…..And, to rein-in the refugee resettlement contractors who have been lobbying hard on this bill to make it easier for more refugees and asylum seekers to enter the US, as well as give the contractors more of your tax dollars.
Senators Corker and Hoeven with adoring press being used by Schumer/Obama/Rubio and Grover Norquist and they don’t get it!
Erick Erickson at RedState postedthis commentary by Senator Ted Cruz—here we go again, voting on a monster (over 1000 pages) bill without sufficient time to read it. Why the rush—because the public is starting to catch on to the horrors in it!
And, if you are thinking it will be O.K. in the House forget it! They could pass anything in the House and when they go to conference committee, the conferees could take the whole Senate version as the final bill.
Erickson went on to post this list of the key swing Senators (and yes, he wants you to call the architects of the “deal” Corker and Hoeven too):
Truth be told—Japan wants to maintain its Japanese cultural identity. They know very well that a small country with open borders will soon be overrun and frankly gone! They don’t buy the ‘diversity-is-strength’ mumbo-jumbo.
Only a few countries understand ethnic nationalism. By the way, that is what Bhutan was doing when it expelled its Nepalese immigrants. And, whatIsrael is trying to do, but may be too late.
A Geisha. Cultural preservation is a driving force in Japan.
Here is some news from Japan (the English isn’t the greatest, so I’m not sure if the writer wants more refugees or not), but it should be instructive for readers nonetheless.
Visit some of our earlier posts on Japan, here, where we learned that the “humanitarians” and the UN badgered Japan to take refugees, but only a trickle have been approved.
Call them “unwelcoming!” But, why should Japan be forced to change? There is no proof that multi-culturalism works!
It is said that the number of refugees is 43.3 million in the world now and many refugees are driven away from their living places. Although many of them are staying at their home country or the neighboring country, there are also refugees who come to the developed countries such as the US and Canada in order to look for their safe and stable life. This is refugee resettlement. Since 2010, Japan also began to the program of refugee resettlement as the first country of the Asian country. In 2010, 27 refugees of Myanmar who live in refugee camp of Thailand came to Japan. This is a new approach for Japan.
At first, why does not Japan receive many refugees? About 1.6 thousand refugees came to Japan in order to be recognized as refugees in 2008. However, the refugees who were recognized as refugees by the Minister of Justice are only 56 refugees.This number shows that many refugees can not be recognized as refugees and be allowed to come to Japan.Compared with other developed countries such as the US and France, the number of refugees being received is very few. The cause that the refugees in Japan are a small number is the system on the refugees and entry into a country. In Japan receiving entry permit to Japan is difficult in the eyes of the system of Japan. In the present day, refugees who came to Japan in order to be recognized as refugees are accommodated in an accommodation temporarily and they are treated like illegal immigrants. The food they receive is a poor Japanese food and they can not eat well because they do not adapt to Japanese food. They suffer in the accommodation until the result of the procedure comes out.
Read it all.
We previously noted, and this article does too, that Japan is second only to the US in giving financial aid to impoverished people elsewhere in the world. So maybe the UN should just leave them alone!
Sioux Falls is a ‘seed community’ (Tuula?*) and by that I mean it somehow was targeted as a “welcoming” community for the resettlement of third-worlders by the US State Department and its resettlement contractors.
Somalis arrive in Sioux Falls. Is there a meatpacking plant nearby?
Before I get to the news about the cost of educating the kids, have a look at the list of statesand how many refugees each has received in the last 5 years. I don’t know why certain places have been chosen. Was there a plan decades ago to push diversity in certain regions of the country (we are going to shove it down the throats of the rednecks)? Are there political factors (for instance, Biden helped pass the Refugee Act of 1980, but Delaware takes very few refugees). Or, did it all come about through happenstance?
Are refugee seed communities built around certain employers (meatpackers)? Or, are they developed in a hit or miss fashion dependent on the level of resistance the community puts up—I once called it the “squawk” factor. If resettlement begins and no real complaints are leveled at the politicians in the community and the local media doesn’t report any negative news about the program, the community is deemed “welcoming.”
How is it that Wyoming got zero refugees in the last five years while neighboring South Dakota got nearly 3,000? And, do states have a Constitutional right to say—NO! or no more! Or, at least demand that the federal government pay for the full cost to the seed communities?
Do American citizens have any right to say, we don’t want change? We like our community just as it is (sans diversity!).
Questions remain, but back to the news this week about the costs and problems associated with educating the children from dozens and dozens of nationalities in heartland America.
Except for Huron, there is no more diverse public school district in all of South Dakota than Sioux Falls.
At last count in October, officials here reported that 29.5 percent of the district’s roughly 22,000 students were minorities.
In Huron, where 41 percent of all its students are children of color, the majority are Karen refugees from Myanmar, or Hispanics. But refugee, immigrant and racial groups in Sioux Falls represent 51 different languages from across the globe that are spoken in homes here.
[…..]
In the past year, Hispanics, blacks, Asians and multiracial students all saw their numbers grow in Sioux Falls, while there were fewer whites and Native Americans. As a percentage of total enrollment, there are twice as many students of color in the district now than there were a decade ago.
Teaching those students English so they learn in the classroom is a big enough challenge, Smith said. But turning understanding of the language into the ability to successfully advance from grade level to grade level can be equally daunting.
The article mentions that refugees who enter the US as teenaged students have a very high drop-out rate. What is going to happen to those young adults?
The taxpayers of South Dakota must now ‘pony-up’ for more of the cost of educating the immigrant kids of Sioux Falls, but shouldn’t this be the federal government’s cost to bare? After all, the taxpayers of South Dakota were not consulted when the seed community of Sioux Falls was established?
Like all school districts across the state who work with ELL students, Sioux Falls caught a break during the past legislative session when lawmakers decided to contribute more money to the education of those children.
Districts will assess their ELL students on language proficiency each February on a scale of 0 to 6. For every student who scores below 4.0 on the assessment, the district will receive an additional 25 percent in state support on top of the regular funding formula.
For Sioux Falls, that means an additional $1.8 million to $1.9 million, Smith said. So this coming school year, Sioux Falls will have $2.2 million in state and district money to use for ELL instruction, and another $1.7 million in federal assistance.
“We won’t be adding additional ELL services with that money,” Smith said. “This roughly pays back what we’ve been putting into the program out of our general fund dollars.
By the way, it looks like Lutheran Social Services of South Dakota pretty much calls the shots and acts as the pass-through non-profit agency for some federal money.
Wow! We have written a lot on South Dakota. See ourarchive here. Just now as I looked through the list, here is one story that jumped out at me—woman’s home vandalized after she complained that Sioux Falls had FOUR mosques (thanks to the work of Lutheran Social Services)! Be sure to scroll down that post to the discussion of Tuulas.
50,000 Congolese refugees coming soon; more refugees generally than previous years; and a warmer welcome (more funding) for all, especially more funding for contractors!
At about the same time that citizens from across the country weresending in testimony to the US State Department telling them they don’t want tens of thousands of refugees admitted to the US in 2014, Assistant Secretary of State for Population Refugees and Migration was making the rounds of refugee contractor meetings and making some news. And, no surprise, it’s all about how resettlement is getting bigger and better (in their view).
Anne C. Richard, Asst. Sec. of State for PRM and formerly a Veep at the International Rescue Committee, a federal contractor.
Here is a portion only of Richard’s speech which I am breaking-up with explanatory sub-headings of my own. Emphasis is mine too.
Your community is “enriched by these newcomers!” says Richard.
Richard:
Let’s now turn our attention back to our own country, the United States. As all of you here today know, the United States is also the world’s leading resettlement country, admitting more refugees each year than all other resettlement countries combined – more than three million since 1975. And we all know that our own communities have been as enriched by these newcomers as they have been by the opportunities this country has provided them. Our overall resettlement policy remains the same: we will continue to strive to achieve the President’s refugee admissions ceiling, focusing on the most vulnerable who cannot go home or be integrated in their country of first asylum.
We get into dangerous places and bring out refugees. In Africa we moved Somalis from a camp that was too dangerous for our Department of Homeland Security to get into, to a less dangerous camp so as to process the twenty-year camp dwellers to your town.
Richard:
The PRM Bureau has gone to extraordinary lengths in the past year to reach refugees in need of resettlement who were previously inaccessible because of dangerous conditions in the places where they had sought asylum.
In Kenya, UNHCR has referred thousands of Somalis in the Dadaab camp for U.S. resettlement. Unfortunately, the Department of Homeland Security was unable to interview them because it was determined to be too risky to send DHS officers to Dadaab. Last year, we provided additional funding to build a transit center in Kakuma camp, where conditions are safer, and have moved close to 1,600 individuals from Dadaab to Kakuma to continue the process for U.S. resettlement.These refugees, many of whom have been living in Dadaab for more than 20 years, will start arriving in the United States this month.
We are working on bringing you Syrians as soon as we can to add to your city’s diversity.
Richard:
In Syria, thousands of Iraqi refugees who have been referred for U.S. resettlement are similarly inaccessible and we are taking several steps to get them to safety.
And, listen up! Here is some big news! The UN has announced that 50,000 Congolese will be resettled and THE US WILL TAKE MOST OF THEM!
Richard:
Many of you know by now that UNHCR has announced its intention to refer up to 50,000 Congolese for resettlement over the next five years. Most will likely come to the United States. Given the level of trauma and need among this population, we want to work together with all of you to do this right. That’s why we’ve formed a working group to bring together partners from all across the spectrum – overseas and domestic, government, International Organizations, and NGOs – to see how we can better prepare the refugees and communities for successful resettlement.
We will be getting into Chad so as to bring you some Darfurians too!
Richard:
We were pleased (and a bit surprised) when the Government of Chad reached out to UNHCR late last year to say it had changed its mind on resettlement of Darfuri refugees from Eastern Chad and would now allow UNHCR to refer individual cases (but not P-2 group processing).
PRM traveled to Chad in February to survey the landscape and discuss the resumption of resettlement with partners.We are cautiously optimistic but proceeding slowly in terms of dedicating resources (human and financial) to the effort, given the fits and starts we’ve faced on this program over the years.
Family reunification from Africa is now up and running after being closed for years due to the widespread fraud we uncovered in 2008. But, we didn’t do anything about those 30,000 plus Somalis who entered fraudulently prior to 2008.
Richard:
Working closely with the Department of Homeland Security, we re-instated the priority three or “P-3” family reunion program this year with a new DNA requirement to ensure that the program is fulfilling its purpose of reuniting relatives.
More refugees coming this year than last, 20% more! And coming faster!
Richard:
I’m pleased to report that we are on track to admit the number of refugees in the Presidential Determination this year. That is 70,000 refugees– a more than 20% increase over last year’s number. You should also know that we’ve been able to admit these refugees in a much more even pace than in recent years. Just under 50% of the refugees we expect this year were admitted in the first half of the fiscal year.
We know that there are shrinking local budgets, refugees are struggling, but we are going to bring them anyway! And, we will make sure the contractors get more federal tax dollars.
Richard:
We recognize that this increase comes at a time of shrinking state and local budgets, cuts in social services, and the challenges of raising private contributions.As you know, PRM has helped deal with economic challenges to the program by doubling the amount of funding provided on a per capita basis to receive and place refugees in 2010. We have provided modest increases since then.
We also are providing “floor funding” to our resettlement agency partners, essentially guaranteeing sufficient funding for services to 60,000 refugees so that program managers can plan and hire staff with the assurance that the funding will be there. Despite all these improvements, we know that many refugees are still struggling in the early weeks and months of their arrival in the States.
Not concerned with how communities can cope or finance all of this, just about how to make sure the refugees’ needs are met.
Richard:
This leads me to ask: How can our domestic programs best address the needs of refugees? What more can we do to help refugees effectively integrate into new communities? [Notice the word ‘integrate.’ They shun that out-of-fashion idea of ‘assimilation.’—ed]
Given the overall budget situation in Washington, we all acknowledge the need to widen the circle of domestic “stakeholders” in the refugee resettlement program. We need to ensure a warm reception for the refugees we resettle. We need to find creative ways to expand participation in the program at the local level and support for the program by community leaders.
Learn more about Anne Richard, the globalist—this is one of several posts on the revolving door (government employee/contractor). Richard has revolved several times in her career.
This is a story from the week the Boston terrorist attack happened and like so many it became lost in my stack as all of my attention became fixated on the fact that “refugees” were responsible for the marathon bombing.
The US State Department Director of Admissions, Lawrence Bartlett, visited Ft. Wayne, the Burmese capital of America (where they produce diversity wheelbarrows), along with a UN Representative to assess the damage there. LOL! that last part is my assertion! However, I have noticed that the State Dept. does send out people when cities have problems, it must be to smooth feathers.
Lawrence Bartlett, State Department Director of Refugee Admissions visited Ft. Wayne, Indiana last month.
In this case, I felt sorry for the mayor who has blinders on to what this refugee overload has done to his “welcoming” city.
Burmese refugees will continue to resettle in Fort Wayne, although in smaller numbers, an official for the U.S. State Department predicted Thursday.
The decline might be offset by an increase in refugees from Congo and Iraq, according to Larry Bartlett, director of refugee admissions for the State Department.
About 60 Congolese refugees have arrived in Fort Wayne in recent years.
“I would expect the program in Fort Wayne to remain strong,” Bartlett told a gathering of local, state and federal government officials at Citizens Square. “We certainly do not want to overwhelm a community.”
Mayor Tom Henry said that “for a while, we were being overloaded. … We just did not have the resources.”
Henry was referring to 2007-08, when Catholic Charities of the Fort Wayne-South Bend Diocese resettled more than 1,400 Burmese refugees in Fort Wayne.
This year’s local cap for refugees is 170.
Bartlett acknowledged that the 2007-08 influx “probably is not the right model for how we manage a program.” [Excuse me! The State Department could easily have reined this in, there was plenty of controversy in the newspapers in Ft. Wayne at that time.—ed]
[….]
More than 2,700 Burmese refugees have come to Allen County since 1993 to escape military rule in Myanmar, formerly known as Burma. Democratic reforms taking shape in the Southeast Asian country are expected to slow and perhaps reverse the exodus.
Fort Wayne is home to at least 5,000 Burmese, Henry said.
“To me, it’s a good problem to have,” the mayor said about challenges to both the city and its refugee population. “They wouldn’t come here if we didn’t have something to offer them.”
Henry said Fort Wayne adheres to a “welcome mat” philosophy.In addition to Burmese and Congolese, the city is home to refugees from Bosnia, Darfur and Somalia.
[…..]
The new arrivals tend to lack the education, job skills and English-language proficiency needed for quick assimilation and advancement, service providers said. Some have to travel out of state to find work. There are Burmese mothers who are raising children while their husbands remain in overseas refugee camps.
I think they call this “burying the lead!”
“My greatest fear is that we are increasing the generational poverty,” said Dr. Deborah McMahan, city-county health commissioner.
Read it all.
Don’t forget! You have until 5 p.m. today to tell Lawrence Bartlett what you think about refugee admissions for fiscal year 2014 because he will likely be presiding over the hearing on May 15th. Go here for instructions.
Testimony already submitted by others is archived here.
Almost forgot, former Indiana Senator Richard Lugar is responsible for getting this critical GAO report done on the Refugee Resettlement Program because he saw what is happening in Indiana.
