It’s true that Tennessee’s illegal immigration problem is anchored in Davidson and Shelby counties. These blue urbans are run by “progressive”, ie, socialists who endorse Biden’s agenda to flood Southern states with legal immigrants like refugees and illegal aliens.
The most recent available numbers as of February 2020, from the data trackers show that among urban counties, Davidson was tracked to 5,355 removable illegal alien cases beating out Shelby county with 3,875 cases.
Removal proceedings happen in immigration courts and is an administrative process whereby an administrative law judge determines whether an illegal alien is deportable or for some reason, gets to stay.
It’s also true that the Tennessee General Assembly’s drift to center (the Senate may already have crossed the line to center-left), enabled by a Chamber of Commerce and refugee expansionist governor, willingly ignore the growing problem and cost of illegal immigrant numbers in the state.
costs calculated in 2017 – how much higher today?
Well surprise, surprise, or not, but illegal immigration has already spread to rural Tennessee. Bedford county was reported to have 477 individuals in removal proceedings and Sevier 951 cases.
The status of Bean Station’s (East Tennessee) illegal alien community is not entirely clear after the 2018 ICE raid at the Southeast Provision meat-packing plant. What was reported, however, was the community’s protectionist attitude to illegal immigration.
Aiding and abetting illegal immigrants to Tennessee, are well-funded groups like the TN Immigrant & Refugee Rights Coalition (TIRRC), Justice for Our Neighbors, Latino Memphis, Conexion Americas, La Paz (Chattanooga), and Centro Hispano (Knoxville) among others.
In November 2020, Tennessee’s Department of Human Services used the state’s bloated TANF fund to award Catholic Charities of Tennessee (CCTN) a $7.3 million dollar grant. The money will be used to help Catholic Charities expand its operations in Middle Tennessee by establishing family resource centers in ten locations – Montgomery, Maury, Marshall, Bedford, Coffee Grundy, Warren, White, Dekalb and Putnam counties.
Family resource centers in Davidson County are staffed to assist individuals including refugees to access public benefits and services. In fact, one such center specializes in assisting refugees. Last year CCTN moved its South Nashville family resource center into the Conexion Americas Casa Asafran building. It now shares space with the Global Education Center and Metro Public Schools, the American Muslim Advisory Council (AMAC), and Justice For Our Neighbors (JFON), an organization which advocates for illegal alien “rights” including Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC)* who are currently being transported and housed in Chattanooga.**
As part of their services, CCTN assists in connecting UACs dropped off at the border, to family members in Tennessee who may have also entered the U.S. in violation of immigration laws like the case of Edwin Mejia in Tennessee.
CCTN’s former State Refugee Coordinator Holly Johnson admitted that her agency helps link UACs to their family members in Tennessee. At the US Conference of Catholic Bishops level, taking custody of the UACs is the “doing well by doing good” business – over $23 million dollars in 2019, quite a haul considering that the UAC numbers were extremely low compared to what the Biden administration has unleashed.
Regarding the resettlement of refugees from overseas, it is no secret that Bill Lee is a passionate supporter for spreading them throughout the state. He is joined in his support for the federal program by state Sen. Page Walley who works for an organization that makes money providing refugee resettlement services.
Over the years the refugee mileage placement rules have enabled CCTN to place refugees in many of the counties that the $7.3 million dollars in state money is now funding to help CCTN expand and set up more formal operations.
50-100 miles covers almost the whole state
CCTN’s executive director thanked Governor Lee and the DHS for their largesse in giving them the largest grant in the history of the organization assuming of course that the multi-millions received year after year from the federal government, is ignored.
CCTN wears several hats in Tennessee including operating as the State Refugee Coordinator (SRC) overseeing the federal contractors paid to bring refugees to the state. In 2008, then governor Phil Bredesen formally withdrew the state from the federal program after which the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement chose CCTN to continue the state’s refugee resettlement program.
Once Catholic Charities took over the program opening the TN Office for Refugees and employing the State Refugee Coordinator, the number of refugees being brought to the state increased by over 60% even as numbers were declining nationally.
CCTN’s state plan was to increase the number of agencies resettling refugees so they could increase the number of refugees being brought to Tennessee.This federal program has been a cash cow for CCTN and the federal contractors resettling refugees.
Government funding, in particular for work related to refugee resettlement, has dominated CCTN’s work. For example, the last available CCTN report, FY2015-16, shows just under $10 million dollars in refugee resettlement grants which come from the federal government.
The financial breakdown clearly showing the heavy dependence on refugee resettlement funds was available on CCTN’s website until 2018 – it has now been removed making the organization’s operations much less transparent.
None of the resettlement contractors operating in Tennessee, including CCTN and the SRC, consult with or are accountable to the state legislature which is forced to expend state dollars to operationalize the refugee resettlement program.
For this reason alone there are reasonable and legitimate questions about why the Tennessee state government chose CCTN of all organizations, to infuse with big dollars. Asked another way, why hasn’t the state simply taken back the SRC function so the state can control the number of refugees brought to the state and the amount of state dollars used for the federal program?
On April 16th, Biden signed a memo intended to speed up the arrival of refugees but left Trump’s FY21 low cap in place – that was until the religious groups who need to fill their coffers, raised the roof. By the afternoon of the 16th, Biden caved and promised that by mid-May, the cap for the remainder of the fiscal year, would be raised to over 60,000.
Don’t be surprised if the enhanced vetting criteria put in place by Trump goes by the wayside. In 2016, after Obama announced that the U.S. would take 10,000 Syrian refugees, his administration “repeatedly shortened the timeframe” for vetting these refugees in order to get as close to that number as possible. So when refugee contractors claim that refugees are the most thoroughly vetted immigrants to the U.S…..
On thing is for certain – when the call comes that refugees are ready to come to Tennessee, CCTN will be ready!
*in line with the Biden administration’s unconstitutional rewrite of U.S. immigration law and erase the illegal immigration status of UACs, they are now referred to simply as “UC” – unaccompanied children.
**once UACs are released to sponsors in Tennessee, they are entitled to attend public school.
And in the process, enable local governments to be run by Marxists, diminish the opportunities for lesser-skilled workers, and generally degrade the quality of life for freedom-loving Tennesseans.
Every time the governor or a member of the Tennessee General Assembly rolls out the “we’re a business friendly state” excuse for why they won’t vote to do X or Y, they should be reminded of four things:
1.abetting the emerging business-driven “soft” vaccine mandates in Tennessee will not end well for incumbents
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)’s December 2020 guidance on vaccinations does not prohibit employers from requiring COVID vaccination as a condition of employment, but does recognize that there are exemptions for certain disabilities and those with a sincerely held religious belief.
Any number of bills related to COVID – SB7/HB10, SB320/HB794, SB564/HB1269, have fallen by the wayside this session. One bill still standing and which may provide some degree of protection is SB187/HB13 which preserves the religious exemption for COVID and its variant vaccines.
However, it does not apply to private businesses so individuals may have to avail themselves of the EEOC process. An amendment was filed by Sen. Haile that also exempted government-run hospitals, nursing homes and public universities so employees and perhaps even university attendees and nursing home residents may still be subject to an institution mandated vaccine program.
Sen. Ferrell Haile
Republicans legislators tend to send a message of semi-appeasement, indecisiveness and lack of backbone on very controversial issues. Democrats, however, have no problem sticking together and casting morally reprehensible votes against bills like Rep. Tim Rudd’s “Unborn Child Dignity Act” which requires burial or cremation for aborted babies.
Rudd described his bill as seeking to “extend the protections, dignity and respect of a deceased surgically aborted child as granted to any other deceased human being…the bill would make the same level of respect applicable as currently available to pets.”
Democrats on the House Health Committee and Senate Judiciary Committee voted against the bill
2. illegal aliens depress the wages of the least skilled Tennessee workers
Despite recognizing the connection between job development, employment of Tennesseans and illegal immigration, Haslam reneged on his campaign promise to “do everything within my authority to be sure that Tennessee does not attract illegal activity.” He refused to sign the sanctuary city bill in 2108, so it went into law without his signature.
As to the employment of illegal aliens in Tennessee, the General Assembly and its conflict-of-interest driven voting, is complicit in throwing legal Tennessee workers and conservative voters under the bus in deference to the wishes of the Chamber of Commerce and NFIB, because “we are a business friendly state.”
3. spending state taxpayer dollars to relocate woke corporations which then work against Constitutionally-based public policy, ultimately backfires
In 2018, for example, former governor and never-Trumper Bill Haslam handed over $20+ million of Tennessee taxpayer dollars to get Alliance Bernstein (AB), a NYC investment management and research firm, to move its new corporate headquarters and its leftist wokeness to Nashville.
At the time, Lamar and Corker couldn’t heap enough praise on Haslam for bringing in more New Yorkers to benefit from living in a no-state-income-tax state – a product of a more conservative leaning legislature buttressed by hefty and sustained support from voters.
Part of AB’s “Social Responsibility” platform is “promoting gender and racial equity.”
Upon arrival, AB didn’t hesitate to try and use its economic weight to influence the Tennessee General Assembly’s work. In 2019, AB joined with the likes of Taylor Swift, Amazon, the Equality Project and the Nashville LGBT Chamber of Commerce to oppose bills which they claimed discriminated against the LGBT community.
Included in the bills to which AB and its allies objected, was the “Tennessee Natural Marriage Defense Act,” (SB1282/HB1369), intended as a response to the Obergefell decision and to uphold the Tennessee Constitution’s “defense of marriage” provision (one man and one woman being the only legally recognized marital contract in Tennessee).
It’s a telling and troubling sign that this bill was never heard in any committee and that a Republican supermajority legislature couldn’t find its way to support the state’s Constitutional amendment which was approved by 81.3% (close to 1.5 million votes) on the November 2006 ballot, and approved overwhelmingly by all four of Tennessee’s socialist counties.
Cementing its woke status, AB’s (white) vice-president Daniel Weisman joined the Nashville-based Equity Alliance’s board.
Founded in 2016, The Equity Alliance mission is to build black and people of color power. The campaigns to “build power” include corrupting Tennessee’s voter integrity laws by pushing to expand absentee voting and vote by mail. Their 501(c)(4) Equity Alliance Action Fund (the Fund) is a member of the Nashville Justice League (NCL) which has successfully helped socialist candidates get elected to the Metro Nashville City Council; their success has been championed by the Marxist group Liberation Road.
The Fund endorsed Marxist candidate Marquita Bradshaw in the 2020 Senate primary. She lost but another of their chosen “progressive” candidates Torey Harris won a seat in the state legislature to become the youngest state legislator who describes himself as bi-sexual. Now they are taking on the Chattanooga City Council.
Given the Fund’s track record, it’s perfectly predictable that they will endorse Odessa Kelly who has announced running for Congress against Rep. Jim Cooper. Kelly was recruited and is being supported by the Justice Democrats which operates out of an address in Knoxville. They are the group which successfully installed the anti-Semitic squad in Congress and is using its power to change Congress and assault the South.
Response from our Republican legislators? We’re a “business friendly state.”
4. the good-will of freedom-loving voters is running out
The extreme failure and dysfunction of the legislature to proactively address the assault on Tennessee from Biden’s insane actions on illegal immigration, taking a “mum’s the word” approach to possible business-driven vaccine mandates and generally demonstrating that they are unprepared and unwilling to unqualifiedly uphold Constitutional principles and God-given rights and freedoms, without which, we are finished.
Nashville’s Fox17 has a long history of pandering to the Islamist community in Nashville and helping them to disseminate intentionally misleading information.
In 2014, American Muslim Advisory Council (AMAC) co-founder and then board member Kurdish refugee Drost Kokoye, complained to Fox 17 reporter Sky Arnold who ran a story about a pro-Israel pamphlet included at a high school cultural fair event. Of course Arnold’s “story” cast the complaining Muslims as offended victims.
Turns out however, that the pamphlet’s content was verified by multiple Middle East sources and Hillary Clinton, as being accurate.
Agitator and deceiver-in-chief Kokoye posted this anti-Semitic laced message about the allegedly offending pamphlet:
Turns out this Fox17 piece is likewise without any factual basis. The FACT is that as of March 31, 2021, any resident of Davidson County over the age of 16, can get a COVID vaccine. In FACT, people can even go to certain pharmacies and get the free vaccine.
Sabina Mohyuddin, executive director of the hyper political organization AMAC herself admits that Muslims in the area are “hesitant” to get the vaccine, accounting for the low numbers in the Muslim community.
Sadly for anyone who watches or reads Fox17 “news” reports, the FACTS do not support the husband and wife (?) propaganda team’s disinformation campaign.
In December 2020, months before either of the Glovers’ stories, Dr. James Hildreth, president and CEO of the historically black Meharry Medical College in Nashville, admitted that distrust of the vaccine accounts for the low COVID vaccination rates among minorities. is because they don’t trust the vaccine.
If either Glover wanted to report factually instead of trying to create a narrative of health-related racism, they could have reported about the on-going efforts by a group called Tennessee Stands which has been leading efforts to have freedom of choice regarding the COVID vaccine.
But in the agenda driven media, everyone knows that non-minority groups wanting to not be forced to take the COVID vaccine, doesn’t fit the leftist media narrative.
From its very beginning, AMAC, betted by the media, has spewed deceit and misinformation to the general public and to the Muslim community they claim to represent. Coincident with AMAC organizing, its founders, with help from the media, knowingly and deliberately issued distorted and untrue statements about a bill introduced in the state legislature.
The anti-terrorism material support bill specifically said that it only applied to individuals deliberately supporting the commission of a terrorist act and specifically stated that it did not apply to “the peaceful practice of any religion.”
The bill defined the term “sharia,” precisely the way jihadist terrorists defined it because this was a bill to prevent terrorist acts by cutting off sources of support. The bill, now a state law, prohibits using religious justification as a defense. This is the very same argument made by self-declared peaceful followers of Islam, to wit, that terrorist acts committed by ISIS jihadists or others in the name of their religion, does not represent Islam and that these terrorists are not true followers of the religion.
And yet, in keeping with standard leftist tactics, Islamist agitators and AMAC organizers, with no basis in fact, told members of their communities that legislators were trying to make following sharia a felony in Tennessee. Had AMAC organizers had any respect for the truth, they would have had to admit that supporters of this bill were actually trying to insulate peaceful religious observers from being lumped in with violent religious extremists.
As to the COVID vaccine – it’s about CHOICE, not equity.
“Misfeasance” as applied to a politician, is defined as “the performance of an official duty in an improper or unlawful manner or with an improper or corrupt motive.”
Conflict-of-interest driven voting on public policy likely qualifies as misfeasance. It’s especially egregious and harmful knowing that Tennessee is not immune from the crush of illegal alien economic migrants being ferried into the U.S. by the Biden administration.
In addition to the 67,000 illegal alien “essential workers” in Tennessee, and the 31,000 illegal aliens reported to be living and working in Davidson County, and the 135,000 estimated by FAIR, and the $793.4 million dollars illegal immigration costs Tennessee taxpayers, there is the issue of the Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) arriving in the state.
Over the past six years, just under 7,500 UACs have been routed to Tennessee. The overwhelming majority, 72%, are between 15 – 17 years old and predominantly male. Recent estimates expect at least 184,000 UACs to arrive in the U.S. this year.
Illegal immigration hurts low-skilled American workers and according to the Project 21 Black Leadership Network, “especially Black Americans who often share the same communities and services as illegal immigrants –[and should] not be forced to subsidize people who are not in the United States legally.’”
Two leading examples of legislators who make it easier for illegal aliens to find work in Tennessee are Rep. John Holsclaw and Rep. Clark Boyd.
Holsclaw is from Elizabethton and represents Unicoi and parts of Carter Counties. He’s been in the state legislature since 2015. Boyd is from Lebanon and represents Cannon County and parts of Wilson and DeKalb counties. He’s been in the state legislature since 2017.
In fact, Boyd, with agreement from the NFIB and the TN Chamber of Commerce, drafted the amendment that essentially nullified the effect of Griffey’s bill. Griffey’s bill originally required employers with 6 or more employees to use E-verify; Boyd’s amendment increased that to 25 employees. Freshman legislator Griffey probably desperate to pass a bill, swallowed the RINO “incrementalist” approach to policy and accepted a bad amendment.
It is common knowledge that the 25 employee threshold would not apply to the vast majority of small businesses in Tennessee.
As an aside, during the committee discussion, Rep. Mike Sparks (R-Smyrna) expressed worry about the fines levied on businesses that get caught hiring illegal alien workers. WAAAH! And Rep. Rush Bricken (R-Tullahoma) then and now continues to wring his hands trying to figure out how to avoid taking any action against illegal immigration in Tennessee.
After beating back Griffey’s original bill, Holsclaw and Boyd both received the “coveted” NFIB “Guardian of Small Business” award and of course, NFIB campaign donations.
NFIB and Holsclaw
While the Senate never moved the companion bill, Griffey’s bill with the non-effective 25 threshold passed the House making its supporters look as if they were taking meaningful action against illegal immigration in Tennessee.
NFIB and Boyd
Even with an ineffective bill, decepticon Republicans Pat Marsh, Patsy Hazlewood, Kent Calfee, Charlie Baum, Sam Whitson, and Mark White voted against the bill. Even more anemic Republicans Michael Curcio, Curtis Johnson, Jerome Moon, Brandon Ogles, Iris Rudder, Kevin Vaughan, and Ryan Williams, didn’t bother to vote.
It should be remembered that several of these legislators are among the worst illegal immigration protectionists in the Tennessee legislature. Patsy Hazlewood went so far as to try to kill the sanctuary city bill so she could help protect illegal aliens who commit crimes in Tennessee.
This year, when Griffey again tried to lower the E-verify employee threshold to to 6 employees, Boyd and Kevin Vaughn led the pack to kill the bill in subcommittee. Speaker Cameron Sexton subsequently abused his authority to prevent further discussion related to the problem of illegal immigration in the state as a way to protect his Republican caucus from being accountable to legal Tennessee voters and legal Tennessee workers.
Shamefully, Tennessee’s RINO approach to illegal immigration is at odds with a recent NYTimes opinion piece written by the U.S. Ambassador to Mexico. He puts it bluntly, in The Real Reason for the Border Crisis, is that “no one is holding American employers to account for their willingness to hire millions of unauthorized immigrants.”
The “no one” includes Tennessee’s Republican legislators.
March is the month that Tennessee House members shifted remaking the state into high gear – illegal alien workers are welcome, racism is a public health threat and made the case for more RINOs to be elected!
Cameron Sexton and RINO Central
House members have twice elected Cameron Sexton (R-Crossville) to lead as Speaker knowing that he is a card carrying member of RINO Central, aka, the Southland Advantage fundraising firm whose stable of clients include super-RINO Steve Dickerson (voted to support ballot harvesting), Eddie Mannis and La Raza Randy Boyd.
Even if the company Sexton keeps doesn’t concern Conservative voters, his choice of Southland given its traitorous, scandalous and unethical conflict-of-interest ridden history, should.
When Taylor and Walker Ferrell, Southland’s husband and wife team, launched their political shop in 2015, both were employed by and embedded in the Tennessee Republican Party – Walker was the Political Director of the state party, and Taylor was employed as the Interim Finance Director.
All three of Southland’s first stable of Republican clients were recruited to oust proven incumbent conservatives.
Flash in the pan Grant Starrett ran against Rep. Scott DeJarlais, Beth Cox ran against then state Rep. Courtney Rogers, and Will Lockhart ran against then state Rep. Judd Matheny.
All three of Southland’s candidates lost their primary races.
2016 was a busy year for Sexton – he sponsored the National Popular Vote bill and was rumored to have been testing the caucus waters for a bid for Speaker. While it took him four more years to ascend to Speaker, he did so bringing along his tainted perspective of how representative government is supposed to work.
Given his history and affiliations, it’s no doubt that the cowardly Republican caucus suspected that a good RINO like Sexton would be willing to abuse his authority and shield them from inviting illegal aliens to work in Tennessee. Dropping the gavel before any member could even turn on their microphone to offer a second to Griffey’s Rule 53 Motion followed by stripping Griffey of his committee assignments, is a too obvious move to protect caucus RINOs from Chamber and NFIB wrath.
It wasn’t that long ago that Speaker Pro Tem Pat Marsh, an illegal alien protectionist, supported awarding in-state college tuition to illegal aliens because, “I go into the local schools and see these immigrants in leadership roles in our schools. They’re the star athletes. They’re the star students. They deserve a chance to move forward in their lives …”
Tennessee’s doctors are racist
Earlier this month, in true BLM-style, the House Health Subcommittee passed a joint resolution affirming that all Tennessee doctors are racists. Only two Republicans voted against it in the full House committee and even though it’s going back for another round in the full committee, it’s a safe bet that whatever gets passed there again, will be passed by the cowering Republican caucus.
No doubt the even more liberal Senate Republicans will agree and “recognize racism as a public health threat.”
The resolution in question is centered around the pro-abortion American Medical Association’s (AMA) declarations regarding an alleged connection between structural racism and public health.
Like other medical venues which are “laundering their progressivism” under the guise of public health, the AMA is also pushing the climate change. During the Trump administration, the AMA issued a statement criticizing the protective separation of children and adults after crossing the border illegally. There’s no record of the AMA speaking against the same policy practiced during the Obama administration.
House Caucus – we need more fake conservatives
The same divide between Conservative and Establishment Republicans in D.C. is also happening in our state legislature. How did we end up with a governor who campaigned as a “conservative outsider” but whose policies and agenda for Tennessee ignore critical issues like real Constitutional carry and the impact of illegal immigration on Tennessee’s legal workers?
Was anyone else laughing out loud when the American Conservative Union (ACU) ranked the Tennessee General Assembly as the most conservative legislature in the country for a consecutive second year?
But that was in 2017, and A LOT has happened since then including a continued decline in the conservative profile and ACU ranking of Tennessee’s House and Senate.
In 2020, the Senate’s average conservative ranking fell by a full 10 points from the prior year, to 75% while the House fell by 11 points to 78%. The slide of phony conservative legislators into RINO-ism is often subtle and difficult to nail down explicitly; it is best looked at as a downward trend taken in a series of mostly small steps.
For example, when Rep. Jeremy Faison (R-Cosby) ran for the first time in his rural east Tennessee mountain district that includes Cocke, Jefferson, and Greene counties, he labeled himself “the conservative”.
A few terms down the road and “the conservative” Faison pushed for legalizing marijuana medical treatments whichhe said, “has no side effects” as compared to alcohol, relying on the standard canard the left and old burned out hippies have been pushing for decades that marijuana can provide medical benefits.
Was Faison’s idea that marijuana would be Cocke County’s biggest cash crop and the pot growers could just start bottling the oil in the field; “farm to table” would, after all, be in keeping with current trends. It will also legalize the weed industry already in place.
Faison also appears to have taken the RINO road on illegal immigration. In Faison’s now deleted 2016 op-ed he wrote that: “Two of the three top Republican presidential candidates want 30 million illegal immigrants deported. Many of these illegal immigrants have family members that are citizens. No president will ever deport. Republicans should build a bridge to their community with concrete, achievable solutions.” This is probably why he filed to be a Marco Rubio delegate in 2016 due to Rubio’s position to amnesty illegal aliens.
And now for a flashback laugh of the day that no one could seriously fabricate – Faison’s bill making it legal for Tennesseans to raise and sell skunks Creating a ready-made market for pot pet specific products like those being sold in California?
If you’re thinking House member conservative sell-out, know that Faison is not alone.
On Monday, March 22nd at 5:00 p.m., every Republican House member will have the opportunity to vote against illegal immigration and instead, protect jobs for legal Tennesseans.
The bill in question sponsored by Rep. Bruce Griffey, is the enhanced E-Verify bill, HB801, which the Republican majority House Subcommittee on Banking & Consumer Affairs killed last week.
E-Verify is a FREE federal database which checks the social security numbers of newly hired employees against Social Security Administration and Department of Homeland Security records to help ensure that the new employee is eligible to work in the U.S.
“Individuals provide their Social Security Number when they visit a doctor, open a bank account, or buy a home. It makes sense that businesses be able to check the Social Security Number of prospective employees to ensure they have a legal workforce.”
Griffey has filed a motion under Rule 53 of the House Permanent Rules of Order which if passed, will enable every House member to “put up or shut up” about the growing problem of illegal immigration in Tennessee.
The challenge for Griffey, however, is that his Rule 53 motion to “recall” (ie, pull his bill out of the committee process), requires two-thirds of the House members to vote “yes”, instead of the regular 50 vote majority.
Legislators needing an “urgent” bathroom break or having to take an “urgent” phone call may absent themselves from a vote that puts them between the Chamber of Commerce and NFIB small business lobby, and the constituents who voted them into office.
Make no mistake, a vote against Griffey’s Rule 53 motion is the same as a vote against curbing illegal immigration in Tennessee.
Rep. Jeremy Faison (R-Cosby), was conveniently absent from the Subcommittee when they voted to kill Griffey’s bill. Faison, who describes himself as a small business owner, also serves as the House Caucus Chairman. Faison received political donations from NFIB and the Chamber of Commerce, a mere five days before the start of the 112th General Assembly. Not much of a long-shot to guess that Faison will do what he can to defeat Griffey’s Rule 53 motion.
Jeremy Faison
NumbersUSA, a long-standing D.C. based organization which lobbies Congress for sensible immigration policies has said that “[t]he single best action Congress can take to significantly reduce illegal immigration is to require all businesses to use E-Verify.” A new bill has been introduced in the current Congress to again try and mandate that all businesses use E-Verify.
It is highly unlikely that the dysfunctional Congress will pass sensible immigration reform which puts the interests of American citizens and legal immigrants first. Until then, it is up to state legislatures to take action.
In 2007, NFIB reported that “[s]eventy-three percent of NFIB members” supported a phased-in mandatory use of E-Verify by all employers of any size because voluntary use “put[s] users at a disadvantage should their competitors hire undocumented workers.”
In Tennessee, current state law makes the use of E-Verify optional for businesses with fewer than 50 employees. When Tennessee first passed its E-Verify law in 2011, businesses with 6 or more employees were required within one year to begin using the system. In 2016, the General Assembly caved to special interest lobbyists and raised the employee threshold to 50 employees.
Its time Tennessee legislators should have to put action behind their fake opposition to illegal immigration.
Yesterday, a group of anemic Republican General Assembly members voted down a bill that would have required all employers in Tennessee, to use the FREE federal E-verify tool to help combat employment of illegal aliens.
The obvious and logical reason for wanting employers to use E-verify, is to help disincentivize illegal aliens from migrating to Tennessee. The equation is pretty simple – no jobs, then there’s no money for food, rent, etc.
Bill sponsor Rep. Bruce Griffey explained that an employer can use the federal E-verify program for FREE or engage the services of a third party vendor at a cost of $3.00 per potential employee to have their data run through the federal database.
Republican Sub-committee members, Kevin Vaughn, Clark Boyd, Rush Bricken, and Kirk Haston all agreed that illegal immigration is a problem but that it’s a federal problem to solve, not their responsibility.
Evincing absolutely no interest in exercising their proper sphere of jurisdiction to push back on Biden’s disastrous wide open border policies which dramatically hurt legal immigrant and Tennessee citizen workers, they were, however, quick to abdicate to the Chamber of Commerce and NFIB (small business lobby).
These legislators are no better than the decepticon (ie, establishment) Republicans in D.C. with the only difference being that the Tennessee homegrown decepticons portray themselves as the protectors of small business – while turning a blind eye to the needs of legal workers. Vaughn went so far as to say that it’s his job to protect small business owners from being “deputized” to enforce federal immigration laws.
Susan Lynn, despite specifically acknowledging that illegal immigration hurts Tennessee workers who are still needing jobs and have suffered greatly from the COVID disaster, didn’t even bother to cast a vote.
The Tennessee Comptroller’s Office reported on March 10, 2021, that Mohamed Gure and Mohamed Osman, two students leaders with the MTSU Somali Students Association and the Muslim Students Association, stole over $114,000 in student activity fees.
Most Somalis have found their way to Tennessee through the federal refugee resettlement program. Between Bill Lee’s insistence that he wants more refugees, and the Biden administration’s promise to increase the flow to well over 100,000, Tennessee is likely to get more than its fair share. During the Obama administration when the refugee pipeline was running full blast, Tennessee bid for and typically received upwards of 1,200 refugees a year. The cumulative numbers, however, do not account for the other category of arrivals under the Office of Refugee Resettlement umbrella or the chain migration impact.
Gure and Osman were indicted on March 9th, by a Rutherford County grand jury. The theft was engineered by creating and forging false vouchers for reimbursement submitted to the Student Activity Fee Award Committee.
Back in 2007, Abdirizak Hassan, executive director of what was then the Nashville Somali Community Center, was charged with and sentenced to 2 years federal probation for making false statements in connection with a federal grant for the Center. The federal charge was related to Hassan’s indictment in 2001 for felony illegal banking. Prior to leading the Somali Community Center, Hassan ran a halwa money changing business out of a convenience store.
As reported by Channel 4 News and recorded by New English Review: – “Hassan’s Nashville bank was shut down by counter-terrorism investigators because they said the bank was linked to Al-Barakat. Al-Barakat is a bank and wiring transfer service that is linked to al-Qaida, according to investigators. Hassan was arrested and charged with felony illegal banking. While out on bond, Hassan and the Somali Center were awarded a grant in the amount of nearly $500,000 by the same federal government that indicted him.”
The Somali Community Center subsequently renamed itself to the Center for Refugees and Immigrants in Tennessee (CRIT). They shifted their focus to getting Tennessee employers to hire refugees. At one time, Tyson’s Human Resource Manager, Gary Denton was a member of the CRIT board. CRIT closed in 2016, but their agenda is still carried forward through groups like TIRRC.
And while Somali student leaders are stealing money from other legitimate student organizations, leftist organizations led by the Niskanen Center are calling for universities to sponsor refugee students which in their terms includes illegal aliens entering through the Southern border.
Raise in tuition or more money from the state to subsidize? Either way, its just another siphoning off of public money through the back door no different than the federal government shifting the costs of its refugee resettlement program to the states without their consent.
Tennessee’s Governor and legislators are asleep on illegal alien employment in the state – you need to wake them up because the only defense against Biden and the left running our federal government, is action at the state and local level.
Why don’t they know what we know?????
According to the Center for Migration Studies NY (CMS), a Soros-funded think tank, legal immigrants and illegal aliens are the “essential workers” saving the lives of lazy Tennessee citizens during the COVID pandemic.
In May 2020, the CMS estimated that in Tennessee, 41,200 legal immigrants and 66,900 illegal aliens are working “often at great risk to their health and lives – to keep Americans safe, healthy, fed and poised for economic recovery.”
Tennessee can expect a dramatic change in these numbers given the Biden administration open border approach to immigration.
Illegal alien workers in Tennessee are protected by the Tennessee Chamber of Commerce and NFIB, the small business lobby which beat back an effort by some Tennessee legislators to pass a mandatory E-verify bill to be used by every business in the state regardless of the number of employees.
CMS says illegal alien workers which they misleadingly label “undocumented”, make up 54% of the foreign-born farm and agriculture workers and 40% in disinfection services. Consistent with Tennessee-specific data, illegal aliens are working in construction and manufacturing.
The same emphasis on the criticality of the foreign-born workforce, especially during COVID, is mimicked by the Migration Policy Institute (MPI), another Soros-funded advocate for open borders and mass migration to the U.S.
The CMS report predictably criticized the Trump administration’s restrictionist approach to immigration without giving any recognition for the wage benefits to American workers, particularly low-skilled workers, from a tightened supply of workers. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office has confirmed this effect. Negative economic impact is also at play for middle-class earners and recent college graduates.
CMS is a member of the Scalabrini International Migration Network which is a network of hundreds of shelters and “welcoming centers” which supports every category of migrant “on the move a vital chance to rest and refuel before continuing their journeys.” Scalabrini is a “child organization of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).”
The USCCB Migration Services are predominantly financed by federal taxpayer dollars. Between 2018 – 2019, the USCCB received over $52 million federal dollars to fund their “charitable” works. Almost half, $23 million dollars was received for USCCB handling of the unaccompanied alien children (UAC) population.
The USCCB is paid by the federal government to take temporary custody of UACs apprehended at the border. The predicted current surge of UACs at the border spurred by Biden’s executive orders on immigration, and his agenda on amnesty which would also let DACA grantees become citizens. So as far as USCCB is concerned, the more the merrier!
When the Obama administration created the same border crisis, MS-13 gang members, entered with UAC status. The same concern about human trafficking then is re-emerging. Tennessee has a slew of strong anti-human trafficking laws so why are the supposed anti-illegal immigration state legislators and governor, silent?
The crush at the border now has the federal government paying to transport illegal border crossers to locations far from the southern border.
Tennessee has previously received thousands of UACs and is likely to continue receiving arrivals. As of December 2020, among arriving UACs, 35% have tested positive for COVID.
In April 2020, the Nashville government issued a report documenting that 31,000 illegal aliens are living and working in Davidson County. The TN Immigrant & Refugee Rights Coalition testified in state legislative committee hearings that the Mexican mobile consular visits Nashville monthly to issue matricula consular cards which TIRRC said are needed by people here illegally so that they have some form of identification. TIRRC also told the committee that they were working with the Metro Nashville Police Department to accept the matricula card as valid identification – that is, treat illegal alien offenders stopped by police, as if they were here with some form of legal status.
A recent documentary titled “Til Kingdom Come” is being shown in Jewish film festivals sponsored by local Jewish community organizations here, here and here.
The film goes out of its way to portray American Evangelical Christians in the most unflattering way possible and send the message that their support for Israel should be rejected by Jews.
In 2015, Abbie Wolf, the Nashville Jewish Community Relations Director, published an article in the Nashville Jewish paper questioning the value of a relationship with Christian Zionists so it wouldn’t be a stretch to see this film pushed out to their viewing community. Wolf wrote:
“While Israel benefits from Christian Zionism, some members of the Jewish community have a host of questions about this fervent support. Some find the gamut of views advocated by Christian Zionists to be disquieting.
So what are some of the concerns about Christian Zionism? One is a distrust of the motives behind their support. What’s the catch, we wonder? What will they ask of us, and when? Is there an expectation of quid pro quo? If it’s support for their domestic agenda they seek, that would be challenging. For example, on many issues like maintaining a strong wall between church and state, we tend to part ways.
Another concern is that Christian support of Israel comes at the expense of our ultimate survival as a people. We fear their support is grounded in Christian biblical prophecy. If their support for Israel is based on their belief that the ingathering of Jews in Israel is a prerequisite for the End of Days, where does that ultimately leave the Jewish people? Further, many believe we must exercise caution in dealing with Messianic Jews – Christians who consider Jews who haven’t accepted Jesus to be ‘incomplete.’
Still others in our community feel that Christian support for Israel comes at the expense of the Muslim community, both here and abroad. Some Christian Zionists’ views are strongly rooted in the belief that there are no moderate Muslims and that Islam is a faith rooted in violence. This broad-brushing of Islam doesn’t consider Muslims who want nothing more than peace for their families and communities.”
To round out the cynical views of Israeli filmmaker Maya Zinshtein, the anti-Trump message is included because as everyone knows, President Trump was the worst thing ever to happen to Jews and their ancestral homeland Israel. Viewed through Zinshtein’s lens, the sole reason Trump moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem and endorsed Israeli sovereignty over the security strategic Golan Heights, was to snare the votes of America’s large Evangelical voting bloc.
The German funded internet portal Qantara, designed to “promote dialogue with the Islamic world,” has also reviewed the entire film. They note that Zinshtein likely had “unique access” to her film’s subjects simply because she is from “the Promised Land.”
Most revealing is the reviewer’s impression that “Zinshtein is evidently irritated by this unqualified love for her country. Yet the leaders of the Evangelical movement who feature in the film don’t seem the slightest bit interested in her critical distance to Israel, which she makes absolutely no effort to hide at any point during the film.”
Zinshtein also appears to be warring against Trump supporting Jews, using her medium to further divide Jewish communities:
“Among other things, Zinshtein filmed during a gala dinner where money was being raised for the IDF. The dinner was attended by billionaire Sheldon Adelson, who has supported both Netanyahu and Trump with huge sums of money. On that evening, Eckstein told Adelson that Jewish communities around the world are not growing, but that evangelical communities are.
The message is crystal clear: pro-Israeli Christians – some of whom refer to themselves as “Zionist Christians” – are much more important allies for Israel’s nationalists than Jewish communities around the world, most of which are liberal and are more critical of this one-sided support than all other religious communities in the USA.”
Political commentator and anti-Trumper Michael Medved spared no criticism of the film – describing it as “hopelessly one-sided,” relentlessly cynical,” and “profoundly misleading.”
The supposed draw for why liberal and leftist Jewish groups would show this film is to show that the mix of conservative politics, support for President Trump’s MidEast policies, and Evangelical “end of times” prophecy, where supposedly 2/3 of Jews are killed and 1/3 convert to Christianity, does not serve the best interest of Jews in the U.S. or Israel.
Nashville’s Jewish community takes a protectionist approach in their relationship with the anti-Zionist Muslim organization AMAC despite the fact that Jews don’t fare any better under the Islamic end of times; in fact neither do Christians – “He will break the cross, kill swine, and abolish jizyah. Allah will perish all religions except Islam.”
Palestinian Islamic scholar Mraweh Nassar, stated in a February interview that “Jews were ‘the most dangerous enemies’” and that “Muslims will experience a golden age ‘after the Jews are killed, in the time of Jesus.’”
If you have concerns about the showing of this film in Nashville, contact Deborah Oleshansky the current Nashville Jewish Community Relations Director – deborah@jewishnashville.org
