Students at William and Mary pushing for refugee resettlement for Williamsburg, VA

11/27/2016 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update November 29th: See tongue in cheek comment with a suggestion for Sam, below!
The biggest threats to the social order and economic viability of your community may be the little darlings at your local college or university (many of whom will graduate and go somewhere else in four short years).
college-of-william-and-mary

Readers in Virginia need to nip this in the bud.

Students are pushing for a city resolution welcoming the federal refugee contractors in to set up shop in the historic city. (Nevermind that there is little low cost housing because the students likely gobble it all up!).
Why is it so cool for the kids these days to want to bring in Syrian (mostly Muslim) refugees while not caring about the local American poor, disabled or struggling veterans?
From the Virginia Gazette:

William and Mary students want to make sure refugees know they are welcome in Williamsburg if and when the state sees fit. First step: getting the city council to pass a resolution to that effect.

In light of severe political unrest and danger in Syria, more than 10,000 refugees have entered the United States. They’ve settled in cities and towns across the country.

“The resolution would say that the city of Williamsburg would be willing to accept refugees were they to come,” senior student Andrew Vollavanh said.

He and other students decided to take the city resolution route after speaking with city staff. “We were trying to proceed in a legislative fashion,” Vollavanh said. “The mayor told us that probably wasn’t the best way to do it.”

Sam Steed is the Virginia legislative coordinator at Amnesty International and a student at the college.

Be sure to check out the information on Sam (photo caption at Virginia Gazette)! He is from Massachusetts and wants a job with Amnesty International when he graduates!
Looks like this is a national campaign aimed at college towns.

He said that resolutions similar to the one that they are trying to pass in Williamsburg have already passed in other cities, including Durham, North Carolina, New Paltz, New York, and Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Williamsburg does not share all of the traits of those cities, but the students still want to push a resolution through. The federal government lets trusted non-governmental organizations [LOL! “trusted”!—ed] figure out where refugees can settle upon entering the U.S. They weigh characteristics like whether there is an existing immigrant community and housing availability.

Continue reading as they repeat the refugee industry’s talking points that seem to be springing up everywhere. These are the three main talking points we have addressed in the past:

omar-al-harden — Omar al Harden an Iraqi refugee plead guilty in Houston recently. He planned to bomb two area malls for ISIS. https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2016/10/18/houston-tx-iraqi-refugee-pleads-guilty-in-isis-bomb-plot-so-much-for-screening/

~Only women and children! So we are expected to believe that these Middle Eastern and African women are going to live without their men for the next couple of decades. There is this thing called “family reunification.”
~Thoroughly vetted! But, no one tells the students that the Director of the FBI has testified to Congress that the Syrians can’t be vetted because there is no documentation on them from the failed state of Syria. In spite of that, Obama shortened ‘screening’ for Syrians from 18-24 months down to 3 months.
~No terrorist arrests in the refugee population in the US! Amazing to me that they tell this bald-faced lie when there is plenty of documentation of Islamic terrorist arrests and convictions (caught before they acted!) in the US refugee population.
I told readers about a few cases off the top of my head here when Church World Service was spinning in Poughkeepsie. One of these days I guess I will have to go back through my refugee crimes category and pull out all the Islamic terror/crime stories from the last 9 years involving refugees.
And, if you live nearby don’t miss this:

Students at the campus chapter of Amnesty International will hold a forum on Nov. 29 where experts will talk about some of the nuances involved in accepting refugees.

See more of the story at the Virginia Gazette.
And, one final thought. Since Williamsburg is an independent city with as they admit little housing for poor people, the kids would presumably have to sell this idea on surrounding counties.
Editor (update): Here is a fun comment from a reader making a suggestion for Sam (sent to my personal email):

Sam Steed from Massachusetts, a student at William and Mary, wants to turn Williamsburg into a welcoming city for refugees, does he? Well, I’d say he doesn’t go far enough.
So, Sam, here’s what I propose you do to gain credibility — Before you ask the city of Williamsburg to welcome refugees, you and fellow do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do students must step forward and offer to adopt individual refugees and their families, prepare them for assimilation into America, and then take them home to Mom and Dad for a lesson in cultural diversity. The refugees can be a real-life report card, like show and tell: this is what your tuition bought. Deal with it, Mom and Dad, or else you’re a racist and a bigot and a xenophobe.
What do you say, Sam? Amnesty International might hire you early!

Roanoke, Virginia: Refugee kills one wounds three at manufacturing company

10/25/2016 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

No wonder Roanoke isn’t feeling very welcoming toward more refugees (remember this story! ).
Hey, all you big companies looking for cheap refugee labor take note! We bring an awful lot of refugees in to America with mental illnesses.
From WDBJ7 (Hat tip: Suzanne):

ROANOKE, Va. (WDBJ7) The man who shot and killed a person and shot three others at FreightCar America has been identified as 53-year-old Getachew Fekede from Kenya.

police-on-the-scene-roanoke — Police on the scene of this morning’s shooting in Roanoke. Shooter is a refugee former worker at the FreightCar America facility there.

Police say he died from a self-inflicted gunshot would.

Three other employees were shot. One of them has been released from the hospital.

Roanoke police say around 10 rounds were fired from a 9 mm semi-automatic handgun.

Fekede last worked at FreightCar America in March. [They make railroad cars—ed]. He arrived at the building by bicycle, police say.

Fekede came to Virginia in 2011 as part of a refugee program.

No mention of Fekede’s nationality (his resettlement contractor*** would know). We don’t take Kenyans as refugees, but we take thousands of Somalis and other African migrants (Sudanese, Ethiopians) who have re-located to Kenya. So keep an eye out for more news about where he is really from and what his religion might be. [Update: a reader tells us he is probably Ethiopian.]
Longtime readers may remember the famous failed kidnapping plot in Roanoke in 2009 where several refugees were found guilty of attempting to kidnap one or more prominent women in the town and hold her/them for ransom.
Also we have 2,024 posts in our refugee crimes category, here.
*** Commonwealth Catholic Charities is responsible for refugees resettled in Roanoke.

What makes a town desirable for refugee resettlement explains Blacksburg, VA resident

09/23/2016 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Blacksburg is one of the new refugee seeding sites being considered by the US State State Department. Recently we learned that there are as many as 47 of them (according to the Reno Gazette-Journal).

melody-warnick — Author Melody Warnick. My questions for Ms. Warnick: How about if you love where you live and want to keep it from becoming something different. Why does keeping it just the way it is, the way one loves it, not as valuable a concept as changing it by changing its people?

Here an expert on loving where you live(!) tells us what she thinks are the features that a town might have that makes that town MOST attractive to the resettlement industry decision makers.
From Quartz (hat tip: Joanne):

In late July, I was one of more than 100 residents of Blacksburg, Virginia, crammed into the local library for the first meeting of the Blacksburg Refugee Partnership. We were there to find out what it would take to bring Syrian refugees to our small town in Virginia.

At first, I’d assumed that our town was too small and isolated to make a good home for refugees. But as a representative from Commonwealth Catholic Charities explained, we had a few things going for us: A university with steady employment opportunities [janitors—ed]. A community of Arabic speakers. And perhaps most importantly, people who really, really wanted to bring Syrian refugees here—not a given in Virginia, considering that the mayor of nearby Roanoke had gone on record saying he didn’t want them. [Poor Roanoke has a long history as a resettlement site, increased crime, social tension, etc., so the mayor is speaking from experience when he said he didn’t want MORE!—ed]

My town’s excitement over the possibility made me curious about the places in the US where refugees are most likely to thrive. During the 2016 fiscal year, the 10,000 Syrian refugees who fled their war-torn homeland for the United States have ended up all over the place—ranging from major cities like Chicago and Houston to more unexpected locations like Clearwater, Florida, and Sheboygan, Wisconsin.

Here is Melody Warnick’s list of the features she thinks a refugee-welcoming town needs (go to the story, here, to see why):

Good public transportation

A culture of volunteerism

A mosque in town

A population that leans Democrat

A church-going tradition [these would be church-goers on the religious left—ed]

An entrepreneurial ecosystem

She quotes David Lubell of Welcoming America by way of explanation:
“If you take the example of Clarkston, Georgia, just outside of Atlanta, which has had a huge growth in its refugee population over the past 15 years, entrepreneurs come and create halal supermarkets.” [Oh yippee, where is PETA?—ed]

Chilly weather

A smaller population

You can read it all by clicking here.
She has forgotten two of the most important elements and those are whether the state has a generous welfare system and has expanded Medicaid.
And, not to mention the most important element and that is whether there is a hardcore political activist group (or even just one or two people), or a Left-leaning Interfaith group, with a mission to change America by changing its people.
Update: How could I forget—if you have a meat packing plant nearby you go to the top of the list!
We know some of the newly targeted towns and they include: Missoula, MT, Charleston, WV, Ithaca, NY, Rutland, VT, Northhampton, MA, Fayetteville, AR. I know I’m missing dozens, so help me identify them all.

AP: Syrian processing to America on steroids, governors like MD Gov. Hogan can't do a thing about it

07/11/2016 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

No Syrian Muslims have been placed in Washington DC!

There isn’t much new and useful in this AP story from Saturday, but wanted to mention it only because once again the feds are telling concerned governors to go fly a kite—the UN/US State Dept. is speeding up the Syrian refugee processing in Jordan and Turkey. Governors are impotent to stop it is the message.

Simon henshaw 3 — Remember Simon Henshaw as the State Department official charged with assuring you that Syrians they admit are all good and decent people (like the sexual deviant arrested in Massachusetts last week?) Henshaw’s bio is here: http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/biog/bureau/213334.htm

There is a little nugget here that I didn’t know about: Apparently the DEMOCRAT mayor of Roanoke, VA did not want Syrians resettled in an already refugee-overloaded city.
We’ve written a few times about Roanoke perhaps most famous for the refugee gang found guilty there for planning to kidnap and ransom some prominent women in the town, here in 2009. (Gee, I wonder if they were deported when they were released after their short prison sentence?)
Associated Press (at the Washington Post):

Dozens of Syrian refugees were settled in Maryland and Virginia in June, part of a sharp nationwide increase as the U.S. government scrambles to meet its goal of admitting 10,000 refugees in fiscal 2016.

The surge has come despite opposition from more than half of the nation’s governors, including Maryland’s Larry Hogan (R), all of whom say they are not satisfied with the federal government’s assurances that refugees are carefully vetted and screened.

[…..]

The pace of refugee resettlement has quickened in part because processing facilities in Istanbul and in Amman, Jordan, have been upgraded and more Department of Homeland Security teams have been deployed to interview refugees, a State Department official said.

“We pushed all those things together so they would happen sequentially and more quickly,” said Simon Henshaw, principal deputy assistant secretary of the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration.

In Maryland, 78 Syrians were settled in June – bringing the total to 115 since October. Sixty-seven arrived in Virginia last month, out of 87 resettled in the state this year. Fifteen of them have been placed in Roanoke, where the Democratic mayor attracted national controversy last fall for citing the internment of Japanese citizens as a reason to bar Syrian refugees.

No refugees have been brought to the District of Columbia, according to the State Department data. [No, of course not!—ed]

Continue reading here.
Photo: My reference to the Syrian charged with sexual assault refers to this story. And, here, Breitbart has Pamela Geller’s reaction to the latest refugee sex crime.
Regarding my title! In truth, Gov. Hogan and other of the governors concerned about the program could do something about it if they had the political will, but most don’t. It is easy to say they don’t like what is happening to satisfy voters, but quite another to put on the state’s rights fight that would be necessary.

A letter to the citizens of Radford, Virginia (a new targeted resettlement site)

06/29/2016 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I’m not going to snip this must-read article published by Jeff Bayard at the Virginia Free Citizen today because I want you to go there and read the whole thing! Bayard has nailed it—this is exactly what you can expect if your town is secretly chosen.

RadfordVAMainStreet — Radford Main Street. Learn more about the bucolic town on the New River here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radford,_Virginia

Radford, Virginia is apparently joining other towns that the UN/US State Department and their contractors have quietly targeted as new ‘welcoming’ (Ha!) resettlement locations.
The feds and the contractors and sub-contractors (like Catholic Charities) are anticipating increased numbers of refugees to be coming in to the country and they are running out of places to put them as existing resettlement towns (approximately 200 of them!) are becoming overloaded and community discord has set in.
We have reported on plans for new sites in Missoula, MT, Charleston, WV, Reno, NV, Ithaca, NY, Rutland, VT, and Fayetteville, AR, so far, just in the last few months.
Now here is a letter “to the citizens of Radford, VA” This is it in a nutshell! The grassroots in Virginia have been studying how this program works for some time now and this essential article shows it!