Tag: Refugee Resettlement

Norwegian towns saying “NO!” to more refugees

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment
The changing face of Norway—Asylum child waiting in line.
Photo : Julien Harneis

Norway’s Refugee Dilemma!

Holy cow!  It’s not just stunning that many towns are saying NO!, it is stunning that they are even given a choice in Norway of whether they want any refugees at all!    Even with our Constitutional tradition of “States Rights,” American cities and states are not given an opportunity to say to the US State Department—sorry we can’t afford more refugees!

Here is the news from The Nordic Page:

Aftenposten writes that only 64 of the 368 municipalities agreed to accept as many refugees as the government wants. 27 municipalities simply reject, while 204 municipalities receive less than the government has requested. 73 municipalities have not even responded to the request of Integration and Diversity Directorate, IMDI.

Later in the article we learn this about who is going to Norway—mostly Muslim young men.

The refugee and asylum seeker definitions are similar to the ones used by the US.

There are two main groups of refugees who come to Norway. The first group consists of asylum seekers who come to Norway on their own initiative, and the second group consists of resettlement refugees. Resettlement refugees are refugees who cannot return to their home country and cannot be granted residence in the country in which they are staying. Resettlement refugees’ cases are processed by and, they are recognised by, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) before they arrive in Norway. The Norwegian parliament, the Storting, stipulates a quota for the number of resettlement refugees Norway accepts each year.  In 2010, Norway accepted 1,300 resettlement refugees. Most of the 2010 quota was reserved for Eritrean, Afghan, Palestinian, Burmese and Iranian refugees. Minimum 55 per cent were to be women and girls, while 15 per cent of the places were for vulnerable female refugees.

Also, there are asylum seekers who come to Norway on their own initiative and apply for protection from the Norwegian authorities. In the end of September, the Directorate of Immigration (UDI) had received 7,299 asylum applications. Many of these applicants come from countries badly affected by war or previous conflicts. The biggest groups of asylum seekers come from Eritrea, Somalia and Afghanistan. Not everyone who applies for asylum in Norway is entitled to protection or a residence permit.

[….]

A total of 163 500 persons with a refugee background were living in Norway on 1 January 2012. These persons accounted for 3.3 per cent of the Norwegian population, and 30 per cent of all immigrants in Norway. The two largest groups were persons with a refugee background from Iraq and Somalia.

[….]

Male refugees were overrepresented, with around 10 200 more men than women as at 1 January 2012.

There is a lot more, read it all!

Sample State Department testimony: This one from Texas

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

As regular readers here know, the US State Department will be taking testimony in mid-May on the “appropriate size and scope” of our refugee resettlement program for fiscal year 2014.

Prior to last year the testimony was almost exclusively from the federal contractors (nine major and approximately 300 subcontractors) looking for more and a greater variety of refugees to resettle to your towns and cities.  Last year citizens concerned with the direction of the program actually outnumbered the contractors in the number of comments submitted.

We have described here how to prepare your testimony.   I also said, I would publish any you wish me to publish.

A reader, John Williams of Texas, has sent us his letter to the US State Department and we share it here with you for inspiration and guidance.  Your testimony may be long or short, detailed or general, but please send in something by the May 8th deadline!

Anne Richard
Asst. Secretary of State for Population, Refugees and Migration
US State Department
Washington, DC. 20520

April 22, 2013

Re: Federal Register Public Notice 8241

Dear Ms Richard:

I am writing to submit written comments on the President’s FY 2014 U.S. Refugee Admissions Program as part of the upcoming May 15 public hearing in Washington, DC. Overall, I am writing to request that Refugee admissions be cut back dramatically to less than 5,000 admittances annually.

There are many reasons for this:

1)    Recent terrorist attacks suggest many refugees being admitted pose substantial risks to the United States and its citizens. There has been a tendency to relax scrutiny of refugees and other aliens in an effort to not appear prejudicial to certain groups or religions. This effort, while perhaps well-intentioned, is naive and dangerous. Some individuals claim persecution precisely because they are considered dangerous to the country in which they live. Admitting such individuals merely moves the danger to the U.S.

2)    If pending Comprehensive Immigration Reform is passed, there will suddenly be a huge additional burden to U.S. unemployment and social services rolls at a time when we can least afford it. Refugees would have to compete with millions of low-skilled workers in an already saturated job market. If we are so anxious to legalize these millions already resident, we should take prudent steps to minimize the impact on our weak economy by reducing other immigrants.

3)    The existing resettlement system does not adequately take into account the desires and resources of the communities in which refugees are placed. As a result, refugees are often “dumped” into an area that is already saturated or is unable to provide the special services refugees often require. This is unfair to the community and can create a huge burden to the local tax base. The federal government should be prepared to support the refugees or not admit them.

4)    Refugee settlement has become a big business that has corrupted what was supposed to be a voluntary activity. If the voluntary agencies are indeed voluntary, they should be self-funding. As long as they depend upon the federal government they will advocate increased levels of admission and funding, regardless of the true cost to local communities or society as a whole.

5)    The refugee program was originally intended to provide safety to small persecuted groups and has become an open-ended tool of US foreign policy. This has perverted the purpose of the program and shows an extreme lack of sensitivity to the communities that are expected to absorb this burgeoning flow of humanity. If the program were reduced then the State Department would presumably select their admissions with better care.

6)    In conjunction with the above, U.S. admissions policy has become subsumed to the needs of the UNHCR. We should not allow a foreign agency to dictate policy to the U.S., especially when it causes adverse effects to local, often small, communities in rural areas. We Americans in “flyover country” do not exist to satisfy the whims and needs of the UNHCR.

7)    Finally, the current high levels of refugee admissions are causing untold damage to small communities all across the U.S. It appears the State Department is either unwilling or unable to acknowledge this very real human cost. This is perceived as callous and arrogant treatment of some of the most generous and caring people in the world. The resulting resentment generated will eventually breed a callous cynicism that will endanger other humanitarian programs deemed desirable by the State Department. This will become apparent when voters demand a general moratorium on foreign aid and an isolationist position for U.S. foreign policy.

Like many programs created by the federal government, the refugee programs have suffered from significant mission-creep and a tendency to become corrupted by the money involved. In all of this the needs of the refugees as well as the “welcoming communities” have become secondary to other priorities. The State Department needs to review the original purpose of the program and what a “voluntary agency” is supposed to be and do. A good way to begin would be to pare admissions to a minimum while re-designing how the program is administered and funded. Enough is enough.

Sincerely,

John D Williams

CC:  Senator John Cornyn
Senator Ted Cruz

Representative William Flores

US Senate Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on Immigration, Refugees and Border Security

House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security

Thanks Mr. Williams!

Again, go here for instructions!

I just realized that we need to make a new category for this year.  Last year some testimony and my commentary of the May meeting was posted here.   I’ll make a category now for ‘Testimony for 5/15/2013 State Dept. meeting’ for your easy access going forward.

State Department will hear testimony from the public in May about refugee resettlement

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Readers this post is a repeat of one I wrote last week.  I promised to reprint this information every week until the deadline for testimony—May 8th—arrives.

You have virtually no voice in the decision about bringing refugees to America—where they come from and in what towns and cities they will be placed.  However, each year the US State Department hears mostly from federal resettlement contractors (nine major and approximately 300 subcontractors) to help them determine who (and how many) will be resettled.   The contractors have a vested interest because they are paid by the head (by you, the taxpayer) to resettle as many refugees as the State Department lets them have.

Anne Richard, Asst. Secretary of State for PRM, revolved into her job from a resettlement contractor position at the International Rescue Committee. Before that she was at the State Department!

The State Department will be looking to set its (the President’s) goals for FY2014 on May 15th.

You can send testimony too!   Here is what you need to do, be sure to pay attention to the last part about copying your testimony to your elected officials.  (Your US Representatives and Senators have pretty much abrogated their roles in questioning this program.)

And, one last thing—The Boston Chechens were not the first refugee/asylee terrorists who have entered the US and been caught, just the most successful so far.

My post from last week:

Every week from now until May 8th, I’m going to repeat this post!

Do not be silent!

The US State Department holds a hearing, usually in May, largely populated by the refugee contractors telling sob stories and looking to boost the number and variety of refugees (not to mention the contractor’s income) to be admitted to the US in the upcoming fiscal year.  My report on last year’s hearing is here.

Last year, and maybe for the first time ever, critical comments outnumbered those looking to add more refugees to already overloaded cities and states.  Let’s do it again!

The whole Federal Register Notice is here.

The meeting’s purpose is to hear the views of attendees on the appropriate size and scope of the FY 2014 U.S. Refugee Admissions Program.

Your testimony can be long or short, detailed or general, but get something in by the deadline of 5 p.m. May 8th!

Address testimony to:   Anne Richard, Asst. Secretary of State for Population, Refugees and Migration, US State Department, Washington, DC.

Reference Federal Register Public Notice 8241

E-mail or fax to Delicia Spruell:

Persons wishing to present written comments should submit them by 5 p.m. on Wednesday, May 8, 2013 via email to spruellda@state.gov or fax (202) 453-9393.

Now listen-up, this is important!   If you don’t copy your testimony to your elected officials, you can be sure your testimony to the State Department will never see the light of day!

You must put cc at the bottom of your testimony and list the following:

~Your member of the House of Representatives  (look up their addresses!)

~Your US Senators

~Any elected officials in your state who may be interested

Also, send to (and list on your testimony):

~US Senate Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on Immigration, Refugees and Border Security.  Go here for list of Subcommittee Members.  You will be listing and mailing to the Subcommittee, however, if your US Senator is on that subcommittee then please be sure they are listed prominently on the testimony you send to the State Department.  Mail to:  U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Immigration, Refugees and Border Security, 224 Dirksen Senate Office Building, Washington, DC 20510.  Mail your testimony to the Subcommittee even if your Senator is not on it!

~House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security.  Go here for a list of all the Subcommittees and see if your Member of Congress is on the Subcommittee.  But, even if he or she isn’t then still send your testimony here (addressed to the Subcommittee):  2138 Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, DC 20515, p/202-225-3951.

When sending anything to your US Senators or Members of Congress always ask a question so that hopefully it forces them to answer your letter!  You might ask them to put pressure on the State Department to have this “hearing” held in several locations around the country!

If you plan to attend the hearing in Washington on May 15th (location and time details in my previous post), you need to let Ms. Spruell know by the same deadline.

Persons wishing to attend this meeting must notify the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration at telephone (202) 453-9257 by 5 p.m. on Wednesday, May 8, 2013, to reserve a seat.

Send me a copy of your testimony and indicate whether or not I have permission to publish it!

I made a special category for testimony last year, here.  So, check it out and see what others said last May.

Send copies to Ann@vigilantfreedom.com

Will Atlanta become the Detroit of the South, and did US State Department help push it that way?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

World Net Daily posted a story three days ago that didn’t say anything about refugees, but asked that question and ended with this line:

DeKalb has changed from majority white to majority black over the last several decades. As the Atlanta Journal Constitution gingerly put it: “The county’s transition from majority white to majority minority was politically rocky.”

Where is Professor Kotkin?  Is this one of his stellar examples of how immigrants are turning red cities and states into blue ones?

These refugees didn’t ‘find their way’ to the Atlanta suburbs, the US State Department and its contractors placed them there!

Debris from a condominium, left, in Brannon Hill (near Clarkston) remains five years after it was leveled. Units in several buildings, right, are in such poor repair that they have been boarded up for years. No money because area populated by Somalis says accompanying story. Photos by Andrew Cauthen

John T. Bennett at WND begins his sorry tale of corruption and how some suburbs are breaking from Atlanta and setting up their own cities (of super-white majorities!) to escape the responsibility of dealing with the Dekalb County suburbs.

As Detroit – beset by violence, debt and social woes – prepares to undergo a historic takeover by the Michigan state government, the city of Atlanta could be sliding toward a similar fate.

Some are quietly wondering whether Atlanta is in danger of becoming “the Detroit of the South.”

The city has experienced an ongoing succession of government scandals, ranging from a massive cheating racket to corruption, bribery, school-board incompetence and now the potential loss of accreditation for the local DeKalb County school system.

For several years, problems of this sort have fueled political reforms, including the creation of new cities in northern Atlanta suburbs. Due to the intensification of corruption scandals in DeKalb, some state-level reform proposals could become national news very soon.

Read all the gory details, here.   Obama must be fuming because with suburbs breaking away to form their own incorporated cities this goes against a fundamental Obama goal of making the burbs pay for the cities as outlined by Stanley Kurtz (read about it here), but that’s a story for another day and another blog!

So, how does the US State Department play a role? 

Because they have been for decades pouring refugees into Dekalb County!  That is why! (Just as they did in Detroit!) But, in fact as we learned here earlier this month they have slowed the flow of resettlements to the beleaguered city of  Clarkston, Georgia where city leaders said, ‘no more!’

However, once ethnic seed communities have been planted, secondary migrants will follow.  So even slowing resettlements directly from a third world country into a town does not necessarily mean the immigrant population will stop growing as their kinsmen arrive from elsewhere in the US because they want to be with their kind of people!

Look at this map of Dekalb County!

Dekalb County, Georgia just east of Atlanta proper. Decatur, Clarkston and Stone Mountain receive majority of Georgia’s refugees via US State Department contractors Catholic Charities, Church World Service and Lutheran Services.

Downtown Atlanta is in Fulton County and Dekalb is the county directly adjoining Fulton to the East.

Then go to WRAPS statistics and see what the primary resettlement cities in Georgia have been since Calendar Year 2007 (too much work to go back further, but this gives you an idea).   Also, have a look at a website which shows the changing demographics for Dekalb County from 2000 to 2010, here (whites are moving out).

Here (WRAPS, arrivals by destination city by nationality*) are the US State Department resettlement numbers for Dekalb County cities.   Georgia received 16,295 refugees from calendar year 2007 to 2013:

Atlanta:  3,826

Clarkston: 2,346

Decatur: 5,861

Stone Mountain: 2,525

So 89% of the refugees resettled in Georgia went to Atlanta and Dekalb County!

* I don’t know what’s up with this, they don’t appear to be giving us the nationalities any more—what are they hiding?

About the photo:

The photo is from this story about how the refugees flooding into Clarkston in previous years have driven out the white residents and brought more poverty and decay.  I first wrote about it here.  Don’t expect to see any balanced reporting any time soon in the mainstream media (including on Fox News) on changing demographics through refugee resettlement.

Illinois: Too many refugees, too little money! (Cue the weeping)

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

They are wailing and rending garments in the land of too many refugees according to this lengthy and very informative article in Medill Reports:

[LOL! After the standard practice of featuring a successful refugee—ed] The Ethiopian association is one of the refugee resettlement agencies in Illinois, which are struggling under a triple burden as the number of refugees steadily climbs: large cuts in federal funding, a greater range of native languages among refugees and the recession.

Illinois has the largest immigrant population in the Midwest as shown here in data collected at the Univ. of Minnesota.  Medill continued:

Tens years of resettlement represented here (23,220). However, according to Silverman’s office in the Illinois Dept. of Human Services, Illinois has resettled 145,000 since 1975.

Illinois has received about 23,220 refugees from 66 countries since 2000, and the flow has steadily increased since 2006, according to data of refugee arrivals in Illinois from the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement.

Feds cut our money,while refugee numbers rise!  (They haven’t seen anything yet, wait till the sequester hits Refugee Resettlement!)

Cook, Kane and DuPage counties have unusually large refugee populations, making the state eligible for targeted assistance from the federal resettlement agency, according to Edwin Silverman, chief of the Bureau of Refugee and Immigrant Services at the Illinois Department of Human Services.  [Here is our Ed Silverman archive for the curious reader—ed]

However, in recent years the federal allocation to Illinois has been cut by more than 50 percent, according to official funding data.

“In the year 2000, we received $7.3 million in combined refugee social services and targeted assistance, and in 2012, we received $3.5 million,” Silverman said.

Federal funding to the state has fallen while refugee numbers have increased in Illinois, because they have also increased in other states.

More diversity=more difficulty

In the face of these cuts, resettlement agencies are striving to meet the needs of a greater diversity of refugees.

Over the past decade, the refugee population has become increasingly diverse linguistically, with wide-ranging educational and employment histories, according to a recent report issued by the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

This makes it more challenging for resettlement agencies accustomed to receiving refugees from a limited number of countries.

More refugees=more unemployment  (by the way, readers, they could say “NO!” to the State Department and ask that the numbers be reduced.)

Achievement of self-sufficiency for refugees has also become more difficult in recent years, according to a 2011 research report for Congress by Andorra Bruno, a specialist in immigration policy.

The recession has played a major part, making it difficult for refugees to find employment and become economically self-sufficient.

Oh NO!  The real horror, Silverman says they have to do private fundraising!

“Finding employment is the biggest problem,” said Erku Yimer, the executive director of the Ethiopian association. “Because many of the companies that hire refugees are not hiring anymore.”

The subsidies resettlement agencies provide refugees is the only financial resource for those who can’t find work. The recession means those who are looking for a job rely on these subsidies for a longer period of time than in the past, Silverman said.  [Not exactly true, refugees are accessing welfare at accelerating rates, most of the contractors are putting their charges on the public dole as soon as they can!—ed]

“So in addition to providing resettlement service, the resettlement agencies have had to be in a constant process of fundraising from the private sector, in order to assure that refugees can pay their rent and don’t go homeless,” Silverman said.

Readers when this program first became law in 1980 (thanks to Ted Kennedy, Joe Biden and Jimmy Carter among others) the understanding was that refugees would quickly become self-sufficient and not be part of a permanent underclass.  Also, the program was to be funded through a PUBLIC-PRIVATE partnership.  Over the years the contractors got lazy and became increasingly dependent on the taxpayer to support THEIR charitable desires and the public is now largely on the hook.

If they have to exert themselves and do private fundraising now, too bad!  They should have been doing that all along.  [sounds of wailing!]