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City Obama Buried in Refugees Is Fighting Back

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The latest flashpoint in the growing backlash against refugee resettlement is Fargo, North Dakota, where the city commission is demanding a full accounting of the program’s costs.

“Surprisingly, that’s never been done before,” said a Fargo city commissioner, Dave Piepkorn, who spoke with WND this week and can be seen discussing his plan in the video above.

Fargo, like many other small cities that have received large numbers of refugees, has been divided by the issue. There have been protests against refugees and counter protests in favor of them, followed by biting blogs and news reports on both sides.

Fargo was thrust into the spotlight on Sept. 18 when it was revealed that the Somali refugee who attacked mall shoppers in St. Cloud, Minnesota, was originally resettled here.

“When we have one Muslim terrorist who tries to kill innocent people in St. Cloud, which is two hours from here, that raised my alarm,” said Piepkorn, who is leading the fight to expose the costs of refugee resettlement on his community. (Read more from “City Obama Buried in Refugees Is Fighting Back” HERE)

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Left-Funded Rally Aims to Pressure Lawmakers to Welcome More Refugees

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Are you concerned about the plight of international refugees? Would you like to see the U.S. government take decisive, constructive action on behalf of displaced persons across the globe who have been forced to flee their homes?

If so, you’re invited to “stand up against the voices of intolerance” this Sunday in Washington, D.C., where you can join forces with other concerned Americans.

But if you do participate, policy analysts who have examined the refugee crisis want you to know they have good reason to believe the rally is a highly politicized event organized for the purpose of lobbying the Obama administration and Congress to allow more refugees into the U.S.—including those from war-torn Syria and Iraq who may have ties to terrorism.

A major contributor to causes on the left, the Tides Foundation, is collecting contributions for the rally.

President Barack Obama said he would boost the number of Syrian refugees admitted into the U.S. to 10,000 for the fiscal year beginning last October and ending this Sept. 30. As of June, about 2,800 Syrians had resettled in America, according to Pew Research Center.

But after a slow start, the administration is poised to meet or surpass its goal of admitting 10,000 Syrians, Anne Richard, assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, told reporters in a conference call earlier this month.

Skeptics, worried about the effects on the economy and the difficulty of screening for terrorists, point to studies showing resettlement of refugees in the U.S. rather than the Middle East is both costly and counterproductive.

High Costs of Resettling Refugees

A report by the Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies found that it costs 12 times as much to resettle a refugee in America than it does to provide for services and relief to the same refugee in the Middle East.

The nonprofit, nonpartisan research outfit included State Department expenditures, welfare use rates, and other figures and benefits from the departments of Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, and other U.S. agencies. Its report says:

Based on that information, this analysis finds that the costs of resettling refugees in the United States are quite high, even without considering all of the costs refugees create. We conservatively estimate that the costs total $64,370 in the first five years for each Middle Eastern refugee. This is 61 times what it costs to care for one Syrian refugee in a neighboring country for a single year or about 12 times the cost of providing for a refugee for five years.

“The organizers, funders, and the supporting groups are putting this rally together to exert pressure to ensure that the Obama administration increases the admission of Syrians into the U.S.,” Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, told The Daily Signal.

For their part, the rally’s organizers insist they have put together a genuine grassroots movement of concerned citizens who want the U.S. government to assume a leadership role in ongoing efforts to alleviate the refugee crisis. This point is made on the rally’s website:

As borders have closed to those fleeing war and violence and as the voices of fear and intolerance have grown louder, we will not let politics or fear stand in the way of our compassion. We urge the United States government to uphold its founding principles and its traditional leadership role in refugee protection by further assisting the countries that are carrying the heaviest burden of the ongoing crisis. We believe that every act of rejection is an affront to humanity and every act of compassion a reminder of what is best in each and every one of us.

The website created for the rally lists the San Francisco-based, nonprofit Tides Foundation as a fundraising vehicle. The foundation and its sister organization, Tides Center, are major benefactors of “left wing” causes for more than 30 years, according to the Capital Research Center, which investigates the “aims and activities of left-liberal special interest groups.”

‘Same League as George Soros’

Foundation financial records put the Tides network on a par with the grant-making efforts of George Soros, the Hungarian-American businessman and progressive political activist. Soros is chairman of Open Society Foundations, an international grant-making network previously known as Open Society Institute.

“Tides’ grantmaking is in the same league as George Soros’s Open Society Institute,” a Capital Research Center report states. “From 1999 through 2008, Tides distributed $630.6 million in grants, a sum within hailing distance of the Open Society Institute’s $901.4 million, according to FoundationSearch.com records.”

Soros is a major funder of National Immigration Forum, a group advocating amnesty for illegal immigrants that is listed as an organization supporting the rally.

The website encourages participants to purchase an orange or white T-shirt with the logo of the DC Rally 4 Refugees, set to take place from 10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., rain or shine, at the Sylvan Theater near the Washington Monument.

The website also asks supporters to donate to the rally through the Tides Foundation, listing its address and a fund number.

In response to an inquiry from The Daily Signal about the role of Tides, rally spokeswoman Lauren Cozzi said in an email:

DCRally4Refugees is 100 percent dependent on individual contributions. The Tides Foundation is the organizational instrument that provides DCRally4Refugees with tax-exempt status on the donations. The Tides Foundation is not hosting the event, nor is it fundraising on behalf of DCRally4Refugees.

Cozzi also said the DC Rally 4 Refugees organization “was founded by a grassroots group of advocates inspired to help after volunteering directly with refugees fleeing war and violence in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and other regions.”

‘We Can Each Make a Difference’

The United Nations Refugee Agency’s figures show more than 65 million people throughout the globe have been forced to leave their homes in response to armed conflict, political persecution, and other extreme circumstances. About 21 million of them are refugees, according to the U.N.

The rally website describes the international refugee crisis as the worst since World War II:

Nearly 5 million human beings have fled Syria alone since the start of its civil war in 2011 and are now living in limbo in neighboring countries. In addition, millions of Iraqis and Afghans have fled their homes under the threat of violence. Millions of refugees from Somalia, South Sudan, and elsewhere also need protection and assistance.

Rally organizers’ volunteer efforts in trouble spots around the world provided them with the impetus for Sunday’s event.

“After seeing the scale of human suffering with my own eyes while volunteering in Lesvos, Greece, I realized I had to help refugees in any way I could,” Kathy Hertz, founder and executive director of DC Rally 4 Refugees, said in a press release. “Despite having no idea how I would finance a rally, I trusted in my desire to educate people about the global refugee crisis and show how we can each make a difference.”

Hertz added:

Many people have shared with me their desire to help refugees, but did not know how to do so. I founded DCRally4Refugees to give them a way to help, provide tools, and create a large coming together of people for increased safe refugee resettlement and support. On the one-year anniversary of the drowning death of Aylan Kurdi, the young boy whose photo shocked the world, we unfortunately cannot say that things have changed. Refugees are still risking their lives daily and too many of them are dying in the process. I know we can do better.

Almost 10,000 displaced persons have drowned while attempting to cross from Turkey to Greece and Libya to Italy, according to the rally website.

‘Timed to Influence the Number of Refugees’

Asked by The Daily Signal to comment on the organizers’ policy objectives, Cozzi, the rally spokeswoman, said: “DCRally4Refugees will raise awareness about the global refugee crisis and urge U.S. action—at home and overseas—to alleviate suffering through relief efforts and refugee resettlement.”

Noting the rally will take place near Capitol Hill, the website said participants “will call on the U.S. to provide more refugee resettlement and increased support to countries and organizations already involved, support proven relief efforts overseas, and offer resources for those who wish to help, raising a collective voice against intolerance.”

Krikorian, of the Center for Immigration Studies, said he sees more than mere happenstance at work in the timing of the rally: Obama is set to play host to a refugee summit at the U.N. on Sept. 20. The president also is expected to release his fiscal year 2017 plan for refugees by the end of September.

The rally is not only “to exert pressure to ensure that the Obama administration increases the admission of Syrians,” Krikorian said, but “timed to influence the number of refugees the State Department is trying to settle.”

Krikorian told The Daily Signal that he makes a critical distinction between refugees and additional Syrians who may be brought to the U.S. from countries, often in Europe, other than Syria:

Once they leave those countries they are basically just looking for a better job. … It seems to me the administration has not made a persuasive case for why any of these people should be brought here, especially since our research shows it costs 12 times as much to take care of a refugee here than it does to take care of them in the Middle East.

(For more from the author of “Left-Funded Rally Aims to Pressure Lawmakers to Welcome More Refugees” please click HERE)

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Lawsuit Filed Over Feds, Refugee Groups Losing 10,000+ Refugee Children, Possibly to Sex Trade or Worse

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A 12-year-old Honduran boy seeking asylum in the United States has been “lost” in the system, illustrating what immigration experts say is a widespread problem of the government failing to keep track of the large number of vulnerable children flooding across the border.

The case of missing child [Walter] has been brought to light in a lawsuit filed in federal district court in Columbia, South Carolina, that names Gov. Nikki Haley, the S.C. Department of Social Services, Lutheran Services and World Relief among the defendants. World Relief is a division of the National Association of Evangelicals and, like the Lutherans and Catholics, is heavily involved in the resettlement of refugees and asylum seekers, getting paid handsomely to perform one of the government’s most secretive and cash-rich operations under the guise of humanitarianism, the suit claims. . .

The federal government has been “rubber stamping” the asylum applications of tens of thousands of child migrants like Walter since 2014, says Lauren Martel, the attorney representing [the plaintiff taxpayer] in the case. Their asylum applications are rushed through the system without taking time to ensure the children’s safety. . .

“There’s a 12-year-old boy out there somewhere who is unaccounted for and we only know about him because a lawyer in the Family Court of Beaufort County didn’t redact his name [on court documents],” Martel told WND. “So now he could be part of the sex trade industry for all we know. Nobody can tell us anything” . . .

“They do not routinely do background checks or determine that the person claiming them is capable, responsible, law-abiding or even financially able,” Vaughan said. “There are more than 10,000 kids who are here now without family members, and most of them are unaccounted for.” (Read more from “Lawsuit Filed Over Feds, Refugee Groups Losing 10,000+ Refugee Children, Possibly to Sex Trade or Worse” HERE)

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Refugees Secretly Flooding Into These States

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Despite more reports in recent weeks about Muslim “refugees” raping and attacking people in the U.S. and Europe, President Obama has ramped up his Syrian refugee program – delivering 625 to U.S. cities in one week and crossing the 6,000 mark for total Syrians who have entered the country since October.

With a little over two months before the Sept. 30 deadline to fulfill his promise to the United Nations to resettle 10,000 Syrians, Obama has delivered 6,227 Syrian migrants to 38 states and dozens of cities.

That means more than 1,000 have arrived just since July 1.

Of the 6,227 total who arrived since Oct. 1, 2015, only 23 have been Christian and 10 Yazidi. All the of the remaining 6,194 Syrians, more than 98 percent, have been Sunni Muslim. That’s the same sect that makes up the ranks of ISIS, al-Nusra Front and other groups that are viciously persecuting Christians in Syria.

Michigan, California, Arizona, Texas and Illinois are the top five states for numbers of Syrian refugees received so far in fiscal 2016. These refugees are hand-selected by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to be permanently resettled in the U.S. (Read more from “Refugees Secretly Flooding Into These States” HERE)

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George Clooney May Have More Refugees Than He Can Handle

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Actor and staunch Obama supporter George Clooney and his wife, Amal, have been open in their criticism of the treatment of refugees in the United States.

Of course, the refugee situation is a problem worldwide, not just in America. In a serendipitous event currently taking place in Italy, Clooney may get his fill of refugees.

Lake Como is a luxurious Italian resort where celebrities such as Clooney and Madonna own multi-million dollar properties.

Celebrities come to Lake Como for its beauty and tranquil atmosphere.

Daily Mail reports the town, which is a preferred destination for many famous people, has recently become a stopping point for migrants fleeing to Britain.

The town’s train station is reportedly being used as a temporary camp for incoming migrants. Sources say tents are being added on an hourly basis, but the resulting crush of people is also causing problems with trash, discarded food and rats.

Why are so many people being forced to make camp in Lake Como? It seems that Switzerland has closed its border to the railway. This means an alternative means of entry must be found.

The Sun reports hundreds of people are currently camping at the railway station, with more people arriving daily.

Robert Bernasconi, who works with a local Catholic charity, said, “We are helping them with food, clothing and we are also mounting showers.”

He went on to say there are more than 2,000 migrants currently being housed in the Catholic facilities.

One migrant told the Daily Mail he and his friends have been traveling for four months and they refused to stop before they made it to England. He added, “I don’t have any family there but I know people there. They say that England is the best place for refugees.” (For more from the author of “George Clooney May Have More Refugees Than He Can Handle” please click HERE)

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THANKS, OBAMA! State Officials Concealing Number Of “Refugees” With Contagious TB

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Epidemiologists at the Vermont Department of Health are concealing the number of refugees with contagious active tuberculosis nearly a month after Watchdog reported that more than one-third of Vermont’s resettled refugees test positive for TB.

Earlier this month, Watchdog revealed that 35 percent of Vermont’s incoming refugees in the past four years tested positive for tuberculosis. How many of those cases are contagious and symptomatic, however, remains a secret, as state epidemiologists and top officials at the Health Department have spent weeks blocking efforts to obtain the data.

Refugees brought to the United States take TB tests as part of comprehensive health screening. For refugees resettled in Vermont, the Department of Health’s Refugee Health Program monitors test results and treats patients who have active TB disease. Unlike latent tuberculosis infection, active TB disease is contagious, symptomatic and even deadly.

According to documents obtained through a public records request, the evasions began May 27, when Watchdog contacted the Health Department to learn how many refugees tested positive for TB in recent years. The inquiry sparked private meetings among state epidemiologists, public health nurses and office staff, who proceeded to conceal the number of contagious active TB disease cases brought to Vermont through the Vermont Refugee Resettlement Program.

Health department employees and lawyers included in the communication loop were Health Policy Coordinator Ben Truman, Refugee Health and Health Equity Coordinator Martha Friedman, public health specialist Sally Cook, Communications Director Nancy Erickson, and legal counselors Margaret Vincent and Bessie Weiss.

State epidemiologist Patsy Kelso sent Watchdog’s May 27 request for data to Laura Ann Nicolai, deputy state epidemiologist and head of the tuberculosis control program. Nicolai met with department staff and legal counsel that day and the following week to concoct a plan to hide the number of refugees with active TB disease.

“This doesn’t say that he wants to know how many cases were identified, so I wouldn’t offer it. If he asks it would be important to explain that latent infection is not reportable,” Nicolai wrote to the team on May 27.

As team members contemplated an official response, Nicolai drafted bulleted talking points to explain the difference between active TB disease and latent TB infection, and Truman suggested the possibility of making Watchdog file a public records request to obtain data.

After deliberation, the team agreed to reveal the number of refugees testing positive for TB but conceal the number of refugees with contagious active TB disease.

When the team conferred again on May 31, Nicolai discussed what to do if Watchdog wanted “additional information on TB disease specifically.”

“If the reporter wants additional information on TB disease specifically then either Sally or I would be happy to talk with him. We could discuss the difference between latent and active infection, etc. or any of the talking points I provided on Friday,” Nicolai wrote.
She added: “If at any point along the way he changes what he wants and decides he’d like additional data, such as the number of active cases among refugees, then we can cross that bridge when we come to it.”

The draft response, completed an hour and a half later, included four years of refugee TB blood test results and bulleted information explaining the difference between latent and active TB. Excluded from the response was the number of refugees with active TB disease.

When Truman delivered the Health Department’s June 1 response to Watchdog without the number of active TB disease cases, Watchdog asked for “actual numbers of refugee active TB cases per year, starting at FY2011 and ending in FY2016.”

Truman, according to plan, replied: “To address the scope of the additional information you want, please submit this as a formal public records request.”

With the limited information provided, Watchdog reported that 318 refugees out of about 900 admitted to Vermont since 2013 — or 35.4 percent — tested positive for tuberculosis. Regarding active TB cases, the article included the only statistic offered by the Health Department — a comfortingly low incidence statistic of 5.4 cases per year over five years. That statistic includes Vermonters only, not refugees with active TB disease.

When Nicolai conferred with the team on June 3, she tells Truman: “This is the average for active cases among all Vermonters. It does not specify that this is the average number of cases among refugees. Should this be clarified?”

Truman replied: “I suggest any further info be in the context of responses to any PRR [public records request] he may choose to make. To my knowledge, none has been made at this time.”

Watchdog filed a public records request on June 9, asking again for the statistical number of active TB disease cases among resettled refugees. The Health Department’s response, delivered June 23 “on behalf of the Commissioner of the Vermont Department of Health,” did not provide the data.

The response did reveal the team’s evasion efforts, however, captured in this series of emails.

The responsive records also revealed that Truman sent the team’s original June 1 response to Watchdog to John Walters, a self-described liberal blogger writing at the Vermont Political Observer. Walters subsequently wrote a June 4 blog entry that advanced the Health Department’s talking points and accused Watchdog of “fearmongering.”

The development comes as Rutland Mayor Christopher Louras and the city’s Board of Aldermen are weighing whether or not to let residents vote on accepting 100 Syrian refugees in October. Louras says letting the people of Rutland vote on the issue is “offensive.”

Watchdog has additional requests pending at the Department of Health and plans to report the annual number of active TB disease cases among refugees resettled in Vermont over the past five years. (For more from the author of “THANKS, OBAMA! State Officials Concealing Number Of “Refugees” With Contagious TB” please click HERE)

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Walmart Hostage Taker Shot by Cops in TX Was Muslim ‘Refugee’

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A man who took two co-workers hostage at an Amarillo, Texas, Walmart Tuesday was a Muslim refugee from Somalia, and that fact came as no surprise to those who track the federal government’s robust refugee resettlement program.

Amarillo is bursting at the seams with foreign refugees, from Africa, Asia and the Middle East, and its mayor has pleaded repeatedly with the government to stop sending refugees to his city . . .

On Tuesday, it was just another example. Mohammad Moghaddan, a Somali refugee, was shot and killed by sheriff’s deputies after he had taken two Walmart employees hostage.

Moghaddan, 54, was a current employee of the store, and his actions were quickly declared “a case of work place violence” by the sheriff’s office. The hostage taker, armed with a handgun, was shot dead by a SWAT team as terrified shoppers were ushered out of the store.

The city’s mayor has been on a crusade since 2011 to get the U.S. State Department, working with the United Nations, to put a damper on the number of refugees flooding into his city. (Read more from “Walmart Hostage Taker Shot by Cops in TX Was Muslim ‘Refugee'” HERE)

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Dutch Reporter Conducting Interview When ‘Refugees’ Make a Scene

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Two apparently Muslim migrants conducted a drive-by spit-on at a young female reporter during an on-air broadcast in Rotterdam, Netherlands earlier this week.

The incident begins with one migrant who goes by on a bicycle shouting, “F*** you” multiple times. Seconds later, two migrants on a motorcycle nearly run the reporter and interviewee over, while spitting at the reporter’s face.

A man identified as Livable Rotterdam Councillor Bart Joost van Rij then attempts to hit the men with his bag as they speed past him.

Through the entire scene, the reporter remains calm and finishes her segment. The story was on the city’s mayor, Ahmed Aboutaleb, a Muslim dual citizen of the Netherlands and Morocco. He supports migrants and calls himself a “jihadist,” claiming that the word is misunderstood.

“Jihadist is the completely wrong word. I am a jihadist. I’m doing the right thing for the city the entire day. I’m a jihadist,” he said. “There are 68 definitions of jihad, if you remove a spike from the street or a piece of glass … to prevent a bicycle being harmed by the spike, you are a jihadist.”

However, Mayor Aboutaleb does not seem to condone violence; after the attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris, he said, in essence, if you don’t like the West, “pack your bags.”

“As a mayor, I like people that have radical ideas,” he said. “Thanks to having radical ideas about the way to lead our civilisations and our societies we left the Stone Age. But that’s not what we are talking about. We’re talking about a group of people who are threatening others, not only because they have radical ideas, but they believe they have their own truth justifying their own goals … by using violence.”

It is unclear why the migrants decided to mistreat the reporter. (For more from the author of “Dutch Reporter Conducting Interview When ‘Refugees’ Make a Scene” please click HERE)

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Norway Is Offering to Pay Refugees to Leave the Country

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maxresdefaultNorwegian authorities are offering a “bonus” 10,000 kroner (£1,000) to asylum seekers willing to leave the country voluntarily.

The Norwegian Directorate of Immigration (UDI) says the measure is less expensive than keeping refugees in immigration centres in the country.

Launched on Monday, the scheme will run for six weeks, state broadcaster NRK reported UDI saying.

The money will be paid to the first 500 asylum seekers to apply on a first-come, first-served basis.

“We need to entice more [people] to voluntarily travel back by giving them a bit more money on their way out. This will save us a lot of money because it is expensive to have people in the asylum centres,” Sylvi Listhaug, integration minister, said. (Read more from “Norway Is Offering to Pay Refugees to Leave the Country” HERE)

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Here’s How Many Refugees Have Been Settled Across America – Your City Could Be on the List

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Almost 77,000 refugees came to communities all across America in the last federal fiscal year, with more on the way if the Obama administration gets its way.

“Islam is coming to America in full force thanks to the Obama administration’s willingness to accept hundreds of thousands of refugees over the next couple of years,” wrote John S. Roberts on Young Conservatives in response to refugee data posted on Weasel Zippers that provides a breakdown of the cities and states where 76,922 refugees were resettled.

At a rally Monday in Helena, Mont., which according to the federal list had no refugees settled in 2015, showed the feeling stirred by the refugee issue and the administration’s plans to resettle Syrian refugees.

“I would love to be able to open the doors and let everyone in. But we’ve already got lots of people out of work and stuff,” said Jim Buterbaugh, the rally’s organizer. “We’ve got people living on the streets that we need to take care of. To throw the doors open and just bring everybody in here, we’ll have everybody on the streets.”

“They’re not the true refugees, the Christian Muslims are the true refugees,” Buterbaugh said. “The Muslims, the Islamic Muslims, they can stay where they are.” (Read more from “Here’s How Many Refugees Have Been Settled Across America – Your City Could Be on the List” HERE)

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