Gainesville, GA: School system doesn’t know how many UACs they are educating; already calling them refugees

11/04/2014 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The flood of Unaccompanied Alien Children that came across the US southern border this summer is now having an impact on local school systems as school boards and administrators have to figure out how to educate them, some of whom speak rare dialects and have had little formal schooling. All of this is, of course, going to cost local taxpayers and disrupt learning for many American kids.

Someone has to pay to educate the “children.” Last I heard Georgia got 1,709 of them. http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/orr/programs/ucs/about

Here in the Gainesville Times, we see that officials are already referring to the illegal aliens as refugees.

They are not refugees, but that is what the Obama Administration and the United Nations (which calls the shots!) wants you to believe.

Indeed, it is my view that the whole invasion mess represents the big push to change the internationally understood definition of what constitutes a ‘refugee’—someone who is escaping persecution for reasons of religion, race or political persuasion.

Once they succeed in redefining refugees (asylum seekers) as people escaping crime, the entire system crashes and anyone in the world can claim asylum in America simply alleging that they fear criminals where they live.

Gainesville is in Hall County (the poultry capital), see a previous post on the problems there with the influx of UACs.

From the Gainesville Times on Saturday:

As children from Central America have fled to the U.S. as refugees, some have wound up in Gainesville schools, but officials said they don’t keep track of how many. [Kind of hard to budget then don’t you think!—ed]

“That’s not a question that we ask,” said Laura Herrington, the district’s director of Title III, a federal program that includes English language learning.

Still, Herrington said the students are there even if there isn’t an exact count.

“I know that we have some who speak dialect, and the dialects that they speak are indicative of some countries in Central America,” she said. “We haven’t asked our students to tell us their stories yet.”

The refugees, she said, are educated in the same program as other students who learn English as a foreign language.

Herrington estimated 30 of about 200 high school students learning English are newly arrived from Central America this year. There likely are more in middle and elementary school, but she doesn’t have a number.

7,000 – 8,000? Where is that number coming from when HHS’s own website says a whole heck of a lot more (see graph!)?

According the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, an average of 7,000 to 8,000 children enter the Unaccompanied Alien Children program each year, and 93 percent of them from El Salvador, Guatemala or Honduras. The children often come to the United States to escape violence, abuse or persecution, to seek family members or to find work. They sometimes are brought into the country by human trafficking rings, according to the department.

Obama and the UN—they are REFUGEES

The United Nations has pushed the U.S. to treat children from those three countries as refugees displaced by armed conflict, as drug traffickers and street gangs have made the three-country region one of the world’s most violent.

Last month, the Obama administration began a program to give refugee status to some children from those countries in response to the influx of unaccompanied minors entering the country illegally. Under the program, legal immigrants from those countries can request that children related to them be resettled in the U.S. as refugees. [And, thus be eligible for all the welfare goodies official refugees receive!—ed]

All of our coverage, going back several years, is here in our ‘unaccompanied minors’ archive.

Cleveland urged to open city’s arms to refugees, even as they come with diseases!

11/03/2014 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We’ve written about Cleveland on several occasions recently as it sits in the cross-hairs of the US State Department and its refugee contractors*** as a prime target for a “welcoming” community for dropping off refugees. In fact, they even sent in federal contractor ‘Welcoming America’ last year to soften up the politicians there.

Remember readers, the refugee resettlement industry is running out of “welcoming” cities and needs to expand those already overloaded or find new locations before citizens catch on!

Here is the latest in an article entitled, ‘Cleveland hosts Refugee Summit, looks to become choice destination for newcomers’ (LOL! they love that sort of terminology—newcomers!).

BTW, one of the ways the refugee industry is attempting to sell resettlement is to say that refugees boost population and the economy in dying cities. What they are really doing is helping slum landlords fill their empty apartments and bring welfare dollars from Washington’s money tree. I wish someone would produce some real economic studies that include the welfare dollars from DC (from federal taxpayers) and the amount of money the refugees send out of Cleveland and America back to their home countries, among other costs, like healthcare.

Dr. Erick Kauffman, chief medical director of Neighborhood Family Practice: Forty percent have health conditions, and 14 percent arrive with infectious diseases. Photo: http://www.nfpmedcenter.org/our-providers.aspx

From Cleveland.com (hat tip: Joanne). The city council held a summit last week (emphasis is mine):

CLEVELAND, Ohio — As political turmoil and civil war escalate in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world, Cleveland is readying itself to become home to international refugees looking for a fresh start in a safe and welcoming community, a panel of service providers told members of Cleveland City Council Thursday morning.

To kick off the city’s first Refugee Summit, which is open to the public and will be held in the City Hall rotunda from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. today, Council invited representatives from a cadre of social service, healthcare and resettlement agencies to describe the challenges that refugees face and the benefits of opening the city’s arms to the newcomers.

In recent years, refugees have generated more than $12 million in economic activity in the Cleveland area, said Brian Upton, of the nonprofit Building Hope in the City. They have taken 650 labor jobs since 2000, bought nearly 250 houses and represented $2.7 million in state and local tax revenue, he said.

And while Cuyahoga County loses an average of 11,400 residents a year, it has gained more than 3,500 refugees in the past decade, he said. [Obviously, there are few jobs available in Cuyahoga County or the Ohioans wouldn’t be moving, so where are the refugees going to work?—ed]

Refugees tend to bring strong work ethics, too, and are 23 percent more likely than the average Clevelander to take an entrepreneurial risk, he said. [They get federal grant money to take risks when opening businesses—ed]

Cleveland has apparently run out its own American poor people and local taxpayers are paying for housing for refugees!

City Councilman Joe Cimperman said that the city has invested $300,000 to rehab a four-unit apartment building for refugees. The facility on West 45^th Street is expected to begin welcoming tenants in January, he said.

Cimperman said that he would like to see about 150 units available by this time next year.

So what are a few expenses for medical care, when there is federal money to be made!

But Cleveland’s refugee population — which largely comes from Iraq, Burma and African nations — arrive under great stress, said Dr. Erick Kauffman, chief medical director of Neighborhood Family Practice, the primary refugee healthcare provider in Cuyahoga County.

Often, they’ve experienced physical and psychological trauma, were victims of torture and violence or have suffered multiple losses, including the death of their children or spouses, he said.

Forty percent have health conditions, and 14 percent arrive with infectious diseases, he said.

Yikes! Are they factoring health care costs into their budgeting?

See our Cleveland archive by clicking here. Cleveland should be taking a lesson from the Mayor of Athens, Georgia who says she wants a plan before giving away the keys to the city.

We have 254 previous posts on refugee and immigrant health problems.

See more on Ohio refugees here including information on health screening.

And be sure to see Columbus, Ohio mosques mushrooming here.

*** These nine major federal contractors, which laughingly call themselves VOLAGS (voluntary agencies), have approximately 300 subcontractors working for them and are running in most cases on 90% or more federal funding.

New Somalis arrive in Minneapolis in droves after 2008 dip; end up in homeless shelters

11/02/2014 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I didn’t mean to make this Somali Sunday but here are our two other posts just this morning (here and here) on the impact of Somalis arriving in extremely large numbers in the US right now as part of the Obama Administration’s increasing focus on Somali refugees (Syrian and Iraqi Muslims feature prominently too).

This is some really good reporting at the Minneapolis Star Tribune yesterday by reporter MILA KOUMPILOVA . Hat tip: ‘pungentpeppers’

As I began reading the news, I was expecting to see no information about why the Somali pipeline to America came to a grinding halt in 2008—the discovery that a large number (thousands) of Somalis had lied on their application to come to America to join family members who were found to be not related at all to the applicants.

I am happy to report it is all here.

US State Department: We want them to stay where we have allocated money through a contractor for them. They want to be with their own people in Minnesota. Nevertheless, we will keep bringing them in! Photo: http://www.c-span.org/video/?309771-1/terrorists-refugee-programs

The article also sheds light on how Somalis resettled in other cities are hightailing-it to Minneapolis to be with their own kind of people (something we would be vilified for should we admit we want to be with our own kind of people).

As they move too quickly to Minnesota they leave behind their financial support (welfare set-up) that comes through the original refugee resettlement contractor.

We won’t be able to highlight as much of this as we would like, because it is jam-packed with information, but here are a few nuggets that interested me. Be sure to read the whole article yourself!

Star Tribune (emphasis mine) setting the stage:

A week after the United States government resettled them in Connecticut this summer, Nur Ali and his wife, Mahado Mohamed, had decided: They were moving to Minnesota. [Lucky Connecticut!—ed]

Tales of the state’s large Somali community had intrigued them back in the Kenyan refugee camp where they had married and had five children. Now, a Somali man they met in Hartford told them all recent arrivals head to Minnesota, home of “Little Mogadishu.”

After a major dip in 2008, the yearly numbers of new Somali refugees in Minnesota have rebounded steadily. The number of Somalis resettled in the state has more than tripled in four years. As resettlements nationally have picked up, more Somalis are also arriving here after brief stints in other states — often trading early support from resettlement agencies for the company of more fellow Somalis.

“You tend to go somewhere you can connect,” said Mohamud Noor, the head of the Confederation of Somali Community in Minnesota. “Before people even arrive from Africa, they know they are coming to Minnesota.”

But without the Twin Cities family ties of earlier arrivals, these newcomers often can’t lean as heavily on longer-term Somali residents. Mary’s Place, a Minneapolis homeless shelter, has become ground zero for families like Ali and Mohamed’s. Somali participation in the state’s public food assistance program doubled in the past five years. Meanwhile, the Minneapolis School District, its Somali student enrollment up 70 percent since 2011, launched eight classrooms with instruction in both English and Somali to help newcomers catch up. [So who pays for all this?—you do!—ed]

State Department discovers massive fraud in family reunification program for Somalis!

Ali and Mohamed are part of a new wave of Somali refugees. Until 2008, the state resettled only refugees reuniting with family here.

But that year, DNA tests showed only about 20 percent of applicants in a refugee family reunification program, most of them from Africa, were actually related to their stateside sponsors. The program was suspended, even as Somalis argued a broader definition of family was as much a factor as fraud. The number of new Somali arrivals plummeted, from a high of more than 3,200 in 2006 to 180 in 2009.

Meanwhile, more stringent background checks for refugees in 2010 snarled the application process. Larry Bartlett, the U.S. Refugee Admissions program director, says the streamlining of security checks since and the resumption of the family reunification program in 2012 led to the recent increase in Somali arrivals — a trend he expects to continue in the next few years.

Somalis move even though their benefits don’t follow!

When these refugees move too soon after arriving in a different state, they get cut off from resettlement agencies there responsible for finding homes and jobs for them. Noor, whose group tries to assist newcomers with navigating the transition, says the federal government needs to do more to discourage this early migration. At the U.S. State Department, Bartlett says staff members strive to honor refugees’ host city preference. Some refugees even sign a document affirming they are going to the city where they want to stay.

“The problem with moving quickly is that the benefits don’t always follow you,” Bartlett said. “We really try to impress that upon them.” [So, does the contractor still get its cut of each refugee’s allocation?—ed]

Read it all!

Who is responsible for the Somali mess in Minnesota besides the aforementioned US State Department? Lutheran Social Services, Catholic Charities, and World Relief Minnesota. See one of our top posts (from 2011) of all time here.

Minnesota readers should be sure to save this important and informative story.

So why are those Somalis moving to Cheyenne, WY? Prepare to be shocked

11/02/2014 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update November 17th: Pamela Geller (Atlas Shrugs) reports on Wyoming, here. Washington, DC immigration lawyer whacks Wyomingites for not “welcoming” refugees.

It’s not for the jobs and the wide open spaces (or blanket-making lessons)!

They are going there to get subsidized Section 8 housing vouchers to take to another state!

***Update*** This post went through the roof yesterday, please help spread it further by sending to your lists, facebook friends and tweet it!

This is an incredible story and a great find by reader ‘pungentpeppers!’ After seven years of writing this blog I had no idea this was happening.

(See our earlier posts here and here about Somalis in Cheyenne.)

This is an NPR radio report at KQED that aired this past Wednesday. Here is the astounding transcript (but be sure to listen to the 3 minute story):

(Emphasis below is mine)

In the last few years demand for public housing assistance across the country has skyrocketed, while congressional funding has stayed flat

Cheyenne Housing Authority Director Mike Stanfield: That housing money was meant for local people.

Right now federal funds covers less than a fourth of families in the United States eligible for a Section 8 housing voucher. Waitlists for voucher in big cities are often years long, if not closed all together. As Wyoming Public Radio’s Miles Bryan reports that made small cities like Cheyenne more attractive to those seeking housing aid, because of shorter wait times.

Tuesday night is when Cheyenne’s Somali community gets together at the Free Evangelical Church to catch up and socialize. Its usually busy but tonight is packed: church volunteers have subbed out the regular english classes for a special lesson in blanket making. (Yeh, who needs English anyway—ed)

Cheyenne’s Somali population has grown rapidly in the last couple of years. That’s surprising because Wyoming doesn’t have an official refugee resettlement program, and most jobs around here require fluent English.

But Cheyenne has one really big draw: housing assistance.

Faiso Abdi moved to Cheyenne last year. She says she was happy living in Greeley Colorado, but she couldn’t even get on the waitlist for that city’s section 8 housing voucher program.

“The real problem is that people are desperate for the housing subsidy and they are willing to do almost anything to get one.”

Cheyenne’s voucher wait list runs almost a year, but many bigger cities like Greeley have simply stopped accepting new applicants entirely. But here’s the thing: getting your housing voucher in Cheyenne doesn’t mean you have to use it there. Organizer Gretchen Carlson says what’s called “portability” is a big draw.

“There are quite a few of them that have already lived here one year and then have moved elsewhere. But they lived here for one year in order to get that voucher.”

Housing voucher money is distributed city by city, but it all comes from the Feds, and they say that every housing voucher eventually has to become portable, or transferrable to any city in the US. Cities can decide whether to let you port your voucher immediately or require you to wait a year. So if you can’t get a housing voucher in say, Denver, you can get one in Cheyenne and, a year later, take it with you back to Denver.

“The frustration is that pot of money was provided to address housing needs here in Wyoming.”

That’s Mike Stanfield, Executive Director of the Cheyenne Housing Authority. When people take vouchers out of Cheyenne the receiving housing authority can chose to absorb the cost or keep billing Cheyenne. Stanfield says lately Cheyenne has been footing the bill more and more often. And while the average cost for a Cheyenne voucher is only about 400 dollars.

“The average cost for a ported voucher that moves somewhere else is 733 dollars.”

Now Cheyenne Housing Authority oversees about 1700 vouchers, with another 1400 families on the waitlist. Only about 70 voucher are currently ported out. Stanfield says that may not seem like much, but there are Cheyenne families on the waiting list who need help now.

“And when they are told that waiting list is 12 to 18 months that is almost beyond comprehension for those families. They are struggling trying to get to tomorrow. Let alone 18 months from now.”

Susan Popkin is a Fellow at the Urban Institute. She says portability is not a problem.

“The real problem is that people are desperate for the housing subsidy and they are willing to do almost anything to get one.”

Popkin says portability is a vital part of the system: it means families don’t have to pass up a better job somewhere else just to keep their housing. She says what’s happening in Cheyenne is a just one symptom of the overwhelming need for housing help across the United States.

“Things that used to be ‘oh well, we can handle it’ ten, fifteen years ago–they just they can’t anymore.”

In Cheyenne Housing Authority Director Mike Stanfield has decided he can’t handle the outflow of housing funds anymore. Recently he began a policy of giving preference for housing vouchers to Cheyenne locals.

Wait for it! Can we expect CAIR to ride to the rescue of the Somali Muslims in Cheyenne?

See all of our coverage of the conflict involving Governor Matt Mead going on for a year now about whether Wyoming should become the last state in the nation to directly “welcome” the third world to come on in—our welfare is great!

And, those resettlement contractors dare to tell us that refugees bring economic benefits to communities when, in fact, they are taking from American low income people!

An afterthought: I bet Lutheran Family Services Rocky Mountains helped them take advantage of Wyoming!

Brits take a beating from “rights” group over decision to not fund rescue of migrant invaders from North Africa

11/01/2014 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Kate Allen, UK Director of Amnesty International: “….dark day for the moral standing of the UK.” Photo: http://www.amnesty.org.uk/blogs/kate-allen

The UK attempts to slow invasion of Europe….

(See our entire ‘invasion of Europe’ series including posts on the boat people problem by clicking here. Thousands of mostly Muslim aliens have been rescued by the Italian navy and then sneak out of Italy and spread throughout Europe.)

We reported the incredible news from brave Brits the other day—the UK does not want to participate in the rescue of illegal aliens who find themselves in trouble while attempting to break into Europe by sea. They say that such efforts serve as a “pull factor” for more and more aliens to try to make the dangerous voyage.

But, they surely will be taking a drubbing from the ‘human rights industrial complex’ as we see just beginning here at the news site for the UNHCR:

Rome’s Mare Nostrum mission, which saved 150,000 people fleeing poverty and warzones in Africa in the past 12 months, will be wound down, its budget slashed by two thirds in the two-month phase-out period.

Instead, Europe’s border protection agency, Frontex, launches its Triton operation to help monitor and patrol the waters off the Italian coastline, with resources of just €3m a month – a third of what the Italian navy has been spending in the past year.

“No matter how it is dressed up, Triton is not a search and rescue operation,” said Nicolas Beger of Amnesty International’s European Institutions Office. “As the world faces the worst refugee crisis since the Second World War, the EU must urgently and collectively… plug the imminent gap in these life-saving operations.”

Britain’s refusal to contribute to the scaled-down replacement operation was also decried. “This is a very dark day for the moral standing of the UK,” said Amnesty UK Director Kate Allen. “The Italian navy’s… operation has saved thousands of lives and other European countries should now be stepping up to share that responsibility with them, not shirk it.”

There is more here.