Thanks to everyone who has sent me one version or another of this story about calls for refugee resettlement moratoriums in Springfield, Mass, Lewiston, Maine, and Manchester, NH.*** Regular readers here know the problems in those three New England cities well, so it is not news to us.
However….
What is news is that the news (mainstream media) is actually paying attention and making connections! I don’t know which came first, the Fox News story(Fox does credit AP), or the AP story.
But, I’m thrilled to see the word “moratorium” used other than on the pages of RRW!
I haven’t enough time to analyze the articles for you, so please read them! There is one thing that caught my eye, however, that needs to be mentioned. The US State Department and its contractors choose resettlement cities with virtually no input from the locals (elected or otherwise), any reference to “stakeholders” usually means only FRIENDLY stakeholders (for the record, I hate that word)!
Daniel Langenkamp (right) Public affairs adviser at US State Dept. PRM http://www.linkedin.com/pub/daniel-langenkamp/1a/197/563
Once they have established a seed community of certain ethnic groups they then throw up their hands and say—what can we do? Families must be reunited and we can’t stop refugees from moving where there are ethnic enclaves of their kind of people. You see their cop-out in these stories when State Department spokesman Daniel Langenkamp says this:
Such requests [for a moratorium—ed] are rare, said Daniel Langenkamp, a department spokesman.
“We make every effort to work with local officials and other stakeholders to ensure the resettlement of refugees is acceptable,” he said. [If everything went so well there would never have been a RRW!—ed]
The Department, he said, does not place refugees unless an area is equipped to handle them. [LOL!–ed] The government’s work with refugees in Springfield is mostly about family reunification, and it cannot keep families from moving there if they are placed elsewhere, he said.
Note to any city contemplating “welcoming” refugees, remember this! Once a seed community is established, the extended family comes, and there is no stopping it! Any elected official calling for a slow-down or outright moratorium will be demonized!
See my ten reasonswhy a MORATORIUM is needed! —all the more important now that the border is being overwhelmed with mostly teenaged boys seeking “asylum.”
*** Search RRW for each of those three cities and find dozens of posts (spanning several years) on problems in each.
The International Institute of New England (also a Limon family enterprise) says they never intended to slow the flow of refugees to overloaded Manchester beyond one year. Readers new to Refugee Resettlement should know that resettlement occurs on a fiscal year basis that begins on October 1 and runs to September 30th of the following year.
That means that there will be a big push from now to the end of September to get large numbers of refugees distributed to your towns and, then starting October 1, they will be working to fulfill the President’s determination (his wishlist!) for the number to be resettled in FY 2014. (Remember when so many of you testified to the State Department back in May, that was to get your input, which will be generally ignored, to the plan for 2014.)
From the Manchester Union Leader (hat tip: Joanne):
International Institute’s Benedict-Drew: No deal for FY2014!
Another 200 refugees will be resettled in Manchester in the coming months, a number that Mayor Ted Gatsas said breaks an agreement he had reached with a refugee resettlement organization.
However, the International Institute of New England said the agreement was only for a 12-month period that lapses next month. And the projection for the coming 12 months — 200 refugees for Manchester — is the same as the current period. An additional 50 will be placed in Nashua.
Carolyn Benedict-Drew, the director of the Boston-based International Institute of New England, said the refugees entering New Hampshire starting in October will most likely be Bhutanese and Iraqis.
They are really brazen about it—-turning refugees into VOTERS and turning red states blue!
Benedict-Drew said Bhutanese started settling in Manchester in 2008, and the first wave are in the pipeline to become citizens, about 300.
“These are going to be voting members of our community who will be building the economic base in New Hampshire,” Benedict-Drew said.
Report from USCRI (Lavinia and Peter Limon) says Manchester has lots of taxpayer supported health-care goodies for refugees including mental health and HIV/AIDs treatment:
A recent report by the International Institute of New Hampshire prepared for the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants said that the state’s two largest cities have a favorable economic forecast, medical clinics and facilities to treat refugees with mental health and physical problems, including HIV/AIDs, and access to state funding for English classes.
Mayor Gatsas says he still wants a moratorium and is following what is going on in Springfield, MA.
The abstract report described Gatsas as neutral on the additional 200 refugees.
But Gatsas said that’s not the case, and he continues to favor a moratorium on refugee resettlement. He noted the Democratic mayor of Springfield, Mass., has asked for a moratorium.
Benedict-Drew: We call the shots, not the duly-elected Mayor
Benedict-Drew said the agreement only covered the current year.
“There was never an agreement for more than one year,” she said. “We honored it for one year.
So why are the contractors so unwilling to give Manchester a break.
First, they are driven by an agenda that includes diminishing the role of states (under the 10th Amendment) and bringing immigrant voters to traditionally conservative cities and states. But on a practical level, they are paid by the head to resettle refugees and the various contractors are competing against each other to get their share of the clients (aka refugees). If an agency can’t resettle a certain number of refugees, they will have to close offices and reduce staff.
Once they find a community into which they can pour the poor, they are reluctant to give it up. Additionally, they are paid by the head to bring family members to join the relatives already in the ‘seed’ community. Last year’s resettled Burmese, Somalis, etc. want to bring their extended family to join them and the contractors want to oblige them by placing them in the same town.
That’s why, if you don’t have refugees yet, but there is some word you might get some, raise questions in the local media right away. I call that the squawk factor, if the feds and the contractors get the idea that the squawking (really the questioning) is not going to stop they will move on to a more “welcoming” target city.
We’ve written dozens of posts over the last few years about Manchester, NH and its refugee overload. For those of you struggling with overload in your cities and towns, Manchester’s plight is instructive. Once the US State Department and their resettlement contractors get an ethnic seed community established, it’s almost impossible to stop the flow.
In the case of Manchester, the Mayor and council went so far as to get a bill introduced in the state legislature to give them some rights to call for a moratorium if the city became too overloaded. It failed. And, interestingly, now even some refugees are saying there are too many in Manchester and THEY CAN’T FIND WORK. (Someone please tell Grover Norquist and the Gang of Eight—Senator Kelly Ayotte too—that there are immigrants in need of work in New Hampshire!).
While many Bhutanese have transitioned well to life in U.S. – and they are all better off than they were in refugee camps – many, especially those older than 40, are struggling, Niroula [refugee featured in this article] said.
“Bhutanese are facing lot of challenges, because they are jobless,” he said.
The refugees aren’t the only ones having trouble coping with the transition. The growing number of refugees could be jarring for one of the least diverse states in the country. In the past decade, the number of immigrants in New Hampshire has grown by 36 percent, outpacing national growth by 6 percent.
Refugees are still a fraction of the population in the state’s largest city. A task force estimates there are 3,500 in Manchester out of a total population of 110,000. State Department figures show that between 2000 and 2010, almost 2,500 refugees were resettled in the city, just over half New Hampshire’s total during that period.
A central fear is that because services for refugees are frontloaded to their arrival, those who don’t transition well immediately are falling through the cracks. That could become costly for the city. [Unfunded mandate?—-ed]
Mayor Gatsas: the city needs a break!
In November 2011, Mayor Ted Gatsas, a Republican then newly elected to his second term, drew national attention after asking the State Department to stop resettling refugees to Manchester. In a recent interview, he said he still believes the city could benefit from a break in their arrival.
“We’ve got refugees in this community that don’t know the language, don’t have a job, and what I’ve been saying is let us catch our breath.Let us get these people into working society, so they’re good examples of the city of Manchester,” he said. “You can’t do that by bringing 300 more refugees on top of that.”
Surprise (not!): Resettlement contractors don’t communicate with community!
They [Bhutanese/Nepalese] are the most recent wave of refugees to land in New Hampshire. Several thousand African and Middle Eastern refugees – mostly Iraqi, Somali and Sudanese – were resettled there in the first part of the last decade and continue to arrive in much smaller numbers.
During the last session, Gatsas led a failed push pass a bill at the state level giving municipalities the authority to enact a one-year moratorium on new refugee resettlement. Among the issues he raised at the time was poor communication between the city and the resettlement agency, though he said that relationship has improved.
Look out Nashua! This is standard operating procedure, when the contractors get blow-back and big problems develop in a community, they simply start new seed communities not far away.
To take some of the pressure off Manchester, close to 50 will be resettled in nearby Nashua.
Contractors are keeping an eye on that other pocket of resistance—Tennessee—where there has been some success in getting the state to re-exert its right to say NO to the federal government.
Saba Berhane, director of the refugee services division with the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, said the mayor’s request is unusual and most resettlement communities welcome refugees, despite occasional challenges. But lawmakers in Tennessee passed legislation limiting resettlement, though a moratorium provision was stricken.Most recently, the legislature there killed a bill to that would have required refugee resettlement organizations to reimburse the state’s costs related to refugees.
Manchester is overloaded! Even the refugees get it! Why don’t the contractors?
…Bishnu Dahal, 53, said using a translator that the number of refugees is making it hard to find a job and she wouldn’t mind seeing new refugees settle elsewhere. Several others agreed.
Endnote: We previously wrote about resettlement contractor—Carolyn Benedict-Drew—quoted in this article, here in April.
Update: Jeannine reports that the story gets better, Musa was aide to a Chechen rebel leader, here. What? Are we doing favors for Russia by taking their troublemakers, just like we did with the Uzbeks? Is that what we were doing with the Mesketians too?
Longtime readers know that Manchester, NH is one of the (few!) cities fighting back against the refugee resettlement industry for overloading their city with needy third-worlders. We have dozens of posts at RRW on Manchester (here).
Musa Khadzhimuratov, Manchester NH resident and friend of Marathon bomber. VOA Photo
Now the residents have one more reason to be up in arms. It seems that Tamerlan Tzarnaev was a regular visitor, and that he went shootingwith a wheelchair-bound Chechen there who had clearly come as a refugee(although there is only an oblique reference to the UN bringing him to Manchester). I’ll bet you a buck that, adding insult to injury, Musa Khadzhimuratov is living off the generosity of US and New Hampshire taxpayers in addition to “helping” Tsarnaev.
And, btw, do we give gun permits to former Chechen rebels? (just wondering)
Sheesh, I want to get back to more mundane topics like the State Department meeting this past week, but all of these refugee terrorist stories keep getting in my way (Uzbeks, Somalis, and now the Chechens again)!
Here is the story from the Union Leader, but do not skip the comments! (Hat tip: Jeannine)
MANCHESTER – Boston Marathon suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev went target shooting at a Manchester firing range and met up with an exiled former Chechen rebel living in the Queen City a month before the attack that killed three and wounded more than 260, according to a Voice of America report.
FBI agents on Tuesday searched the Manchester home of Chechnya native Musa Khadzhimuratov, and examined the hard drives on his computers, VOA reported. Police in Manchester confirmed the FBI agents searched Khadzhimuratov’s home, according to the story, but Manchester Police Chief David J. Mara said police will not confirm anything because it is not their case.
The FBI, Mara said, also are not commenting on the matter.
[….]
The Khadzhimuratovs keep to themselves, the resident said, and do no socialize with other tenants. She thought his wife works but does not believe Khadzhimuratov is employed. He is paralyzed from being shot in the back in his native Chechnya.
Khadzhimuratov told a VOA reporter that FBI agents went to his home Tuesday with search warrants and took DNA sample and his fingerprints.
He said he repeatedly met with Tsarnaev over the past several years and that the FBI first questioned him on April 29, two weeks after the deadly attack. Tsarnaev died in a shootout with police while his brother, Dzhokhar, 19, was wounded and later captured.
[….]
He said he came to the United States from Chechnya in 2004 through a United Nations program. He is paralyzed from the waist down from gunshot wounds suffered in Chechnya in 2001, according to the VOA article.
He said he first met Tsarnaev seven years ago at the annual meeting of the Chechen Society of Boston. Tsarnaev visited him three times in Manchester and once came with his wife and child.
Chechen Society of Boston? We were told, in many articles (I wish I had saved them) that there are only a small handful of Chechens in the whole US, but obviously there are enough in the Northeast to have a ‘society.’
There are some great comments at the Union Leader, please read them.
Here is one I liked a lot! From Eric Boyle:
Well done everyone. Every ones comments are dead on. We need to be more vocal about all of this. The liberals get their way because they are loud. Let’s get vocal about what we believe in!
Update April 4th: A reader directed us to the comment section at this Union Leader story (I admit I hadn’t previously read them), but here is just one of many great comments. This one is from Jeannine Richardson and sums up the feelings of many:
Rick D’Alarcao [another commenter] – I think you and Ginger should offer to take in a few of these refugees if you think we need more of them. Put your money where your alleged “do-gooder” mouth is. Liberals are always do-gooders with other peoples’ money. That should be the motto of the Democrat Party.
Just a reminder, Ms. Richardson sent testimony to the US State Department hearing last May. We published it here. So please all of you send a statement to the State Department this year!
This story is a few days old now and I held it up because I have so much to say about this latest flare up in New Hampshire between a federal refugee resettlement contractor and the elected officials in Manchester and Nashua.
Unfortunately, this is going to have to be Part I of what I plan to say because I am out of time for my ‘charitable work’ this morning of bringing you the news about LEGAL immigration programs and problems.
Before I give you a portion of this news story, keep a couple of things in mind. These contractors have to operate in secrecy (some agencies are worse than others) because they know that once citizens fully get wind of what is happening, citizens usually object.
And, the other point that you should know is that once a resettlement agency gets a foothold in your city, they get PAID BY THE STATE DEPARTMENT to process in the earlier refugees’ family members. That’s why I call this seeding! It’s also known as chain migration!
Resettlement contractors have a huge financial incentive to keep the family reunification applications flowing, and they will sucker poor residents of a city with a guilt trip about keeping the families together. Most Americans are a soft touch and they know it.
By the way, there is no federal law that says they have to place the extended family within 50 miles of their other family members, maybe the State Department tells them that, but Congress never did. And, besides as this article points out, refugees will move anyway within a few months because they want to be with their own ethnic group.
Note location of Nashua directly south of Manchester. Concord has them too.
Here is the story from the Union Leader (Ready or Not, the refugees are coming). Emphasis below is mine:
The state’s refugee resettlement program is expected to spread from Manchester to Nashua in the coming weeks, with 50 refugees headed toward the Gate City. Officials in both cities are expressing concern over the plans.
“I was talking about my concerns with the head of the International Institute*, and the next communication I have from them is to say that they (the refugees) are coming, and we’ve found housing for them,” said Nashua Mayor Donnalee Lozeau.“I asked, ‘Where? When? Who’s coming? Are there any children?’ No one has any answers. The concerns I raised were real ones, and I feel like they weren’t addressed at all.”
The International Institute of New Hampshire (IINH) has been working for months to resettle another 200 refugees in Manchester, despite a sometimes frosty relationship with city officials. Mayor Ted Gatsas wrote a letter in 2011 to the U.S. State Department, which oversees the refugee program, faulting its “complete and utter lack of consideration for the local resettlement community.”
Citing the challenges the thousands of refugees already in the city face in terms of housing, education and employment, Gatsas later sought a moratorium on new arrivals, asking the Executive Council to withhold federal contracts to IINH and other resettlement agencies. The contracts were eventually approved.
Manchester Ward 3 alderman Pat Long, who headed a commission to study the refugee problems in Manchester, said he approached IINH officials months ago about the possibility of spreading out the 200 incoming refugees to other communities around the Queen City.
“There is a stipulation that resettlement take place within 50 miles of the local state office,” said Long. “The IINH office is located in Manchester, so we were asking that they look at other communities within 50 miles of the city as well. Nashua was one of them, and when I heard there were 50 refugees headed there, I thought at first they were part of the group of 200, but that’s not the case. The IINH has applied for and been approved to receive 50 additional refugees.”
[….]
“When we’ve questioned them in the past, the IINH always points out that these are families they are trying to keep together, that the refugees have family members here they are coming to be with,” said Long. “So my concern with this is, when the institute money runs out, and this group leaves Nashua, they likely have family here in Manchester. So it’s likely they will head here as well.”
[…..]
…. Lozeau said she has many concerns.
“It’s not enough to bring them just because you have federal money and the OK to do so,” she said. “Without doing the proper due diligence work, you are setting them up to fail, and that doesn’t benefit anyone. [including the citizens and taxpayers of the resettlement city—ed]
* The International Institute of New Hampshire is a subcontractor of the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, here. USCRI is headed by Lavinia Limon, here, who ran the whole federal Office of Refugee Resettlement for Clinton. She revolved out of the government door and into the government contractor door!
For more information, type ‘New Hampshire’ into our search function for dozens and dozens of posts on problems there.
Watch for Part II about what you can do in your towns and cities!
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