US gives UN refugee program more than a half billion dollars in recent months

The largest recent cash installment was announced last week (LOL! a month after an audit revealed massive waste and fraud in the program).

From the US Mission to the UN:

The United States is pleased to announce a second contribution of $482.05 million toward the 2012 operations of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).  The United States’ initial contribution of $125 million was announced on December 29, 2011 along with subsequent funding of $28.2 million toward emergency appeals this fiscal year for vulnerable populations from Syria, Sudan, South Sudan, and Mali.  These contributions are funded through the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, and help advance UNHCR initiatives worldwide.

There is more, read on.

I guess the funding wasn’t “imperiled” by that devastating audit after all.  Maddening isn’t it!  The UNHCR gets paid big bucks by you (the taxpayer), wastes a lot of money, and on top of it all they get to pick the refugees coming to your “welcoming” towns.

Somali sex trafficking trial underway in Nashville

Update April 21st:  More sordid details from the on-going trial, here.

Case is complicated by lack of accurate birth dates for the former refugees.

From AP at the Minneapolis Star Tribune:

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Forensic experts testified about DNA evidence during the second week of a federal trial involving several defendants accused of using a young Somali female for forced prostitution.

The trial being held in Nashville includes nine out of a total of 30 people who have been accused in an indictment of involvement in a child sexual trafficking ring that prosecutors say was run by Somali gangs and that included sexual acts in Minnesota, Ohio and Tennessee.

The key witness testified last week that she was used as a prostitute by members of Somali gangs starting in the 6th grade. But the trial has been complicated by the fact that both the alleged victim and many of the defendants are from Somali families who fled to the United States as war refugees and who don’t have accurate birth records. The other defendants are expected to face trial at a later date.

Go here for all of our previous coverage of the case.

South African constitution makes promises it can’t keep as economic migrants pour in

Every time I see one of these articles (coming with some regularity now) about South Africa’s troubles with immigrants seeking the promised land and the local population that resents them, that ol’ schadenfreude is hard to hide.  South Africa threw off the yoke of “white oppression” and a myth was born that the country would be a model for the world—it would be the RAINBOW nation where people of all races would live in harmony as they were directed to do by a Communist-inspired constitution.

I wondered, when Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg recently touted South Africa’s Constitution as a model for emerging ‘democracies’ (ROFLMAO) like Egypt, if she ever read newspapers (maybe Katie Couric should ask her what she reads).  Here we learned that the African National Congress promises the moon to anyone in South Africa—a job, food, housing, fairness, peace and security.  No wonder they are flowing in by the tens of thousands from across Africa and the Middle East.

But, the government is learning the hard way, you can’t have Open Borders while offering security and sustenance to anyone who gets there.

Here is the latest news on how the government is trying to cope with the problem:

JOHANNESBURG—South Africa, which receives more individual asylum requests than any other country, announced Thursday it is taking steps to cope with the influx.

The government’s immigration department said in a statement that it faces an “immense challenge” and was extending hours at offices across the country that accept asylum applications from people who have traveled from as far away as Pakistan. Mkuseli Apleni, the department’s top bureaucrat, also said police will help manage lines at the offices, where fights and stampedes have broken out.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees welcomed the moves. The agency’s spokeswoman for southern Africa, Tina Ghelli, told The Associated Press that her agency is concerned that people fleeing oppression and violence are finding it difficult to get help because economic immigrants are abusing and overwhelming the system in South Africa.

According to UNHCR figures, more than 100,000 people sought asylum in South Africa last year. That was well above the next highest number of applications received, some 74,000 in the United States.

And, can you believe it! They have xenophobia too (and it’s not the white people who fear the foreigner).

Somalis make up the second largest group of asylum seekers in South Africa, according to the U.N. refugees agency. In South Africa, they are not confined to refugee camps and can work and receive state welfare benefits.

Most asylum applications are from Zimbabweans, whose neighboring country is gripped by political violence and economic uncertainty. Congolese, Bangladeshis and Pakistanis also apply, UNHCR said.

Xenophobic attitudes led to an explosion of violence against foreigners, particularly those from elsewhere in Africa, in some of South Africa’s poorest communities in 2008.

Indeed tribalism is alive and well even in the Rainbow Nation with the model constitution.

American Al-Shabaab believed to have been executed in Africa

We reported on the American-born Jihadist who grew up in Alabama on several occasions (here) a couple of years ago and hadn’t heard much of him since.  Now, there are rumors that he was executed (beheaded?) in Somalia earlier this month after a disagreement with leaders of the Al Qaeda linked terror group Al Shabaab.

From Key Media:

Keydmedia Somali had received a report that Hammami, a leader in the group Al Shabaab, was executed on April 4 by other Al Shabaab members in rebel-held Lower Shabelle region of southern Somalia, but the exact location is unclear yet.

Hammami, who used the name “Abu Mansour al-Amriki” or “The American,” appeared in a video last month in which he said he was afraid for his life because of disagreements within the officials of Al shabab rebels.

A Washington, D.C.-based group that monitors the war on terrorism said, however, that it questions the accuracy of the report, the second in 13 months reporting Hamammi’s demise.

In 2010 Hammami said that Al Qaeda’s (and Al-Shabaab’s) goal was nothing short of a worldwide Caliphate, here.

For new readers Al-Shabaab first came to our attention when dozens of Somali refugees returned to Africa to get terror training, here.

$4 million in grant money available to track refugees with communicable diseases

This week I received an announcement from the Office or Refugee Resettlement forwarding a grant announcement for some group or entity to apply to set up a surveillance system to track diseases coming in with refugees.  No kidding!  Apparently we have no way to track refugees with diseases at this time!

The full announcement at the Center for Disease Control is here (I couldn’t open the file), but here are some parts of the document from the e-mail.

The title is:  Strengthening Surveillance for Diseases Among Newly-Arrived Immigrants and Refugees

Measurable outcomes of the program will be in alignment with one (or more) of the following performance goal(s) for the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases: Protect Americans from Infectious Diseases

Here are some sections of the announcement (emphasis mine):

Background

Every year, approximately 70,000 refugees and 400,000 immigrants resettle to the United States from overseas.  Refugees are particularly vulnerable populations, marginalized from public-health surveillance, preventive treatment and health care in their home countries and countries of temporary asylum. They have complex health-care issues, such as low baseline vaccination rates and high rates of infectious diseases, including tuberculosis, malaria, and intestinal parasites.
[no wonder the cost of health care is sky rocketing!—ed]

[….]

One challenge to developing best practice health recommendations for refugees and immigrants is that there is no standardized national surveillance system for the identification of acute illnesses in newly arrived refugees and immigrants.  Reporting of health conditions in refugees and immigrants that are identified after arrival is limited to the required reportable conditions as specified by state and federal requirements.  However, refugee or immigrant status is not reported. Consequently, there is little data to evaluate the effectiveness and quality of the required overseas medical examination, the overseas presumptive treatment and other public health interventions, or to guide the establishment of evidence-based guidelines for the post-arrival medical examination.   A better understanding of medical conditions in refugees and immigrants is essential for educating health care providers in the U.S. about those conditions, particularly tropical diseases, with which they may be largely unfamiliar, and for providing assistance to state and local refugee health programs so that they can better prepare for the arrival of these new Americans.

Since 2004, CDC has responded to over 50 domestic and international outbreaks of infectious diseases among U.S.-bound refugees, including measles, rubella, varicella, cholera, hepatitis A, O’nyong-nyong fever, and multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis.* These outbreaks, some of which were associated with the importation of infectious diseases to the United States and secondary domestic transmission within the United States, have taxed the resources of U.S. State and local health departments.  These outbreaks also represent an obstacle to the U.S. Government’s plans for elimination of vaccine-preventable diseases, including measles and rubella, and constitute a risk for the importation of emerging infectious diseases. In addition to the public-health resources required for outbreak response, the outbreaks temporarily halted resettlement and cost the U.S. government hundreds of thousands of dollars in flight cancellations and other expenses.  Early detection through pre-departure surveillance and appropriate, cost-effective public-health tools, such as routine vaccination, could have prevented these financial costs, and the mortality and the serious morbidity that occurred among U.S.-bound refugees.

Most recent outbreaks of communicable infectious diseases among refugees have occurred in refugee camps with a mixture of U.S.-bound and non-U.S.-bound refugees.  While detecting, controlling and preventing outbreaks as early as possible in refugee camps is the most effective means to prevent the importation of communicable diseases into the United States, limited public health infrastructure and laboratory resources present challenges to disease surveillance in these settings.  Conducting pre-departure surveillance in U.S.-bound immigrants is even more challenging since they are geographically dispersed and usually fully integrated into the local community.  Until these complex and far-reaching limitations can be addressed, enhancing surveillance among refugees and immigrants after arrival in the United States will provide the most effective means of monitoring their health status, detecting outbreaks of communicable disease and evaluating the overseas health interventions designed to improve their health before resettlement.

Purpose

The purpose of the program is to conduct surveillance to detect, prevent and control diseases and evaluate existing health programs to improve the health of refugees and/or immigrants that are newly arrived in the United States.  The program will: 1) enhance existing surveillance networks for communicable and non-communicable diseases, including, but are not limited to: vaccine-preventable diseases, malaria, hepatitis, intestinal parasites, nutritional deficiencies and anemia; 2) evaluate the health status of refugees and/or immigrants for the purposes of informing and improving U.S. programs for overseas and the post-arrival health assessments and interventions, such as presumptive treatment for parasitic infections; and 3) improve the health of refugees and/or immigrants undergoing U.S. resettlement and protect the health of their receiving communities [your town!—ed] by controlling the spread of communicable diseases.  This program addresses the “Healthy People 2020” focus area(s) of Global Health.

* I bet you have been told that no one gets into the US with drug-resistant TB!   Think about this: a refugee or other immigrant gets into the US and can just disappear into the woodwork, so even if they have been identified with some communicable disease and possibly started treatment, there is no way of following them or to monitor their treatment as they simply move to another location in the US.

Endnote:  If you are thinking about sending comments to the US State Department May 1st meeting, communicable disease is a good topic.  More on refugee health problems can be found in our Health Issues category, here.  We have 125 posts in that category and the first ones we posted in 2007 involved the Fort Wayne, IN (Allen County) health department’s crisis with too many TB cases to manage.