NYT reports first hardship story as refugees entering the US last evening being detained

01/28/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

And, so it begins.

I told you here on January 7th exactly what the refugee contractors would do!
Rutland, Vermont a case study!
This is what I said eleven days ago:

The US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) said in a press release in recent days that they were going ahead with their plans to open an office in Rutland, VT for the purpose of placing 100 Syrians (the first 100!) in the city where those plans have drawn heated controversy since last spring.

lavinia-limon-2 — Ms. Limon was irresponsible opening the Rutland, VT office only weeks ago when she knew this was coming. So, I’m saying she is cruel by giving false hope to refugees. The refugee contracting agency she heads is 97% funded by you! https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2016/09/05/this-federal-refugee-contracting-agency-is-97-taxpayer-funded/

Setting up a showdown with Donald Trump…..

If Trump does what he said he would do and quickly pauses refugee resettlement at least from terror-producing regions of the world, USCRI will be in a position to scream bloody murder—how dare Trump stop these poor women and children who were headed to a ‘welcoming’ Vermont town.

And this:

Warning to Mr. Trump: These are not squishy do-gooder organizations and people who you can easily roll. They are sharp, experienced political fighters.

Well, the fight is on as Pres. Trump did what he said he would do and now the NYT (story here) and Lavinia Limon are crying foul!
Here (at Valley News) is Ms. Limon wailing*** about Vermont two days ago (when it became clear Trump was not backing down):

Montpelier — The mayor of Rutland — a city that had been expecting up to 100 refugees from Syria and Iraq — said he fears a policy being considered by President Donald Trump would halt refugee resettlement in the city.

Trump is proposing to reduce the maximum number of refugees by more than half, to 50,000, for the budget year ending in September. He’s expected to suspend the U.S. refugee program for four months and indefinitely bar those fleeing war-torn Syria.

“That could very well mean the end of refugee resettlement for the city of Rutland,” where two Syrian refugee families recently arrived, Mayor Christopher Louras said.

“The human tragedy is terrible,” said Lavinia Limon, president of the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants. “The cruelty of doing that to people is really, really bad.”

Continue reading here.

Who is, first and foremost, responsible for the “cruelty?”

The US State Department bureaucrats (see Bureaucrats gone wild!) and Ms. Limon because they were pushing the refugees (the poor political pawns!) in to the pipeline as fast as they could! It was irresponsible of them to not start slowing down the flow on the day after election day.
For new readers, Ms. Limon’s organization is paid by the head to place the refugees!
For more on Rutland, click here. For our large archive on Ms. Limon, go here.
This post is archived in our Trump Watch! category.

*** Don’t miss more stories about the wailing and gnashing of teeth in the Open Borders movement. See Leo Hohmann at World Net Daily (here).

Refugee contractor may have exaggerated numbers in letter promoting Rutland, VT resettlement

01/12/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Every one of you working in your local communities and questioning plans for either expanding the number of refugees in your city or where new sites are planned, pay attention! Do what this housing authority member did—don’t take the contractors word on the economic benefits that refugees supposedly bring to your town or city.
I’ve been begging for years for someone with an economic/business background to thoroughly debunk (with a focused economic study) this illogical notion that bringing more poor people to a poor and struggling city benefits the city economically! I’ve suggested Utica, NY as the case study location.

This meme along with the propaganda that no refugees have been involved in Islamic terrorism are the two major talking points the refugee industry advocates peddle.
Here is Vermont Watchdog. You too can do this!

Gail Johnson, a Rutland resident and Board of Aldermen hopeful, likes to confirm her facts. This practice grew out of necessity when, as a U.S. Navy finance officer, she was in charge of payroll for an entire naval base in Charleston, S.C.

lavinia-limon-96 — In 1996 Lavinia Limon was Bill Clinton’s Director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement. After leaving government where she doled out grant money, she took the reins of one of nine major government refugee contractors receiving grant money, the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants. See Breitbart’s Michael Leahy’s dossier on Limon here last August: http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/08/05/twin-falls-refugee-crisis-clinton-appointee/

Now, a member of the Rutland Housing Authority commission, Johnson continues to fact check. “Whatever I say or do, I have proof. I back it up. I expect others to do that as well,” she said.

Johnson never thought she would find discrepancies in a letter by the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) to the Rutland Board of Aldermen, but she did.

[….]

In October, the Board of Aldermen sent a letter to USCRI, asking for justification of Rutland’s selection as a refugee relocation site. The agency still has not released the original grant application, which is supposed to spell out in detail Rutland’s suitability. Instead, USCRI CEO Lavinia Limon responded to the board in December, sending a letter that cited numbers of available jobs and housing.

Limon said that, as of Nov. 28, 2016, The Vermont Housing Data showed “284 housing units available for rent in Rutland City.”

Johnson noted that the 284 figure could be a result of expanded search parameters, to potentially place refugees in rent-to-buy situations, homes or condos. However, USCRI only places refugees in apartment rentals. [However, because the numbers coming in now are so astronomical, we are hearing refugees being placed (against federal regulations) in hotels!—ed]

However, when Watchdog checked the site on Jan. 11, only 23 housing locations are listed in Rutland City. Of those listed, none have availability.

[….]

“I’ve worked with people from many backgrounds. I’ve studied Arabic. Refugee settlement is a wonderful humanitarian effort,” she said.

But she said she becomes concerned when settlement agencies claim refugees will be beneficial to Rutland’s economy.

“They say that bringing in refugees is good for our economic recovery. I don’t know that that’s the solution. What I do know, in a bigger sense, is that the logic behind improving our economic recovery in Rutland by bringing in low-income people to generate business, it’s not a logical economic model,” she said.

Instead, Johnson contends, Rutland’s unemployment and lack of affordable housing makes bringing low-income refugee families into the city counterproductive from an economic standpoint.

Please read the whole story, Ms. Johnson found many more discrepancies in Lavinia Limon’s letter.
See my previous post on Rutland where I said Ms. Limon was setting this up (with the New York Times help) to use as a cudgel against Donald Trump should he stop the flow of Syrians after January 20th.
See our many posts on the Rutland controversy, here. And, learn more about Lavinia Limon and USCRI by clicking here.

First Syrians to Rutland, VT in direct challenge to Donald Trump

01/07/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

screenshot-14 — Lavinia Limon with Chobani CEO Hamdi Ulukaya. Ms. Limon’s organization, USCRI, helps Chobani Yogurt by sending refugees to Twin Falls, Idaho. Limon headed Bill Clinton’s Office of Refugee Resettlement. Warning to Mr. Trump: These are not squishy do-gooder organizations and people who you can easily roll. They are sharp, experienced political fighters.

Throwing all caution to the wind (shelling out money they don’t know they will have) and gambling that they can back Trump down, the federal resettlement contractor headed by longtime Clinton ally Lavinia Limon is hiring staff for a proposed opening in a couple of weeks—timed, I surmise, to happen just about the time Donald Trump is inaugurated.
Setting up a showdown with Donald Trump…..
If Trump does what he said he would do and quickly pauses refugee resettlement at least from terror-producing regions of the world, USCRI will be in a position to scream bloody murder—how dare Trump stop these poor women and children who were headed to a ‘welcoming’ Vermont town.
By the way, the NYT puff piece on Rutland recently was likely part of the propaganda set up to nail a heartless Trump.
These resettlement contractors have been around for over 30 years! Lots of big salaries depend on the continuation of the industry (yes, it is an industry), not to mention cheap labor for global corporations. Goals also include increasing Democrat voter rolls and generally driving all of us to accept a multicultural borderless world.
They are not going to give up easily or quietly!
From Valley News:

Rutland —

The Vermont Refugee Resettlement Program’s Rutland office is expected to open and be fully staffed within a couple of weeks.

According to Stacie Blake, director of government and community relations with the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, the office will have three full-time employees. Primary guidance will come from the Colchester, Vt., office and will be based on the organization’s 35 years of experience working with refugees in Vermont.

“The program expects to welcome the first refugee families to Rutland in January,” Blake said in a news release.

[….]

“Sites across the country are continuing to welcome new arrivals as their travel from overseas is booked,” Blake said in an email. “We have no information regarding changes to the resettlement program.”

I’ll bet you those travel bookings at IOM are going through the roof!
The article goes on to say how excited the volunteers are who are anticipating their very own Syrians (how cool is that!), and these local refugee advocates can be counted on to wail if Trump pauses the program (and they will have no clue that USCRI used them).
See our extensive archive on Rutland, here. And for more on Lavinia Limon, go here.

Message to new 'welcoming' towns: get out your wallets for your school system!

12/10/2016 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Ehtesham-Cating said… she cannot foresee the government penalizing Rutland schools if they cannot provide translation services right away.

This is yet another story from Rutland, VT where citizens and elected officials have been questioning a resettlement contractor (USCRI) and the federal government for months about the details of the US State Department’s decision to send the FIRST 100 Syrians there perhaps next month!
Board of Aldermen President William Notte wanted to know about school funding if the refugee children arrive in the middle of the school year.
As we point out in our 2015 post ‘Ten things your town needs to know‘ when ‘welcoming’ refugees, the impact of the resettled refugees will be felt first in your school system’s budget.
Here is what we learned at Vermont Watchdog:

Miriam Ehtesham-Cating, the English language program director for the Burlington School District, said the focus needs to be on elementary and high school kids, in keeping with the federal government’s requirements for English language learning.

vermont-refugee-agency-2 — In news dated December 2nd, USCRI says it is proceeding with plans for Rutland with a wait and see attitude toward the incoming Trump Administration. http://wamc.org/post/vermont-refugee-resettlement-opening-rutland-office

“Vermont and the federal government have a strict regulatory process for identifying English language learners, and providing language assistance,” Ehtesham-Cating said.

Ehtesham-Cating, who oversees English language instruction for 14 schools, said services for preschoolers would not likely be a priority. “It is more important for staff to receive coaching and to receive help in developing learning profiles for these children,” she said.

In addition, since schools are required to send materials home to students and parents in a language they can understand, Rutland schools will need to offer some sort of translation services.

Ehtesham-Cating said that in her opinion, she cannot foresee the government penalizing Rutland schools if they cannot provide translation services right away.

[….]

Winooski, another refugee resettlement community in Vermont, spends about $1 million dollars annually on language services. Rutland schools would have a much lower tab, said Ehtesham-Cating, since only two full-time liaisons would likely be needed to help an estimated 40 refugee school kids.

“(Language services) aren’t just a requirement, they’re good practice,” she said. “Some of these children have grown up their whole lives inside a camp. They don’t know how to even go to school. … Rutland has to decide how they are going to help these children transition.”

Continue reading here.
See our complete archive on the on-going tension in Rutland, VT by clicking here.
The federal contractor WRAPSnet previously maintained a list of a couple hundred resettlement offices, here. As of this writing they have removed that list and so after years of being able to see where refugee offices are located that information is no longer available to you.
Rutland is one of 47 new sites the US State Department and the Office of Refugee Resettlement have quietly targeted as new resettlement sites. One of the first things the Trump Administration must do is to make all of this information public information. Here are some of the sites we have identified so far:

Asheville, NC

Rutland, VT

Reno, NV

Ithaca, NY

Missoula, MT

Aberdeen, SD (may have been thwarted as a primary resettlement site!)

Charleston, WV

Fayetteville, AR

Blacksburg, VA

Pittsfield, MA

Northhampton, MA

Flint, MI

Bloomington, IN

Traverse City, MI

Poughkeepsie, NY

Wilmington, DE

Watertown, NY (maybe)

Youngstown, OH (maybe)

Storm Lake, Iowa

More on Rutland: Refugee resettlement is about (your) money

11/22/2016 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

It’s hundreds of thousands of dollars in grant money that goes towards transitioning the refugees.

In Rutland, VT the controversy about whether to bring mostly Syrian refugees to the city in the coming months continues to simmer. The brakes are on right now, as we told you here and here recently, because the federal contractors know they can’t get out too far ahead of their money (YOUR money, federal grants).
Frankly, the contractors have virtually no money of their own especially the contractor in Rutland (USCRI here). For new readers, USCRI*** is the contractor working in Twin Falls, Idaho too.

mayor-louras — Rutland Mayor Louras thinks small towns will be saved by bringing in mostly Muslim refugees from the Middle East. I don’t see him clamoring for the Congolese Christians. Photo: http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2016/08/05/shrinking-small-towns-see-hope-in-refugees

There is nothing earth-shattering in this, another story on Rutland, but I was interested to see how overtly the promoters of resettlement are willing today to talk (they didn’t 9 years ago) about the need for federal bucks to make the resettlement work.
Those promoting bringing the Syrian Muslims (flavor of the year!) to Rutland aren’t shelling out their own money, neither is the state of Vermont (at least on the surface, they will, however, shell out plenty for ‘services’ and educating the kids as time goes on.).
On this flavor of the year comment (I can hear the rage!), I was struck by a thought when I wrote about the rally for Syrians in Charleston, WV and we see it here in Rutland too.
Would the resettlement advocates be so eager if they were going to be getting mostly impoverished and boring Christians from the DR Congo or Burma, or is this fervor for Syrians and Iraqis (mostly Muslims) fueled by a desire to be just kinda cool?
Here is the bit of the story at WCAX.com I want you to see:

An opportunity about 100 Syrian and Iraqi refugees hope to find in Rutland. “It’s frankly just a lot of unknowns,” said Rutland Mayor Chris Louras.

After Donald Trump’s win, Rutland officials are not sure whether their resettlement plan for the refugees will be affected. “There’s the potential that we may only see two families in before he’s inaugurated. We don’t know what happens at that point,” Louras said.

President-elect Trump campaigned with anti-immigrant rhetoric, saying he plans to cut refugee funding and put a temporary halt on accepting Muslims.

“Without that federal funding for the program, there’s no mechanism to resettlement to the United States,” Louras said. [If people really were driven by humanitarianism, they would be privately funding resettlement, one family, one church at a time!—ed]

Right now with all the uncertainty, USCRI isn’t going to go out on a financial limb and hire staff and open an office!

It’s hundreds of thousands of dollars in grant money that goes towards transitioning the refugees. The Vermont Refugee Resettlement Program Rutland plans to hire three full-time case workers and two part-time translators to work with the refugees on education and employment. “We’re still planning as if these people are coming — we have to,” Louras said.

So is Marsha Cassel, a Rutland High School teacher and active member of the group, Rutland Welcomes.

And, check out this next line. The good citizens of Rutland are bringing over their old furniture, but USCRI gets to give it a monetary value so they can tell the feds they have some skin in the game. The feds expect the contractors to show they have contributed something, and since they don’t have cash (especially USCRI 97% taxpayer funded) they get to use old furniture and volunteer hours (your volunteer hours are given a cash value!) to prove they are contributing.

In the Rutland Herald’s former printing press room, hundreds of pieces of donated furniture await new owners. “They’re coming with nothing but hope, so we are just hoping to get them started,” Cassel said.

The WCAX.com story continues with much discussion about screening terrorists, but I think the greater threat is what we are seeing in Minnesota where the generation of cute little kids we supported grows up to be jihadists.
To see our very large archive on Rutland, click here.
***Learn more about USCRI’s CEO Lavinia Limon here at Breitbart.