Month: September 2008

Immigrant voting strategy in key swing state of Virginia

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This is a post I wrote back on July 6th, but because I’ve just been hearing so much on the news today about the swing state of Virginia, I thought it might be timely to repost the whole thing here now.

Somalis, Ethiopians and Kenyans,  many having entered the US as refugees which puts them on the fast track to citizenship, are organizing for Democratic candidate for President, Barack Obama.  Wow!  Can you believe it!  Here is what the Washington Post had to say:

From coast to coast, Somali, Ethiopian, Nigerian and Kenyan Americans are knocking on the doors of their fellow African immigrants, registering new citizens to vote, raising money and preaching Obama’s mantra of hope and change. They hope that his prominence will change their status as one of the nation’s least-recognized immigrant groups, and that he will one day provide aid to help ease the turmoil and poverty in countries such as Ethiopia, Somalia and Sudan.

One Somali said Obama is like a son, one of them.

“Obama is one generation away from Africa,” said Eyow, who immigrated to the United States nearly 30 years ago. “I have nothing against my brothers and sisters, black people who were born here, but his father is like me. His father was an immigrant….”

Although Eyow says he has nothing against his black brothers who were born here, we have been chronicaling the tensions that are building in the black community partially resulting from the growing realization on the part of native-born black Americans that immigrants are taking their jobs (among other brewing conflicts).

The Post goes on to report that the Migration Policy Institute (in the right hand column you can check for the number of foreign born voters in your state) says the numbers of African immigrants aren’t high enough to swing the election, but organizers have figured out how to have influence in key states like Virginia.

Endale said that in the District, Ethiopians for Obama will not try to influence the national race between Obama and Republican Sen. John McCain (Ariz.). Instead, the group will target Ethiopian households in the Northern Virginia suburbs.

“There’s a possibility of getting 10,000 Ethiopians in Virginia,” Endale said. “That could be a game-changer.”

Is anyone checking to make sure they are all citizens and eligible to vote?

My blogging pitch again! We need more focused blogs!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Every so often, and as our readership increases (dramatically by the way in the last month), I make a pitch for more people to get into blogging.   I am not talking about one more gadfly blog where you write about what is going on in the news across a wide spectrum of issues, give your opinion and people come and yak and yak about the deeper meaning.  

We need blogs that will examine in detail a particular subject area and provide people with hard facts and information that they can then use—especially now that the mainstream media seems to have completely abandoned any concept of investigative journalism if it doesn’t fit their political world view.  

We, at RRW, aren’t perfect (I admit, it is fun to yak) and are hardly experts, but we have been trying to provide useful information on the subject of Refugee Resettlement and we hope we are succeeding.  

To make my point, nothing makes me angrier than to see bright people wasting what must be hours hashing around some fine point about who is “racist” and who isn’t.   Makes me want to shout—GET TO WORK!

Yes, please please get to work and help research needed areas in this war to save our country.  Pick a topic that interests you and begin to be an expert— likely you will, in short order, be THE expert and your brain power won’t have been wasted yakking and playing a game of one-upsmanship with other commenters all trying to say the most clever and insightful things.

And, take it from me, you don’t need to be some sort of computer techy genius to get the words on the screen.  Don’t be deterred by insecurity and talk yourself out of doing it by saying—oh, I couldn’t make a blog look nice.   The important thing is to get the information out to the world, not how fancy the site is!

P.S.  If you feel you aren’t that out-front sort of person, then become a behind-the-scenes helper to another blog you support and help provide needed research, but get to work!

Refugees, home ownership, and non-profits getting your tax dollars

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Your tax dollars:

I see on the news this morning that negotiators in Congress have a deal—we taxpayers will buyout bad home loans and bailout lending institutions who were given a free rein by Congress in the first place to loan money to people, including immigrants, who should never have gotten loans.   Since it appears we are about to have something shoved down our throats, I am hoping that at least they got the infamous ACORN’s grubby hands out of the pot of gold.

All of this home loan discussion reminded me that refugees get special help in buying homes.   It is an issue that came up a year ago in Hagerstown, MD in conjunction with the public meeting held in our city to try to explain how the refugee resettlement program works.    A long-time resident noted that at least one very recent refugee had purchased a home already.  In that case, it appears the refugee actually came to this country with assets (don’t let them fool you, some refugees had homes to sell and did not live in squalid camps, especially the Russians).

Anyway, that comment led me to look into a federal program that does give refugees a special deal for home ownership, education, and business ownership.  It’s called Individual Development Accounts (IDAs) and administered through the Office of Refugee Resettlement.   The objectives of the program:

The objectives of the IDA Program are to increase the ability of low-income refugees to save; promote their participation in the financial institutions of this country; assist refugees in advancing their education; increase home ownership; and assist refugees in gaining access to capital.

Under this match grant program, the refugee sets up a savings account and the taxpayers match him or her dollar for dollar.   Just think about this!   Where is Grover Norquist and Americans for Tax Reform (oh, silly me, he is busy promoting that we take more refugees and immigrants)?

Individual development accounts are matched savings accounts available for the purchase of specific assets. Under the IDA program, the matching funds, together with the refugee’s own savings from their employment, are available for purchasing one (or more) of four savings goals: home purchase; microenterprise capitalization; post secondary education or training; and in some cases, purchase of an automobile if necessary to maintain or upgrade employment.

IDA grantees provide matched savings accounts to refugees whose annual income is less than 200 percent of the poverty level and whose assets, exclusive of a personal residence and one vehicle, are less than $10,000. Grantees provide matches of up to $1 for every $1 deposited by a refugee in a savings account. The total match amount provided may not exceed $2,000 for individuals or $4,000 for households. Upon enrolling in an IDA program, a refugee signs a savings plan agreement which specifies the savings goal, the match rate, and the amount the refugee will save each month.

Is it any wonder there is animosity toward immigrants and refugees.  When struggling hard-working Americans hear about these sweet deals they get angry.   How many Americans have a house, a car and less than $10,000 in assets and are not eligible for this handout because they were born here!

To add insult to injury, go to the Office of Refugee Resettlement to see who holds the pots of money for the refugees, it’s not some government office accountable to elected officials, it’s a gang of leftist non-profit groups, some of them churches.  Among the duties of these NGO’s is to teach the refugee how to access our “financial systems” and get those loans that are now bringing down our economy.   So where is the ACLU on the separation of church and state?

To learn more, go here.  Note (scroll down) that there is a link for how to get sharia finance for Muslim borrowers into the IDA’s!

More Somali gang violence in Minneapolis prompts community meeting

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update September 30th:  Another Somali murder today here.

Residents of Ft. Morgan, Greeley, and Grand Island among others, take note:

The Police met with members of the Somali community this week in response to claims by Somalis that the police had not done enough to solve the many recent murders of mostly young Somalis in that city.    But, the Somalis themselves were blamed for “cultural” practices which apparently require silence and not coming forward to authorities with information.  From the Minneapolis Star Tribune:

Police are frustrated that witnesses aren’t stepping forward. Some Somalis blame cultural divides. Five Somalis have been killed in Minneapolis since December.

In a packed gym at the Brian Coyle Community Center, Somali leaders on Thursday asked members of their own community and police for help in solving recent Somali homicides, including Monday’s fatal shooting outside of the center.

Somali speakers directed their anger at their community for not helping authorities, and at police for not solving the murders.

Several angry Somalis spoke and the police defended their position that they couldn’t solve the murders if no one would talk and report what they saw.   Witnesses are aparently constrained by rules of the clan system of their Somali homeland.

Hassan Mohamud, the imam, or spiritual leader, at the Ali family’s mosque, said some community members said they gave police enough information about Monday’s shooting to warrant an arrest.

He said later that Somalis are conflicted between their Muslim beliefs, social clan rules that say they should protect clan members whether they do good or ill and threats of harm if they talk to police.

The 20-year-old murdered most recently had been in the country since 1991, so would have been a toddler and have only experienced America growing up and not the brutality of Africa.   His father, who attended this meeting, said the first sensible thing I’ve seen in all this coverage we have done of Somali issues:

He said his family fled Somalia in 1991 “and now this bullet has killed my son.” To his people, he added: “We destroyed our land because of the civil war, so I advise them not to destroy this land.”

So jumping now from the sensible to the insane.  Some of the speakers criticized police for not covering the dead man’s face and a dhimmi city councilman said this:

City Council Member Cam Gordon said he will do what he can to help with those requests. In response to Muslim speakers who criticized police for not covering the victim’s face right away, he said the city needs to look at how it handles murder victims’ bodies.

This is the sort of thing that we mean when we talk about assimilating to America.  Can you imagine training police departments on how to handle dead Muslim bodies.   Here is just one small section of those “rules” involving the face:

Seeing the face of the deceased

The face of the deceased should not be left open for everyone to see.

If the deceased is male: Shariat will only allow mahram females to see the face, the mahram females are : wife, mother, grandmother, sisters, aunts, nieces, daughters and grand-daughters.

If the deceased is a female: Shariat will allow only male mahrams to see the face. The male mahrams are as follows: father, grandfather, sons, grandsons, brothers, uncles and nephews.

 

Question:

Can a husband see the face of his deceased wife ?

Answer:

In the kitaab, Sharhut Tanweer (vol.1 pg. 897), it is stated that a husband is not permitted to give ghusl or touch his deceased wife, but he may see her face.

We previously wrote about Somali gang activity in Minneapolis here.  Hey, come to think of it, where is Omar (Jesse Jackson) Jamal in today’s story?  Any chance he has been deported yet?  See also Somali gang/clan violence in Seattle here.

For new readers, we have resettled over 83,000 Somali refugees in the US in the last 25 years, thanks to the Refugee Resettlement Act of 1980 (Kennedy/Biden) and the US State Department.