Virginia has taken in more than 650 refugees from Afghanistan in the past five months as that nation continues to reel after President Joe Biden’s 2021 withdrawal of American troops.
According to a report on refugee resettlement from October 2023 through February, 655 Afghanis now call Virginia home. That is the most of any country of origin for the 1,295 refugees recently resettled in Virginia.
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The Office of Global Michigan is encouraging “everyday Americans” to volunteer to house illegal immigrants and “make a difference by welcoming refugees from around the world.”
“Volunteers [are] needed” to “support refugee resettlement efforts in Michigan,” says the office’s website, which was recently launched by the Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Development.
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The Biden administration has poured billions of taxpayer dollars into the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) since October 2022, according to a new report from Open the Books.
The Biden administration spent $8.925 billion in fiscal year 2022 and $10.928 billion in fiscal year 2023 on the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) at ORR to accommodate, transport, and provide migrants with various other services like medical care and loans, according to the report, which was released Tuesday. In recent months, HHS has faced scrutiny for ORR’s alleged mishandling of cases of unaccompanied migrant children, some of whom have been released to poorly vetted sponsors where they are used for child labor, according to The New York Times.
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The Biden administration failed to use all available screening data to vet Afghan refugees brought to the United States last year, allowing at least 50 individuals posing “potentially significant security concerns” to make it inside America’s borders, the Pentagon’s chief watchdog is warning.
To make matters worse, the Defense Department inspector general reported to Congress this week that 28 of 31 Afghan evacuees with known “derogatory information” can no longer be located.
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After the Department of Defense granted approval for two more Virginia military facilities to process Afghan refugees, half of the total number of refugee resettlement facilities in the United States will be located in the Commonwealth.
“The Department of Defense has authorized two additional military installations in Virginia to house Afghan refugees — Marine Corps Base Quantico and Fort Pickett, a National Guard training center an hour southwest of Richmond,” according to Military.com.
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GOP gubernatorial candidate Jeff Johnson has raised the trifecta of issues facing states where the federal government’s contractors are resettling refugees – cost, transparency and accountability. Johnson’s call to pause refugee resettlement in Minnesota demonstrates his understanding that costs being forced onto the state to pay for the federal program is…
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A prominent evangelical Christian leader tells The Minnesota Sun in an exclusive interview that a recent article in the St. Cloud Times , which is owned by the media giant Gannett, distorts Biblical scriptures to falsely justify the massive refugee resettlement that has taken place in that community over the past…
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The Partnership for a New American Economy (PNAE), is a powerful and well-funded big-business-cheap-labor lobby led by business leaders, former politicians, and chambers of commerce. Renamed to the shortened New American Economy (NAE), the coalition continues its advocacy for comprehensive immigration reform by highlighting the work ethic and perceived business…
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After serving his last term as governor of Tennessee, Bredesen dabbled in “partisan politicking” and working to help other Democrats get elected: As a loyal Democrat, Bredesen this year declared his support for President Obama’s re-election, endorsed the party’s 4th Congressional District nominee, Eric Stewart, and did “robo-calls” supporting a…
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Phil Bredesen, the health insurance executive turned governor, had an antidote to contain the spiraling costs of the state’s Medicaid program – disenroll elderly, sick and disabled Tennesseans from TennCare. According to Gordon Bonnyman, co-founder of the Tennessee Justice Center, two years into Bredesen’s first term as governor, “[a]pproximately 200,000…
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When he was governor of Tennessee from 2003 to 2011, Phil Bredesen set the state up to receive a dramatically higher number of refugees – an increase well into the thousands – bringing with it significant financial benefit to federal refugee contractors like Catholic Charities of Tennessee and World Relief.…
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The cost to teach English to non-English speaking students in Tennessee public schools has increased over 100 percent since FY 2016. In FY 2016, the total cost for English Language Learner (ELL) services was $94,110,440. Seventy percent was funded through the state’s Basic Education Program (BEP) in the amount of $65,877,308,…
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Philadelphia-based Education Law Center told the city’s School Reform Commission that immigrant students and English Language Learner students (EL), need expanded programming, “improved cultural competency” for teachers, more support for the parents of these students and greater access to vocational training programs. According to the Law Center, test results show that…
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From the inception of the federal Refugee Admissions Program in 1980 until 2003, the first year of Phil Bredesen’s first term as governor of Tennessee, only a handful of Somali refugees were resettled in Tennessee by the federal government. That all changed in 2003. Between 2003 and 2011, Bredesen’s last…
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Tyson CEO and President Tom Hayes was the BMOC (big man on campus) at the Humboldt plant ground-breaking on Wednesday when he promised a $500,000 kickback grant to Gibson County. But it’s not really a no-strings unconditional gift, nor is it really money from Tyson Foods’ pocket, is it Tom?…
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Refugee resettlement in Tennessee has brought sizable fiscal rewards for the federal contractors operating in Tennessee but along with helping to establish what former mayor Karl Dean celebrated as “growing enclaves of immigrants” has come Kurdish and Somali gangs from refugee groups brought to the state. In 2007, the New York…
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