Plan to infuse
small towns with Muslim migrants meets resistance, Montana the latest state targeted for Syrian
'refugees', by Leo Hohmann, 1/29/16, WND
Another big battle is
brewing over Syrian “refugees” sweeping into small-town America. Rural folks in
Montana are pushing back against plans by urban elites to plant hundreds of
Muslims from the Third World into Helena and Missoula. They plan a protest
rally at 10 a.m. Monday in front of the county courthouse in Missoula. And if
the pattern holds of similar rallies in Twin Falls, Idaho, and Fargo, North
Dakota, a contingent of pro-refugee people will show up to counter protest.
Of all the 50 states,
there are only two that have not received their “share” of the nearly 1 million
Muslim refugees that have been infused into more than 180 U.S. cities and towns
over the past 35 years, compliments of the U.S. State Department and the United
Nations.
Those states are Wyoming
and Montana. Wyoming has received only five refugees from the federal
resettlement program since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and is
currently not participating in the program (although Gov. Matt Mead has
indicated he’d like
to restart the program). Montana
has only received 61 refugees since 9/11 and none since 2008.
Compare that to
neighboring Idaho, which has received 10,730 refugees over the same period,
according to the federal refugee database. WND
reported last week that Chobani’s
billionaire Muslim CEO has been working with the federal government to import
refugees to work in his massive yogurt plant in Twin Falls.
That has caused tensions
as far out as Sand Point, in northern Idaho, where mayor Shelby Rognstad tried
to lay out the welcome mat for Syrian refugees but was forced to retract his
proposal after extreme blowback from the community, the Boise
Weekly reported.
Another neighboring
state, North Dakota, has been on the receiving end of 4,912 U.N. refugees since
9/11, according to the federal
refugee database. Colorado has absorbed
18,122 refugees, Minnesota 37,838, Washington state 36,395, and Nebraska 9,161.
As WND has reported,
Obama’s plan to import Syrian and other Muslim refugees has met spirited resistance
in South Carolina, Idaho, Minnesota, North Dakota and Michigan. Residents in
many areas of these states have let it be known they are not on board with the
progressive vision of a multicultural America. They argue, with mounting
evidence, that such policies in Europe have led to rampant crime, mass rapes
and terrorism.
And the multicultural
vision is no longer limited to gateway cities like New York, Chicago, Los
Angeles or Miami.
Small cities like Boise,
Idaho; Fargo, North Dakota; Wichita, Kansas – and now Helena and Missoula,
Montana – are vying for a bigger slice of the refugee pie.
Here in “Big Sky
Country” local politicians in Missoula, working with pro-immigrant NGOs, are
inviting the federal government to begin sending Syrians, comparing them to the
Hmong refugees who fled Vietnam’s communists in the late 1970s. They have not
been deterred by the fact that 98 percent of Syrian refugees are Sunni Muslims,
the vast majority of whom FBI Director James Comey admits are impossible
to vet for ties to terrorism.
Despite Comey’s
warnings, the Missoula Board of County Commissioners sent a
letter on Jan. 13 to the U.S.
State Department requesting Syrian refuges. “We look forward to seeing
approximately 100 refugees per year resettled in Missoula,” the letter states.
“Missoula is an ideal
city for resettling refugees,” the letter continues. “Our community enjoys good
schools, incredible natural beauty, and a low unemployment rate, among other
factors.”
A group of Montanans has
mobilized against the plan. They are trying to educate their state and local
representatives about how the refugee resettlement program actually works,
including the high welfare usage of refugees, the costs of educating children
who speak zero English and the risks to national security.
Wild-eyed lefties in the
Wild West
Monday’s protest rally
is not just aimed at Democrats. Citizen activists described the resistance put
up by Republicans in the state Legislature as tepid at best.
“They’ve done little to
help us and have basically given lip-service,” said Paul Nachman, a Bozeman
activist who described Missoula as a town dominated by progressive politics,
due largely to the influence of the University of Montana.
“It’s a wildly left-wing
town, known around here as the Berkeley of Montana,” he said. Nachman
says the commissioners Jan. 13 letter was
astonishingly naïve.
Under the resettlement
program, as governed by the Refugee Act of 1980 (authored by former Sens. Teddy
Kennedy and Joe Biden), local elected leaders are not afforded any control over
the number of refugees the federal government sends into their communities. The
feds must “consult” with state and local leaders but are not required to abide
by any suggested limits on the number of refugee arrivals. Nor is the federal
government bound to restrict refugees coming from any particular country, such
as Iraq, Syria, Somalia, Afghanistan or any other jihadist-infested country.
The flow of refugees
could begin with 10 Christians from Myanmar, for instance, but quickly evolve
into hundreds of Muslims from Syria or Somalia. The Obama administration claims
it has carte blanche authority over how many refugees will arrive in any given
town and where they will come from.
Paul Ryan’s capitulation
Obama plans to send at
least 10,000 Syrians to dozens of U.S. cities and towns this year and thousands
more in 2017. The program as a whole will deliver 85,000 refugees to U.S.
cities in 2016 and 100,000 in 2017, all completely funded by Speaker Paul
Ryan’s Congress
Since the controversy erupted last fall over Syrian refugees, Secretary of
State John Kerry’s top refugee lieutenant, Anne Richard, has repeatedly said
states have “no authority” to stop the flow of refugees.
Yet, the Jan. 13 letter
shows a stunning lack of knowledge on the part of the Missoula County
commissioners, said Nachman, who lives in Bozeman. The commissioners seem to
believe they can simply put their order in for a specific number of refugees.
“They are practically
begging” for 100 refugees per year, says Nachman, a 67-year-old retired
physicist. He came to Montana from Southern California in 2005 where he was
involved in that state’s pitched battles over illegal immigration.
As in many small towns
and rural areas, debates on controversial issues in Montana often play out on
the op-ed pages of local newspapers and on talk radio shows.
Nachman has written
several letters to the editor to local papers, countering what he says has been
dishonest propaganda put out by representatives of pro-refugee agencies that
stand to make a lot of money off of the resettlement of Syrians in Montana. One
group, Soft Landing Montana, is affiliated with the International Rescue
Committee or IRC, which is one of nine major contractors the U.S. government
pays to resettle refugees. It wants to bring Syrians to Missoula.
Another group,
WorldMontana, is less advanced in it’s plans to seed Helena with Muslim
refugees. It has held three meetings at the Plymouth Congregational Church to
plan a “potential refugee resettlement,” according to the WorldMontana website.
Maly said the discussion
of bringing Syrians into Helena has become “very noisy and loud.”
He said some city
officials have spoken against the idea, but he believes state officials are
prepared to support the resettlements in due time.
The Jan. 21 meeting in
Helena was attended by representatives from Catholic Social Services, the
Helena Ministerial Association and included input from refugee bureaucrats in
neighboring Idaho along with Boise Mayor David Bieter. The agenda also included a presentation by a “social
justice” grant-maker from Minnesota.
Maly said he has met
with federal officials to discuss refugee resettlement in Helena and was told
to “go slow, be transparent and inclusive, try to avoid the snares of
partisanship and politicization” and to be patient and persistent, the Tribune
reported.
But the “inclusiveness”
only extends to those who are willing to jump on board with the program, say
opponents. Caroline Solomon lives in the city of Big Fork in Flathead County,
which is tucked away in the northwest corner of Montana. She said rural
Montanans are getting stirred up and frustrated by the bare-knuckle approach of
the refugee-resettlement groups.
Montana vs. Belgium
Solomon is a member of
the local chapter of ACT For America, an organization that educates the public
about the dangers of creeping Shariah law. She is originally from Belgium and
lived near a section of Brussels that is now infested with jihadists, several
of whom were recruited by ISIS to take part in the Nov. 13 Paris terror
attacks.
She and her husband
retired to Kalispell, Montana, in 1993 and quickly fell in love with the
community. “We have had 23 years here, and I tell you I cannot describe the way
the people are here,” she said. “You get airlifted to Spokane with a medical
problem, and before you know it people are in their cars driving to visit you.
I could not understand that as a European. It’s like one big family. Everybody
is nice. When you go shop, everybody talks to everybody. When I go back to the
big city, I think I must look like a country bumpkin because I have a smile on
my face. That’s why people come here.”
Contrast that with the
no-go zones in Europe, or the growing enclaves in Minneapolis, Minnesota, or
Dearborn, Michigan, and you can see why Solomon and others aren’t warming up to
the changes proposed by liberals in Missoula. “This subject (of refugees) is
now a very hot topic here,” she said. “We had over 100 people at our last
meeting, and the one in December we had over 300.
“They all say ‘not in
Montana.’ Well it’s time to wake up because they are coming to Montana,”
Solomon said. “They are asking the government to send them. We are about 100
miles north of Missoula, but a lot of us will hopefully be going to that rally
Monday.”
‘Assimilation is the
problem’
She stressed that she is
not anti-immigrant. “I am an immigrant. So anybody saying I’m against that is
absolutely wrong. There are people who need help in a serious way. That’s what
this country is all about. What makes me mad and sad is they want to bring
people in without knowing who they are or what they are involved with,” Solomon
said. “Our own FBI says they can’t vet them. We know ISIS is using this
loophole to get people into our country. We have seen it from the attacks on
Europe and San Bernardino.”
Assimilation is the
problem, she said. Neither Europe nor America is demanding that its refugees
from the Middle East assimilate. And 91 percent of refugees from the Middle
East were receiving food stamps between 2008 and 2013, according to data from
the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement, while 73 percent were on Medicaid and
68 percent were receiving cash welfare assistance.
“I have a problem with
people who come here as immigrants or refugees and do not assimilate. They do
not want to assimilate. I would have never thought that this little part of
Brussels where we used to shop would be a place where terrorists hide in a
no-go zone. The younger generation of Muslims, they do not want to assimilate,
and I think there are forces pushing these young people (into jihad).”
Solomon said the county
commissioners in Missoula are extremely uneducated about the refugee issue. “That
letter reads like an advertisement for tourists to come to Montana,” she said.
“They say how wonderful the scenery is. What’s so dangerous is, I think that’s
what they believe. You know, the kumbaya crowd, and that’s why we are doing
what we are doing and trying to educate them and show what is really going on.”
Ad hominem attacks
While a handful of state
legislators and city officials have been receptive and sympathetic to
residents’ concerns, the reaction is often hostile from the community
organizers, she said. “They call us all kinds of names, like Islamophobes, and
I think CAIR is behind it,” she said, referring to the Council on
American-Islamic Relations. “I think political correctness will destroy us. The
Muslim Brotherhood, they said it in their Explanatory Memorandum (seized by the
FBI as evidence in 2004 from a house in Virginia), that they will destroy us
from within using immigration and political correctness as a weapon, and they
are using it very aggressively at this time.”
A WND report
from May 2015 exposed the strategy of
the refugee-resettlement industry to deride and intimidate any politician or
activist who opposes its agenda to change the demographics of a town. The
report, titled “Resettlement
at Risk: Meeting Emerging Challenges to Refugee Resettlement in Local
Communities,” was authored by one
of the nine federal contractors responsible for sending thousands of refugees
to the states in return for lucrative taxpayer grants and fees. It calls for
“new tools to fight back against a determined legislator or governor who has
decided to challenge resettlement for political or other reasons.”
Montana governor falls
in line
The pro-refugee
organizers in Montana have an ally in Democrat Gov. Steve Bullock, who is from
Missoula and has been a vocal advocate of refugees including those from
high-risk countries like Syria.
After the Nov. 13 attack
on Paris in which 130 people were killed by eight ISIS terrorists, including
two who are believed to have entered Europe through the ranks of Syrian
“refugees,” more than two-dozen governors sent letters to the Obama
administration requesting, to no avail, that the flow of refugees into their
states be stopped. But not Bullock. On Nov. 16, he issued
a statement that Montana would
remain open for business as usual with regard to refugees.
Solomon said she doesn’t
buy President Obama’s theory that poverty is the main cause of violent
extremism, or that providing jobs to disillusioned Muslims will solve the
problem of global jihad.
“It’s in their book (the
Quran) that they are not refugees they are migrants. They are on the hijra
(migration), and Muhammad was the first one to migrate, going from Mecca to
Medina and that is what’s happening, and all the pieces are falling into
place,” she said. “A lot of them are not poor refugees but migrants. The
migration is happening and that is what I am afraid of. They say they want 100
per year in Missoula, and the families will come and they will seed them. The
first little seed is going to be planted in Missoula but then the families will
come. What’s a family for them? They have multiple wives and many children.”
Montana already has at
least one mosque, near Montana State University in Bozeman, and several Islamic
centers.
“Missoula has an Islamic
Center and a very active MSA (Muslim Student Association) chapter at University
of Montana,” Solomon said.
The MSA was exposed as a
front group for the Muslim Brotherhood in court documents filed during the Holy
Land Foundation terror-financing trial in 2007. It has hundreds of chapters on
college campuses across the U.S. and is notorious for stirring up anti-Israel
sentiment and boycotts among college students.
Solomon said her ACT For
America chapter met with Montana’s congressional delegation in Washington,
D.C., last summer, and also with Texas Rep. Brian Babin, who is sponsoring
House Bill 3314, which would halt all refugee resettlement until a full audit
of the program can be conducted. So far House Speaker Paul Ryan has refused to
promote Babins’ bill even though it has more than 80 co-sponsors.
Nachman, who fought many
immigration battles in Southern California, said he too loves Montana. But the
state has many communities that aren’t prepared for these battles and can be
hoodwinked by clever pro-immigration activists.
“You have a lot of naïve
communities,” he said. “When I came in 2005, Montana reminded me of the Midwest
in the 1950s. It reminded me of that, lost in time, sort of throw-back
community, but the problems of big cities are bound to come here if we don’t
fight them off.”
http://www.wnd.com/2016/01/plan-to-infuse-small-towns-with-muslim-migrants-meets-resistance/
Comments
Our
Western States have been terrorized by federal agency overreach and federal
land and water grabs. They need to push the return of federal lands to the
States. The Muslim immigration issue is another burr in their saddle.
They need
to dump their current Governors and all State Legislators who drank the refugee
Kool Aide and all the County Commissions, Mayors and City Councils who support
the refugee plan. They need to boycott their churches for contracting to bring
in refugees. Challengers who oppose refugee resettlement should run in
2016.
Norb
Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
