Tag: US State Department

Dr.Taylor Haynes, a gubernatorial candidate in Wyoming, speaks out on refugees

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We have been reporting since early February on the controversy in Wyoming about opening the state for the first time to refugee resettlement—a proposal from Republican Governor Matt Mead.   All of our previous coverage is here.

Dr. Taylor Haynes

The Casper Star Tribune has been the source of many stories on the growing political firestorm and here is one more article (mostly about Dr. Haynes’ primary challenge) in which the refugee proposal is discussed.

By the way, Casper, along with Gillette, are the two cities being considered by the US State Department and its contractor (Lutheran Family Services Rocky Mountains) as resettlement sites.

Just a reminder, opposition to formal (contractual) resettlement does not bar refugees from living in Wyoming.  Legal immigrants are permitted to move around and live wherever they wish in America.

Haynes speaking about refugees from the third world:

“To make them our problem doesn’t solve their problem.”

Haynes, a medical doctor, also raises an issue that is increasingly on peoples’ minds—fear of diseases entering the US with refugees. (See our ‘Health issues’ category).

From the Star Tribune (emphasis is mine):

Gov. Matt Mead and others are learning more about refugees and evaluating options to possibly create a plan in Wyoming for refugee resettlement. Wyoming is the only state without a formal resettlement program.

Haynes opposes the idea.

“First there is a cultural language problem, which is a barrier to them being self-sufficient,” he said. “Second, there are communicable diseases from central Africa,” which is where a lot of refugees who need to resettle are from.

Communicable diseases include HIV, Ebola, Rift Valley fever, he said.

Haynes acknowledged some Americans have HIV and AIDS, “so why would you risk importing any more?”  [Refugees with TB and with HIV/AIDS are being permitted entry into the US and taxpayers are responsible for the cost of their treatment.—ed]

While plenty of people from Central America move to the U.S., learn English and become successful, Haynes said, it’s easier for them because many American citizens are fluent in Spanish and can speak to them while they’re learning English. Culturally, they’re similar to Americans, Haynes said. That’s not the case with Africans, he said.

Haynes acknowledged that in engineering school he and his classmates had popular professors from India, China, Taiwan and Pakistan.

“We’re talking about individuals who have made an effort to get the degree, they’ve made the effort to get into our culture,” he said. “These people were Hindus, Sikhs and obviously Muslims, all on the same campus. It was not an issue.”

But many refugees are not educated or prepared culturally for the United States. A Wyoming community of 35,000 cannot support 2,000 refugees.

“We can’t solve their problem by bringing them here,” he said. “We have to help them with humanitarian aid, and my heart goes out to them. To make them our problem doesn’t solve their problem.”

Read the whole Casper Star Tribune article for more on the campaign.

Dr. Haynes website is here.

Albany, NY: Another brutal crime by an Iraqi refugee; major media breakthrough

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

 Update April 6th:  Saturdays in springtime are usually slow days here, but this post went through the roof yesterday, thanks to all who sent it around on facebook!

The US State Department and their Catholic contractor should be shaken by this one.

The crime is nothing new, but the reporting sure is!

Iraqi refugee could get 25 years for brutal rape

Here is what happened according to the Albany Times Union and reporter Robert Gavin (emphasis below is mine):

Albany

A jury needed less than two hours on Thursday to convict an Iraqi refugee of brutally raping a 19-year-old woman behind a trash bin in Colonie after meeting her at a downtown bar last year.

Salam Al Haideri, 24, of Niskayuna, faces 25 years in prison after the jury of nine men and three women found him guilty of predatory sex assault and first-degree rape.

[….]

Al Haideri and a friend had met the victim, whom neither man knew, at the Buddha Tea House club on North Pearl Street in the pre-dawn hours of June 2, 2013. The 4-foot-11 woman got in their car and, during the ride, Al Haideri touched her. She said she wanted to go home and she and Al Haideri argued. When Al Haideri’s friend stopped the car, Al Haideri yanked the woman out of the car and took her behind a trash bin behind “I Love NY” pizzeria on Central Avenue by Vly Road, Cleary said.

Al Haideri smashed the victim’s face into the pavement, ripped open her shorts and raped her for 12 minutes as she begged him to stop, Cleary said.

“This is an act of just pure anger,” Cleary told jurors. “When she started to fight back, he beat her into submission and then he took what he believed he was entitled to.”

Cleary showed the jury a photo of the victim smiling before she went out that night. She then contrasted that with an image of the woman at Albany Medical Center Hospital, where she lay bloody, beaten and bandaged.

“Someone just doesn’t come out of a consensual sexual encounter looking like that,” a man on the jury said after the verdict.

Breakthrough in media coverage!

Here is the most important part of the story at the Times Union, and for this we owe reporter Robert Gavin a debt of gratitude.  When we first began RRW back in 2007 (and for years until most recently),  stories like this one would describe the convicted rapist as an “immigrant who found his way” to Albany—the ‘R’ word was never mentioned!

Not only is the sacrosanct word “refugee” mentioned here, but the Iraqi criminal’s resettlement through a “federally funded program” and by Catholic Charities under contract to the US Conference of Catholic Bishops is discussed!

Al Haideri is the third Middle East refugee — all brought to the Capital Region under the same federally funded resettlement program — to be convicted of a sex crime since 2010.

[….]

The conviction follows the sex crime convictions of Walid Nehma, 30, an Iraqi refugee who once was a housemate of Al Haideri, and Salah Mhawesh, 34, an Egyptian refugee. All three settled in the Capital Region with help of a program run by Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Albany under a contract with the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Migration and Refugee Services.

In December 2009, Nehma struck a woman in the face, forced her to the ground, tore her pants open and tried to rape her as she screamed for help in a desolate area next to Capital Repertory Theater. He is serving a 5-year sentence at Great Meadow Correctional Facility in Washington County for attempted rape and is due to be released on Dec. 3. Mhawesh pleaded guilty in 2012 to first-degree sex abuse of a woman in his home on Central Avenue. He was sentenced to one year in the Albany County jail, which became time served.

When Al Haideri testified Wednesday, Cleary also questioned him about the assistance he received in jailhouse conversations with Jacqueline Foster, 73, of Niskayuna, his foster mother in the refugee resettlement program.

Al Haideri lived with Foster, who had also allowed Nehma to live with her family for a time.

Incredible!!!

Reporters and thus the public are beginning to understand how it is we have so many refugees living in especially “preferred resettlement sites” like Albany.

Note also the sickening story from Syracuse earlier in the week about a Catholic Church becoming a mosque—that conversion was attributed to an increase in the ‘refugee’ population there, so bit by bit (hopefully) the political correctness that has dominated the mainstream media and kept it silent about the Refugee Program of the US State Department/UN is disappearing.

LOL!  The next step is to bill the US State Department for the refugee criminal trials occurring with greater frequency now!  And, while they are at it they could foot the bill for his next 25 years behind bars as well (and maybe the Catholic Bishops could throw in some cash too!).

Wyoming, are you ready for this?

Abrams and Schwartz want further relaxation of security screening for Syrian refugees

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

In a highly criticized move, the Obama Administration already relaxed security screening aimed at bringing in thousands of Syrians.  Now Elliott Abrams and Eric Schwartz have penned an op-ed saying it wasn’t enough.

Elliott Abrams

Frankly, some serious wrangling must be going on within the Administration because as far as I can tell, Obama has not YET opened the floodgates to Syrian refugees and thus we are seeing the public relations push—as we mentioned in the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society story the other day.  (Incidentally, that story was viewed by 33,328 readers via our facebook page!)

Who are Abrams and Schwartz?   According to the USA Today op-ed:

Elliott Abrams, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, was a deputy national security adviser in the George W. Bush administration. Eric P. Schwartz, dean of the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota, was assistant secretary of State for population, refugees and migration in the Obama administration. They are members of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.

We have a lot on Eric P. Schwartz, a Soros protege and one-worlder, on our pages, here.

Eric P. Schwartz

Abrams and Schwartz at USA Today:

Last month, as Syria’s civil war entered its fourth year, bloodshed continued without pause and the number of refugees continued to swell. Those are among the reasons that the Obama administration took an important step to sustain a U.S. tradition of protecting refugees, including Syrians fleeing their country. But the administration can do more.

The United States has long provided haven and resettlement to those escaping tyranny.

They then go on to describe the waiver from terrorism bars the Obama Administration has already put in place and say it isn’t enough:

There are other categories of refugees who still fall afoul of current law, such as former combatants who never acted against U.S. interests and have laid down their arms, and individuals who provided “insignificant” support for groups that the U.S. has designated as terrorist groups. The administration should consider expanding its waiver to include these groups.

Abrams and Schwartz say they only want a few thousand Syrians to be admitted, but therein lies the rub.  The US State Department had bandied about the possible resettlement of 2,000 this fiscal year, but the resettlement contractors are pushing for from 12,000-15,000 this year (to be repeated again next year and the year after…).

BTW, we are already 6 months into the 2014 fiscal year which began on Oct. 1, 2013.  And, just a reminder: the contractors are paid by the head for each refugee they resettle.

In case you are wondering, Abrams and Schwartz never mention the persecuted Syrian Christians.

This is how you snooker the low-information Americans who read USA Today:

We are not suggesting that the United States admit waves of new refugees. While there are more than 2 million Syrians outside their homeland, the U.S. resettlement program for Syrians is focused only on several thousand of the most vulnerable.

LOL! It is only a few thousand and only the “vulnerable” they say.  What is “several thousand?”

As I said the contractors and the open borders lobby must be running into some resistance on the Syrian refugee resettlement issue or Abrams and Schwartz wouldn’t be penning this piece.

Just as Americans are weary of war, I believe they are weary of taking in the world and putting the masses on US taxpayer-funded welfare, not to mention putting our security at risk!

You need to be letting your Representative in Congress or US Senators know, you have had enough!

Wyoming: County GOP says NO to refugee program for the state

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Demonstrating that the issue of whether Wyoming should become a UN/US State Department resettlement site is becoming a political hot potato—the Natrona County GOP has said No to the scheme.

New readers, click here, for all of our previous posts on Republican Governor Matt Mead’s invite to the feds to help the state plan for refugee resettlement for possibly Gillette and/or Casper, Wyoming.

The federal government and its contractors are running out of ‘welcoming’ sites for dropping off refugees, so Wyoming represents fresh territory!

Natrona County includes Casper.  We spotted this tiny bit at the end of this story at the Casper Star Tribune (btw, the Tribune has editorialized in favor of refugee resettlement):

Other measures adopted by the party at the county convention:

*The party opposes the introduction of refugee camps or participation in refugee resettlement programs in Wyoming.

Wyoming is the only state without a formal refugee resettlement program. Gov. Matt Mead and others are trying to learning more about refugees and evaluating options to possibly create a plan in Wyoming for refugee resettlement.

If you missed it, be sure to see Don Barnett’s excellent op-ed also at the Casper Star Tribune.

The feds and contractors need to find more resettlement towns and cities

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The ones they have are at the saturation point and so the hunt is on!  (Get it Wyoming!)

It’s been on actually for some time, but last summer the State Department (PRM) and the Dept. of Health and Human Services (ORR) began to spell out what they are looking for in a “welcoming” community.  They published their ‘guidance’  in a boring-sounding report entitled, ‘Key Indicators for Refugee Placement in FY 2014.’  

I had the report, but had filed it away for a slow day, which didn’t come until last week.

Bottomline is that they want to find out where they can get the best goodies for refugees in a welcoming atmosphere!  They have compiled state data for “stakeholders:”

…including state-by-state employment rates, health insurance access, average housing costs and state minimum wages.

They have had eleven meetings since 2011, some are conference calls, but others are site visits like one they described in Minnesota:

… ORR and PRM staff conducted a joint site visit to Minnesota and engaged with representatives of a resettlement agency, area service providers and the state and local government to discuss resettlement needs and gauge local support and capacity for new resettlement possibilities.  [They love that word capacity!—-ed]

See the full report, we will have more to say about it in coming days.

See our ‘where to find information’ category for more on reports like this one, statistics etc. that you will need to educate your communities.