Have you seen the meme—the one that the refugee industry has been blasting all over social media—to guilt-trip good-hearted people into welcoming Syrian Muslims*** to America? It is maddening! Here is what I said on twitter when Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, which is being paid (by the head) by the US taxpayer to resettle Syrians to your towns, spread fake news (on twitter) about Jesus!
Here is a good article at the Daily Wire debunking the purposeful misreading of the New Testament:
Every December, as millions celebrate the birth of Christ, a bevy of people who know absolutely nothing about the New Testament try their dead-level best to trap Christians in a hypocrisy trap. Memes and quotes spread across social media like a virus, claiming the story of Mary, Joseph, and Jesus is analogous to the Syrian refugee crisis…
[….]
A healthy debate about the Syrian refugee crisis is perfectly acceptable and necessary, however, it is in no way analogous to the story of the birth of Christ. Let us count the ways.
[….]
Mary and Joseph were returning home for a government-mandated census.
With Trump win, Santa Fe’s refugee program on hold
(Albuquerque Journal headline)
Hurrah! We found another*** of the supposedly 47 sites the Obama Administration has (secretly!) approved or was working on approving for the massive numbers of refugees they expected to resettle had Hillary won the election rather than Donald Trump. Here is the sad tale from Sante Fe (a city yearning for more diversity). After an initial heartwarming intro:
In less than a year – and largely through the efforts of Santa Fe’s faith communities – what snowballed into a group calling themselves Welcoming Santa Fe were able to get the city designated a refugee resettlement site by the U.S. State Department.
“We were elated,” Dickenson [Nancy a Sante Fe filmmaker who spear-headed the effort] said.
Sante Fe Mayor Javier Gonzales wanted more diversity for Sante Fe. He was one of 18 mayors who demanded Syrian refugees for their cities in 2015. See here: https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2015/10/14/act-for-america-launches-citizen-action-campaign-urging-18-mayors-to-re-think-their-demand-for-more-syrian-refugees/
But that was in October. Weeks later, on Nov. 8, Donald Trump won the presidential election. He campaigned on a strict immigration policy that included building a wall on the southern border to stop illegal immigration. He also proposed a temporary ban on allowing Muslims into the country, a message he repeated Wednesday in response to this week’s terrorist attack in Berlin that was allegedly perpetrated by a Tunisian asylum-seeker.
No one knows what a Trump presidency will mean for immigration policy. And that’s what caused Lutheran Family Services, an affiliate of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service – one of nine national organizations that work on behalf of the U.S. government to resettle refugees in different parts of the country – to put on hold using Santa Fe as a refugee settlement site.
One hundred refugees, including up to 20 families and 30 children mainly from Central Africa but also from the Middle East and South America, were scheduled to make Santa Fe their new home next month. The startup of a refugee resettlement program was mentioned at a recent meeting of the city Immigration Committee and notice had been issued for a fundraising concert.
Money is the main reason it is on hold!
Burnett [Tarrie Burnett, program director for Lutheran Family Services in Albuquerque] said future funding is also a major concern. Trump has talked about scaling back the nation’s admissions program for refugees, defined by the State Department as people who face persecution in their native lands.
[….]
Burnett said her office operates on a budget of about $1 million, about 75 percent of it coming from the federal government.The rest comes from various grants, pass-through funding, donations and other sources.
Much more here at the Albuquerque Journal.
Bottomline! Resettlement subcontractors like Lutheran Family Services (LIRS is the major resettlement contractor) are not going out on a limb now to open offices, pay rent, and hire staff when Donald Trump could drastically cut the number of refugees arriving beginning on January 21st.
The contractor’s initial federal funding is paid out by the number of ‘clients’ they place. It is a per head payment!
*** We can now add Sante Fe to our list!
Below are new sites we have identified so far of the supposed 47 the Obama Administration is (or has been) trying to get established.
One of the first things the Trump Administration must do is to make all of this information public information. Here are some of the sites we have identified so far by just keeping an eye on local news reports:
Two days ago we reported that Rep. Mike Honda (D-CA) had introduced a bill in the waning days of the Congress to admit 25,000 Syrian ‘orphans’ to the US.
So I found this story interesting and something you should know about. We do have a program for ‘unaccompanied refugee minors’ not to be confused with the ‘unaccompanied alien children’ flooding across our southern border at the moment (and for the last few years). The refugee minors program is for children who are deemed refugees (not the phony asylum seekers from Central America). Although I think the reporter in the story at US Newshas the efforts confused. Or, is it possible that the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement really has no authority to pay out over a billion dollars a year for those illegal alien children and is doing it under this one? I don’t know if these formal refugee minors programs are also taking care of the tens of thousands of unaccompanied alien children (who are not legitimate refugees!). If your state has a program, you might add this to your investigative work. How many of the refugee ‘children’ are being cared for in your state? Are they all legitimate refugees? Does the program cost state and local taxpayers anything? When they become 18, what happens to them?
This news says they (resettlement agency reps) can find very few truly ‘unaccompanied’ children from Syria (although they are looking!) because most, if separated, quickly find parents or family members who take them in. This makes me wonder why Rep. Honda felt there was a need to bring in 25,000 orphaned Syrian children on a “temporary” basis.
From US News:
Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, or LIRS, and eight other refugee resettlement groups have worked with the federal government to resettle roughly 17,000 Syrian refugees, including many children within family units, since the conflict broke out in the country in 2011. But of those, the State Department says only one has been a minor without a parent or guardian to care for him or her. Out of privacy concerns, they could give no details about the minor.
The U.S. has the capacity to accept more orphans from the war-ravaged country, Haynes and other experts say. It’s just that for now – as jarring as it might sound while Aleppo’s trapped children plead for help – there aren’t many Syrian minors who qualify for this particular form of assistance.
The Unaccompanied Refugee Minors Program in the United States is the only formal program in the world that is specifically designed to bring unaccompanied refugee children into a unique domestic foster care system, says Haynes. Since its founding after the Vietnam War, the program has accepted about 13,000 minors. It’s a relatively small program, admitting about 200 children last year.
The system gives refugees access to all the support available in the regular foster care system, but also provides additional assistance for things like language training and mental health services. It’s a federally funded program, and like all refugee resettlement services, can be changed or terminated at the whim of the president.
The US Conference of Catholic Bishops and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service monopolize this federal grant program.
Children can come into the program a range of ways. They’re frequently referred by United Nations refugee agency partners based in other countries. In other scenarios, they’ve crossed the southern border and are classified as victims of trafficking or asylum seekers. LIRS works with another group, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, to place the children. The program prioritizes family reunification, meaning officials try to place minors with relatives who are able and willing to care for them before putting them in the foster care system.
Now, pay attention to this! Once the ‘unaccompanied’ refugee reaches the age of 18, he she doesn’t leave, but can apply for family members to come to America!
Ensuring that minors are truly unaccompanied takes time, she says. And once they qualify and arrive in the U.S., they can’t apply for any family member to join them in the U.S. until after they are 18.
Here is a storyfrom the Omaha World-Heraldwhich used those Pew numbers we reported yesterday, as the hook for this story about how “welcoming” Nebraska is for refugees.
Nebraska is one of the states I visited over the summer, and I am here to report that even if the Republican governor is thrilled about welcoming refugees, the citizens whose towns are being impacted by refugee labor at meat and chicken processing plants, aren’t too thrilled.
Downtown Nickerson, Nebraska where citizens objected to plans to locate a chicken processing plant in the area. One reason they said NO! is that they did not want an influx of Somali refugee workers.
No mention in this heartwarming report about Nickerson, Nebraska that actually fought and kept out a new chicken plant here last May.
Cut the humanitarian guilt-trip mumbo-jumbo and be truthful!
I live for the day when resettlement contractors like Lutheran Family Services here are completely out in the open about the work they do providing laborers for BIG MEAT and BIG POULTRY and also tell the public that their salaries and offices are paid for by the US taxpayer (this is not a Christian charity! this is not about passing the collection plate on Sunday morning!).*** Then we can have the debate about why it is in the interests of the American taxpayer to supply foreign labor to giant corporations some of which are not even US-owned!
From the Omaha World-Herald: Todd Reckling of Lutheran Family Services at least hints here that LFS works with BIG MEAT which wants refugee workers.
LINCOLN — Nebraska led the nation in resettling the most refugees per capita during the last year, according to newly released federal government data.
The state welcomed 1,441 refugees, or 76 per 100,000 Nebraskans, between October 2015 and September 2016, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of data from the U.S. State Department’s Refugee Processing Center and the U.S. Census Bureau.
Nebraska is a strong draw for refugees because of its strong economy with accessibility to jobs in hospitality and meatpacking, said Todd Reckling, a vice president of Lutheran Family Services, the state’s largest of three placement agencies. About 90 percent of refugees come to the state to reunite with family already living in Nebraska, he said.
“I’d say Nebraska has a reputation for being a welcoming state,” he said, “a place to provide safety and hope for the families that are coming together.”
Continue reading here, especially if you live in Nebraska!
You will notice at the end of the story that some who are not thrilled about the security concerns with refugees are hanging their hat on Donald Trump to take care of that problem.
For any of you in states (especially with Republican governors who are squishy on the refugee program) do some research on who is donating to their campaigns.
***Lutheran Family Servicesin Omaha is a subcontractor of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service headquartered in Baltimore which is 95% funded by taxpayers, go here.
Fayetteville, Arkansas is one of the newest resettlement sites approved by the US State Department to accommodate the large number of refugees that Barack Obama has proposed for FY2017. We previously learned that there are 47 new sites, most chosen in secrecy. Below is the list of those we have heard about so far.***
From Talk Business & Politics:
Canopy Northwest Arkansas received final approval from the State Department on Sept. 30 and is waiting for the assignment of its first refugee family, which could come as early as mid-November.
Real test for Rep. Steve Womack (R) is whether he will support defunding the Refugee Admissions Program when Congress addresses the FY17 budget starting this week! Womack is on the Appropriations Committee: http://womack.house.gov/biography/committees.htm
Canopy partners with the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIRS), one of nine national resettlement agencies that contract with the State Department to run the refugee resettlement program. LIRS is the agency that will assign refugees to Canopy after the refugees go through an extensive screening process, sometimes lasting more than two years. [Learn more about LIRS, here, 95% taxpayer funded!—ed]
Over the course of the coming year, Emily Crane Linn, resettlement director at Canopy, said they expect to settle 20 to 25 families in Northwest Arkansas. [That would likely be over 100 refugees—ed]
[….]
It is the Syrian refugee possibility that caused U.S. Reps. Rick Crawford, R-Jonesboro, Bruce Westerman, R-Hot Springs, and Steve Womack, R-Rogers, to send a letter dated Oct. 24 to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to “express our concern” about the resettlement program. (Link herefor a PDF of the letter.)
Sending a letter won’t cut it.
Sending a letter makes constituents feel better, but….
….we know how that turned out when Rep. Trey Gowdy thought that he could slow the flow to then new resettlement site Spartanburg, SC by writing to John Kerry. It did nothing!!!
Defund! Defund! Defund!
Only one thing matters, and if there is a ‘pocket of resistance’ forming in Arkansas you must tell these three members of Congress to work to cut the funding in the upcoming lame duck budget battle!
I see (here) that Arkansas has no members of Congress who have tried to lift a finger to cut the funding so far.
See Conservative Review’sLiberty score card for the Arkansas delegation.
BTW, how many poultry processing plants in Arkansas are hankering for cheap refugee labor?
***Is your city one of the newest targets for resettlement of third worlders?
Asheville, NC
Rutland, VT
Reno, NV
Ithaca, NY
Missoula, MT
Aberdeen, SD (may have been thwarted as a primary resettlement site!)
