Tag: Utah

‘Hate’ crimes were fairly steady through most years of Obama Administration

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

And, religious ‘hate’ crimes were most often against Jewish people, not Muslims.

The Salt Lake Tribune published an article over the weekend in which they seem to reach for statistics to show that so-called hate crimes (mostly racial) are on the rise in Utah and elsewhere.

FBI
Learn about the Hate Crime data collection at the FBI here: https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/civil-rights/hate-crimes

One could easily conclude that yes, the ‘hate’ crimes were up a little in 2016 from the previous year, but about the same (or slightly lower) as Obama presided over in 2011.

Although they don’t say it, the implication is that Trump’s hateful rhetoric and followers are to blame for a trend.

We’ll wait for the 2017 data, since of course it was Obama (the peacemaker) presiding over the country for this data.

Here are the opening paragraphs of the Tribune article:

Incidents of hate crimes in Utah rose significantly for the first time in two years in 2016, and based on complaints and investigations this year, the local FBI believes those numbers will continue to rise.

Last year, local law enforcement reported 66 incidents to the FBI, ranking Utah No. 23 out of the 49 reporting states and the District of Columbia, according to recently released 2016 hate crime statistics.

Those 66 incidents encompass 72 offenses, or individual crimes, reported in 2016. The most common was simple assault, with 22 instances, followed by vandalism at 18 and crimes against society — drug, gambling, prostitution, weapons violation or animal cruelty offenses — at 13.

Sounds like just flat out criminal activity to me! (Did you know they were counting hate crimes against animals in this data?)

When you read the article don’t miss the part about how as a state becomes more “diverse” the hate crime incidents rise.

When I checked the data, here, sure enough the states with the most ‘haters’ were California, New York, Ohio, Michigan and Massachusetts also among the most diverse states in America. Wyoming, arguably with the least diverse population, was the least hateful state with only 3 incidents in 2016.

So could we make a case that diversity does not make us stronger, but in fact causes more strife and stress in society?

Here is an interesting chart showing the national ‘hate’ crime stats. The reporter says hate crimes were rising for the last five years (through 2016).  Yes, but she doesn’t mention the fact that they were slightly higher in 2011 than in 2016.

 

Screenshot (1107)

 

Here is an important takeaway: someone please tell CAIR Minnesota’s director Jaylani Hussein that in 2016 ‘hate’ crimes based on religion were more than twice as high against Jews than Muslims.

CAIR would have us think that all over America people were hating on Muslims. Gosh, who might be hating on all the Jewish people?

Jewish people were most likely to face the brunt of hate crimes targeting a person’s religion, with 684 reported incidents, about 54 percent of the total. Those incidents involved 862 victims, up nearly 18 percent from 2015 . Muslims were the target of 307 incidents….

There is lots of interesting data at the FBI’s Hate Crime Statistics for 2016.  I don’t have the time to explore it all, but you might.

Endnote:  I was just thinking about that 2016 Lake Calhoun incident in Minnesota, remember this. Was it categorized, by the FBI, as a ‘hate’ crime by Somalis against white people?  Heck it might fit in the racial category and the religious category!

If  that blatant incident isn’t in the data base at the FBI then you can throw out anything the FBI says about ‘hate’ crimes.

See my Utah archive here. See that the likelihood of their hate crimes increasing is pretty good as they continue to diversify through refugee resettlement.

Utah: Struggling refugees now look on refugee camps in Africa with longing

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

“Life got harder for me when I came to America…Most of the time, I wish I could go back to the refugee camp in Africa.”

Congolize refugee

Update November 15th: See how many from the DR Congo we have brought in already, here.

This story represents one of my major reasons for writing RRW for the last 10 years.

The do-gooders want ever-greater numbers of refugees admitted to the US despite the fact that many will live in poverty while many of the CEOs of the major resettlement agencies are raking in large 6-figure salaries.

Damn it! If you ‘humanitarians’ care so much for the world’s downtrodden, why do you need to be making salaries in excess of $200,000, $300,000, $500,000 largely funded by the US Treasury?

Nigeria Refugees Miliband
For the camera, IRC CEO David Miliband shows compassion for children in Nigeria, but where is the compassion for refugees his organization dropped off in Utah and are now living in squalor or are homeless. Doing well by doing good, Miliband makes $591,846 annually. Photo: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/ap/article-3349940/Refugee-kids-bring-David-Miliband-knees-Nigeria.html

And, readers, it isn’t refugees like these in Utah that should be criticized or castigated (they were sold a bill of goods), it is the refugee industry (the globalists) that obviously turns a blind eye to the refugees they brought in previous years.

Instead of admitting only the number of refugees communities can afford or otherwise accommodate, the nine contractors*** always want more. Why?

Because the newly arriving refugees bring-in money by the head to the resettlement agency and that is the primary reason they are so angry at Trump. He has reduced the number of their paying “clients.”

From Deseret News  where the story features refugees from the DR Congo.

For new readers, back in 2013, here, Obama’s State Department said it would help clean out UN camps in Africa by bringing 50,000 from the DR Congo to Anytown, USA. We may have already exceeded that number.

When he felt hopeless, the Bible’s words lifted him up and renewed his faith that God had a plan for him. He prayed that the Lord would deliver his family to America.

If he ever made it there, he imagined, he would have a home of his own with a large backyard, where he could tend a garden and watch his children play.

Instead, this is Ngunza’s reality: He lives in a tiny, roach-infested apartment with his wife and 11 children. His job slicing meat at a local deli pays just above minimum wage, which barely covers his monthly rent, and leaves him precious little to feed and clothe his family.

Instead of dreams, these days Ngunza only has fears – that he won’t be able to provide for his family’s basic needs and still keep a roof over their head.

“Just like in the camp,” he says, “I feel trapped all over again.”

Mike Lee
Where are you Senator Mike Lee? Why don’t you take the lead and call for an investigation of the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program!

[….]

On its face, the resettlement program is a feel-good story, a symbol of America’s commitment as a global citizen, and for refugees, the epitome of the American Dream.

[….]

Utah is the only state that allocates funding for resettlement agencies – the International Rescue Committee and Catholic Community Services – to offer case management services for a full two-year period. During this time, they provide refugees with job training, housing placement and English language lessons, and more, all with the goal of helping refugees reach self-sufficiency as quickly as possible.

Nevertheless, despite the best of intentions, the Deseret News has found that many refugees are living well below the poverty line. Some are facing eviction. Others have become homeless.

In part, that’s because it is very difficult for arriving refugees to find jobs that pay a living wage and housing they can afford.

It is not the Mormon church doing the resettling in Utah, it is Catholic Charities and the International Rescue Committee (IRC is headed by David Miliband, a Brit, who pulls down a cool $500,000 plus a year salary).

Aiden Batar, director of Migration and Refugee Services at Catholic Community Services, says he does not know how many refugees in Utah are homeless or living in poverty. Neither does Poulin with the International Rescue Committee.  [Of course they don’t—see no evil!….–ed]

[….]

At the Road Home shelter, the Deseret News met a Congolese refugee family of 11 evicted from their apartment three months ago who have been unable to find another place to live. At an apartment complex in South Salt Lake, a single mother named Feliz, also from the Congo, has been unemployed for two months after losing her job as a maid at a downtown hotel, and she has struggled to find other work.

“Life got harder for me when I came to America,” says Feliz. “I constantly worry that I will be evicted and my family will end up on the street. Most of the time, I wish I could go back to the refugee camp in Africa.”

It is a huge article, go here for more.

Dear Donald, maybe it’s time for that repatriation fund we talked about years ago.  Set up financing for unhappy refugees to go home!  LOL! take it out of the salaries of the top executives of the refugee industry!

What you can do!  If you live in Utah (or otherwise have contact with the Senator), call on Senator Mike Lee to launch an investigation!

***The nine federal contractors that monopolize all resettlement in the US are below. Go here to see a recent accounting of their finances and salaries.

Utah, Tennessee seeing cuts in budget and staff as flow of refugees to US slows; it is their own fault!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Sorry to keep repeating myself, but someone once told me people have to hear things seven times before it sinks in.
One side benefit of the Trump refugee slowdown (but 50,000 isn’t that low! as I explained here) is that the public is learning that the federal refugee contractors have failed to keep their end of the bargain and raise enough private money to sustain their ‘charities’ as the US Treasury spigot is turned off.

miliband-laughing
Will Miliband take a 20% pay cut as his subcontractor is taking in Utah? See here that IRC CEO Miliband makes over a half a million dollars running this ‘charity’? https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2017/02/12/nyt-allows-wealthy-british-subject-to-lecture-us-about-fundamental-american-values/

The hundreds of contractors and subcontractors are dependent on a per head payment for their job of placing a refugee in your town and getting them signed up for their ‘services’ (ie. welfare).
Thus, once established (as I said here in ‘Ten things’ (#5)), there is no incentive for a contractor to voluntarily slow the flow to your community if it becomes overloaded with needy third worlders.
Here is one of many sob stories, this one from Utah, and from the extremely wealthy International Rescue Committee.
From KUER:

With anticipation of a possible new travel ban from the Trump Administration, refugee resettlement agencies in Utah are bracing for the worst.

The International Rescue Committee is one of Utah’s two refugee resettlement agencies. For every person they help find a new home, they get money from the U.S. State Department. Each year they resettle half the refugees that come to Utah, around 600 people according to their staff. But they’re expecting that number to be nearly cut in half.

“For the IRC this year, we’re estimating about 366 refugees, so that’s a pretty drastic drop,” says Natalie El-Deiry with the International Rescue Committee.

El-Deiry says that drop in numbers would come from the proposed 120-day halt on all refugees to the U.S. and an indefinite block of Syrian refugees, which she says need the most assistance.

El-Deiry says the decrease in clients could translate to about 20 percent less in their budget.

“The economic impact is: when we’re looking at reducing numbers across the board, it’s reducing an organization’s budget and so most organizations that resettle refugees are going to be looking at a budget shortfall,” El-Deiry says.

Continue reading here.

In Tennessee Catholic Charities is cutting staff to make up for its shortfall.

Apparently they too were too lazy to raise private money over the years from all of the humanitarians shouting for more refugees to be admitted to the US. Only Catholic Charities’ leadership is to blame for this evident mismanagement.
From The Tennessean:

Catholic Charities of Tennessee cut 13 jobs this week in its refugee resettlement office due to President Donald Trump’s executive order that drastically reduced the number of refugees coming to the United States this year.

The employees were notified of the layoffs Thursday, said Pam Russo, the executive director of the Nashville-based Catholic Charities of Tennessee. Staff who lost their jobs primarily served incoming refugees, and many of those employees came to the U.S. as refugees themselves, she said. [BTW, this highlights a little known practice of hiring refugees with federal money to help improve stats showing that refugees have employment.—ed]

“These are heartbreaking cuts,” Russo said. “We did not want to make them, but we had no choice because we did not want to put any of the other refugee services at risk.”

The layoffs come on the heels of another Christian-based refugee resettlement agency, World Relief, announcing more than 140 staff layoffs across the country and the closure of five offices, including in Nashville. World Relief also cited the Trump order in its decision.

More here.

Again, these refugee contractors have only themselves to blame for extremely poor leadership/management that had gotten fat on federal dollars and didn’t do enough of the hard work that legitimate charities are expected to do—raise private funds!

Endnote: The prize for Tucker Carlson would be to get IRC CEO, former British Foreign Secretary, David Miliband on his show!
Dear producers, I’ve done your work for you, click here to learn more about David Miliband (Hillary had a crush!). He also gave the IRC’s top prize—Freedom Award—to George Soros!

Utah embraces refugees, will LDS church become a federal refugee contractor?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

“Even people that live here, they don’t even know they have that many refugees in the state.”

Aden Batar, Catholic Community Services

Right now, most refugees resettled in ‘welcoming’ Utah are placed there through Catholic organizations under the umbrella of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, but the Mormon church is jumping on the bandwagon.  So far they haven’t applied to become a refugee contractor (to get direct grants from the federal government), but I have been speculating about the possibility that they are in the learning stage right now working along with Catholic agencies.

Esar Met, listens to proceedings in Judge Judith Atherton's court room, at the Matheson Courthouse in Salt Lake City, Thursday, January 9, 2014. Esar Met is accused of killing 7-year-old Hser Ner Moo, who disappeared on March 31, 2008.
Poster boy for refugee program in Utah! They will never mention the sensational trial of Burmese Muslim refugee, Esar Met, sentenced to life in prison in Salt Lake City in 2014. He brutally raped and murdered a 9-year-old Christian Burmese girl. Met was likely placed in a housing complex with Burmese Christians by one of the Utah’s resettlement agencies. Was it the Catholic agency? National media never reported the story! I’m not going to let it die! https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2014/05/15/utah-burmese-muslim-refugee-sentenced-in-brutal-rapemurder-of-little-girl/

If you missed it yesterday, you might want to read my post about the millions of tax dollars the US Conference of Catholic Bishops receives every year for their charitable (Ha! Ha!) work here.
It doesn’t surprise me that other ‘religious charities’ might want to get on the gravy train!  See recent posts on the Mormon church and refugees here.
Here is a the fluffy puffy news from The National Catholic Reporter (the star of the story is a Somali refugee) about how wonderful the refugee program is in Utah.

Aden Batar’s first taste of Utah came more than 20 years ago as a high school student in his native Somalia. An agriculture team from Utah State University had traveled there to work with Somali farmers on their farming techniques. Batar was a promising student then, learning about the snow in Salt Lake City from the ag workers, studying English and planning for law school.

[….]

Now 48, Batar was the first Somali refugee resettled by Catholic Community Services (CCS) of Utah in 1994. The agency has helped to resettle close to 7,000 men, women and children in the state, the majority since 1996. That same year, Batar got a job as a case manager with CCS in part because he could speak Somali.

“Utah is home to more than 60,000 refugees,” said Batar, now the immigration and refugee resettlement director at CCS, which is affiliated with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. He credits a partnership between the Catholic church and the Church of Latter Day Saints for much of the immigration work done in the state. “Even people that live here, they don’t even know they have that many refugees in the state.”

[….]

hser-ner-moo-esar-met-facebook
Hser Ner Moo: The medical examiner testified that she died in “excruciating pain” and her mother wonders if coming to America was the right thing to do.

Concerns about terrorism and the prospect of harsher immigration laws under the incoming Donald Trump administration aren’t making the work of CCS and Holy Cross Ministries any easier, but they’ve frankly got too much on their plates right now to worry much about what might happen in the future.

If it’s still a surprise that so many refugees end up in Utah, it may be even more so to learn that they are often the “most difficult to serve,” Batar said. The refugees are usually part of large families, people with medical issues or disabilities, or women who have suffered trauma and are the head of household. Utah is popular not just because housing is inexpensive there, although it is, Batar said.

We can only assume that Utah has run out of American poor people for the LDS church to serve, so they have moved on to importing poverty to the state.
Near the end we hear from Rick Scott, manager of North American humanitarian operations for the LDS Church in America and Canada:

The LDS Church had explored becoming a resettlement agency itself, Scott said, but it currently provides cash, commodities (mattresses, food, hygiene products, etc.), resources, and volunteer assistance to CCS.

Frankly, I think they still are exploring it! But, to break into the monopoly the nine volags (federal contractors) have, an organization wishing to become a direct resettlement agency must prove they have experience with refugees.  What better way to get it than to partner with the largest contractor—the US Conference of Catholic Bishops—to learn the ropes.
There is a lot more that might be of interest to Utah residents, go here to read the glowing report about Utah wrapping its arms around refugees.

Mormon church is getting on the refugee resettlement bandwagon

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

But, they aren’t a resettlement contractor (yet!).

mormon-church
Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City, Utah. We have money to give to refugees.

I previously told you about the Mormon donation to the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, here.  And, now here is more news (a puff piece) about contributions to the other eight contractors featuring Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service.  I can only assume the Mormon church has run out of poor Americans to help as they are moving on to helping what is becoming a massive flow of needy Muslims from the Middle East and Africa entering the US.
When I read this story at Utah’s Deseret News, my first thought was to wonder if The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was actually ultimately angling to become a resettlement contractor in order to receive lucrative government grants.
The nine contractors*** working for the federal government have a monopoly on the program at the moment. Are the Mormons attempting to buy good will?
In order to break in to the club, to become a contractor, an organization must prove it has experience with the program.  Is that what is happening here as we learn that the Mormons are being trained by LIRS in this case?
For new readers, the contractors are paid by the head to resettle the refugees and representatives of the nine meet in DC weekly to divvy-up the refugee cases coming in (they bid for bodies as one of our most astute observers quips). Do the Mormons want in?
Deseret News:

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah — A flash flood of Mormon volunteers was a spring surprise for Lutherans who run refugee resettlement organizations in 25 U.S. states.

Motivated by statements of church leaders encouraging them to help refugees, the influx of Mormons prompted resettlement centers of the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services to add volunteer training sessions in places like South Carolina, Colorado and Arizona.

linda-hartke-3
LIRS CEO Hartke is chomping at the bit about this new batch of money coming in. LIRS is 95% funded by you—the taxpayer! https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2016/09/03/lutheran-immigration-and-refugee-service-is-95-funded-by-taxpayers/

On Tuesday, the budding relationship expanded again, as LIRS leaders visited Salt Lake City and received a check for $130,000 from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The LDS Church also pledged an additional $520,000 in commodities such as food and mattresses. [I would really like to understand this mattress thing because there were mattresses involved somehow in the resettlement that happened in my MD county back in 2007!—ed]

“We’ve been chomping at the bit on building this relationship, which is evolving on two levels,” said Linda Hartke, president and CEO of LIRS. “On the local level, we’re seeing greater interest and more volunteers coming forward.

[….]

Tuesday’s donation was part of $5 million in cash and commodities the LDS Church has pledged to the nine U.S. refugee resettlement agencies, which operate over 300 affiliates helping newly arrived refugees settle into local communities.

In August, the church gave $2 million to the two resettlement agencies that work in Utah — $1.25 million to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Migration and Refugee Services and $750,000 to the International Rescue Committee.

On Monday, church officials will travel to the East Coast to give $2.35 million to the remaining six resettlement agencies.

Continue reading here.
If you are a Mormon and not thrilled with importing more unvetted Muslims from Syria, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Burma (Esar Met!), you might want to start speaking up at church.
These are the nine members of the federal resettlement contractor club.  If the Mormons are trying to break in, I’m going to love reporting on the battle.