, county schools, employment, health care, skills training, social services, public safety, etc.
When World Relief and its allies have their master settlement plan (and impact statements) ready for public inspection, it would be appropriate for the City Council and County Council, along with our legislative delegation, to call a meeting to present this information to the people of Spartanburg and allow us to ask questions and learn more about how the plan will affect us, our families and our communities.
Failing to plan is planning to fail.
Be sure to see our first post on Spartanburg, with updates,here. And, if you are getting wind of your town being targeted, please see ‘Ten things your town needs to know,’ here.
This is a story we have written before, not the specific refugee nor the specific city, but the story about violence perpetrated against refugees as the resettlement contractors overload poor neighborhoods with third world refugees (many of whom have lived protected lives in UN camps) who don’t know how to live among thugs who are not at all moved by the multi-culti myth that diversity brings strength.
There are too many diverse ethnic groups being dumped into cities across the country by Federal resettlement contractors(they call themselves VOLAGs. They are anything but Voluntary!) and the US State Department where the ‘humanitarians’ apparently believe that a melting pot still exists, melting will happen, and everyone will live happily ever after.
See our many posts on problems in Buffalo, NY, here.
By the way, Buffalo political leaders think the many immigrants are going to save their city. But, be sure to check out what is happening in another New York city—Utica—-the town that “loves refugees”where the city has sued the state of New York for more tax payer funding as its school system is deteriorating due to a large influx of needy children from the third world. Ten years ago, the UNHCR gave Utica the title and used their report on Utica as propaganda around the country to convince other towns and cities to “welcome” refugees.
Only after laborious therapy has the Burmese immigrant of Karen ethnicity regained movement in his right arm. The comfortable room is not in a hotel, but in Terrace View nursing home near Erie County Medical Center. Wah has been hospitalized since a mugging last June left him paralyzed, a disheartening symbol of the assaults and break-ins afflicting the immigrant population on Buffalo’s West Side.
Burmese refugee left paralyzed after beating in Buffalo.
The county executive last week celebrated the recent influx of immigrants, which has staunched the county’s three-decade population bleed. The other side of the immigrant story is K’Paw Wah. He was born and raised in a Thai refugee camp, after his parents fled from oppressive Burmese rulers. He and his two daughters four years ago followed his older brother to Buffalo.
Wah’s dream of freedom ended violently. Heading home from a West Side convenience store late one night, he was jumped by at least two men with, he recalled, “their faces covered.” The attackers, Wah told me in halting but clear English, threw him hard to the ground, breaking his neck.
Is your town considering “welcoming” refugees?
If so remember you will need more funding, more police, more translators, etc. etc.
Wah’s fate is the grimmest reminder of the fragility of the immigrant population. Buffalo’s West Side is the end point for Burmese, Somalis, Burundi and other newcomers. Circumstances render them vulnerable and tough to protect. Language barriers, a lack of translators and a distrust of police related to abuse in their homeland contribute to their problems. Critics say police and city officials have been slow to respond to the challenge. Dozens of frustrated Burmese went public with their complaints this month at a Common Council meeting.
Lisa Strand said similar community outreaches the past several months have spurred good-faith efforts from police.
“There’s recently been a lot of progress,” said Strand, attorney for Buffalo’s Legal Aid Bureau. “But the police need a formal translator-access plan and to grasp the larger scope of this.”
Who is responsible for overloading Buffalo with refugees?
Remember that we told you last week that Lutheran Social Service is responsible for the Somalis in St. Cloud, well, whew! look at this! We have five of the nine major contractors divvying up what must be a large flow of refugees to Buffalo (and LOL! I bet they each fight to keep their number of paying ‘clients’ up). From the very handy US State Department listof subcontractors with offices in 180 or so US cities:
CWS (Church World Service)
NY-CWS-07: Journey’s End Refugee Services, Inc
Address:
Tri-Main Center, 2495 Main Street
Buffalo, NY 14214-2152
Phone:
716-882-4963
DFMS (Episcopal Migration Ministries has changed its name to: Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society of the Protestant Episcopal Church in America)
NY-DFMS-07: Journey’s End Refugee Services, Inc
Address:
2459 Main Street, Suite 317
Buffalo, NY 14214
Phone:
716-882-4963
HIAS (Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society which recently dropped the ‘Hebrew’ from its name!)
NY-HIAS-06: Jewish Family Service Of Buffalo And Erie County
Address:
70 Barker Street
Buffalo, NY 14209
Phone:
716-883-1914
USCCB (US Conference of Catholic Bishops)
NY-USCCB-02: Refugee Assistance Program Catholic Charities
Address:
20 Herkimer Street
Buffalo, NY 14213
Phone:
716-842-0270
USCRI (US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants)
NY-USCRI-02: International Institute Of Buffalo, Inc.
Address:
864 Delaware Avenue
Buffalo, NY 14209
Phone:
716-883-1900
