Here we go again! Another case of Tuberculosis (ACTIVE TB) has turned up in Minnesota where officials are being questioned about why they waited so long to notify those who might have been exposed to the communicable disease. From Michael Leahy, Breitbart’s expert on diseases in the immigrant/refugee population:
Minnesota Health Officials Conceal Case of Active TB in High School for Six Weeks
A student or staff member at St. Louis Park High School in suburban Minneapolis, Minnesota, was diagnosed with active tuberculosis (TB) in late November, but Hennepin County Department of Health officials and St. Louis Park Public Schools officials concealed that information from the public until the second week of January, six weeks later.
Why did school superintendent Metz wait so long to release this vital information to students’ families? Learn more about Metz here: http://www.startribune.com/rob-metz-to-step-into-superintendent-s-role-in-st-louis-park-on-july-1/208358891/
“Some parents received letters in the mail Thursday saying their teenagers may have been exposed to an infectious disease,” WCCO reported.
“In late November, the school district was notified by the Hennepin County Department of Health that an individual at the high school had been diagnosed with active (TB),” St. Louis Park Public Schools Superintendent Rob Metz wrote in a letter sent to parents of students dated January 11.
The letter was sent in three languages: English, Spanish, and Somali.
Read it all. Some fishy timing on all of this! Metz has moved on to bigger and better things!
I wondered if there is any criminal liability involved if a student or teacher should contract TB during the period when officials were keeping the revelation secret. If there isn’t, this is something Congress could fix pretty easily!
See all of Leahy’s reports on Tuberculosis here.
And see our extensive ‘health issues’ category here.
As if they don’t have enough problems with the tens of thousands of Somalis living in Minnesota, the Minneapolis city council passed a resolution yesterday, welcoming Syrians to join the gang in Minneapolis. Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges (right) in Somali language Youtube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3po7RG2Eyc
Frankly, I’ve wondered why so few Syrians have been sent (by the US State Department) to Minnesota so far and wondered if the DOS was worried that there could possibly be some tensions created with the added diversity in the city where Somalis are king.
Arab Muslims (98% of Syrians entering US right now are Muslim) and black Africans aren’t always the best of friends, and the Syrians will add competition for the same welfare dollars as the Somalis enjoy now.
See screenshot from Wrapsnet.org below showing how many Syrians have been placed in Minnesota. I went back to FY2012 and only these few are recorded so far (with none in FY 2017 to date).
From Minneapolismn.gov:
The Minneapolis City Council and Mayor Betsy Hodges approved a resolution today supporting the resettlement of Syrian refugees in Minneapolis and calling on other Minnesota communities to support a national effort to resettle the country’s most vulnerable refugees.
The resolution notes that “hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees are making life and death decisions to flee Syria and neighboring countries because they are unable to access shelter, health care, education or protection, and neighboring countries have closed their borders to new arrivals.”
[….]
More than 14,000 Syrian refugees have resettled in the United States since the beginning of the conflict in 2011. The Twin Cities is a leader in welcoming refugees and has resettled more than 12,500 refugees from 40 countries, including Syria, since 2011. [Only 5 from Syria have been placed in Minnesota so far—-ed]
“Minneapolis has long stood as a place of welcome for refugees from throughout the world, including those seeking resettlement from Syria,” said Mayor Betsy Hodges. “Today we restate our City’s commitment to welcome Syrian families to make homes and new lives here.”
The other day when I wrote about the large number of Somalis entering the US from refugee camps in Kenya, I wondered who were all the refugees coming from Uganda and here we learn they are Somalis too!
We have written so many posts about Somalis/Catholic Charities in Minnesota, I have lost track. But, I do remember when I first learned that it was three ostensibly Christian federal refugee contractors who first placed Muslim Somalis in Minnesota decades ago,and they are still at it. See that 2011 post here.
It was the generous welfare that made Minnesota so attractive to these resettlement contracting agencies.
Somali Muslims are being placed in Minnesota from Nakivale Refugee Camp in Uganda.
Here is the story that caught my eye just now, from CNSnews:
A Somali couple with three children is seeking a new life in Minnesota thanks to a Catholic Charities’ resettlement program that cites a Christian imperative for its work.
“Now the family is together and thankful for their new home. While they are learning about Minnesota and adjusting to the cold weather, they have a place to live and food in the cupboards,” Julia Jenson, Catholic Charities St. Paul-Minneapolis director of external affairs and communications, told CNA.
The family comes from the Nakivale refugee camp in Uganda, which hosts 100,000 Somalis who have fled conflict at home.
[….]
Laurie Ohmann: the Pope tells us to work with the “poor and the vulnerable in our community.” So why not help the American poor before bringing in third world poor? Photo: https://www.cctwincities.org/our-organization/our-people/leadership/
For Ohmann [Laurie Ohmann, senior vice president of client services and community partnerships at Catholic Charities of St. Paul-Minneapolis], the agency’s motive for refugee resettlement is clear.
“It’s an issue of human dignity and supporting their participation in our economic and cultural life,” she said. [Refugee resettlement is about protecting people from persecution, not about economic and cultural opportunities we can give them. See recent reportabout a Minnesota Somali safely going home to Somalia!—ed]
She cited the principles of Catholic social teaching and Pope Francis’ prominence in “welcoming the stranger and working with the poor and the vulnerable in our community.”
[….]
Ohmann acknowledged some Americans’ safety concerns about refugees.
Ohmann then goes through the usual talking points about security screening, which we have learned is pretty much useless with nomadic Somalis who have no records and whose children have grown up to become jihadists right here in America! See my answer,here, to their talking points about their assertion that refugees are harmless.
And, much to the reporter’s credit for bringing up another of Catholic Charities placement—the Ohio State stabber! So much for vetting!
Among those aided by Catholic Charities affiliates was Abdul Razak Ali Artan, the 20-year-old who in November drove a car into a crowd at Ohio State University then started to stab passersby before he was shot and killed by a campus police officer. The attacker hurt 11 people, one critically.
Artan had come to Dallas as a refugee from Somalia in June 2014 and stayed in Dallas with his six siblings and his mother for about three weeks before moving to Columbus, Ohio. They had been aided by Catholic Charities of Dallas after vetting by the U.S. State Department.
Dave Woodyard, the Dallas agency’s president and CEO, said there was nothing that stood out about Artan during his brief stay there. [There are many questions still unanswered about this family’s short stay in Dallas and their abrupt move to Ohio—ed]
More here.
See my HUGE archive on Minnesota by clicking here.
Warning to Trump transition… remember we are bringing in certain potentially dangerous ethnic groups from safe places in the world. So it is important not to say something like: “We will stop refugees from Somalia (the country).” We don’t take refugees from Somalia, we take Somalis who have spread out all over the world!
For those of you in cities and states contemplating whether to ‘welcome’ refugees, remember this: Once you have set up a program, there is no stopping it.The federal government looks to see if your community has a particular ethnic group growing and you then will get more of them. (Obviously, even if you have had a terror attack as St. Cloud did!) Minnesota CAIR director worried that the September Islamic terror attack could cause blowback against Somalis in St. Cloud. Not to be deterred, the Obama State Department and Lutheran Social Services are still pouring Somalis in to St. Cloud. Photo: http://www.mprnews.org/story/2016/09/23/st-cloud-mall-stabbing-update LOL! The feds want the refugees to be with their own folks, their own kind of people (never mind that that seems a bit racist to me!).
Since I was having fun with numbers, see my previous post about how Somalis are being resettled at the fastest rate in US history, I thought I would have a look at where the 334 Somalis were resettled in Minnesota in the last 2 months. So, here we go (Wrapsnet.org). Top two in red.
Burnsville (3)
Chaska (1)
Fairbault (1) typo?
Faribault (29)
Inver Grove Heights (6)
Mankato (4)
Marshall (11)
Minneapolis (164)
North Mankato (2)
Owatonna (2)
Rochester (15)
St. Cloud (57)
St. Joseph (1)
St. Paul (26)
Waite Park (1)
Willmar (11)
Many Somalis find work in meatpacking plants (which are luring them to the state!). When I made my summer swing to visit many meatpacking/manufacturing towns overrun with refugees, I stopped at a rest stop near Rochester, MN and I was shocked to see Muslim women praying on the lawn of the rest stop in the middle of lovely farm country stretching from Wisconsin to Minnesota. I said to myself, I guess I am in Minnesota and my East Coast neighbors would not believe this!
One more thing, this storyfloating around over the last few days says Minnesota will get 2,500 total refugees this year (we assume they are using the standard fiscal year as we do). At the rate of Somalis we are reporting here, that means that just over 2,000 of the 2,500 would be Somali. (If Trump doesn’t step in on January 21 and cut off the flow from Islamic terror-linked countries.)
By the way, most of our Somali refugees come through Kenya so I hope Trump’s people aren’t blindsided by that! Somalis are Somalis wherever in the world we find them. ***Update*** I just remembered this post I wrote in 2015 when I looked back for ten years at all the towns in Minnesota seeded with Somalis, click here.
Schwartz, the Humphrey School dean, said the 110,000 national number for the year is a ceiling, not a legal obligation binding the new government.
Actually I don’t think they will have to worry about taking their share of the huge number Obama proposed for FY2017—110,000—because Trump will surely reduce that number one way or another.
For our readers in Minnesota this is a very useful article with lots of details about the contractors and the cities in which they are placing refugees. Seems one big limiting factor is affordable housing! I sure hope one of the Trump Admins first actions will be to kill Obama’s Affirmatively Furthering FAIR Housing initiative!
Here is the latest from Minnesota at the Star Tribune (emphasis is mine):
Minnesota, one of the nation’s busiest resettlement destinations, is aiming to keep its refugee arrivals steady in 2017.
Eric Schwartz was Obama’s first Asst. Sec. of State for PRM and thus Anne Richard’s predecessor. Both of them were Soros’ proteges. Go here for our file on Schwartz: https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/?s=Eric+Schwartz
Faced with a housing shortage and other constraints, the state is forgoing a larger role in an almost 30 percent national increase the Obama administration announced earlier this fall.
Now, that Obama goal and the nation’s longer-term approach are in question as a Donald Trump administration prepares to take over. On the campaign trail, Trump pledged to pause resettlement from “terror-prone regions” and took aim at Somali refugees in Minnesota. But he has not addressed the overall number of refugees the country resettles each year.
“There is complete and total uncertainty,” said Eric Schwartz, dean of the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs and a former federal official who oversaw refugee admissions in the Obama administration.
In the fiscal year that ended in September, Minnesota took in 2,630 refugees, a 15 percent increase over previous year.
[….]
Kristina Hammell of Catholic Charities in the Diocese of Winona says her agency is running into housing shortages in the Rochester area as well.
“If we can’t find affordable housing, we aren’t doing refugees any great favors,” she said.
See my recent post: Obama’s 110,000 is a CEILING and Trump can turn off the spigot on January 21, 2017. He can PAUSE THE WHOLE PROGRAM!
Schwartz, the Humphrey School dean, said the 110,000 national number for the year is a ceiling, not a legal obligation binding the new government. Although Trump has criticized resettlement from countries including Syria and Somalia, he has not discussed the United States’ role in addressing the global migrant crisis.
Presumably, the administration could block resettlement from some regions and shift admissions to others, but that would be a significant logistical challenge, Schwartz said.
This last is wishful thinking I believe. Since the contractors are paid by the head and their salaries, office rent etc. depend on your tax dollars, I think they are hoping if Trump suspends resettlement from say Syria, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan and so forth that he will make it up with numbers from non-Muslim countries. I doubt it.
It is best to pause the whole program on January 21st and then “find out what is going on!” (As Trump frequently intoned on the campaign trail!)
