Now to Maryland…our home state

For the last few days I’ve written about immigration hot spots around the world (Italy, Switzerland, South Africa, and shortly I’ll tell you about Scotland), but now to Maryland, my Maryland.  

This is part of a story from a man who demonstrated recently at one of several Motor Vehicle Administration offices in the state.  Here is part of what he says:

I’m at the rally because Maryland is one of only four states that give drivers licenses to foreign nationals who are illegally in the United States. An illegal alien can get a Maryland driver’s license simply by having a foreign driver’s license – that’s all! Or, an illegal alien with merely a foreign birth certificate, an auto registration card, and an apartment rental contract qualifies for a Maryland driver’s license. There’s no requirement to prove legal presence in the U.S.; and needless to say, I’ts relatively easy to forge an apartment lease.

Maryland MVA is giving drivers licenses to foreign nationals as fast as it can – 1,700 a week according to officials (if we can believe them they have the authority to give as many as 5,000 a week)! Maryland even pays Spanish translators to help illegal aliens apply for driver’s licenses and offers a Spanish version of the driver’s test to license applicants all at taxpayer’s expense!

Now 5,000 a week totals 1.3 million in 5 years about of the State’s population! Why on Earth does Maryland’s government want to give drivers licenses to that many foreign nationals?

I bet  you are thinking he is some rightwing xenophobic racist redneck.  He isn’t!  Here is the opening paragraph of his narrative: 

This morning, I participated in a citizen’s rally at the Motor Vehicle Administration (MVA) facility near my home in Maryland. A group called Help Save Maryland had arranged these rallies at three different MVA sites for the same day – May 17th. Now you have to understand, I am 57, a professional manager, and haven’t participated in a demonstration since college. I’m politically progressive and adopted my son from Guatemala.

I’m not saying we are going to end up in flames like France, or Italy or South Africa, but I am saying that the heat is turning up.  Just this last week when Senator Diane Feinstein successfully attached an amendment to give amnesty to farm workers on an Iraq funding bill those of us concerned about uncontrolled immigration got in gear and defeated it (again!).  I can’t tell you how furious people are getting over these maneuvers by many in government to defy the will of the majority of Americans.

When 50 year-old self-described progressives like this fellow, Bob Fireovid, are willing to stand outside a Motor Vehicle office holding a handmade sign things are getting bad.

So what does this have to do with refugees?   You are saying refugees are legal!  The demonstration was all about illegal immigrants.  Yes, and so far that has kept the spotlight off refugees for the most part.   Most of those active in pushing for border control readily say, “I’m not against legal immigration.”  That is going to change as time goes on and there is growing resentment about out of control immigration shoved down our throats by governments.

To prove my point check out the agenda for a meeting coming up in Maryland in which a government supported agency teaches participants how to sell refugees and immigrants on communities or how to find an asylum lawyer or how to get a drivers license. 

Read about this June workshop of the Maryland Coalition for Refugees and Immigrants (MCRI) and see what your tax dollars are doing for you.

 

Frederick, MD meet Ft. Wayne, IN

For our local readers from Frederick, MD where Burmese refugees have begun to arrive, please read about the issues facing Ft. Wayne, IN which has the largest Burmese population in the country.

More than 100 people, many already serving new residents from other countries, packed a room at the City-County Building to discuss how to help 800 or more Burmese refugees who will resettle this year in Fort Wayne through Catholic Charities, which operates the region’s U.S. State Department-sanctioned resettlement program.

Last year 613 Burmese refugees resettled here, spurring a call to action to identify which agency is doing what, where gaps exist in services, and where and how to seek funding.

Much of the discussion at this public meeting revolved around how to find jobs, teach English and  provide services such as translation services to the hundreds more refugees expected this year.    You should know that the cost for translating anything important for refugees falls on the agency responsible.  Local Health Departments, Fire Departments, even the local court are all required by Federal law to provide translators.    A refugee gets a traffic violation that sends him or her to court and the county pays for an interpreter.

Here is a post I did way back in July 2007 about the cost to Montgomery Co. of translators to the court system there.  A Liberian refugee charged with raping a little girl was let off because an appropriate interpreter was not found within a reasonable time period.

Much to my surprise this new article from Ft. Wayne does not discuss the cost to the Allen County Health Department, an issue plaguing the Ft. Wayne area for the last year.  See our many previous posts on Ft. Wayne here.

If the citizens of Frederick wish to welcome refugees and asylees, then knowing in advance what to expect and what responsibilities will be placed on the community is the only sensible approach.

NOTE:  I am so bad, I don’t even have Maryland in our “your state” page at the top of RRW.  I’ll work on that today.

Confusing the folks in Frederick, MD, asylee or refugee?

When our refugee issue boiled up in Hagerstown, MD we learned that the largest city close to us, Frederick, MD, was also receiving refugees.    That was way back last spring.    So, I was surprised that a well-connected Frederick woman called a month or so ago to ask about the Burmese she had heard, through the grapevine, were in Frederick with more on the way.

Sure enough, now literally years after the first refugees were resettled the Frederick News Post has a couple of articles about the Burmese who started arriving there in 2002.  Here is some information from the first article.

 According to statistics from the U.S. State Department Worldwide Refugee Admission Processing System, from October 2002 to September 2007, 43 refugees from Burma moved to Frederick.

Then here is where it gets confusing.  First, our old friend Martin Ford explains that refugees go through a rigorous vetting process.

Burmese admitted to the U.S. have escaped a repressive military junta in their country and have waited in refugee camps, sometimes for months, sometimes for years, said Martin Ford, associate director of the Maryland Office for New Americans.

The office, part of the Maryland Department of Human Resources, is tasked with providing assistance in the form of money, employment services and English language training to refugees for an eight-month period after they arrive.

The refugees go through a rigorous vetting process, and are citizens before they arrive [not], he said. Refugees who need help are then sponsored by one of 10 voluntary agencies throughout the country.

Then the reporter switches gears and talks about how many of the Burmese in Frederick are actually asylees.  Asylees are a whole differant type of immigrant.  These are people who were not “vetted” in camps in Thailand, they are people who came into the country illegally and then said they were Burmese and claimed asylum from persecution in Burma.   We have really no way of knowing if what they say is true.  We don’t send investigators to Asia to find out who they are.

Asnake Yeheyis, a statistician with MONA, said that there are also Burmese in Frederick with asylum status. Asylees share the same legal definition as refugees, but obtain their status after arriving in the country.

MONA tracks only those asylees who seek benefits, which accounts for roughly less than half of the asylee population, Yeheyis said. During the same five year span, from 2002 to 2007, MONA recorded serving 22 asylees from Burma in Frederick.

According to report compiled by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Immigration Statistics, from 2004 to 2006, the U.S. government accepted 1,612 new Burmese refugees. [In 2007, the US accepted over 15,000 with another 15,000 expected this year].   In 2006, Maryland received 524 asylees.

Also, note that the MONA representative says they only keep track of those looking for services.  I guess if your motives for being here are not necessarily pure, you might not want to sign up for government programs and English lessons.

Frankly, I was shocked that half of the so-called Burmese refugees going to Frederick were actually asylees.  And, the overall number of asylees coming to Maryland struck me as high.

This is where the line gets blurred between legal and illegal immigration.  Someone sneaks into the US from a trouble spot in the world, makes an asylum claim and bam—-welfare, food stamps, English lessons, and an employment case worker.  I guess the Mexican illegals wish they could make the persecution claim too.

Folks in Frederick need to check out a couple of posts we have done in the last few weeks.   The first is about an asylee in Philadelphia.  I think you will be shocked to see how he got into the US.  And, the other is about the tragic rape and murder of a 7-year-old Burmese Karen (Christian) refugee by a 21-year-old Burmese refugee in Utah.   I’m wondering now if he was an asylee? 

You might also want to check out the huge costs being run up by the Health Department of Ft. Wayne, IN which has the largest community of Burmese in the country.   Rumor has it too that they are experiencing friction between the Burmese Karen and the Burmese Muslims that are somehow getting into the US.

As we said in Hagerstown, the bottomline for any city is that the citizens who live there need to be given all the facts in advance of the city becoming a resettlement city.  Decide how many refugees you can afford.  Make absolutely sure that each refugee family unit has a sponsor, like a church or other group.  What good is it if the sponsor is some immigrant who has been here for a few months— that is the blind leading the blind!

My advice to Frederick, get all the facts.

 P.S.  To regular readers of RRW,  Walkersville, MD where the Ahmadiyya Muslims were seeking to build a convention center is also in Frederick County.   

Note on April 13th:  For those of you searching for more information on what happened in Hagerstown last fall, we have an entire category to your left called “September Forum,” or feel free to e-mail me through our contact address at right.

“Unwelcoming”—Hagerstown join the crowd

Last week the good folks of Hagerstown and Washington County took a whoopin’ in the mainstream media, accused of being “unwelcoming” to more refugee resettlement.  Both the Hagerstown Herald-Mail and the Baltimore Sun made it appear that we alone were saying NO to the “persecuted” of the world.   All this occured at the very same time a report was being delivered in Geneva, Switzerland at the 58th Session of the Executive Committee of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.  This from the Washington Times this morning:

Asylum seekers are finding an ever-colder reception, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees found, with nearly 99 percent of them detained or turned away each year.

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Erika Feller, head of the refugee agency’s protection unit, expressed mounting concern to UNHCR board members last week about “untouchables” seeking resettlement.

——–

“Increasingly, some groups of refugees are becoming simply unwanted by resettlement countries. Neither their refugee status nor their protection needs are in question, but their desirability is,” she said.

———

Governments are increasingly wary of politically sensitive ethnic groups as well as the elderly, who may become public charges, she said. Others having trouble with resettlement include large families, single men who might become a threat to public order, or refugees with low educational levels.

So, instead of the perception that we are neanderthals in the dark ages, could us Hagerstown Hicks actually be in the vanguard of a worldwide movement?  Immigration industry (volags and other government employees) beware you might want to start thinking about your paycheck.

A Trifecta in the Herald-Mail

Today the Herald-Mail features on the editorial page three letters from opponents of refugee resettlement in Hagerstown. Mary Haines’s letter is titled “Refugee program lacked oversight.” Ann Corcoran’s is “Churches can still bring refugees to Hagerstown area.” And Judy Warner’s (also posted here — scroll down) is “A word from the ‘unwelcoming’ on refugee resettlement.”

Mine is quite long so I’m especially pleased that they printed the whole thing. The crux of the letter is this:

Because of the need for liberals to feel good about their own tolerance, they are not able to differentiate between ethnic groups. Anyone who is “different” is therefore good and deserving.

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But in the real world there are groups of refugees who come to America and settle in, and others whose customs and beliefs cause huge amounts of trouble. This does not say anything about the niceness, hardworkingness or picturesqueness of any individual, but it is a fact about groups.

Baltimore Sun Bombs - Part III

Actually this shouldn’t be titled as I have it above, it should be “Baltimore Sun Pimps for Business”.   I asked these questions a few days ago when I posted about Louisville, KY and its huge immigrant population:  is refugee resettlement being driven by the need for business to import immigrant labor?  Is this about depressing wages of low income workers?   Is this about having a captive work force partially supported by the taxpayer?  Are these humanitarian groups making themselves feel good while knowingly or unknowingly abetting big business interests?  It sure looks like it.

Here is just one of several quotes from The Sun about how happy employers of low-skilled labor are about refugees:

“To be honest with you, we’ve had a hard time finding people who want to work here from the Hagerstown area,” said Cheryl Eyler of Parker Plastics, who has hired about eight refugees. “The refugees have a great work ethic. They’re here every day, they don’t call in sick and they work hard. … They’re extremely thankful for having a job.”

——–

Eyler currently has a few openings for $10- to $11-an-hour packing jobs. She would like to hire more refugees, she said, but now that is unlikely.

Of course, now I’m wondering who encouraged all these factory, warehouse, distribution employers to come to Hagerstown without first asking where the labor force was going to come from?  Do we change the way we live to oil the machinery of big business? 

Refugee Resettlement needs to be reformed and as a first step the Refugee Act of 1980 needs to be updated with an amendment requiring a social and economic impact study of a city or town PRIOR to the arrival of refugees.

Baltimore Sun Bombs - Part II

After writing my previous post on this topic, something occurred to me.   I had spoken at length on several occasions with Rona Marech the reporter who wrote “Unsettled by Resettlement” in today’s Baltimore Sun.  She was very interested in Refugee Resettlement Watch and the role it has played in the controversy in Hagerstown.   We also talked about the many complex aspects of refugee resettlement in general.  But, she wrote not one word about this blog or what we discussed.   Instead she followed the laughable politically correct template for issues like this one.   My only conclusion can be that the Baltimore Sun, like most newspapers in America, knows the threat bloggers are to their very existence.  Eventually people will get all of their news from TV and internet sources.   So, duh,  of course they aren’t going to give free advertising to bloggers doing more investigative work than they do. 

I plan to have Part III tomorrow.

Baltimore Sun Bombs–Part I

I know, I know…should I have really expected a lengthy balanced article about the complex issue of refugee resettlement in Hagerstown, MD?   Yes, there is still a bit of me that believes some mainstream news outlet will do a serious open-minded investigation about refugee resettlement, but I guess I won’t hold my breath.  Thank goodness for alternative media.

For a little token balance, The Sun reporter throws in some small criticisms of how the Virginia Council of Churches handled the resettlement, but the whole tone of the piece follows the politically correct theme—those who challenge the righteousness of this sacrosanct program are bad bad people:

But ultimately, the problem was an “unwelcoming atmosphere,” said Frances Tinsley of Church World Service, the church council’s parent organization. “It’s pretty dangerous when you have people who say, ‘We don’t want you here.’ “

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“That’s very sad,” she said. “What does that say about America?”

What is very sad is that tactics like these are employed by those who purport to be such good Christian people against other Christian people in order to silence them. 

For new readers, Church World Service is the federal contractor that hired Virginia Council of Churches (VCC) to bring refugees quietly to Western Maryland.   To answer Tim Rowland’s question about who pulled the plug on VCC—Church World Service pulled the plug because the US State Dept. told them to.  The whole issue was eating up staff time and VCC had become an embarrassment for all those involved.  As a matter of fact, I’m guessing, but I have a hunch that VCC got the hook for reasons greater than its Hagerstown troubles.

Blogs are blossoming!

Look out Tim Rowland.   It appears that the Herald-Mail is getting competition daily, as are mainstream newspapers across the fruited plain.   Someone just brought this Maryland blog to my attention.  It’s called Red Maryland and it too has a post about how “unwelcoming” we are here in Hagerstown (aka Hicksville), USA.  

I’ve been thinking, wouldn’t it be ironic someday if struggling Hagerstown became a booming town because it had rejected the multicultural/diversity-is-great myth.    Maybe we could even sell it as a city that had old-timey redneck values; a sign out on the dual highway could read:  “Welcome to the most unwelcome city in America.”  

Tim Rowland, confused humorist

Columnist Tim Rowland of the Hagerstown Herald-Mail is the only writer I know of who would try to make people who don’t like the Ku Klux Klan look bad. His column today is titled “Hagerstown racist? No, we ‘unwelcome’ outsiders equally.”

His sarcastic and I suppose meant-to-be-funny point is that the refugees are only one instance of Hagerstown being unwelcoming.  Residents are so-o-o-o-o unwelcoming that they also don’t like Willy Mays, outside school superintendents, and downtown developers. And:

Racist? We’re not racist, we hate everybody equally. Remember, we didn’t want the Klan in Sharpsburg, either. And we certainly don’t like the school board hiring outside talent, no matter what the skin color.

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We’re not Hagerstown, we’re Goldilocksville. We don’t like anyone too light (Klan) or too dark (refugees), too rich (city developers) or too poor (Section 8), too smart (school superintendents) or too dumb (me).

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It don’t matter if you be from Burma or Madagascar, New York or Baltimore. West Virginia? Forget you. And we’re not real happy about those Pennsylvanians. They’re driving on the roads that we paid for with our hard-earned tax money.

So we’re just dumb, mean bumpkins. The only new thing we’d like in our community is Elvis, says Tim. In contrast, Tim Rowland is a big-hearted guy who would like to take care of all of “God’s most desperate children on earth.” No matter what the consequences, even  it means putting them up in his own home, no doubt. He’d look good to St. Peter, but perhaps most important, he’d feel good about himself. And that’s really the most important thing.