St. Cloud controversy over refugees draws CAIR’s attention; CAIR draws media attention

And, of course, as I look around this morning I see that CAIR’s arrival on the scene draws the national media!  A local Fox affiliate is reporting on the controversy surrounding one city councilman’s proposed moratorium on refugee resettlement and even the Washington Post is now reporting.   I expect to see the spinners and liars from the New York Times arriving soon!  LOL! the new ambulance chasing—CAIR chasing!

It looks like the showdown will be Monday, October 23rd when Councilman Jeff Johnson will propose that the mayor and council ask the federal government and its agent in Minnesota—Lutheran Social Services of MN—to give them a break until more is known about the economic impact of resettlement on the city and until there can be some assurances that the process going forward is transparent. Federal law does give a role to local governments to weigh in with their suggestions.

If this is the first time you are learning about the latest uprising in St. Cloud, see my posts here, here and here recently.

The moral of this story is if you can draw out CAIR (Council on American Islamic Relations) you can get some national attention for your efforts! 

As I said in my previous post, CAIR must fight to keep Muslim refugees coming in to the US in order to continue to build their political power base.  It is that simple!

Here is CAIR!

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How did St. Cloud get here?

Rather than go back over the resolution and what it could possibly do (or what might happen on Monday night at city hall), I think my best contribution to this story is to supply readers with background on how a small Minnesota city became ground zero for a battle, the results of which, will in fact help determine the future of literally every town and city in America in the decades ahead.

It’s the Lutherans in the case of St. Cloud.

We know that Somali refugees have been placed in Minnesota by the US State Department since the late 1980’s.  By the early 1990’s the flood gates were opening as three major federal contractors: Catholic Charities, Lutheran Social Services of MN (whose ‘mothership’ is Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service where, by the way, rumor has it that some scandal is brewing), and World Relief saw Minnesota’s generous welfare as a real plus for the destitute Somalis. See my 2011 post here.

Not only was the generous welfare a draw, but big companies needed cheap labor (a window company in Owatona for example, or meat packing plants all over the state, including in St. Cloud!).

LSS as employment agency?

jodi harpstead
CEO Harpstead pulls down a salary and benefits package of over $300,000 annually to head the $91 million a year operation

Initially there was no direct resettlement of refugees in St. Cloud, that didn’t come until 2011. But, the so-called secondary migrants were moving to the city helped by an EMPLOYMENT OFFICE run by none other than Lutheran Social Services of MN.  WTH!

Why was a non-profit ‘religious’ charity running an employment office to benefit large corporations?  Was someone paying them to find refugee laborers for St. Cloud area businesses?  Who? Taxpayers?

Here is an August 2010 story from Minnesota Public Radio announcing that in the coming year LSS of MN would be bringing 300 refugees directly to St. Cloud over the next 3 years.

But, we learn that since 2002 (right after 9/11), LSS was running an “employment office” there:

Kim Dettmer, Director of Refugee Services at Lutheran Social Services, said no one has an exact figure for the total number of refugees living in the St. Cloud area. Many community and nonprofit leaders estimate that the African population in St. Cloud is between 8,000 and 10,000–this figure includes people who came to the United States as refugees and who have since become naturalized citizen and no longer have refugee status. Lutheran Social Services learned that St. Cloud had a large and growing Somali population, so it opened an employment office in St. Cloud in 2002 to provide extra support.

Continue reading here.

One of those companies looking for cheap (Lutheran-supplied) labor was apparently Gold n’ Plump a St. Cloud-based chicken processing plant which found out that maybe cheap Somali Muslim labor isn’t cheap after all.  It had to pay out an undisclosed cash settlement to Somali workers in a legal dispute discussed here in the Star Tribune.

In a landmark settlement that could change the way Muslims are treated in the workplace, St. Cloud-based Gold’n Plump Inc. has agreed to allow Somali workers short prayer breaks and the right to refuse handling pork at its poultry processing facilities.

The federally mediated agreement is among the first in the nation that requires employers to accommodate the Islamic prayer schedule and the belief, held by many strict Muslims, that the Qur’an prohibits the touching and eating of pork products.

Community organizers form Red-Green axis:

One of those involved in the settlement was community activist Mahmoud Mohamed. I told you about him and his ‘ethnic community based organization’ here in early 2010 and here again in December of that year where he claims to be part of the “we” who brought the first refugees directly from camps to St. Cloud.  I don’t know if he is still active, or if SASSO is still calling shots in St. Cloud.  And I don’t know if Mohamed is still working with the hard Left community organizer Luke Tripp. Someone needs to do a little research.

The controversy surrounding the resolution vote on Monday (and hopefully there will be a vote so that citizens there can see exactly how each council person votes) did not happen in a vacuum or come out of the blue.  In addition to those events I just mentioned, a lot has gone down in St. Cloud over the years, including but not limited to:

A controversy about Somalis harassing an assistance dog, here. (my first introduction to St. Cloud)

Controversies in the high school, one of many posts here.

A huge zoning battle over the construction of a mosque in the middle of a neighborhood, here.

The knife attack by a Somali at the local mall, here.

Somali teen murders African American, here.

Muslim arrested for mosque vandalism blamed on citizens (Islamophobes!) originally, here.

Local paper did not like me visiting St. Cloud, here.

Go here for many more stories in my archive about St. Cloud.

Update! How could I forget this! MN Governor Dayton said in St. Cloud 2015: anyone who doesn’t like immigrants can get out of Minnesota, here.

Bottomline, Lutheran Social Services of MN is responsible for the exploding Somali population in St. Cloud and the chaos and controversy that has followed.

Not in my name!

What you can do: If you are of the Lutheran denomination, you need to let your ministers know exactly how you feel about changing America by changing the people in the name of your faith group (and for Caesar’s money)!

Comment worth noting from St. Cloud, MN

Editor: From time to time I post comments more prominently that I think are important but would get little notice otherwise. This is a comment I received about my post two days ago, here.

Update October 19th: Don’t miss all the breaking news on St. Cloud today, here.

From St. Cloud Guy:

I have lived in St Cloud for a long time and I can’t believe how fast the city is going down. The housing market in St. Cloud is falling way behind all the surrounding cities because of the excessive refugee population. Also the schools have become some of the worst ones in the entire state of Minnesota. The Star Tribune estimated over 30% of St Cloud Apollo High School is Somalian now and the other high school St. Cloud Tech has a larger refugee population in its area. They have only been coming to St. Cloud in large numbers the last decade and a half. What will happen in another 10 years? Plus all the extra kids they have? 80%?

St_Cloud_Somalis

It’s very upsetting and frustrating that St. Cloud was a nice normal town that we could raise families here and go to decent schools. Now that is all gone and we have to take huge losses to sell our houses to get out of here. I really wish we would have a say in this since tax money is used for it. We almost have to move out of state, because any decent size city in Minnesota has or is starting to have problems with excessive refugees and poverty.

I don’t care if people want to migrate here but we need to stop paying for it with our tax money and let them get over here on their own and take care of themselves. That’s what all our ancestors did and that’s what made America so strong. At least that way the people that do migrate here on their own will be hard working and motivated to live the American dream not just sit at home collecting welfare checks and having babies.

See more comments worth noting and guest posts, here.

NYT Op-ed: hand wringing about future of Democrat Party; Somalis mentioned

I confess I didn’t read the whole opinion piece in the New York Times as carefully as I should have (I have so little patience for this sort of excruciating hand wringing analysis).

minnesota somalis on fox

But, I read far enough to know that the gist of the schism, between our two major political parties, has to do with the rapid racial and ethnic diversification of America with the Dems on the side of the ‘new Americans’ and showing  little interest in helping white working class American citizens.

Much of the current polarization is driven by difference of opinion on issues of race and immigration.

In fact one of those pontificating about how the Dems should proceed suggests that the Dems don’t hesitate to move in the direction of more catering to their immigrant base and forget the white working class altogether.

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Begala is in favor of trying to get the white working class back in the fold

And then author, Thomas Edsall, mentions Paul Begala (remember him from the Clinton inner circle, Rush calls him the “forehead”) who is on the side of trying harder to reach the white working class.

Begala says something that I know many readers here will relate to (after you get past his painting of some whites as drunks and drug-addled).

Edsall at the NYT:

Paul Begala, a Democratic consultant and adviser to Bill Clinton, also comes back to the cultural breach between upscale Democrats and the white working class and poses this basic question:

If you look at the Democratic platform, or Hillary’s speeches on the economy, Democrats have a raft of good ideas, loads of sound policies that would make life better for the white working class. So why have they rejected us?

White working-class Americans are “dying before their time,” Begala wrote in an email, specifically citing the rise in alcoholism, cirrhosis, drug addiction, overdoses, suicide and poisoning:

If the life expectancy of, say, Somali immigrants in Minnesota suddenly took a dive, Democrats would be falling all over each other trying to ascertain the causes and advocate the cures. We owe white working-class Americans no less.

Ain’t it the truth!

This post is filed in my ‘Laugh of the day’ category, here.

Except for Somalia and Syria, new rules for travel to US won’t have much impact on refugee program

In Trump’s new mixed bag, most of the eight countries are not significantly represented in the US Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP).

Editor:  By the way, I assume you saw that the Supreme Court has cancelled arguments on the previous travel ban, here I don’t know yet what that means for the refugee portion of the case.

Other than Somalia, Syria and Iran we don’t see many refugees from the other five countries. And, you should know, for Iran, that the vast majority of those we admit as refugees are Christians and other religious minorities.

As I remarked the other day, we do admit very large numbers of questionable refugees from Afghanistan, Iraq, Burma (Rohingya Muslims) and some additional African countries who will not be getting the extra scrutiny.

I checked Wrapsnet just now to see how many refugees we have admitted between FY07 and FY17 from the 8 ‘travel ban’ countries. But, don’t forget that many others from these countries get in to the US through other legal programs as well as illegally.

Refugees admitted FY07-FY17 (to date).  Here is what I found:

Chad (182)

Iran (38,236 but only 405 of those are Muslims while over 20,000 are Christians)

Libya (12)

N. Korea (203)

Syria (21,110)

Yemen (146)

Somalia (67,158)

Venezuela (13)

The new vetting rules may have a large impact on Somalis entering the US….

Check out here where all those Somalis have been planted.  Minnesota tops the list with 8,529. But that doesn’t tell the whole Minnesota story as Somalis resettled elsewhere move in large numbers as what the USRAP calls “secondary migrants” to MN.

 

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Alaska welcomed 294, but Hawaii (the state that loves diversity) welcomed zero!

 

St. Cloud, MN: a microcosm of the battle ahead for cities targeted by federal refugee program

The dramatic change in demographic makeup and the escalation of tensions in St. Cloud came to my attention in the earliest days of writing this blog when my then blog partner, Judy, wrote in 2008 about how Somali students were harassing a service dog to such a degree that it caused the disabled student to leave the school.

See that story here.

It is a good thing that we captured some of that story because it seems to no longer be available at the St. Cloud Times, which surprise, surprise, seems to be the case for many of the articles we have reported on from St. Cloud in the ensuing 9 years.

Recommendation!  I can’t do it here, but when I look at RRW’s archives on St. Cloud (that began with the dog abuse story) what immediately comes to mind is that what has happened to the city, now the third highest for the direct resettlement of Somalis in the state (Minneapolis and St. Paul, are numbers one and two), is that someone should do a documentary film or write a book about the transformation of a small American city that began with a meatpacking plant’s desire for cheap labor.

And what got me thinking about it this morning is this snarky editorial in the St. Cloud Times blaming the Christian haters for the tension there.

Before I get to that, take a look at my St. Cloud archive by clicking here.

A sampling of stories that you should look at include:

St. Cloud, MN Somalis turn up the stealth jihad heat, demand “human rights”

St. Cloud, MN a perfect example of community agitation to bring “change”

St. Cloud, MN update: refugees now arriving there directly from camps

 

On this last post, I checked data at Wrapsnet and St. Cloud was getting Somalis directly, immediately after 9/11, but I believe Lutheran Social Services MN (the resettlement contractor there) didn’t open an office in the city until 2010.

But, direct resettlement doesn’t tell the whole story because Minnesota leads the nation in secondary migration (Somali refugees placed in other states move to MN to be with their own kind of people.)

Here is some of the editorial from the St. Cloud Times showing its disdain for its Christian readers:

If Central Minnesota is going to look back on one year since the Crossroads Center attacks and ask about community relations and people getting along, we at least need to be honest.

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Photo used by the St. Cloud Times to illustrate its editorial. What! no photo of the Somali who stabbed ten at the local mall last year (a bit more hateful than words!).

When it comes to publicly exuding religious extremism in Central Minnesota and a lack of tolerance for others, it’s not from new immigrants nor Muslims. It’s from long-time residents. And Christians.

[….]

But there also is no denying a small, fervently vocal group of residents is working very hard to degrade new immigrants and Muslims — to the point this group wants to ignore the First Amendment and move from an American democracy to a Christian theocracy.  [WTH! These citizens with concerns are using the First Amendment as you chronicle below. It is the SC Times attempting to silence speech with this editorial!—-ed]

Witness the continued march of anti-Islam guest speakers making stops across Central Minnesota, typically as invited guests of certain Christian pastors.

The latest came Sept. 12-14 when Christian pastor and former Muslim Shahram Hadian spoke in St. Cloud, Browerville and Freeport. His topics: “Trojan Horse of Interfaith Dialogue,” “Islam’s Assault on the Constitution” and “Islam’s March Toward Supremacy.”

Witness the handful of local folks who have shown up regularly at recent St. Cloud City Council meetings to use the public input period to demand City Council members stop the influx of immigrants.

Never mind that this is a free country, and people can live where they choose. These speakers also want city leaders to go into public schools and other places, programs and organizations over which the city has no control.

So how many Christians in St. Cloud have attempted to murder Muslims?

(Don’t miss Leo Hohmann here on the feckless FBI on Somali refugee Adan who attempted to murder Americans one year ago in St. Cloud.)

But, somehow, to the editors at the St. Cloud Times, it’s the Christians (exercising their First Amendment rights!) who are the haters?

The editors continue…

To be clear, Dahir Adan stabbing 10 people at Crossroads a year ago was among the most horrific crimes experienced in Central Minnesota. And, yes, it certainly met the definition of terrorism.

It is unsettling that even a year later the FBI is not providing more details, especially clarity as to whether Adan was acting alone.

More here.

I’m frustrated! The story of St. Cloud needs to reach all Americans, so someone in the larger media needs to do a full investigation, or better still write a whole book or produce a documentary film so that all of America can be warned!