Lucky Nashville labeled “Little Kurdistan”

Here is a long article entitled, ‘Nashville Tennessee: Kurdish Capital of America’ at The Comment Factory.  I’ve selected a few paragraphs that interested me in this gooey, everything is just lovely story, but please read the whole article.

Thank Catholic Charities!

Kurds have struggled to build a new haven in Nashville, and director of refugee and immigration services at Catholic Charities of Tennessee Holly Johnson says “they have changed Nashville.”

Kurds are arriving in Nashville from all over America looking for jobs!

NPT’s (Nashville Public Television*) portrayal of the Kurdish community has contributed to a growing awareness of Kurdish-Americans in the U.S., especially those who live in Nashville. “Little Kurdistan” represents the close-knit community and culture among the Kurds, a presence that is confirmed by the many Kurdish-owned businesses in Nashville. A large number of Kurds have therefore moved to Nashville from within the U.S. to be with friends and family, or just to be a part of the growing society. This phenomenon is ongoing, and the peace of mind in knowing that there are other Kurds in Nashville is crucial for those Kurds who choose to move there. Nick Aref is one of many Kurds who have moved, in his case from Arizona, to open a business in Nashville. The key reasons that led many Kurds to Nashville in the 1970s were, as Drew Jubera points out, the fact that “Nashville was viewed as a manageable, relatively affordable place to live, full of entry-level jobs for people who didn’t speak much English.”

Lucky Nashville has the only known Kurdish Pride gang in the Nation!

Another unfortunate event for Nashville’s Kurds is the breakthrough of the Kurdish Pride Gang in the recent years. KPG is thought to be America’s only Kurdish street gang, and has been linked to a series of high-profile crimes. The number of members is not accurately estimated, but they are believed to be made up of 20 to 30 teens and young adults (Emery:2007). The Metropolitan Nashville Police Department are uncertain of the gang’s foundation, but believes the gang is supposed to function as a Kurdish show-off to other ethnic gangs such as the Hispanic gangs Sureños 13 (Sur-13) and Mara Salvatrucha 13. The Metropolitan also point out that the KPG members’ backgrounds are surprising to everyone, because “they come from two-parent homes, […] from middle-class families with a strong work ethic, where education is important” (Emery:2007). [Darn! There goes the theory right out the window again that crime is a product of poverty-ed.]  Members of the Kurdish community [mostly Sunni Muslims] have expressed concern and some have said that they are ashamed of the reputation these few associates have given the rest of the thousands of Kurds in the country.

Yippee!  They were involved in “civic engagement” by organizing for Obama!

In recent years, various Kurdish organizations have propped up in and outside of Nashville and have regularly organized events that have been aimed to bring the Kurdish-American community together. A primary goal of these organizations has been to promote the interests of Kurdish-Americans and cultivate support among both Kurdish and non-Kurdish-Americans. “Next Door Neighbors” also illustrates how Kurdish-Americans have opted to take part in the American democratic process. Kurdish organizations have played a role in introducing the democratic process to newly naturalized Kurdish-Americans by initiating programs that are aimed at stimulating their involvement. The Nashville chapter of Kurdish American Youth Organization (KAYO) was awarded by the Tennessee Immigrant & Refugee Rights Coalition for promoting civic engagement in 2008. Furthermore, Kurds in Nashville took part in organizing a movement entitled “Kurds for Obama”, which was aimed at gathering support for then-candidates Barack Obama and Joe Biden. As refugees of former dictator-controlled states where they had no permission to partake in anything, Kurds have displayed a desire to participate in the growth of their new country.

Multicultural Nashville has been the subject of many posts here at RRW, please use our search function for those stories.  And, by the way, keep your eyes peeled in Nashville for some of those 270 illegal Somalis that we hear have headed to Nashville (among other cities where diversity is strength). 

* We learned some time ago that Nashville Public Television was in cahoots with the Nashville Open Borders lobby made up of big business types looking for cheap labor.  Too bad their quest for cheap labor now threatens the security of Nashville.

Boise, ID: Burundian refugee wants her kids back!

Here is a long and convoluted story about a Burundian woman in Boise, ID resettled there in 2006 by World Relief (one of nine federal refugee contractors) and now wishing she had never come to America.

This is how the story in the Boise Weekly begins:

Sitting on a couch in her sparsely decorated Meridian apartment, Christiana Niyonzima clutches a Christmas photo of her six kids and a drawing her youngest daughter sent her through an Idaho Department of Health and Welfare caseworker.

The drawing depicts a stick figure of a girl flying in the clouds with the inscription, written by an adult: “[Girl’s name] pretending to fly. Mommy watching.”

“I think … I am not sure if they are safe or not,” Niyonzima said through an interpreter. “But I know they think of me sometimes.”

Niyonzima, who came to Boise in late 2006 with five children and pregnant with her sixth, had already led a difficult life, growing up in refugee camps in Tanzania. Originally from Burundi, Niyonzima, 32, said that her family was killed in the fighting there, forcing her to flee to Tanzania at a young age.

She later fled an abusive partner in one refugee camp, landing with her children in another camp. She did not have electric lights or flushing toilets and only had very basic schooling.

But no matter the difficulty of life in the refugee camps, Niyonzima says now she never would have left if she had known what would happen to her children in the United States.

About a year after arriving in Boise, the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare took Niyonzima’s children away from her and placed them in foster care. And in July 2009, a judge terminated her parental rights, placing her six kids into adoption proceedings. She has not seen them since then.

“I’m very sad,” Niyonzima said in English. “I’m not dead, and I’m not crazy,” she continued in Kirundi, the national language of Burundi and the only language in which she is fluent. “I don’t know why they did that.”

This is apparently a complicated case with far-reaching implications regarding such issues as legal requirements for proper interpreters.  Read the whole article. 

Note that the Idaho office of World Relief was criticised here just recently by a young woman claiming there was a religious litmus test for those wishing to volunteer and work with refugees.

Update:  I see that Friends of Refugees has additional comments on this story, here.

Comment worth noting: Somali says they are here to stay

A post that is among the most visited every day is this one about how many Somalis have arrived in the US through the Refugee Resettlement program of the US State Department.  We also now have proof that other Somalis are entering the US illegally possibly with motives other than just finding a job (as we learned here a few days ago). 

So this is what commenter “Somali” has posted at the first post above.

I am Somali; Black, Immigrant, Muslim and my IQ is 136. My people will stay here forever as your grandparents did, and they will thrive in this wonderful land. The faith of my people will flourish to all corners in this country and you will be watching as a hag dog from the streets. To those who hate new immigrants, I will say to you to go back into history books and read how America rolled to be America – with the exception of my Indian brothers/sister, we are all on the same boat (immigrants!) although our time of arrival varies. The issue here as I read it is not about fraudulent immigration but rather deeply rooted hatred against black immigrants and muslims. One more wisdom, All Christians are not Crusaders, and all Jews are not associated with Isreal.
Peace…… I am proud to be a Muslim American!

I wonder if the State Department officials who have allowed this to happen and all the leftwing do-gooders who support immigration from parts of the world where we are hated think this guy is kidding about the stealth jihad to make Islam the dominant religion in the world.

From an interview with Al-shabaab leaders translated by Memri, here, in January 2009:

“We want to inform Bush and our rivals about our real intentions. We will establish Islamic rule from Alaska and Chile to South Africa, and from Japan to Russia. Beware, we are coming.”

[….]

“Our objectives, by the grace of God, are to see the return of the Islamic Caliphate, the last of which was the Ottoman empire that collapsed in the 1920s. We want to bring that system back and govern the world with God’s law.

UK Somali woman’s case demonstrates that the end of Europe as we know it is near

Thanks to Baron at  Gates of Vienna for this incredible story.  A Somali woman with 4 children and no husband (where is he?) is given permission by European Union judges to be provided a new home by the British government.    From the Daily Mail:

Standing proudly with her arm draped over her 36in television, this is the Somali woman who must be given a council house even though she has no right to live in Britain.

Nimco Hassan Ibrahim – who lives with her four children on benefit handouts – was granted the right to the home by EU judges yesterday because she was once married to a Danish citizen who briefly worked in this country.

The landmark judgment means the 34-year-old migrant and her children will soon be packing up their impressive collection of furniture and electrical equipment when they are given a new house. 

[….]

The landmark EU judgment opens the door for hundreds of thousands of unemployed foreigners to claim both state benefits and council or housing association homes.

Read this whole article and weep!  As I read it I wondered, so where is the husband and father of 4 kids?  Off in Somali fighting for al-Shabaab perhaps?

The story reminds me that we live in incredible times—witnessing the end of Western Civilization in Europe.   This is of course why Mark Steyn entitled his book that everyone should read—America Alone!  And, then get to work saving ourselves!

Solution to the Palestinian “refugees” problem: show they are not refugees

Nitzia Nachmias, a senior researcher at the Jewish-Arab Center who also teaches in Asheklon College and the University of Maryland, has a new approach to the Palestinian “refugee” problem that is probably the correct one.  In a recent interview she  explained to Arutz Sheva:

“there’s no such thing as Palestinian refugees. If people would stop calling the places in which they live ‘refugee camps,’ then they would see that these places are just like villages and towns anywhere else, and the inhabitants are totally rehabilitated… Refugee camps are like the maabarot [in which Israel housed its hundreds of thousands of new immigrants from North Africa and elsewhere] in the 1950’s or the camps now in Haiti – not the villages with streets and stone houses in what is known as Palestinian refugee camps of today.”

She also noted that most of those Palestinians living abroad who claim to be refugees have been fully integrated into their host countries, meaning they are technically no longer refugees.  There has been a lot of fuss lately about Palestinians in Lebanon who are barred from certain professions, making it seem as if this situation is widespread.  Lebanon should be pressured to change that, but as Nachmias said: “Only in Lebanon are there refugees who are not allowed to work in certain professions; they are a small fraction of the total.”

Professor Nachmias also pointed out that the Palestinian “refugees” do not fit the definition under international law. That law defines a refugee as “an individual or family that was forced to run away – but this definition does not extend to children, a community or a group.”  And certainly not to the descendants of these people in perpetuity.

Her recommendations are these. First:

“We can’t simply push it off to the ‘final status talks’ and say, ‘We don’t accept the demand for the right-of-return because it will destroy the Jewish character of our state;’ what do they care about our Jewish character? If they deserve to be here, then it’s tough luck on us! Rather, Israel should take a pro-active approach, basing itself on international law and precedents, and declare that the Palestinian refugee issue no longer exists. They are no longer refugees!”

And second:

“Israel must nullify the status of Palestinian refugee camps; there is no other place where the UN controls territory. We must send the UNRWA out and transfer the control of these places to the Palestinian Authority, and then when the status of each individual resident there is reviewed, we will see that none of them match the legal definition of a refugee, and they are established citizens.”

This is brilliant and it’s true. If her recommendations were followed, Israel might be able to solve the seemingly intractible problem of the “refugees” in a fully legal way. I don’t know how the countries where Palestinians live would be forced to give them citizenship, but that would be necessary. Such a solution would greatly benefit the Palestinians. Almost anything the UN runs messes up the lives of the people it controls, and UNRWA, the agency for these “refugees,” has been a force for great misery and evil. Where Palestinians have gained some autonomy and stopped depending on UNRWA for their existence they have built up an economy and thrived, as is the case in some of the West Bank towns.  

I can’t find any reaction from the Israeli government or anyone else in the more than two weeks since this interview, but to my mind this is an important development.