Yippee! Houston the most welcoming city in the nation for refugees

Houston gets the lucky distinction of being the destination for the largest number of refugees in America this year!

From the Associated Press:

HOUSTON (AP) — A report finds Texas has become the favorite destination for refugees seeking haven in the United States.

Houston on Monday began marking World Refugee Day, which is June 20.

The Houston Chronicle (http://bit.ly/KuslFG ) reports more than 5,600 refugees reached Texas last year. Houston was the favorite city nationwide.

The federal Office of Refugee Resettlement says a total of 56,419 refugees settled in the U.S. during 2011, with about 10 percent in Texas.

Caitriona Lyons with the state’s Refugee Resettlement Program credits the strong Texas economy and affordable housing.

I just typed “Houston” into our search function because I know I’ve written many posts on it and the refugee problems the city faces, but if you only have time for one, read Refugee Horrors in Houston, here from 2009.

Sudanese illegal immigrants demonstrate in Israel to no effect

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is not intimidated by the Sudanese illegal immigrants who want to be classified as refugees. CNN reports:

JERUSALEM – Several hundred Sudanese immigrants rallied Sunday on the streets of Tel Aviv, demanding refugee status.

Marching towards the United Nations Refugee Agency building, the demonstrators held up banners reading “We are not infiltrators, we are refugees,” “We are human beings too” and “We are refugees, we are not criminals.”

Israel is a democratic county that has a lot of immigrants and a high level of social services. No doubt these immigrants thought they could sneak into this first-world country and take their places as low-level workers and/or welfare recipients. But Israel is intensely focused on its national survival, and these immigrants, part of a wave of economic migrants from sub-Saharan Africa, are a demographic threat. So:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denounced the violence [a May protest that turned violent]. “The problem of infiltrators must be resolved, and we will resolve it,” he said after the protest last month. “We will complete the construction of the security fence in several months and soon will start the process of sending the migrants back to their home countries.”

He added, “We will solve the problem and will do so responsibly.”

That doesn’t sit well with “human rights” groups, social services, and refugee agencies. But those who have to suffer the immediate impact of the immigrants understand.

Some residents of southern Tel Aviv neighborhoods, where there is a large concentration of Africans, have blamed their new neighbors for increasing levels of crime and suffocating the infrastructure and public services. Some also complain the illegal immigration is changing the fabric of Israel.

Phony Iraqi refugee was Australian human trafficking kingpin….

…..and the Australian police let him slip through their fingers and escape the country!

You know what is really interesting about this story, besides the fact that they actually have real investigative reporting in Australia, is that if the police suspected two years ago that he was a smuggler, why was he given refugee status—two years ago?

From AFP (emphasis mine):

SYDNEY — Australian police said Thursday an alleged people-smuggling kingpin who was granted a refugee visa fled the country this week after a television expose, and they were powerless to stop him.

Tony Negus, head of the Australian Federal Police, said the accused smuggler known as Captain Emad flew out of Melbourne on Tuesday after a damning documentary about him aired in Australia on Monday.

Emad had travelled from Indonesia on a people-smuggling boat in January 2010 and set up smuggling operations in the national capital Canberra after being granted asylum under a false name, according to the ABC Four Corners programme.

The allegations angered Jakarta, who described them as “disappointing and difficult” given that Australia expected their help in tracking down people-smugglers.

Negus took the rare step of confirming Thursday that Emad had been the focus of police inquiries for two years, given the significant public interest in the case, but said the Iraqi-born man had since fled.

“There was an operational decision made by investigators that he could not be detained as the officers had no lawful basis to prevent him from departing Australia,” Negus told reporters.

“This was despite the material recently aired in the Four Corners programme being thoroughly analysed by our investigators.

Something smells about this story.  Why let the “head of the snake” go?  Not enough evidence!  Why anger the Indonesian government?  Why give him refugee status in the first place?

Emad was described as the “head of the smugglers, the head of the snake” by an informant who linked him to a powerful Indonesian ring behind two ill-fated boats which sank before reaching Australia, killing almost 150 people.

He was sent as part of a plan to expand the ring’s operations in Australia, along with “at least” another six agents on board his ship who were also granted refugee status, according to the programme.

There is more, read it all.   Maybe its time for ol’ Tony to get the boot!   (come to think of it, that could be the theme song for the refugee program in general!)

Witness who refused to testify in Nashville Somali sex trafficking case faces jail time

One of the Somalis the government hoped would testify in the Somali sex trafficking case* said he feared for his life if he snitched on his fellow countrymen.

From AP:

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — A Somali man who refused to testify against gang members in a sex trafficking trial in Nashville told a judge that he was assaulted and warned that gang members would get him if he snitched.

Abdullahi Farah was charged with criminal contempt for refusing to testify during a federal trial against nine defendants accused in a sex trafficking ring. Three people were convicted and six were acquitted by a jury in May.

Farah said on the stand Thursday that men wearing masks assaulted him twice and he was told that threats were made against him for cooperating with federal prosecutors in the case, which includes more than 30 defendants and spanned from Minnesota to Ohio and Tennessee.

The indictment alleged that Somali gangs in Minneapolis and Nashville were using young girls and women for prostitution.

U.S. District Court Chief Judge Todd Campbell found him guilty of criminal contempt and ordered sentencing to be set for July 3.

[…..]

“I knew what the gangs are capable of,” he testified on Thursday. “I’ve seen it.”

But, did the government (ICE) make him promises and double cross him.  I don’t have time to look further into this, but read the rest of the AP story here.

For new readers, here is one post from earlier this year on the case.  But, if you are really interested, type ‘somali sex trafficking’ into our search function and you will get many posts on the sorry tale.

Burma: Muslim Rohingya riot, burn homes, kill residents after leaving mosque

Update June 10th:  Fighting continues in Rakhine as armed Rohingya rebels continue to terrorize Buddhists, here.

Special note to the US Conference of Catholic Bishops—these are the “persecuted” people you want to bring to America?

From Eleven Media Group:

Eleven Media Group)- Dozens of Rakhine people were killed amidst the Rohingya terrorist attacks in border town of Maungdaw in Rakhine State, the western part of Myanmar on Friday.

Due to the violence, hundreds of houses and buildings were burnt down by mobs, said the reporter Ko Win Maung of the Eleven Media at the scene.

The death toll in the incident has reached 20 to 30 until the night of 8 June and the injured persons nearby villages of Maundaw Township have been taken to Maungdaw hospital.

The onset of the violence on 8 June was that the Rohingya Muslims who returned from the mosque yesterday afternoon started throwing the stones to the Rakhine houses and buildings in Maungdaw Township, according to the Eleven Media reporter whose house was also blazed amidst the violence.

As the riots could not be controlled, the police forces took security measures in the town where Muslims are majority and Rakhine people are minority. Rohingya mobs were setting fire on the nearby villages of Rakhine ethnics, said a Buddhist monk who resides in Maungdaw Township.

Readers, at the May 1 State Department meeting to discuss who should be resettled in the US, Anastasia Brown of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops made a case for more Rohingya “refugees” to be resettled in the US.  Is it the job of the US to bring every group of supposedly persecuted Muslims to our towns and cities?  Should the average American taxpaying citizen have to pay for the Islamic upheaval in large parts of the world by bringing the Islamists to their neighborhoods?  For what?  To help Burma or Somalia or  Syria (next!)?  To show we are good people?  To show we are fair by balancing out our Christians and Muslims?

Readers please focus on the word Rohingya and don’t let this happen.  We were asleep when these same contractor/church groups began the importation of Somalis, but we are awake now.

This is our 108th post on Rohingya since 2008, please glance through our Rohingya Reports category, here, for more information.

Update:  Here is the Reuters version of the riots, but it doesn’t matter who started what, the message for us is that we should let them fight it out in Burma!  We don’t need to be resettling all of the world’s problems into the US.