If Trump only knew Utica, NY story, says
resettlement agency employee, he wouldn’t be so misguided, by Ann Corcoran 11/19/16
But what is the real
Utica story? Easily one of my greatest concerns about the whole resettlement
process in the United States, is how can there be such widely divergent views
on whether refugees have brought a “robust” economy and multicultural nirvana
to a community, or not!
Read the 2005 UN propaganda report
used to entice (embarrass) other cities into ‘welcoming’ refugees.
Is there no real investigative journalist willing to go to Utica, spend a little time, talk to everyone involved and report
an accurate story about what has happened in the ‘Town that Loves Refugees’ (according to a 2005 United
Nations propaganda campaign).
This is one more in those warm and
fuzzy stories about how everything is copacetic in Utica. Of course the
election of Donald Trump is the news hook for a reporter to once again tell the
‘good’ news about rebuilding cities with refugees.
Take a side trip now to Politico’s county by
county breakdown and see that Trump actually
won most of New York State including Oneida County (Utica) by a large margin.
Presumably Trump’s views on refugees and immigration are in line with the
largest numbers of voters in most of the state. Surely if the ‘good’ news on
Utica was true after 11 years of beating that drum, the citizens there should
all be on the side of more refugees. They apparently are not! Back to Utica and yet another
account of how refugees have supposedly
brought boom times to the struggling city.
From the Gloucester Times: UTICA — More than anywhere else in
New York, this city in the Mohawk Valley has embraced people fleeing
strife-torn countries. But, now, Donald Trump’s election as president is stoking fear among
refugees and their advocates, given his anti-immigrant rhetoric and focus on
curtailing immigration. A wall proposed for the Mexican
border was a rhetorical fixture of Trump’s campaign, and he’s called refugees a
“Trojan horse” whose ranks are infiltrated by “terrorists.”
“It is concerning to us,” said
Shelly Callahan, director of the Mohawk Valley Resource Center for Refugees,
which coordinates the resettlement of newcomers here. [Mohawk Valley Resource Center is a subcontractor of primary federal
resettlement contractor Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service—ed] Over the past
three decades, Utica has rolled out the welcome mat to an estimated 16,000
refugees.
Here we go again with Chobani
Yogurt changing America to supply its
labor needs (with the help of a fake ‘charity’): In Utica, foreign-born people
and their children account for about a quarter of the city’s population of
62,000, earning it the United Nations’ distinction as “the town that loves
refugees.”
Refugees represent a new pool of immigrant labor, which Callahan said has been a major asset for regional
businesses looking to expand or simply trying to fill jobs shunned by workers
already living here.
In some cases, businesses that hire
refugees are targeted. One upstate employer that has taken
on some refugees living in Utica, the Chobani yogurt plant in Chenango County,
has been sharply criticized in recent weeks by a right-wing, pro-Trump website,
Breitbart, for hiring Muslim immigrants. Those reports have unleashed racist
rants against Chobani and its founder, Turkish immigrant Hamdi Ulukaya.
Democrat Assemblyman Anthony
Brinidisi: we have “robust” small business growth. But would someone please do
a real unbiased economic and social impact study about Utica. LOL! I should do
a post just on their favorite words, robust is near the top of the list.
Everything from business start-ups to security screening is robust!
In the last decades of the 20th
century, Utica shed more than 20,000 jobs with the closings of two nearby
General Electric plants, Griffiss Air Force Base in nearby Rome and a Lockheed
Martin plant. Its population of 100,410 people in 1910 had shriveled to 60,000
by 2010.
“Without them, we would have a city with less population, less cultural
diversity and not as robust in terms of small business growth as it has been
over the past couple of decades,” Brindisi said in an interview. More here.
I have all sorts of questions and
suspect that some economic growth (if it does exist) may well be that federal
welfare dollars (remember when Nancy Pelosi famously said food stamps boost the
economy!) are flowing to Utica with the refugees which is not real growth but
just a redistribution of wealth from one group of taxpayers elsewhere to supply
social services for the refugee flood to Utica.
And, here is why I’m
posting this story: There is not one bit of anything negative in here about what
changes have been brought to Utica that are not welcome. Reporter Joe Mahoney must not know how to google!
(And, this is why local newspapers are going belly-up! The NYT too!). Where is the mention of how the school system there had to sue the
state for more money to manage all the kids in the school system?
Think about Utica, NY before
you jump on the “welcoming refugees” bandwagon Utica (the town that loves
refugees) is suing the state of NY for their refugee-generated school
funding crisis. How about the story from last summer
where the feds gave grants to the Utica area for summer jobs for special
teenagers (refugees): Utica: Give refugees summer
jobs or pay for it later.
Then, how about: Utica NY: Latest concern is
refugees driving drunk Utica, NY: Burmese Karen
refugee murdered. Large numbers of refugees bring food
stamp scammers to town: More Muslim food stamp
scammers arrested, Utica, NY this time.
From elsewhere in New York state: Syracuse, NY refugee story
confirms imported immigrant poverty does not revitalize cities In refugee-saturated Buffalo,
NY, violence leaves Burmese refugee paralyzed New York boosts school budget
$1.1 billion to cope with refugee overload Buffalo, NY: Christians and
Jews declining in number, Muslim population increasing Syracuse: Catholic Church
becomes mosque update Heads up Poughkeepsie, New
York: ‘Christian’ charity to bring you Syrian Muslims likely before
January 2017
You know what! Go back and look
again at how red New York State is, here. Someone in New York should be writing a blog about the
UN/US Refugee Admissions Program and pulling all this together!
https://refugeeresettlementwatch.wordpress.com/2016/11/19/if-trump-only-knew-utica-ny-story-says-resettlement-agency-employee-he-wouldnt-be-so-misguided/
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