Thread: Refugee Contractors Use Trump September Executive Order to Organize Nationally

Refugee Contractors Use Trump September Executive Order to Organize Nationally


11/24/2019 ~ Ann Corcoran

And, guess what? You, who either don’t want to see any more refugees coming to America or at least want a say in who we are accepting and whether they are placed in your town, are screwed.


Sorry to sound vulgar, but it is true, because the other side is highly organized and you have no national voice helping to guide you on what to do locally to push back.







It is make or break time! You’ve got a few more weeks to get your message to your local mayors, city councils, and governors.


And, locally is where the refugee contractors are making their big move now (in addition to suing the President over the September EO that supposedly will give states an opportunity to opt-out of resettlement).


I’m not naming names, but for those of you hoping a national immigration control organization located in Washington, DC (or anywhere in America) will focus on the refugee issue and tell you what to do, forget it!
You are on your own.


And, notice where the debate is! It isn’t on the issue of whether we should be bringing tens of thousands (hundreds of thousands!) of refugees to the US annually from countries that hate us; it isn’t on whether the whole program is unconstitutional and needs to be dumped and rewritten (if we even want more refugees); it is on which of your towns will be changed forever and who gets to decide that!








Trump’s EO was far from perfect, but he is concerned about the secrecy that has heretofore been the watchword of refugee resettlement decision-making in America. The contractors, which have monopolized all resettlement in the US for decades, love calling the shots from Washington and are fighting tooth and nail not to lose that power.The nine federal contractors*** and their friends throughout the Open Borders Industry are highly organized with an extensive grassroots network, so when Trump opened the door with his September Executive Order about local and state governments having some say in the decision-making process they have turned on their networks and their people have gone to work.


Indeed, they expect Trump to be gone so they can go back to business as usual of changing America one town at a time, their Executive Order pushback has become a key element in their strategy.


I’ve always hated the expression, but since Trump handed them a lemon they are making lemonade!


Here is the first of many examples, Mary Poole the refugee advocate who opened the door to a new resettlement office in Montana says it best.


From the Missoulian:


Missoula refugee resettlement agency wades through Trump order

Missoula is one of roughly 190 communities in the U.S. that resettle refugees. Only a handful of states don’t. So far none has banned further resettlement, and letters of support are reported from city councils in the likes of Decatur, Georgia; and Alexandria, Virginia.







In 2016 Mary Poole successfully pushed for the opening of an International Rescue Committee subcontractor office for Missoula.Gary Herbert, Utah’s Republican governor, wrote Trump a letter requesting he “allow us to accept more international refugees in Utah.”


Democratic governors Jay Inslee of Washington and Kate Brown of Oregon have voiced support for resettlement, and on Tuesday Republican Gov. Doug Burgum, announced North Dakota would continue to receive refugees “as long as local governments agree to it,” the Grand Forks Herald reported.
Such responses underline what Soft Landing Missoula’s Mary Poole sees as a bright side to the executive order.


“While it makes an additional hurdle and roadblock, and it’s unfortunate, I think what we’re really going to see are people going to bat for (accepting refugees) in a way we haven’t seen before,” she said. “I’m pretty excited to see that visual representation nationwide to show how important this is.”

And so they are!


Their people are pushing local governments everywhere to shove it back at Trump and put in writing that they WANT MORE REFUGEES!


Some examples that have come across my desk in recent days:

In Holland, Michigan, here.

In Lancaster, PA, here.

In Oklahoma, here. (The Oklahoma story is particularly informative.)

In Nebraska, here.

And, in Tennessee the Tennessee Office of Refugees run by Catholic Charities has sent out an e-mail with contact information for TN mayors to make it easier for their anti-Trump EO supporters to weigh in:


Contact your local elected officials to let them know their constituents support refugee resettlement.


Chattanooga City Mayor
Andy Berke
(423) 643-7800
mayor@chattanooga.gov


Hamilton County Mayor
Jim Coppinger
(423) 209-6100
Email: hamiltontn.gov/Mayor/form.aspx
Knoxville City Mayor
Madeline Rogero
(865) 215-2040
mayor@knoxvilletn.gov


Knox County Mayor
Glenn Jacobs
(865) 215-2005
Email: knoxcounty.org/email/email_new.php?email_name=county.mayor


Memphis City Mayor
Jim Strickland
(901) 636-6000
mayor@memphistn.gov
Shelby County Mayor
Lee Harris
(901) 222-2000
officeofthemayor@shelbycountytn.gov


Nashville Metro Mayor
John Cooper
(615) 862-6000

You can be sure that information like that is going out in your state too!
Because you aren’t going to hear it from any organization giving you marching orders….
…. my message to you is get to your local government and speak up before they do—a big challenge because they have a huge head start on you!

Contact your governor too!

Even if you think that your voices won’t be heard, tell your local and state elected officials what you think anyway, otherwise they will assume that supporting the idea of more refugees for your town or city is a political freebie for them!


Oh, and if you want to make a big splash—challenge your local elected officials in the next election. Even if you think you can’t win the first time out, your local media will be forced to report on your platform.


A very simple message to your elected officials is this: care for refugees where they live in the world, and let’s take care of poor and vulnerable Americans here first!


***The nine federal contractors listed below have dozens of subcontractors working under them around the country. So although your local resettlement agency has a name not listed here, you can be sure they work for one of the nine major contractors.


They are all very Leftwing political organizations, but the most actively anti-Trump in recent months are in red. You might argue that the Bishops are very political and they are, but I’ve noticed that they are laying low these days (there are a large number of Catholic Trump supporters) and USCRI has been unusually quiet.

• Church World Service (CWS)
• Ethiopian Community Development Council (ECDC) (secular)
• Episcopal Migration Ministries (EMM)
• Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS)
• International Rescue Committee (IRC) (secular)
• US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) (secular)
• Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services (LIRS)
• United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB)
• World Relief Corporation (WR)

https://www.alipac.us/newthread.php?do=newthread&f=9

We need to draft a professional letter for all to copy and use now.

No more refugees!

And we need to get that letter to all our City Halls and copy the Governor of our States.

Send in by mail, email, fax, bombard them that we do not want any more refugees ever!


MR. GHEEN????

CAN WE GET A NEW TOPIC AND LETTER DRAFTED AND GET THE WORD OUT.

Original Refugee Act: States have a Right to Opt-in or Opt-out of Refugee Admissions Program

12/03/2019 ~ Ann Corcoran


Editor: Thanks to David James for another excellent analysis of the vital question about the resettlement of refugees in the US—do states have any right to say no to the placement of UN/US State Department selected refugees within their borders?





James says yes, and explains that a Migration Policy Institute paper by a legal expert confirmed that in 2011.


Indeed the original Refugee Resettlement Act of 1980 foresaw an opt-in and in practice that opt-in has been ignored for nearly 4 decades, Trump is attempting to fix that as I have been explaining in recent days.




The primary reason you should be involved now is that you should have a say in how your state and local taxes are spent (not some federally funded NGO operating out of New York City, Washington or Baltimore).






Soros Funded Immigration Think Tank Said States Can Reject Refugees


The self-described non-partisan Soros-funded Migration Policy Institute (MPI), was light years ahead of President Trump about the limited authority of the federal government to force refugee resettlement in states which say no thanks.








In 2016 George Soros pledged to give $500 million to promote migration. Forbes reports that one of the beneficiaries is the Migration Policy Institute.


https://www.forbes.com/sites/kerenbl.../#7815e75b3888


In 2011, the MPI issued a paper titled, The Faltering U.S. Refugee Protection System: Legal and Policy Responses to Refugees, Asylum Seekers, and Others in Need of Protection, written by lawyer Donald Kerwin, Exec. Dir. of Center for Migration Studies and former ED of the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, a subsidiary of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops.


The USCCB is also one of the busiest federal resettlement contractors whose last available financial statement in 2017 showed $50 million dollars in federal grants comprising 94% of the USCCB budget for migration and refugee services.


States have rights!


Kerwin wrote that states need to say yes to refugees before the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees & Migration (PRM) resettles refugees in any state:


Resettlement agencies (many affiliated with VOLAGs] meet with state and local officials on a quarterly basis regarding the opportunities and services available to refugees in local communities and the ability of these communities to accommodate new arrivals. They also consult with the state refugee coordinator on placement plans for each local site. PRM provides ORR and states with proposed VOLAG placement plans. If a state opposes the plan, PRM will not approve it.


During a 2010 U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, testimony from Fort Wayne, Indiana and Clarkson, Georgia city officials stated that they had never been consulted or given notice by resettlement agencies or PRM about upcoming resettlement plans.


There’s plenty of evidence that even if these consultations actually take place, they only happen between like-minded bureaucrats and not with say, state legislators on the finance committees.


Remember too, that in states which have withdrawn from the resettlement program, the state refugee coordinator is typically an NGO which has its own refugee resettlement program heavily dependent on keeping the federal cash flowing to its bank account.


Of course, there is no accounting for the state taxpayer dollars being forcibly taken to pay for the federal program, even if a state has already withdrawn.


Another dirty little secret about refugee placements is that decisions about “capacity” at the local level for resettlement is left up to the federal contractors whose financial well-being is directly tied to how many refugees they can bring in during the fiscal year.


The US General Accounting Office found that “capacity” can pretty much mean anything the contractor wants it to mean including its own “long-term funding needs.”


It’s not clear what Kerwin’s basis was for his concession to a state’s authority to reject a proposed refugee resettlement plan. But Tennessee’s lawsuit offers a legally viable and coherent explanation – the federal government’s admission to shifting the costs of its refugee program to state governments in violation of the Tenth Amendment and U.S. Supreme Court precedent.


Not only that, but the refugee resettlement program was designed originally as an opt-in. The 1980 Act has no language authorizing a replacement after state withdrawal but is structured as an opt-in program for states just like other federal spending programs. It wasn’t until 1994, that the state withdrawal/ORR replacement provisions were added to the regulations.


When a state chooses to withdraw from the federal program ORR, gave itself, by regulation, what the enabling legislation didn’t – the authority to appoint a replacement state designee. Importantly, appointing a replacement state designee, is permissive, not mandatory. In each state that has chosen to withdraw, however, ORR has appointed an NGO resettlement agency as the state’s replacement designee. This has resulted in forced state participation and forced state expenditures for the federal program.


President Trump’s Executive Order reads as if a state can override consent by local governments to bring in refugees. However, the operating details won’t be known until HHS and the State Department issue their guidance on the consent.


Of course, the activist judge who will be deciding the lawsuit brought by the VOLAGs challenging Trump’s order will have to choose between following the law or legislating from the bench.


Local activists would do well to explain the real fiscal implications to their state legislators and governor of the state being forced to pay the federal freight that Congress has chosen to shift to the state, taking state funding priorities away from the state’s most vulnerable citizens.



https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/

No Wonder the Refugee Contractors are Sweating Trump Order!


12/02/2019 ~ Ann Corcoran

We’ve been reporting daily (just scroll back and see what I mean!) about the President’s September Executive Order that requires that refugees be placed in cities/counties where the elected officials have said in writing that they welcome more refugees, or in the case of new sites where the city or county wants a new site.








It is no wonder the federal resettlement contractors heads are exploding! They are going to have to work really hard to get their federal boodle!I’ve been wondering how they are going to accomplish this goal by a deadline supposedly later this month.


In fact, I’ve been seeing a reference to a June 1 date that had me scratching my head. What happens then?


This morning, I opened my alerts to yet another sob story about how refugee families are suffering because they were expecting to bring their whole families here soon and now face a longer wait because of that meany in the White House.


The story is this one from Missoula, Montana—which hosts a very new resettlement site operated by the filthy rich International Rescue Committee.***


(I mentioned it here just last week!)

Today’s story is here:


‘You pray, you pray’: Trump refugee cap places strain on Missoula families

It contains many column inches of stories the Left loves to tell—the stories that count on moving people emotionally. But, it also contained this brief paragraph:

Trump also signed an executive order, set to take effect next summer, that requires resettlement agencies like Missoula’s IRC to obtain state and local government consent before accepting more refugees.

So what is that all about?


There must be guidance published somewhere on how the Executive Order is to be implemented.
Sure enough, here it is and it is evident that the reason for the contractors hitting the panic button is that their FUNDING AFTER JUNE 1 IS TIED TO THEIR COMPLIANCE WITH THE EXECUTIVE ORDER.


FY 2020 Notice of Funding Opportunity for Reception and Placement Program


They must jump through a lot of hoops! They have to explain how they involved the public in their decision making about who and how many they want to place in a community; they need to say how much private money they have collected toward the project; and of course must have letters from the governor AND the local elected officials apparently by Christmas.


The funding guidance mentions the 50-100 mile radius around each resettlement site that I referenced in my post yesterday. If you missed it be sure to go back and see if you live near a site.
You are going to have to read the guidance yourself, and I’ll see what I can do to get a lawyer’s opinion on what appears to me to be a massive bureaucratic undertaking for the contractors. Boo hoo! It is about time they are being made accountable!


No wonder they are suing to stop the President!


Just so you know, I don’t think there can ever be real reform of the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program until this entire contracting system that relies on nine Leftwing ‘non-profits’ largely funded by taxpayers (and who hate the President!) to place refugees throughout America.



***Note to Montanans! You must put pressure on your governor because you know the refugee industry there is mobilized! Additionally, if Missoula is lost, see what you can do to put some political pressure on county government.



https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2019/12/02/no-wonder-the-refugee-contractors-are-sweating-trump-order/

Tennessee is presently a real battleground to continue refugee resettlement. George Soros funded groups, progressive church groups, and others are lobbying hard to push republican Governor Bill Lee to continue flooding the state with refugees.

The Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights group ( TIRRC) lobbies for refugees and illegal aliens with organized events and campaigns to keep their coffers flowing and sympathy messages for these foreign citizens outgoing.

Over 800 million dollars a year is reportedly taken from taxpayers due to illegal immigration in Tennessee. Costs to American citizens and Tennesseans is increased with refugee resettlement and all of the free handouts.

Kansas: Governor Joins List of Governors Asking for Unknown Number of Refugees



12/06/2019 ~ Ann Corcoran

Have you taken 15 minutes to make your calls?








On October 16th, refugee contractor the International Rescue Committee sent out a call to action to Kansans. https://www.rescue.org/announcement/...comes-refugees


The list is growing ever so slowly with the most recent addition being Kansas Democrat Governor Laura Kelly. In agreeing to take an in determinant number of refugees she has agreed that she is okay with the high cost of the care of more impoverished people coming into the country from Africa, Asia and the Middle East and placing that cost on Kansas taxpayers.


When the Refugee Act became law in 1980, Kennedy/Biden and Jimmy Carter said the cost would not fall on the states that ‘welcomed’ refugees, but over the years that is exactly what happened. The feds have shifted the cost to state and local taxpayers.


Incoming refugees are eligible for all forms of welfare and the primary job of the contractors*** who place them is to get them signed up for their services—medical, housing, food, education, and English language/citizenship training—a large portion of which is funded by state and local taxpayers.


Governor Laura Kelly joins seven other governors (by my count) who have said to the UN/US State Department (or to the media), sure send us any number of refugees you want to send us and we will pay for them!


Here is the news from Voice of America:


Kansas Joins Other States in Accepting Refugees Under New Trump Rule

Kansas is the latest U.S. state to commit to resettling refugees under a new Trump administration rule that requires cities and states to opt in to the government’s refugee program.






The ultimate example of elections having consequences: Democrat Laura Kelly decides for Kansas rather immigration hawk Kris Kobach.“I not only consent to the initial refugee resettlement in Kansas as per the terms of the Executive Order, I also welcome them into our state,” Democratic Governor Laura Kelly wrote to President Donald Trump in the letter, made public Wednesday.


With the letter, Kelly joins a small bipartisan list of governors to quickly respond to the new rule, issued in September.


Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Washington state — headed by Democratic governors — and Utah, led by a Republican, previously submitted similar letters to Washington officials.

Pay attention here! For nearly 40 years the US State Department and its contractors (nine today) have called the shots about which would be refugee target towns and cities and the contractors are now fighting tooth and nail to keep that power!

Prior to the Sept. 26 executive order, refugees were either reunited with family or assigned a destination based on a quarterly meeting near Washington, D.C., between government officials and the non-profit organizations that handle resettlement.


They generally placed refugees in communities around the country where the non-profits have offices and staff to help refugees, especially during their first year in the U.S. [The Leftwing contractors have been deciding which communities to turn blue—ed]


While there have been some cities and states, like Tennessee, that in previous years attempted to block refugees, such cases are rare. Resettlement had occurred in every U.S. state, territory, and the District of Columbia since 2003, according to U.S. State Department arrival records.


[Wrong here! Wyoming has never taken refugees, Hawaii gets very few and Biden’s Delaware is near the bottom of the list.—ed]


By requiring consent, the Trump administration is allowing states and localities to bar refugee resettlement in their areas.

If you thought that maybe your governor could say that you would take a certain number of Middle Eastern Christians, you are WRONG! Again, by agreeing to ‘welcome’ refugees, your governor is saying your state will take any number from anywhere in the world!

Despite the consent requirement, state and local governments will not be able to choose which refugees it wants to accept, or to exclude certain groups.
[….]


The new rules will affect resettlement beginning June 1, 2020, according to an emailed statement from an agency spokesperson.


Written consent will be required from the state governor’s office and the chief executive officer of the county or county equivalent for each jurisdiction where refugees will be resettled, the spokesperson added.


Any cut-off date for the consent letters is unknown. The State Department did not respond to a request for clarification Thursday. [You need to get on this immediately, don’t wait to contact your governor and your county government.—ed]

More here.


Go to the VOA piece and see some of the governors’ letters.


I am keeping a list of governors who have publicly announced (some may not have sent their letter) that they will take on the financial burden of more impoverished people for their states in my right hand side bar here at RRW.







***These (below) are the nine federal resettlement contractors who might not get their funding for the later part of this fiscal year without approvals from the governor and the county in which they want to place incoming refugees. I say might not because the funding guidelines have some squishy language.


These are the fake charities funded largely with your federal tax dollars to place refugees and they want to keep the federal money spigot flowing. And, that is why their lobbying arm, Refugee Council USA, has created a “toolkit” for Open Borders agitators.


They could help refugees and immigrants out of their good hearts and private wallets, but heck then they wouldn’t have the financial power to oppose the President.

• Church World Service (CWS)
• Ethiopian Community Development Council (ECDC) (secular)
• Episcopal Migration Ministries (EMM)
• Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS)
• International Rescue Committee (IRC) (secular)
• US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) (secular)
• Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services (LIRS)
• United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB)
• World Relief Corporation (WR)

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Posted in Changing the way we live, Colonization, Community destabilization, Refugee Resettlement Program, The Opposition, Trump, What you can do, Who is going where


https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2019/12/06/kansas-governor-joins-list-of-governors-asking-for-unknown-number-of-refugees/