Governor Paul LePage once quipped: “I was Donald Trump before Donald Trump became popular!”
The Republican Governor who attempted to stem the flow of Maine taxpayer- funded welfare to literally the world says he will run again in 2022. If he wins it would end 4 years of Democrat control of a state trending blue in recent years.
‘Working People Vote Republican’: Former Gov. Paul LePage Launches Comeback Bid in Maine
Former Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R) announced Monday that he would run once again in 2022 as he seeks to serve as the state’s governor, a role he previously held for two terms.
LePage said in a campaign announcement:
Today I am officially starting my campaign for Governor of Maine. Maine faces several challenges and we must work toward building a better future based on individual liberty, fiscal responsibility, and an economy which empowers everyone including our rural communities.
“We simply cannot continue to look to Washington, DC for bailouts, subsidies, or leadership,” he added. “We must ensure Maine is a great place to raise a family for generations to come, for all Mainers regardless of background.”
This is an excellent opinion piece from Maine, a state we have extensively reported on here at RRW.
The writer very logically explains that before the state willy-nilly invites even more refugees and asylum seekers who supposedly would fill the needs of businesses looking for labor, more data is needed because right now it sure looks like Maine taxpayers are picking up the slack.
Maine Compass: Work permits for asylum applicants? Slow down
We need more data on how long it takes most refugees to make enough in wages to support their families without taxpayers’ help.
As more asylum seekers arrive in Portland, members of Maine’s congressional delegation want to accelerate work permits, pointing to labor shortages and taxpayer costs. But on a closer look, good reasons exist for continuing to require applicants to wait for work permits.
[….]
I believe that the labor benefit of employing asylum applicants is exaggerated, as court denial rates for West African applicants range from 40 percent to 50 percent, which suggests that almost half of Portland’s asylum seekers will eventually be denied and become potentially deportable. And of those who achieve refugee status, there are substantial costs.
Proof that the costs of refugee resettlement are shifted to states, while supposedly some financial benefits accrue at the federal level.
An internal study rejected by the Trump administration and leaked to The New York Times, “The Fiscal Costs of the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program at the Federal, State, and Local Levels from 2005-2014,” provides important data for Maine’s representatives in Washington. The authors estimate that refugees and their dependents generated a $52.8 billion federal surplus but caused a net deficit at the state and local levels of $35.9 billion. Since the federal surplus would be shared nationwide, but the state and local deficits fall entirely on state and local governments, increasing the number of refugees in Maine would cost Maine taxpayers.
And the federal benefit? I imagine that the study’s computed federal benefit is inflated, as the impact of refugees on the high cost of national defense or federal debt was not included in this study — a surprising omission.
I suspect the enormous cost to our economy of remittances—money sent back to the home country—was never included either.
Christian continues….
Refugee costs shouldn’t surprise us. Moving to a new country, learning the language and making enough money to support your family is difficult.
The Maine Department of Labor looked at the employment data five years after Somali immigrants arrived in Lewiston-Auburn in 2001. By 2006, only half of working-age Somalis had worked at all. Many of those jobs were seasonal and low wage.
Excellent questions that are NEVER answered:
Before providing work permits to a new population of asylees, we need more data. How long does it take most refugees to make enough in wages to support their families without taxpayer programs? Will Portland’s applicants remain when they get refugee status? Or will they move to cities with better wages and larger populations of their compatriots? Do they have the skills our employers need?
[….]
When politicians provide foreign workers to employers that don’t pay a livable wage, then taxpayers will eventually subsidize the employee with public programs. It would be better to require employers to recruit Americans.
Now here comes the ticking time bomb that no one wants to talk about—what is going to happen to all of the low-skilled workers we have admitted (and continue to admit) by the millions as the automation monster rears its ugly head?
And we might ponder the future. A recent McKinsey study is projecting that automation will replace nearly half of the American workforce by 2055.Walmart already uses robots to stock shelves, and McKinsey predicts that automation will sweep the economy. Let’s slow down, and think this one through.
Mainer Cynthia Anderson recently published a book about how 6,000 plus Somali refugees are busy resuscitating a supposedly dying Maine city.
No surprise that the Star Tribune, in the heart of Little Mogadishu, MN, reviewed Anderson’s book. One quote in the review stands out and it makes my blood boil!
“I also think journalists, including me, sometimes don’t push for answers lest they appear insensitive or out of fear they’ll provide ammunition to haters.”
Just think about that, she is admitting she might have pulled some punches so as not to give us (haters! and Islamophobes!), critics of the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program, any ammunition. WHAT THE H***!
If so-called journalists were HONEST, for one thing there would be no need for me to write this blog and secondly if they were HONEST then maybe government programs like this one might be reevaluated, reformed or trashed.
Review: ‘Home Now: How 6,000 Refugees Transformed an American Town,’ by Cynthia Anderson
“Home Now” by Cynthia Anderson; Public Affairs (318 pages, $28)
“A moving chronicle of who belongs in America.” Guess you can see the bias right there at Amazon.
At a campaign rally in Portland, Maine, President Donald Trump linked worsening crime in Maine to the influx of Somali refugees there. He blamed their large community in Minnesota for straining the state’s social safety net and bringing potential recruits for Islamic terrorist groups.
“You see it happening,” Trump said. “You read about it.”
The above is a reminder to all those wimpy Republican governorswho are ‘welcoming’ more Somalis, Iraqis, and Syrians to your states that the President wants to rein-in the program. Duh!
Long before Trump turned refugee resettlement into a national flash point, Cynthia Anderson was immersing herself in Lewiston, Maine, a small white town that came to host one of the largest populations of Somali-Americans in the country, for her timely, richly detailed book “Home Now.”
Anderson grew up in a village 45 miles away and recalled the area’s gradual decline leading up to 2001, when the first Somali refugees arrived in nearby Portland.
She reported on Lewiston’s transformation for more than a decade, moving from seeing Somali newcomers as passive victims traumatized by war to people with complex, resilient trajectories.
Anderson also writes about Fatuma Hussein, a community leader and advocate for Somali women who admires Maine’s civility and is optimistic about relations between natives and newcomers. She speaks out in opposition to Trump’s election, yet she is also forthright about the challenges of merging different cultures in Lewiston.
The town is not prepared to absorb the arrivals so quickly; the mayor draws headlines for saying Lewiston is “maxed out.”
Anderson deftly sums up the tension by noting that the new refugees were not ungrateful but nor were they just grateful.
[….]
Though the book paints a mostly rosy picture of how refugees can revitalize a community, Anderson is honest [?—how honest?—ed] about her qualms.
During debates over a state bill aimed at the Somali-American community to ban female genital mutilation (FGM), she admits to being conflicted. Anderson is initially opposed, and doesn’t want to see the Somali community hurt, but nor does she want harm to come to any Somali girls.
[What woman could possibly be conflicted about the brutal practice of slicing off a portion of a girl’s genitals?—ed]
Anderson also acknowledges that the refugee vetting process warrants examination, noting that records can be inadequate in war-torn countries.
She considers it fair to question how long refugees take to become self-sufficient, finding answers inconsistent and hard to find. [No kidding—this program is run in secrecy! The refugee contractors and the government don’t want anyone to find out how poorly the refugees are doing!—ed]
“I also think journalists, including me, sometimes don’t push for answers lest they appear insensitive or out of fear they’ll provide ammunition to haters,” she admits. “But not asking and not knowing provides fertile ground for rumors to flourish. It’s also patronizing; Lewiston’s newcomers can withstand the scrutiny.” [Note that she deftly suggests that those of us with concerns are trafficking in rumors!—ed]
Anderson raises these questions through her portrait of Jared Bristol, driven after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to become an activist against Islamic extremism. Bristol advocates for the FGM bill during a hearing that’s one of the only times Anderson sees Muslims and anti-Islamists in the same place.
Such activists, Anderson writes, “are wrong if they believe I absorbed nothing they and other anti-Islamists said or that my thinking didn’t shift, however incrementally.” [So what good is absorbing if she then pulls punches?—ed]
Scrutiny comes anew when a man dies of a fatal head injury after being attacked by several teens of African descent.
Nevertheless, and moving right along, the expert concludes:
….that Mainers feel that integrating refugees is worth the effort, even as it has taken time and money.
That is not what I’m hearing!!!
See my extensive, and I mean extensive archive on Lewiston here at RRW (there is more at ‘Frauds and Crooks.’)!
Gee, I wonder if Ms. Anderson used any of the material I’ve compiled over the years? Did she get the story about the Somali teen who burned down four apartment buildings in 2013 for example? Or the one about the ISIS fighter whose wife lived in Lewiston? Or the Somali health care scammers? And, as far back as 2009 Somali ‘youths’ were roaming the streets and attacking people.
You guessed it, the headline calls him a Vermont man, but it could have more accurately said: ‘Somali refugee lied to gain admission to the US, gets slap on wrist!’
Here is how the Lewiston Sun Journal titled its story I assume to make it sound as benign as possible (hat tip: Steven):
Vermont man gets two months and revoked citizenship for false claims
[What no deportation?—ed]
LEWISTON — A Vermont man with ties to Lewiston and Auburn was sentenced Wednesday for impersonating a Somali man.
Hussien Noor Hussien, 56, of Burlington, Vermont, appeared in U.S. District Court in Portland where a judge sentenced him to two months in prison for impersonating another in a naturalization proceeding, procuring naturalization contrary to law and making a false statement on a passport application, according to court records.
After he’s released from federal prison, Hussien will be on supervised release for three years, Judge George Z. Singal ordered.
Singal also ordered Hussien’s citizenship be revoked because he was naturalized illegally. [But I don’t see anything about deportation!—ed]
Hussien was convicted on the three charges after a three-day trial.
Hussien entered the United States in 2004 as a refugee under the name Abukar Hassan Abdule, along with the wife and children of the real Abukar Hassan Abdule. Three years later, Hussien obtained a driver’s license using that name. In 2011, Hussien applied for U.S. citizenship in Maine under that assumed name.
On his citizenship application and during a citizenship interview with federal officials, Hussien affirmed that his name was Abukar Hassan Abdule. He eventually was naturalized under that name.
Hussien applied for a U.S. passport in 2011 at a Lewiston post office under the assumed name using a Maine driver’s license as identification after he became a citizen. On his application, he listed the name of Abdule’s wife. In 2013, he renewed his U.S. passport under his real name. Also in 2013, he filed in a Vermont court to change his name legally from Abukar Noor Abdule to Hussien Noor Hussien.
But when Abukar Hassan Abdule’s children applied for passports, that triggered a fraud investigation.
“It was discovered that two individuals were using the Abukar Hassan Abdule identity,” according to a complaint filed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in federal court.
Hussien’s likeness in passport applications “did not match the individual pictured in the identification documents … submitted with the minor children’s passports,” according to the complaint.
“The documents submitted with his minor children’s passport applications were (Adule’s) refugee identity cards from Kenya issued in 2010 and 2015,” according to the complaint. “All of Abdule’s consent forms for his minor children’s passport applications were executed in Kenya, where he appears to reside,” the complaint says.
There is more as the wife admits lies she told!
I thought I recognized this story and yes, I wrote about it in May of 2018, see that post in which I went into greater detail about the lies Somali ‘families’ tell to get into the US.
I wrapped that post with this:
Hussien (or whatever his name is!) is only the tip of the iceberg!
Looking for something to do?
Contact the White House(contact link here) and tell the President to find and vigorously prosecute refugee fraud then broadcast the punishment widely around the world in the hope of deterring the ever-growing epidemic of refugee fraud, bribery and corruption.
The Justice Department’s September 11th press release is here.
See one of several posts on Somali refugee fraud at my other blog ‘Frauds and Crooks.’
Don’t miss this oneabout the fraud in United Nations camps in Kenya where most of our Somalis come from!
They got this liar, but how many more are out there—20,000 give or take another couple of thousand!
Yesterday I posted this story at Frauds and Crooks:
Writer: Solve Border Crisis by Turning Asylum Seekers Over to Refugee Resettlement Agencies for Care (ahhhhh!)
After following the activities of the US Refugee Resettlement Agencies—the nine federal contractors largely funded by you and me (the taxpayers)—I can say with absolute certainty that this is a foolish idea.
Treat all the border jumpers as refugees and turn them over to the care of Leftwing federal refugee resettlement contractors!
And today I’ll have news on the arrests in Lewiston, Maine in the death of a Maine manlast year. Update: See news of the arrests, here.
If you haven’t made your move to Frauds and Crooks, click here, and subscribe in the right hand side bar. Or, just visit every day or so and see what is new!
Now here comes the ticking time bomb that no one wants to talk about—what is going to happen to all of the low-skilled workers we have admitted (and continue to admit) by the millions as the automation monster rears its ugly head?
