Month: February 2008

Yemen is overwhelmed with African refugees

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Judy just told you about Israel being overwhelmed with African refugees and then tonight I’m reading about Somalis and Ethiopians flooding into Yemen.   According to this Reuters article, 30,000 African (mostly Muslim) illegal immigrants have swarmed across the Red Sea to Yemen this year alone in hopes of getting to Saudi Arabia or the West.  

The United Nations has set up camps and many go there in hopes of a ticket out.

Many Africans consider Yemen a gateway to other parts of the Middle East and the West. It shares a border with oil-producing Saudi Arabia, which hosts millions of foreign workers.

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But some Africans find their odyssey ends here, in lives half-lived because Yemen is itself too poor to offer a better future.

Others like this 23 year old mother of SEVEN disperse into slum neighborhoods.

“I couldn’t stand camp life,” said a woman in a black scarf with orange flowers who gave her name as Fawzia. The 23-year-old has seven children and a runaway husband. She survives on casual domestic work, but has failed to pay her rent for six months.

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“I hate myself, I hate my children, I have no future,” she said vacantly. Beside her, a baby lay untended in its own vomit on the grubby blue carpet of her trash-filled shack.

Here is a post I wrote back in January on Africans headed north through Libya.

Pew: Faith in numbers

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The Washington Times yesterday reported on a recent study by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life under the headline “Catholic Tradition Fading in US.”    The article reports that Catholic numbers are declining in the United States and only being propped up by immigration.  The largest and fastest growing group are the Evangelical Christians.

Evangelical Protestants outnumber Catholics by 26.3 percent (59 million) to 24 percent (54 million) of the population, according to the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, a massive 45-question poll conducted last summer of more than 35,000 American adults.

Mainline Protestant churches are dying.

The traditional mainline Protestant churches, which in 1957 constituted about 66 percent of the populace, now count just 18 percent as adherents.

So, guess you’re wondering why I’m writing about this in RRW.   One reason is that it’s the Catholic groups like Catholic Charities and many of the mainline Protestant churches that traditionally are the ones to resettle refugees.   I noticed here in Hagerstown that the Virginia Council of Churches was having trouble finding churches to volunteer.  None of the Catholic Churches participated.   Methodists and Presbyterians were involved but only with a handful of church members. 

Could it be that those faith groups are declining?  This Pew study would indicate that is so. 

I know I’m making a broad generalization, but I’ll do it anyway based on what I know in my county.   Although Evangelical churches care about the world’s troubled people they tend to send missionaries to the third world to help them where they live.  They don’t bring them here in a big way.  The Virginia Council of Churches (in Maryland) did not ask any of the Evangelical churches to help with resettlement and one pastor of such a church remarked to me, “We would be the last they would ask.” 

I think I like the idea of helping people where they live.  (See my next post on Pat Buchanan)

This does not bode well for refugee resettlement by the left-leaning mainstream church groups and could be why we are seeing refugees being left in the lurch with a lack of care.  There just aren’t enough willing volunteers in those type of churches.

The other thing that caught my attention in this Pew study was the numbers of adherents of Islam.  This study puts the number of Muslims at a much smaller demographic than Muslim organizations have been proclaiming in recent years.   Six to eight million is the number bandied about, but Pew puts it at only 1.3 million.

It also revealed there are twice as many Jewish adults (3.8 million) as there are Muslim adults (1.3 million).

Looks like almost three times as many. 

Interestingly the number of Muslim refugees we have confirmed from 1990 to 2003 at 200,000 (certainly there were more before they kept those numbers and many more since 2003) would indicate that Refugee Resettlement has played a huge role, larger than I had guessed, in increasing the Muslim population of the US.

By the way, I suspect Pew’s Forum on Religion and Public Life is all about the electorate, you can bet all the Presidential campaigns are pouring over Pew’s numbers as I write this. 

UN slaps EU on Iraqi displaced persons

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I don’t have time to say much, but check out this article from the Earth Times today.   The UNHCR (UN refugee agency) gives a tongue lashing to various members of the European Union for not allowing thousands, tens of thousands (millions?) of Iraqis to enter Europe.   

All I can say is could those countries getting a UN slap down have concerns relating to cartoon riots, or Muslim immigrants burning Paris, or maybe crashing welfare systems.   I don’t know, saying no, seems kind of sensible to me!

Odds are that Muslim refugees will end up in radical mosques in the US

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Each year we admit thousands of Muslim refugees into the United States.    The top three Muslim sending countries are Bosnia, Somalia and Iraq, but we have accepted Muslim refugees from at least 77 countries.  The total number of Muslim refugees as of 2003 (5 years ago!) was already over 200,000 and they can all bring extended families.

Even if (big if!) all those Muslim immigrants arrive as so-called “moderates” the odds are good they will become radicalized here.   Preliminary findings reported at World Net Daily over the weekend reveal that 3 out of 4 mosques in America are teaching the most virulent form of Islam.

An undercover survey of more than 100 mosques and Islamic schools in America has exposed widespread radicalism, including the alarming finding that 3 in 4 Islamic centers are hotbeds of anti-Western extremism, WND has learned.

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The Mapping Sharia in America Project, sponsored by the Washington-based Center for Security Policy, has trained former counterintelligence and counterterrorism agents from the FBI, CIA and U.S. military, who are skilled in Arabic and Urdu, to conduct undercover reconnaissance at some 2,300 mosques and Islamic centers and schools across the country.

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“So far of 100 mapped, 75 should be on a watchlist,” an official familiar with the project said.

State Dept. Press release: big bucks to the UN and others

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

In a press release from the US State Department today we learned that we have dramatically increased aid payments to the United Nations and other “humanitarian” groups to help Iraqi displaced persons.

The U.S. Government has increased humanitarian assistance for displaced Iraqis from $43 million in 2006 to almost $200 million in the first half of 2008.

But, way at the bottom of the press release, the State Department tells us the number of interpreters that have been admitted to the US so far and how many are in the pipeline.   As the situation on the ground improves in Iraq, I don’t get why this many interpreters are so fearful.  Wouldn’t you think they would want to stay and help rebuild Iraq?  I’ll wager that somewhere down the line we find out that some of those fluent in English have nefarious motives for wanting to be in the US, just as those Judy reported on in Denmark not that long ago.

In FY 2007, 988 special immigrant visas were issued through the special admissions program for Iraqi translators and interpreters who assisted the United States. This number includes 526 principal applicants and 462 family members.

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So far in FY 2008, through January 31, 2008, 507 special immigrant visas were issued through the special admissions program for Iraqi translators and interpreters who assisted the United States. This number includes 247 principal applicants and 260 family members.

The last lines in the press release refer to the Kennedy bill which recently became law.

New legislation will permit up to 5,000 Iraqi principal applicants working under Chief of Mission authority who are in immediate danger, to apply for special immigrant visas. Procedures for processing those applications are currently in interagency development.