Syracuse citizens not happy with Mayor's invite to Syrians

09/30/2015 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We told you, here, the other day about Syracuse mayor Stephanie Miner inviting more*** Syrian ‘refugees’ to Syracuse, but it appears her constituents are not thrilled.
Here is a portion of a letter to the editor (Mayor, how will we fund refugee resettlement?) that appeared at Syracuse.com in response to their earlier article. I suspect that all over the country citizens are asking the same questions!
The most interesting thing is the huge number of comments the letter received, most also critical of the mayor.

Mayor Miner — Reader PistolPete wanted to know how many refugees the mayor was taking into her home. This is not the mayor’s home, but this is pretty funny. Apparently while campaigning for the job, the candidate took photos of ‘code violations’ (like this one) and posted them. Why not take photos of code violations that will surely be found in the slums where the refugees are living and post those on facebook. The refugee resettlement contractors (and the politicians that support them) must be called-out for causing the further decline of already impoverished minority neighborhoods. Photo: http://syracusesearch.pbworks.com/w/page/6360859/Syracuse%20Search%20%231%20-%20%235

Let’s take care of our own first! seems to be the common theme.
To the Editor:

This letter is in response to Mayor Stephanie Miner’s letter to President Barack Obama in her call for an increase of Syrian refugees. I currently work with refugees and have worked in a number of human service agencies. I commend her commitment to help those in need.

Last year Americans committed to resettle 70,000 refugees, and we fell short of meeting that number. This next year we have taken on an additional 10,000 refugees from Syria alone. With the ongoing dire circumstances in Syria and those around the rest of the world, we should absolutely do our part to help.

However, with all the letters and articles I have been reading lately, I have not seen a proposal of how we plan to financially support the resettlement of more refugees. How can we support those in need outside the United States if we cannot take care of our own? How does one decide whose life is worth providing resources to?

More….

Candice Fry

Now, check this out. Someone in the Syracuse area is doing his/her homework!

Do the same where you live! Go on the offense and make them answer to you. (Gino, get in touch with us to join with like-minded people in the growing grassroots network around the country!).
From commenter GinoChalupa (emphasis added is mine):

Stephanie Miner and her friends at the Catholic Charities and Interfaith Works are talking out of both sides of their mouths. A few weeks ago they expressed collective shock and outrage that Syracuse has one of the nation’s highest poverty rates and that the number of census tracts with concentrated poverty tripled in a matter of a few years. It just so happened to be that the census tracts on the north side where these organizations have settled the vast majority of its refugees all had the highest poverty rates in the city with nearly 80% of the population below the poverty line. These north side census tracts had much lower levels of concentrated poverty in the 2000 census before the Catholic Charities and Interfaith Works began tripling the number of refugees settled in Syracuse. Beth Broadway, Executive Director of Interfaith Works told local reporters that the high rates of concentrated poverty among blacks, Hispanics, and Asians in Syracuse was unacceptable and a sign this community has much work to do. Stephanie Miner and a host of other groups which claim to share the same goal of alleviating poverty claimed the community would address this issue.

What Ms. Broadway of Interfaith Works, the Catholic Charities, and Stephanie Miner fail to acknowledge is that the high rate of poverty is driven in part by the influx of 10,000 refugees to the City of Syracuse since 2000. The vast majority of refugees settled by these organizations are from countries in Africa and Asia. It should come as no surprise that the percentage of black residents living in poverty and the percentage of black residents living in high poverty census tracts increased as thousands of the refugees settled from Africa are “black.” The 52% poverty rate among Asians in the City of Syracuse in the latest census should also come as no surprise as a plurality of the refugees settled are from Asian countries. The percentage of Asians living in poverty in suburban Syracuse is in the single digits (with the exception of the Town of Salina which has seen an increase in Vietnamese families relocating there due to the rapid deterioration of the north side).

According to monthly data posted on the website for the NY Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance, the number of welfare caseloads in Onondaga County has nearly doubled since 2007. In June 2015, the most recent month data is available, a total of 7,468 families in Onondaga County received temporary assistance. This is the equivalent of 16,054 people. In one month alone, the number of families receiving assistance increased by more than 200 from 7,237 families in May 2015 to 7,468 families in June 2015. The number of Medicaid caseloads has more than doubled in 10 years (this number had doubled before the Affordable Care Act was implemented, so the increase cannot be attributed to the increasing number of needy residents enrolling in Medicaid). Onondaga County had struggled with a growing welfare caseload in the 1990s and was able to whittle down the number of families enrolled in temporary assistance by the year 2000. It wasn’t until the mid 2000s, that welfare caseloads began to increase again. This increase was more than 3 years prior to the Great Recession of 2008. When comparing Onondaga County to other upstate counties with large urban populations (Albany, Erie and Monroe), Onondaga County is the only major upstate county that has not experienced a decline in the number of families receiving temporary assistance, Albany, Erie and Monroe Counties have seen declines during the past two years and the number of families receiving assistance is now back down to levels seen prior to recession. In Onondaga County, however, the number of families on welfare is at its highest level since records were posted online in 2001. Compared with the other major urban counties, Onondaga County has seen a much larger settlement of refugees. The latest census estimates also show that the percentage of residents lacking any formal education and the % that don’t speak English has increased significantly. Local governments and service providers that are already stretched thin are going to have to provide additional services that the community can ill-afford.

Interfaith Works [a subcontractor of the far Left Church World Service—ed] recently paid $1,024,520 for an office building on the 1000 block of James Street. The previous owner was a financial services company which left for the suburbs. It would appear that these organizations are heavily dependent on the $1,000+ administrative fee they are paid by the federal government for each refugee they settle. The City of Syracuse and Onondaga County cannot afford to allow these two organizations to balance their books and generate revenue at the expense of an already stretched social safety net. If Interfaith Works and the Catholic Charities were genuinely concerned about reducing poverty, they would not continue to exacerbate the situation by settling 1,200 to 1,400 refugees each year.

LOL! Another reader PistolPete wanted to know how many refugees “Steffi” (the mayor) was taking into her two homes!
We have written a lot about Syracuse over the years, click here, for previous posts (Diversity is so beautiful! Catholic Church becomes a mosque, African Americans beat up Burmese refugees, convenience store fraud by Palestinians, refugees booted from sub-standard housing in which they were placed, etc.).
*** Syracuse has already started resettling Syrian refugees according to US State Department data, here.

The Sanctuary movement involves Catholics and Communists

07/24/2015 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Cliff Kincaid, Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism, has published an excellent review of the Sanctuary movement, the Catholic Church’s love affair with Communist Sandinista’s, Obama’s early community organizing days (for a Catholic organization in Chicago) and Jim Simpson’s new monograph: Red-Green Axis!

God and Caesar — If you want to understand the scope of the Sanctuary Movement that saw churches help illegal aliens from Central America get across the southern border and then spread them throughout America, get this book. Of course it is written in support of the movement, but it’s an eye-opener.

We wrote many posts a few years ago about the 1980’s Sanctuary Movement, see those by clicking here.
Also, I’ve linked the border invasion of the ‘Unaccompanied Alien Children’ last year to the modern-day sanctuary movement.
Here is Kincaid (The Religious Origins of the Sanctuary Movement) Hat tip: Robin.

Thanks to Donald Trump, the major media are being forced to cover the illegal immigration movement, such as the proliferation of “sanctuary cities” across the U.S. that attract criminal aliens, give them legal protection, and let them back out on the streets to commit more crimes. But the really taboo topic is how these sanctuary cities grew out of a movement started by the Catholic Church and other churches.

Over 200 cities, counties and states provide safe-haven to illegal aliens as sanctuary cities, the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) reports. What has not yet been reported is that the Catholic Church, which gave President Obama his start in “community organizing” in Chicago, has been promoting the sanctuary movement for more than two decades.

What’s more, in April, a delegation of U.S. Catholic bishops staged a church service along the U.S.-Mexico border and distributed Communion through the border fence. At the same time, Pope Francis said a “racist and xenophobic” attitude was keeping immigrants out of the United States.

No wonder the pope’s approval ratings have been falling in the United States. Overall, Gallup reports that it’s now at 59 percent, down from 76 percent in early 2014. Among conservatives, it’s fallen from 72 percent approval to 45 percent (a drop of 27 points).

“Few people are aware that this extreme left branch of the Catholic Church played a large part in birthing the sanctuary movement,” says James Simpson, author of the new book, The Red-Green Axis: Refugees, Immigration and the Agenda to Erase America.

Simpson says Catholic Charities, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and its grant-making arm, the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, are prominent elements of the open borders movement.

The sanctuary movement has its roots in the attempted communist takeover of Latin America.

There is much much more, click here for more juicy information!
New readers, please note that the US Conference of Catholic Bishops is one of nine federal contractors resettling refugees in your towns and cities (on your dime!).
I’m going to have more on the suspicious activities of the USCCB tomorrow…..

Daniel Greenfield: Chattanooga shooter possibly linked to Palestinian refugees

07/17/2015 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update 2: Shooter traveled to Jordan in 2014, WSJ here.
Update: If Dad is a Palestinian who left Kuwait, this family could indeed be resettled refugees or successful asylum seekers we gave shelter to. Here is what wikipedia says about the expulsion of Palestinians (Jordanian citizens) from Kuwait after the first Gulf War. I don’t have time to dig around, but if you do, I’ll post your links here! I have to get on to my work on “Welcoming Ohio” this morning.
Everyone I know is asking if the Islamic-motivated shooting of 4 unarmed Marines is somehow linked to our refugee program. I don’t have the answer yet.

We don’t take very many refugees from Kuwait nor do we take very many Palestinians, but we do send many Muslim refugees to Tennessee.
If anyone sees a mention of the year the killer’s family entered the US it might help us narrow this down. Remember there are several legal immigration programs through which this family could have been admitted to the US.
One possibility is that a family member (the father?) entered the US in some legal fashion (tourist visa?) then applied for asylum and subsequently brought the family over behind him (like the Tsarnaev Boston Bomber family did).
Everyone keep an eye out for any news about how they got into the US!

As the Director for the Tennessee Office for Refugees, Holly Johnson would be able to put the question to rest by telling us whether or not the killer’s family came to the US as refugees or possibly were granted asylum status after getting into the country through some other means.

The refugee program in Tennessee is a Wilson-Fish program which means it is run jointly by the US State Department and in this case Catholic Charities of Tennessee (Tennessee Office for Refugees)—they would both know if the Abdulazeez family came here as refugees or successful asylum seekers.
Also, the primary resettlement contractor in Chattanooga is Bridge Refugee Services (a subcontractor of Church World Service and Episcopal Migration Ministries, two of nine major contractors).
Bridge has been operating in Chattanooga since 1982 so they would know if this family was one of theirs!
My guess is that the refugee contractors in Tennessee will not be forthcoming.
Daniel Greenfield writing at Frontpage magazine has this bit of information:

This is still preliminary as the story is developing. So take it as that.

The media is reporting that the Muslim attacker in the Chattanooga shootings is Kuwaiti. That may not be accurate, based on the current reporting, it would appear that his mother Rasmia Abdulazeez is indeed from Kuwait, but his father Youssuf Abdulazeez is from Nablus in Israel.

This is not especially significant as a lot of self-described “Palestinians” used to live in Kuwait. At least until the Kuwaitis kicked them out for collaborating with Saddam. With the approval of Bush I.

If you see more on how the family got into the US, please send it our way.
By the way, one of the first posts I ever wrote at RRW was about this agency, Bridge Refugee Services, joining the ACLU and CAIR to fight a 2003 request by the US Dept. of Homeland Security for information under the Patriot Act. The national security agency was looking for information on resettled Iraqi refugees. The resettlement contractor refused to cooperate.
So they are not likely to talk now!

Here is another Daniel Greenfield story on this topic.

Meanwhile Presidential candidate Bobby Jindal says Muslim immigration to America might more correctly be called “colonization.”

At Breitbart:

According to a recent report from the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), approximately 2.5 million immigrants from “predominantly Muslim countries” reside inside the U.S. right now. Abdulazeez was apparently one of them. Jindal has questioned whether all the Muslims coming into the United States right now is really truly “immigration” or if it’s actually a “colonization.”

About Holly Johnson: This is her contact information if any investigative reporters want to try to get an answer—good luck!

Holly Johnson, Director
Tennessee Office for Refugees
Office: (615) 352-9520 ext. 222
Fax: (615) 352-0701
Email: HJohnson@cctenn.org

Roanoke, Virginia: Former Bosnian Muslim prison guard extradited to Bosnia, committed war crimes…

07/10/2015 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

…..and surprise! surprise! lied on his application for refugee status.

Nezirovic-mug-for-web-jpg — Poster boy for the refugee next door! For every Albert Einstein the refugee industry highlights, I’ll show you a Nezirovic!

The US State Department is quick to say that refugees are thoroughly screened before arriving in the US, don’t believe them. The case of Almaz Nezirovic is not the first case of refugee fraud we have reported over the years.
From WDBJ-7 (hat tip: Robin):

ROANOKE, Va. –

A former Bosnian prison guard who lived in Roanoke and is accused of war crimes against Serbian prisoners has been sent back to Bosnia.

Almaz Nezirovic, 54, was extradited back to Bosnia on Wednesday.

He is accused of committing war crimes against civilians between April and July 1992 during the Bosnian War.

Bosnian officials believe that Nezirovic beat unarmed civilian prisoners.

“This included allegedly stripping victims naked, beating them severely with a club, and forcing them to eat grass on which others had urinated,” according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Western District of Virginia.

After the war in the former Yugoslavia ended in 1995, Nezirovic sought refugee status in the United States, where he later applied for a green card and to become a naturalized U.S. citizen.

Nezirovic was originally arrested in June 2011 and charged with two counts of naturalization fraud. Those charges stemmed from false statements about his wartime activities and other conduct during his citizenship application.

Continue reading here. There is more, plus the US Attorney’s news release is printed in full.
We first posted on this case in 2011, here, so imagine what this investigation, incarceration and trial has cost the US taxpayer! I think there should be a law that when refugees go through the criminal justice system, the US State Department budget should pay the costs. I know that is still taxpayer money, but maybe it would help alert everyone to the fact that the State Department really doesn’t know who the hell they are sending to unsuspecting towns.

Roanoke

Roanoke, VA has had its share of charming refugees. Remember the 2009 case of 4 African refugees plotting to kidnap local rich women!
We also had a 2008 story about tensions building between the local African American community and their new African brethren being resettled there.
So who is doing the resettling in Roanoke? For new readers who want to check out who is responsible for colonizing your towns and cities, go to this handy list and have a look.
By the way, it was Bill Clinton who brought in the over 100,000 mostly Muslim Bosnians to America!
It seems that the US Conference of Catholic Bishops/Catholic Charities is responsible for changing Roanoke. Don’t ask me why they have two offices there largely paid for by you!

USCCB
VA-USCCB-03: Commonwealth Catholic Charities
Address:
820 Campbell Avenue, Sw
Roanoke, VA 24016-3536
Phone:
540-342-7561

USCCB
VA-USCCB-07: Commonwealth Catholic Charities
Address:
541 Luck Avenue SW, Ste. 118
Roanoke, VA 24016
Phone:
804-545-5930

Justice Department Inspector General suggests possible misuse of grant money by Catholic Charities San Antonio

06/12/2015 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The Center for Immigration Studies reported this week on an audit conducted by the Dept. of Justice’s Office of Inspector General of possible improper use by Catholic Charities, a major refugee resettlement contractor in San Antonio, TX, of federal grant money.

Before I get to what Dan Cadman at CIS says about this revelation, readers should know that these government contractors are virtually never audited financially.
I was told when I first began investigating the Refugee Program that they were subjected to “program” audits only, but not financial ones you would expect when this many tax dollars are involved. What that means is that the non-profit contractor has to report on how well they are doing with their various projects and programs, but not how they spend the money (your money) or where exactly it goes!

It seems to me that a quick and easy amendment to Refugee law would be for Congress to mandate FINANCIAL auditing on a regular basis.

Here is Cadman at CIS:

The Department of Justice’s Office of Inspector General (DOJ OIG) released a report this month entitled “Audit of the Office of Justice Programs Services for Victims of Human Trafficking Grant Awarded to Catholic Charities, Archdiocese of San Antonio, Inc., Texas”. The grant was for a substantial amount of money, $810,000, of which $730,491 has already been disbursed, and was intended to further the work of the South Texas Coalition Against Human Trafficking and Slavery (STCAHTS).

According to DOJ OIG, “The objective of this audit was to determine whether costs claimed under the grant were allowable, supported, and in accordance with applicable laws, regulations, guidelines, and terms and conditions.” That’s pretty straightforward and seems like a basic requirement given the amount of taxpayer dollars involved.

The DOJ OIG staff found that Catholic Charities Archdiocese of San Antonio (CCAOSA) pretty much failed the audit on all counts:

Specifically, CCAOSA: (1) did not follow procedures for identification and procurement of contractors and there were no procedures for monitoring contractors, (2) had unsupported expenditures and drawdowns of $20,363, (3) submitted inaccurate financial reports, and (4) did not maintain supporting documentation for progress reports.

Perhaps such an examination should have occurred before more than 90 percent of the money had been provided, but that’s water under the bridge.

[….]

No amount of cross-checking by subject matter or division (ORR is a part of HHS’s Administration for Children and Families) revealed any audit work done by HHS OIG despite the tens of millions of dollars apportioned, and not just to Catholic Charities, but to a number of both secular and religiously affiliated charities. One wonders at this lapse.

New readers: See our three-part series on Texas from earlier this week, beginning with Part I here. Eight of the nine major federal contractors are operating in Texas, the top resettlement state in the nation.
See our previous post this morning on the US Conference of Catholic Bishops migration committee chairman calling for 65,000 Syrians (mostly Muslims to be selected by the UN) to be admitted to the US by President Obama before he leaves office.