South Dakota one of Four States that won’t get Afghan Evacuees (yet!)

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

“We had really significant concerns about our ability to provide the level of support to help make that integration successful.”

(Rebecca Kiesow-Knudsen of Lutheran Social Services South Dakota)

 

Wow! I can’t believe a refugee contractor is actually telling the truth!  No, they don’t have the resources and neither does South Dakota or America for that matter!

I was amazed to see that the AP reporter actually remembered that Noem was one of the virtue-signaling Republican governors who told Donald Trump no thanks in 2019 when he tried to give the governors veto power to stop refugee resettlement in their state.

 

Republican Governor Kristi Noem will get the credit, or the blame, for blocking the Afghans depending on which side of the great divide one resides.

I had a couple of other things I had planned to write about today until I saw this AP story.

Both other possibilities are stories written by John Binder at Breitbart who is really on top of the news about the flood of ‘new American workers and voters’ Biden is pulling in from around the world.

Heck, they won’t have to cheat in elections once they change the electorate!

From AP (where they have gotten something right in their headline—these are mostly not refugees!):

South Dakota is 1 of 4 states not resettling Afghan evacuees

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — South Dakota is one of four states, along with the District of Columbia, that won’t be resettling any of the nearly 37,000 Afghan evacuees who made it to the U.S. during the final days of its chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan last month.

Lutheran Social Services of South Dakota, which is the state’s refugee resettlement agency, decided not to accept any Afghans after weighing local conditions and its ability to resettle them.

Rebecca Kiesow-Knudsen, the group’s chief operating officer, said Thursday that those arriving from Afghanistan without special immigrant visas are currently not eligible to work or receive federal aid to help them resettle.

“We had really significant concerns about our ability to provide the level of support to help make that integration successful,” she said.

Kiesow-Knudsen said the agency was facing a “rapidly evolving situation” that could change depending on whether Congress decides to provide funding and work eligibility for evacuees who have not been granted refugee status.

How financially burdened will your state be?

The Biden administration this week began telling governors and state refugee coordinators how many Afghan evacuees they would receive.

The numbers ranged from more than 5,200 people who are headed to California to as few as 10 being resettled in Alabama and 10 in Mississippi.

South Dakota, along with Hawaii, West Virginia, Wyoming and the District of Columbia, are not expected to resettle anyone from the first group.  [Really those Libs in DC and in Hawaii should be rewarded with refugees and they almost never get any!—ed]

Republican Gov. Kristi Noem last month expressed reservations about accepting evacuees from Afghanistan. She told KSFY-TV, “We do not want them coming here unless we know they are an ally and a friend, and that they don’t want to destroy this country.”

Noem in 2019 decided to continue allowing refugees to be resettled in the state after former President Donald Trump attempted to allow states to opt out of the program.

Remember this.  In American anyone can move and that includes migrants of all stripes.  Afghans may be placed in most states but they won’t end up there. As tribal people, as soon as they can they will be heading to enclaves where other Afghans have settled because they will want to be with their own kind of people.

LOL! We should take bets on how quickly the Afghans get out of places like Vermont (brrr!) and even places like Minnesota where the territorial Africans (who don’t see the ‘joys of diversity’) will be making it hard on the Afghans.

Check out my archive on South Dakota, another state I visited on my 2016 road trip!

Top Ten States that have Rolled Out the Red Carpet for Afghan Refugees

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

US News has done a handy analysis you can read yourself.

Nearly 100,000 Afghans have been resettled in the US in two decades.

Here is a screenshot of the summary of where most of them went:

Interesting to see that Governors Kristi Noem (SD) and Mark Gordon (WY) have said no thanks.  However, they may soon learn they have no say in the matter.

Know that Wyoming is the only state in the nation that has never set up a refugee program.  

Go here to see the states where governors have remained silent on accepting Afghans.

It is really a moot point however, since it has been established that states cannot say no.  Trump attempted to give them that power, but almost all Republican governors rejected his plan.

Afghan Evacuees Filling Hospital Beds in Northern Virginia, Americans Turned Away

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

And, the health care system there is begging the feds for more money to help relieve this latest fallout from Biden’s totally screwed-up Afghan evacuation.

Thanks to a reader for alerting me to this story at American Military News:

Americans turned away from Virginia hospitals over Afghan evacuees

(Editor:  Glad to see that the Afghans are not being referred to as ‘refugees.’ They are not legitimate refugees!)

A massive influx of Afghan evacuees strained Northern Virginia hospitals so much this week that American citizens were being turned away.

Every Virginian should be complaining to Virginia Democrat Senators Tim Kaine and Mark Warner.  Let them know that Biden’s disastrous Afghan surrender will be hurting them and their party in the next election. Throwing more taxpayer dollars at the problem won’t get them off the hook.

A hospital near Dulles Expo Center has been running out of beds, forcing the facility to turn away non-Afghan patients who didn’t need critical care, according to The Washington Post.

The overwhelmed hospital system prompted a regional emergency response group to monitor the hospitals after one became so packed with patients that federal  officials lost track of a number of Afghans receiving medical care, including a month-old child suffering from a possibly life-threatening condition.

Kristin Nickerson, executive director of the Northern Virginia Emergency Response System, said the child was later located in one of the hospitals. Nickerson, who also directs the Northern Virginia Hospital Alliance, confirmed that another hospital was forced to turn away American patients.

“Our hospitals are already almost at capacity,” she said, referring to patients with COVID-19. “It’s not like they have tons of free beds available. We are still in the middle of a pandemic.”

Nickerson said federal officials have not been responsive to requests for financial help. The Washington Post reported that a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said questions should be presented to the Department of Homeland Security, which did not respond to several attempts seeking comment.

The offices of both Senators Tim Kaine and Mark Warner said they are aware of and monitoring the situation.

[….]

Nickerson further explained that a federal contractor which was supposed to retrieve Afghan evacuees after their hospital visits has left them in the facilities for up to six hours. Cherokee Federal, the contractor in question, did not respond to The Washington Post’s request for comment. [Oh, gee, another contractor for me to investigate!—ed]

Surprise (not!):

As Afghan evacuees continue to arrive, the cost to care for them continues to rise.

On Aug. 28, top local administrators, who make up the board of the Northern Virginia Emergency Response System group, sent a letter to Virginia’s secretary of health and human services, calling for federal and state dollars to be allocated for the ongoing effort.

“To meet the current need, we are leveraging what little resources we have to augment the existing team at the moment, but this is not sustainable with only a staff of 12,” the letter said.

J. Stephen Jones, chief executive of the Inova Health System, said the hospitals shouldn’t expect the impact of the Afghan crisis to end any time soon.

More here.

By the way, I have 390 posts in my health issues category.  See what other health problems refugees and migrants of all sorts bring to America. Health problems, including mental health problems, that you ultimately pay for, one way or another.

If you missed it yesterday, I wrote a refugee-related story at ‘Frauds and Crooks.’

UN Secretary General Guterres to Taliban: Can’t we all just get along?

Massachusetts Jewish ‘Refugee’ Contractor: We can’t do all this work without money!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Of course I have been making the point for 14 years—these so-called religious charities that resettle refugees in the US (the Afghans are not legitimate refugees!) would quickly go belly-up if they had to find private money for their religious charitable work.

They can’t raise enough money to place thousands of refugees without the federal dole, so what does that tell you?  It tells me that there isn’t popular support from average Americans for what they are doing!

I’m not picking on Massachusetts or this Jewish resettlement agency, it just happens that this story, of MANY stories that are coming to my attention, came to me as I sat down to write a post for today.

This complaint is everywhere—-too many evacuees, little payment for services for the contractors, no affordable housing and these Afghans, most of them, won’t be eligible for welfare including food stamps unless Congress changes the law.

Somehow the chosen towns and its citizens are going to have to cough up the financial support.

And, you can be sure they won’t be put up in Hyannis! 

That would only be fair since it was ol’ Teddy himself who created the refugee admissions program and the Special Immigrant Visa program for Iraqis and Afghans.

You can be sure that no Afghans will be housed at Massachusetts’s Hyannis Harbor Hotel!

 

Before I give you the story, know that the contractors*** are knocking on doors that were previously slammed in their faces—like this one in Rutland, Vermont.

From Masslive:

Nearly 1,000 Afghan refugees are set to arrive in Massachusetts – are we ready?

Roughly 1,000 Afghan evacuees are going to be rehoused in Massachusetts communities, Maxine Stein, president and CEO of the Jewish Family Service of Western Massachusetts (JFSWM), told MassLive on Thursday, although the specific date is yet to be confirmed.

The problem for non-profits like JFSWM is funding and permanent housing.

[….]

Republican Governor Baker: Welcome Afghans whoever you are!

Gov. Charlie Baker issued a public statement on Aug. 17, at the height of the crisis in Afghanistan that Massachusetts is ready to assist Afghan refugees seeking safety and peace in America, but little has been revealed on the state’s plan for the intake.

 

Where is the MONEY?

So far no money has been promised to aid the work the charities are doing to rehouse the refugees and Baker’s office has not laid out any guarantee of support.

“I think we’re getting to a point now where we’re being asked to do all of this work, and that’s wonderful, but we are given no resources to do it,” said Stein. “The state of Massachusetts is welcoming Afghan refugees, but we need to see some financial support.”

JFSWM is looking at three communities to house the 150 Afghan evacuees they can help: Framingham, Pittsfield and Springfield.

If you live in one of those Massachusetts towns and you aren’t happy with what you are hearing, you better speak up now or forever hold your peace!

Check out my archives to see that Springfield, Mass, a working class town, has been a real pocket of resistance over the years.  Nevertheless, the State Department continued to shove refugees down the mayor’s throat.

***The primary contractors have around 100 subcontractors working for them….

The Springfield Jewish agency is a subcontractor of HIAS.

Glenn Beck Praises Lutheran Refugee ‘Non-Profit’ for Their Supposed Christian Charity Toward Afghan Evacuees

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Yesterday as I was happily putting up my vegetable harvest, I heard Glenn Beck in the background announcing that he soon would be talking to the leader of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIRS) about their efforts to care for arriving Afghan evacuees (most are NOT refugees).

Beck can be a doofus at times.  He was just that as he effusively thanked KRISH O’MARA VIGNARAJAH CEO of LIRS for helping the poor souls (mostly Muslims of course) that Biden loaded on planes in Afghanistan last week to make it look like he was the king of humanitarians.

I’m too lazy to search for a transcript of the interview, but Beck seemed most interested in whether they were helping Afghans assimilate to American life and to learn English.

Oh, yes, they do help them learn English Vignarajah assured him.

She said they needed donations and volunteers to help them with that and their other good deeds.

But, neither she or Beck SAID A WORD ABOUT THE FACT THAT LIRS IS ALMOST COMPLETELY FUNDED BY TAXPAYERS—INVOLUTARILY BY YOU!

Now is Beck so ill prepared that he didn’t know that or did he not want to inform his listeners of that little fact?  To the uninformed the message was that wow! look at this Christian organization doing their Christian good works!

Let’s get our facts straight!

I have done this many time over the years, but just so you know.

I repeat….

The Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service is funded by the federal government!

Heck, I won’t be able to retire unless the media (and even people like Beck who fancies himself a great investigator) make that fact known!

Here is the data from the most recent LIRS Form 990 (2019).

On page 9 we see that $52 million of their $60 million or so income came from the US government.  They are a federal contractor!

 

And here, have a look at the salaries of Mrs. O’Mara and a few of her other co-workers.  Although she does not make the salary her predecessor Linda Hartke made before leaving under questionable circumstances, a quarter of a million a year isn’t chump change.

Note that she makes more than a US Senator or Member of Congress.  If LIRS was truly a private organization funded out of the charity of individuals, their salaries would be none of our business, but they are not!

 

And, now looking forward from 2019 here is some data from USA Spending.  Looks like they are sucking up even more federal tax dollars!

I hate to think that a lot of uniformed Americans are sending their hard earned bucks to LIRS because of Beck’s plug yesterday when they are already contributing via the US Treasury.