Posted by Ann Corcoran on October 6, 2017
I have to admit, I thought Donald Trump would come in to office and take a forceful position on the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program and tell Congress to investigate the program (and the contractors!) with an eye to trashing or reforming the whole system.
Looks like Trump has thrown in the towel on refugee program, it is now up to you where you live!
With his capitulation on the annual determination, with a substantial 45,000 refugees to be admitted in the next 12 months, Republican leaders (with the Chamber of Commerce cheering) gave a sigh of relief.
It is still enough cheap labor and no one is going to force them to investigate how taxpayer dollars are spent and no one will call them heartless racists.
(Although there is still one glimmer of hope. The 45,000 is a CEILING and the Trump Admin can come in substantially lower than that and be within the law. No executive order is needed to stay well below the ceiling!)
So, where does that leave you in the pockets of resistance that have formed over the last few years? It means back to work (or continuing to work in your communities) exposing the system, exposing the contractors, and electing people to local office who don’t want Washington dictating the future demographic makeup of your towns and cities.
(By the way, I am very aware of many of you who never quit working hard, but won’t name you here now.)
For those of you who are advanced in your work, please forgive the following list of things that need to be done locally. We have new readers asking what they can do, so this is mostly for them.
My list of suggestions below is in no particular order:
~Learn all you can about the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program. You might start with my Frequently Asked Questions, here.
~Call your state refugee coordinator and politely ask for information on who came to your state in the past and who is coming in the future. Ask for your state’s refugee plan.
~Learn how to use Wrapsnet (I’m going to have a tutorial shortly) so you know which ethnic groups are coming to your town.
~Find the subcontractor (s) working near you. Go here. Find your state and city (if you live within 100 miles of one of these offices, your town is fair game). Note the abbreviation in the left hand corner. That stands for one of the nine major federal contractors***
Some cities are such large refugee resettlement sites that more than one contractor is working there. Bidding for bodies?
~Call your closest subcontractor office and ask for the R & P Abstract for FY18. They will dodge and weave and may even tell you they don’t know what you are talking about. Be persistent. You may ultimately have to use your state’s public information laws to get the abstract out of your state coordinator. (You will likely never get a FOIA answered by the US State Department, however.)
The Abstract, in addition to other research you do, will lead you to the employers who want the cheap migrant labor because they are usually cited in the Abstract. Expose them.
~The local refugee contractor is required to hold quarterly “stakeholder” meetings. They work very hard to keep the general public out. Call them and your state coordinator and ask to be included. If you get a runaround that is one more thing to publicize. This program can only run with your money, therefore YOU are a stakeholder.
~Become friendly with people in your local health department and other social service agencies. You may find them willing to tell you more about the mode of operation of the contractor/subcontractor working in your community and/or problems related to the refugees themselves (eg. high TB rates).
~Become familiar with the impact the refugee program is having in your local school system which is usually the first place we see problems erupting.
~I would expose every case you find where the subcontractor/contractor had left a refugee family or families in the lurch. Keep your focus on the government agencies and the contractors and possible malfeasance there rather than being aggressively anti-refugee. Keep in the back of your mind, that some refugees have been sold a bill of goods and wish they could go home.
~Get as much as you can into your local newspaper/TV/radio show. If they are all pro-Open Borders you will have to write your own blog or facebook page to get the information you are finding out to a broader audience.
~If you have someone in your group (yes, it would be good to form a little group) who could do youtube, or small documentary films that is another option to reach more people.
~Speak up in your churches if they are affiliated with the nine major contractors*** Tell your church leaders that it isn’t Christian charity to take millions from the US taxpayers.
~Some grassroots activists have successfully taken to the road with powerpoint presentations to be shown to local civic groups.
~Arrange for expert speakers to come to your towns to educate a wider audience.
~All of the above, and more that I’m not thinking of, is to educate your community with the goal of electing mayors and council members who are on your same wavelength. The Left has been electing mayors for years and that is how many cities are in the pickle they are now in!
~Consider running for elected office yourself. Even if you think you can’t win because it is another way to publicize your views.
~Educate and put pressure on your governors and your state representatives, because if you can agitate them enough there will be a trickle-up effect on US Representatives and Senators who don’t want to hear a buzzing of bees back in the district.
~As the 2018 election year gets underway, make sure you have people ready to ask tough questions of your US Congressmen/Senators as they visit your town.
~When you earlier identified those industries and global corporations pushing for cheap labor, you should be working to find out which elected officials at all levels of government are getting campaign contributions from them as well. Use that information in 2018.
~If you are a member of one of the big three immigration control groups (CIS, FAIR, and NumbersUSA) and/or the Heritage Foundation you will need to keep pressure on them. Since they are in the swamp they may not have a good understanding of how the USRAP is affecting you and thus trade-off the refugee program for something they want.
And, one final thing for right now, don’t get discouraged if you can only find a few people to work with you, just plug away with a plan a little every day and look to your key helpers for moral support and a little help!
I’m sure there is more I’m not thinking of right now… I’ll update later.
*** These are the nine federal resettlement contractors paid by the head to place refugees in your towns. They are also ‘community organizers’ who call upon their supporters to lobby Congress etc. They are rolling in millions of tax dollars.
I’m thinking that one thing that Trump’s slightly lower cap for FY18 will do to them is to force them to tighten their belts and, as they do, tensions within the fake non-profits could rise—watch for it!
- Church World Service (CWS)
- Ethiopian Community Development Council (ECDC) (secular)
- Episcopal Migration Ministries (EMM)
- Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS)
- International Rescue Committee (IRC) (secular)
- US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) (secular)
- Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services (LIRS)
- United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB)
- World Relief Corporation (WR)
This post is filed in my ‘What you can do’ category, click here for more.
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