Who is Going to Pay the Rent for Hundreds of Thousands of Refugee Tenants?

07/16/2020 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Who do you think?

As the Chinese virus tanks our economy, it will be those of you still able to pay taxes! Either local tax dollars will go directly to the refugees, or local landlords will get bailouts (your tax dollars too).

Over the years I’ve watched landlord sharks seek out refugee tenants often working closely with federal refugee contractors and subcontractors in Democrat-run cities, but that whole system of cronyism could be crashing as we speak thanks to the Trump administration turning off the refugee spigot and the Chinese virus creating mass unemployment for the mostly low-skilled workers that have poured into the US as cheap refugee labor in the last few decades.

Will we soon see large numbers of refugees among the homeless, maybe.

This story in the Wall Street Journal today brought all of this to mind because I have been seeing stories here and there about how refugees are getting local financial assistance (with your money through local government agencies) when we have been promised for decades that the federal government bears the entire financial burden of refugee resettlement (NOT!).

I don’t have a subscription to the WSJ, but how great is this, the WSJ has a video with their story headlined:

Eviction Looms for Millions of Americans Who Can’t Afford Rent

This is Fadhila Hussein. She is a landlord in Schenectady, NY and owns over a dozen rental properties. She is now losing big bucks. I suspect her tenants are refugees and other immigrants. Watch the video at the WSJ link.

WASHINGTON—Millions of Americans who have missed rent payments due to the coronavirus pandemic could be at risk of being evicted in the coming months unless government measures to protect them are extended, economists and housing experts say.

Nearly 12 million adults live in households that missed their last rent payment, and 23 million have little or no confidence in their ability to make the next one, according to weekly Census Bureau data.

Who are the people who mostly can’t pay rent, I bet a large percentage are immigrants of all stripes who are losing work in the service industry and in food processing. Can you say meatpackers!

Look around where you live and I will bet you find bailouts for immigrants coming from local tax dollars. In just a couple minutes of searching I found this one for Illinois.

IDHS COVID-19 Resources for Immigrants and Refugees

See who gets to distribute the money in Illinois—radical Leftist groups like the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR)—so that the needy immigrants then see who they are beholden to! And, it is not you, the taxpayer!

Just a reminder that back in the heyday of the Obama administration Democrat mayors were squawking to Obama and telling him they wanted MORE refugees (100,000 at least) especially the Syrians saying their cities needed many more poor, uneducated citizens who would eventually vote for more Dems.

NO, they weren’t that truthful, they said they needed more refugees to help their cities grow into economic boom towns (to benefit landlords and the Chamber of Commerce). Well, no they didn’t say that exactly either, they just tried to make it look like they are humanitarians seeking to help the world’s less fortunate.

So let’s take a trip down memory lane and see which mayors were begging for more refugees—refugees who are now down and out.

Story from 2015:

18 US Mayors tell Obama: We want MORE Syrian (Muslim) refugees!

Here are the mayors (some may still be in office), but even if they aren’t whoever took over the mayoral job since 2015 is, you can be sure, of the same ilk…

We want over 100,000 refugees a year!

Ed Pawlowski, Mayor of Allentown, PA
Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, Mayor of Baltimore, MD
Martin J. Walsh, Mayor of Boston, MA
James Diossa, Mayor of Central Falls, RI
Mark Kleinschmidt, Mayor of Chapel Hill, NC
Rahm Emanuel, Mayor of Chicago, IL
Edward Terry, Mayor of Clarkston, GA
Nan Whaley, Mayor of Dayton, OH
Domenick Stampone, Mayor of Haledon, NJ
Pedro E. Segarra, Mayor of Hartford, CT
Eric Garcetti, Mayor of Los Angeles, CA
Betsy Hodges, Mayor of Minneapolis, MN
Bill de Blasio, Mayor of New York City, NY
Jose Torres, Mayor of Paterson, NJ
William Peduto, Mayor of Pittsburgh, PA
Javier Gonzales, Mayor of Santa Fe, NM
Francis G. Slay, Mayor of St. Louis, MO
Stephanie A. Miner, Mayor of Syracuse, NY

Obama gave them almost as many as they wanted in fiscal year 2016 as he was walking out the door—almost 85,000 from 79 countries.

If you live in a Democrat-run city, you need to think about the possibility that your city could see more homelessness, strife and crime in the coming months, so please take time now and prepare for your family’s safety and well-being. Consider moving!

See here and here.

Refugees placed in rough neighborhoods, not so sure it was a good idea to come to America

07/03/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

“I wanted to come here, have a nice house, a car, but they kill your son,” she said. “They broke my heart. They killed me, too.”

(Mother questioning why she ever came from the DR Congo to Chicago)

Stories are increasingly showing up in the media about refugees placed by federally funded resettlement agencies in to cheap housing in dangerous neighborhoods.

Darlis killed in Milwaukee — 17-year-old Darlis was shot and killed in Chicago

Yesterday I posted this story from San Antonio, and reader ‘ganjagrandma’ sent another story from last week about Milwaukee, Chicago and Rockford, Illinois where not only were refugees placed in slum housing, but were targets of violence and murder in the neighborhoods where they were placed.
(I suspect those refugees in a Boise housing complex are feeling like Darlis’ mother.)
Of course, I am a little suspicious about this spate of stories because I think what it is leading to is a demand for more federal money for refugee agencies and an opportunity to blame Donald Trump yet again for being heartless.
You need to know a couple of things before I go on with this latest news on the subject.
Continue reading →

Illinois: pro-refugee op-ed is worth mentioning, state taxpayers on the hook

11/19/2016 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Every time a federal resettlement contractor arrives in a new site and attempts to convince local taxpayers that the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program is a federal program that won’t cost local and state taxpayers anything, beware.
Editor’s note: I was in Washington, DC yesterday for business and pleasure so only just now posted good comments from readers to my posts of Thursday. Sorry for the delay.
This op-ed at Chicago Monitor by Megan Waden has a few interesting nuggets I want you to see, and this final line sums up exactly why I do what I do and thus I agree whole-heartedly with its author:

When engaging in policy discussions to address the refugee admissions process, presenting a more comprehensive picture of the security clearance process and the resources provided throughout resettlement is critical.

My role at RRW for the last nearly 10 years has been to present a “more comprehensive picture” of how resettlement works and who is paying for it.
The writer begins by giving the refugee industry’s talking points about security screening, but you need to know that for the Syrian resettlement, the Obama Administration has reduced screening time down to 3 months.

megan-wadin — Megan is a graduate of the University of St Andrews, UK where she studied Human Geography. She volunteers with Heartland Alliance and the Pan African Association’s refugee resettlement programs in Chicago. In the future she hopes to pursue a Graduate Degree in Refugee Studies.

Then in this next section, I was stunned, flabbergasted, to see how much Illinois taxpayers have been ponying-up for refugee and immigrant “services.” You need to find out how much your state is spending. And, this below doesn’t even mention the cost of welfare payments and the cost of educating the kids!
(Editor: I split this paragraph in to segments for easier reading):

Agencies funded at the state level remain particularly vulnerable to the budget impasse in Illinois. The impasse has led to cuts for several services including the Immigrant Family Resource Program, which “assists immigrants in determining whether they are eligible for public benefits and enables the state to meet federally mandated language-access obligations***”. [They have a whole agency which determines if refugees/immigrants are eligible for welfare!—ed]

Funding was also cut for The New Americans Initiative, ending the program’s ‘citizenship application assistance and outreach’. Over 200 employees were laid off in the Refugee and Immigrant Services sector, as an additional 100 positions remain severely at risk. [Illinois had 300 employees doing this!—ed]

The Director of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, Breandan Magee, has quoted over 102,000 clients this year as going without services as a result of these funding cuts. Non-state funded groups like the Syrian Community Network in Chicago, who provide resettlement services for Syrian refugees, try to fill that gap in state funding. But they have to rely on community donations to fund their training and other programs.

More here.
The Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights is an activist group promoting open borders which we have mentioned often over the years. Click here to see those posts.
***This reference to “federally mandated language-access obligations” is about a Clinton era EXECUTIVE ORDER that Bush could have rescinded but didn’t. Trump? It says that you, local and state taxpayers, must provide at your expense interpreters whenever refugees/immigrants have problems with any institution receiving federal funding for medical care, school systems, criminal justice system, etc.
About the photo: Ahhhh! there is a degree in Refugee Studies! Will they hire me to be a guest lecturer?

Comment worth noting: Refugees are liars in Illinois (and where you live too!)

09/12/2016 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I’ve been writing about two things lately that come together in this one comment from a regular reader.
Posted to my report Saturday headlined, The big lie: refugees are not being vetted, this is what ‘domstudent11’ reports:

Ann, they are indeed not being vetted! As a shocking update to the refugee family in my family member’s apartment (Evanston, IL), it turns out that these people LIED to World Relief and the church that sponsored them. They were evicted last week after doing over $4,500 worth of damage to the apartment. When the landlord tried to bill them for repairs, it turned out that EVERY piece of information they gave to World Relief and the church was a LIE. The Evanston Police are now involved. This family has gone underground. So much for vetting. Even the contractors are fooled!

What are the two important points to take away? First, refugees are not being thoroughly vetted (some not vetted at all), and that landlords are increasingly wary of leasing to refugees especially as we learned here, the resettlement contractors dropping them in your towns will not back up the refugees by co-signing their leases (amazing!).
BTW, if the lazy, fearful, complicit Members of Congress really wanted to reform this program they could make some simple fixes (initially) and one would be to make it a law that federal resettlement contractors must co-sign every home or apartment lease when they place refugees. And, make sure damages come from their own meager, privately raised funds (not from more of your tax dollars).
This reader comment is filed in our Comments worth noting/guest posts category, click here for more from readers.

Illinois: Zakat Foundation to open cultural center specifically for Rohingya Muslims in the state

04/07/2016 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

While we focus on Syrians, thousands upon thousands of equally questionable Muslim refugees are being admitted to the US—most notably Somalis, Iraqis, Uzbeks and now enough Rohingya Burmese Muslims to warrant a special “cultural” center for them!

My! My! how times have changed. When I first began writing RRW, the US State Department would not admit Rohingya Muslims. Now thousands are here!
We have probably the largest archive anywhere on the Rohingya Muslim ‘refugee’ issue with 187 posts extending back to 2007 where we first learned from Time magazine about how Islamic terror groups had infiltrated the devout Rohingya population.
If someone wanted to write a book on how the ‘humanitarians’ and the international Leftists can wear down a country (the US) by creating a media drumbeat to the point where our leaders have now thrown previous caution to the wind and are admitting refugees who definitely cannot be properly screened, your research is done on these pages! (Unfortunately, most of our so-called leaders in Washington don’t even know this is happening!)
Here is one of many posts I wrote way back when. And this is what Time magazine said about the Rohingya in 2002!

Here is what Time magazine said about Rohingya on October 14, 2002 in an article entitled, ‘Deadly Cargo’ by Alex Perry.

Today, southern Bangladesh has become a haven for hundreds of jihadis on the lam. They find natural allies in Muslim guerrillas from India hiding out across the border, and in Muslim Rohingyas, tens of thousands of whom fled the ethnic and religious suppression of the Burmese military junta in the late 1970s and 1980s. Many Rohingyas are long-term refugees, but some are trained to cause trouble back home in camps tolerated by a succession of Bangladeshi governments. The original facilities date back to 1975, making them Asia’s oldest jihadi training camps. And one former Burmese guerrilla who visits the camps regularly describes three near Ukhia, south of the town of Cox’s Bazar, as able to accommodate a force of 2,500 between them.

This is the news today from Illinois (hat tip: domstudent11) from The Daily Northwestern:

Home to more than 2,400 new refugees from 29 nations that migrated in the past year, residents say Illinois has historically been an open and welcoming place for asylum-seekers and immigrants alike.

“Illinois is easier to resettle because it’s so diverse,” said Suzanne Akhras Sahloul, a Syrian refugee and founder of the Syrian Community Network. “It’s important to see people who are of different ethnic backgrounds because then that makes our transition a little bit easier.”

rohingya_flyer__large — Rohingya Cultural Center to open in Chicago on Saturday. http://www.zakat.org/news/rohingya-cultural-center/

But following Governor Bruce Rauner’s call in November to halt the flow of Syrian refugees into Illinois and Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric on immigrants, including a proposal to temporarily bar all Muslims from entering the United States, some say the state may turn in a different direction. [Illinois is in the top five states for the resettlement of Syrian Muslims, see here.]

Muslim ‘charity’ to open cultural center just for Rohingya.

In the 2015 calendar year, Syrians made up about 6 percent of all refugees in Illinois, preceded by those from the Democratic Republic of Congo at 12 percent, Iraq at almost 20 percent and Myanmar at nearly 40 percent, according to U.S. Department of State data.

The Zakat Foundation of America, an organization that provides resources for low-income communities, plans on opening a culture center just outside of Evanston this weekend. The center, which has been in the works for six months, is the latest effort by the organization to provide resources for Rohingyan refugees fleeing Myanmar.

“There are two basic things motivating the project,” said Jamie Merchant, public relations coordinator at Zakat. “The specific problems of this uniquely disadvantaged community of the Rohingya and also trying to establish a new angle for approaching the general challenges of resettlement.”

Catholic Bishops lobbied for Rohingya!
The US Conference of Catholic Bishops is one of the major lobbying groups to push for the seeding of America with Rohingya Muslims as we reported here in 2013. I was in attendance when the USCCB said we must bring more Rohingya to America.
One more thing….
Although there is no evidence any of your tax dollars are going to this group, but generally the federal government (with grants) encourages the establishment of cultural centers specifically for ethnic groups to be with their own kind of people, how does that help assimilation to America?