Intro to ‘Stop the Refugee Resettlement Program’
Edited by John R. Houk
November 10, 2014
Obama is making Muslim Resettlement in America a dangerous proposition. Even if you believe the propaganda that Islam is peace, it is better to believe your eyes that Muslims are persecuting and butchering Christians left and right in Muslim dominated nations. Right now the press is telling you of the atrocities of the ISIS terrorists committed against the ever decreasing Christian minority in the area they control in Iraq and Syria. We are presented that ISIS is a lawless aberration within Islamic ideology.
BUT STILL Coptic Christians in Egypt experience abuse of murder, rape, forced conversions, Church burnings and more. It is the same in with the Muslims of Northern Sudan doing the same and throw in enslavement. There were cities in Palestine Administration governed Judea-Samaria (Israel-haters call it the occupied West Bank) that had Christian majorities – like Bethlehem. Now it is lucky if those same cities have a 10% to 20% minority status. Iraq’s Christian population has been fleeing even before the notorious successes of ISIS.. Lebanon actually used to be a Christian minority Middle Eastern nation. So many Christian Lebanese have fled their homeland for a safer life in the West that Lebanon has been reduced to 35% of the population. Ethiopia is a Christian majority at 62% and the largest competing religion is Islam at about 34% (2007 census). Nigeria’s religious status is actually difficult to pin down. I’ll go with the Pew 2012 stats that showed 2010 data: 49.3% Christian and 48.8% Muslim. In full disclosure though there tends to be an agreement among other sources as 50% Muslim, 40% Christian and 10% Other. My understanding though is the latter data is a bit controversial in its conclusions. AND YET today Nigerian Christians are among the worst hit by Islamic terrorism today.
In Muslim nations in which Christianity is a single digit minority fair no better. I often post about the atrocious persecutions in Pakistan (largely due to the reporting of Shamim Masih), Pakistan’s Christian population is less than 2%.
What in the world is President Obama doing allowing one Muslim with an Islamic Supremacist mentality coming to America rather than the Christians being slaughtered by Muslims?
JRH 11/10/14
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Stop the Refugee Resettlement Program
By Justin O. Smith
Sent: 11/9/2014 2:30 PM
Americans have the right to stop any and all immigration, legal or otherwise (e.g. Congress 1920-1965 [See HERE, HERE and HERE]) and this includes any refugee migration, which is overburdening city and state infrastructures across the nation and harboring numerous terrorists, as witnessed in Minneapolis [link], Bowling Green [link] and Boston [link] and numerous other cities [link]. And yet, despite efforts by Tennessee and other states to withdraw from the federal Refugee Resettlement program, the federal authorities contract with private agencies and resettle “refugees” wherever the meet the least resistance, at a heavy cost to the ordinary American.
The nine major refugee resettlement organizations typically operate secretly in closed-door sessions with government officials, because they do not want to disclose that their programs significantly increase unfunded costs on the state and local taxpayers in the form of social services, which must be provided. Also, these agencies, affiliated with the Catholic, Episcopal and Lutheran churches, present themselves as “charitable” organizations, when, in fact, they are federal contractors with 95% of their annual budgets funded by the federal government.
After passage of the Refugee Act of 1980, states were totally reimbursed for the cost of providing Medicaid, SSI and cash welfare to refugees for three years. By 1991, reimbursement to the states was eliminated, and federal support for refugees, who were unable to qualify for state funded programs, was reduced to eight months, shifting the burden back to the states.
These refugees take full advantage of the system, since all public benefits from the local, state and federal level are available to them within thirty days, after arriving in the U.S. In 2010, 49% of refugees, who had arrived between 2005 and 2010, were receiving medical assistance/ Medicaid, 26% were receiving cash assistance, and 63% were in the food stamp program.
Holly Johnson of the Tennessee Office of Refugees still promotes the lie that refugees “are completely self-sufficient, usually within four months,” and, in the meantime, the Catholic Charities agency is planning the further expansion of the refugee resettlement program in Tennessee; since taking control of this program in 2008, when Gov. Phil Breese withdrew Tennessee from it, Catholic Charities has expanded it by 66%, because they get paid for each refugee they bring to Tennessee.
“It raises the issue whether the state or Congress should pay the costs of the federal program,” Joanne Bergman, attorney and activist, stated in an interview last year, and she reiterated her message on October 26th, 2014 before a group of concerned citizens in Murfreesboro, TN (ACT).
With health care costs taking 60% of all new state revenue, Tennessee Governor Bill Aslam warned all departments in the state, weeks ago, that they must prepare for a 7% budget cut across the board, as a backlog of 7080 disabled Tennessee citizens, 152 in Rutherford County, waits for services, Bergman further explained; in contrast, the State Department authorizes 70,000 refugees annually, who are immediately eligible for the social services of the states that receive refugees.
Why aren’t we spending our tax-dollars on our most vulnerable U.S. citizens instead of refugees?
A Government Accounting Office report from July 12, 2012 stated in part that the U.S. State Dept.’s financial assistance is expected to be supplemented by private donations for the provisions of reception and placement services, but, in fact, even the massive U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops refugee resettlement agency only raises 2% of its $72 million total revenues. The USCCB resettles about a quarter of the refugees that the U.S. receives annually, and federal funds account for nearly 93% of USCCB’s migration/ refugee budget.
From the GAO report [link]: ‘Greater Consultation with Community Stakeholders Could Strengthen Program’ –
“most public entities such as public schools and health departments generally said that voluntary 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”.
This same GAO report quotes a state official who notes –
“That local affiliate funding is based on the number of refugees they serve, so affiliates (private contractors) have an incentive to maintain or increase the number of refugees they resettle each year rather than allowing the number to decrease.”
Other concerns rest in the fact that many of these refugees come from war-torn and terror-sponsoring nations, with this year’s group including 20,000 Iraqis, over 16,000 Burmese, and 8300 Somalis added to the 150,000 Somalian here now. Four thousand Syrian refugees have already applied for next year. Homeland Security cannot possibly adequately screen Somalian, from the largest Al Qaeda enclave in the world _ Somalia, due to the complete destruction of any law enforcement records in Somalia from twenty years of civil war.
“We come for the jobs,” says Mohammad Shakir Hassan, a Somali refugee who has resettled in Tennessee. After working for the TN Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition and CAIR/Hamas promoting the American Center for Outreach, Hassan now works as the program director for the TN American Muslim Advisory Council. All three organizations stress non-assimilation in favor of multicultural accommodations.
Perhaps Hassan came to America for a job, but thousands of other Muslim immigrants in Greeley and Ft Morgan, Colorado are looking to move to Wyoming, because the wait for government-subsidized housing is only about six months, while Colorado’s wait period is a year or longer. One-hundred Somalis have already moved to Cheyenne, Wyoming, and the Somali women voiced their concerns to the Wall Street Journal, in September 2014 [Refugee Settlement Watch delves into WSJ info], whether other government services would be comparable, since Wyoming currently does not have a Refugee Resettlement program.
The City of Amarillo, Texas has repeatedly questioned why it has been sent 500 to 600 foreign refugees annually for a decade, when based on demographics and its local economy, it should receive no more than sixty. So, Senator Keel Salinger (TX-R) asked [link],
“Who stands to benefit from the unbalanced number of refugees … it’s worth the investigation of who lubricates that system with the money … the health care institutions and the schools are not getting that money …”
In 2013, the Nashville International Center for Empowerment, a refugee resettlement agency, received over $800,000 in taxpayer money to fund its organization. And Will Alexander, Senator Lamar Alexander’s son and current Economic and Community Development chief of staff for Gov. Aslam, served on its Board of Directors until 2012. This is unseemly and inappropriate at best, since Senator Lamar Alexander is a strong advocate for illegal aliens and “immigration reform” in the U.S. At its worst, there is a miasmatic sense of corruption and cronyism hanging heavy in the air.
Mayor Nancy Denson, a Democrat, presides over Athens, Georgia, where 85% of Clarke County’s students already qualify for free lunches, which is the primary indicator schools use to measure poverty in their communities. And, since the school system is already funded at the maximum property tax allowed by Georgia’s state constitution, Mayor Denson has been forced to fight the opening of an International Rescue Committee resettlement office, the oldest and largest of the nine agencies.
Springfield, Massachusetts Mayor Domenic Sarong, a Democrat, is witnessing his school, police and social services overwhelmed by too many refugees. Twice during the last year he has asked federal officials to stop sending refugees into his city: “I’m not cold-hearted at all,” Sarong told the ‘Springfield Republican’ (newspaper), “I want to help. All I’m asking is for accountability … You just can’t keep concentrating poverty on top of poverty.”
“When the people … say ‘Stop, We don’t want this program’, how is it possible that the feds simply go through a private agency after that?” Joanne Bergman asks.
Primarily, these agencies don’t want to stop. It’s big business for them as they get paid a flat figure for every refugee they bring into the country. They have expenses, utilities and salaries to pay, so there’s never an incentive to stop the flow of the money or the number of refugees.
U.S. citizens across America have concerns about health, safety and the economic drain that a voluntary program with no Constitutional authority, the Refugee Resettlement program, places on their communities. Suggestions by lawmakers that, at the very least, these “charitable” private contractors must reimburse the states, if they take federal funds, are met with disdain; Lipscomb University and the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition say that this “targets refugee children as a burden rather than an investment,” so one must ask, “Shouldn’t America’s children come first?”
Demand a Congressional moratorium on all refugee and immigration movement into America! Enough is enough!
By Justin O Smith
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Edited by John R. Houk
Text and links enclosed by brackets are by the Editor
© Justin O. Smith
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