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.
Natrona County includes Casper. We spotted this tiny bit at the end of this storyat the Casper Star Tribune(btw, the Tribunehas editorialized in favorof 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.
Last week Planet Jackson Hole published this lengthy story filled with lots and lots of pro-refugee propaganda from resettlement contractors, but nothing from knowledgeable critics (other than a Wyoming legislator and a primary gubernatorial candidate). The story is long and, as I said, so filled with fluff about refugees that I just couldn’t bring myself to tackle it, but for the sake of keeping our Wyoming archives complete, here it is.
[Photo of the Bahige family removed at their request—ed]
Since its publication, Don Barnett, an expert on how the program works, writing at the Casper Star Tribune has attempted to set the record straight on some of the realities of the refugee resettlement program where the US State Department (at the UN’s direction) picks the refugees to be resettled in each state and awards contracts to the federal contractors. It is after that that the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement starts divvying out the tax dollars to the contractors.
Someone please tell Mr. Bahige that he doesn’t need a refugee office in Wyoming in order to apply to bring his Congolese family members to the US!
JACKSON, WYO – Debate ensues over refugee resettlement in Cowboy State
When Bertine Bahige arrived in Baltimore, MD, after spending two years as a child soldier and the rest of his teenage years alone in a dark and dusty refugee camp in Mozambique, he began earning money to pay off his airfare washing dishes at Burger King. He didn’t know what became of his mother and nine siblings who were tortured in the Democratic Republic of Congo by rebel groups fleeing Rwanda in 1994.
Now a high school math teacher and father to two young children, Bahige graduated from University of Wyoming and married a Gillette native. He coaches soccer and volunteers his time to help kids get college scholarships, like the one that brought him to Wyoming.
And he has begun a controversial campaign to see if he can bring his four siblings, that he recently located at a refugee camp in Uganda, to Wyoming.
“I would love to have them resettled here,” Bahige said, stressing that his 17-year-old sister has been “fighting for her survival” as a victim of sexual abuse. “But that’s not the sole reason I am doing this. Wyoming would benefit greatly from a program. People have to be educated that refugees are not illegal. We are not just going someplace and packing people into trucks.”
Wyoming is the only state in the nation that does not have a refugee resettlement program. But that may change, despite widespread objections about what it will cost and heightened fears about who might be relocated to the Equality State.
In fall 2013, Gov. Matt Mead opened the door to discussion about creating a safe haven for refugees, defined as men, women and children fleeing war, persecution and political upheaval. Ever since, his office has been working with University of Wyoming Law Professor Suzan Pritchett, whose partner, Noah Novogrodsky, discussed the advocacy program with Jackson Hole students when he visited the valley this winter.
“The Governor’s office and the State of Wyoming have authority on whether or not the program is created,” Pritchett wrote in an email. “Right now they are moving in that direction, but nothing is certain. We were motivated to advocate that Wyoming become a refugee resettlement state, and to work with the Governor’s office on the program, because we were approached by Bertine Bahige.
I assume it is Bahige that the wannabe contractor, Lutheran Family Services Rocky Mountains, was critical of herebecause he went public before they, the contractor wannabe, was ready for the general public to learn what was happening.
By the way, the primary federal contractor will be (if this goes through in Wyoming), Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services,one of the exclusive top nine contractorswho then subcontract to hundreds of smaller contractors making the financial machinations of these supposed-non-profits hard to follow.
Last summer, the US State Department announced that we were going to take 50,000 Congolese refugees soon, but there is no guarantee that Wyoming will get all Congolese refugees, but in fact will get a smattering of many ethnic groups making it even harder to provide state and local funding for ESL in schools and translation services for myriad languages spoken by refugees from African, Asian and Middle Eastern countries. Arabic is the number one language!
As regular readers know, the Republican governor of Wyoming, Matt Mead, last year wrote to the federal government to begin exploring the possibility of setting up a refugee resettlement program in the only state in the nation wise enough to stay out of it completely for over 30 years.
A political firestorm is underway in the state now over whether or not the state should proceed with the US State Department, the US Department of Health and Human Services (Office of Refugee Resettlement), and a Lutheran contractor to begin bringing refugees to Gillette and/or Casper, Wyoming. See all of our previous posts on the controversy by clicking here.
The feds and the contractors need Wyoming because they are reaching a saturation point in many locations around the country. “Pockets of resistance” have developed.
Don Barnett
One of the leading critics of the program, Don Barnett, has penned this piece published in theCasper Star Tribuneyesterday so Wyomingites have more facts before they leap into a contract with the federal government and a federal contractor (emphasis is mine):
Refugee resettlement was once the calling of true sacrificial charity and the work of private sponsors who invested their own resources. Today, it is the work of federal contractors who have no responsibility a mere 3-4 months after the refugee has arrived.
Traditional sponsor duties have been replaced by access to all forms of welfare upon arrival for refugees and an opaque stream of grant money from seemingly every government agency except NASA.
In recent years up to 95 percent of the refugees coming to the U.S. were referred by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees or were the relatives of U.N.-picked refugees. Until the late 1990s, the U.S. picked the large majority of refugees for resettlement in the U.S.
Considering that the refugee influx causes increases in all legal and illegal immigration as family and social networks are established in the U.S., the U.N. is effectively dictating much of U.S. immigration policy.
A network of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) working with the U.S. State Department “selects communities where refugees will live” according to a 2012 GAO report, “Refugee Resettlement — Greater Consultation With Community Stakeholders Could Strengthen Program.”
They don’t place refugees in D.C. where the NGOs have offices which lobby for more refugees and money. They don’t place refugees in Delaware, home of Joe Biden, co-sponsor of the 1980 Refugee Act which defines the program we have today.
The GAO report is critical of refugee contractors and how they place refugees in local communities across the U.S., noting of the resettlement contractors “few agencies we visited consulted relevant local stakeholders, which posed challenges for service providers.” The report found that “… most public entities such as public schools and health departments generally said that agencies notified them of the number of refugees expected to arrive in the coming year, but did not consult them regarding the number of refugees they could serve…”
Lutheran Family Services Rocky Mountains, the affiliate proposed for Wyoming for Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIRS) the fourth largest refugee contractor in the nation, takes this penchant for operating in secret to the max. According to notes from a February 2014 board of directors meeting the process of selecting resettlement sites in Wyoming has been “complicated by both the state and a private citizen advocate providing media availability to a local paper. Media coverage at this stage is potentially damaging to the success of the overall process…”
There is a reason for the secrecy.
The program places significant unfunded costs on state and local taxpayers in the form of social services which must be provided.
According to the latest data available, a federal study of refugees who have been in the country 5 years or less, the unemployment rate for refugees was 21 percent compared with 9 percent for the U.S. population in 2010. Twenty-six percent were dependent on cash assistance, 63 percent were in the food stamp program and 48 percent were in Medicaid or short-term federal Refugee Medical Assistance. The federal welfare program SSI is a good indicator of long-term welfare dependency rates. It is generally a lifetime entitlement and usually includes Medicaid and other social services. The federal study of arrivals over the previous five years found an 11.6 percent rate of usage – about 2.5 times the national average.
Most of this cost is borne by the federal taxpayer, but programs such as Medicaid have state cost components as well.
There is even secrecy in the meaning of official language used in the program. For instance, it will be claimed – and the media will report – that refugees are “self-sufficient” in some amazingly short period of time. But as officially defined, refugees are considered “self-sufficient” even if they are living in public housing, receiving Medicaid and Food Stamps. They can receive cash assistance from local, state and federal sources, such as SSI. Only TANF disqualifies one from being “self-sufficient.”
Then there is the money racket.As a state refugee coordinator notes in the 2012 GAO report, “local affiliate funding is based on the number of refugees they serve, so affiliates have an incentive to maintain or increase the number of refugees they resettle each year rather than allowing the number to decrease.”
Refugee resettlement is very profitable for the non-profits.
At the point of his recent retirement the CEO of Lutheran Social Service of Minnesota, another resettlement affiliate of LIRS, was making $441,767 a year in salary and benefits – almost all taxpayer-supplied.
It is time to bring this program out of the shadows.
Don Barnett is a fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, D.C.
Editors note: If you’ve had experience with the refugee program where you live, please take a few minutes and comment to Mr. Barnett’s opinion piece so that the citizens of Wyoming have all of the facts before they get into something they will never be able to get out of!
Wyoming had 5 eligible “refugees” in the state in FY2012 and the Governor thinks they need a federal plan?
This week we reported on Wyoming Governor Matt Mead’s op-ed in which he said Wyoming needed a plan (with the feds and their contractors) to cope with the “refugees” already arriving in Wyoming. I wondered what the heck he was talking about.
This morning I’m working on another post on the ‘Key Indicators for Refugee Placement FY2014,’that is the planning document the US State Department and the Office of Refugee Resettlement (in Health and Human Services) are using to determine if your town or city has the “capacity” and the “welcoming” attitude needed for a refugee resettlement seed community.
I wish I could reproduce it here, but see the figures for FY2012 in this table (p.3-4). It is a state-by-state review of how many refugees/asylees etc. came to your state and what goodies they get there.
By the way, don’t be fooled (don’t start salivating for federal dollars!) by that last column which lists the federal $$$ going to your state—the majority goes to the CONTRACTOR to spend, it is not money that goes into your state or city coffers for your local leaders to decide where to soften the refugee impact.
And, always keep in mind there are NO FINANCIAL AUDITS of the contractors!
So get this Wyoming!
Go to pages 3 & 4 of ‘Key indicators….’ You had a whopping 5 (five!) refugees in Wyoming in FY2012. And, those were asylees! Asylees have been granted asylum. They got into the US illegally (Mexicans are now asking for asylum) or overstayed a visa, claimed they would be persecuted if sent home and were granted asylum. We recently reported that a Congressional hearing revealed that as many as 70% of those granted asylum may have made fraudulent claims.
For readers new to this subject, the most recent ‘famous’ aslyees were the Boston Bombers!
So Governor Mead wants to turn over Wyoming’s demographic future to the feds for a handful of asylees, another handful of secondary migrants, and a handful of change from the federal taxpayer? It will be more than a handful of refugees once Lutheran Family Services Rocky Mountains gets its foot in the door.
Residents of Casper and Gillette must speak up before it’s too late!
Governor Matt Mead invited the federal government in to help Wyoming “plan” for refugees. Makes me wonder if he is pals with open borders Republican Grover Norquist.
Update March 19:Wyoming had 5 refugees in FY2012, so someone is selling the Governor a bill of goods! Not exactly a flood moving to the state!
He says they are already coming, so they need a plan or another government program. Mead:
With or without a program, the issue is real -– this is already evident in some of our Wyoming communities as refugees find their way to our state.
Let me say at the outset that I don’t fault the governor for not understanding how refugee resettlement works, heck it has taken me and other critics years to understand even a small portion of it because of the profound secrecy with which the federal government agencies (US State Department and US Dept. of Health and Human Services) with their quasi-government contractors operate, and because of the complexity of the program itself.
The governor in his op-ed published in the Star Tribuneyesterday said they need a plan for Wyoming because the refugees are already coming.
What the governor doesn’t get is that if they are coming already they are secondary migrants NOT newly resettled refugees. They are just like anyone else who might move to Wyoming because this is America and they can. Wyoming doesn’t need a federal contractor for immigrant in-migration anymore than they would for an American moving over from Colorado. Their poster boy, Bertine Bahige, is a secondary migrant.
Secondary migrants are not under the care of a resettlement contractor like the secretive Lutheran Family Services Rocky Mountains that would like to be the federal contractor bringing NEW refugees to Wyoming via the US State Department. The “refugee,” now a secondary migrant, has already gotten his introduction (his package of goodies) to America in some other state.
If secondary migrants are coming in any large numbers to Wyoming they are either coming there because there is some industry luring them (like BIG MEAT in some other western states), or Wyoming has generous welfare benefits like Minnesota and Maine.
Here is more of what Republican Mead (who sounds like a big D) said in defending his position in what has become a hot-potato issue in Wyoming:
There have been recent discussions about refugees coming to Wyoming. It is an important issue as refugees are coming now and have been coming to Wyoming with our state having no plan or say on the matter. Questions of what, if any, resources are being used and how they are used remain unanswered. We are the only state in the country without a plan or process.
So it is clear … refugees are people who are in the United States legally after being vetted by the Office of Homeland Security and others. The program started following World War II to address a number of Europeans who were displaced by the war. Sadly, conditions exist in places around the globe where people are faced with hardships so severe that they must flee their homes in order to be safe. These men, women and children are fleeing persecution, torture, violence and war. There is understandable sympathy for these people. The United States has set standards to evaluate the conditions that qualify a person for refugee status.
As refugees have been coming to Wyoming –without a plan or program – I felt it important to learn more about what is done in Wyoming.The United States accommodates a relatively small number of people from around the world when refuge is needed. Most refugees choose to stay in our nation’s larger cities. A small number are choosing a rural state like Wyoming. It is a responsibility to our taxpayers to know, as refugees come to Wyoming, what is the impact.
Again, the governor confuses secondary migrants with newly resettled refugees who are under the care and control of a contractor for only 3-6 months, then they are free to strike out on their own and move elsewhere (presumably without any hand-holding from government agencies).
Although, one caveat, is that the contractors are now expanding their “services” in order to get more federal grants for such things as “healthy marriage programs”(where the contractor gets the taxpayer $$$, not the state), but the contractor needs a large “refugee” population in a specific community to get those.
If he would like to know more about such migrants, check out St. Cloud, MN, Lewiston, ME, or Ft. Morgan, CO. I doubt there will be a great migration of them to Wyoming any time soon. However, if he sets up a “program” with Lutheran Family Services Rocky Mountains, he will indeed start the flow to Wyoming because LFSRM will, after resettling the ‘seed community’ then apply for all the family members to follow (they are paid by the head for those too!).
They (the feds and the contractors) need Wyoming because they are running out of “welcoming” communities elsewhere!
All of our coverage of the Governor’s appeal to bring in the federal government to help determine the demographic future of Wyoming may be found by clicking here.
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.
