Lutheran Social Service planning to seed 225 additional refugees into St. Cloud this year

10/12/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

jodi harpstead — CEO Harpstead pulls down a salary and benefits package of over $300,000 annually to head the $91 million a year operation. Link to Form 990 below.

If they succeed they will be placing 27 more than they did in FY17 which ended on the 30th of September.

Checking Wrapsnet, here is a summary (below) of the refugees (mostly Muslims) who were placed by a subcontractor (Lutheran Social Service of Minnesota) of the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service mothership located in Baltimore.

Refugees who went to St. Cloud in direct resettlement (there are no reliable numbers on secondary migrants) last year are below.

Secondary migrants are refugees placed elsewhere who migrate (legally!) on their own to another town or city.

Minnesota does have the highest number of secondary migrants in the country as we learned a few years ago when such information was published.

In FY17 St. Cloud received 198 of the 1,623 refugees resettled in the entire state.

Burma (4)

Ethiopia (19)

Iraq (9)

Somalia (166)

St. Cloud had the second highest Somali resettlement after Minneapolis (364).

Here (below) is the FY18 R & P Abstract for St. Cloud.

This is the document that should be made available to the public BEFORE it goes to Washington. These numbers are determined by Lutheran Social Service in Minnesota (Harpstead’s organization) with the help of “stakeholders.” Stakeholders should include your local elected officials!

(See my post on St. Cloud yesterday)

Normally this document is kept from the general public, but we were fortunate enough to obtain it. Knowledge is power and that is the primary reason there is so little transparency with refugee resettlement. The feds and the contractors don’t want citizens to have all the facts!

I maintain that if the program is a good one for the community, they should be able to sell it with all the facts on the table!

Below are screenshots of the pages. Serious students should go to this post where I explained some of the numbers, categories etc. But, I am far from an expert!

Documents like this (reporting the capacity of your town to ‘welcome’ refugees and from where) come in to Washington from hundreds of towns and cities and are put together to become the basis for the Presidential determination which we know is a maximum 45,000 refugees for FY18 (which is now underway as of Oct. 1).

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Again, knowledge is power!

I leave it to you, again with the help of this post to examine the plans that Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service in conjunction with the US State Department and the US Department of Health and Human Services have in the works for St. Cloud.

LOL! Do you see that line in the last chart about voluntary hours/miles? What that represents is the number of hours and the miles that volunteers put on their own vehicles converted to a cash value. The contractor uses that figure to show the federal government that they have put some skin in the game (it is supposed to be a public-private partnership after all). I wonder do volunteers know that they are worth money to the contractor?

Check out the actual cash from foundations/corporations in FY16 and the enormous jump estimated for FY18. Is that realistic? Can they just make up numbers?

Housing specialist? So the refugees get a housing specialist? Do just regular poor Americans get one from LSS of MN?

The most recent Form 990 for LSS of Minnesota is here (or see LSS financials page):

file:///C:/Users/Ann/AppData/Local/Temp/Lutheran%20Social%20Service%20of%20MN%20-%20Public%20Inspection%20Copy-1.pdf

Other contractors are operating in other cities in Minnesota. See here:

https://refugeeresettlementwatch.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/acb67-publicaffiliatedirectory1-6-17.pdf

What can you do?

Citizens in St. Cloud, see my complete archive on what I’ve reported about your city since 2008.

Concerned citizens elsewhere, go to the list of contractor/subcontractors I linked above. Call one near you and ask for the FY18 R & P Abstract (Reception and Placement Abstract). Ask your local elected officials—mayor and council—if any of them have ever seen the plans for their town/city?

Addendum! If you get a runaround complain to your elected officials in Washington—your member of Congress and US Senators. If they can’t (or won’t!) get it for you, then you have even more to complain about!

Concerned citizens in St. Cloud, MN ask for a moratorium on refugee resettlement to their city

10/11/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

As I said here, the swamp is not going to be drained anytime soon, so my best advice to all of you concerned about the economic and cultural disruption in your communities fostered by the US State Department and its contractors choosing your town/city as a resettlement site (and the lack of transparency by federal government contractors in the process) must renew your efforts at the state and local level.

Here we have an excellent example of citizen action to get their local mayor and council to pay attention to their concerns. The citizens are asking for a moratorium on resettlement until their questions and concerns are addressed.

Watch the council meeting here. Begin at 13:45 to hear private citizens and then here again at 1:17:50 to hear Councilman Jeff Johnson say that he will be placing a resolution before the board at the next meeting. (Hat tip: Ron)

You too can do this!

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Again, go here to play the video: http://stcloudmn.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=2&clip_id=1324

I had to laugh, check out their rule that a citizen may have 2 minutes only two times a year to address the high and mighty. And, they only take 5 commenters at each meeting.

You can learn more about the St. Cloud council at their website, here. They said at the meeting that they accept letters and e-mail commentary.

Let me be clear, there is nothing in refugee law now to address the issue of a city having any power to halt resettlement to their city. However, the State Department has repeatedly said they will not place refugees in communities that don’t want them. So, if the council were to ask the federal government for a moratorium, it would (should!) carry significant weight!

But, if the council turns down a resolution for a moratorium, it becomes a very important educational opportunity for the community. If council members votes are recorded, the political stance (in support of, or opposition to, more resettlement and continued secrecy) of each council member becomes clear to the whole city.

Again, see my post here. Some of you in St. Cloud might decide to run for mayor or council based on what happens next. Even if you don’t win, the exercise will educate even more voting citizens.

Please visit my post yesterday where I told you about the ‘stakeholder meetings (quarterly consultations)’ held without the public, and the R & P Abstracts that are kept secret from the public.

You should be demanding that your mayor and council members (or whatever local govt. format you have) attend those meetings and receive the planning documents before they go to Washington and make an opportunity available for the public to comment on the plans before they are submitted to Washington each year!

Just fyi, I have been to St. Cloud twice in recent years. You can see my whole archive on the controversy there by clicking here.

I think RRW’s first mention of St. Cloud was by Judy in 2008 when she wrote about Somali students harassing a fellow student’s service dog, here.

Lutheran Social Services of Minnesota is the primary contractor in St. Cloud responsible for placing large numbers of Somalis there.

This post is filed also in my category entitled ‘What you can do.‘

Because frankly the Washington swamp is alive and well! Some important swamp creatures are the Chamber of Commerce and other business lobbyists looking for more customers and cheap labor! Do not be fooled! Refugee resettlement is not, first and foremost, driven by humanitarian zeal!

I repeat: all concerned citizens must ask to attend ‘Quarterly Consultations’ held by refugee contractors in your communities….

10/10/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

….transparency, transparency, transparency should be your mantra!

The ‘quarterly consultation’ is required by law and the US State Department has confirmed that the general public is permitted to attend.

One of the most important elements of the consultation is the discussion that should be held in public about how many refugees could be placed in your town in the coming year.

As I said here the other day, since the President has flubbed his great opportunity to push reform of the entire UN/US Refugee Admissions Program in late September, citizen efforts must necessarily now return to local action.

bartlett with map — Lawrence Bartlett is still running things at the US State Department because Trump has failed to put his people in place to supervise the career bureacrats. Here Bartlett told Senator Jeff Sessions that there are community consultations open to the public. https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2015/10/02/senate-oversight-hearing-on-refugee-program-very-revealing-senator-sessions-did-a-masterful-job/

Shortly, I will tell you the latest about how citizens in St. Cloud, MN are doing just that, but because others of you are reporting a lack of cooperation from resettlement contractors to your requests to be notified to attend QUARTERLY consultations, we will walk down memory lane.

I wrote this post on October 12, 2015 (this is just a portion of it). Disregard the portion about contacting Trey Gowdy, he is no longer the chairman of the subcommittee responsible.

(LOL! I urge serious students to open the links and read related stories, so that I don’t go nuts having to repeat things!)

It has only been in the last year or so [2015] that we have been made aware that QUARTERLY CONSULTATIONS with community “stakeholders” were being held quietly, out of public view. In fact, I wondered why I hadn’t heard about them and now I know why!

The citizens of St. Cloud, MN, here and here, brought the issue of exclusion of taxpaying citizens from the meetings where the ‘non-profit’ refugee resettlement agency meets with local elected officials, fire/police, education, health departments etc. to assess how things are going with the refugees, and they discuss how many to bring in the upcoming year. [Open both of those links at the beginning of this paragraph, please!—ed]

According to a State Department spokesman (unnamed!) doing a ~~press briefing for reporters~~ on September 11th, we learn that they have only been doing these QUARTERLY CONSULTATIONS since 2013! WTH! [Press briefing is no longer available so its a good thing I copied this bit of it.—ed]

And, they are lying! “Private citizens” have not been welcome.

These agencies (‘non-profit’ resettlement subcontractors) work very hard to hold these meetings secretly and out of the view of local concerned citizens—the ultimate stakeholder, the taxpayer! Yet, we have a State Department official (why no name?) telling the mainstream media that private citizens can attend!

Why is the spokesman unnamed?

We are pleased to have [name and title withheld] with us today. Moving forward, [State Department Official] will be called State Department official for the purposes of this call. Again, this call is on background.

So much for Obama’s much ballyhooed transparency! Now here is what ‘name and title withheld’ told a special group of reporters:

In addition, starting about two years ago, I believe it was FY13, we required that all of our resettlement agencies conduct quarterly consultations with stakeholders in their communities. So that means that not just once a year when they’re preparing a proposal, but every quarter they have to reach out to a wide variety of stakeholders. And that would include other community organizations. That could include the police department, the school, the mayor’s office, the fire department, other agencies that have a stake in refugee resettlement, and private citizens can be invited as well. And they hold those quarterly conversations and that is taken into account when we are making placement plans for the entire year and throughout the year.

You know Larry Bartlett told Senator Sessions this basic untruth here in the Senate hearing the week before last as well.

It gets worse!

We need lawyers on our team! Have they been breaking the law for 33 of 35 years? Or, have the states, which are supposed to prepare a plan every year and hold the meetings, not done their required duty to hold the quarterly meetings with communities?

Here are the federal regulations guiding the program (From CFR 400.5(h))

Provide that the State will, unless exempted from this requirement by the Director, assure that meetings are convened, not less often than quarterly, whereby representatives of local resettlement agencies, local community service agencies, and other agencies that serve refugees meet with representatives of State and local governments to plan and coordinate the appropriate placement of refugees in advance of the refugees’ arrival.

What should you do now?

So, for all of you working in ‘Pockets of Resistance’ (and others too!). Go here, and call the closest refugee resettlement office near you and tell them you want a schedule for the upcoming quarterly consultation! Ask them as well for the FY2016 [now FY18—ed] R & P Abstract which will tell you their plans for your town/city this year.

Continue reading here.

If you get a runaround, find a local lawyer willing to send the resettlement agency a letter on behalf of you—taxpaying citizens (stakeholders!). And, also make all the noise you can through whatever media you have available—tell the public that the program is being run secretively between a refugee contractor and Washington.

To all of you who have gotten this far, please send this to your fellow citizen activists. I don’t want to sound too cranky, but, if year after year, we reinvent the wheel, we will get nowhere!

This post is filed in my ‘what you can do’ category.

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

09/24/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

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.

Screenshot (864) — 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!

St. Cloud, MN residents concerned with refugee resettlement told it is a federal issue

08/10/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

No it isn’t. Local governments want to pretend they have no role so as to get the monkeys off their backs!

St. Cloud on Monday evening. http://knsiradio.com/news/local/residents-sound-refugee-resettlement#.WYvzdZCv3y8.twitter

First, here is the news about citizens appealing to the city council for a study about the costs of resettlement. The council voted the proposal down by one vote and said this isn’t a local government issue.

Memory lane! In 2015 we learned that the US State Department had only begun holding so-called “stakeholder meetings” with local government agencies in 2013!

This is what I said:

It has only been in the last year or so that we have been made aware that QUARTERLY CONSULTATIONS with community “stakeholders” were being held quietly, out of public view. In fact, I wondered why I hadn’t heard about them and now I know why!

Here Lawrence Bartlett, US State Department Refugee Program, told Senator Sessions that of course they consult communities and elected officials about numbers and impacts! https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2015/10/02/senate-oversight-hearing-on-refugee-program-very-revealing-senator-sessions-did-a-masterful-job/

According to a State Department spokesman (unnamed!) doing a press briefing for reporters on September 11th [sorry, the briefing has been removed!—ed] we learn that they have only been doing these QUARTERLY CONSULTATIONS since 2013! WTH!

And, they are lying! “Private citizens” have not been welcome.

More here.

Such meetings are required under the Refugee Act of 1980 as succinctly outlined here at Let Freedom Ring blog (hat tip: Katherine). This is a must-read. No time to pull quotes from it because I’m going away for a few days and dashing around this morning.

There is a local government role whether the city council of St. Cloud likes it (admits it!) or not!