Tag: Massachusetts

Lowell, Massachusetts: Alleged sexual assault by Syrian refugee puts refugee program in the spotlight

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update August 2:  This post reached thousands more readers than usual when Michael Savage linked it on the same day he was briefly suspended from facebook for posting on Muslim refugee crimes.
The US Refugee Admissions Program was created 36 years ago by Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts and was signed into law by Jimmy Carter in 1980.  It has evolved in secrecy in towns that have been receiving third world refugees for decades and where citizens only begin to hear about it when something like the alleged assault by a newly arrived Syrian Muslim refugee in a public swimming pool forces the program into the daylight.

Kevin Murphy Lowell
Former State Rep. Kevin Murphy (D) runs the city of Lowell and will get reports from the federal resettlement contractor “now and then.” Did Murphy ever get an invite to “stakeholders” meeting? Photo: http://www.lowellsun.com/breakingnews/ci_25460940/kevin-murphy-named-new-lowell-city-manager-by

Here is the latest from reporter Amelia Pak-Harvey in Lowell, Mass.  Pak-Harvey has done some great reporting on the arrest of the Syrian (see our earlier post), however, clearly here she is parroting the talking points of the contractor (International Institute of New England an USCRI subcontractor) which, as a federal contractor, has a financial interest in bringing more Syrians and other refugees to Lowell.
LOL! Refugee program is “complicated!”  Yes, and it is that way for a reason—they don’t want anyone to understand how it works!
Here is the latest from the Lowell Sun:

LOWELL — Understanding the refugee resettlement process requires a handful of acronyms — USCIS, ORR, ORI, and the local International Institute of New England, or IINE.

It’s a process even federal and local officials admit is complex, one that often gives cities like Lowell less than a month’s notice to prepare for the arrival of refugees.

It’s also one that seems to usher in much confusion and misinformation — in March, rumors abounded that an influx of Syrians would be pouring into Lowell. Since the beginning of the federal fiscal year in October, the city has only received 18.

But after a 22-year-old Syrian refugee was charged with indecent assault and battery this month, city officials are hoping to have more contact with IINE-Lowell on resettlement.

They are going to give the city manager reports “now and then!”

Pak-Harvey continues:

“I think it was agreed that maybe it’d be good in the future to have more communication between the city side and the International Institute,” said City Manager Kevin Murphy, who met with the nonprofit. “They agreed, and they’re going to give me reports every now and then and we’ll sit down and discuss issues more often, so that we have a good give-and-take between the two.”

Then here is one of the most important pieces of information in this story for those of you concerned with refugee resettlement where you live:

In Lowell, the International Institute already meets quarterly with local stakeholders — including school and police officials — for updates on the latest numbers.

If you live in a refugee-receiving town, g0 to your local “stakeholders” meetings. 

As a taxpayer, you are a stakeholder!  I was shocked in one town I visited recently where the elected officials seemed to not even know that such meetings were occurring!  Does Kevin Murphy know?  Does Murphy know that the International Institute has prepared a document for the US State Department (an R & P Abstract) that lays out how many refugees will be dropped in Lowell in FY2017 and what amenities Lowell is offering the refugees?
I’ll bet he has never seen the document!

Massachusetts: Alleged assault by Syrian refugee exposes secretive nature of refugee program

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The lack of transparency that surrounds the resettlement of third world refugees through the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program is likely the single-most important factor in why I have been writing about it for nine years.  Almost nothing makes me so angry as the arrogant treatment of citizens in towns across the country as refugees are placed in communities with no advance warning in most cases and certainly no thoughtful discussion and planning.

Lavinia Limon smirking
Lavinia Limon is the woman making the decisions about which refugees go to Lowell. USCRI is also in charge of Twin Falls, Idaho and is opening new offices in Rutland, VT and Reno, NV. Go to our extensive archive on Limon (formerly Bill Clinton’s director of the ORR) to learn more: https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/?s=Lavinia+Limon

For decades the only way citizens learned of the program was when it was already up and running and problems had occurred and here we learn from the Lowell, Massachusetts city manager that they have had the same experience.
BTW, controversies like the one on-going in Rutland, VT actually started the same way—a mayor secretively worked with the federal government to ‘welcome’ Syrians to town, and when the residents found out all hell broke loose directed mostly at the mayor for acting secretively.
Here is the latest news from Leo Hohmann at World Net Daily who tells us about some excellent reporting from the Lowell Sun on that case from last week where a Syrian man was arrested for allegedly making advances at a 13-year-old at a public swimming pool.

The secrecy of the federal refugee-resettlement program has once again been highlighted by a local official who has seen the dark side of the program play out in living color.

In Lowell, Massachusetts, a 13-year-old girl was twice groped at a public pool last week by a 22-year-old man freshly imported into the community from Syria as a “refugee.”

The city manager of Lowell told his local newspaper Tuesday that he was not even notified by the U.S. State Department or its resettlement contractor that Syrians were being delivered to his community.

Emad Hasso, 22, of Syria pleaded not guilty Friday to inappropriately touching the girl at the state-run Raymond Lord Memorial Pool in Lowell, according to the Lowell Sun.

This marks the second high-profile sexual assault on an American girl in the past month by a refugee. On June 2, a 5-year-old girl in Twin Falls, Idaho, was reportedly raped by an Iraqi refugee boy while an older refugee from Sudan filmed and coached him during the assault.

Hasso is one of 18 Syrians, all of them most likely Sunni Muslims, who have been secretly planted in the Lowell community since May, according to the State Department’s Refugee Processing Center online database.

City Manager Kevin Murphy said he’d like to receive regular numbers from the federal contractor that resettles refugees in the city. The International Institute subcontracts with the main federal contractor, U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, or USCRI, to deliver refugees to Lowell.

The city does not know when or from where refugees come to Lowell, Murphy said, and is only made aware of them in instances like this one where a refugee gets arrested or otherwise singled out for bad behavior.

“I think we’ll reach out to the International Institute to see if they could cooperate with us in the future by letting us know when they relocate individuals to Lowell,” Murphy said.

Good luck with that!
There is much more here, including a list of the cities where large numbers of Syrian Muslims (yes, they are 99% Muslim and mostly Sunnis) have been placed this year, continue here.
By the way USCRI is the primary federal contractor and the International Institute is a sub-contractor.  Be sure to see this older post when USCRI’s office was ultimately closed in Waterbury, CT (they weren’t caring properly for the refugees they had placed).  See why I referred to Limon for years as ‘whoop-de-do.’
One more thing that will interest you folks in Idaho.  Click here to view a copyrighted photo of Lavinia Limon with the CEO of Chobani Yogurt at the Clinton Global Initiative last September.  They are all in this together—MONEY!

Massachusetts: 22-year-old Syrian refugee arrested for "touching" 13-year-old in public pool

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Oh gee, one more “story” that doesn’t fit the Left’s narrative about refugees! (The Hive needs to get busy!)

You knew it had to happen sooner or later—a 22-year-old Syrian refugee has been arrested for making sexual advances to a young girl at a public swimming pool.  She reportedly told him she was just a kid, so leave me alone.
From the Lowell Sun (hat tip: Joanne):

LOWELL — A 22-year-old Syrian refugee is behind bars after only two months in the United States after he was accused Thursday night of inappropriately touching a 13-year-old girl at a state-run swimming pool in Lowell.

Emad Hasso, right, with defense attorney William Kittredge at his Lowell District Court arraignment on Friday. sun/lisa redmond
Emad Hasso

In Lowell District Court on Friday, Emad Hasso, of Lowell, was ordered held on $25,000 cash bail after pleading not guilty via an interpreter to one count of indecent assault and battery on someone under 16.

Judge Stacy Fortes set the bail over the defense attorney’s objections, because Hasso’s only ties to this country are his family members with whom he lives.

Prosecutor Sam Miller said that around 5:30 p.m. on Thursday, the 13-year-old Lowell girl was at the Raymond Lord Memorial Pool at the North Common Park in Lowell when she said a man approached her, touched her upper thigh and asked her age.

For more details, continue reading here.
Hey Rutland, VT, and Reno, NV! He was likely resettled by the same federal contractor, US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (the federal contractor in Lowell), wanting a toe-hold in your towns. USCRI is in charge of Twin Falls, Idaho too!
What are the odds that this guy is going to become an upstanding American citizen?
An afterthought: So is this the contractor’s fault for not telling their new charges that this sort of behavior is illegal in America? I think it is!

'Faith' group exploring bringing refugees to Cape Cod and Nantucket

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

My first thought when I saw this was, do they actually have cheap subsidized housing there, or are the well-off going to take them home with them?
I’m posting this although I doubt very much that Syrian Muslim refugees are going to be seeded into this expensive realestate in Massachusetts anytime soon.  But, for others of you, this is how it begins—‘church’ groups, whose ‘leaders’ have no clue how the resettlement program works invite in a resettlement contractor.

cape-cod-massachusetts-usa_main
Syrians, Somalis and Iraqis to Cape Cod? What a great idea! Teddy would be so proud!

By the way Senator Ted Kennedy created the refugee program in 1979 (Carter signed it into law in 1980).  I previously joked and referred to Kennedy as ‘don’t bring them to Hyannis’ Kennedy.  I guess he isn’t around to save his neighborhood.
From Cape Cod Times (Answered prayers):

In Vermont, the mayor of Rutland unveiled a plan last month to resettle 100 Syrian refugees who fled the onslaught of the Islamic State and are exiled in refugee camps in Jordan. If approved by the State Department and others, the resettlement would begin in October and gradually send Rutland more Syrian refugees than are currently living anywhere else in New England. [Yikes! Did you folks in Rutland know you would be the Syrian capital of New England joining Lewiston, Maine as the Somali capital!—ed]

[….]

Closer to home, Worcester is in the midst of an initiative that may prove to be a model for refugee resettlement. A coalition of agencies and organizations spearheaded by Ascentria Care Alliance, under a $457,000 grant from the Health Foundation of Central Massachusetts, has undertaken a pilot program — Partnership for Refugee Wellness — to coordinate support among participating organizations that include health care, job training, education, and legal assistance. Ascentria is the former Lutheran Social Services of New England.  [If you live in the Worcester area, you need to follow what Ascentria is doing, we haven’t had time to write about it, but there is much in the news—ed]

Traditional resettlement practices and policies established in 1980 to serve refugees primarily from Southeast Asia and the former Soviet Union are outdated and fall short in serving more diverse needs of recent refugees from the Mideast, South Asia and Africa. A number of refugees struggle once here under the federal program’s funding that allows for an eight-month resettlement period, and focuses on employment and economic stability.

[….]

Perhaps it’s time for the Cape Cod Council of Churches and the Barnstable Interfaith Coalition to develop a similar partnership with Ascentria or the State Department.

[….]

Tom Ryan, a board member of the Council, said he has heard from some church leaders on the Cape and Nantucket about their hopes as congregations or as a network of congregations to receive refugees.

By the way, are there mosques on the Cape?  Does anyone know?
An afterthought:  Have they heard about the Tuberculosis in the refugee flow to America?

Massachusetts: Iraqi family of seven living in a motel, so where are all of the bleeding heart humanitarians?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

….where are all of you ‘Christian’ do-gooders with your personal charitable giving?
This story should make your blood boil.  We are lectured that we should “welcome” refugees to our towns and cities and then those doing all the yammering leave families like this one high and dry, living in a series of motels and expecting their teenage children to morph into successful assimilated American citizens (yeh right!).

Jeffret Thielman
Jeffrey Thielman is the CEO of the International Institute of New England which did not respond to a Boston Globe reporter’s call. This family is his responsibility! http://iine.us/2015/06/iine-announces-new-presidentceo-2/

Read this story, read the whole thing from the Boston Globe on Friday (hat tip: Diane).  And, don’t get mad at the refugees, get mad at your Senators and Members of Congress, get mad at the UN, get mad at the US State Department and get especially mad at the International Institute of New England which brings them in and drops them off!
Do not read this as a plea for more taxpayer funding, but as a plea for a reduction in the number of refugees we admit.  If we can’t take care of them, then don’t bring them.
And, for those of you contemplating ‘welcoming’ refugees to your town for the first time, you will be paying for it.  This article highlights the fact that local and state taxpayer dollars are involved; and, that many of these traumatized families require expensive mental health treatment.
It also points out that your local refugee resettlement contractor simply washes its hands of troubled families and moves on to the next paying ‘clients’ the State Department sends them!
I told you yesterday, that the US State Department is accepting testimony (by May 19th) about the size and scope of the Refugee Admissions Program for FY2017 (Obama has already signaled it will recommend bringing in 100,000 for that year). Someone should write up this story from Massachusetts as an important point in your testimony.
Boston Globe (this is just a bit of the story about the contractor):

Refugee families depend on the federal government to help once they arrive. To assist them, the State Department contracts with nonprofits to help families find an apartment, sign up for health care, enroll in ESL classes, obtain food stamps, and look for employment opportunities. But the organizations are only required to provide guidance for three months, and refugees who need more help must turn to state programs and case managers for other benefits such as welfare.

Samantha Kaufman, a spokeswoman for the Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development, declined to comment on the Rubayes’ plight. “We can’t release any personal information about individuals and families,” she wrote in an e-mail.

Dr. Richard Mollica, director of the Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma, called for increased refugee benefits from the government.

“If you have a medical problem or a mental health problem or you’re a survivor of torture, the probability that you’re going to make it to independent living after eight or nine months is probably nil,” Mollica said.

Currently, the biggest allotment of financial aid for refugees is a one-time federal payment of $2,025 for each family member. Some families pool those funds for rent and clothing, but at least $900 of each allowance goes to pay administrative costs to such resettlement agencies as the International Institute of New England, which was assigned to the family originally for three months, according to Rubaye. The International Institute did not respond to queries about resettling refugees. [No surprise!—ed]

There is much more, read it all.
See our recent post on the number of (potentially troubled) Iraqis entering the US and note that in recent years Iraqis made up the largest ethnic group admitted (82% are Muslims).  We also have an extensive archive with 688 previous posts on the Iraqi migration to America.
Way back in 2008, a wise Iraqi refugee boy penned a letter to the editor in which he said this about the large number of Iraqis entering the US as refugees:

It is better to have 10 Iraqi refugees who are satisfied with their lives than having 100 angry ones with no life at all.

But, the truth is that resettlement contractors can’t keep their doors open if they slow the flow as each refugee brings money (your taxpayer dollars) per head they resettle.  The whole resettlement model is (wrongly, I believe) built on increasing the numbers we admit! It is not about assuring assimilation and success!