Minneapolis City Council: Please send Syrian Muslims to our city!

01/14/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

As if they don’t have enough problems with the tens of thousands of Somalis living in Minnesota, the Minneapolis city council passed a resolution yesterday, welcoming Syrians to join the gang in Minneapolis.

Frankly, I’ve wondered why so few Syrians have been sent (by the US State Department) to Minnesota so far and wondered if the DOS was worried that there could possibly be some tensions created with the added diversity in the city where Somalis are king.
Arab Muslims (98% of Syrians entering US right now are Muslim) and black Africans aren’t always the best of friends, and the Syrians will add competition for the same welfare dollars as the Somalis enjoy now.
See screenshot from Wrapsnet.org below showing how many Syrians have been placed in Minnesota. I went back to FY2012 and only these few are recorded so far (with none in FY 2017 to date).
From Minneapolismn.gov:

The Minneapolis City Council and Mayor Betsy Hodges approved a resolution today supporting the resettlement of Syrian refugees in Minneapolis and calling on other Minnesota communities to support a national effort to resettle the country’s most vulnerable refugees.

The resolution notes that “hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees are making life and death decisions to flee Syria and neighboring countries because they are unable to access shelter, health care, education or protection, and neighboring countries have closed their borders to new arrivals.”

[….]

More than 14,000 Syrian refugees have resettled in the United States since the beginning of the conflict in 2011. The Twin Cities is a leader in welcoming refugees and has resettled more than 12,500 refugees from 40 countries, including Syria, since 2011. [Only 5 from Syria have been placed in Minnesota so far—-ed]

“Minneapolis has long stood as a place of welcome for refugees from throughout the world, including those seeking resettlement from Syria,” said Mayor Betsy Hodges. “Today we restate our City’s commitment to welcome Syrian families to make homes and new lives here.”

Continue reading here.
Here below is the screenshot from Wrapsnet.org (US State Department’s data base for arriving refugees):

screenshot-143 — None were recorded in the previous three fiscal years. And none have been placed so far in the first three months of FY17.

Refugee contractor may have exaggerated numbers in letter promoting Rutland, VT resettlement

01/12/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Every one of you working in your local communities and questioning plans for either expanding the number of refugees in your city or where new sites are planned, pay attention! Do what this housing authority member did—don’t take the contractors word on the economic benefits that refugees supposedly bring to your town or city.
I’ve been begging for years for someone with an economic/business background to thoroughly debunk (with a focused economic study) this illogical notion that bringing more poor people to a poor and struggling city benefits the city economically! I’ve suggested Utica, NY as the case study location.

This meme along with the propaganda that no refugees have been involved in Islamic terrorism are the two major talking points the refugee industry advocates peddle.
Here is Vermont Watchdog. You too can do this!

Gail Johnson, a Rutland resident and Board of Aldermen hopeful, likes to confirm her facts. This practice grew out of necessity when, as a U.S. Navy finance officer, she was in charge of payroll for an entire naval base in Charleston, S.C.

lavinia-limon-96 — In 1996 Lavinia Limon was Bill Clinton’s Director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement. After leaving government where she doled out grant money, she took the reins of one of nine major government refugee contractors receiving grant money, the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants. See Breitbart’s Michael Leahy’s dossier on Limon here last August: http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/08/05/twin-falls-refugee-crisis-clinton-appointee/

Now, a member of the Rutland Housing Authority commission, Johnson continues to fact check. “Whatever I say or do, I have proof. I back it up. I expect others to do that as well,” she said.

Johnson never thought she would find discrepancies in a letter by the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) to the Rutland Board of Aldermen, but she did.

[….]

In October, the Board of Aldermen sent a letter to USCRI, asking for justification of Rutland’s selection as a refugee relocation site. The agency still has not released the original grant application, which is supposed to spell out in detail Rutland’s suitability. Instead, USCRI CEO Lavinia Limon responded to the board in December, sending a letter that cited numbers of available jobs and housing.

Limon said that, as of Nov. 28, 2016, The Vermont Housing Data showed “284 housing units available for rent in Rutland City.”

Johnson noted that the 284 figure could be a result of expanded search parameters, to potentially place refugees in rent-to-buy situations, homes or condos. However, USCRI only places refugees in apartment rentals. [However, because the numbers coming in now are so astronomical, we are hearing refugees being placed (against federal regulations) in hotels!—ed]

However, when Watchdog checked the site on Jan. 11, only 23 housing locations are listed in Rutland City. Of those listed, none have availability.

[….]

“I’ve worked with people from many backgrounds. I’ve studied Arabic. Refugee settlement is a wonderful humanitarian effort,” she said.

But she said she becomes concerned when settlement agencies claim refugees will be beneficial to Rutland’s economy.

“They say that bringing in refugees is good for our economic recovery. I don’t know that that’s the solution. What I do know, in a bigger sense, is that the logic behind improving our economic recovery in Rutland by bringing in low-income people to generate business, it’s not a logical economic model,” she said.

Instead, Johnson contends, Rutland’s unemployment and lack of affordable housing makes bringing low-income refugee families into the city counterproductive from an economic standpoint.

Please read the whole story, Ms. Johnson found many more discrepancies in Lavinia Limon’s letter.
See my previous post on Rutland where I said Ms. Limon was setting this up (with the New York Times help) to use as a cudgel against Donald Trump should he stop the flow of Syrians after January 20th.
See our many posts on the Rutland controversy, here. And, learn more about Lavinia Limon and USCRI by clicking here.

Nearly 30,000 'refugees' admitted in last 15 months from two terror-exporting countries

01/05/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Those two countries are Syria and Somalia*** as the Obama Administration works overtime to pour as many refugees in to the US as they can before Donald Trump takes office on January 20th.
The numbers we have been reporting in recent weeks go way beyond anything we have seen in the last nearly ten years of writing this blog.

Photo by: Dennis Van Tine/STAR MAX/IPx 6/16/15 Donald Trump announces his Candidacy for President of The United States of America at Trump Tower. (NYC) — Trump transition needs to know that John Kerry’s State Department is cutting corners and knocking themselves out to get as many Muslim refugees placed in US towns and cities before January 20th as they can!

Questions are also beginning to arise about whether the refugee agencies (the non-profit resettlement contractors) can properly care for them due to those high numbers of arrivals. We have reports of refugees placed in hotels, delays in medical screening, and refugees without winter clothing, all are violations of US State Department regulations for contractors.
I promised some maps for someone, which sent me to Wrapsnet.org this morning.
These are maps (screenshots) for the placement and numbers of Syrians and Somalis for the last 15 months. That would include all of FY2016 and the first three months of FY2017 which ended on December 31, 2016. (The fiscal year for the placement of refugees runs from Oct. 1 of one year to Sept. 30th of the next year.)
Obama said at the beginning of FY16 that his State Department would admit 10,000 Syrians (98% Muslim) to the US that year. We are now (in the last 15 months) up to 16,153!
screenshot-114

screenshot-111 — No Syrians went to Hawaii or Alaska, and if you can’t read Florida the number is 847.

Virtually all Somali refugees are Muslims. You should know we pick them up all over the world and place them in your towns and cities. So Donald Trump’s administration needs to be careful and not say we will halt refugees coming from Somalia (for example), because few if any come from Somalia directly. (We do expect Trump to halt them!)
screenshot-116

screenshot-117 — Alaska received 36 Somalis, Hawaii 0, and that Florida number is 148. Again the map is for the last 15 months.

And, if you missed it yesterday, many questions remain about one Somali admitted to the US in 2016 who was free to wander the streets of Aberdeen, SD and attempt to sexually assault a special-needs woman there. See our post yesterday, here.
***Thousands more Iraqi, Afghan, and Burmese Muslims have entered as well during these same 15 months, but we chose to focus only on Syria and Somalia for this report.

Texas Rep. Brian Babin calls on President-elect Donald Trump to honor his promises to pause refugee resettlement

12/29/2016 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

You must watch Rep. Brian Babin of Texas skillfully deflect Fox News’ Ed Henry’s efforts to sucker him into some Christmas season mumbo jumbo about separating out and helping the good refugees coming in from the Syrian conflict.
After you watch, send this video far and wide! (It only had 24 views early this morning).
Henry is sitting in for Tucker Carlson. It is too bad Carlson himself wasn’t there for this interview, because of anyone on Fox, Tucker ‘gets it’ about Muslim migration to Europe and to America.
Pay special attention around the 2:00 minute mark where Henry begins with something like: ‘you do want to help’ (something like that). Watch Henry’s face! And, don’t miss Rep. Babin calling on Donald Trump to “honor his promises!” (watch beginning around 3:45 for that comment).
(If the youtube video below doesn’t play for you, you can find it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHQw16iSc1M )

Stop Obama’s Trojan Horse!

See our Rep. Brian Babin archive by clicking here. The bill Babin mentions in the interview is one that Speaker Paul Ryan and the Republican leadership never allowed to come up for a vote. It effectively died with this past Congress. New bills will be submitted beginning in January.

New Mexico: Lutheran resettlement contractor puts brakes on new Sante Fe refugee program

12/23/2016 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

With Trump win, Santa Fe’s refugee program on hold

(Albuquerque Journal headline)

Hurrah! We found another*** of the supposedly 47 sites the Obama Administration has (secretly!) approved or was working on approving for the massive numbers of refugees they expected to resettle had Hillary won the election rather than Donald Trump.
Here is the sad tale from Sante Fe (a city yearning for more diversity). After an initial heartwarming intro:

In less than a year – and largely through the efforts of Santa Fe’s faith communities – what snowballed into a group calling themselves Welcoming Santa Fe were able to get the city designated a refugee resettlement site by the U.S. State Department.

“We were elated,” Dickenson [Nancy a Sante Fe filmmaker who spear-headed the effort] said.

NEW YORK, NY - DECEMBER 08: Santa Fe, New Mexico Mayor Javier Gonzales attends a press conference after attending New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio's Mayor's summit on immigration reform on December 8, 2014 in New York City. The summit focused on how cities can best utilize President Obama's executive action on immigration reform. (Photo by Andrew Burton/Getty Images) — Sante Fe Mayor Javier Gonzales wanted more diversity for Sante Fe. He was one of 18 mayors who demanded Syrian refugees for their cities in 2015. See here: https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2015/10/14/act-for-america-launches-citizen-action-campaign-urging-18-mayors-to-re-think-their-demand-for-more-syrian-refugees/

But that was in October. Weeks later, on Nov. 8, Donald Trump won the presidential election. He campaigned on a strict immigration policy that included building a wall on the southern border to stop illegal immigration. He also proposed a temporary ban on allowing Muslims into the country, a message he repeated Wednesday in response to this week’s terrorist attack in Berlin that was allegedly perpetrated by a Tunisian asylum-seeker.

No one knows what a Trump presidency will mean for immigration policy. And that’s what caused Lutheran Family Services, an affiliate of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service – one of nine national organizations that work on behalf of the U.S. government to resettle refugees in different parts of the country – to put on hold using Santa Fe as a refugee settlement site.

One hundred refugees, including up to 20 families and 30 children mainly from Central Africa but also from the Middle East and South America, were scheduled to make Santa Fe their new home next month. The startup of a refugee resettlement program was mentioned at a recent meeting of the city Immigration Committee and notice had been issued for a fundraising concert.

Money is the main reason it is on hold!

Burnett [Tarrie Burnett, program director for Lutheran Family Services in Albuquerque] said future funding is also a major concern. Trump has talked about scaling back the nation’s admissions program for refugees, defined by the State Department as people who face persecution in their native lands.

[….]

Burnett said her office operates on a budget of about $1 million, about 75 percent of it coming from the federal government. The rest comes from various grants, pass-through funding, donations and other sources.

Much more here at the Albuquerque Journal.
Bottomline! Resettlement subcontractors like Lutheran Family Services (LIRS is the major resettlement contractor) are not going out on a limb now to open offices, pay rent, and hire staff when Donald Trump could drastically cut the number of refugees arriving beginning on January 21st.

The contractor’s initial federal funding is paid out by the number of ‘clients’ they place. It is a per head payment!

*** We can now add Sante Fe to our list!

Below are new sites we have identified so far of the supposed 47 the Obama Administration is (or has been) trying to get established.

One of the first things the Trump Administration must do is to make all of this information public information. Here are some of the sites we have identified so far by just keeping an eye on local news reports:

Asheville, NC (not decided yet)

Rutland, VT (approved, waiting)

Reno, NV (open)

Ithaca, NY

Missoula, MT (open)

Aberdeen, SD (not now)

Charleston, WV (approved, see Senator Capito as the Frau Merkel of WV!)

Fayetteville, AR

Blacksburg, VA

Pittsfield, MA

Northhampton, MA

Flint, MI

Bloomington, IN (dead for now)

Traverse City, MI

Poughkeepsie, NY

Wilmington, DE

Hudson, WI (dead for now?)

Watertown, NY (maybe)

Youngstown, OH (maybe)

Storm Lake, Iowa

Sante Fe, NM (approved but on hold)