Missoula, MT refugee arrivals could begin in
August, most will be Muslims, Posted by Ann Corcoran on June 18, 2016
This is the
latest from Montana, a state which hasn’t had any refugee flow for a number of
years, but is now about to get its first resettlement office. We have
been following the controversy for months and urge you to go here and review the political strife in Big
Sky Country over the plan.
IRC’s Bob
Johnson said he was instructed by his superiors in New York to not discuss
recent Islamic terror attack against gay night club in Orlando. http://www.rescue.org/blog/bob-johnson-refugee-resettlement-director-seattle
Early on,
suggestions were made by the proponents and those carrying the water for the International
Rescue Committee (the
primary federal refugee resettlement company in charge of the office), that
there probably wouldn’t be Syrians in the initial flow. But, it seems all that
has changed and that most of the refugees that could be chosen for Montana are
in fact Muslims.
Here is the
news at the Missoulian: Bob Johnson, a senior adviser for the
IRC’s Seattle office, returned to Missoula this week to make preparations for
the reopening of a refugee resettlement office. He said the agency for whom
he’s worked 40 years instructed its people to abstain from commenting publicly
in the wake of the Florida shootings.
Announcement of
the Missoula office’s executive director is still a couple of weeks away, and
it now looks like it’ll be August before the first refugees arrive in town. In
March the IRC contracted with the U.S. State Department to resettle up to 100
refugees in Missoula in the first year, a figure that can be adjusted up or
down in subsequent years.
The State
Department approved a staff of 2 1/2 in Missoula – the executive director, a
caseworker and a half-time finance manager. The latter two jobs are still being
advertised.
The IRC says it will give from two weeks to
two months notice of where the first refugees will come from, said Mary Poole of Soft Landing
Missoula, the volunteer organization that successfully made the case to the IRC
to open the Missoula office.
What is clear is there’s a better chance than
first thought that some of the refugees will come from Syria. The U.S. has been slow to meet
President Barack Obama’s pledge to resettle 10,000 displaced Syrians this
fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30. National Public Radio reported this week that
so far that number is just 2,800, but a White House National Security spokesman
said the U.S. remains committed to the president’s plan.
Virtually all Syrians arriving in the US now
are Muslims. Of course Afghans and ROHINGYA*** are Muslims. Most of those from DR
Congo are very needy, mentally troubled, but mostly non-Muslims. Does Missoula have good mental health facilities?
An IRC official
in April told a reception hosted by Soft Landing that because Missoula has no
established nationality base of refugees, it’s likely that its first families
will come from a population that has no family ties in the U.S. According to
the Missoula Independent, those could be Syrian families of four to 10 members;
Afghans; families and single-woman households from the Republic of Congo; or
Rohingyas, an ethnic Muslim minority from Myanmar (Burma).
What a wonderful
coincidence, the schools in Missoula have been teaching Arabic (the
number one language of
refugees entering the US) for a few years already!
The 6-year-old
Arabic language and culture program in Missoula’s three public high schools was
another unexpected asset to the IRC. Continue
reading here.
And, if you
feel like it, visit reporter Jared
Goyette’s piece from several weeks ago. It is a
typical warm and fuzzy, touchy-feely discussion about how one opponent of the
plan got friendly with a proponent of the plan. I have been meaning to
write about it, but the only point I need to make is this: Mary and
Drew are nice people, but don’t fall for the emotional stuff that Jared is
peddling.
You have every right
to question, in a clear-eyed unemotional way, public policy in your state that
will effect your wallet, your safety, your health and the social
cohesion of your community forever!
Learn more about devout Rohingya Muslims here. We have 189 posts on this ethnic group and only
yesterday we mentioned that we are admitting them to our towns and cities now
by the thousands. Remember this! The Rohingya are not our problem.
They have been fighting for decades with the Buddhists in Burma. We did
nothing to make the Rohingya our responsibility! (Not that any
others are ours either. But, the Left loves to tell us we are responsible for
wrecking Iraq and so those are ours!).
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