Editor: I started this post yesterday, but couldn’t finish it as RRW went down for awhile making me very nervous. I don’t know what that was about, but it seems to be working fine today. Sure hope you didn’t experience any problems visiting.
I told you back in January that Lutheran Social Services of North Dakota had filed for bankruptcy after getting mired in some affordable housing scheme that is too complex to bother with here.
In the process they are losing their fancy and expensive building, a building I saw in my 2016 travels to the state.
So the assumption was that refugee flow into the state was going to be halted at least for awhile.
You might recall that North Dakota’s Republican governor did NOT support President Trump’s effort at reforming the Refugee Admissions Program by allowing local and state governments to have some say in the process of determining the target sites for resettlement.
That brings us to the latest breaking news as Fargo’s Valley News Live says that refugees are being placed in Fargo:
FARGO, N.D. (Valley News Live) – Fargo City Commissioner Dave Piepkorn said Tuesday that he sat in on a phone call in which Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services stated that they had resettled approximately 25 refugees in Fargo-Moorhead. Deputy Mayor Piepkorn shared concern that he had not been made aware of the resettlement and he questioned whether the City of Fargo was notified prior to rehoming the refugees.
Too funny! NOT! The woman who ran LSSND as it was financially crashing is now working for the governor!
Questions have been raised as to how the action was coordinated. Prior to filing bankruptcy, Lutheran Social Services (LSS) was tasked with refugee resettlement in the state.
Former LSS Director, Jessica Thomasson, now works as the Executive Policy Director at ND Department of Human Services.
The country of origin of the refugees was not made known. In a recent interview with Chris Berg, Gov. Burgum stated that he was open to resettling refugees in the state but he was unaware of any plan to resettle undocumented immigrants from the southern border.
Be sure to watch Chris Berg’s interview with Fargo City Commissioner Dave Piepkorn where Piepkorn says he doubts anyone was notified and mentioned specifically the school system.
In response to Deputy Mayor Piepkorn….
President Trump’s failed reform initiative sought to give local governments an opportunity to review plans for resettlement in their jurisdictions with a yes or no sign-off, governors would also have to approve or disapprove the plan.
Shockingly, most Republican governors, including North Dakota’s Doug Burgum, did not back the President’s efforts to shore-up their Tenth Amendment states’ rights.
Here is one of many, many posts on the feckless Republican governors:
At present local governments are supposed to be consulted, but I will bet that the resettlement agency only talked to friendly “stakeholders” in the process of preparing an “abstract” that must be submitted to the US State Department in advance of placements in a given location.
Any elected official should be able to request permission to attend a stakeholder meeting and be permitted to see a recent R & P Abstract prepared by a local resettlement contractor.
Of course, in the case of ND (with no agency operating at the moment), one would most likely go to the state’s Department of Human Services for the most recent Abstract and a schedule of stakeholder meetings.
LOL! that would be the agency now headed by former LSS CEO Thomasson.
One final note: For years we were able to see which refugees went to which towns and cities on an almost daily basis and all the way back to 2002. That database is no longer available. It was shuttered during Trump’s tenure. The feds claimed the website is being overhauled.
Except for the most recent arrivals in the present fiscal year, we are left completely in the dark about the numbers, nationalities and resettlement locations of thousands and thousands of refugee arrivals.
If you are feeling whiplash over the Biden teams’ Refugee Admission plans, join the crowd.
I don’t have the time or energy to go back over the flip-flop-flipping the White House has been doing over the last few months on the decision to raise, not raise, and now raise the refugee ceiling from the level President Trump had set for Fiscal Year 2021 which ends on September 30, 2021—a mere 5 months away.
But, for new readers here is one recent postabout the mess the administration stepped in when they dared to leave the ceiling/cap for refugee admissions for the remainder of the year at the Trump level—15,000.
Looks like the administration, in its latest iteration, has listened to refugee contractor Mark Hetfield who told the Biden team to “set the damn cap.”
He explained it is a cap and likely won’t be reached, but that Biden/Harris must send their virtue signal around the world!
It was heard loud and clear yesterday by the United Nations which chooses most refugees admitted to the US and applauded the decision.
Somalis who live in one of the world’s largest UN refugee camps—Dadaab in Kenya—will soon be arriving in Anytown, USA. Trump had slowed the movement of certain groups of refugees to America.
Biden increases refugee cap to 62,500 after backlash
President Biden has increased the refugee admissions cap to 62,500 for the current fiscal year, after keeping the historically low Trump-era cap of 15,000. But Mr. Biden also admitted in a statement on Monday that the administration will not reach that cap this year.
The Biden administration faced intense backlash from liberals, immigration advocacy groups and religious groups alike after announcing last month that they would keep the Trump-era level of 15,000 refugees for the time being, despite an earlier pledge to quadruple admissions of immigrants escaping war and violence. The White House said Monday that they would increase the cap this month.
“Today, I am revising the United States’ annual refugee admissions cap to 62,500 for this fiscal year,” the president said in a statement. “This erases the historically low number set by the previous administration of 15,000, which did not reflect America’s values as a nation that welcomes and supports refugees. The new admissions cap will also reinforce efforts that are already underway to expand the United States’ capacity to admit refugees, so that we can reach the goal of 125,000 refugee admissions that I intend to set for the coming fiscal year.”
We are raising the ceiling just for show and to get the crazed Leftwing Refugee Contractors*** off our backs!
But Mr. Biden also said in his statement that the U.S. will not reach 62,500 admissions and a cap is just that — a ceiling.
“The sad truth is that we will not achieve 62,500 admissions this year,” the president said in his statement. “We are working quickly to undo the damage of the last four years. It will take some time, but that work is already underway.
Have you noticed that not only on the refugee admissions, but with the southern border that they have decided on the perfect propaganda message to cover their screw-ups. Blame it all on Trump!
Now what?
Based on comments from readers, I see that many of you still don’t know that the invaders at the southern border are not refugees that will arrive under the legal refugee admissions ceiling. Don’t worry too much about that for the moment.
Biden/Harris are out scouting for new locations to place either group of migrants (aka new Democrat voters).
Just know that no one in Washington is going to help you if your town/city/county is going to be a relocation site for legal refugees or illegal aliens. See my post about Winchester, Virginia.
A reader yesterday asked me how she could find out if she lived in a target town? I have no way of finding out….However!
Pick up the phone!
I told her she must call her local elected officials at the city or county level and ask them if they have been alerted by the federal government or a federal resettlement contractor if they have been targeted.
Get other like-minded people to do the same, the more the better! And, if the answer is yes, yours is now a target town, you will have to get to work organizing locally against it.
I know that isn’t what you want to hear, but that frankly is all there is—you making the most political noise you can make against Biden and the Democrats working to change America by changing the people.
For four years, we all sat back and let Trump take care of us. He did a mostly good job, but here we are—back to square one—local organizing by hard working citizen activists asking local elected officials:
Don’t we have an obligation to care for our own poor and homeless first?
***In case you are new to RRW, here are all of the nine contractors that have monopolized all refugee distribution in the US for decades.
They worked to ‘elect’ Biden/Harris andlobby for open borders. As taxpayers you pay them millions annually to change America by changing the people.
Two of the contractors, the USCCB and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service are also paid to find locations for the Unaccompanied Alien Children.
“We cannot and we must not fall victims to politics of fear and hatred that drives the far-right…..[Biden] “must follow through on his promise.”
(Rep. Ilhan Omar)
In addition to abysmally low numbers, Biden hasn’t re-started the flow of refugees from Muslim countries, the flow Trump halted for a handful of countries that hate us.
Syrians, Somalis, Iraqis are waiting and frustrated, but not nearly as frustrated as the refugee contractors*** and their friends in Congress like Minnesota Somali Rep. Ilhan Omar.
As I have said before, the mystery for me is this:
How do the contractors who have been paid since at least 1980 to place refugees in your towns and cities and who have had a pipeline to the US State Department via their swamp dwelling bureaucrats (even as Trump was in the White House) not know what is going on?
Apparently they don’t and the guess is that Biden doesn’t want to look too pro-immigration as the southern border is being overrun.
Well, duh!
It is too late for that as most of America sees Biden as the most open borders President ever!
And, besides the average American voter does not even fully understand the difference between fake asylum seekers (illegal aliens!) at the southern border and the Refugee Admissions Program.
It is ludicrous to think that voters are sitting around saying, gee it’s good of Biden to stop the refugee flow right now so let’s give him some brownie points because he is slowing, by a tiny bit, the Great Replacement!
Biden’s delay on refugees baffles and frustrates allies
Senator Ted Kennedy created the present refugee and asylum system with the help of Joe Biden in 1979. Jimmy Carter signed the Refugee Act into law in 1980. A question I have asked for over a decade is this: Why has Biden’s Delaware resettled only a handful of refugees since then? Maybe Joe doesn’t like foreigners in HIS neighborhood!
President Biden sent a stark message in February to foreigners fleeing oppression, persecution and danger: The United States stands ready to help them once again. He pledged an eightfold-plus increase in the annual cap on refugees set during the Trump administration, saying he would aim for a “down payment” on that promise “as soon as possible.”
More than two months later, Biden has not made good on his vow. He has yet to sign a directive that would lift the cap for the next fiscal year or enact more-immediate changes to the Trump limits.
His advisers have provided little public clarity on why, angering many human rights advocates who say the delay is inflicting growing harm on refugees desperate to take flight to the United States.
[….]
People close to the White House’s decision-making attribute the delay to several factors. Some point to the administration’s ongoing struggles to contain a massive increase in migrants arriving at the southern border, saying they detect political concerns from the White House about expanding the refugee program at a moment when there is increasing pressure on Biden to be tougher on immigration and border security.
Jenny Yang of World Relief
“What’s missing is the political will of the president,” said Jenny Yang, vice president for advocacy and policy at World Relief, one of a handful of resettlement agencies working with the government.
The result, Yang said, is that “the program is effectively operating as if President Trump were still in office.”
[….]
Before becoming a highly paid refugee contractor CEO, Vignarajah worked for Michelle in the White House.
“Unfortunately, I think it shows that President Trump may have been effective in conflating refugee resettlements and the asylum program,” said Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, another resettlement agency working with the government.
She said there “is no substantive reason” why Trump’s directive should remain in place, given that changing it is “not a herculean task” for Biden.
I don’t know why Lutheran CEO Vignarajah is complaining as her organization is raking in millions of your tax dollars to take ‘care’ of the Unaccompanied Alien (mostly teens) Children invading the border.
Biden cautious on immigration!
Biden’s careful posture underscores the broader caution with which he and his advisers are approaching immigration.
Keenly aware of how the issue has sparked impassioned divisions in recent years, Biden, who ran as a unifier, did not emphasize it as a candidate. As president, he and his aides have treaded lightly, wary of inflaming a polarizing debate that could threaten to his appeal to a broad swath of voters.
He didn’t emphasize it as a candidate because controlling immigration appeals to most Americans and plays in Trump’s favor!
Some of the most fervent concern has come from Democrats in the House. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), who lived in a refugee camp in Kenya as a child after her family fled a civil war in Somalia, warned in a recent statement that “We cannot and we must not fall victims to politics of fear and hatred that drives the far-right.”
Biden, she said, “must follow through on his promise.”
[….]
Biden announced that he would raise the annual cap on refugee admission to 125,000 for the first full fiscal year of his administration, which begins in October. He informed Congress that his target for the current fiscal year was 62,500.
But he never signed a new presidential determination, a decision that has left Trump’s directive in place. Now, Biden is on pace to accept the fewest refugees this year of any modern president, according to a report the International Rescue Committee released last week. The Biden administration has admitted only 2,050 refugees at the halfway point of this fiscal year, according to the nonprofit organization’s report.
Data from the Refugee Processing Center.You can readily see that if Biden follows through on what he said, his numbers would eclipse anything George Bush or Barack Obama ever did.
Six months into the fiscal year and only 2,050 refugees have been admitted. They have to do some real hustling if they want to beat Trump’s lowest year of 11,814.
The report says Biden’s inaction means “tens of thousands of already-cleared refugees remain barred from resettlement and over 700 resettlement flights have been cancelled.”
Absent a reversal of Trump-era restrictions, most refugees from civil war-ravaged Syria, who have the highest resettlement needs according to the report, do not have a chance of coming to the U.S.
Refugees from other Muslim countries are also being hit hard by current rules, according to the report
[….]
Some White House allies find the president’s delay perplexing because the refugee program has attracted bipartisan support in recent years. Even some of the Republicans who have been critical of Biden’s handling of the border have called for raising the refugee cap to expand the legal pathways for immigrants to come to the United States.
Republican Senator Portman: Increase the refugee cap! Any Republican wanting to increase the cap is making the Chamber of Commerce types happy!
“The refugee program is much more of an orderly and legal process that is entirely distinct” from the situation at the border, said Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio). “I would increase the refugees cap from where it was in the Trump years, and I would make the asylum system work as it should.”
I am willing to blame (almost) everything on the newly installed Biden/Harris Administration, but Trump never had support for his effort to give state and local governments a say in placement of refugees. Why?
First, because the Leftwingers at three federal contracting agencies, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, Church World Serviceand Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, had taken the EO to court and had already won!
The contractors have been calling the shots on locations for decades and they plan to keep it that way!
An Appeals Court, the day before Inauguration Day, had already put the nail in the coffin on this Trump effort to protect you and give you a say in refugee resettlement site selection.
More importantly, governors needed to support the plan and the vast majority, at least 18, Republican governors in the nation opposed the President, except for a handful including DeSantis and Kemp who remained quiet, leaving Governor Abbott of Texas the only Governor in the Nation brave enough to back the plan!
….most importantly, the supposed reformers working for the President apparently did not have a firm understanding of how weak most Republican governors are on immigration issues of any sort.
For new readers, most Republican governors are weak because they are backed by global corporations and the Chamber of Commerce types who want a steady supply of CHEAP labor!
Hey, and for all of you Kristi Noem fans, she DID NOT SUPPORT THE PRESIDENT on this and I suspect it is because of that big Chinese-owned Smithfield Foods slaughter house in South Dakota and its appetite for cheap refugee labor.
In addition, of course, to the myriad other meatpackers scattered across South Dakota that Noem was obviously not willing to buck. (Not presidential material in my view!)
And, even if Biden left a little (fake) wiggle room as the Breitbart article suggests in its incomplete story, there is NO concern for you from Biden/Harris— for those of you who live in the communities where refugees have been resettled and where tens of thousands more will be resettled.
Biden is aimingto bring in more refugees than any president in three decades.
The US State Department and its contractors*** will be choosing locations for the impoverished third worlders new homes as they have been doing for 40 years.
Here is Breitbart’s storywithout some of the most important facts! You can read it yourself, but remember…
As Biden arrived in the White House, there was effectively no longer a Trump EO to protect local citizens and states, and a big part of the blame goes to REPUBLICAN GOVERNORS who did not back the President.
Joe Biden Puts Americans in the Dark by Revoking Ability to Reject Refugee Dumping in Their Communities
Too bad Breitbart isn’t reading RRW!
Americans Last!
***For New Readers these are the nine federal refugee contractors who worked to put Biden and Harris in the White House and are lobbying for millions of illegal aliens to be transformed into legal voting citizens, as well as raising the refugee admissions ceiling from 15,000 this year to 125,000.
They are largely paid by you, the taxpayer, for their work of changing America by changing the people, and in so doing, are putting Americans last!
I don’t know exactly how many, but I have heard that around 100 offices closed.
The nine contractors*** call them affiliates, but you could also call them subcontractors (I do). I suspect they don’t like the later word because it then appears that there are lots of bucks moving around, and there are!
As the Obama Administration was ending we had reported that efforts were underway by the US State Department to add as many as 40 new locations for the placement of refugeessince the contractors were wearing out their welcome as they overloaded towns and cities with poverty.
Here is a map from the Refugee Processing Centershowing where refugees were being placed in 2016. I know it is hard to read but you can see it enlarged either at the link above at RPC, or use the link under each map.
See that the nine contractors are color-coded and listed in the right hand corner, and note that more than one contractor can have local offices in cities especially eager for more diversity and for more needy people to care for.
We can only assume those cities have run out of their own poor people!
You can expect to see a re-opening of some of those offices closed during the Trump years, and pay close attention to local efforts, often by those “Interfaith” political organizations, agitating for new offices.
Frankly, the only way forward now is to work at the local/state level for most of your political activity.
Americans Last!
***For New Readers these are the nine federal refugee contractors who worked to put Biden and Harris in the White House and are lobbying for millions of illegal aliens to be transformed into legal voting citizens, as well as raising the refugee admissions ceiling from 15,000 this year to 125,000.
They are largely paid by you, the taxpayer, for their work of changing America by changing the people, and in so doing, are putting Americans last!
One final note: For years we were able to see which refugees went to which towns and cities on an almost daily basis and all the way back to 2002. That database is no longer available. It was shuttered during Trump’s tenure. The feds claimed the website is being overhauled.
In addition to abysmally low numbers, Biden hasn’t re-started the flow of refugees from Muslim countries, the flow Trump halted for a handful of countries that hate us.
Data from the 
Here is a map from the
