Todd Bensman, senior national security fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, said the Biden administration is attempting to direct attention away from record-high illegal land border crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border by offering a multitude of other avenues to migrants who intend to enter the country.
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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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Tennessee U.S. Senator Bill Hagerty joined The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy Thursday, where in a stunning statement of clarity, exposed the Biden administration’s intention to repurpose ICE from an immigration enforcement agency to a resettlement bureau though a manipulation of the Continuing Resolution budget.
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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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According to non-profit Samaritas, a Michigan refugee resettlement group that has been providing homes for displaced migrants since 1934, it will be resettling at least 350 Afghan refugees in Michigan.
“What I can tell you is that Samaritas is committed to serving at least 350 refugees from Afghanistan,” Kelli Dobner, an executive with the organization, told 9&10 News. “Men, women and children.”
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The first of hundreds of Afghan refugees have been settled in the Phoenix area, which is being described as a “top destination” for those displaced after the U.S. withdrawal and Taliban takeover of the country.
Republican Gov. Doug Ducey thanked the Arizona Department of Economic Security (DES), along with Cindy McCain, the widow of former Arizona Senator John McCain, for assisting in the refugee resettlement process.
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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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Amid the Biden Administration’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan which led to a swift takeover by the Taliban, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer says it is Michigan’s “duty and honor” to welcome Afghan refugees with open arms.
In a lengthy statement, Whitmer announced that the state will be resettling refugees in the near future.
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Thursday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed Carol Swain to the newsmakers line to discuss several of President Trump’s refugee resettlement executive order and suggests how Tennessee should respond.
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272,000 legal immigrants arrived in the United States during 2016 with an entitlement to the full menu of welfare programs, just like any U.S. citizen, attendees were told at the Conservative Caucus in Murfreesboro on Saturday.
The information was presented by one of the afternoon’s speakers, Don Barnett, a fellow with the Center for Immigration Studies who has followed refugee resettlement for over 20 years.
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Two separate bills that stipulate that the input of either the state or local legislative body is required with regard to the resettlement of refugees have moved through the House State Committee.
In other words, both proposed pieces of legislation prohibit Tennessee’s governor from acting alone in making decisions regarding refugee resettlement.
The proposals came about as the result of a series of events that occurred in late 2019.
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A prominent conservative organization has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to consider a case involving Tennessee’s participation in the federal refugee resettlement program.
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In the past month, the State Department resettled over a thousand refugees from Afghanistan, even though the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program was temporarily suspended due to the coronavirus pandemic.
COVID-19 cases are on the rise in refugee camps overseas, including in Greece, where a migrant camp had to be quarantined after 23 asylum seekers tested positive for the coronavirus.
The pause on refugee admissions was expected to last from March 19 through April 6, but according to Ann Corcoran of Refugee Resettlement Watch, 1,003 Afghan refugees were resettled during that approximate time period.
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Breitbart reports, “American taxpayers are billed up to $133,000 per refugee resettled in the United States over the course of a lifetime, a new study reveals.”
In a recent report on the costs to U.S. citizens for its welcoming immigration and refugee policies, the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) finds that each refugee resettled in the U.S. especially those in the United States illegally, and use social welfare programs cost American taxpayers anywhere on average between $60,000 and $133,000 over the course of a lifetime.
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The classic Wizard of Oz quote “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain” could apply to the attitude of the top leaders of the Ohio Republican Party.
Gov. Mike DeWine and Ohio Republican Party Chairwoman Jane Timken have taken to the roads to proclaim how wonderful the economy is and talk about government spending plans for children’s programs. Noticeably absent are comments about red flag laws, refugees and primary endorsements that the two have drawn heat on lately.
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Live from Music Row Thursday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – Leahy was joined on the newsmakers line by Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii.
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The Minneapolis Institute of Art has draped thousands of life jackets worn by refugees over the museum’s exterior columns.
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“Do what I say, not as I do,” could be the mantra for Presidential candidate Amy Klobuchar when it comes to resettling more than 500 percent more refugees under her proposal since virtually none of them would end up in her neighborhood, according to a report. And one of her motives is to support the big businesses that handle resettlement, according to reports. The Democratic U.S. senator from Minnesota wants to skyrocket the number of refugees taken in every year from President Trump’s cap of 18,000 to the Obama-era level of at least 110,000, Breitbart reported. While Minneapolis has resettled thousands of refugees since 2009, almost none live in Marcy-Holmes, where Klobuchar owns a home with her husband. Nearly 85 percent of all residents in Klobuchar’s neighborhood are native-born American citizens and of the less than ten percent of foreign-born residents, half arrived from China, India, Korea, Germany, Thailand, and Malaysia — countries from where only five refugees have been resettled in Minnesota in the last decade and none of whom have been resettled in Minneapolis much less Klobuchar’s neighborhood. Klobuchar is not the only Democratic presidential candidate to call for drastically flooding America with refugees. South Bend, Indiana,…
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Billionaire Democratic presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg wants to flood America with refugees by 694 percent.
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A Michigan group announced last week that it has awarded $300,000 to nine local organizations “working to address the needs of immigrants and refugees,” including legal services and healthcare.
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The Tennessee House of Representatives is considering a new bill aimed at stopping Gov. Bill Lee from allowing an influx of refugees without legislative approval.
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In a statement from the White House Wednesday evening, Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham called this ruling “preposterous” and yet another example of a lawless district court asserting its own immigration policy in front of standing US law. Furthermore, she says this ruling “robbed” millions of Americans from having a direct say in something that directly affects their communities.
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Gov. Tim Walz’s December 13 decision to say yes to more refugees in Minnesota grants the federal government permission to resettle refugees from any country it desires into the state, including up to 720 refugees from Middle East countries that the government of Australia has refused to accept.
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Both of Minnesota’s most populous counties will officially continue to accept refugees.
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As the 111th Tennessee General Assembly is set to enter its second session, newly elected Speaker of the House Cameron Sexton gave an exclusive interview to The Tennessee Star to discuss legislative priorities and current issues.
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Republican governors around the country are working closely with refugee resettlement NGOs and contractors to circumvent President Trump’s efforts to lower the amount of refugees admitted to the United States, according to a memo obtained by Breitbart.
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Gov. Bill Lee’s decision on December 18 to say yes to more refugees in Tennessee allows the federal government to resettle refugees from any country it wants into the state, including an estimated 300 to 720 refugees from Middle East countries that the government of Australia has refused to accept.
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We’re tolerating ourselves to death. There is no other way to say it, especially when it comes to immigration, specifically anchor babies, chain migration, and refugee resettlement. It’s as though our “leaders” have been fed stupid pills and chased them down with healthy quantities of idiocy.
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Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN-05) accused Beltrami County of “denying refugees a chance at a better life” after it voted to opt out of refugee resettlement.
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Westerville City Council unanimously passed a resolution this week that says the city will allow refugees to resettle within their community.
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A Minnesota senator said he is “deeply disturbed” by House Majority Leader Ryan Winkler’s (DFL-Golden Valley) threat to cut state aid from Beltrami County after it voted to opt out of refugee resettlement.
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A high-ranking Minnesota lawmaker is threatening to withhold state aid from Beltrami County after it became the first county in the state to opt out of refugee resettlement.
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Gov. Bill Lee went to Elizabethton last week to tout a college grant. He got that and more — including a protest over his refugee plan.
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The Columbus Dispatch wants Ohio to open the doors to more refugees.
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Gov. Bill Lee doubled down on his controversial — and unpopular — decision to say yes, rather than no, to more refugees in Tennessee during an interview with Michael DelGiorno on his radio program Monday morning, heard on Nashville’s 99.7 WTN.
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My home state has been ground zero for America’s failed, taxpayer abusive resettlement schemes for decades. Thousands of welfare dependent refugees, migrants, and illegal immigrants have been forced on our overburdened taxpayers in economically deprived cities, and the results have been disastrous. If Tennessee citizens fail to act, you will endure the same fate.
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Gov. Mike DeWine’s Christmas gift to Ohio residents was a letter to the U.S. Department of State inviting refugees to keep on coming in, including from countries with “high burdens” of tuberculosis.
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Refugee resettlement in Ohio is up 22 percent under Gov. Mike DeWine, including hundreds from countries with “high burdens” of tuberculosis.
DeWine is one of more than 30 governors who have agreed to accept more refugees under a plan put forth by President Donald Trump in which a governor has to opt in for resettlement, the Associated Press reported.
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On December 18, 2019, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee announced Tennessee would accept more refugees under President Trump’s executive order. As anyone paying attention might guess, that decision did not go over well with conservatives in Tennessee.
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Dozens of mayors from across the country recently issued a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to ask for continued refugee resettlement in their respective cities and townships.
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During a specific discussion Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m.– Leahy welcomed Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies Mark Krikorian.
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“So what the governor’s letter is going to do is make Tennessee a magnet. Tennessee will be a magnet for refugees,” host Michael Patrick Leahy told listeners Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 am to 8:00 am.
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The Thomas More Law Center (TMLC) and Bursch Law PLLC filed a petition for rehearing by the entire Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals bench of a two-judge panel opinion dismissing Tennessee’s challenge to the constitutionality of the federal refugee resettlement program for lack of standing.
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The Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday rejected the State of Tennessee’s appeal in which the General Assembly sought to ban the federal government from forcing Tennessee to accept and fund a refugee resettlement program. A copy of the court’s ruling is available here. A federal judge in March 2018 dismissed Tennessee’s lawsuit against the federal government’s resettlement of refugees in the state on 10th amendment grounds. The Tennessee General Assembly in May 2018 authorized the Thomas More Law Center to file an appeal on its behalf, The Tennessee Star reported. The law center did not charge for the service. When Diane Black was running for the governor’s office last year, she announced her support for the appeal. The General Assembly first retained Thomas More in 2017 to file a federal lawsuit against the U.S. State Department, which oversees the refugee resettlement program, the law center said in a press release. In its decision Wednesday, the Sixth Circuit “side-stepped the substantive issues in a ruling Wednesday that held the General Assembly did not have ‘standing’ to challenge the federal program and dismissed the state’s case. Thus, the court never decided whether the federal refugee resettlement program violated the…
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The blue wave made its way through New Hampshire Tuesday night when both U.S. House seats went to Democrats as well as both houses of the state legislature. Neither of the state’s U.S. senators, both Democrats, were up for reelection this year. The results left incumbent Gov. Chris Sununu (R-NH) among the only victorious Republicans of the night in the state, beating his opponent Democrat Molly Kelly 53 percent to 46 percent. “The next two years are going to be a little bit different, but that’s OK. That’s New Hampshire. Anybody who has ideas is invited to the table,” he said in his victory speech. Sununu will also be up for reelection in 2020, since governors are elected every two years in New Hampshire. Local conservatives blamed nobody but the state GOP for the bad results. The local website GraniteGrok wrote: If the NH Republican Party wants to win, and win Consistently, act like you believe in the Platform. Speak like you do and at each and every turn. Vote like you do at each and every opportunity. And Legislate like there’s no tomorrow because two days ago was that “no more tomorrow” – and you blew it. Creating additional trouble for Sununu is the state’s Executive Council, a political body…
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The Pennsylvania Office of Inspector General and the Lancaster County District Attorney’s Office announced last week that they are joining forces to tackle welfare fraud, specifically food-stamp fraud. Commonly referred to as the food-stamp program, the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) has increasingly become a concern among law-enforcement officials. Due to the extent of the fraud and the ease with which it has been carried out, as well as the apparent lack of desire to tackle it until now, fraud had “ballooned” from 2012-2016 during President Barack Obama’s term in office. Most recently, the Government Accountability Institute (GAI) released a stunning report linking the misuse of food-stamp dollars to international terrorism as the practice of “trafficking” raked in millions of dollars for fraudulent convenience stores nationwide. The findings from GAI’s groundbreaking report, titled “EBTerrorism: How Fraud Ridden SNAP Funds Terror, Fails at Enforcement and Wastes Taxpayer Money,” were reported by The Ohio Star last week. In short, the trafficking involved individuals selling their benefits to store owners and managers for less than what they were worth, while the recipients turned them in for full value. Such fraud will be the focus of Pennsylvania’s efforts to find and prosecute those running welfare…
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Right after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that the FY2019 ceiling for refugee admissions would be no more than 30,000, Democrats in Congress flew into action and federal refugee resettlement contractors began objecting. On Thursday, 51 U.S. House Democrats, including Tennessee’s Steve Cohen, co-sponsored House Resolution 1073 calling for no fewer than 110,000 refugee admissions for fiscal year 2019 which begins on October 1st. This was the last refugee admission ceiling proposed by Obama before leaving office. The resolution also takes a swipe at President Trump’s integrity on the refugee issue by stating that Trump “and his administration must operate the United States Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) in good faith.” Democrat Senate candidate Phil Bredesen’s history of welcoming thousands of refugees to Tennessee during his two terms as governor, is strong evidence that he agrees there should be a higher number of refugees brought to the U.S. in the coming year. Between 2003 and 2011, Bredesen’s last year as governor, over 9,000 refugees of multiple ethnicities were brought to Tennessee by federal contractors. The numbers do not, however, account for secondary migrants who are first resettled in other states or other parts of Tennessee but then relocate to follow friends,…
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Democratic gubernatorial candidate Karl Dean placed a high priority on meeting the needs of “new Americans” during his two terms as mayor of Nashville. Speaking forcefully against an English-first proposal to launching programs like “MyCity Academy” and “Pathway for New Americans,” Dean looked for ways to politically capture the support of the immigrant constituency and solidify Nashville’s blue vote. In 2009, Nashville Councilman Eric Crafton proposed an amendment to Nashville’s charter which would have declared English to be the official language of Nashville and Davidson County and which would have limited the use of languages other than English in conducting the city’s business: English is the official language of the Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County, Tennessee. Official actions which bind or commit the government shall be taken only in the English language, and all official government communications and publications shall be in English. No person shall have a right to government services in any other language. All meetings of the Metro Council, Boards, and Commissions of the Metropolitan Government shall be conducted in English. The Metro Council may make specific exceptions to protect public health and safety. Nothing in this measure shall be interpreted to conflict with federal or…
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