Refugee Resettlement Watch

Aberdeen update: Efforts abound in South Dakota to keep citizens in the dark about refugees

Posted by Ann Corcoran on January 5, 2017

If you missed the story yesterday, go here, to learn about how an arrest, an indictment and a guilty verdict all went missing from local news reports about a Somali refugee who had been in the country one week before his July encounter with a special-needs woman.

Here is a recap and an update from Leo Hohmann at World Net Daily:

A South Dakota newspaper that failed to report on the case of a Somali man convicted of trying to molest a severely handicapped woman, changed gears Wednesday after being outed by WND and decided to publish a story about the crime.

south-dakota-state-map-600

Most SD refugees are placed in Sioux Falls. How Mohamed got to Aberdeen within a week of his arrival in the US and was left unsupervised is still unexplained.

The story ran on page three of the Aberdeen American News under the headline “Sentencing later this month for a man convicted of attempted sexual contact.

But the newspaper left out an important detail.

The convicted sex criminal, 39-year-old Liban Mohamed, was a recently arrived refugee brought to the state from Somalia at the invitation of the U.S. government. He had been in the country only about a week and in Aberdeen only one day when he wandered up to a group home and tried to molest a 31-year-old mentally handicapped woman who was sitting outside the facility.

Mohamed, freshly arrived in the U.S. just days prior, wandered more than a mile from his hotel on foot and preyed upon a mentally handicapped woman at the Aspire Inc. residential care facility, which houses about 150 handicapped people. His victim was left unattended for only minutes. When a caregiver returned, she caught him with his hand between the disabled woman’s legs, reaching toward her private parts.

AAN’s belated story also neglected to mention that Mohamed had been brought to Aberdeen to work in the local meatpacking plant, DemKota Ranch, which has become a magnet for cheap refugee labor.

I did some looking around last night and there is some very funny business that went on with this particular meat plant and its former owners that involved the state government and then-Governor Rounds (now US Senator for SD).  It would be good if someone out there took time to investigate the broader story.

Near the end of his update, Hohmann, reports on a group of citizens who met with the South Dakota Attorney General in October (when surely this AG would have known about this case while the citizens did not!):

marty-jackly

What did AG Jackley know and when did he know it?

Meanwhile, a citizens group tells WND they met with South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley on Oct. 3 at the state Capitol in Pierre to discuss their concerns about refugee resettlement and its impact on safety.

The meeting was affable with the approximately 10 citizens sharing concerns about refugees who might put the safety of their communities at risk.

 

Then the atmosphere changed:

“If you guys know of anything, can cite anything [negative] that’s happening in your communities, then please tell me,” he reportedly said.

“He wouldn’t give the concerned people the answers they were looking for,” said one person present at the meeting. “I watched him and was thinking what are you doing? It was more like dodge ball and ‘what do you know?’”

He told the group refugee resettlement was a federal issue and “his hands were tied,” one participant of the meeting said. “What’s upsetting is, he already knew, he would have known that this crime had happened in Aberdeen.

So what are they hiding in South Dakota?

The situation is shaping up there to look very similar to what happened in Twin Falls, Idaho where a sexual assault case blew things up—big company/big money wants foreign laborers, pols going along, newspaper covering for them all, citizens treated like troublemakers and labeled racists for wanting answers about why their community is being radically altered and wanting to know who is behind it?

Posted in Changing the way we live, Colonization, Community destabilization, Crimes, diversity's dark side, Muslim refugees, Pockets of Resistance, Refugee Resettlement Program, The Opposition, Who is going where | Tagged: , , , | 5 Comments »

Nearly 30,000 ‘refugees’ admitted in last 15 months from two terror-exporting countries

Posted by Ann Corcoran on January 5, 2017

Those two countries are Syria and Somalia*** as the Obama Administration works overtime to pour as many refugees in to the US as they can before Donald Trump takes office on January 20th.

The numbers we have been reporting in recent weeks go way beyond anything we have seen in the last nearly ten years of writing this blog.

Photo by: Dennis Van Tine/STAR MAX/IPx 6/16/15 Donald Trump announces his Candidacy for President of The United States of America at Trump Tower. (NYC)

Trump transition needs to know that John Kerry’s State Department is cutting corners and knocking themselves out to get as many Muslim refugees placed in US towns and cities before January 20th as they can!

Questions are also beginning to arise about whether the refugee agencies (the non-profit resettlement contractors) can properly care for them due to those high numbers of arrivals. We have reports of refugees placed in hotels, delays in medical screening, and refugees without winter clothing, all are violations of US State Department regulations for contractors.

I promised some maps for someone, which sent me to Wrapsnet.org this morning.

These are maps (screenshots) for the placement and numbers of Syrians and Somalis for the last 15 months.  That would include all of FY2016 and the first three months of FY2017 which ended on December 31, 2016. (The fiscal year for the placement of refugees runs from Oct. 1 of one year to Sept. 30th of the next year.)

Obama said at the beginning of FY16 that his State Department would admit 10,000 Syrians (98% Muslim) to the US that year.  We are now (in the last 15 months) up to 16,153!

screenshot-114

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No Syrians went to Hawaii or Alaska, and if you can’t read Florida the number is 847.

 

Virtually all Somali refugees are Muslims. You should know we pick them up all over the world and place them in your towns and cities.  So Donald Trump’s administration needs to be careful and not say we will halt refugees coming from Somalia (for example), because few if any come from Somalia directly. (We do expect Trump to halt them!)

screenshot-116

 

screenshot-117

Alaska received 36 Somalis, Hawaii 0, and that Florida number is 148. Again the map is for the last 15 months.

 

And, if you missed it yesterday, many questions remain about one Somali admitted to the US in 2016 who was free to wander the streets of Aberdeen, SD and attempt to sexually assault a special-needs woman there. See our post yesterday, here.

***Thousands more Iraqi, Afghan, and Burmese Muslims have entered as well during these same 15 months, but we chose to focus only on Syria and Somalia for this report.

Posted in 2016 Presidential campaign, Changing the way we live, Colonization, Community destabilization, Muslim refugees, Obama, Refugee Resettlement Program, Refugee statistics, Where to find information, Who is going where | Tagged: , , , | 1 Comment »

Active TB showing up more often in US refugee population

Posted by Ann Corcoran on January 5, 2017

You probably got this news the other day at Drudge, but I am posting this and another article about Tuberculosis by Michael Patrick Leahy at Breitbart to keep our ‘Health Issues’ category up to date.  If you’ve never scrolled through it, we have cataloged 321 posts in the last 9 years on the topic of refugee/immigrant health problems.  Some of our very first posts in the category were about costly Tuberculosis treatment for refugees in Ft. Wayne, Indiana.

symptoms_of_tb

TB Symptoms don’t usually show up in the first year of infection. https://www.physio-pedia.com/File:Symptoms_of_TB.png

Here is Leahy three days ago.  BTW the refugee industry is quick to tell you that immigrants with latent TB are permitted entry to the US, but pay attention because these are refugees with active TB.

Between 2012 and 2015, 1,565 refugees were diagnosed with active tuberculosis (TB) in the United States, according to annual reports published by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).

The CDC data, which has been public but obscure until now, shows that the number of refugees diagnosed with active TB in recent years is more than three times greater than previously reported by any media outlet.

The number of refugees diagnosed with TB in the United States has increased every year since 2012, the first year the CDC began publishing data on foreign-born cases of the disease by category, when 358 were diagnosed. In 2013, 396 refugees were diagnosed with TB. The following year, 2014, 402 refugees were diagnosed with TB, and in 2015, the number of refugees diagnosed with TB rose again to 409. Data for 2016 has not yet been reported.

Continue reading here.

And, then yesterday, Leahy, who has become an expert on the Tuberculosis problem growing in America, reported that a middle school student in South Carolina has been diagnosed with active TB.  School officials are working hard to keep the story tamped down.  I wondered, when I read this, if parents at the school were told to keep their mouths shut about the status of the student—is he/she foreign born? Is he or she a refugee?

Breitbart:

A student at Castle Heights Middle School in Rock Hill, South Carolina was diagnosed with active tuberculosis (TB) in December.

Officials with the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC) and Rock Hill Schools, part of the York County Public School System, are not disclosing the patient’s country of origin.

“We can’t provide any more information about the individual that was confirmed with the case of tuberculosis,” a spokesperson for the South Carolina DHEC tells Breitbart News.

“We are in the middle of our contact investigations,” the spokesperson adds.

LOL! Leahy’s reputation must be spreading!

“Your reporting on Breitbart.com implies that you will attempt to use this data to indicate the confirmed case of TB is from a foreign-born student connected in some way to the influx of refugees into the United States over the past few years,” Rock Hills Schools spokesperson Frost adds.

“The identity of the student is and will remain private as we are bound by federal law (FERPA) to not release medical or educational information about students. As such, we cannot confirm or provide the birth location of the student involved in this case,” he notes.

Continue reading here. Leahy has much more including many links to related information.

I’ve said it more than once, and will keep saying it: If Islamic terrorism doesn’t frighten you, this (sending your kids to school were Tuberculosis could be found) should!

And, would someone who works for a refugee agency tell us if volunteers are trained to spot symptoms in the refugees they are helping and are given any instructions on how to keep themselves safe?

Posted in Changing the way we live, health issues, Reforms needed, Refugee Resettlement Program, Taxpayer goodies | Tagged: , , | 4 Comments »

We need Kris Kobach in the Trump White House!

Posted by Ann Corcoran on January 4, 2017

If you have been looking around and wondering who might champion our causes in a Trump Administration and only seeing Senator Jeff Sessions as Attorney General and his former staffer Stephen Miller at Trump’s side in the White House, this appointment could go a long way to assuage your concerns!

From McClatchyDC:

WASHINGTON

Groups that want President-elect Donald Trump to make good on his campaign promise to rein in illegal immigration may have found a way to get a key ally into a pivotal job – while getting around a potentially reluctant Congress.

kris_kobach_trump

Do it Donald!

They are urging Trump to hire Kris Kobach, Kansas secretary of state and an immigration hardliner, for a newly created position – immigration czar – that would not need Senate confirmation.

“We have been pushing them,” said Roy Beck, executive director of NumbersUSA, a group that advocates for greater immigration enforcement. “The idea has been percolating in a number of places.”

The proposal would put one person in charge of an issue that impacts a dozen departments and agencies, including the departments of Homeland Security, State, Justice, Labor, Housing and Health and Human Services.

Kobach, a member of Trump’s transition team who has met with the future president twice in recent weeks, had been considered for attorney general and homeland security secretary.

But Kobach could face confirmation problems. Republicans who have more moderate views on immigration would be unlikely to support him. They include Sens. John McCain and Jeff Flake, both of Arizona. [beware the open borders Republicans—ed]

“It’s designed to put Kris Kobach in a position of authority,” said Frank Sharry, the executive director of America’s Voice, an immigration advocacy group. “It’s widely recognized that Kris Kobach can’t be confirmed by the United States Senate.”

Kobach had advised Trump on immigration policy throughout the campaign and added Trump’s promise to build a wall along the Southern border to the Republican Party’s national platform.

More here.

Although with a mission narrower in scope, Obama designated Samantha Power (who would later become Ambassador to the UN) as his Iraqi refugee “czar” early in his administration—-so such appointments are not unprecedented.

Posted in 2016 Presidential campaign, Other Immigration, Reforms needed, Refugee Resettlement Program | Tagged: , | 4 Comments »

Aberdeen, SD: Silence about pre-Christmas trial of Somali refugee (Twin Falls redux?) guilty of attempted sexual assault

Posted by Ann Corcoran on January 4, 2017

A newly arrived Somali refugee*** who court records show had arrived in Aberdeen, SD to work for the controversial meat packing plant there was found guilty by a jury on December 20th of attempting to sexually assault a special-needs woman.

Read the story!  And, ask yourselves, why didn’t the local media report on the case?

Did it have something to do with the controversy roiling there among citizens who were vigorously opposing a plan to make Aberdeen a new resettlement site (only Sioux Falls and Huron were getting direct resettlements), a plan supported by the mayor, as we reported last April.

mike-levsen-mayor

Aberdeen Mayor Mike Levsen: ““We need workers, and we certainly would be glad to have more friends and neighbors and more children in our schools and more cultures that we can learn from.” [And you get to pay for it all while big business gets cheap labor!] https://refugeeresettlementwatch.wordpress.com/2016/04/16/heads-up-aberdeen-south-dakota-new-resettlement-site-being-proposed/

BTW, for new readers, my title refers to the sexual assault case that the media and elected officials downplayed in Twin Falls, Idaho earlier in 2016.

Here is what Leo Hohmann (WND) learned yesterday.  After you read the whole incredible story, see what I have to say below about the timeline.

A refugee newly arrived from Somalia has been tried and convicted for attempting to sexually assault a special-needs woman while she was sitting outside of a home for the disabled in Aberdeen, South Dakota.

Liban Mohamed, 39, was in the United States for only about a week when he tried to force himself on a 31-year-old woman with severe disabilities. He is not a U.S. citizen, but whether he will be deported in the wake of his conviction remains unclear.

The trial for Mohamed was held just a few days before Christmas and not a word of the conviction has made it into the local media, residents of Aberdeen told WND on Tuesday.

Mohamed speaks no English and required two interpreters at trial, according to the state’s attorney who prosecuted the case.

“I do know he lived in Aberdeen,” prosecutor Christopher White told WND. “The day that it happened, he was staying at the White House Inn hotel in Aberdeen. What came out at trial, in his defense attorney’s opening statement, was that he arrived in Aberdeen that day and had only been in the United States for approximately a week, and he had come to work at the beef plant in Aberdeen. But I don’t know if he had already started working or was about to start work there.”

Mohamed mentioned to law enforcement that he had been hired on at the Demkota Ranch beef plant, White said. [Someone needs to do some research on DemKota Ranch Beef and figure out how closely they are working with Lutheran Social Services of SD and the US State Dept.—ed]

Read the whole thing!  Click here.  Don’t miss the line where Mohamed told the arresting officers that what he did was o.k. in his country!

Hohmann wraps up with this:

According to court records obtained by WND, Mohamed was arrested July 30 and indicted by a grand jury on Aug. 15. The jury was seated on Monday, Dec. 19, and the trial was held Tuesday, Dec. 20.

What a coincidence!

I was in Aberdeen meeting with residents on July 25, just five days before the arrest. Citizens there were becoming troubled by the changes they were seeing in their community and expressed fear about just such a thing happening.  They told me that the meat plant was luring labor like these newly arrived Somalis and they had already noticed an increase in crime. They said that they did not want a resettlement office in town.

As we reported in April, there was a big push going on to open a direct resettlement site in Aberdeen which would presumably supply labor for DemKota directly from Africa, Asia and the Middle East.  A small refugee office existed in Huron, but most refugees placed in South Dakota still go to Sioux Falls which is 200 miles away from Aberdeen.

tim-jurgens

Tim Jurgens, State Refugee Coordinator. SD is a Wilson-Fish state which means that state elected officials have virtually no say about the program that is run by Lutheran Social Services and the US Dept. of State in Washington, DC.

Because of the public outcry in late summer and early fall, Lutheran Social Services appeared to back off a plan to open a direct resettlement site in Aberdeen after some of the citizens I met on July 25 organized a resistance. (I’ll give you some numbers below for SD).

The first public meeting organized by residents occurred a little over two weeks later and the Aberdeen News didn’t miss that event reporting on it on August 12th. Go here to see what happened at the heated meeting and read about the paper’s biased news coverage.

Look at the timeline.  Mohamed was arrested on July 30th (no local media coverage).

A grand jury indicted him three days after (on August 15th) the paper wrote in negative (biased!) tones about the citizens who dared question what was happening in their quiet town.  Did the paper cover up the sexual assault story on purpose because it confirmed the things citizens said they were worried about (or was it just incompetence)?

Look at what was happening in Twin Falls, Idaho in the first week of August! Click here.  All hell had broken loose about a sexual assault there!

And, then of course it is quite stunning that no court reporter was present at the trial on December 20th.  But, also not present was the family of the victim, and there still remains a question about how the guardians of the mentally-impaired woman were not told to be in court.

Many more questions remain!

Have the wheels come off the US Refugee Admissions Program? Are they trying to shoe-horn so many refugees in to the country that there is flagrant violation of contracts going on? 

Refugees are to be placed by the contractor (LSS SD) directly in to apartments or rental houses and their initial resettlement period is about 3 months during which the contractor introduces the new refugee to American culture, signs them up for their welfare services, gets kids in school, tries to find them jobs, and arranges their medical screening (for things like TB!).

I am simply blown away by the information given by the state’s attorney that Mohamed had only been in the US a week and was walking the streets of Aberdeen unsupervised. 

What! Did LSS simply bring him in to Sioux Falls and put him on a bus to Aberdeen to work at the meat plant?  And, then put him up in a hotel?  (I’m getting more and more reports of refugees being housed in hotels when State Department policy has always been that the refugee is to be picked up at the airport and escorted to their furnished apartment with ‘culturally appropriate’ food in the refrig!).  What is going on? Too many refugees for them to handle?

I know it is pretty easy to unload on Mohamed, but why was he literally walking the streets in Aberdeen?  He didn’t even speak English.  Was no one supervising him? Was no one giving him any instructions about American culture and laws especially as it relates to the treatment of women?

Does this guy have a family? Or are we admitting single men to work in meatpacking now? Didn’t Homeland Security find out during his vetting process that he might have a problem?

What did Aberdeen’s mayor Mike Levsen know (about the sexual assault case) and when did he know it?

What role did Aberdeen’s mayor play in bringing DemKota to Aberdeen, and did he encourage LSS to open a refugee office to supply the company with cheap labor? Is it even a US-owned company?

I think folks in Aberdeen need to start having a serious look at the man they elected mayor in 2004!  What! 12 years! Isn’t it time for a new mayor?  See one of many stories about him here.

South Dakota numbers

This is getting too long, so here (below) are some numbers from South Dakota (via Wrapsnet.org).   I’m sure this story isn’t going away any time soon especially since sentencing is scheduled for January 30th!  (After expensive-to-taxpayers incarceration, will he be sentenced to be deported?)

In the 8 fiscal years since Obama has been in office, South Dakota received a total of 4,319 refugees.  The largest groups were Bhutanese and Burmese, but Somalis came in at #3 with 577 placed in the state.  Almost all of them were resettled in Sioux Falls. 64 Somalis came in FY 2016 (Mohamed would have been one of them, but does he have a family that we are now completely supporting somewhere else in SD?).

***Almost all Somalis who get in to the US come as resettled refugees, however, if we learn that he came in with a work visa that is going to open up a whole new controversy for the incoming Trump administration.  OMG! Work visas from terror-producing countries of the world! Jeff Sessions, as newly appointed Attorney General must look into this case.

Posted in Africa, Crimes, diversity's dark side, Muslim refugees, Refugee Resettlement Program, Taxpayer goodies, Who is going where | Tagged: , , , | 6 Comments »

Refugee advocates think Trump can’t change Obama’s 110,000 refugee goal for this year

Posted by Ann Corcoran on January 3, 2017

I have no time to say much about this sob story in South Carolina’s The State newspaper about Muslim refugees resettled in the Carolinas (mostly in North Carolina) because I have to dash to jury duty again today.  But, I can’t not mention this little blip from Jason Lee.  We wrote about him on many occasions when he was chosen to work for a refugee contractor, World Relief, in Spartanburg, SC in 2015.

trump-and-sessions

Trump Test! Trump here with Senator Jeff Sessions his Attorney General nominee, can and must pause the Refugee Admissions Program. He can do it on day one, but I give him 4 weeks (I’m being generous)—until February 16th to do it! Sessions knows what can and should be done!

That was a resettlement plan that resulted in a heated controversy. Spartanburg is also in Rep. Trey Gowdy’s district and despite efforts by the Immigration Subcommittee chairman (Gowdy!) to question the choice of Spartanburg as a new resettlement site (he wrote a letter to Sec. of State Kerry), it went ahead as planned.

Jason Lee is wrong.  Congress does not approve the level of resettlement for the coming year (it is not an act of Congress).

The President of the United States proposes the level in September preceding the fiscal year and sends his determination to Congress for “consultation,” but there is no legal requirement for Congress to agree to whatever number the President has chosen.  Of course, if they give the President money to admit a certain number of refugees through the Appropriations process, then that is tantamount agreement to the numbers.

That said, Donald Trump can and should, because he has the power to do it, limit the number set by Obama on day one of his Presidency.  He can halt immigration from certain regions of the world, or pause the refugee program altogether. In fact, he would not be the first to pause the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program.  In 2002, the program was almost ground to a halt as fear grew in the wake of the 9/11 attack.

jason-lee

Jason Lee’s wishful thinking?

Here is what Lee told The State:

Congress has approved admitting 110,000 refugees in fiscal 2017.

It will be difficult for President Trump to cut that number, said Jason Lee, former director of the refugee assistance group World Relief Spartanburg. [As you know, World Relief is one of nine major federal refugee resettlement contractors, paid by the head to place refugees in your towns—ed]

“A number of questions won’t be answered until President Trump takes office,” Lee said. “(But) he’s already backed off not allowing Muslim immigrants into the country.”

Read it all here.

See our archive on Spartanburg by clicking here.  (I warn you there are many posts there!)

It is through the Spartanburg controversy that I formed my opinion of SC Governor Nikki Haley (Trump’s nominee to be Ambassador to the UN).

Posted in Changing the way we live, Colonization, Community destabilization, Muslim refugees, Obama, Pockets of Resistance, Refugee Resettlement Program, Resettlement cities, Who is going where | Tagged: , , , | 15 Comments »

Mama Merkel: Boo-hoo! We tried to help them and they attack us

Posted by Ann Corcoran on January 3, 2017

Invasion of Europe News……

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has a bad year ahead.  On December 19th, a failed asylum seeker killed a dozen people celebrating a Christmas tradition in Berlin. Here we learn that a Syrian refugee (who had been granted permission to stay in dear old Deutschland) has been arrested on terror charges, and she is up for election later this year. To top it off Donald Trump, rather than her soulmate Barack Obama, will be in the White House.

From Reuters:

A Syrian migrant who arrived in Germany two years ago has been arrested on suspicion of seeking funds from Islamic State to drive truck bombs into a crowd, a German state prosecutor’s office said on Monday.

barackobamaangelamerkel

Obama to Frau Merkel: Ich liebe dich! You did good! Islam will ultimately rule Europa thanks to your kindness. (No, Obama did not say that as far as we know so don’t spread this as fake news!)

The arrest follows an attack two weeks ago when a Tunisian whose asylum request had been rejected rammed a truck into a Berlin Christmas market, killing 12 people. The man, Anis Amri, 24, was later shot dead by Italian police.

In the latest case, the prosecutor in the western city of Saarbruecken said the 38-year-old Syrian was detained on Saturday and a formal arrest warrant was issued on Sunday on suspicion that he was trying to raise 180,000 euros ($189,000) to fund an attack.

[….]

The Syrian is from the city of Raqqa, Islamic State’s main stronghold in the country. The prosecutor’s office in Saarbruecken, near the French border, had been alerted to his activities by the BKA federal crime office.

The Syrian came to Germany on Dec. 5, 2014, just before a wave of more than 1.1 million asylum-seekers arrived from the Middle East, Africa and Asia in 2015. He was given permission to stay in Germany on Jan. 12, 2015.

Chancellor Angela Merkel, who made the now-controversial decision to open the country’s borders to refugees in September, 2015, described Islamist terrorism on New Year’s Eve as the greatest test facing Germany.

She has also said she is sickened by the prospect that refugees Germany has tried to help could mount attacks.

Continue reading here.

For all of our ‘Invasion of Europe’ posts, click here.  This archive extends back many years.

For fun, search photos of Angela Merkel and Barack Obama (steamy!).

Posted in Asylum seekers, Colonization, Community destabilization, Crimes, diversity's dark side, Europe, Immigration fraud, Muslim refugees, Obama, So what did they expect? | Tagged: , | 2 Comments »

Lancaster, PA school district didn’t cave to ACLU, appealed refugee students case to higher court

Posted by Ann Corcoran on January 2, 2017

In my previous post I noted that the media (the New York Times) is working overtime to sell the public on the notion that everything is just peachy in Lancaster with the decades-old refugee program there.  Then we see stories like this one that indicate at least some segments of the community are not thrilled at all—namely the school system.

BTW, see my Ten Things your town needs to know when ‘welcoming’ refugees and see that the first great impact on your community will most likely be in the school system.

Look how much this lawsuit filed by the ACLU is costing Lancaster taxpayers! If your town becomes a new ‘welcoming’ site, be prepared for unanticipated costs like these!

From Keystone Crossroads (hat tip: Joanne):

About 17,000 of the refugees arriving each year in the U.S. are children, yet their education — in particular, how public schools might accommodate them — plays a surprisingly minor role in placing families.

Federal law says public schools have to adjust to meet any number of students’ varying needs, including overcoming language barriers.

But that doesn’t always happen.

A few lawsuits have been filed in recent years on behalf of student refugees suffering the consequences of systematic shortcomings.

Schools have settled out of court in most cases.

Not Lancaster.

[….]

Lawyers for the Pennsylvania ACLU and Philadelphia-based Education Law Center sued the School District of Lancaster last summer.

The lawsuit claims that, despite the city’s robust tradition of resettlement, several teenage refugees waited months to enroll in public school. Ultimately, they were denied outright or diverted to magnet school Phoenix Academy, which has less support for nonnative English speakers than mainstream McCaskey High School.

[….]

In the meantime, a judicial panel in Philadelphia is considering Lancaster’s appeal. (See that story here)

[….]

Whether the district’s on the hook for any expenses depends on how the case turns out.

Defense attorneys’ bills are at about $150,000 so far, according to the district’s business administrator Matthew Przywara. The ACLU’s costs are approaching $2 million.

But Lancaster’s insurer has indicated it won’t pay out more than $100,000 for this lawsuit, district officials say.

There is more, continue reading here.

If the ACLU prevails be forewarned for refugee resettlement to your town to become even more expensive!

Click here for more on Lancaster, PA.  Someone should do a study of the negative impact on this longtime resettlement site.

Posted in Changing the way we live, Colonization, Community destabilization, Pockets of Resistance, Refugee Resettlement Program, Resettlement cities, Taxpayer goodies | Tagged: , , | 4 Comments »

BT! Church World Service working hard to get Syrian Muslims placed in Lancaster, PA

Posted by Ann Corcoran on January 2, 2017

BT=Before Trump

This is the first of two posts (second one is here) on Lancaster, PA this morning.  I’ve been interested in Lancaster ever since that city’s refugee program was linked to Church World Service’s (CWS) placement of refugees in my county seat.  Those were mostly Meshketian (Russian Turkish Muslims) back in 2007.

Five years later, I traveled to Lancaster to a meeting of the refugee industry there—the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement was meeting with refugee contractors and advocates in 2013. A federal ORR employee shocked me by referring to any of the communities questioning the program as “pockets of resistance.”  He was happy to tell the gathering that Pennsylvania was ‘welcoming’ and didn’t have any PORs.

cws-mccullough-arrest

Church World Service does not just resettle refugees, but they advocate for illegal aliens as well. CWS CEO Rev. John McCullough being arrested in Washington, DC protesting in support of Obama’s executive amnesty. Photo and story here: http://njfon.org/2015/04/08/faith-groups-challenge-fifth-circuit-court-on-presidents-immigration-actions/ McCullough pulls down an annual salary of over $300,000 a year from his CWS work and from “related organizations.” Page 13- 14 http://www.guidestar.org/FinDocuments/2015/134/080/2015-134080201-0c44e710-9.pdf

If you would like to get some background on Lancaster before reading this below, click here for our Lancaster archive.

This is the news that appeared in the New York Times and reposted here in Vermont newspaper. Church World Service (with the NYT) is trying so hard to make everything look so perfect in Lancaster.  But, it isn’t and you will see what I mean in my next post.

Their [Syrian family—ed] imminent arrival explains all the commotion inside this slate-colored house in the small city of Lancaster, in south-central Pennsylvania. The state may have gone to Donald Trump, who likened the Syrian resettlement program to a “a great Trojan horse” for terrorists. But he isn’t president yet.

[….]

He [Josh, CWS’s 26 year old housing guy—ed] scours a government checklist of housing requirements for a resettlement [Contractors sign contracts to provide essential items for the refugees’ new home—ed], mindful that whatever he spends is deducted from a refugee’s one-time government grant of no more than $1,125. A family’s combined grants must cover its rent and other expenses until the nonprofit has helped the adults acquire Social Security numbers and jobs.

I want you to know (and the NYT doesn’t) that it is $1,125 per family member, so the Syrian family of 6 being discussed here will get $6,750 (plus welfare) and that CWS will get another approximately $6,750 as their share (of your tax dollars) to resettle this family (for their salaries and overhead).

Such encounters [Josh meets a refugee at Walmart***] happen often in Lancaster, whose rich history of acceptance is rooted, in part, in the influence of the Mennonites, Amish and other faiths. A glimpse of the local worldview came in January when a supportive rally of more than 200 people drowned out a much smaller anti-immigrant protest outside the Church World Service office in Lancaster. [See our report on the resistors rally, here.]

Sheila Mastropietro, the group’s longtime supervisor in Lancaster, took heart in the moment. It reflected a communal understanding of both the global refugee crisis and the rigorous screening process that refugees undergo before coming to the United States. [The communal understanding is wearing thin as you will see in my next post.—ed]

The big question for the resettlement contractors is: What will Trump do and when will he do it?

Still, given a president-elect who seems averse to the country’s modest commitment to refugee relocation, Mastropietro says, “We don’t know what to expect.”

[….]

Last fiscal year, the Lancaster office of the Church World Service helped to resettle 407 of the 85,000 refugees admitted to this country; this fiscal year, its target is 550 of a hoped-for 110,000.

“We are acting as if the numbers are going to be the same — until we hear something different,” she says.

Lancaster a happy “medley of cultures” (then why did Lancaster County go 57% for Trump):

Decades of resettlement work have transformed the Lancaster area into a medley of cultures so rich that Amer Alfayadh, 34, a senior case manager, struggles to name them all: “Syrians, Iraqis, Somalis, Congolese, Ukrainians, Belorussians, people from Kazakhstan. Then, of course, Lebanese, Palestinians. Bhutanese, Nepalese, Burmese, Sri Lankans …”

***I would love to know what the deal is with Walmart.  Wherever I traveled on my middle America tour this past summer, I heard that Walmart was a gathering place for Muslim refugees.  Is Walmart giving them gift cards or other goodies?  Does anyone know?

Posted in 2016 Presidential campaign, Changing the way we live, Colonization, Community destabilization, Muslim refugees, Pockets of Resistance, Refugee Resettlement Program, Resettlement cities, Taxpayer goodies, Who is going where | Tagged: , , | 5 Comments »

9/11 Mastermind explains why they call it the ‘Religion of Peace’

Posted by Ann Corcoran on January 2, 2017

This is the 5th in my series on James Mitchell’s ‘Enhanced Interrogation’ where the CIA contractor tells us how Enhanced Interrogation Techniques did work to reveal not only upcoming planned terror attacks, but also revealed the mindset behind the Islamic supremacists’ view of how things should be in the world.

Our initial interest was in Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s assertion that the Islamists’ plan is to conquer America through immigration and by out-breeding us, but that violent attacks would ultimately wear us down and prepare us for submission.

See previous posts here, here , here and here.

 

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Make it your new year’s resolution to learn more about Islam!

P.S. I sure hope Donald Trump takes time to read this book!

Posted in Changing the way we live, Muslim refugees, Refugee Resettlement Program, Stealth Jihad | Tagged: , | 8 Comments »

 
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