Advocate for what? Well, the usual Leftwing causes like halting global warming and welcoming more impoverished people from across the globe to Minnesota’s welcoming welfare system, and most of all shutting up those who disagree with the Leftwing’s political agenda by calling them haters and racists.
I’ve been saying this until I’m blue in the face—the Left is organized and continues to develop their networks of like-minded people so that they can promote their issues, while conservatives are pretty lousy at organizing grassroots action.
I’ve been writing a lot about the religious Left in posts in recent days, hereandhere about the Christian churches that are anti-Trump on immigration (and likely everything!) and it is those groups and individuals who spearhead the creation of Interfaith groups along with Jewish Leftists.
Back in the early 1980s, I was fighting to save my farm from being taken to expand a national park and had been surprised and disappointed (I was naive!) to learn that the hard Left, which had infiltrated and taken over major environmental groups, was pushing for the government to take more private land from unsuspecting farmers and ranchers across the country.
Isn’t that a communist idea when the government wants to own all of the land I queried.
Yes it is actually! And, I was told by someone knowledgeable with the planning for the Lefts’ agenda to transform America that in order to bring their agenda to fruition they must “get to the churches.”
Church-going Americans were generally conservative in those days and were blocking the Lefts’ plans. I was informed that one leading group promoting that concept was the Pew Charitable Trust located in Philadelphia.
So they have been working on this strategy (successfully!) for 40-50 years!
Sorry for the digression! I’ve observed in recent years that it is often Interfaith groups (sounds warm and fuzzy doesn’t it?) that push for more refugee resettlement and open borders generally, and so I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise that Minnesota Interfaith groups are joining forces to advance their Leftwing political agenda claiming they will be first in the nation to strengthen their ties.
New network aims to link interfaith efforts in Minnesota
Minnesota has long been a national leader in interfaith cooperation. A new nonprofit will be launched next week to strengthen ties even further.
The Minnesota Multi-faith Network will hold its kickoff event Monday night with a gathering of faith leaders — including Christians, Jews, Muslims and Hindus — pledging to collaborate on education, outreach and advocacy across the state.
Hundreds of faith organizations are working on issues ranging from climate change to immigration to combating racism, organizers said. The network will be a place where they can find one another, join forces and make a stronger impact.
[….]
Rabbi Adam Stock Spilker
The network can provide a coordinated response to hate crimes and other timely issues, organizers said.
“We need to combat hate with love, which is very much part of the Minnesota fabric,” Spilker said. “But we need coordination to make that happen.”
The network hired J. Cody Nielsen as its first executive director earlier this year. Nielsen, founder of the national interfaith group Convergence, said groups working toward similar goals often don’t know about one another and don’t share training or seek shared funding. He hopes the new network can change that.
Nielsen’s priorities include launching regional hubs across the state to connect local groups. He also wants to coordinate with university student organizations, such as the Muslim Students Association, as well as university professionals involved in interfaith and religious work.
[….]
The network also has created a speakers bureau, Duke said, making it easier for schools, churches and other groups to offer education on lesser-known religions and to dispel myths.
[….]
Nielsen said if the network works as planned, Minnesota could become a national model for this type of collaboration.
“I see that as a larger possibility,” Nielsen said. “And what better place than Minnesota, one of the most religious[ly] diverse states?”
I wonder where they are getting their funding? Michael Bloomberg, George Soros, Paul Singer? I recommend that Minnesotans sign up for their mailing list and attend meetings to find out what they are up to! Surely they won’t block anyone—they are lovers not haters (right?).
By the way, where are the America First! networks in every state?
I’ve been meaning to mention Minnesota ever since I saw a Star Tribunearticle that describes how the taxpayer funded resettlement contractors divvied up the state’s counties in order to put lobbying pressure on elected officials there.
Because Minnesota is such a hot resettlement site, the state has ‘enjoyed’ the presence of a majority of the nine federal contractors.*** At one point only HIAS didn’t have an office there. The others were busy as one critic joked—“bidding for bodies” as the contractors are paid by you and me on a per head basis.
According to the Minnesota Department of Human Serviceswebsiteat the present time, five subcontractors are placing refugees in the state:
Hereis the Star Tribune about how the five have divided the counties in the state to lobby for permission to place refugees. They claim they are aiming to convince 24 counties (of 87) to grant permission to be resettlement sites this next year, but I’m sure they are out scouting for any easy pickin’s among the remainder of counties.
Local approval for refugee resettlement sparks heated debate in Minnesota counties
Ben Walen, director of refugee services at the Minnesota Council of Churches, said it seemed like county governments were “being put in a political bind.” The council is one of the state’s five refugee resettlement organizations. Those agencies [funded with taxpayer dollars.—ed] are splitting up the work of soliciting letters of consent from about two dozen of Minnesota’s 87 counties that have a recent record of resettling refugees.
I’m thinking putting county governments in a political bind is a good thing. Don’t want political binds, don’t run for political office!
BTW, as of today, December 13th, the governor has apparently not sent in his formal letter to the US State Department. See those consents that have come in already, here.
***For new readers these (below) are the nine federally-funded refugee contractors that monopolize all refugee placement in America. For decades they have decided in secrecy where to place refugees and they don’t want to lose that power because even as they pontificate about their religious convictions and humanitarian zeal, they are the ‘religious Left’ political groups working to change America by changing the people and using your money to do it!
When I caught this news at the Minneapolis Star Tribune about a program for lonely senior refugees, not refugees who came decades ago and grew old here, but senior citizens we admit through the US Refugee Admissions Program, it reminded me to tell you how your tax dollars are used.
Twice a month, elders from the area’s East African community gather here for a shared halal meal and a program that can range from citizenship to weaving to winter preparedness. [I’ll bet the emphasis is on citizenship and registering to vote!—ed]
The goal is to help break the social isolation experienced by members of the older immigrant population, many of whom speak little English and stay home to care for grandchildren while younger adults in the family are at work.
[….]
About 20 people were on hand last week, including Abdi Matan, who helped organize the program through the nonprofit Horn of Africa Aid and Rehabilitation Action Network. Matan came to St. Peter six years ago after working in Somalia for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. He also worked for the U.N. in refugee camps in Somalia and Kenya.
“Minnesota is the next home for Somalis,” he said with a big grin. “We have really enjoyed this program for socialization.”
Somali elders, he said, often have a hard time adjusting to their new home.
[….]
Mohamed Omar Ali, 73, was a herdsman in Somalia. He arrived in St. Peter about five years ago. [Arrived in the US at age 68, sure will be a real asset to the US workforce which is the usual excuse for the program in the first place!—ed]
Agencies paying for this program are all taxpayer-funded including of course Lutheran Social Service of MN!
Mahoney [Leah Mahoney, Minnesota Department of Health] said she believes this is the first program of its kind in rural Minnesota and hopes that other communities with East African populations will take notice. Support for the program has come from the state Health Department, as well as the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Lutheran Social Service of Minnesota, the city of St. Peter and the Minnesota River Area Agency on Aging.
First, senior citizens admitted as refugees are eligible for SSI (Supplemental Security Income) from Social Security. Read about it here.
However, in addition to individual benefits, states that welcome “elder” refugees receive help directly from the federal treasury (from you again) to help them cope with needy senior citizen refugees.
It would take a lot of time to go through the entire list of over a hundred countries from which we receive refugees to get to the total. But here are a few numbers from the Refugee Processing Center.
In the last five years we admitted 748 seniors (over 65 years old) from Bhutan, Burma 640 seniors, DR Congo 777, and Somalia 273.
Now get a load of this!
States are given federal money to help take care of refugees aged 60 and older.
Do a little math and see how much the elder refugees are costing taxpayers in just this one portion of the welfare services available to them.
The FY 2020 allocations to states and replacement designees are based on the number of ORR-eligible individuals aged 60 or older who arrived and were served in FY 2018, as reported in the ORR Refugee Arrivals Data System (RADS).
The chart below documents the number of eligible individuals served in each state in FY 2018 and the corresponding funding allocations for the SOR program for FY 2020.
Here is just a bit of the chart in a screenshot. But be sure to open the chart and see the whole list! It gets worse. I wondered if this is sweetener for many states? New Hampshire 4 refugees $75,000 from the feds!
This is the kind of handout you have been supplying through your tax dollars for years and possibly decades!
Well, I should say he is claiming credit for creating the present-day US Refugee Admissions Program in 1979.
Editor:By the way, I’ve been away at a conference to talk about how RRW was “deplatformed” by WordPressdotcom and am now back at my computer with news about why the US Refugee Admissions Program Mr. Purcell says he created must be dumped (and reformed if there is a will for some sort of program).
I know this might be getting too wonky, but it’s important to know how the program began and how it has gone wrong (or was wrong all along!)—something the speech police have been trying to stop me from telling you!
James N. Purcell, in anopinion piecein the Dallas News, says the refugee program was designed to leave out local and state government approval of refugee placement claiming it was “fairer” to leave them out of what he says is a federal decision.
I set up the U.S. refugee resettlement program that Trump is attacking
At a campaign rally last week in Minneapolis, the president trumpeted a recently issued executive order that would prohibit refugee resettlements unless states and cities expressly consented to them. He went on to say, “no other president would be doing that.”
There is a better way for state and local officials to make their views known that’s worked in the past.
This issue was a concern when I set up the U.S. refugee resettlement program in 1980 under President Jimmy Carter and when I was later named the official director of the program by President Ronald Reagan. We went out of our way to avoid the Damocles sword that President Donald Trump is now swinging.
Rather than force national decisions on state and local governments (which they were unable to make and has the effect of politicizing these decisions), we came up with a fairer and more humane approach that respected their unique roles. [So whatever happened to the Tenth Amendment?—ed]
The Refugee Act of 1980 recognized the essential contributions expected of state and local governments and made achievement of them possible.
What is he talking about! Were the “essential contributions expected” of the state and local governments the enormous costs associated with welfare, education, health care, housing and so forth—costs now borne by state and local taxpayers with little financial help from Washington?
And, get this, the role of state coordinator was created to help identify and resolve problems. How many of you reading this even knew you had state coordinators***?
The act required the federal government to coordinate and consult regularly with state refugee coordinators about proposed resettlements. Many potential problems were identified and resolved through monitoring and oversight, and record resettlement was achieved without serious incidents.
Now, without apparently knowing what he has revealed he tells us how the NGOs (the federally-funded refugee contractors, Leftwing phony ‘religious’ groups) really run the show he claims they tried not to “politicize.”
Perhaps that was why I was so perplexed in 1986 to receive a scathing letter from one of Minnesota’s leading politicians demanding that I cease resettlement of Hmong in Minnesota forthwith. This demand was so out of character for Minnesota that I immediately informed NGOs working on Hmong resettlement. By the end of the next week, Minnesotans were so outraged that I received letters reversing earlier criticisms and asking for more Hmong refugees.
Unbelievable! He was the US State Department’s director of the Refugee Admissions Program and he tipped off his contractors that an elected official in Minnesota was having a problem with the refugee program and they in turn ginned-up letters from their flocks (Catholics and Lutherans mostly) to send him asking for more Hmong refugees. (This was of course a few years before the major influx of Somalis to Minnesota began.)
So why wasn’t this all handled as he said they designed the program, through the State Refugee Coordinator? Why? Because the program is run by the contractors who are paid out of the US Treasury to place refugees wherever they choose! (See my recent post with a list of the present-day contractors, here.)
There will be no real reform of the US Refugee Program as long as the contractors are paid by us while acting as Leftwing political agitation groups.
*** Go here to see who your state refugee coordinator is. If you know anything about the program in your state you will notice that many of them are affiliated with a federal contractor.
Got a problem in your state, or just want to know more about the program there? Call your coordinator. You can start by asking for your state’s most recent Refugee Plan on file with the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement. Be polite and you will get some information (maybe not much!) but something.
Don’t miss my post on the major drug bust of Hmong in Wisconsin recently.
Editor: This is a cross post from my other blog ‘Frauds and Crooks.’
When the news broke a couple of days ago that Tech High in St. Cloud, MN was in the news again there was no information on who exactly was brawling in the school. I didn’t post the story here at RRW because we didn’t know if Somali refugees were involved. Now we know….
Whew! That is a relief! At least now there won’t be any reason for race hustlers like CAIR to get involved, right!
“Students of the same race.” That is how police characterize the make-up of the gangs of fighting students we reported hereon Thursday. But thanks to a Minnesota law which allows names of those who committed felonies, who are aged 16 and 17, be made public, we now have a clearer idea of who exactly was involved in a brawl that brought 20 police officers to a school in a city that has seen years of tension created by the arrival of Somali refugee families.
No secret decoder ring needed—names tell us all we need to know!
(See my extensive St. Cloud file at Refugee Resettlement Watch, here. I first heard of Tech High Somali problems inthis story from 2008. A few posts featuring St. Cloud are here at ‘Frauds and Crooks.‘)
Go hereto ‘Frauds and Crooks’ to read the full story and see the names of some of the students charged with felonies. Some Tech High staff were injured trying to break up the fighting gangs.
Ben Walen, director of refugee services at the Minnesota Council of Churches, said it seemed like county governments were “being put in a political bind.” The council is one of the state’s five refugee resettlement organizations. 
