“How do they have a place for them but not for us?”
(A homeless woman in Maine)
I can’t believe my eyes. A local media outlet has dared to publish this news and it comes at a time when the national media is dumping on the President who says Americans should come first when it comes to public assistance!
150 African asylum seekers have jumped ahead of 18,000 Mainers who have been on a waiting list for years for Section 8 housing!
Portland welcomes Africans. No charity for their own American homeless? Photo: https://www.pri.org/stories/2019-06-17/portland-maine-turns-crisis-opportunity-african-migrants
I-Team: Homeless Mainers feel left behind as asylum seekers get housing
PORTLAND (WGME) – Nearly 200 asylum seekers have to be out of an emergency shelter at the Portland Expo by this Thursday as the Red Claws move back in.
While state and city leaders scramble to find them housing, some homeless Mainers say they feel left behind.
The I-Team found more than 18,000 Mainers are on a waiting list for Section 8 and that’s just one program to help low-income families get affordable housing.
Many of those people are homeless and hungry and have already been waiting years for their number to be called. [Am I dreaming? I can’t believe any media in America would report this news!—-ed]
Zanetta Smith said she’s thankful for a storage shack in the woods where a friend is letting her live.
She said it’s not much, but it’s better than living in her car where she’s been for the last 5 years.
“It was pretty tough in the winter,” Smith said.
She lost her apartment after she got sick and couldn’t work anymore.
“You fall into bad times, and sometimes it’s hard to get out of it,” she said.
She’s trying to get a place of her own with a toilet, shower, and running water, which her temporary housing doesn’t have.
She said she’s been on the waiting list for a Section 8 voucher for years.
According to Maine Housing, the statewide Maine Centralized Section 8 waiting list is now up to 18,316.
Dan Brennan says it is only short term assistance for asylum seekers until they become “self-sufficient.” Yeh right!
“It’s years, unfortunately. We just don’t have the supply and stock,” said Dan Brennan, director of the Maine State Housing Authority.
Brennan said it could be five years to get a voucher to help pay for rent, and even if you get one, there’s no guarantee you’ll find a place.
“There simply is not enough supply of units available for people who need them,” Brennan said.
Local housing authorities also have waiting lists for public housing.
In Portland, for example, we found nearly 1,400 people waiting for a unit to open up, which could take as long as three years.
“Of course when the asylum seekers come up here they offered them free housing. How do they have a place for them but not for us?” Smith wants to know.
At last check, more than 150 asylum seekers who arrived in Portland since June have moved out of a makeshift shelter at the Portland Expo and into units in Bath, Brunswick, Lewiston, Portland, and Scarborough.
See all of my previous posts on the DR Congolese migration to Maine, here.
BTW, yesterday I told you that over 11,000 DR Congolese were legally admitted as refugees to the US in the first ten months of this fiscal year. This bunch in Maine came illegally and are now jumping the line for taxpayer supported housing!
First they want the 30,000 they believe they were promised for this year (FY19).
See my post yesterdaywhere I explain we are likely to reach that number by September 30th.
However, in a recent letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo they say they want 95,000 next year.
Hereis the news at from the Jewish Council for Public Affairs:
167 Jewish Organizations Urge U.S. to Meet Refugee Goal
JCPA, a network of 125 local Jewish community relations councils and 17 national Jewish agencies, has joined with 166 national, state, and local Jewish organizations and institutions in urging the United States to meet the refugee resettlement admissions goal of 30,000 for fiscal year 2019 and to return to historic norms next year.
In a letter delivered to Secretary of State Michael Pompeo on Wednesday (August 7th), the group explained, “The United States has historically distinguished itself as a beacon of hope and as a safe haven for those who most need it. For nearly 40 years, the refugee admissions target averaged 95,000 per year, with actual admissions averaging 80,000 refugees per year. Despite this, the Administration set the admissions ceiling to a historic low of 30,000 refugees in FY19. Resettling zero refugees in the U.S. in FY2020 would effectively gut the refugee resettlement program, violate our values as Jews and Americans, and abdicate the American promise of freedom and opportunity.”
Not mentioned in the short news story is the request for the CEILING for 2020 to be set at 95,000. See the letter with its 167 signatures. This is a paragraph from near the end.
We urge the Department of State, in partnership with the other implementing agencies, to restore our country’s refugee admissions cap to at least 95,000 for FY2020.The values of our nation and the safety and well-being of tens of thousands of refugees and their families depend on it.
Don’t miss the list of those that signed the letter, here.
What do they mean by restore the cap to 95,000?
In the last ten years (mostly Obama years!) the cap was no where near 95,000 until Obama set it at 110,000 in September 2017 as he was getting ready to vacate the Oval Office.
Why didn’t he set it at 110,000 or even 95,000 in his previous opportunities to set the CEILING?
I didn’t see these same groups attacking the sainted Obama for his much lower caps in his previous 7 years in office!
They make it sound like we have been admitting that extreme number in the years prior to the arrival of Donald Trump. We have not!
See the last ten years of CEILING data at Wrapsnetand then the actual number of admissions.
And, remember this: in the early years of the refugee program which began in 1980, we were not being invaded by tens of thousands of asylum seekers (wannabe refugees) at our borders as we are today.
I couldn’t manage to get the whole chart on the screen, but the part I want you to see is the column for the CEILING. So what do they mean by claiming the CEILING must be RESTORED to 95,000! Compare the CEILING column to the actual admissions and you will see that Obama’s numbers were high, but not as high as they are demanding that Trump’s should be!
There has been a lot of squawking from the refugee industry of late demanding admission of the full 30,000 refugees that the Trump Administration set as its ceiling for FY19, and it looks like they will get pretty close.
But, first a little housekeeping. I am working on restoring Refugee Resettlement Watch but my helper has been very busy so it is taking longer than I had hoped.
In the meantime, I’ll bring you some refugee news here at Frauds and Crooks. I have already been reporting some of the news about the refugee contractors*** demand for 95,000 refugees for the new fiscal year (FY2020 begins on October 1 of this year).
Today I’m updating numbers and nationalities of this year’s refugee crop.
Also, several readers at Facebook and some readers here tell me that yesterday’s post about those creeps who taunted an old white ladyin a Chicago area nursing home, here, were unable to open the story or it was never sent out. I hope too many of you didn’t have the same problem.
So how are refugee admissions going this year?
Here (below) is a map from Wrapsnet showing how many refugees have been admitted since October 1, 2018 to August 1, 2019 (10 months). Texas continues to lead the nation as the number one most ‘welcoming’ state. (They will turn Texas blue!)
You can see that as of August 1, 24,906 refugees have been admitted. And, with two months and a little over 5,000 more to go, they might very well make it to the CAP (aka ceiling). Remember though that since that is a CEILING, there is nothing that says the State Department must hit the ceiling.
The Prez, when setting the 30,000 limit, might very well have finished the year with only a fraction of that number and been completely within the law.
I know the numbers are difficult to read, so here are the top ten welcoming states:
Texas, New York, Washington, California, Kentucky, Ohio, Georgia, Arizona, North Carolina, and Michigan.
The top three nationalities in this year’s flow are ‘refugees’ from the DR Congo by far with 11,047, followed by Burma with 4,175 (826 of those are Rohingya Muslims), and Ukraine 3,036.
The total number of Muslims admitted in the first ten months is just over 4,000, or about 16% of the total refugee arrivals of 24,906.
***For readers new to the whole Refugee Admissions Program, the UN liststhe nine contractors here and then has a cool interactive site to find which refugee agencies are operating near you.
“You just can’t believe you’re seeing this. You think your mom is safe and now this is going on.”
(Joan Biebel, Margaret Collins’ daughter)
Here is the pair of aides who taunted a 91-year-old patient in their care at a Chicago area nursing home, filmed their sick game and posted it on Snapchat.
Jamie Montesa and Brayan Cortez will be in court later this month. Not only are the pair uncaring and mean-spirited, they are stupid for posting their ‘game’ on the internet.
The first version of the story I saw yesterday was at aUK publication.
What! People in the UK know about this and we don’t! But, this morning I see the story was reported locally.
Any sign of it on national news? CNN? MSNBC? Probably not because here (dare I say it!) we have brown people torturing a little old white lady which doesn’t fit the mainstream media narrative!
Before I get to one local story (very few posted photos of Montesa and Cortez), be sure to see my previous posts on elder abuse in the case of Billy Chemirmir who was allegedly murdering elderly women in assisted living homes in Texas, and the case in North Carolinawhere a Guatemalan ‘caregiver’ was sexually assaulting vulnerable women in his care.
And, then there was the rape case at a nursing home in Seattle, see here.
Is there an epidemic of abuse, even murder, going on in American nursing homes?
We are constantly bombarded with news about vulnerable women and children crossing our southern border, but what about our own vulnerable senior citizens! Why aren’t we hearing about them!
Nursing home sued after video shows staff taunting elderly woman
GLENVIEW, Ill. — A Glenview nursing home was sued after caregivers posted Snapchat videos of themselves taunting a 91-year-old dementia patient.
Margaret Collins, a 91-year-old great-Grandmother was treated inhumanely by supposed nurse’s aides.
The short Snapchat video shows 91-year-old Margaret Collins who has dementia. In the video, it said “Margaret hates gowns!” with two laughing and crying emojis. It showed a certified nursing assistant repeatedly putting a hospital gown on top of an elderly woman while she tries to wave it away.
“You just can’t believe you’re seeing this,” Joan Biebel, Collins’ daughter, said. “You think your mom is safe and now this is going on. You’re just trying to figure out what the heck is happening here.”
The incident happened last December at the Abington of Glenview nursing and rehab center. Family members said staff knew that Collins did not like hospital gowns and preferred to wear her own clothes.
Brayan Cortez and Jamie Montesa were both charged with misdemeanor disorderly conduct. Police said Cortez was in the video and Montesa recorded it and they said she told investigators she had recorded video of Collins in her wheelchair once before.
“If they’re in her room, they should’ve been there for a reason to help, her assist her, not to exploit her and threaten her and demean her and post it on social media,” Biebel said.
Now, the family is suing the nursing home, its parent company and the workers. The lawsuit seeks more than a million dollar in damages.
Administrators said in a statement:
“The privacy and dignity of our residents are of the utmost concern at The Abington. Recently, two employees were immediately terminated when it was determined that they violated our standards and policies.”
Police reports said Cortez and Montesa did initially return to work after serving a six day suspension. The Illinois Department of Public Health reported administrators initially concluded the allegations were unfounded after co-workers vouched for the pair.
“This was a sick game that two CNAs tried to play for their own enjoyment and by filing this lawsuit and pursing this lawsuit we will prevent this from happening to other individuals in this facility, as well as other facilities across the state,” John Perconti, attorney, said.
The state found Abington failed to implement its abuse prevention policy. Family members moved Collins to another facility, but they say her health has deteriorated.
My best advice for any of you who must put your loved one in a nursing facility is to check it out carefully and visit often and without notice. If you can’t do that all the time, find friends and relatives who will visit the patient at odd hours.
And, even if your family member or friend has dementia, listen to them if they show signs of fear or complain in any way about their care. (Finally someone listened in the North Carolina case!) Perhaps even look into getting a camera for the room if you are suspicious about nurses, nurses aides, and others with access to your loved one.
Although he really isn’t an Arkansas man! He is a Yemeni national who lived in Arkansas ever since his father used illegal means to get his family into the US.
Thanks to Richard for the tip. Surprise! Surprise! There is even a photo of Bilal al-Rayanni (aka Bilal Kassim Alawdi)
The story broke yesterday and is rapidly making the rounds of small city media outlets since the APposted a pretty decent story.
Initial local Arkansas media coverage left out a key point, as did yesterday’s Justice Department press release—none that I saw, except the AP, said a word about how this Yemeni NATIONAL was living among us.
Indeed, rarely do we see mention of how these criminals and terrorists get into the US in the first place and that is always the most important question for me.
How do we fix our ‘broken’ immigration system if we don’t know how it is being gamed? Hereis a bit of the AP story posted at the Washington Post:
Arkansas man charged with helping al-Qaida
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — A Yemeni national living in Arkansas was charged with providing support to a terrorist organization, the U.S. Department of Justice said Friday. Bilal al-Rayanni was charged Thursday with supporting al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula between October and December of 2014 while he was in Yemen. Al-Rayanni was in Yemen, his home country, for three months in 2014.
The 28-year-old was initially on arrested June 27 and charged July 11 with making a false statement on a passport application in May. According to the original complaint, he allegedly used the name Bilal Kassim Alawdi, which he had been using on passport documentation since he was a small child.
The Justice Department said al-Rayanni “provided and attempted to provide material support and resources, in the form of personnel (including himself) and services” to the terrorist organization, but did not elaborate. A spokeswoman said the department opened an investigation because of a citizen report.
[….]
The Justice Department said al-Rayanni lived in Arkansas before and after he traveled to Yemen in 2014.
Al-Rayanni is a resident of Helena-West Helena, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) east of Little Rock. He’s been in federal custody since the June arrest and his arraignment is scheduled for Thursday. In an interview the day before he was arrested, al-Rayanni told State Department and FBI agents that his father had purchased a U.S. visa from a Yemeni man whose name was Kassem Alawdi. His father then used that visa in 1992 to obtain a U.S. passport for al-Rayani under the name Bilal Kassim Alawdi. He said he didn’t learn his true name until he was between 10 and 12, but has used the false name to obtain and renew passports in 2002 and 2008, as well as the most recent attempt to renew his passport in May.
I’m more interested in the immigration fraud then I am in his terrorist inclinations!
I sure hope the US Justice Department is now going after his Daddy and anyone else who got into the US with him by lying and cheating!
If it was a visa, then for what? Did they just overstay the visa and no one figured out that they were here illegally?
And, if they got into the US on only a visa for some limited time, how did they get US Passports with only visas permitting them to be here? So many questions!
