Shame on You if You Don’t Take 15 Minutes to Do This!

Shame on You if You Don’t Take 15 Minutes to Do This!


12/04/2019 ~ Ann Corcoran

Turn off the damn faux impeachment hearing! And, for goodness sake forget about shopping and whether Prince Andrew did something to a blond girl whenever.


https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org...ng-300x169.jpgThe

President heard your concerns about refugees being placed in your towns with no warning and no local approval and did something about it! Are you going to let him down now?For those of you who spend the day reading news to inform yourself, stop reading for 15 minutes and do something—I’ll tell you what shortly.


The President listened to your concerns about having no role in the decision making process about where refugees are placed in America.


He has gone out on a (another) political limb and created an Executive Orderback in September with the lowest determination for the number of refugees to be admitted to the US since the Kennedy/Biden/Jimmy Carter refugee program became law in 1980.


And, in that Executive Order, althoughimperfect, he directed the US State Department to collect approvals in writing from governors and county/city elected officials saying they will opt-in (and accept refugees) so that the federal contractors can get their funding to move the Africans, Middle Easterners, Asians, etc. to your towns.


The deadline is approaching and…

….those approvals are now coming in!


Open Borders Inc. and the federally-funded refugee resettlement contractors are turning the process into a referendum on the President and the Refugee Program and have pulled out all the stops as I have been reporting here for days.


My analysis:


Every county in America is up for grabs!



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This is the National Association of Counties map that the lobbying arm of the refugee industry is directing its followers to use in order to find the contact information for county government leaders.https://ce.naco.org/Even counties that haven’t previously received refugees are on their hit list.


They are not sticking with the established resettlement sites I posted here a few days ago. And, mark my words, those approvals from far flung counties will be held by the contractors and used as political cudgels no matter who is President.
By the way, there are 3,242 counties and county equivalents available to be resettled! And, that is how they are turning red states blue—one county at a time.


Both the governor and the local elected body (county government seems to be the primary goal) or possibly a mayor, especially for big cities, must agree to the placement of the impoverished refugees in order for the refugee contractors to get their plans to the State Department and to ultimately be paid to do their work.


(See my right hand sidebar for the governors who have already said yes, or at least the ones we know of.)


The contractors are pushing to obtain the approvals by Christmas in order to get their proposals to the State Department by January 21st.


This is what the Refugee Council USA is telling its followers to do (I told you about it here). You should follow their model except obviously with a different message:

Your State & Local Officials Need to Hear From You


When you engage your local officials, we encourage you to educate them about the existence and content of the EO and ask whether they will provide written consent to resettle refugees. Here are the top two ways to take action:

• Tell Your Governor to Declare Welcome for Refugees: Click here to contact your governor and tell them to declare that they welcome refugees in your state. Ask them to provide the necessary written consent to the federal government stating that refugees are welcome. A template letter that can be adapted to your state is available here.

• Tell Your State & Local Officials to Support Refugees: Contact your state legislators, mayors, and county executives (and if you have close connections, to city, county, and town officials or other state and local elected leaders). Urge them to issue a public statement saying they support resettlement and to provide the necessary written consent so refugees can remain welcome in your community. A template letter that can be adapted to your locality is available here.

Letters should be addressed to: Secretary Michael R. Pompeo, U.S. Department of State; and Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary Carol T. O’Connell, Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, U.S. Department of State.

For the sake of time, focus on your county government and your governor.


You can keep your message simple (choose any or all you like):


~Tell your elected officials that by agreeing to accept refugees they are agreeing that state and local taxpayers pick up the financial burden (refugees are eligible for all forms of welfare) that Kennedy once said would be a federal responsibility.

~Tell your elected officials that we have enough of our own poverty in America and that vulnerable Americans should come first.

~Tell them there are hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers (wannabe refugees) that must be processed first.

~Tell your elected officials that security screening is inadequate and that safety is an issue.

~Tell them that the ‘religious’ ‘charitable’ groups placing those refugees are actually federal contractors who depend on high numbers of refugees to receive their pay from the US Treasury.

~Tell them that the original law created an opportunity for states to opt-in or opt-out that has been ignored for decades.

~Tell them politely about any other concerns you have about the UN program that moves impoverished third worlders to your towns/cities.
If you haven’t been following RRW in recent days, go here, here, and here for more information.
Are you as tough as North Dakotans? I guess we will soon find out!


Please spread this post far and wide, honestly if we can’t muster at least some small showing of support for the President’s efforts to slow costly, disruptive and possibly dangerous refugee resettlement to the far corners of America, then speaking for me, why should I bother to continue investigating and writing!


Endnote to readers in Ohio: A story here in September says your governor is on board with MORE refugees, but I haven’t seen anything in the last week or so. Assume he hasn’t sent an official letter yet.


https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org...es-to-do-this/

(From link above)

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?



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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.



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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/kerenblankfeld/2016/09/20/billionaire-george-soros-earmarks-500-million-for-migrants-and-refugees/#7815e75b3888

In 2011, theMPIissued 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.

This post if filed in my Comments worth noting/guest posts category.

https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org...sions-program/

(Link from article)

Guest column: Feds shifting costs to states for refugee resettlement


10/08/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran


Editor: From time to time we post guest commentary. This is from Joanne Bregman. As we refocus our efforts at the state and local level, because we can’t count on Washington, this is an effective argument for you to make on the state level.


This is about States’ rights!

(emphasis below is mine)


Federal Cost Shifting of the Refugee Resettlement Program


Background


In 1980 the federal government formalized the refugee resettlement program by passing the Refugee Act of 1980. There was no mandate to force states to participate in this program.Federal appropriations to provide for medical and cash assistance for newly resettled refugees, was authorized for 36 months. Refugees were and still are, first required to use state Medicaid programs if they are eligible, before federal medical assistance funds are used.


When the federal law was passed, it provided that for each refugee brought to a state by a federal contractor, states would be reimbursed 100% for three full years, the state incurred cost of providing Medicaid and cash welfare. The law also provided, that for refugees who did not meet eligibility criteria for state Medicaid and cash welfare programs, they could instead, receive a federal subsidy – Refugee Medical Assistance (RMA) and Refugee Cash Assistance (RCA) for 36 months.
By 1991, even though the number of refugees being resettled was not decreasing, the federal government eliminated reimbursement to states for the state cost of resettling and supporting refugees with Medicaid and cash welfare.


In addition, the federal government reduced the RCA and RMA subsidy from 36 months to 8 months for refugees who do not qualify for state funded programs. States have no other choice but to assume the greater share of the voluntary federal program’s costs.
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The U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement told Congress early on in the program that the reason states were no longer being reimbursed for the state’s costs was because Congress didn’t appropriate enough money.


The 1981 Select Commission on Immigration and Refugee Policy convened by Congress also documented that even the initial 3 years of 100% reimbursement to states, was not sufficient to “minimize the impact of refugees on community services.” The Commission was specifically referring to schools, hospitals and community support services.


In 1990, the U.S. General Accounting Office documented that the reduction in reimbursement to states for the federal refugee resettlement program, “costs for cash and medical assistance have shifted to state and local governments.” The National Governors Association has also questioned the federal cost shifting, stating that “[t]hese reductions represent a major federal policy change that shifts fiscal responsibility for meeting the basic needs of refugees from the federal government to states and localities.”
As the resettlement industry has grown, so has the cost to both federal and state governments but only the federal government controls its costs by appropriating annually “as available” while each state’s cost is driven by how much of the federal cost Congress chooses not to pay.
Be sure to see my post from earlier this past week about what you need to do on a state and local level, here.


This post is filed in my ‘What you can do’category and in ‘Comments worth noting.’


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