WND has discovered what amounts to the government playbook
for countering the rising “backlash” against the secret planting of Muslim
refugees into cities and towns across America.
The 2013 report anticipated two years ago that resistance
would increase to the seeding of communities with Muslim refugees if counter
measures were not undertaken. The report was prophetic.
Last year, WND reported how the
mayor of Athens, Georgia, requested the federal government not send any
refugees to her town until she could get a handle on the costs. Earlier this
year, another high-profile case of pushback emerged in Spartanburg, South
Carolina, in Rep. Trey Gowdy’s district, a story WND
first reported in April.
In Wyoming, the only state that does
not have a refugee resettlement agreement with the U.S. State Department, Gov.
Matt Mead was “exploring” whether he should start such a program. But after
stories in the local media and
on WND, Mead dropped the plan.
Now, WND has learned the government and its contractors have
a stock plan on how to deal with what they call “backlash” to refugee
resettlement in American cities.
Titled “Resettlement
at Risk: Meeting Emerging Challenges to Refugee Resettlement in Local
Communities,” the report by one of the federal
government’s top resettlement contractors admits that communities “across the
country” are pushing back against the refugee program, especially when it
involves the infusion of Muslims into their city or town.
In the wake of the report, the Obama
administration has handed out millions of dollars in grants to organizations
like Welcoming America, which works to “educate” elected officials and the public
in “receiving communities” before refugees arrive. Welcoming America was
started in 2010 with seed money from George Soros’s Open Society Institute.
The U.S. State Department, working with the United Nations,
accepts about 70,000 foreign refugees for permanent resettlement in the United
States each year, distributing them to more than 190 cities and towns across
America.
Dealing with uncooperative elected
leaders
The report lays out a strategy for dealing with
uncooperative politicians who insist on representing the concerns of their
constituents as opposed to the interests of the refugee industry.
The report calls for “new tools to fight back against a
determined legislator or governor who has decided to challenge resettlement for
political or other reasons.”
One of those tools is Obama-supporter David Lubell’s
Welcoming America. The group is dispatched to areas where native-born Americans
are not sufficiently “welcoming” and runs advertising campaigns on TV, radio
and billboards touting the economic contributions of refugees and other “new
Americans.”
The 2013 report, authored by the Hebrew Immigrant Aid
Society and financed by a wealthy New York family foundation, cites three
examples of push back – in Georgia, Tennessee and New Hampshire.
Tamping down an uprising in
Georgia
In Georgia, Gov. Nathan Deal in 2011 ordered a hold on
federal money flowing to refugee resettlement contractors until a review of the
program could be completed.
A group of residents and at least one elected official in
the city of Clarkston complained that the city was being overwhelmed by
refugees and the governor wanted to investigate.
“Although the governor’s office offered no reason for the
review, it is believed that an elected official from Clarkston, a small city
east of Atlanta, complained to the governor on behalf of a constituent,” the
report states. “The official, who in 2003 had introduced legislation to require
resettlement agencies to notify local government officials if 10 or more
refugees would be resettled in a community at one time, told the governor’s
office that Clarkston was at ‘capacity.’”
That prompted an army of refugee advocates and lobbyists to
leap into action.
“Facing the prospect of staff layoffs and the disruption of
critical services for refugees, the network of agencies providing services to
refugees created an informal coalition to advocate for the release of the
federal funds,” the report says. “The coalition worked to gather information
and educate elected officials, influential supporters of the governor, as well
as police chiefs and school officials, about the economic benefits of refugee
resettlement in Georgia.”
The coalition got U.S. Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., along with
the Clarkston mayor, to write a letter to the governor in support of refugee
resettlement. In December 2011 Deal relented and released federal funds for the
resettlements to continue in Georgia. The resettlement contractor did, however,
agree to decrease the number of refugees being sent to Georgia the following
year by 20 percent.
Muslim refugees spark concerns
about terrorism
The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society is one of nine government
contractors who do the resettlement work in more than 190 cities and towns
across the U.S. These contractors subcontract with more than 350 smaller
agencies and church groups to get the refugees settled into subsidized housing,
get their children enrolled in school and families signed up for Medicaid.
Among the other nine major contractors are the U.S. Conference of Catholic
Bishops, Church World Services, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services, Episcopal
Migration Service, World Relief and the International Rescue Committee. These
agencies describe themselves as nonprofit “charitable” organizations but they
have the majority of their budgets covered by government grants.
Hebrew Immigrant Aid’s 30-page report says the danger of
push back is exacerbated when Muslims are part of the equation. Americans have
been less receptive to Muslim refugees than those coming from a Christian or
other religious background.
Hebrew Immigrant Aid cited fear of terrorism as one of the
primary concerns that residents have with Muslim refugees settling in their
communities.
“…although cases of refugees connected to terrorism have
been rare and refugees are among the most highly scrutinized and vetted
immigrants in the U.S., anti-immigrant groups have suggested that the program
is a gateway for terrorists. The recruitment of young Somalis by terrorist
cells and the arrest of two resettled Iraqi refugees in Kentucky on terrorism
charges have provided fuel for these allegations,” the report says.
Since the report was written in February 2013, scores more
Somali refugees have been arrested for providing material support for overseas
Islamic terror groups such as al-Shabab. Still others have left the country to
fight for ISIS and al-Shabab.
Just last month six Somalis from
Minnesota were arrested for trying repeatedly to fly to Turkey and join ISIS,
leading U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger to proclaim, “We have a terror recruitment
problem in Minnesota,” WND
reported.
Shifting the blame to Americans
But the report blames the backlash
not on any failure of the government to properly vet refugees but on
“anti-Muslim views” held by native-born Americans. The report also points a
finger at refugee watchdog Ann Corcoran, who started the Refugee Resettlement
Watch blog in 2007 after she learned that
Muslim refugees were arriving in her rural farm community in western Maryland.
Watch Ann Corcoran tell her
personal story of how she got interested in the refugee movement and became the
nation’s leading watchdog of refugee “contractors” posing as charitable
organizations.
“Online forums such as Refugee Resettlement Watch have emerged for
individuals critical of the resettlement program to share their concerns. Many of the posts express disdain for the refugee resettlement program, particularly the resettlement of Muslim refugees, along with anti-Muslim views,” the report states.
Corcoran has repeatedly stated that she is not against
legitimate refugees but she does want the program to be halted until it can be
“cleaned up.” She believes it is plagued by secrecy and lack of accountability
and that public hearings should be held prior to any city being chosen as a
“receiving community.” She says a complete impact study should be conducted and
shared with local residents to remove the mystery that surrounds the program.
Countering the ‘resistance’
Besides Georgia and Maryland, major statewide resistance has
occurred in New Hampshire and Tennessee, according to the report.
“Tennessee, New Hampshire, and Georgia are the only states
that have recently attempted to stop refugee resettlement at the legislative or
executive level,” the report states. “Resistance to resettlement has emerged in
other communities across the country as well, although those states have not
pursued statewide measures to stop resettlement.”
A culture of secrecy
But the report was written before the emergence in March of
a grassroots fight in Spartanburg, South Carolina, where World Relief has
opened a resettlement office and decided to place 60 refugees from Syria, Congo
and other countries over the next year. Once a resettlement office opens in a
city, the deliveries of refugees continue year after year, Corcoran said.
Spartanburg residents led by Christina Jeffrey, the former
historian of the U.S. House of Representatives, approached their congressman,
Gowdy, and started asking questions.
How many were coming, when were they coming, from what
countries, and what would the impact be on local services and the economy?
Where would the refugees find jobs in a city already plagued by high
unemployment and poverty?
Gowdy said he did not know all of the answers, so he fired
off a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry asking for details on how cities
are selected, who is contacted for input on the local level, and many other
pieces of information that are normally kept hidden from local communities.
Kerry responded to Gowdy’s first letter on April 30, but
Gowdy said the answers were vague and incomplete so he sent a second letter in
early May demanding more precise information.
“I think Spartanburg is the Waterloo, the watershed, where
all of the pieces are coming together,” said Corcoran. “Activists there are
going to stay in the fight no matter how heated it gets.”
Not allowed to evangelize Muslims
Jason Lee, a local pastor and director of World Relief
Spartanburg, spoke at a meeting last Monday of the Spartanburg County Council.
One of the arguments he made was that it was good that some of the refugees
coming to South Carolina were non-Christians.
“He said one of the advantages of the program is we can
spread the gospel,” Jeffrey said. “One of the holes in that argument is that
the money is coming from the federal government and it cannot be used to spread
the gospel. They have a contract which they must sign obligating them not to
evangelize, and if he doesn’t know that, he should know it, because he is the
director of World Relief in Spartanburg.”
Corcoran said the resettlement industry compiles an “enemies
list” in local communities where resettlements encounter resistance. “They do
research and develop a list of enemies and potential enemies,” she said. And
that’s not all.
“We recently learned that instructions have gone out
nationwide to give citizens no information when they call a resettlement agency
to ask for the abstract describing plans for their town,” Corcoran said. “It
just further enhances their reputation as being secretive.
“I had a lady email me from Connecticut recently who called
her local Catholic Charities office to ask for their abstract, and they wrote
back and said ‘who are you?’ before they would give her any information. She
said she’d like that abstract.”
The “abstract” is the document describing the number of
refugees planned for a given city, where they will come from and the expected
impact on social services, schools and the job market.
“We’ve recently been given word that citizens who seek these
abstracts are being denied those documents and it appears to be a concerted
national effort to shut down the flow of information from resettlement agencies
to the local concerned citizens,” Corcoran said.
“What you have here are rich foundations joining forces with
the government and working against the regular hard-working Americans who just
want to find out what is happening in their town,” Corcoran added.
Resistance is also more likely when refugees are sent to a smaller
city or town, as opposed to a traditional gateway city like Chicago, L.A.,
Philadelphia, Boston or New York, according to the report.
And if the city is in the midst of “economic distress,”
which many smaller cities are, it is even more likely to push back against the
planting of refugees because of the costs associated with integrating refugees
into schools, housing, and healthcare services, the report says.
The report says refugees tend to stand out in smaller
communities where their “visibility” is accentuated.
Kaplan Fund director has ties to
Soros
The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society was granted $35,000 to
write the report by the New York City-based J.M. Kaplan Fund, whose migration
program is directed by corporate lawyer Suzette Brooks-Masters.
According to her LinkedIn
page, Brooks Masters once worked for
Soros’s Open Society as a researcher on the “Forced Migrations Project.”
She was mentioned as a “friend” by
immigration activists at a Washington press
conference last month in which Obama rolled out his plan
to create more “welcoming communities” for new immigrants and refugees. The
newly formed White House Task Force on New Americans is making a concerted
national effort to turn the immigrants into “new Americans” by removing
barriers to citizenship.
Brooks Masters says on her LinkedIn page that she is
“launching the Receiving Communities Initiative with Welcoming America, and the
creation of the Community College Consortium for Immigrant Education based at
Westchester Community College and IMPRINT (a national collaboration to foster
immigrant professional integration in the US workforce).”
She says she is also working to finance the integration of
unaccompanied alien children from Central America into U.S. communities.
“I am also funding work on the local reception of
unaccompanied minors and trying to improve the integration outcomes for refugees,”
she said on her site.
Use locals to fight resistance
In its recommendations, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid report says
the work of countering backlash should be coordinated at the national level
while using local people at the grassroots level to debunk and counter the
claims of those in the resistance.
The report also calls for Congress to increase funding of
the refugee program, which currently costs taxpayers nearly $1.5 billion per
year, not including the social welfare benefits handed out to refugees. Unlike
most other categories of immigrants, refugees immediately qualify for food
stamps, public housing, Medicaid, Social Security disability and TANF, a
monthly cash assistance program for poor families with children under the age
of 18.
WND
reported last week that Angela Davis, the late 1960s
radical and former leader of the Communist Party USA who went on to lead the
feminist studies program at the University of California at Santa Barbara,
appeared at a rally in Berlin, Germany, May 14-15, in which she said “the
refugee movement is the movement of the 21st century” for radical community
organizers.
http://www.wnd.com/2015/05/u-s-pushback-against-muslim-refugees-growing/
No comments:
Post a Comment