Lancaster, PA school district didn't cave to ACLU, appealed refugee students case to higher court

01/02/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

https://www.aclupa.org/

In my previous post I noted that the media (the New York Times) is working overtime to sell the public on the notion that everything is just peachy in Lancaster with the decades-old refugee program there. Then we see stories like this one that indicate at least some segments of the community are not thrilled at all—namely the school system.
BTW, see my Ten Things your town needs to know when ‘welcoming’ refugees and see that the first great impact on your community will most likely be in the school system.
Look how much this lawsuit filed by the ACLU is costing Lancaster taxpayers! If your town becomes a new ‘welcoming’ site, be prepared for unanticipated costs like these!
From Keystone Crossroads (hat tip: Joanne):

About 17,000 of the refugees arriving each year in the U.S. are children, yet their education — in particular, how public schools might accommodate them — plays a surprisingly minor role in placing families.

Federal law says public schools have to adjust to meet any number of students’ varying needs, including overcoming language barriers.

But that doesn’t always happen.

A few lawsuits have been filed in recent years on behalf of student refugees suffering the consequences of systematic shortcomings.

Schools have settled out of court in most cases.

Not Lancaster.

[….]

Lawyers for the Pennsylvania ACLU and Philadelphia-based Education Law Center sued the School District of Lancaster last summer.

The lawsuit claims that, despite the city’s robust tradition of resettlement, several teenage refugees waited months to enroll in public school. Ultimately, they were denied outright or diverted to magnet school Phoenix Academy, which has less support for nonnative English speakers than mainstream McCaskey High School.

[….]

In the meantime, a judicial panel in Philadelphia is considering Lancaster’s appeal. (See that story here)

[….]

Whether the district’s on the hook for any expenses depends on how the case turns out.

Defense attorneys’ bills are at about $150,000 so far, according to the district’s business administrator Matthew Przywara. The ACLU’s costs are approaching $2 million.

But Lancaster’s insurer has indicated it won’t pay out more than $100,000 for this lawsuit, district officials say.

There is more, continue reading here.
If the ACLU prevails be forewarned for refugee resettlement to your town to become even more expensive!
Click here for more on Lancaster, PA. Someone should do a study of the negative impact on this longtime resettlement site.

BT! Church World Service working hard to get Syrian Muslims placed in Lancaster, PA

01/02/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

BT=Before Trump
This is the first of two posts (second one is here) on Lancaster, PA this morning. I’ve been interested in Lancaster ever since that city’s refugee program was linked to Church World Service’s (CWS) placement of refugees in my county seat. Those were mostly Meshketian (Russian Turkish Muslims) back in 2007.
Five years later, I traveled to Lancaster to a meeting of the refugee industry there—the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement was meeting with refugee contractors and advocates in 2013. A federal ORR employee shocked me by referring to any of the communities questioning the program as “pockets of resistance.” He was happy to tell the gathering that Pennsylvania was ‘welcoming’ and didn’t have any PORs.

cws-mccullough-arrest — Church World Service does not just resettle refugees, but they advocate for illegal aliens as well. CWS CEO Rev. John McCullough being arrested in Washington, DC protesting in support of Obama’s executive amnesty. Photo and story here: http://njfon.org/2015/04/08/faith-groups-challenge-fifth-circuit-court-on-presidents-immigration-actions/ McCullough pulls down an annual salary of over $300,000 a year from his CWS work and from “related organizations.” Page 13- 14 http://www.guidestar.org/FinDocuments/2015/134/080/2015-134080201-0c44e710-9.pdf

If you would like to get some background on Lancaster before reading this below, click here for our Lancaster archive.
This is the news that appeared in the New York Times and reposted here in Vermont newspaper. Church World Service (with the NYT) is trying so hard to make everything look so perfect in Lancaster. But, it isn’t and you will see what I mean in my next post.

Their [Syrian family—ed] imminent arrival explains all the commotion inside this slate-colored house in the small city of Lancaster, in south-central Pennsylvania. The state may have gone to Donald Trump, who likened the Syrian resettlement program to a “a great Trojan horse” for terrorists. But he isn’t president yet.

[….]

He [Josh, CWS’s 26 year old housing guy—ed] scours a government checklist of housing requirements for a resettlement [Contractors sign contracts to provide essential items for the refugees’ new home—ed], mindful that whatever he spends is deducted from a refugee’s one-time government grant of no more than $1,125. A family’s combined grants must cover its rent and other expenses until the nonprofit has helped the adults acquire Social Security numbers and jobs.

I want you to know (and the NYT doesn’t) that it is $1,125 per family member, so the Syrian family of 6 being discussed here will get $6,750 (plus welfare) and that CWS will get another approximately $6,750 as their share (of your tax dollars) to resettle this family (for their salaries and overhead).

Such encounters [Josh meets a refugee at Walmart***] happen often in Lancaster, whose rich history of acceptance is rooted, in part, in the influence of the Mennonites, Amish and other faiths. A glimpse of the local worldview came in January when a supportive rally of more than 200 people drowned out a much smaller anti-immigrant protest outside the Church World Service office in Lancaster. [See our report on the resistors rally, here.]

Sheila Mastropietro, the group’s longtime supervisor in Lancaster, took heart in the moment. It reflected a communal understanding of both the global refugee crisis and the rigorous screening process that refugees undergo before coming to the United States. [The communal understanding is wearing thin as you will see in my next post.—ed]

The big question for the resettlement contractors is: What will Trump do and when will he do it?

Still, given a president-elect who seems averse to the country’s modest commitment to refugee relocation, Mastropietro says, “We don’t know what to expect.”

[….]

Last fiscal year, the Lancaster office of the Church World Service helped to resettle 407 of the 85,000 refugees admitted to this country; this fiscal year, its target is 550 of a hoped-for 110,000.

“We are acting as if the numbers are going to be the same — until we hear something different,” she says.

Lancaster a happy “medley of cultures” (then why did Lancaster County go 57% for Trump):

Decades of resettlement work have transformed the Lancaster area into a medley of cultures so rich that Amer Alfayadh, 34, a senior case manager, struggles to name them all: “Syrians, Iraqis, Somalis, Congolese, Ukrainians, Belorussians, people from Kazakhstan. Then, of course, Lebanese, Palestinians. Bhutanese, Nepalese, Burmese, Sri Lankans …”

***I would love to know what the deal is with Walmart. Wherever I traveled on my middle America tour this past summer, I heard that Walmart was a gathering place for Muslim refugees. Is Walmart giving them gift cards or other goodies? Does anyone know?

Lancaster County, PA refugee economic study is misleading

11/26/2016 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

If everything is so copacetic in Lancaster County, then why did it go 57% for Donald Trump?

This is what the Left is so good at—writing studies that are not completely accurate to paint a positive picture of the economic impact of refugees on a community and then use it as a news-hook.
But, in this case the study (the propaganda!) which concluded that immigrants/refugees economically benefit Lancaster County, PA was produced by the real driver of the Open Borders movement, not the Leftwing, do-gooder, ‘humanitarians,’ but business interests who want the ready supply of cheap labor—-the Chamber of Commerce and Bloomberg’s New American Economy cheered on by federal refugee contractor Church World Service which receives most of its funding from you, the taxpayer. [For more on the New American Economy, go here.–ed]

NEW YORK, NY - DECEMBER 15: Former Mayor of New York City Michael Bloomberg speaks at a press conference announcing a new initiative between the Clinton Foundation, United Nations Foundation and Bloomberg Philanthropies, titled Data 2x on December 15, 2014 in New York City. Data 2x aims to use data-driven analysis to close gender gaps throughout the world. (Photo by Andrew Burton/Getty Images) — Do not trust any propaganda from leading Open Borders advocates like Bloomberg: “Former Mayor of New York City Michael Bloomberg speaks at a press conference announcing a new initiative between the Clinton Foundation, United Nations Foundation and Bloomberg Philanthropies…” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-bloomberg/bloomberg-what-works-cities-data_b_7097304.html (Photo by Andrew Burton/Getty Images)

The article at Philly.com (fake news?) seems to be promoting refugee resettlement, but when you look closely, the educated and hardworking immigrants cited are mostly not refugees—they are Vietnamese (we only take a handful of refugees from Vietnam now), Mexicans, Germans!, Dominicans, and a smaller number of Cubans which we do take as refugees, but shouldn’t be!
But, the most important and misleading aspect of the story is that there is no information in the study about what the refugees/immigrants cost Lancaster County and the federal taxpayer for welfare, subsidized housing, food stamps, medicare, the criminal justice system and a biggie—education for the kids.
The low wages Tyson Foods and other big global corporations pay their labor is supplemented by you, so of course the business community loves this model!
Philly.com:

Lancaster County is Donald Trump land. The president-elect won 57 percent of the 240,000 votes cast there, compared with Hillary Clinton’s 38 percent.

The county of about a half-million people also is home to fast-growing numbers of immigrants and refugees – 23,094 as of last count – whose rate of growth from 2009 to 2014 was nearly double the rate for the county as a whole. Nationwide, immigrants and refugees were among groups often lambasted by candidate Trump.

irwin-bass1 — VP Lancaster Chamber of Commerce, Cheryl Irwin-Bass. http://www.lancasterchamber.com/article.aspx?page=executive-biographies&parent=media-center#.WDmpW1ygY2w

But in Lancaster County, according to a study released Tuesday, foreign-born residents have had “an outsize” positive impact on the local economy, and in 2014 contributed $62.8 million to Social Security, $16.4 million to Medicare, $52.5 million in state and local taxes, and $103.3 million in federal taxes. Their spending power was estimated at $440.5 million.

The study was a joint project of the Lancaster County Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Lancaster County Refugee Coalition. It was conducted and underwritten by the bipartisan New American Economy, a Washington nonprofit whose cochairs include former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and former Philadelphia Mayor Michael A. Nutter.

[….]

“With the very serious workforce challenges the business community faces, the findings in this report will help us to more fully leverage every person in this county,” Cheryl Irwin-Bass, vice president of the chamber, said when she presented the study at her group’s annual State of the County event.

[….]

The study cites manufacturing and health care as industries in which immigrants have played important roles. Some refugees have obtained jobs at Tyson Foods. [I wonder if refugees who sign up abroad to come here are forewarned about the meatpacking jobs they are expected to fill—ed]

[….]

Church World Service has an office in Lancaster City, and the refugees she helps include Syrians who have had to flee their war-ravaged homeland. The top five immigrant groups are from Vietnam, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Germany, and Cuba. [Mostly NOT refugees—ed]

Philly.com continues here.

lancaster-rally — Rally earlier this year against more refugees for Lancaster. Trump voters! https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2016/01/03/pennsylvania-patriots-rally-against-more-muslim-refugees-for-lancaster/

Forget humanitarianism, it is all about money!

If I have done nothing else with this post and years of work on the subject of Refugee Resettlement I hope I have gotten one important message through to you dear reader—-Refugee Resettlement in America is NOT first and foremost about humanitarianism, it is about big business and cheap labor!
I’ve written a lot about Lancaster (Amish country) over the years. My interest began in 2007 when it was Lancaster’s spillover (there was some problem with crime there we were told by our police chief) that came to my county in western Maryland.
Go here for my archive on Lancaster. See especially posts where some very unhappy citizens protested against more refugee resettlement and where the school system endured a very expensive lawsuit filed by lawyers for refugees (I bet Bloomberg didn’t include that cost in his study!).

Lutheran refugee contractor in Lehigh Valley area of PA to close, running out of money

05/21/2016 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Watch for it! The contractors will all now be begging Congress for more of your money because frankly they can’t privately raise the millions upon millions of dollars resettling tens of thousands of refugees each year costs America. As highly touted “public-private” partnerships the PUBLIC funds are now far outweighing the supposed Lutheran Christian charity.

miji bell — LIRS communications director, Miji Bell, says they plan to get approval from Washington for another agency to take over so the flow of Syrians to Allentown will not be slowed.

Readers may recognize this agency going under as the one we discussed a few times back in October. It is really worth your while to read that post before this latest news.
So, hummm!, Lutheran Liberty is tired of losing money! (Just like the taxpayers!). I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that there is more to this story—did regular church-going Lutherans get fed up with bringing in the Syrian Muslims (99% of those entering right now are Muslims***).
From The Morning Call (hat tip: Joanne):

ALLENTOWN — The state’s largest refugee resettlement program is slated to shut down next month, forcing federal officials to approve a replacement before services in the Lehigh Valley and across Pennsylvania are interrupted.

Lutheran Children and Family Services, which has headquarters in Philadelphia and helps settle about 100 refugees a year in the Lehigh Valley, cited accumulating debt as a reason for ending most of its social services by June 30.

Officials said the nonprofit was not receiving enough money to cover immigrant and child welfare programs and has had to borrow $4.5 million from its parent company, Liberty Lutheran, to stay afloat.

If you are considering “welcoming” refugees to your town, read this next line carefully. This will cost your state and local taxpayers no matter how much the contractors say the feds pay for it all. The “reimbursement” mentioned is the payments the federal taxpayer shell out to the contractor.

“Unpredictable state and local funding, coupled with reimbursement that didn’t cover the true cost of service contributed to mounting deficit, leaving Liberty to resource millions of dollars to cover the shortfalls. The generosity of donors has not met the shortfall,” says a statement on the LCFS home page.

Don’t get too excited, they plan to be back with a new subcontractor:

Efforts are underway to find an agency to take over the refugee program. The LCFS Refugee Resettlement Program is a local affiliate of the National Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, which is hoping to partner with Baltimore-based Bethany Christian Services to continue administering refugee relocation services in Pennsylvania.

There is more, continue reading here.
The article goes on to say that there are many Syrians already in this part of PA, BUT there is no mention that they are mostly Christians who are not too excited by the large number of Muslim Syrians being admitted.
By the way, Pennsylvania is important to them. This is a state teetering on the line between red state and blue state. These resettlement contractors and the open borders agitators are working to turn it reliably blue.
***Just checking “government figures” as of May 10th. We admitted 1,943 Syrian refugees (of the 10,000 Obama wants) and 1,922 were some flavor of Muslim. That keeps the percentage at 99% Muslim for the Syrians resettled in your states so far this fiscal year.

Pittsburgh: Jewish agency and Islamic Center working together to bring more Syrians to the city

02/12/2016 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We’ve told you previously that apparently the city of Pittsburgh has run out of American poor people and is looking to import more poverty from the Middle East, Africa and Asia so at least their poverty would be diverse.
The mayor, Bill Peduto, wrote to Obama in September looking especially for thousands of Syrians.
I’ll bet African American voters helped put this guy in office and they don’t get it that he is now bringing in competition for low income housing and jobs for low-skill workers. (The city is 26% African American, here)
This is the latest from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (housing and jobs are in short supply, no kidding?):

While the city of Pittsburgh might be welcoming more refugees from war-torn Syria, it is local agencies such as Jewish Family & Children’s Service and the Islamic Center of Pittsburgh that are working to make their lives here possible.

The challenges, Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto said, are housing and jobs.

Leslie Aizeman 2 — Leslie Aizenman of the local Jewish resettlement office explains how her organization uses your tax dollars to find housing and jobs for refugees.

“It’s not the city government that does this work,” Mr. Peduto said at “A Syrian Summit” Thursday night at East Liberty Presbyterian Church. “It’s the agencies … they look at those two critical factors.”

[….]

Dozens of people attended the meeting, sponsored by the Southwest PA division of the National Association of Social Workers, to ask Mr. Peduto and other speakers what Pittsburgh is doing for Syrian refugees and to advocate for them to live here. Four families already do.

[….]

The city will be able to take 500 refugees — not just Syrians — this year, he said.

Continue reading here.
Jewish Family and Children’s Service of Pittsburgh is a sub-contractor of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, here. Don’t forget, HIAS is the organization that wrote a report in 2013 which urged the Southern Poverty Law Center to investigate (and label as racists, bigots and xenophobes) anyone who had problems with the social and economic upheaval from refugee resettlement in their communities.
Pennsylvania is in the top FIVE states ‘welcoming’ mostly Muslim Syrians, see here.
Click here for everything we have said about Pittsburgh in previous posts.