Opposition to refugee resettlement growing in West Virginia

10/26/2016 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We have reported on many occasions that West Virginia has pretty much dodged a bullet when it comes to the federal government resettling third worlders in the state, but all of that is changing as new efforts are underway to supply more industries there with cheap labor—in a state that has been struggling for years! [***Update*** or is it pressure from the Catholic Church, see here—ed]
The controversy began last spring when Episcopal Migration Ministries (one of 9 federal refugee contractors) went public with its plan to bring Middle Eastern refugees—Syrians in particular—to Charleston which had only gotten a few Iraqis and Iranians in the last ten years.

alex-mooney-2 — Rep. Alex Mooney represents Charleston, WV. He is also a member of the House Freedom Caucus. West Virginians who have concerns about refugees being placed secretly in the state, must get a commitment from him BEFORE the election to join any effort in the lame duck session to DEFUND the RAP. See here: https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2016/10/26/reminder-these-are-the-house-members-who-should-be-automatically-on-the-side-of-defunding-the-refugee-admissions-program/

BTW, 176 refugees in total were placed (mostly by Catholic Charities) in West Virginia in the last decade. Charleston got 13 Iraqis and 9 Iranians before last year’s five Syrians.
We reported on the plan by EMM here. Then again here and here in September. And, more recently published the testimony of citizen activist Brenda Arthur to Senator Jeff Sessions Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest, here.

Arthur has now launched a facebook page—ACT Charleston-Secure West Virginia. Click here to join and keep up with the news.

Earlier in the summer when Arthur was just learning about the RAP (Refugee Admissions Program), after reading about it in an article in the Charleston Daily Mail, she penned a letter to the editor. Arthur reports the following:

This (below) is the letter I tried to get Kelly Merritt – Charleston Daily Mail Opinion Page Editor – to publish in late July 2016. He wanted me to “soften” it, as he said it was too “inflammatory”. I would not — therefore, he would not publish it.

This is the “inflammatory” letter, what do you think?

REFUGEE RESETTLEMENT FOR CHARLESTON?
Brenda Arthur

On May 26, 2016, the Charleston Gazette-Mail published an article by staff writer Erin Beck. She painted a glowing face on the issue of Charleston being targeted by Episcopal Migration Ministries as a “resettlement community.” I’m compelled to fill in gaps in her narrative with what Paul Harvey called ‘the rest of the story’.

The refugees being brought to the United States are 98% Muslim. Only a small number are Christians. In reality, the Christians are treated much worse in the refugee camps. Many Christians are afraid to go to the refugee camps because of mistreatment by the overwhelming numbers of Muslims.

Although people being brought here as refugees come from all over the world — many of those coming now are picked by the United Nations High Commissioner For Refugees from the refugee camps in Syria, Turkey, and Jordan. The UN is a corrupt organization that hates America and Israel. How can we trust any refugees they pick for us?

Beck’s article never mentioned that ISIS has sworn to infiltrate the ‘refugees’:

“ISIS has said in their own words that they want to exploit it to infiltrate the West. Again, it is not a threat I am making up, it’s a threat their own officials have warned us about.” (11/18/15)–House Homeland Security Chairman Michael McCaul.

Beck neglected to report that these refugees can’t be vetted, an alarming fact that ISIS knows even if Erin Beck doesn’t.

James B. Comey, Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation, U.S. Department of Justice: “There is risk associated with bringing anybody in from the outside, but especially from a conflict zone like [Syria]… My concern there [about bringing Syrian refugees into the United States] is that there are certain gaps I don’t want to talk about publicly in the data available to us.” (10/8/15)

Supporters of this resettlement scheme will tell you that the refugees are vetted by our State Department and Homeland Security. REALLY? Is this the same State Department that “vetted” the wife of the San Bernardino terrorist, and gave refugee status to the Tsarnaev brothers a.k.a. the Boston bombers? Perhaps Erin Beck has a copy of the State Department memo warning Charleston – and other host cities across America – that some refugees are afflicted with drug resistant strains of TB.

Are we to believe highly informed intelligence experts — or groups like the Episcopal Migration Ministries (one of 9 major Federal Contractors paid mostly with our tax dollars) who are paid “by the head” to bring these people to the United States. Thanks to a reserved place at the public trough, these Federal Contractors get hundreds of millions of dollars in government grants.

Ask yourself these questions:

Why do groups like Episcopal Migration Ministries (a 501(c) 3 charity) *(and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops operating in West Virginia as Catholic Charities of West Virginia) get hundreds of millions of our tax dollars to do their work ?

Why do they operate “below the radar” away from public scrutiny?

Why aren’t they presenting our elected representatives with the R & P Abstract (Reception & Placement) which details the plan for the town they are invading?

Before you vilify me as a bigot, xenophobe, racist, or hater, answer these questions:

Why is it incumbent on us to absorb so many impoverished third world peoples who reject our language, our culture, or our values?

Why spend millions on them when thousands of my fellow West Virginians are facing hard times due to the Federal assault on our coal industry?

Why is money given to foreign nationals when our veterans cannot get quality medical care?

Why not resettle them in other Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia where there is plenty of space and oil money to boot?

Why should our country which is almost 20 Trillion dollars in debt give refugees Supplemental Security Income (SSI), Food Stamps, Medicaid, Social Security Disability Insurance, Public Housing, Child Care & Development, Job Opportunities for Low Income Individuals (JOLI), Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), and other government benefits?

We have our own problems. Could any group that wants to bring impoverished third world peoples here that add a further financial burden to our citizens and have the potential of risking our security have the interest of our community and state in mind?

*Added: 10-23-16

More questions from me:
Where is the West Virginia Congressional Delegation? Where is Senator Shelley Moore Capito? Where is Rep. Alex Mooney? Are they shilling for industries in West Virginia clamoring for cheap immigrant labor in a state that has seen unemployment go up as the coal industry is being killed by Obama? Their silence is telling!
Endnote: While doing my research on Iraqis here yesterday, I noticed that the tiny town of Washington, WV on the Ohio border is getting Iraqis, only a small number so far, but I wonder why? Spillover from Ohio?

Over 1,000 Syrians seeded throughout America in last 3 weeks; 99% Muslim

10/23/2016 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Apparently there is no effort being made to resettle more persecuted Christians from Syria than Obama did last year.
1,069 Syrians have been spread around America in the first three weeks of FY2017. That is 352 a week. 99% or 1,054 practice some form of Islam. The vast majority are Sunni Muslims.

no-refugees-demonstration — There will most likely be 20,000 Syrian (99%) Muslim refugees admitted to the US by September 30, 2017, UNLESS Congress cuts the funding for the program next month!

There were 4 Catholics, 3 Christians and 8 Orthodox identified in the flow.

The top state receiving them was Michigan (by far!).

Here are the top ten receiving states:

Michigan (199)

California (104)

Arizona (68)

Maryland (63)

Pennsylvania (63)

Texas (62)

New York (60)

Ohio (50)

Indiana (42)

Georgia (42)

See the map from the Refugee Processing Center for the first 3 weeks of the fiscal year (30 states received Syrians so far, assuming I counted them correctly!):
screenshot-50
Don’t like what you see?

There is only one thing you can do to slow this flow (besides electing Donald Trump) which at this rate would bring around 20,000 Syrians to America by next fall and that is to persuade your member of Congress and US Senators to DEFUND the program in the lame duck Budget debate coming in November.

See the first in a series of posts on the lame duck budget process by clicking here. This is not about Obama, your Congressional Representatives have the power to rein this in if they wanted to (and they don’t want you to know that they have that power!).

You have 16 days before election day to get a commitment from your Washington, DC representatives to DEFUND!

100 refugees approved for Northwest Arkansas

10/19/2016 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Arkansas, like West Virginia and Montana, has received very few refugees over the years, but all that will change with the Dept. of State’s (DOS) approval of a new resettlement agency that will ‘welcome’ 100 refugees beginning next month.
All of the new sites*** are needed because Obama has ‘determined’ that the US will admit a huge increase (to 110,000) in the number of refugees admitted to your towns and cities in FY2017.

donald-j-trump-2016-with-flag — The Obama Administration is moving fast to get as many new refugee sites open as possible before January in case Donald Trump is elected.

The Obama DOS is on a crash program now to get as many placed in your towns as they can by Inauguration Day in January (in case Trump is elected) and place as many in the pipeline as they can making it more difficult for a new administration to put the breaks on.
There is only one entity that could slow the flow and they can do it next month and that is Congress (if there is a will)! Congress (not Obama!) has the ultimate power to DEFUND the large increase in the number of refugees coming in. These contractors, like this new one in Northwest Arkansas have virtually zero money of their own!
The story, here, and below demonstrates how impotent Arkansas’s governor is to do anything to stop the migration to the state.
From KATV Little Rock:

NORTHWEST ARKANSAS (TALK BUSINESS & POLITICS) — The questions surrounding refugees from the Middle East and other parts of the world will soon come to Arkansas as Canopy Northwest Arkansas works to bring 100 or more refugees from around the world to the region.

emily-linn — Emily Linn is the executive director of Canopy. She says Arkansas has great jobs in poultry plants (yippee!). How much is this resettlement being driven behind the scenes by BIG MEAT? LOL! BIG CHICKEN in this case! http://www.canopynwa.org/about/

[….]

In response to news publicity about the global refugee crisis, concerned residents in Northwest Arkansas (NWA) began meeting in January and formed Canopy Northwest Arkansas, a 501(c)3 non-profit with the mission of settling refugees in NWA.

“We consulted with refugee agencies operating nationally and we learned that there’s a need for new communities to open up to refugees. So we started looking into what it might look like for refugees to come to NWA and what we found is that our community has an incredible capacity to welcome refugees and help them really thrive here,” said Emily Linn, director of Canopy Northwest Arkansas.

Linn cited the growing economy in NWA as a reason refugees would do well.

Here comes the poultry industry! Surely, the Chamber of Commerce is not far behind. (I always wonder if they tell the incoming refugees that they are going to a meat or poultry plant town).

“We have great jobs for folks who don’t even speak English, for example, in the manufacturing or poultry processing industry or agriculture. We also have great jobs and we have a need for people to come and work in very high skilled jobs,” she said. “For instance, we have a brand new hospital opening up in Springdale, Arkansas Children’s and the Washington Regional Hospital is growing and expanding, and there’s a need for very highly educated individuals as well, and so we have this wide variety of employment options.”

I keep seeing this nonsense about skilled labor in the refugee flow. It is bogus. If there are doctors and engineers etc. in the flow they must become re certified in the US which is a long and expensive process. The closest any refugee doctor will get to a hospital is scrubbing the floors at night.
Canopy is a subcontractor of LIRS (see my previous post this morning, here).

Canopy Northwest Arkansas partners with the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIRS), one of nine national resettlement agencies that contract with the State Department to run the refugee resettlement program. LIRS is the agency that will assign refugees to Canopy after the refugees go through an extensive screening process, sometimes lasting more than two years.

Continue reading here. I see no evidence, at least in this story, that there is any pocket of resistance in Northwest Arkansas.
***Here are some of the new sites we have learned about in recent weeks being set up to accommodate, among other ethnic groups, a large number of Syrian Sunni Muslims. We heard that there are 47 of these new target sites:
Asheville, NC
Rutland, VT
Reno, NV
Ithaca, NY
Missoula, MT
Aberdeen, SD
Charleston, WV
Fayetteville, AR
Blacksburg, VA
Pittsfield, MA
Northhampton, MA
Flint, MI
Bloomington, IN
Traverse City, MI
Watertown, NY (maybe)
I just created a new ‘tag’ and I should have done it a long time ago, will try to keep it up going forward—New resettlement sites. For new readers, here is the old list of sites. Apparently the feds are not updating the list because they likely don’t want you to know where all of the new offices are located. Secrecy is the watchword of refugee resettlement in America!

World's most vulnerable: are we responsible for them all?

10/13/2016 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This story at the Huffington Post bashing Trump and telling us we must not turn our backs on the “world’s most vulnerable” is not worth reading.

I simply want to make the point that about every five years the world’s most vulnerable changes and we are expected to “welcome” them all to our towns after hearing the same old propaganda guilt-trip stories like this one.
Not too long ago it was the Burmese who were most vulnerable (we have taken in around 200,000). And, I remember so well when the Iraqis were the world’s most vulnerable (oh they love that word!) because it was about the same time I began writing RRW. Our Iraqi refugee numbers are climbing toward 200,000.
Then a few years ago it became the Syrian most vulnerables. And, get ready because we are hearing rumbles that they are gearing up to guilt-trip us about the South Sudanese! Blah, blah, blah!
It never ends!
This HuffPo article concludes with an appeal to send money to the International Rescue Committee which as one of the leading members of the refugee industry receives hundreds of thousands of dollars from the US taxpayer each year—but it is never enough money!

DOS Syrian resettlement pace would bring total in 2017 to over 20,000

10/13/2016 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

When the Obama Department of State (DOS) ‘consulted’ with the US Senate on the number of refugees to be admitted in fiscal year 2017 (which began 2 weeks ago on October 1) they were very cagey about how many Syrians would be in the flow.
However, a refugee contractor in California let the cat out of the bag, here, a few weeks ago saying that he suspected it would be 20,000-30,000 Syrians in a total refugee flow of 110,000.

Frankly what we get will depend on one thing—whether Donald Trump wins the White House or whether Hillary Clinton (and Bill, with John Podesta as chief of staff) are in the Oval Office.
An aside: As you learn more about the people Hillary has surrounded herself with in the campaign via the Wikileaks e-mail dumps, remember THESE VERY SAME PEOPLE WILL BE IN THE WHITE HOUSE RUNNING THE COUNTRY IF SHE WINS!
Now back to the Syrians (98-99% are Muslims, we are not saving the Christians).
Don’t forget that when Senator Jeff Sessions held his hearing about this year’s plan, he and Senator Cruz got an admission out of the Dept.of Homeland Security that some Syrians (because many don’t have documents and data) have been admitted based on their personal stories!
From Michael Patrick Leahy at Breitbart:

The Obama administration is on pace to bring 20,000 Syrian refugees into the United States in FY 2017.

The final number of Syrian refugees arriving in the United States this fiscal year will be determined by which candidate–Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump–is inaugurated as president in January 2017.

If Hillary Clinton wins, she will be well positioned to accelerate Syrian refugee resettlement in FY 2017 to the 65,000 she has said she wants to come into the country annually.

If Donald Trump wins, he has committed to suspending Syrian refugee resettlement.

A recent Breitbart/Gravis poll shows that 59 percent of voters oppose Hillary Clinton’s plan to increase Syrian refugee resettlement in the United States.

Continue here.

See the map!

I was doing a little numbers research last night myself and got a slightly larger number of Syrians than did Leahy, but I suspect more data was loaded between the time Leahy did his research and I did mine. Below is a map from the Refugee Processing Center (DOS data storage website) where you can see the number of Syrians who arrived in your state since October 1. The total was 686 (as of last evening) which means, at this pace, they could easily reach 5,000 by Inauguration Day in January.
Top receiving states are Michigan, California, Texas, Arizona and Maryland (ahhhh!). Maryland is never in the top for resettlement states, so what is up with this? Most of the 52 that went to Maryland over the last 12 days were placed in Baltimore with a handful in Silver Spring and 2 in Riverdale.
Clear path in Maryland as governor has been silent
I am guessing the new enthusiasm for Maryland is that the mayor of Baltimore has been merrily inviting Muslims to live in that hellhole (powder keg!) and Maryland’s Republican Governor made some squawks when other Republican governors said they didn’t want Syrians, but since then he has not said a word (thus quietly supporting the refugee resettlement program).
Map from the DOS Refugee Processing Center as of last evening, October 12, 2016. 686 Syrians admitted in first 12 days of Fiscal year 2017.
screenshot-40