Fargo, ND poll: Most citizens do not want more refugee resettlement

11/04/2015 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

But, almost more interesting to me (in this news account) was the fact that the local CHAMBER OF COMMERCE hosted the event to try to convince the citizens there that they are wrong.

Readers, if you don’t know it already—The Chamber of Commerce throughout America is FOR more migration to America and lobbies FOR amnesty and obviously is now openly out in front promoting more refugee resettlement. Can you say cheap immigrant labor! And, look at the Republican members of Congress and Senators who are wimps on immigration and you will likely find the Chamber behind them (and funding them!).
From the Grand Forks Herald (emphasis is mine):

FARGO — The head of the nonprofit agency tasked with resettling refugee groups in North Dakota gave a presentation Tuesday hoping to dispel misconceptions about refugees.

Jessica Thomason, CEO of Lutheran Social Services in ND. Photo: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessicathomasson

“Today, we are going to be clearing the air,” Jessica Thomasson, CEO of Lutheran Social Services of North Dakota, told a crowd of about 200 people at the Radisson Hotel in downtown Fargo.

Among the notions that Thomasson sought to debunk was the idea that refugees are responsible for increases in crime. “We know there is no correlation,” she said, citing a study that showed: “Immigrants are less likely to commit serious crimes or be behind bars than the native-born population.”***

Thomasson, whose talk was hosted by the Fargo Moorhead West Fargo Chamber of Commerce, said the U.S. Department of Homeland Security screens refugees before they enter the country. “The United States has as one of its policies that we don’t resettle people who have been aggressors in the conflicts,” she said.

Thomasson’s talk came at a time when refugee resettlement is a hotly contested issue in North Dakota, which leads the nation in refugee resettlement per capita.

The day before Thomasson spoke, Valley News Live aired the results of a poll the TV station commissioned. Of the 625 adults surveyed in Cass and Clay Counties, 57 percent opposed the continued resettlement of refugees in the area, 28 percent supported it and 15 percent were undecided. The poll had a margin of error of no more than 4 percentage points.

Continue reading here.
***Update*** Here are the survey results. And here is my post on the poll. And, one more update here—“myth” about free cars explained.
Go here for all of our previous posts on North Dakota. This post is filed in our ‘Pockets of Resistance’ category, here.
By the way when you check our archives on North Dakota you will see several horrible crimes committed by refugees there—the one that jumped out at me was the Somali mass murder of native Americans, here. Then there was the “hatchet man”….

Backpedaling on the numbers of refugees expected in North Dakota

08/24/2015 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Editor’s note: I am still out of the country and trying to post when I get a minute. I see I have a boatload of e-mails and will try to get to those as soon as possible. I apologize for not responding sooner.

It was only a few weeks ago that WDAY-6 News was reporting that the number of refugees expected in North Dakota this fall was going to jump, but now following controversy that those statements generated, it seems that Lutheran Social Services North Dakota is moving quickly to say, oh, no!, the numbers will be ‘normal.’

LSS north dakota — Gotta keep the refugees flowing into North Dakota because LSS has a fancy new building to pay for. LSS is paid by the head to resettle refugees AND they receive other federal grants for all sorts of additional “programs” for their special charges. From a recent FORM990 we learned they received over $10 million in government grants.

In this article at Inforum, a spokeswoman for LSS says that people (citizens, taxpayers) don’t understand how this all works and that is how they/we get confused.
But, here is the deal, the reason people can get confused is that these agencies have been for 35 years(!) working in SECRECY, so is it any surprise there could be confusion.
There should be a least one public meeting a year in each refugee receiving community where the resettlement agency, the feds and city and state elected officials explain to the community who and how many they will be expected to “welcome” to town in the coming year.
How about a public meeting in Fargo or Grand Forks where LSS does explain how the whole program works!
Here is Inforum:

GRAND FORKS – Refugee resettlements in Grand Forks are expected to remain the same as in previous years, according to Lutheran Social Services.

The city can expect four to 12 refugees to arrive here by October, said Katie Dachtler, resettlement services supervisor. The total number expected is on par with previous years, she said.

Varied reports on the expected number of refugees to arrive this fall in the Fargo area led to the perception by some that the cities would have more refugees than each could handle by October, sparking harsh online comments and a Change.org petition asking LSS to stop further placement unless it’s approved by a vote from Cass County residents. As of Friday afternoon, the petition had gained 3,037 signatures.

Read the whole thing and follow links.
Be sure to see the section on the ‘Somali Community of Grand Forks’ which is what previously was called an ECBO (Ethnic Community Based Organization) ‘non-profits’ funded largely with tax dollars. ECBO’s help THEIR people get a start, help them find “resources,” help them get registered to vote, and then act as political spokespersons if some problem arises with THEIR people.
Now they are called Ethnic Community Self Help groups. Here is one recent list of grantees at the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement. The Grand Forks Somali ECBO is not listed here, but has certainly received start-up money from some federal or state agency. I could not find any financials on the group. Concerned citizens in North Dakota need to do some research on this group and others like it.
The big question is why should taxpayers fund groups that seek to promote special treatment for THEIR ethnic “community.”
We have a category on ECBOs here, but haven’t had much news archived there lately.
This post is also filed in our new ‘Pockets of Resistance’ category, here.

Pockets of Resistance growing and spreading, WND tells us where (so far)

08/17/2015 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update: This WND story made it to Drudge today and it went through the roof!
Leo Hohmann, writing at World Net Daily last evening has another detailed article on the Refugee Admissions Program of the UN/US State Department and a report from at least three important ‘Pockets of Resistance.‘

AnneRichard and UNHCR — That is Anne Richard, Asst. Secretary of State for Population, Refugees and Migration on the right. She does the bidding of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Antonio Guterres, the former Socialist President of Portugal (on the left). Together these two are changing (colonizing!) American towns one by one. Richard was formerly a Vice President at the International Rescue Committee, one of nine federal resettlement contractors. Bio: http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/biog/188212.htm

The WND article begins:

The pushback started earlier this year in South Carolina, then spread to Minnesota, Idaho, and now North Dakota.

Michigan and Ohio are also organizing against what local residents say is a sinister and sneaky federal program that almost never gets serious coverage from local media. It’s the U.S. State Department’s refugee resettlement program, which has been humming along on autopilot since Congress passed the Refugee Act of 1980, signed by President Jimmy Carter.

No longer satisfied with pat answers, residents in several states are starting to ask the hard questions. They are showing up at meetings, starting blogs and email lists, digging up information and bypassing local media to inform their friends and neighbors of what’s really going on with the refugee movement.

[….]

In conservative Twin Falls, Idaho, for instance, a group of 100 activists are going door to door informing their neighbors about how the refugee program works. Organizer Rick Martin says most people are surprised to find out that the United Nations picks most of the refugees destined for America, and that the Catholic Church, the Lutheran and Episcopal churches, along with evangelical and Jewish groups get paid by the federal government to resettle refugees in the U.S.

“When we mention that the U.N. is involved most of the time they won’t believe it, so we have to show them the articles,” Martin said.

Since, I have BIG MEAT on my mind these days and the role it plays in lobbying for cheap, legal, immigrant labor, comments by Minnesota’s Bob Enos jumped out at me:

The nine private resettlement agencies, including “charities” within the Lutheran, Catholic, Episcopalian, and evangelical churches, get federal grants to resettle the refugees, essentially acting as front groups for the government, but without the transparency and accountability that would be expected if the government did the work itself, said Bob Enos, spokesman for T-3 (Truth and Transparency in Taxation) in St. Cloud. His group is pushing for more openness in the way refugees are resettled in Minnesota.

“I think the meat packers had a lot to do with this,” Enos, a former businessman, told WND. “These are people in business whose raw materials won’t allow them to outsource overseas, so if you can’t bring the factory overseas you bring overseas to the factory.”

Read it all! It is, as usual, very thorough, and it might give you some ideas on what you can do in your ‘Pocket of Resistance (POR)’.

Fargo, ND seems to be developing a 'Pocket of Resistance'

08/13/2015 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The other day we told you about how Lutheran Social Services seemed to be gleefully announcing that a big batch of new refugees was on the way to town, see here. I wondered if Fargo had any resisters (see ‘Pockets of Resistance’) and now it seems they do.
This article just popped up in my alerts.

Note to our readers in Australia, Canada, and Europe: some of this information may be pretty ‘inside baseball’ for you, but in some ways it should also be useful information for you to know that there are Americans who are raising red flags about the resettlement of refugees in their towns and cities. They are trying to figure out how the secretive program works, digging into documents, asking public questions, informing their neighbors and hounding elected officials.
From WDAY-TV where we learn that an on-line petition has sprung up in opposition to more refugees being placed in North Dakota.

Fargo, ND (WDAY TV)-Hundreds of people have signed an online petition to send a message about the increased number of refugees expected in Cass County.

Many we spoke with said they think the petition is irresponsible and unfair.

[….]

But hundreds disagree, according to the list of signatures on the Change.org petition titled, “Stop Lutheran Social Services in Fargo!”

The document was created earlier this week and calls for an end to the flow of refugees into Cass County without a vote, as well as for information on the refugees already placed here.

Many wrote reasons for their support, including messages like:

“How can we afford to bring more people in to live off what we have, when we don’t have enough for the ones that are already here?” – James Williams, Fargo.

Mr. Williams’ comment is a common refrain we hear everywhere—why are we bringing in more poor people when we can’t take care of those already here?

Then get this! LSS CEO Jessica Thomasson says her organization has no say about how many come—the federal government is doing the picking—it is a decision made by Congress, she says! This exactly illustrates what Don Barnett said in our previous post. The media has no clue how this is all done and they simply parrot the local contractor.
WDAY-TV continues….

But the thing is, Lutheran Social Services*** CEO Jessica Thomasson says, beyond a conversation once a year about how many refugees the organizations staff can handle, they don’t have much of a say in how many people are sent here or where they’re sent from.

That’s all up to the Federal Government.

Jessica Thomasson/CEO, Lutheran Social Services: “Lutheran Social Services really just facilitates resettlement in this community, this is a decision that’s made by Congress every year that is affecting the work across the entire United States.”

Go here for more and to see the petition.
She is right that Washington is making the decisions for North Dakota (and every other state) receiving the UN-chosen refugees, but her parent organization—Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service—takes her suggestions that arrive in that R & P Abstract for how many her local subcontracting office can handle and where they will come from!
Every week or so, her parent organization sits down with US State Department employees and they divvy up the refugees partially dependent on what amenities your town has to offer the refugees in the form of subsidized housing, jobs for low-skilled people and so forth. They even take into consideration the presence of a mosque or two.
Maybe Congress should have a role, but they don’t (mostly because they have abrogated their responsibility!).
This is all done at the Administration level as the President sets the agenda every year for how many will be resettled and from what countries. He then sends his “determination letter” (2015 is here) to Congress for “consultation” where historically members of Congress responsible for this program merrily rubber stamp whatever the President says!
***LSS of North Dakota is an over $40 million a year operation with $10 million coming from government grants, see here.

Warning!

By the way, on this Presidential determination letter, the Obama Administration is working on that right now for FY2016. They will send it to Congress around Sept. 30th since FY2016 begins on October 1. I am very concerned that instead of the usual 70,000 refugees the Obama Administration has been bringing in each year, that they will dramatically increase the number for 2016 to accommodate the 65,000 (mostly Muslim) Syrians that the United Nations wants us to take. The reason I suspect a rat is that it has been very very quiet ever since the Jihad Caucus wrote to Obama. I’m guessing Obama/Kerry told them to hush-up for now because something is in the works!
Watch for it!

Fargo, ND (and everywhere else) to be slammed with new refugees in next seven weeks

08/07/2015 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Why the next seven weeks? Because fiscal year 2015 ends on September 30th and the settlers in the US State Department and in their contracting agencies want to hit the Obama target of 70,000 for the year and they have (as of July 31), 18,470 more to go!
Actually that 70,000 figure that Obama announced in his Presidential Determination Letter to Congress last September is meant to be a ceiling, not a goal that they necessarily have to hit. However, since the contractors are paid by the head and they have salaries and office overhead to pay, they always try to shoot for the highest number they can haul in as possible.

Here is the news from WDAY-6 News (hat tip: Deb). You will see that the school system is sweating it! I know from my own experience that the local health department will also have to work overtime to get all the kids ready for school — our poor kids and the new poor kids coming in!
Anyone out there forming a ‘Pocket of Resistance’ in North Dakota? I’m guessing that ND is getting more than usual because there is no resistance to colonization there while some other locations are seeing citizen pushback.

Fargo, ND (WDAY TV) – Local aid organizations and schools say they’re going to be very busy the next couple of months. More refugees than usual are expected to be coming.

As of July, 215 refugees had been resettled in Fargo-West Fargo and Jamestown, 21 in Moorhead and 64 in Grand Forks.

By September 30th, Fargo and West Fargo could increase to 350 new residents and the number in Grand Forks could be bumped to 100.

Jessica Thomasson/CEO, Lutheran Social Services of North Dakota, “In an ideal world, it would be spread evenly over the 12 months of that year, but we know that in a lot of years you’ll have ups and downs.”

Jessica Thomasson, the CEO of Lutheran Social Services, says the projections the next couple months are 10 to 20 percent higher than usual in North Dakota. The whole year is about 10 percent higher. She says their organization usually gets about two weeks notice of new arrivals during which they have to set up housing, furnishing and other things to prepare for a new life in a new place.

[….]

Overall, the U.S. plans to resettle 7,500 refugees this month and over 10,000 in September to meet it’s commitment of 70,000 for this fiscal year. Most of the arrivals here in metro will be Bhutanese, Somali, Iraqi and Congolese. About 75 percent have family connections here.

By the way, this last bit is what I was telling you about when I wrote about Lancaster, PA the other day. Once you have been targeted as a resettlement site and the refugees are coming, there is no stopping the importation of the family members!
How many have you gotten in your state so far this fiscal year? Go here and check out data on arrival by nationality and state. As of July 31, they are at 51,530 for the year so far.
See all of our previous posts on problems with refugees in North Dakota by clicking here. They were supposed to get Syrians this year, wonder what happened to them?