Tag: Syrian refugees

Refugee resettlement industry held emergency conference call on Friday: What will Trump do?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update November 22nd: Michael Patrick Leahy at Breitbart investigated and found more details.  In an update to his earlier article, he reports that the US State Department claims they did not organize or participate in the conference call, see here.
They are worried. And, as my good friend Richard (Blue Ridge Forum) would say, it has a lot to do with rice bowls. What? you ask! Have you ever heard the phrase ‘breaking rice bowls?’ It happens a lot when a new administration comes in to power and a lot of people have their livelihoods placed on the line perhaps for the first time ever!
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In a story ostensibly about what is going to happen to the new resettlement site of Northampton, Massachusetts, the head of the local Catholic Charities tells us a good bit about what went on when 452 worried refugee resettlement workers got on a conference call with presumably leaders of the two main federal agencies that administer the program and dole out the federal bucks in Washington.
BTW, as we have mentioned previously, both the Asst. Secretary of State for Population, Refugees and Migration and the Director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (as political appointees) will soon be on their way out.
Here is Masslive.com:

NORTHAMPTON — Asked if she thought a city refugee resettlement program would be subject to change under President-elect Donald Trump, Catholic Charities Executive Director Kathryn Buckley-Brawner pulled no punches.

“Of course it is,” Buckley-Brawner said. “Because Trump will be president. It’s less a question about ‘is’ as opposed to ‘will.'”

03/10/11 South Hadley Republican Photo by Mark M.Murray - Bishop Timothy McDonnell, Roman Catholic Diocese of Springfield ,annouces the official begining of the 2011 Annual Catholic Appeal, during a press conference inside the St.Patrick Parish center kitchen thursday. Also on hand at right is David Bergeron, head of food services at the center , and Kathryn Buckley-Brawner, Direcor of the Catholic Charities Agency.
Kathryn Buckley-Brawner has been resettling refugees in Springfield, Mass. http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2012/01/kathryn_buckley-brawner_named.html

Buckley-Brawner participated in a 452-person nationwide “post-election national refugee advocacy” conference call Friday headed up by people in government. [Advocacy on the taxpayers’ dime!—ed]

The call leaders said “don’t overreact,” prepare to advocate and argue in favor of refugee resettlement programs and hold steady until something changes, Buckley-Brawner said.

But feelings of uncertainty permeated the discussion, according to Buckley-Brawner.

“People whose job it is to have their finger on the pulse of what’s going on in our government don’t have a clue,” Buckley-Brawner said in a MassLive interview following the call. “If they don’t have a clue, the rest of us are in the same position.”

Members of the call seemed to think the most likely way a Trump administration might impact U.S. resettlement efforts would be by blocking refugees from certain places — like Iraq and Syria. [LOL! If Trump asks me, I’ll say Somalia, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan and Burma (Rohingya) need to be on the list too!—ed]

Trump told CNBC on Monday he felt more against allowing Syrian refugees into the country than ever, calling the prospect “one of the great Trojan horses.”

[….]

Several different scenarios were discussed during Friday’s conference call, Buckley-Brawner said.

Among these, a complete shut-down of funding for refugee resettlement — thought very unlikely. A tightening of vetting procedures and slow-down of refugee intake — thought very possible. Finally, a dramatic decrease in refugee intake across the board.

“We’re simply going to keep on doing what we’re doing until somebody says ‘stop,'” Buckley-Brawner said.

Continue reading here about the elected libs in Northampton and their enthusiasm for taking Syrian Muslim refugees.
Be sure to visit our archive on Springfield, Mass. where the mayor called for a MORATORIUM and begged for relief from Buckley-Brawner’s resettlement of refugees there for years.
Northhampton is fresh territory and I will bet that although it is only 20 miles north of Springfield, the folks in Northampton likely have no clue about all the problems Springfield has had (unless they have been reading RRW for years!).
Endnote: My apologies to the good citizens of Northampton! I have been spelling the name of your town wrong for months! Sheesh, just found that I had spelled it wrong above!

Manchester, NH police chief: 500 refugees coming to NH, 90,000 Syrians to America

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

That is what the Manchester Union Leader is reporting.  I’m thinking 90,000 Syrians is way high especially in the age of Trump.  Nevertheless, here is the story.  It is not clear to me (maybe it is to you!) what the motion before the mayor and council would actually do, so I’ll just stick to reporting on the stunning numbers that supposedly came from the FBI.

Alderman Keith Hirschmann originally proposed the motion, saying the board would empower Mayor Ted Gatsas in any efforts to stop a potential influx of 500 refugees from Syria.

willard_testified
Manchester Police Chief Nick Willard said he got the numbers from the FBI. BTW, Republican Senator Ayotte, to Willard’s right in this photo, lost her Senate seat. For our purposes it didn’t matter, because I have not seen her lift a finger to slow the Refugee Admissions Program (too close to Senators McCain and Graham?)

That figure came from Manchester Police Chief Nick Willard, who said he was told by members of the FBI that 500 Syrian refugees could be headed to New Hampshire.

“I was told during discussions with the FBI that 90,000 Syrian refugees are headed to the U.S., and 500 of them will be headed to New Hampshire,” said Willard.

Willard said he had no further information about the expected influx, including when or where in the state the refugees would be headed.

The motion was defeated.
Here is what one of our long time readers told the Union Leader, a sentiment shared by many in cities and states across America!

Jeannine Richardson said Friday, November 18, 2016 at 8:21 pm

Those who voted to host more refugees better find a way to house our homeless first and look into the burden on our schools, Medicaid, subsidized housing and job marker [market] for people with no skills before thinking this is a good idea for Manchester. Last family we hosted (like that PC term) are receiving $1200 in food stamps per month while we have soup kichens [kitchens] and religious groups having to feed American citizens in Manchester.

– See more at: http://www.unionleader.com/article/20151118/NEWS0606/151119198#sthash.Cz5PiKjA.dpuf

We have a huge archive on Manchester where the mayor worked for years to try to slow the flow to the refugee overloaded city.
And, if you hadn’t noticed, New Hampshire is turning (politically) blue and I maintain much of  that has to do with the influx of refugees and immigrants to the state.

Report: Charleston, WV pro-Syrian Muslim resettlement rally held

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

“I don’t think they should be brought here, period!”

(citizen activist Brenda Arthur)

As I told you a few days ago a Charleston ‘Interfaith’ group was planning a rally to push for the resettlement of Syrian refugees to the state capitol. And, as I mentioned then, I am struck by the fact that the rally for refugees was so specific about Syrians when we bring refugees from all over the world (and resettlement contracting agencies don’t get to pick only those ethnic groups they prefer).
Why are they so concerned about Syrians? Why is the Charleston, West Virginia group so discriminatory against other ethnic groups?

And here are my bigger questions: Where is Alex? Where is Shelley? Where is Joe?

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Come on Joe! Even if the Republicans are too squishy to speak up, surely you get it!

Considering that the controversy about the resettlement of Syrian refugees in American towns is one of the major issues that pushed Donald Trump over the finish line last week, shouldn’t we expect elected officials like Rep. Alex Mooney (R) in whose district this rally occurred and US Senators Shelley Moore Capito (R) and Joe Manchin (D) to have the guts to say where they stand on the issue! 

Are they for or against this plan from Washington?

One story about the rally is here.  There was a counter-rally, so no one can say any longer that there is no opposition to the plan to expand the resettlement of Syrian Muslims (99% of all Syrians entering the US are Muslims) in to West Virginia.
See some of the opposition’s arguments reported at the Charleston Gazette-Mail:

During last year’s rally supporting Syrian refugees, Brenda Arthur stood across the street in protest. She learned of the rally only hours before it was scheduled to begin. She was then one of only two people protesting against it.

This time, she brought a few friends. To them, the reasons to not bring refugees seem endless.

“We had the June flooding disaster, we’ve lost jobs, there have been cuts in school funding and then there’s the drug epidemic,” Arthur said. “We’ve got all of these major problems to deal with. How does it even make sense to bring people here from halfway around the world that are going to need every form of government assistance?”

Arthur, 65, gathered with about a dozen other people in protest of the rally. Their main complaints about settling refugees in Charleston is the fear that they might be sent by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and that tax money would be used to resettle them.

But even if it didn’t cost taxpayers anything to bring refugees to West Virginia, and even if officials could be completely sure that the refugees weren’t sent by ISIS, Arthur still doesn’t want them here.

“I don’t think they should be brought here, period. We should take care of them in their homeland,” Arthur said. “A lot of these people, you know, they’ve been in their tribal land for thousands of years, and now they’re uprooted, brought to a new culture — in many cases a culture that has nothing to do with them. Our values are antithetical to a lot of things that they believe.”

See our complete archive on the West Virginia controversy by clicking here.

Hudson,Wisconsin Catholic Church asked to resettle five Syrian families in departure from normal resettlement process

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

First, this proposal to a specific Catholic Church to effectively become a resettlement agency in a town with no resettlement office tells me that the refugee industry is getting desperate.

Frankly, as Congress has not appropriated enough money for Obama’s large refugee numbers for FY17 (already underway) because it has not acted on the budget for the upcoming year, contractors like the US Conference of Catholic Bishops are looking for ways to pawn off some of their responsibilities on, in this case, an individual church.
Members of St. Patrick’s Catholic Church are apparently in the process of deciding if they will take responsibility for five (most likely Muslim since 99% of the Syrians entering the US now are Muslims) families.  (I saw this story almost a week ago, so maybe they have already decided.)

st-patrick-hudson
US Conference of Catholic Bishops attempting to get the most bang for their federal bucks by not opening an office while turning over responsibility for Syrian families to a specific church.

This is a huge undertaking. I watched as a church near where I live in 2007 took on the responsibility for one family and it was an enormous chore that didn’t end well.  My local story is a long story, but members of St. Patricks must be prepared for many duties not the least of which is shuttling refugees in their own cars to myriad appointments (doctors, schools, social service departments) and often to jobs for months (one of the first things volunteers ultimately become weary of!).
And, one of the other things that volunteers tire of is the lack of appreciation some ethnic groups of refugees show for volunteers.  I can’t say that will happen here, but the fun and excitement of taking care of Africans and Middle Easterners wears thin when the refugees act entitled.
One more thing before I get to the story:  Hudson, Wisconsin is on the border of Minnesota. Normally a federal contractor has an office within a hundred miles of where it places the refugees, but the three offices maintained by the Bishops in Wisconsin (Greenbay, Sheboygan, and Milwaukee) are all hundreds of miles away.  However, the USCCB office in St. Paul, Minnesota is only 18 miles from Hudson so I assume that out-of-state office will be sending the federal money to St. Patrick’s.  My first thought is that the USCCB is now making decisions from over the border in Minnesota for what happens in another state.
Here is the news from the Hudson Star-Observer:

Rev. John Gerritts and St. Patrick’s Church received a call from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops for the parish to assist with the resettlement of five Syrian refugee families from a camp in Turkey to Hudson. The church has not yet made a decision.

The conference is one of several organizations that helps with the federal government’s refugee resettlement program. Through the program, the U.S. will admit 85,000 refugees this year [reporter has it wrong, that was FY16, the number for FY17 is 110,000—ed] , according to the U.S. State Department.

These five refugee families have been vetted by the government and approved for resettlement in the United States, a process that can take between 18 and 24 months, Gerritts explained.

hudson-map
Hudson is right across the state line from a huge resettlement area (mostly Somali refugee resettlement) in Minnesota.

“It’s quite thorough and lengthy,” Gerritts said. “They are fully approved to move here. This is working through the government.”

Hudson was selected as the families’ new home because they indicated they had a relative in Hudson during the vetting process. [One relative and five families are coming? Sounds fishy—ed]

Whether or not these five refugee families come to Hudson is not up to the church, as they have already been approved by the federal government. Instead St. Patrick’s is being asked to be a resource to spearhead the resettlement.

[….]

Usually, after a location for resettlement is determined, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops will reach out to an agency in the area that specializes in resettlement. The Hudson community does not have an agency like this, so instead St. Patrick’s has been asked to assist. St. Patrick’s is one of the first parishes in the country who have been asked to take on this role.

[….]

St. Patrick’s would not bear any of the financial cost for these services. The church would be responsible for disbursing the government funding provided for refugee resettlement.

For the full story, go here.
LOL! Parishioners at St. Patrick’s better get that in writing and the town of Hudson’s elected officials are presumably being briefed because there will be many costs to local taxpayers!
For new readers in Wisconsin, see our ‘Ten things your town needs to know’ by clicking here. It is not just one Catholic parish that will be impacted by the decision, but the whole town!  If you don’t like what is happening be sure to let Speaker Paul Ryan hear from you!

Ho-hum another Trump fear article reveals an interesting bit of information

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Apparently some refugee advocates blame the US State Department’s decades old secrecy about the Refugee Admissions Program (RAP) for the backlash against it!

He (resettlement contractor Christopher George) places some of the blame on the State Department, which encourages resettlement programs to operate at a low profile (in secrecy!).

bloomington-forum
US STATE DEPT. NO-SHOW! More than 100 people came out to a refugee forum in Bloomington, Indiana last week. Experts Don Barnett and Jim Simpson debated one lonely pro-refugee immigration lawyer, when Barbara Day, representing the US State Department, was a no-show and purportedly discouraged refugee agencies in the state to not participate as well, thus confirming what Connecticut contractor George told NPR. Photo and story from Bloomington, here: http://www.idsnews.com/article/2016/11/locals-discuss-concerns-for-refugee-families

This is from NPR (no surprise), but buried in its many paragraphs of sad stories about poor Muslim refugees we found a point of agreement with a resettlement contractor (emphasis below is mine):

Donald Trump’s election has sent tremors through America’s refugee advocate community, and caused fear and uncertainty among the most recently resettled refugees, the Syrians. They listened with alarm as candidate Trump called them “terrorists” and blamed them, incorrectly, for violent attacks in America.

“That rhetoric has had an impact,” says Becca Heller, director of the International Refugee Assistance Project, a legal aid program. “Trump has been successful in politicizing refugee admissions in a way that they have not been politicized before.”

[….]

Advocates argue that backtracking on American commitments could encourage other countries to follow the U.S. example, deepening a humanitarian crisis for allies and giving talking points to Muslim militants who claim that the West is hostile to Islam. [Is our goal here to make Muslim militants happy and prove we are good anti-hostile people or to help legitimate refugees, I wonder—ed]

But bipartisan support for refugee resettlement unraveled after last November’s Paris terrorist attacks, when early reporting erroneously identified one of the attackers as a Syrian refugee. Support further declined following last December’s terrorist attack in San Bernardino, Calif., and a mass shooting in June at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando.

Remember this is about money (your money!)

These so-called charities can’t help refugees until they have wads of your tax dollars in their pockets!  I say if the general public is supportive, people should contribute private money, not steal from tax payers!
NPR continued:

Now that Republicans control both chambers of Congress and the White House, refugee advocates fear there will be severe funding cuts for their work.

Note in the following paragraph from the NPR story,  how an employee of a resettlement agency spins his rhetoric about fears of terrorism by saying there have been no arrests for domestic terrorism in the refugee community.  He is completely discounting all of the arrests and convictions of refugees for planning terrorism abroad.  

hamza-ahmed
Somali refugee Hamza Ahmed sentenced to 15 years just yesterday for attempting to join ISIS.

We gave you a few cases here the other day (including domestic jihadists like the Somali Christmas tree bomber, and don’t forget the St. Cloud knife attacker!), but here is news just this morning about another terrorism conviction of a Somali refugee.
You raised this Islamic jihadist wannabee with your tax dollars.
NPR (apparently reporter Deborah Amos is too lazy or too biased to get the facts about refugees and terrorism, so George spins unchallenged!):

Refugee advocate Chris George says the campaign rhetoric could undermine a program that has resettled 750,00 refugees since Sept. 11, 2001 — with not one arrest for a domestic terrorism charge.

However, here is the part of the story I found most useful:

“This all goes back to a fundamental lack of information about the refugee program and lack of contact,” he says.

George is the executive director of Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services***, a nonprofit agency in New Haven, Conn. His organization has resettled more than 250 refugees this year in a distinctive program that partners with private groups to place refugee families in communities, “so people can meet them and have them live down the street and walk to school with their children.”

Most Americans have never met a refugee, says George, and that is part of the problem.

He places some of the blame on the State Department, which encourages resettlement programs to operate at a low profile.

And, why does the US Department of State operate in secrecy? I maintain it is because if the general taxpaying public knew the full story about the RAP it would be rejected almost everywhere!
*** IRIS is a Church World Service subcontractor.  Go here to learn about CWS finances.