Now the Federal government is trying to entice this Virginia town with financial benefits. Unbelievable.
More than 1,000 people crowded into a high school auditorium Thursday in this hardscrabble rural Virginia town to confront Obama administration officials with fierce opposition to plans to turn a defunct college here into housing for some of the illegal-immigrant children flooding across the border.
The residents raised concerns about security, disease, impact on overburdened emergency services and tax dollars going to unaccompanied alien children (UACs) instead of local families living in poverty.
“Please take your UACs and relocate them to D.C., where you can keep a very close eye on their welfare and keep them out of our backyard,” said John Zubrod, one in a long line of residents lined up at Brunswick High School to address Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) officials.
“Children are witnessing their mothers being murdered. Children are being raped. Children are being threatened left and right,” she said. “I think it is important we keep at the center of our minds who we are talking about — children who have really suffered already.”
Her plea did not sway the crowd.Anne Williams, who lives on a shady street by the college, said that she was a “fervent Catholic” and wanted to help all children. But she still had reservations about bringing hundreds of the children to her town, where children struggle in poverty.
“We cannot save the world unless first focused on children in poverty in the United States,” she said to a loud round of applause.
On that front, Ken Tota, deputy director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, warned the crowd that they risked losing the benefits the project could bring to the struggling town of 1,500 people, where most of the storefronts on Main Street are empty.“If this community is not the right place. We’ll find one that is,” he said. “If those federal dollars are not here, they will be somewhere else.”Read more:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jun/19/town-residents-decry-plan-to-move-immigrant-childr/#ixzz35CddSc13 Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter
Read more:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jun/19/town-residents-decry-plan-to-move-immigrant-childr/#ixzz35CdS3giM Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter
