Tag: Syrian refugees

Germany: Syrian refugees turn murderous over the weekend

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

….and it will likely get worse as time goes on!

Invasion of Europe news…..

I’m sure you’ve seen the news over the last day or so, but am posting links for those who haven’t.

merkel-refugee-selfie
German Chancellor Angela Merkel with refugee. This ‘selfie’ should go down in political strategists’ training manuals as an example of what NOT to do with refugees from the Middle East.

First from Reuters (Syrian refugee kills a pregnant woman with a machete):

A 21-year-old Syrian refugee was arrested on Sunday after killing a pregnant woman with a machete in Germany, the fourth violent assault on civilians in western Europe in 10 days, though police said it did not appear linked to terrorism. [No terrorism, so move along!—ed]

The incident, however, may add to public unease surrounding Chancellor Angela Merkel’s open-door refugee policy that has seen over a million migrants enter Germany over the past year, many fleeing war in Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq.

German police said they arrested the machete-wielding Syrian asylum-seeker after he killed a woman and injured two other people in the southwestern city of Reutlingen near Stuttgart.

Continue reading the discussion about Merkel’s open door policy and the political turmoil it is creating in Germany.
Then, over the same weekend, a Syrian suicide bomber explodes his backpack outside of a music event in a Bavarian town. From Russia Today:

Bavarian authorities have announced that the suspected suicide bomber, who was killed in the Ansbach explosion, was a 27-year-old Syrian whose asylum request was rejected last year. The motive behind the attack, which injured 12 people, remains unknown.

[….]

The attacker was a 27-year-old Syrian who had entered the country about two years ago, but was refused asylum, Bavarian authorities told a press conference. His application was rejected a year ago but the man was allowed to stay in Germany temporarily, due to ongoing hostilities in Syria.***

[….]

The Federal Office for Migration and Refugees will reveal why the suspect’s asylum application had previously been rejected later in the day Herrmann (Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann) noted that those who are “seeking protection in Germany, must show full respect for the German legal system and the German population.”

The minister added that the attack demonstrated the need “to strengthen controls on those we have living in our country”.

Following a press conference, Herrmann told Germany’s DPA, that he personally considers the bombing in Ansbach to have been the work of an Islamist suicide bomber.

“My personal opinion is that, unfortunately I think, it is very obvious that there has been a real Islamist suicide attack here,” Herrmann said early Monday.

Any bets on when Germany will get the big one—like in France or Belgium!
Go here for our archive extending back many years on the ‘Invasion of Europe.’
***By the way, this happens in the US too. If someone is denied asylum, but they come from a country in turmoil, we don’t deport them either!

Rutland, VT: City aldermen demand answers as rift with mayor grows

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

As regular readers know by now, I am driving through the heartland to learn more about how towns and cities, seeded through the UN/US State Department with growing enclaves of ethnic diversity and where in most cases no effort to assimilate by the newcomers, is creating politically and socially tense communities.
Rutland VT map
If I were to pick one motivating force (for RRW and this trip) it is to expose the secrecy with which towns and cities have been populated by third worlders through federal refugee contractors working for the US State Department and the Office of Refugee Resettlement in the Dept. of Health and Human Services.
The controversy swirling in Vermont (of all places!) about the establishment of a new resettlement site for Syrian Muslims is instructive. Initial plans were put in place between the refugee contractor and a rogue mayor.  When citizens caught on, only months from ‘welcoming’ the first Syrians, all hell broke loose. (See our previous posts on Rutland by clicking here.)
Here is the latest from VTDigger.org.  City council excludes mayor from discussion of their next moves!

Rutland’s Board of Aldermen held a closed-door executive session with the city’s attorney last night to discuss legal issues surrounding the refugee resettlement process. In a rare move, the board excluded Mayor Chris Louras from the meeting.

The board approved three motions: one directs the City Attorney to request the full abstract*** and application for Rutland’s resettlement program from the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants and its affiliate, the Vermont Refugee Resettlement Program; the second asks the attorney to conduct a review of the mayor’s actions and whether those actions comply with the city charter and any other applicable law; and the third recommends that the Charter and Ordinance Committee review subchapter 9 of the charter which lays out the mayor’s executive powers.

In an interview outside the boardroom Mayor Louras said this was the first time he’d been excluded from an executive session.

“I think this is the board acting out in a relatively juvenile manner,” he said.

[….]

He also said he wanted to know if there was a “contract or paper trail between the mayor’s office and VRRP.”

The mayor has stated on numerous occasions that refugee resettlement is a federally administered program involving no contracts or agreements with the city. The only paper trail, beyond correspondence with the various agencies involved, Louras says, is the letter of support he wrote to the State Department as part of the application process. Louras says he writes similar letters for grant applications on a regular basis without board approval.

[….]

At a tense board meeting on May 25, one month after the announcement was made that Rutland was being considered as a possible location for Syrian refugees, members of the board were provided with hard copies of the three-page abstract pertaining to Rutland and submitted to the State Department by USCRI.

More here.

***Get your FY2017 Abstract!  Knowledge is power!

I feel like I’m beating a dead horse when I say this, but every one of you living in on-going resettlement sites and proposed new ones must demand to be given the R & P Abstract for FY17.  This is a document prepared by every contractor and it goes to Washington as the document used to FUND the resettlement program where you live.  It is a treasure-trove of information.
Also, these documents (payment planning documents) will be used for the creation of Obama’s last decision on how many refugees he will propose for FY2017 which begins October 1, 2016.
The discussion above, that for Rutland there are only 3 pages, is suspicious.  I have the one prepared by USCRI (the same major contractor) for FY17 for Reno, Nevada and it is 16 pages!  Significantly there are many pages attached which are letters of support from the school system (you must identify who is behind more refugee resettlement!), Catholic Charities (the major contractor in the state) and the local Islamic Center, etc.
It also lists the companies that are apparently eager for cheap immigrant labor.
Demand transparency for your communities!
Call your local resettlement contractor and ask for the R & P Abstract for 2017.  They will likely tell you NO! Then contact your state refugee coordinator and ask for it.  If you get a NO there, then try using your state’s Public Information Law and and try to get it that way (may not work in Wilson-Fish states where the program has been essentially de-coupled from any elected body within the state).
If you get the document, make it publicly available and open a debate. Put it before your local elected body and demand a public hearing or meeting on it. If you don’t get it raise a ruckus!

This isn’t some sort of silver bullet, but is an important part of the process of demanding transparency for American citizens paying the bill for all of this. As someone said to me yesterday. We have no silver bullet, but we are building one!

Refugee news roundup! Trump is the only hope for America on most important issue—immigration

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

First, I’ve been seeing a whole lot of America since I left Maryland a week ago today.  Thanks so much to all of you who have met me along the way to tell me about what is happening to your towns and cities as a result of the UN/US State Department Refugee Admissions Program.
I’m now 1/4th of the way through my listening tour of the heartland.  I hope to get time this weekend to tell you a bit about what I am learning. In some cases I’m stunned, in others disheartened, and then there are bright spots (mostly those involve the hard work you are doing to try to stem the tide!).
But, in the meantime, there are all sorts of nuggets of news I’ve been missing.  So, here is a quick re-cap.

Trump acceptance
This is the most important election of our lifetimes (possibly even since our founding).

First, the Trump speech last night was remarkable in the detail in which he addressed immigration policy and specifically refugee admissions policy.  The indispensable Julia Hahn (does she sleep?) at Breitbart tells us about how CNN is ignorant of refugee policy in its so-called “fact checking.”  Read it here.
One of Hillary’s possible VEEP picks (Tim Kaine) speaks to leaders of one of the most dangerous mosques in America, see here.

A reminder! If Hillary is elected and Speaker Ryan is still in office, we are finished!

Refugees by the numbers!  Be sure to see Leo Hohmann’s WND summary of which states are getting Syrian refugees as we approach Obama’s deadline—September 30th—to place 10,000 mostly Muslim Syrians into your towns.
Congolese going to be placed in Montana.  An announcement has been made that the first refugees to be placed in Montana will be Congolese.  We are told the Congolese flow is mostly made up of needy and traumatized women and children. Most are not Muslim, but these refugees will contribute little to the economy and require more social services than the usual because they need mental health counseling.
Controversy continues to swirl in Rutland, VT where the mayor secretly worked with a refugee contractor and invited 100 Syrian Muslims to live there.  Learn more here at Watchdog.org.
More Syrian Muslims for Michigan at Arab American News, here.  This story is about Grand Rapids, but every American should see Dearborn as I did earlier in the week.
Connecticut wants to be known as the “go-to state” for refugees according to CNN, here. The resettlement contractor there brags that CT has welcomed more Syrians than any other state.  Not so, according to WND, here.
No refugees entering the US since 2010 have been screened for HIV.  We knew about it here in 2011. Taxpayers pay for their meds.
Editor:  I’ll continue to update this post later (if I get some time).  Moving on to the next town this morning.

Ohio: Active TB in refugees there too!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Michael Patrick Leahy’s latest expose’ on where ACTIVE Tuberculosis is found in America reveals that the Akron, Ohio area has it too.

Elaine-Woloshyn-300x300
As Executive Director of the International Institute of Akron, Elaine Woloshyn is in charge of the refugees arriving in the city. The IIA is a subcontractor of USCRI the same federal contractor working to expand to Rutland VT and Reno NV. It is also the major federal contractor in Twin Falls, Idaho. http://iiakron.org/our-team/

We have a few posts on Akron here at RRW.  I’d like to direct you to one in particular because it is an example of what I am learning on my road trip through the heartland.  There is money involved in refugee resettlement and local elected officials and their cronies are figuring out how to tap it!  It is your money as developers look to the taxpayer-funded gravy train coming from Washington! (In addition to the foreign money that is buying up real estate!)
I digress.  Along with the money (for special people) comes other problems, including frightening health risks for all of us.
Leahy at Breitbart:

CLEVELAND, Ohio–Eleven refugees have been diagnosed with active tuberculosis in Summit County, Ohio, over the past six years, Dr. Margo Erme, medical director of the Summit County Public Health Department tells Breitbart News.

The case of active and communicable tuberculosis were in the county that holds Akron, with a population of 199,000. It is the largest city in Summit County, population 541,000.

The county lies immediately to the south of Cleveland and Cuyahoga County. Many of the delegates and members of the media attending the Republican National Convention held in Cleveland this week are staying at hotels in Summit County and are shuttled on buses thirty plus miles each way.

“From 1/1/2010 through 12/31/2015, 37 cases of tuberculosis (both pulmonary and extrapulmonary) were reported in Summit County,” Dr. Margo Erme, medical director of Summit County Public Health, tells Breitbart News in an email.

Of those, “16 were US-born” and “21 were foreign-born.” Of the 21 foreign-born, “10 did not come into the US on refugee status, 11 came into the US on refugee status,” Erme says.

Of the “US-born” I would like to know how many live in households with the “foreign-born?”
No time to write more, but check out this fluffy puffy piece on the growing Arab population of Toledo—a city I just visited!  A “model city” for Syrian refugees they say!  Ahhhh!  More when I have time.

Admit fewer refugees say 76% of Republicans; 38% of Dems agree!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I was surprised to see that this large number—38%—of Democrats think our refugee admissions are too high!

Obama and Clinton 3
The numbers indicate that the public is not behind Obama and Clinton on the subject of refugees. Trump needs to continue to hammer this issue! Republicans in support of the refugee program for its ready supply of cheap labor should beware!

Readers you have to wade through a lot of column inches before you get to what I consider the meat of this story by AP.  It sure looks like Americans generally are not in agreement with Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton on admitting tens of thousands of refugees from mostly Muslim countries, especially Syrians.
Associated Press at WHIO (12 paragraphs into the story).  Emphasis below is mine:

Americans are slightly more likely to oppose than favor a temporary ban on Muslims who are not U.S. citizens from entering the United States, by a 52 percent to 45 percent margin that has been strikingly consistent in AP-GfK polls conducted this year.

Sixty-nine percent of Republicans say they favor the temporary ban on Muslim immigration, while 68 percent of Democrats are opposed. Half of whites and just a third of non-whites say they favor the ban. Seventy-six percent of Trump supporters are in favor.

On a trip to Scotland last month, Trump shifted his rhetoric, saying he would instead “want terrorists out” of the U.S., and to do so, he would limit people’s entry from “specific terrorist countries and we know who those terrorist countries are.”

The poll indicates that rhetorical shift could win support. Among those asked more broadly about a temporary ban on immigrants from areas of the world where there is a history of terrorism against the U.S. or its allies, 63 percent are in favor and 34 percent opposed. Ninety-four percent of Trump supporters say they favor this proposal, as do 45 percent of Clinton supporters.

“That’s a necessity for creating stability,” said Ryan Williams, 40, a health care provider from Jacksonville, North Carolina.

Most Americans — 53 percent — think the United States is currently letting in too many refugees from Syria, engulfed in civil war since 2011 and the Islamic State militant group’s de facto center. President Barack Obama has pledged to admit some 10,000 Syrian refugees this year.

Remember Hillary is on record saying she wants to admit 65,000 Syrians immediately (only 11 percent of Americans agree with her!):

Another 33 percent think the current level is about right, while just 11 percent want to let in more. About 4 in 10 think there’s a very or somewhat high risk of refugees committing acts of religious or political violence in the United States, 34 percent think the risk moderate, and 24 percent consider it very or somewhat low.

Seventy-six percent of Republicans think the U.S. should allow fewer refugees. Among Democrats, 43 percent think the current level is about right, 38 percent think the U.S. should allow fewer, and 18 percent want to allow more.

This tells me that Trump has to continue to pound the issue of refugees!  (And, that the propagandists at The Hive have their work cut out for them).
BTW, if every American could see what I’ve seen over the last two days on my road trip, these numbers would be even higher!
One more thing…I’ve heard several times lately that some Americans think that the US refugee program is a temporary one for the refugees, that they only come here until things calm down in their home countries.  That is NOT the case! Refugees who come to the US come here permanently and ultimately become citizens.