Tag: Tennessee

Tennessee: housing market “unkind” to refugees/immigrants

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Do we see a trend developing here!  It appears that the Open borders activists must have sent out talking points—tell the media that there is unfair treatment of refugees/asylum seekers and other migrants rampant in America!

We just now posted on the not-so-nice Minnesotans, here.  And, we have a story from Portland, Maine last week that we didn’t get to about problems asylum seekers are having with landlords there.

Hawa Abdullahi: We would like more low-income housing for our people. http://www.centerforrefugees.org/our-team/

Now comes the news from Nashville, a major resettlement site for Catholic Charities, that they are having problems with “fair housing” in that ‘welcoming’ city and surrounding counties.

Not mentioned, of course, are the problems that impoverished or disabled native Nashville area citizens are likely having getting housing when they have to compete with the immigrants!

From The Tennessean  (Hat tip: Joanne).  Emphasis is mine:

Immigrants and refugees in Nashville have more help than ever finding stable housing, but forces beyond their control have made life tougher in recent years.

Increasing apartment rental costs have been hard on international newcomers, said Hawa Abdullahi, social services coordinator with the Center for Refugees and Immigrants of Tennessee, at a conference on fair housing in Nashville.

“We have seen a lot of rent going up, which is hard for people to cover,” she said. “We see a lot of people getting pushed … moving to Antioch, Smyrna, and places like that. It’s really getting hard right now to find apartments.”

Abdullahi spoke about immigrant housing experiences as part of the Fair Housing Matters Conference. The fight against housing discrimination has taken on new urgency locally and across the nation because of increased federal funding and new directives meant to make housing available to all people.

Abdullahi described how the refugee families she works with struggle to get by on wages that rarely top $10 per hour.

The panelists said immigrants struggle to find housing because of language barriers, discrimination, poor credit histories, and limited options near public transit.

And refugees, in particular, arrive with debt. People approved by the U.S. government to move into America to escape persecution in their home countries, they receive financial assistance for eight months but must pay back the travel costs that move them to America in the first place.  [This plane fare issue is bogus—many just walk away from the debt.  What they never tell you is that the ‘church contractor’ (in this case Catholic Charities) gets to keep a portion of the loan if it is repaid!  Only a small portion of your tax dollars are reimbursed to the US treasury.–ed]

About 1,300 refugees are resettled in and around Nashville each year — with more than two-thirds joining families that already live here.   [Just a reminder readers, that when yours has become a “welcoming” city, the first refugees arriving apply to bring their family members.  It is called chain migration—ed]

[….]

“The city of Nashville is getting better. Definitely (officials) are aware Nashville is a destination for immigrants,” Morales said. “For surrounding counties, that’s a different story.”

Nashville has been such a hot spot over the years that we have a whole category designated just for Nashville, here, with 65 previous posts.  Nashville was recently chosen by the federal government as a “preferred community” for refugee resettlement, here.

Tennesseans going around the mainstream media with “justice” website

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Everyone of you concerned with the cost to your state of federal initiatives like the US State Department’s Refugee Resettlement program should be taking a cue from activists in Tennessee where they have been tirelessly attempting to dig out the cost of the program to the taxpayers of their state.  And, more importantly, they aren’t waiting for the big news outlets in Tennessee to carry their message.

‘Community organizers’ have taken a page from the Leftist playbook and have published their own website entitled, ‘tn Council 4 political justice’—justice for the taxpaying citizens of Tennessee.

Rep. Sanderson said ’60 Minutes’ story influenced him to choose more refugees over needs of Tennesseans.


Here is a recent post in which TN Rep. Bill Sanderson, a Republican, gets called out for supporting more refugees in Tennessee when Medicaid dollars are short for needy Americans.

From TCPJ:

It’s no news to anyone listening in Tennessee, that Governor Haslam is warning that projected revenue shortfalls will mean budget cuts.

Speaker Harwell acknowledged that with “revenues down a little this year, [balancing the state’s budget] will be tough.  But we will stick to the principles of fiscal responsibility and balance it responsibly.”

On January 2, 2014, The Tennessean reported: “The governor has argued that the annual growth in Medicaid spending has put the squeeze on other programs the state would like to spend money on. ‘Medicaid takes up all of our new dollars, and that’s just the hard fact,’ the governor told reporters after a Rotary Club speech last month.”

The week of January 20, 2014, the newspaper ran a series titled “Broken Trust” about the 7,100 most vulnerable Tennesseans with developmental disabilities who are forced to go without needed services because of the state’s failure to allocate the funds.

The funds needed to provide these services are Medicaid funds.  These are dollars that the State spends and the federal government matches.

Rep. Bill Sanderson believes that these state Medicaid dollars should NOT go to Tennesseans with developmental disabilities, but instead, to refugees who don’t even live in Tennessee yet.  He’s referring to the refugees that are eventually brought to Tennessee by Catholic Charities, a federal contractor that gets paid a lot of taxpayer money to bring refugees to Tennessee.

When refugees are brought to Tennessee by the federal contractors, they are immediately enrolled into any and all public assistance programs, including, state-funded TennCare, SSI, and cash welfare. The federal government used to reimburse the state for 3 years worth of what it cost the state to provide these benefits.  But typical of the federal government, they broke their promise to the states and stopped reimbursing the states for what the federal program cost.

Sanderson helped block a bill last year in the Tennessee legislature that simply sought to require refugee contractors and the agencies they work with to divulge various costs to Tennessee taxpayers from the resettlement program.  If you’ve spent any time following this federal plan for your “welcoming” state you know those numbers are not readily available—on purpose!

Last year, a bill was brought to Rep. Sanderson’s committee that was designed to help Tennessee figure out how much it was costing the state to pay for the federal program, a program that the state withdrew from in 2008 and is now run by a federal contractor.

But Rep. Sanderson who scathingly accused the bill sponsors and advocates of going on a “witch hunt against Catholic Charities,” related how he had watched a “60 Minutes” segment about refugees and it convinced him that they needed our help. He enthusiastically joined up with the federal contractors and led the effort to not pass the bill out of the committee.

Take a lesson in community organizing from Tennessee activists and follow TCPJ (see ‘follow’ link on bottom of right hand side bar).  Have you asked your state legislators what refugee resettlement is costing your state?

For more on Tennessee, see our Nashville category, here.

Writer challenges assumptions in Tennessee study of cost to state of refugee resettlement….

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

…..calls the study “a completely innumerate and illogical financial analysis.”

Here is the opinion piece in its entirety written by Don Barnett of Nashville that appeared in The Tennessean on Saturday.   Please visit The Tennessean for the comments which are enlightening, readers want answers to fundamental questions like, why are we doing this? Who decides? Doesn’t the state have the power to say NO!

Holly Johnson, left, of Catholic Charities in Tennessee calls the shots along with the US State Department about which refugees come to the state. http://www.isedsolutions.org/blog/wilson-fish/wf-workshop-highlights

Barnett:

Struggles over state versus federal power relations are still not settled about 225 years after the signing of the U.S. Constitution. The left and right have launched movements to alter the Constitution, with progressives tending to support change that would assign more power to the federal government, while conservatives and libertarians would give more influence to states.

Tennessee legislators established the Joint Legislative Oversight Committee for the purpose of exploring this question.

Examples of possible federal overreach of constitutional authority abound, and the committee will, presumably, get to each of them in turn, but it has seemingly run aground on its first choice for study: the federal Refugee Resettlement Program.

The federal government assumed there would be a cost to states when it established the resettlement program in 1980. That’s why it promised three years of support for refugees, reimbursing states for their social-service costs. That period quickly shrank from three years to eight months, and there is no longer any reimbursement for state costs. The federal government has repeatedly documented the fact that refugee program costs are being shifted to states.

The bulk of support for refugee resettlement now comes from welfare programs, all of which are available to refugees upon arrival.

The main program cost falls to the federal taxpayer, but states have costs, as well. When the main private refugee resettlement contractor in Tennessee places 59 percent of its refugee arrivals into TennCare, as it did in 2011, it imposes a cost on state taxpayers, who cover 30 percent of TennCare.

The oversight committee asked for a report from the legislature’s Fiscal Review staff on just what the costs are and who pays them.

The review identified costs totaling $753 million from 1990 to today that were paid by the state of Tennessee. According to their analysis, however, tax receipts from refugees, mostly from the state sales tax, totaled $1.3 billion since 1990. For most of the media, the main finding was that refugees contribute “nearly twice as much” in state taxes as they take out in state-funded public services.

Now, for the fine print. The study considered only the cost of English Language Learning (ELL) and TennCare, but new arrivals were credited with paying 100 percent of the taxes the average Tennessean pays. Further, it assumed refugees were exactly like the average Tennessean with regard to income, TennCare use and tax remittances. Are these assumptions logical?

According to the latest data available — a federal study of refugees who have been in the country five years or less as of 2010 — the unemployment rate for refugees was 21 percent, compared with 9 percent for overall U.S. population. Twenty-six percent were dependent on cash assistance, 63 percent were in the food stamp program and 48 percent were in Medicaid (TennCare) or short-term federal refugee medical assistance. Those refugees who were placed in employment in Tennessee after arrival earned an average wage of $8.79 per hour in 2010, according to the study.

Of course, wages will go up and welfare dependency will go down with length of time in the country, but there is considerable evidence pointing to long-term dependence, and there are social services other than ELL and TennCare that Tennessee provides.

The federal welfare program SSI is a good indicator of long-term welfare dependency rates. It is generally a lifetime entitlement and usually includes Medicaid and other social services. The federal study of arrivals over the previous five years found an 11.6 percent rate of usage — about 2.5 times the national average.

None of this should be unexpected or surprising. What is surprising is that the conclusions from a completely innumerate and illogical financial analysis would become the story.

The oversight committee should insist on a realistic financial impact analysis and get back to the questions it originally set out to explore.

Some of you will be surprised to know that Nashville is considered by some to be the fastest growing immigrant city in the US, here.

Catholic Charities runs the refugee program in Tennessee—not the state government!  It’s my view that the progressives, the Leftists, have to win the south demographically and that is what this is all about.

Catholic Charities rolling in your dough!

Just for fun, visit the most recent Form 990 that Catholic Charities of Tennessee submitted to the IRS, here.

Out of a total revenue stream (p. 9) of $11.4 million dollars, government grants (YOUR money!) amounted to $7.4 million, so like all of these ‘religious’ non-profits they could not exist without federal tax dollars.  While you are perusing the form, see page 10 and see how your money is spent:  salaries, pensions, employee benefits, compensation to officers, office and rent expenses, travel, conferences, etc. etc.    And, with your money they are also busy advocating in Washington, DC.

Any wonder then why “progressives” want a larger federal role in governing you through their little fiefdoms!

For your reading pleasure, we have written 60 previous posts on Nashville/Tennessee archived in a special category.

Endnote:  It defies logic that if refugees are doing so well, as the Tennessee study indicates, then why are refugee contractors begging for more payola from Washington.  See post yesterday.

Study: Refugees in Tennessee contribute more than they consume (maybe)

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Except for the “maybe,” that is the title of the story in The Tennessean yesterday, but one only needs to read down a few paragraphs to learn that is not the conclusion that should have been drawn from the news—it is The Tennessean editor’s wishful thinking.

Researchers were not able to “tease out” the information sought by lawmakers—do refugees use welfare to a greater extent then the American-born population?  And, no one keeps track of the taxes they pay either.

Mohamed-Shukri Hassan: We’re not looking for welfare, we want the jobs!

The Tennessean (emphasis mine):

A new study of foreign-born refugees who live in Tennessee has found they contributed almost twice as much in tax revenues as they consumed in state-funded services in the past two decades.

But limitations of the study — an unprecedented research effort by the state — left the state lawmakers who asked for it with questions on Tuesday.

A committee of House and Senate lawmakers requested the study last summer to try to understand the impact of refugee services on the state budget. They were especially interested in whether there has been a shift in how those costs are covered by state and federal funds.  [Here is our earlier report, from August, about the initiative by TN lawmakers—ed]

[….]

Making “conservative estimates,” researchers said that since 1990, the state has spent $753 million on services for refugees — including for schooling and health care — and received almost twice as much, $1.3 billion, in tax revenues from them.

But, but, but!

Researchers couched their analysis with caveats about the data collected, prompting lawmaker questions on Tuesday.

The researchers said both in the study and in answers to questions that they struggled to get some federal data and found most state agencies don’t track whether the people they serve are refugees.

There was no mechanism for tracking which services refugees used, said Krista Lee, senior fiscal analyst, requiring researchers to make certain assumptions. For example, they had to assume that refugees enroll in public schools, government assistance programs and TennCare, the state’s Medicaid program, with the same frequency as the general population.

“From the information we could find, there wasn’t anything substantial stating they wouldn’t be in a similar standing as current citizens,” Lee said.

That assumption left some lawmakers skeptical about the study’s findings. Rep. John Ragan, R-Oak Ridge, said a major impetus for the study was to tease out whether refugees are more likely to rely on government assistance.

Somali:  We aren’t looking for welfare, we want the jobs!

“We’re not here for the government programs or any welfare; we’re here for the jobs,” said Mohamed-Shukri Hassan, 27, a Somali naturalized in 2009.

What!  Are there no Tennesseans looking for work?

Read it all!

For ambitious readers, we have an entire category on Nashville here.

Update!  Reader tomasrose gives us more information on the study:

The way this study was structured, any group that moves to Tennessee – be it, for sake of illustration, the entire graduating class from the London school of economics or the entire population of Bangladesh – will make the same incredibly high per capita net positive impact on Tennessee’s finances. The study assumes that all new arrivals will pay the same taxes and use the same amount of social services as the average Tennessean. According to this study, Tennessee would become a very wealthy state if it took all the refugees that come to America. That is more than absurd of course.

Tennessee legislators want answers about fiscal impact of refugee resettlement

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This is a report from Bobbie Patray of the Tennessee Eagle Forum about the first meeting of a select committee of the Tennessee legislature to address  the 10th Amendment of the Constitution and the encroachment by the federal government on states’ rights in regards to the resettlement of migrants in the state by Catholic Charities (through the US State Department).

Holly Johnson, Catholic Charities TN, with her Idaho counterpart at 2010 Refugee meeting. In Tennessee, Catholic Charities calls the shots on resettlement.

See our earlier coverage here.  (You will find links there for reports from The Tennessean and Nashville Public Radio.)

Patray:

It was an exciting day to be at Legislative Plaza and see history being made yesterday.  The first official meeting of the Joint Legislative Advisory Committee was convened. This creation of and mission of this committee grew out of the increasing concern of both legislators and grassroots activists about the ongoing encroachment of the federal government on the constitutional rights of the sovereign states.

Members of the committee are: Rep. Judd Matheny, Chairman, Rep. John Ragan, Rep. Joe Carr, Rep. Josh Evans, Rep. Mike Turner, Sen. Mike Bell, Sen. Janice Bowling, Sen. Ferrell Haile, Sen. Thelma Harper, Sen. Jim Summerville.  All members were present except Sen. Harper.

There was enough interest in this important issue that other legislators attended: Rep. Jeremy Faison, Rep. G.A. Hardaway, Rep. David Alexander, Rep. Terri Lynn Weaver, Rep. Shelia Butt, Sen. Mark Green, M.D., Sen. Frank Niceley.

It was that concern that drove the motive for taking up the first issue of this committee:  The Federal Cost Shifting of the Refugee Resettlement program.

As one article stated: “A newly-created legislative committee met for the first time Wednesday to investigate the indirect fiscal impact of refugee resettlements. They were given an unsatisfying answer: no one is keeping track.”

That is the problem.   Each year, lawmakers are responsible for passing a budget and certainly have a fiduciary responsibility to the taxpayer to know where these dollars are going.  Except….in this case…they don’t!!!

Chairman Judd Matheny CLEARLY laid out the parameters of the discussion:  It was ONLY about the COST SHIFTING to the states.  It was NOT about the value of the refugee resettlement program, it was NOT about what the refugees bring to this state, it was NOT about the work that the providers or participants do.

It is not just Tennessee lawmakers that  have these concerns.  Two years ago, the National Governors Association stated: “The federal government’s unwillingness to provide adequate funding for costs attributable to migration and resettlement services has resulted in a dramatic shift of program costs from the federal government to state and local taxpayers.”

The first speaker, Kasar Abdulla,  started telling her personal story, which, of course, was compelling. However, as was stated earlier, the value of the program was NOT the subject of the hearing.  Chairman Matheny asked her a couple of time to please stick to the topic, but she did not and, in fact, clearly was not prepared to do that.  So the Chairman called for the next speaker, Holly Johnson, State Refugee Coordinator, Tennessee Office for Refugees, Catholic Charities of TN, Inc.  After Miss Johnson spoke, Don Barnett and Joanne Bregman, Esq.  addressed the committee.  Bregman’s testimony was incredible as she revealed the cold, hard facts and figures.  The last speaker  Stephen Fotopulos, with the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition was totally out of line with his testimony.

Just as a snapshot, Sen. Mark Green, M.D., observed that using the two numbers provided in the testimonies, the refugee program would be costing TennCare between $7.2million  and $12.1million over a four year period.  This is the kind of information that is desperately needed for budget purposes and that we have not been able to get hard figures on.  The committee passed a motion to ask the Fiscal Review Committee to do a comprehensive study of all aspects of this program with emphasis on any cost shifting, expenses incurred, what enabling legislation they are acting under, including a proportionality of refugees coming to TN versus other states to present at the November 12 meeting.

Click here to watch the proceedings.  For more on Tennessee and refugees, click here.

Photo is from this story about a Wilson-Fish (Office of Refugee Resettlement) meeting in Washington, here.  When you click that W-F link you can see if your state refugee program is now being run by a non-governmental agency.

Oops!  Depending on your screen size, in an earlier version of this post, the TEF logo blocks Johnson’s face… should have checked that first!