Trending? Connecticut resettlement contractor farming out refugee families

08/24/2016 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This may be happening already where you live, but this is the first time I’m seeing such a strategy.
A subcontractor of both Episcopal Migration Ministries and Church World Service (two of nine major contractors) in Connecticut is lining up towns to take refugee families, raise money for them and take over much of the responsibility for the family.

Senator Blumenthal with the Connecticut Director of CAIR. We want Syrians resettled in CT!

I would really like to know if this is a new strategy for the federal contractors who are in fact doing a pretty lousy job of assimilating new refugees as the numbers keep rising beyond what they can handle. The article I’m posting (below) says there are 50 such arrangements in CT.
Connecticut politicians have made it very clear over the last year that the state is going to welcome as many Syrian Muslims as possible. See this post from last fall where CT Senator Blumenthal announces that he wants to see a reduction in screening time for Syrians (he got his wish since the Obama Administration did indeed reduce the normal 18 months or more down to 3 months to get his 10,000 Syrian Sunnis here by the end of September).
Here is the news item that caught my eye this morning at the Hamlet Hub. Mark your calendars:

In response to the global refugee crisis, a group of area residents has applied to sponsor a refugee family in Ridgefield in partnership with Integrated Immigration and Refugee Services (IRIS), a non-profit agency that has been resettling refugees in Connecticut for over 30 years. This local group, the Refugee Resettlement Committee—Ridgefield (RRCR), will host an information session for the public at the Ridgefield Library on Thursday, September 15 at 10am.

According to IRIS, there are 19 million refugees in the world today, the largest number since World War II. The U.S. Government is inviting 85,000 of those refugees to become Americans in 2016; that number will increase to 100,000 in 2017. Eight hundred are arriving in Connecticut this year; 450 of them will be welcomed by IRIS and its more than 50 state-wide co-sponsors. These refugees will arrive legally, fully vetted, fully documented and with many skills, but most likely without English or money.

Ridgefield-1.8 — IRIS is headquartered in New Haven, home of Yale University.

As an IRIS co-sponsor, the RRCR will help the family secure affordable housing, find jobs, access language training, and navigate the education, health and social services systems. The goal is that the family be relatively self-sufficient in six months. During that first six months, however, they will need help with transportation and living expenses, so the committee is recruiting volunteer drivers and trying to raise $15,000 for the family.

To learn more about the process and how to get involved, come to the information session or contact the committee at RRCRidgefield@gmail.com. To make a tax-deductible donation, go to the ‘online giving’ tab at www.ststephens-ridgefield.org, which is managing donations on behalf of the committee.

A cautionary tale….
Just about the time I started RRW, a church in my town privately sponsored an African family. It became a nightmare for the church that finally ended when the family left for Minnesota to be with others of their African ethnic group. Church members were ultimately left with a bitter taste in their mouths. They first became weary of driving members of the family everywhere, and then were left with a mess in the donated home they permitted the refugees to use free of charge as the family packed up and left. The appliances in the home had to be trashed and the place repainted.
I would like to know who will be responsible for rental property etc. (or if some crime occurs) in Ridgefield, IRIS or the local welcoming citizens? And, do the Ridgefield citizens get to pick their family—perhaps a quiet Buddhist or Christian family?

Is there no resistance to new refugee office in Ithaca, NY?

08/21/2016 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

It sure doesn’t sound like it.

Mayor Myrick of Ithaca — Mayor Svante Myrick says he will do anything in his power to relocate Syrian Muslim refugees to Ithaca, NY. http://ithacavoice.com/2015/11/mayor-myrick-pledges-to-help-syrian-refugees-relocate-to-ithaca/

Due to a shortage of time, I am going to urge all of you, especially in new ‘pockets of resistance,’ to read this thorough article (albeit biased in favor of refugees going to Ithaca) because it has a lot of useful information about the process of setting up a new resettlement site (this one is a Catholic Charities site).
Here is one little bit of the Ithaca Voice article that answers a question many of you have had:

After arrival in Ithaca, working-age family members are required to be self-sufficient within six months. Within a year they will apply for Green Card status. According to Spear, Catholic Charities will receive $2,025 per person. This is broken down as $900 per refugee arrival for administration and $1,125 per refugee for “client direct” assistance. This money comes from the State Department (PRM) as part of the “Reception and Placement Program” that covers the first 90 days’ costs of resettling each refugee.

Other funds are organized by federal offices such as the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the Administration of Children and Families (ACF), and Refugee and Entrant Assistant funds via the Office of Refugee Resettlement.

The refugees “immediately qualify for public assistance and we are the ones that will help them with the application process,” says Chaffee. “They are going to be working and contributing to our tax base within six months. Many refugees become home owners within five or six years.”

Read it all, there is so much I would like to say about it!
First self-sufficiency is a joke. Refugees are considered self-sufficient even if they are still on certain forms of welfare including housing assistance and food stamps. In fact, if they go off all welfare the ‘Work Opportunity Tax Credit’ would not be available to prospective employers (and as we have said repeatedly, the driving force for the refugee resettlement program is not humanitarianism, but to provide cheap, federally subsidized, labor to certain industries!).
The original State Department tranche of money includes in this case $900 per refugee head for Catholic Charities income, however, Catholic Charities receives other grants from other federal agencies to supplement their phony Christian charity. This per head payment gets higher and higher every year! And, since there is a per head payment, there is no incentive to slow the flow in subsequent years if the town gets overloaded.
“Public assistance” is the nice way of saying WELFARE. Yes, they get welfare right away (including SSI for the elderly and disabled refugees) and Catholic Charities job (the federal contractor here) is to get them signed up ASAP.
And finally, even if refugees get menial jobs, they will not be taxpaying members of the community because their income will be so low that they won’t have to file.
I would really like to know the percentage of refugees who buy homes that quickly (even with a special government savings program just for refugees to buy homes!). Some groups of refugees even enter the country with enough money to purchase property which begs the question—are they the poor downtrodden people we are led to believe they are?

Polls: Most Americans do not want Obama to bring in Syrians and distribute them around the US

08/18/2016 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Donald Trump must continue to hammer this issue—the American people do not want to pay for, or worry about their security as the Obama Administration is nearly its goal of admitting 10,000 Syrian Muslims to the US by September 30th.
And, for those of you who think that will be it, it won’t be as Obama and Hillary are gearing up to make 2017 an even bigger year for bringing the third world to your town.
Before I give you this latest poll news, I need to make sure you all understand something that even I wasn’t fully wrapping my mind around. Although we write frequently about the 190 or so US resettlement offices (see list here), refugee placement is not restricted to the town where the contractor’s office is located, but in fact refugees are distributed in 100 mile radius circles around those offices and thus I will bet Syrians and other refugees (Somalis, Burmese Rohingya, Iraqis etc.) have been settled in thousands of American small towns over the years.
map Syrians this fiscal year
I just checked the US State Department data base (Refugee Processing Center) and see that 184 cities and towns (map: 38 states) have received Syrians in the last 11 months.
Here is the polling information from the World Tribune:

Americans are overwhelmingly against accepting a wave of Syrian refugees into the country, a new poll found.

Just 36 percent of U.S. voters support allowing the refugees to enter, according to a Chicago Council on Global Affairs poll released on Aug. 15.

The Obama administration is close to reaching its goal of allowing 10,000 Syrian refugees into the U.S. by the end of September.

Anne Richard, assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, said earlier this month that 8,000 Syrians have already been re-settled.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has pledged to increase the number of Syrian refugees coming to the U.S.

Hillary Clinton: U.S. should take 65,000 Syrian refugees

The media has been mum about it, but a wise Trump campaign should find Hillary’s declaration last fall on Face the Nation and play it over and over again!

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said Sunday that the United States should accept 65,000 refugees from Syria to help alleviate the humanitarian crisis created by the war there.

Here is my post on what she said. She was following the lead of the United Nations and the Senate Jihad Caucus (pushed by the resettlement contractors!) which called for 65,000 before Obama leaves office. See my June 2015 explanation (below) about where Hillary got the number 65,000! By the way, look for Obama’s even larger number at the UN pow wow in September.
My message is more urgent today than it was in June 2015!

Lowell, Massachusetts: Alleged sexual assault by Syrian refugee puts refugee program in the spotlight

08/01/2016 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update August 2: This post reached thousands more readers than usual when Michael Savage linked it on the same day he was briefly suspended from facebook for posting on Muslim refugee crimes.
The US Refugee Admissions Program was created 36 years ago by Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts and was signed into law by Jimmy Carter in 1980. It has evolved in secrecy in towns that have been receiving third world refugees for decades and where citizens only begin to hear about it when something like the alleged assault by a newly arrived Syrian Muslim refugee in a public swimming pool forces the program into the daylight.

Kevin Murphy Lowell — Former State Rep. Kevin Murphy (D) runs the city of Lowell and will get reports from the federal resettlement contractor “now and then.” Did Murphy ever get an invite to “stakeholders” meeting? Photo: http://www.lowellsun.com/breakingnews/ci_25460940/kevin-murphy-named-new-lowell-city-manager-by

Here is the latest from reporter Amelia Pak-Harvey in Lowell, Mass. Pak-Harvey has done some great reporting on the arrest of the Syrian (see our earlier post), however, clearly here she is parroting the talking points of the contractor (International Institute of New England an USCRI subcontractor) which, as a federal contractor, has a financial interest in bringing more Syrians and other refugees to Lowell.
LOL! Refugee program is “complicated!” Yes, and it is that way for a reason—they don’t want anyone to understand how it works!
Here is the latest from the Lowell Sun:

LOWELL — Understanding the refugee resettlement process requires a handful of acronyms — USCIS, ORR, ORI, and the local International Institute of New England, or IINE.

It’s a process even federal and local officials admit is complex, one that often gives cities like Lowell less than a month’s notice to prepare for the arrival of refugees.

It’s also one that seems to usher in much confusion and misinformation — in March, rumors abounded that an influx of Syrians would be pouring into Lowell. Since the beginning of the federal fiscal year in October, the city has only received 18.

But after a 22-year-old Syrian refugee was charged with indecent assault and battery this month, city officials are hoping to have more contact with IINE-Lowell on resettlement.

They are going to give the city manager reports “now and then!”

Pak-Harvey continues:

“I think it was agreed that maybe it’d be good in the future to have more communication between the city side and the International Institute,” said City Manager Kevin Murphy, who met with the nonprofit. “They agreed, and they’re going to give me reports every now and then and we’ll sit down and discuss issues more often, so that we have a good give-and-take between the two.”

Then here is one of the most important pieces of information in this story for those of you concerned with refugee resettlement where you live:

In Lowell, the International Institute already meets quarterly with local stakeholders — including school and police officials — for updates on the latest numbers.

If you live in a refugee-receiving town, g0 to your local “stakeholders” meetings.

As a taxpayer, you are a stakeholder! I was shocked in one town I visited recently where the elected officials seemed to not even know that such meetings were occurring! Does Kevin Murphy know? Does Murphy know that the International Institute has prepared a document for the US State Department (an R & P Abstract) that lays out how many refugees will be dropped in Lowell in FY2017 and what amenities Lowell is offering the refugees?
I’ll bet he has never seen the document!

Unraveling Rutland (VT) may help every town in the same boat!

07/27/2016 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

With mayors like these who needs enemies!
Update: Refugees now a hot topic in gubernatorial race, see here.
Rutland VT map
As I travel around the US meeting with citizens concerned about the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program, patterns are developing and one of those is that there is no doubt that when your town is targeted for a new resettlement site (or expansion of an old one) it is done with the utmost secrecy and very often involves an over-zealous elected official (a mayor or city council member).
I have no time to write before I hit the road again this morning, but I want you to see this! This should resonate with everyone I’ve met with in 6 states so far.
Rutland, Vermont residents were shocked to learn a couple of months ago that their mayor had quietly “welcomed” the resettlement of 100 Syrians to the town for later this year.
To catch up, see our Rutland archive here.
Here is the latest from Watchdog.org, story titled:

‘Lone alderman in on refugee secret ‘stunned’ at speed of decision‘

A secret plan to make Rutland a permanent refugee resettlement community has divided residents and put the mayor’s political future in doubt. But at least one member of the Board of Aldermen knew about the secret, and that official told Watchdog he is “stunned” at how fast the plan was carried out.

Prior to announcing the resettlement of Syrian refugees, Rutland Mayor Louras held secret meetings with representatives of the Vermont Refugee Resettlement Program, the State Department, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants and Gov. Peter Shumlin. He also consulted with a single alderman: Board of Aldermen President William Notte.

In this interview, Notte answered Watchdog’s questions about his role in the backroom deal to make Rutland a refugee resettlement community.

Continue reading here for the interview.
The lesson I’m learning is this—-as it is confirmed to me repeatedly that refugee seeding plans are done in secrecy, you must be working locally to get the right people elected to political office and get mayors like this one out!