Tag: US State Department

Three days remaining to send comments to the US State Department

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Please take a few minutes sometime in the next three days to send comments on what you think should be the “size and scope” of the US refugee resettlement program for FY2015.    

Go here for instructions!  You have until 5 p.m. on May 29th!

Anne C. Richard, Asst. Secretary of State for Population, Refugees and Migration will be the recipient of your testimony. She revolved into the State Department from her former position as a VP for the IRC—a contractor. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShMI1o_A9FQ

It is really simple, you don’t have to write a book or be an expert (none of us on the outside are experts!), just tell the State Department calmly and politely how many refugees they should take and from where in FY2015 which begins on October first of this year.

I’ll be telling them there should be a complete moratorium on the program until Congress holds hearings to review the whole thing and abolishes or reforms it.

And, here are the most important things for you to do!

*Tell the State Department you want a copy of everyone’s testimony (including the advocates’ testimony).  They can do it electronically by making a link available, or the old fashioned way—they can send you a hard copy of the entire stack.

*Send your testimony to your elected officials in Washington and ask them for a response to you on their position on the program.   (You can do this part after you get your testimony in to the State Department by Thursday of this week! 5 p.m on the 29th).

Frankly, it is shameful that several major religious groups and some secular ones are paid millions of tax dollars each to bring more poverty to America and basically leave the responsibility for the refugees’ care on your local community.   For an average of 70,000 or so refugees annually, the program costs federal taxpayers over a billion dollars a year NOT including education, housing, food stamps and healthcare etc. some of which is carried on the backs of local and state taxpayers.  (See our most visited post, our fact sheet!)

If churches and synagogues want to adopt a refugee family for a year or two (until they assimilate and can get on their own financial feet) then they should do that with PRIVATE charity—that is what Jesus would do!   Jesus wouldn’t steal from others in the name of Christian charity!

In fact, those Lutherans in Baltimore who are planning their big lobbying push for June sure better be using private funds for lobbying Congress and not your tax dollars!  Remember they get about $30 million from you and only about an additional $1 million from private giving—they would fold if it weren’t for their permanent attachment to the government teat.

For new readers, to see some testimony from last year, click here, and then scroll back through the posts.  There are 21 posts archived there about last year’s testimony.  Those opposed last year sent more testimony than the ‘human rights’ advocacy gang.

Also, if you would like us to publish your testimony for this year, please send it to us!  The simplest format for me to convert to a blog post is for it to arrive in the body of an e-mail.  Use the Yahoo address in right hand side bar and I promise to check it more often during this week.  Put the word ‘testimony’ in the subject line so it jumps out from among the junk e-mails!

Please help spread this post to everyone you know on facebook, twitter etc.

US State Department hiding stats on which US cities receive refugees

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Why is that?

For the longest time we were able to access statistics for cities at the US State Department contracted site called WRAPS (Worldwide Refugees Admissions Processing System/Refugee Processing Center (RPC)).

Most of the website is NOT available to the public, but at this public page there had been for years a link for ‘arrivals by destination city by nationality.’    I thought I might be imagining that there had been that statistical category, but noticed just now, when visiting another US State Department contracted site, that indeed it exists (but not for you!).

Here is what the Cultural Orientation Resource Center (gee I wonder when they turned the ‘C’ in their logo into a crescent?) says about the WRAPS/RPC stats:

The Refugee Processing Center (RPC), operated by the U.S Department of State, Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM), coordinates the processing and tracking of the movement of refugees from various countries around the world to the U.S. for resettlement under the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program.

Working closely with Resettlement Support Centers, national refugee resettlement agencies, and others, the RPC oversees the use of an interactive computer system called the Worldwide Refugee Admissions Processing System (WRAPS). The RPC uses this data to produce a variety of reports on refugee arrivals per region within a fiscal year, arrivals by state within a fiscal year, arrivals by destination city by nationality, and so on.

To access these reports and more, see the Refugee Processing Center’s Admissions and Arrivals reports page.

What else do they keep from the public?  They keep the stats on the number of Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, Hindus etc. that are coming in as refugees, but do not release those to the public either.  Only special people can get further into the password-protected site.  It is all part of the secrecy that is a hallmark of the program.

See a list of State Department “preferred communities,” here.  But, we don’t know how many and what nationalities are being resettled. Is your city one of them?

Don’t forget!  Please send a comment to the US State Department by May 29th (one week from today!) on the “size and scope” of refugee admissions for FY 2015!

Federal government to take on more healthcare costs of refugees; relieve local health departments

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

One of the first things a “welcoming” community in America becomes aware of is the cost of refugee health care at a county health department.

We first became aware of how quickly “pockets of resistance” grow locally when a health department is overloaded with refugee vaccination needs and medical treatment costs for such diseases as TB and HIV/AIDS.   Here is one of our earliest posts on the problem in Ft. Wayne, Indiana (2007!).

Now we see that the US State Department and the CDC are going to try to get a greater number of refugees vaccinated abroad before they enter the US.  It sounds like a good move for medical reasons.  But, it also provides a fig leaf by shifting the cost from one group of taxpayers to the other.  While relieving the burden on local and state taxpayers, the costs will be borne by the federal taxpayers, so what is the difference!

Wyoming please note that if they are successful in vaccinating 56% abroad (we resettle on average 70,000 a year), that still leaves 30,800 or so refugees whose vaccination needs will be paid for by state and county taxpayers along with many other of their medical needs!  Wyoming Governor Matt Mead thinks the refugee program is free to Wyoming and that the federal government has a money tree!

From the CDC:

The refugees have agreed to participate in a vaccination project that will introduce multiple vaccines overseas, depending on age, before they arrive to the US. The project is a partnership between CDC’s Division of Global Migration and the US Department of State’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM). CDC and PRM are co-funding this project for approved refugee applicants in the US Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP).The goal of the project is to provide cost-effective public health interventions, improve refugee health, and limit the number of vaccinations refugees will need after they arrive in the US. In addition to Kenya, the vaccination project is being implemented by IOM with USRAP in Ethiopia, Thailand, Malaysia, and Nepal.

[….]

This project has been implemented in five countries and will provide vaccinations overseas to 56 percent of US-bound refugees each year, saving state and local health departments from the cost and time to provide those vaccines after the refugees reach their new homes in the US.

And thereby eliminating an important driver of community resistance to refugee placement.

Ten reasons there should be a complete moratorium on refugee resettlement

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Editors note:  This (below) is the testimony I delivered (in person) to the US State Department in 2012 for it annual hearing to determine the “size and scope” of refugee admissions for the upcoming fiscal year.  I submitted the same testimony in 2013 and will do the same this year.  Since the ‘M’-word has been mentioned in two of our previous posts, here and here, I’m joining the chorus (again!).

 

Originally posted here in April 2012:

 

This is the comment I sent to the US State Department yesterday [two years ago—ed] to be included in their record of the May 1 meeting where mostly contractors and refugee advocates make a pitch to the State Department to resettle more refugees from this country, or that one, to the US in FY2013.

Ten Reasons there should be no refugees resettled in the US in FY2013—instead a moratorium should be put in place until the program is reformed and the economy completely recovers.

1)    There are no jobs. The program was never meant to be simply a way to import impoverished people to the US and place them on an already overtaxed welfare system.

2)     The program has become a cash cow for various “religious” organizations and other contractors who very often appear to care more about the next group of refugees coming in (and the cash that comes with each one) than the group they resettled only a few months earlier. Stories of refugees suffering throughout the US are rampant.

3)   Terrorist organizations (mostly Islamic) are using the program that still clearly has many failings in the security screening system.  Indeed consideration should be given to halting the resettlement of Muslims altogether.  Also, the UN should have no role in choosing refugees for the US.

4)    The public is not confident that screenings for potential terrorists (#3) or the incidences of other types of fraudulent entry are being properly and thoroughly investigated and stopped.  When fraud is uncovered—either fraud to enter the country or illegal activity once the refugee has been resettled—punishment should be immediate deportation.

5)     The agencies, specifically the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), is in complete disarray as regards its legally mandated requirement to report to Congress every year on how refugees are doing and where the millions of tax dollars are going that run the program.  The last (and most recent) annual report to be sent to Congress is the 2008 report—so they are out of compliance for fiscal years 2009, 2010 and 2011.***  A moratorium is necessary in order for the ORR to bring its records entirely up-to-date. Additionally,  there needs to be an adequate tracking system designed to gather required data—frankly some of the numbers reported for such measures of dependence on welfare as food stamp usage, cash assistance and employment status are nothing more than guesses.  (The lack of reports for recent years signals either bureaucratic incompetence and disregard for the law, or, causes one to wonder if there is something ORR is hiding.)

6)    The State Department and the ORR have so far failed to adequately determine and report (and track once the refugee has been admitted) the myriad communicable and costly-to-treat diseases entering the country with the refugee population.

7)   Congress needs to specifically disallow the use of the refugee program for other purposes of the US Government, especially using certain refugee populations to address unrelated foreign policy objectives—Uzbeks, Kosovars, Meshketians and Bhutanese (Nepalese) people come to mind.

8)   Congress needs to investigate and specifically disallow any connection between this program and big businesses looking for cheap and captive labor.  The federal government should not be acting as head-hunter for corporations.

9)     The Volag system should be completely abolished and the program should be run by state agencies with accountability to the public through their state legislatures. The system as presently constituted is surely unconstitutional.  (One of many benefits of turning the program over to a state agency is to break up the government/contractor revolving door that is being demonstrated now at both the State Department and ORR.)  The participating state agency’s job would be to find groups, churches, or individuals who would sponsor a refugee family completely for at least a year and monitor those sponsors. Their job would include making sure refugees are assimilating. A mechanism should be established that would allow a refugee to go home if he or she is unhappy or simply can’t make it in America. Short of a complete halt to resettlement-by-contractor, taxpayers should be protected by legally requiring financial audits of contractors and subcontractors on an annual basis.

10)   As part of #9, there needs to be established a process for alerting communities to the impending arrival of refugees that includes reports from the federal government (with local input) about the social and economic impact a certain new group of refugees will have on a city or town.   This report would be presented to the public through public hearings and the local government would have an opportunity to say ‘no.’

 

For these reasons and more, the Refugee admissions program should be placed on hold and a serious effort made by Congress to either scrap the whole thing or reform it during the moratorium.  My recommendation for 2013, 2014 2015 is to stop the program now.  The Office of the President could indeed ask for hearings to review the Refugee Resettlement Act of 1980-–three decades is time enough to see its failings and determine if reauthorization is feasible or whether a whole new law needs to be written.

I suspect the major impediments to reform will be the contractors who make their living from the program (and use the refugees for political goals) and big business which has entwined itself with the federal agencies, the Volags and certain Members of Congress (on both sides of the political aisle) to keep the captive labor coming.

Please get your comments in to the US State Department for FY 2015, go here for instructions! You have only until May 29th.  Be sure to ask for a copy of the complete public record (all of the testimony, everyone’s testimony!) to be sent to you. And again, the most important point of this exercise is to alert your US Senators and Members of Congress to your concerns.

***Hey, check it out!   Progress! They are only two years out of compliance now!  ORR still owes Congress reports for 2012 and 2013, but at least it isn’t 3 years!

 

 

Maine: Tsarnaev’s gun came from Eritrean gang member in Portland

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

However, the Portland Chief of Police maintains that Maine is still a safe state with only a few loosely affiliated immigrant gangs!

Boston bomber Tsarnaev was a political “refugee” in America

It’s all over the news, but as usual the UK press (Daily Mail!) is covering the story in its famously direct fashion, no beating around the bush about the nationalities of the gang bangers like the defensive-sounding Maine papers.

Longtime readers of RRW know that Maine has become a magnet for African refugees—as refugees resettled directly there by the US State Department, as secondary migrants, and as asylum seekers.  See our lengthy archive on Maine, here.   See especially our 2009 post about the Somali migration to Maine for its generous welfare.

By the way, when you check out the Portland paper (the Sun Journal), note that one of the gangs they are watching is the Somali True Bloods.

Here is the UK Daily Mail (Hat tip: ‘pungentpeppers’):

The 9mm pistol that Boston bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev used to murder one police officer and gravely wound another came from a brutal street gang in Maine that is allegedly led by an Eritrean immigrant.

Tracking the path of the Ruger P95 semiautomatic pistol has led investigators to believe he may have dealt drugs to finance the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings that killed three spectators and injured more than 260 others.

Drug money is also believed to have funded the 26-year-old’s 2012 trip to Chechnya and Dagestan in Russia, where he became involved in radical Islam.

[….]

They found that it was legally purchased at a Cabella’s sporting goods store outside Portland, Maine, in November 2011 by Danny Sun Jr – a Los Angeles native. The gun typically sells for about $375.

Sun told investigators that he gave the pistol to Biniam Tsegai, a 27-year-old Eritrean immigrant who goes by the street name ‘Icy.’

The Times reports that Tsegai is a reputed leader of a Portland, Maine, street gang with a lengthy arrest record – including robbery, criminal trespass and reckless driving.

In May 2013 – a month after the marathon bombings – Tsegai was arrested and indicted on federal drug trafficking charges. Prosecutors noted that the drugs he is accused of trafficking were brought from Boston to Maine.

Tsegai has refused to talk to authorities about the Ruger pistol – or anything else.

However, Tsarnaev’s possession of the weapon have strengthened their suspicions that he was involved in drug trafficking.

This last bit in the story is a terrible black mark on investigators.  That these murders linked to Tsarnaev were not solved (and still aren’t solved as far as I know) in a timely fashion is a travesty.

They have not been able to prove his involvement, but suspect he had something to do with the September 11, 2011 murder of three men in an apartment outside Boston who were found with the throats slit. Marijuana and $1,000 in cash was found sprinkled around the crime scene.

Besides Maine, where are the Eritreans?

RRW geography lesson!

They are in Washington DC in very large numbers.  The State Department and its contractors don’t normally resettle new refugees to DC (the well-off and well-connected might be troubled by that), but Eritreans are going to DC as secondary migrants having been resettled elsewhere in the US.

Here is a lengthy story, also thanks to ‘pungentpeppers,’ about how their kinfolk in Africa are being kidnapped and ransomed and the DC Eritreans are stressed about it.

According to wikipedia about 50% of the population of Eritrea is Christian and 48% Muslim.

From the Washington City Paper:

Eritreans began migrating to the U.S. in small numbers in the 1960s, when the country was still part of Ethiopia, according to Hepner. Subsequent waves in the 1980s and over the past five years brought thousands more, mainly as part of refugee resettlement programs, and the D.C. area has long been home to one of the largest communities in the country, Hepner says.

Read it all.

This is our 30th post in our Boston bomber category, click here, for more on the case and that grateful refugee family.