Refugees a big issue in Wyoming gubernatorial primary debate

07/17/2014 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

What a relief to write about something other than the border crisis!

Action alert below! Help Haynes!

This is an update on another of our favorite subjects—why the Republican governor of Wyoming wants a refugee resettlement program in a state (the only state!) previously smart enough not to get entangled with the federal government by importing third-worlders to the state.

Dr. Taylor Haynes (left) is challenging incumbent Republican Governor Matt Mead in a primary scheduled for August 19th. Photo: Alan Rogers, Star-Tribune

On Tuesday night Republican candidates squared off over that issue (and the perennial public lands controversy) in a debate in Casper.

For background see our extensive archive that began with the Governor actually writing to the feds in September of last year inviting them to set up shop in Wyoming.

Wouldn’t you think that the public lands issue would be enough to keep them from inviting the US State Department and the Dept. of Health and Human Services into the state to assume a role in the state’s business?

From the Caspar Star Tribune (emphasis mine):

Gubernatorial candidates Dr. Taylor Haynes and Gov. Matt Mead disagreed in a Tuesday night debate on refugees in Wyoming and on how to respond to a Wyoming Republican pet peeve – intrusive federal government overreach. [The issues are one and the same!—ed]

[….]

Haynes, a Cheyenne physician, rancher and business owner, opposes refugees resettling in the Cowboy State, after news earlier this year that the state is exploring having a refugee resettlement program. Wyoming is the only state without such a program.

Haynes is concerned about diseases such as HIV, Ebola or drug-resistant tuberculosis, he said. He worries some may have terrorist ties.

“I think they’re groups of people brought in to kill our labor and undermine our culture,” he said.

As a Christian, Haynes said his heart goes out to them, but there are too many refugees in the world. The best solution is to provide aid that benefits them, such as supporting Doctors Without Borders. [Excellent idea–ed]

Mead, a former U.S. attorney for Wyoming who was elected governor in 2010, said the state isn’t importing refugees. The state is exploring the idea of having a refugee resettlement program, he said.

“Count the number of refugees we’ve brought under my administration,” he said. “Zero.”

Mead said refugees may already be living in Wyoming, and he wants to know who they are and what services they use.

One of my favorite articles about the controversy is this one where Governor Mead as much as called RRW and me, your humble blogger—racist!—after we helped educate citizens of Wyoming about what they would be getting into when inviting federal contractors to bring refugees to Wyoming.

And here is something to think about: the contractor the Governor wants to invite in is the Lutheran Family Services Rocky Mountains which tried to keep the Wyoming plan secret until it was further along. Lutheran Family Services’ mothership is one of the major federal contractors moving ‘unaccompanied minors’ around the US at this moment. So, maybe just on that front alone, Wyoming has dodged a bullet by not yet having formal immigrant/refugee ties with the feds.

Action Alert!

If you want to support a Republican candidate who has the guts to speak his mind on this taboo topic and send the establishment Republicans (squishes, if not down-right open borders, on immigration) a message, send a donation to Haynes! Click here for Dr. Haynes campaign website.

Wyoming: Good conversation underway on refugee program and diversity

05/14/2014 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Commenter: Those who want a refugee program should invite refugees to live with them and pay for them!

Give Syrian refugees a home in your home! Photo: http://rt.com/usa/usa-syria-refugees-thousands-309/

Yesterday a friend alerted me to the extensive comment thread developing at this article in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle about Somalis moving to Cheyenne, Wyoming. I encourage you to visit it and check out the comments and maybe add one of your own before the thread disappears. This morning there were 63 comments and now it’s up to 72! ***Update*** Heck, now I see they have closed the thread, read it before it disappears!

But, it reminded me to look for a comment from someone posting as “Parallex” that I had seen a few weeks ago in response to the pro-refugee editorial (supporting Gov. Matt Mead) also in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle that says it all.

This is a refrain we hear all the time from sensible conservative local folks.

Here is “Parallax” (for the record I don’t know who this person is):

Those who support a refugee program should be required to:

1) Pay for it themselves.

2) Provide living quarters for the refugees in their own homes.

Those who oppose this program are not “bigots”. They ARE concerned about the cost and social issues that come with a flood of people from places like Somalia. I’ve seen it first hand. Conveniently supporters never mention this aspect of the issue but there’s no shortage of evidence for the problems this can create. What do supporters propose we do about these problems? Send government checks to the new ‘oppressed minority’?

If cocktail sipping Liberals feel bad about themselves and demand a ‘diversity’ program to assuage their guilt then they should also be the test bed… let these refugees live with those who demanded this program. Diversify yourselves, Liberals, and get busy paying for it while you’re at it.

Maybe Liberals just don’t know that they can sponsor a family or adopt a third world child with their own money?

Somali refugees have discovered Cheyenne, Wyoming

05/06/2014 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Somali overload in Greeley and Fort Morgan, Colorado is sending Somalis on a northward migration to settle in Wyoming according to good reporting from the Wyoming Tribune Eagle which I blasted the other day here for a careless hate-filled editorial accusing critics of Gov. Matt Mead’s plan “bigots”. This is the type of reporting (sans maudlin sob stories) and the facts they should be gathering before spewing out ill-informed editorials.

One fact that they need to pursue, however, in light of this article which I was sure was going to lead to—this is why we need to have a refugee resettlement program in Wyoming—is that if Lutheran Family Services Rocky Mountains, sets up shop in Wyoming, they will be bringing new refugees from Africa, Iraq, Iran and countries in Asia directly to Wyoming. The federal contractors do not take care of secondary migrants, like these Somalis in Cheyenne, who have been here for months or years. They are like anyone else who moves from one state to another and should not require special “services.”

Ask the folks in St. Cloud, Minnesota how the Somali population expanded there at the same time the Lutheran’s opened their federally-funded office. Be sure to talk to the Mayor of Lewiston, Maine(the Somali capital of New England) too about what happened to them when the Somalis, resettled originally in Georgia, discovered the “services” Maine had to offer. The word “services” is, of course, the sanitized word for “welfare goodies.”

Keep in mind as you read this article that the meat packers (often foreign-owned companies) get cheap captive laborers and you, the American taxpayer, supports the rest of the refugee family’s life!

By the way, US Senator Jeff Sessions called out the meat packers as being among the chief lobbyists for amnesty, here.

Now to the story with an attractive and apparently likeable Somali refugee (with an African sob story history,why is that our problem?) as the star of the article (LOL! this must be J-school 101—start out with a sympathetic character to warm-up readers).

Tribune Eagle (Hat tip: ‘pungentpeppers’) Emphasis mine:

Abdirashid Noor has moved from Colorado to Cheyenne, Wyoming

CHEYENNE — While Wyoming might be the only state in the country without an official refugee resettlement program, that doesn’t mean there aren’t former refugees living in the Cowboy State.

There are dozens, perhaps even several hundred, former refugees living in the Capital City alone.

Many of these people, like Abdirashid Noor, are from the war-torn east African nation of Somalia.

Read the many paragraphs about the hell hole that is East Africa.

Noor’s life changed forever in 2007 when he was accepted into the University of Northern Colorado.

Be sure to go back and read the interesting history I posted just a few weeks ago about Greeley, CO and the Univ. of Northern Colorado’s role in the history of modern day Islamic extremism.

The Tribune Eagle story continues! The migration is on……

Greeley connection

Noor came to Greeley, Colorado, to study accounting at UNC. As fate would have it, when he arrived, he found that the city was home to a growing Somali community.

Unlike Noor, the majority of Somalis in Greeley did not come to attend the university -n they came to work in a nearby meat packing facility operated by the Brazilian meat-processing company JBS.

“When people come into this country and they don’t know the language, they have a lot of issues getting jobs,” Noor said.

“If you can’t communicate with other people and you can’t understand what other people are saying, they aren’t going to hire you.

“So the only area where people from east Africa or Somalia get hired is JBS or another meat plant. They don’t require communication skills as long as you can do the work,” he said.

Because jobs at the meat plant are typically low-paying, many of the Somali employees in Greeley rely on government subsidized housing programs like Section 8.

As the Somali population in Greeley grew, so did the waiting lists for programs like Section 8.

Colette West, co-executive director of the Global Refugee Center in Greeley, said the waiting list for housing subsidies in Colorado can be as long as three years. [That means needy Americans wait too!—ed]

Noor and many others in Greeley’s Somali community began looking north to Cheyenne for affordable housing options.

Mike Stanfield, executive director of the Cheyenne Housing Authority, said, “Some folks (in Colorado) found out the waiting list (for subsidized housing programs) was still open (in Cheyenne) and they came up here and applied.”

According to Noor, many of the people in Cheyenne’s Somali community commute to Greeley to work in the meat plant. Others, he said, have taken jobs here in places like the Wal-Mart Distribution Center west of town.

“Navigating through the system” means they need people in-the-know to direct them to all of the available social services—housing, healthcare, food stamps, interpreters, education for the kids and other GOVERNMENT assistance!

In places like Greeley, where Somali communities have existed for years, there is a system in place to help new immigrants gain access to services and educational programs. But because the Somali community here is newer, those services are sometimes harder to find in Cheyenne.

“They are going to need help navigating all the systems,” West said. “It’s very hard when you don’t speak the language.”

[….]

And as the city’s Somali population grows, so will the need for services.

So, someone like Noor will be paid with taxpayer dollars to be sure to get his fellow countrymen on the taxpayer- funded “social services” roster in Laramie County, Wyoming!

For ambitious readers, we have 90 previous posts in a category entitled ‘Greeley/Swift/Somali controversy’ going back at least 5 years.

Governor of Wyoming refugee program still in planning stage? Or, was it a done-deal last fall?

05/03/2014 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

As you know we have been following the growing controversy in Wyoming about whether that state will open a refugee resettlement office for the purpose of bringing new-to-America refugees to Wyoming. We first became aware of Governor Matt Mead’s proposal here in February. All of our subsequent posts are here.

The Governor has been claiming that they are simply exploring the option of becoming the 50th and final state to actively admit third world refugees directly to Wyoming. However, here (below) is the Governor’s letter to Eskinder Negash, Director Office of Refugee Resettlement, from LAST SEPTEMBER. Sure sounds like a done-deal to me!

Just for your information, Eskinder Negash (formerly a VP at one of the resettlement contractors—the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants) is the Director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) in the US Dept. of Health and Human Services.

The other half, and perhaps the most important half, of the FEDERAL Refugee Admissions Program is the US State Department and its Asst. Secretary for Population, Refugees and Migration represented now by Anne Richard also previously employed as a refugee resettlement contractor (International Rescue Committee).

By the way, this program is notorious for revolving doors between contractors and government, but I digress!

I’m not sure why the Governor wrote only to ORR to alert them that “Wyoming has elected to pursue” a resettlement program.

Below is the letter dated September 5, 2013 which was obtained by Wyoming resident and radio talk show host Frank Jorge. Jorge’s website is here. The radio program is here. And, I was a guest on his show this past Tuesday evening, listen here (interview begins at about minute 34) where I urge Wyomingites to get involved and find all the facts about the impact the program will have on Wyoming—demographically, financially and culturally—because it is US and Wyoming taxpayers who foot the bill and thus you all have a right to know!

Wyoming newspaper, too lazy to find facts, calls names

04/28/2014 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

“Haters” and “bigots” that is what mainstream media publications call anyone searching for the FACTS involving anything to do with immigration in America these days.

So it is no surprise to see this editorial (not a letter to the editor mind you!) from the educated and erudite and oh-so-sophisticated making up the editorial staff of the Wyoming Tribune Eagle.

The message is you are a “bigot,” “bigot,” “hater,” “hater,” “racist,” “xenophobe,” (LOL! the more powerful if they say the words many times!) if you have any questions about a federal or state government program involving immigration and your tax dollars, so shut up. It is pathetic really.

Here is how they begin, but you can read it all yourself! And, it is this sort of journalism that is at the very root of why Refugee Resettlement Watch exists to this day!

Tribune Eagle (Hat tip: Joanne):

The debate over Wyoming setting up a program to accommodate refugees from foreign lands is similar to the debate over decriminalizing pot in The Cowboy State. Some think that as long as it is illegal to possess marijuana in Wyoming, there will be no pot here.

That same ignorance is behind the opposition to creating a refugee program here: If there’s no system in place, refugees won’t come to Wyoming.

That’s just wrong, Gov. Matt Mead has pointed out, because refugees are already living here. Having no plan in place to ease them into the system n no, there will be no “refugee camp,” despite claims from the conspiracy theory crowd n simply gives the state no control and few options to provide help to the refugees who do come calling on Wyoming to make it their home.

Unfortunately, this issue has drawn the haters out from under their rocks since Mr. Mead announced a few months ago that his office was exploring the issue. (Wyoming is the only state without some kind of refugee settlement plan.)

The McCraken family owns this newspaper and Mike McCraken is the publisher. They own the Casper Star Tribune too (this paper and the Star-Tribune have the widest circulation in the state), so it looks like they control the news in Wyoming.

**History lesson from the archives of Refugee Resettlement Watch.**

We, a couple of women, began RRW in 2007 when our local newspaper, the Hagerstown Herald Mail, refused to do any investigation into how the first group of newly arrived refugees ‘found their way’ to our rural Maryland county (dropped off by the Virginia Council of Churches). Many problems ensued that mostly revolved around the refugees not being adequately cared for by the VCoC. Citizens wanted answers.

Curious too about how the government program works, I asked the Herald-Mail to please do some small amount of investigating about how the program works—how did a church group from Virginia get to drop off hundreds of mostly Meskhetians (Turkish Russians) and no one knew about it, or few knew about it.

Naively, at the time, I asked the paper to find some answers to the following questions. I thought if the public understood the program there would be less anxiety in the community.

This is from the text of an e-mail I sent to a reporter in 2007:

Here are some (maybe more than you were looking for!) questions:

1) Under what authority can a private religious group choose to bring refugees into a community? Why Hagerstown?

2) Are assessments done of the community and its ability to absorb more people who will, at least initially, live below the poverty line? Do we know how many people in Wash. Co. live below the poverty line? How many in Hagerstown?

3) Is there any accounting done of the cost to the community? For instance, is there high demand now for low income apartments in the Hagerstown area? Will more immigrants push up the cost of housing for all low income people in the county?

4) Are elected officials consulted before and during the process? Is there any legal authority that requires such consultation? Was there any outreach to Commissioners and City Council prior to the establishment of Virginia Council of Churches program here?

5) Who pays for the immigrants housing, food, medical until they are fully established?

6) Is there a saturation point determined, or can this program just go on indefinitely? Who determines saturation point?

7) Since these refugees will have low skilled work, is health insurance available to them, or must they depend on public health care? Is there any accounting of how many in the first group are now covered by medical insurance? What has been the response of public health services?

8) Are schools in Washington County overcrowded? Maybe the initial 200 refugees have not put a burden on the schools, does anyone know? Will the next 200 put a burden or the 200 after that?

9) Have there been any crimes committed or use of police services during the first wave of immigrants?

10) How well has the original group of refugees learned English? Did all adults attend ESL classes regularly enough to learn?

11) What programs are in place to encourage other assimilation to living in America?

12) Who were the volunteer groups and churches in Washington County that helped support the first wave? Are they still helping with the newcomers? What sort of support did they give to the immigrants? Are there such people lined up to help with the next wave?

13) Are there regular meetings in Washington County to assess the problems/progress of the first group?

Do elected officials attend? Does the public attend?

14) Is it a normal practice for a group such as Virginia Council of Churches to go to elected officials and ask for funds ($15,000 in this case)?

15) Why did VCoC leave Carroll County? Why are they not locating these people in Virginia? Have those cities in Virginia been saturated?

16) Does VCoC get government funds for its overhead? If so, how much?

The paper refused to even try to answer these straightforward questions and began the editorial name-calling. If I recall correctly they weren’t even so crass, or so mean, as to call those of us with questions “bigots,” “racists” or “xenophobes,” but we were called “unwelcoming” and “kitten kickers.”

That did it! If the news media could not be counted on to find facts on how refugee resettlement works, the average citizen (paying for the program) had to have another source for information—RRW was born!

Bottomline! You have a right to know every detail about how your tax dollars are being spent and how your community will be changed! Don’t let their name-calling silence you!

I just went back and re-read the Wyoming Tribune Eagle editorial and note, at the end, that they have the audacity to advise the Governor to cut any citizens with questions out of the process when getting input on the plan—unbelievable! Is Wyoming now Moscow?

Shame on you Tribune Eagle, if this program cannot survive full and open scrutiny and public discussion, should it be secretly put in place?

New Readers! To catch up on the Wyoming controversy, click here for all of our previous posts.