Tag: US State Department

US State Department and resettlement contractors salted Minnesota with over 10,000 Somali refugees since 2005

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

In the wake of the terror scare over the past weekend, the Washington Times has published a pretty thorough piece on how the Refugee Admissions Program of the US State Department has changed/stressed Minnesota with the resettlement by three refugee contractors—Catholic Charities, Lutheran Social Services of MN, and World Relief MN (now Arrive Ministries)—of thousands of Somali refugees.   (For anyone interested in finding the resettlement contractors in your state and city, click here for a handy directory).

Someone should prepare a map showing all of the towns in Minnesota that have ‘welcomed’ refugees of all stripes. Some of the towns we mention are here especially the hottest sites: Minneapolis, St. Paul, St. Cloud and Rochester.

We told you here, that Minnesota is the go-to state for the resettlement of Somalis. Generous welfare was the original draw.

You can read the whole Washington Times article by reporter Kelly Riddell, here.  As of this writing there are 626 comments!

If you are living in small town/suburban Minnesota (or small town America) and are thinking this isn’t happening where you live, it is a big city issue, think again.

I went through the State Department data base again yesterday to see just where in Minnesota Somalis had been resettled over the last ten years (I started my search in February 2005).

I was shocked!

Remember as you look at this list below that the Somalis may not have stayed where they were originally placed, they may have moved to bigger cities in the state or others may have joined the ‘seed community’ in these other towns.

In refugee industry lingo, those who move are called “secondary migrants” and Minnesota is getting the lion’s share of those from across the US.

Do you think all of these towns (over 60 in number!) were consulted before they were expected to take on the financial burden of housing, healthcare and education for the kids?

The total number of Somalis placed in Minnesota, since February 2005 to date, is 10,804. 

(Many more were resettled in Minnesota before 2005, but we only looked at the last ten to eleven years.)

Anoka (2)

Apple Valley (13)

Barnesville (5)

Blaine (5)

Bloomington (124)

Brooklyn (2)

Brooklyn Center (38)

Brooklyn Park (50)

Burnsville (282)

Chanhassen (6)

Chaska (2)

Colombia Heights (112)

Coon Rapids (16)

Crystal (16)

Eagen (38)

Eden Prairie (400)

Edina (27)

Fairbault (10)

Falcon Heights (7)

Faribault (211)  (is this the same town as Fairbault, or is this a typo?)

Fridley (14)

Golden Valley (9)

Hill Top (1)

Hopkins (143)

Hutchinson (5)

Inver Grove Height (7)

Inver Grove Heights (11)  (typo again?)

Lakeville (4)

Mankato (34)

Maple Grove (6)

Maplewood (4)

Marshall (35)

Mendota Heights (1)

Minneapolis (4,868)

Minnetonka (40)

Moorhead (8)

New Brighton (18)

New Hope (80)

Norcross (1)

North Mankato (14)

Norths St. Paul (2)

Oakdale (1)

Owatonna (140)

Pelican Rapids (113)

Pine Island (3)

Plymouth (58)

Richfield (193)

Richville (7)

Robbinsville (4)

Rochester (595)

Rosemount (9)

Roseville (52)

St. Anthony (7)

St. Cloud (1,123)

St. Louis Park (100)

Saint Paul (1,491)

Saint Peter (11)

Savage (30)

Shakopee (18)

South St. Paul (11)

Waite Park (23)

Waseca (6)

West St. Paul (13)

White Bear Lake (1)

Willmor (122)

Woodbury (2)

By the way, Minnesota also ‘welcomed’ many other refugees of many nationalities, but we only looked at Somali numbers because they are dominating the news.

 

Who makes the decisions on refugee resettlement in America? UN is at the top of the pyramid

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This is the third in a series of primers of sorts for the media on the present Refugee Admissions Program.  The first two are here and here.

(I’m doing this series so that I don’t have to give lengthy explanations to reporters! Looking for a quote, below are the offices you should call!)

I wish I knew how to make one of the those flow chart things, but since I don’t, here is a list of who is responsible for which refugees are resettled in the US and ultimately where they are resettled.

At the top of the pyramid is the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

The present UNHCR is Antonio Guterres the former Socialist President of Portugal.

UNHCR Guterres and Asst. Sec. of State Richard. LOL! is this how Guterres looked when he heard about the FBI testimony and learned that the US can’t resettle the 9,000-10,000 Syrians he wanted us to “welcome” this year?

Then next is the President of the United States who sends a determination letter to Congress each September which contains a ceiling for the number of refugees to be admitted in the upcoming fiscal year (fiscal years begin on October 1 of the preceding year, thus we are nearly 5 months into FY2015).  The President also sets ceilings for various regions of the world.

The ceiling for FY2015 is now at 70,000.

Supposedly Congress can change what the President wants, but as far as I know no one on the House or Senate Judiciary Committees ever says boo! about any of it.

BTW, the determination letter is prepared in the US State Department after what amounts to phony hearings where they say they want public comment on the “size and scope” of the program for the upcoming fiscal year, but they really only listen to their contractors (see contractors below).

In the House of Representatives, the present chairmen of the House Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security (of the House Judiciary Committee) is Rep. Trey Gowdy.

In the Senate, the present chairman of the Senate Immigration and the National Interest Subcommittee (of the Senate Judiciary Committee) is Senator Jeff Sessions.

Both the House and Senate Homeland Security Committees are involved too.

Under the President there are three cabinet level agencies intimately involved in Refugee Resettlement:

US State Department where the Asst. Secretary of State for Population Refugees and Migration is Anne C. Richard.  Under Ms. Richard are Lawrence Bartlett (in charge of bringing refugees in) and Barbara Day (in charge of working with contractors to distribute them around the country).

The Department of Homeland Security is responsible for screening refugees.  At the USCIS, Barbara Strack is the chief of the Refugee Affairs Division.

And, finally in the Department of Health and Human Services the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which basically acts as the distributor of money to refugees and contractors, the new director is Ken Tota.

I should mention that there are State Refugee Coordinators which have varying amounts of power depending on which type of Refugee program is being carried out by the contractors.  Here is a directory of those contacts.

Then ostensibly under all those layers are the nine major resettlement contractors, but LOL! it is often said that they are in fact running the show!  They call themselves VOLAGs (short for Voluntary Agencies but they are paid mostly from the US Treasury).  There are 350 subcontractors under the nine biggies who are resettling refugees in your towns and cities.

The nine major contractors:

For reporters focusing on your own cities or states, here is a link for a directory of subcontractors in almost every state in the nation.  Do  you see the abbreviation in the left hand corner of each listing?  That is the abbreviation for which of the nine biggies that subcontractor is affiliated with.

Here is a map of the US showing where those subcontractors are located.

Who are the 525 Syrian refugees admitted to the US in recent years; where have they been resettled?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Everybody is talking about the Syrian refugees admitted to the US, including the British press, here at the Daily Mail.  But, let me be clear, most news outlets are reporting that we are going to quadruple the number already here from recent Syrian crisis to around 2,000 in the coming year.

Please remember that the US State Department has 9,000-10,000 in the pipeline created by the UNHCR and in fact until the recent revelation by the FBI, they had every intention of getting the flow up to that level this fiscal year!

The resettlement contractors have been agitating for 15,000 a year!

First Syrian refugee family arriving in Louisville, KY being helped with a grant from an Islamic charity. Hey! Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul—are you paying attention! https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2015/02/15/first-syrian-refugees-arriving-in-louisville-ky-helped-with-grant-from-islamic-charity/ Photo: http://www.wave3.com/story/28105459/first-refugee-family-from-syrian-civil-war-arrives-in-louisville

From the Daily Mail:

More than 500 refugees from Syria’s bloody civil war have already been resettled in the United States, and U.S. officials and members of Congress are becoming increasingly worried that jihadis linked to the ISIS terror army could slip into the country along with them.

Since war broke out in Syria nearly four years ago, America has welcomed 524 people from the rapidly disintegrating country with open arms. U.S. intelligence agencies lack the resources to vet them properly, but the Obama administration plans to admit a few thousand more this year.  [My stats beginning January 1, 2012 indicate 525 Syrians have been admitted—ed]

‘The United States has admitted 524 Syrians since 2011,’ State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters on Feb. 13.

‘We’re likely to admit 1,000 to 2,000 Syrian refugees for permanent resettlement in Fiscal Year 2015 and a somewhat higher number, though still in the low thousands, in Fiscal Year 2016.’

You can read the rest of the Daily Mail article.

As I said yesterday when I told you where Somalis have been resettled in the US in recent years, I’m doing a series of posts on facts the media (and you!) need to know.

The vast majority of Syrian refugees entering the US right now are Muslims (89%)

Here is how the religions of our newest Syrians break down (from Refugee Processing Center data).  Arrival dates between 1/1/12 and 2/23/15.   These are the exact category names used by the State Department:

Atheist (1)

Bahai (2)

Catholic (1)

Christian (36)

Jehovah Witness (8)

Moslem (20)

Moslem Shiite (8)

Moslem Sunni (437)

No Religion (2)

Orthodox (3)

Other Religion (6)

Yazidi (1)

So where did the US State Department resettlement contractors*** send them?

Arizona (19)

Arkansas (1)

California (72)

Colorado (8)

Connecticut (3)

Florida (21)

Georgia (15)

Idaho (9)

Illinois (50)

Indiana (25)

Kansas (5)

Kentucky (5)

Maine (1)

Maryland (19)

Massachusetts (21)

Michigan (20)

Missouri (1)

New Hampshire (3)

New Jersey (17)

New Mexico (6)

New York (8)

North Carolina (33)

Ohio (6)

Oregon (1)

Pennsylvania (30)

Tennessee (8)

Texas (79)

Utah (5)

Virginia (16)

Washington (16)

West Virginia (1)

Wisconsin (1)

*** For reporters and other interested media, here is a list of the federal contractors and the percentage of tax dollars they use to do their work of distributing refugees around the country via their approximately 350 subcontractors.

Media shock over Obama plan to bring in a couple of thousand Syrian refugees growing

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment
Melanie Nezer: We want the US to admit 75,000 Syrians over 5 years!

This is just a quick commentary.

My alerts are filled with news stories about revelations last week and the week before that the Obama Administration is planning on bringing Syrian Muslim refugees to the US this year and in future years and everyone is shocked at the number being discussed—2,000.

Don’t get me wrong, I am glad the media is now paying attention.

But, remember, up until December of last year the State Department was predicting that they would bring in 9,000-10,000 this year. (See our Syrian refugees archive by clicking here)

Remember also that it is the refugee resettlement contractors*** and the UN lobbying us to bring in 15,000 a year!  See one of many stories on the subject here as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society leads the charge.  Not to appear to be picking on HIAS—the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Lutherans testified in Congress last year that they wanted the US to take 12,000-15,000 Syrians a year starting last year!

And, finally, why isn’t the same media paying attention to the fact that we brought in 20,000 Iraqis (three quarters are Muslim Iraqis) last year alone and 9,000 Somalis last year alone?

Come on media!  Where have you been?

***Update*** Here is one more of many stories on the media figuring out that the Syrians are coming!

***The federal refugee resettlement contractors:

Gitmo detainees sent to Uruguay as refugees don’t want to work!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We told you about how the former prisoners were presto-chango turned into refugees by the US State Department, here, in December.

This news could not come at a more opportune time (for a little chuckle), just as State Department Spokeswoman Marie Harf tells us that jihadists or wannabe jihadists just need a job and some upward mobility.

Too busy to work? One of the detainees (aka refugees) was recently in Argentina lobbying for the country to take some of his Gitmo pals who are still being held by the US government.

That is what Uruguay has offered and now we hear that the “refugees” have rejected their offer of work, a roof over their heads and cultural and language lessons as not being enough!

President Mujica says of them—these are not gritty, hardworking immigrants like the earlier ones who came to Uruguay.  If they were humble people of the desert they would be stronger!

From the Associated Press at Epoch Times (hat tip: Robin):

MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay—Controversy is flaring over the six Guantanamo detainees taken in by Uruguay for resettlement, with even the man who pushed through the plan, President Jose Mujica, seeming to criticize them for lacking a work ethic.

The men were locked up for more than a dozen years at the U.S. Navy base in Cuba before they were brought to Montevideo in December. Mujica agreed to accept them as a humanitarian gesture and said they would be given help getting established in a country of 3.3 million people with a total Muslim population of perhaps 300.

The government has offered them a residential facility to study Spanish, learn about Uruguayan culture and integrate to their new home.

But Syrian refugee Abu Wa’el Dhiab recently complained that the men have “walked out of a prison to enter another one.”

In a TV interview, Dhiab expressed thanks to Uruguay, but said it needs a plan for helping the ex-detainees, who need “their families, a home, a job and some sort of income that allows them to build a future.”

A labor union that has been helping the men says, however, that they have turned down job offers.

Mujica recently visited the home where five of the six men are staying and asked them to start working. After his visit, the president said on his radio program that the former detainees are far from the ancestors of Uruguayans, who he said were gritty, hard-working immigrants.

“If these people were humble people of the desert, poor people, they’d surely be stronger and more primitive, but they’re not,” Mujica said of the former prisoners. “Through their hands, features and family histories, it seems to me that they’re middle class.”

We have a little archive growing on Uruguay here and just this morning created a new category—South America—for increasing refugee news from there.