Month: November 2007

Big business is bringing refugees to small-town America

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

About a year ago the presence of refugees in Hagerstown, MD came to the public’s attention rather dramatically.  A very ill African woman sent a child out on the street of her crime-ridden neighborhood to look for medical help.  The child spoke no English and was found knocking on doors, searching for the resettlement agency office.  After the police were called, a series of misunderstandings led to an erroneous conclusion that the refugees and others living in the building were ill with a mysterious African disease.  The street was closed and a Hazmat team called in.  The woman had morning sickness (or so they say).   Thus began the questions by citizens about how all this came to be; it seemed almost as if the public had been kept in the dark purposely.

One of the most significant lines of inquiry involved the economic questions.    How could our city absorb all these people who were obviously receiving housing subsidies and other forms of welfare?   Were the refugees working?  And, what sort of jobs could they do since they didn’t speak English?   How could they support whole families on not much more than minimum wage?

It turned out that most of our refugees were working at warehouse jobs or local factories.  So then we asked, what’s in it for the likes of Sealy Mattress, one of the employers?   One probable answer is a federal tax subsidy for businesses that hire people on TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) or Food stamps.  (Note in my earlier post that half of the refugees are on food stamps, many receive TANF benefits).   The Work Opportunity Tax Credit , recently extended by Congress until August 31, 2011, offers a lucrative deal to employers.  (Note:  We have a better summary of the program from the Congressional Research Service dated June 4, 2007.  It was sent to me privately and I cannot find it on line. E-mail us and I’ll tell you where you might get it.)

A qualified employee (welfare recipient) need only work for 400 hours (a 40 hour work week translates to 10 weeks) and the business reaps a tax benefit of up to $2400.  If that employee doesn’t work out, get another! The volags (voluntary agencies) act as employment services for businesses and help facilitate refugee hiring.

It makes me wonder if this federal government subsidy is just one of the reasons big businesses like Tyson’s Food are so keen on refugees (in addition to their wish to keep wages low).   Afterall, these immigrant workers are here legally and come with benefits of their own.

Check out this post on Louisville, KY.  The Wall Street Journal says refugees are good for business.

Are we importing poverty?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Your tax dollars: 

Everytime I hear a Presidential candidate (Edwards for instance) say we need to combat poverty in America, or, we hear from Hillary and Obama that we need health care for the poor; I shake my head.   Will these ever go away as drumbeat issues when we are adding to our welfare rolls daily through our immigration policy, or in the case of illegal aliens, the lack of any policy?

In my research on the Work Opportunity Tax Credit (post later when I have a little more time), I came back to the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) annual report to Congress.    The latest available on-line is the 2005 report;  it’s a treasure trove of information.   I’ve written about this before but with almost 250 posts here at RRW, I couldn’t find it!   It is worth repeating:

All in all, past surveys have described a consistent process of advancement, slow at first, and halting for some, but sustained nevertheless, toward integration with the American mainstream. The 2005 survey, in contradistinction, describes a much more serious struggle. The 2005 survey reveals a definite turndown in refugee resettlement advancement as measured by the general labor force participation and welfare utilization data. The survey indicates that the educational background of the five-year refugee population is substantially weaker than that reported in previous surveys. Fewer refugees have finished higher school, and fewer still have finished a college degree. A smaller proportion of arriving refugees can speak English fluently and a higher proportion speak no English at all. This has translated into lower labor force participation, as measured by the employment rate which has retreated from 62 percent in the 2004 survey to 58 percent this year.

———–

Moreover, the jobs that refugees find are of poorer quality than seen in previous surveys. This year the average age declined about five percent from the year before after considering the effects of inflation. Even more troubling is the dramatic decline in employer-related health benefits: Five years ago, two-thirds of respondents could claim such coverage; today, only one-fifth can make that claim.

Some other interesting statistics from the report:   For refugees arriving in 2005, 27%  received cash assistance and 11% lived in public housing.  Those numbers were the norm for the 6 years shown in the report.  However, two numbers rose considerably.  39% received medicare and 53% were on food stamps prompting conclusions like those outlined in the above segment of the report.

For those of you who love to look at statistics, check ORR’s annual reports back to 1997.

Emporia, Kansas is cooking!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Have been gone all day and came in just now to see more news from the Emporia Gazette.  When you Kansans get fired up, you get fired up!     As a matter of fact, you have sent more traffic to Refugee Resettlement Watch than we have received on any other issue.

Over the last week there has been much talk about an article about Somalians in Emporia that ran in The Gazette on Nov. 3. The discussions also took place online at www.emporiagazette.com, where almost 600 comments have been posted.

______

The online discussion got so lengthy that it sparked a call from U.S. Rep. Jerry Moran’s office wanting to discuss the situation of Somali refugees in Emporia.

Apparently all this is because this famous old newspaper  got with the times a year ago and started on-line blogging for important stories like this one, thus fostering more open debate.   Our newspaper, in Hagerstown, MD, did everything in its power to stymie debate on refugee resettlement.  It even went one step farther by facilitating a ‘feel good’ publicity stunt to try to sway public opinion toward supporting more refugees.

In today’s Gazette one comment from “methusla” raises a very important point, one we have raised before as well.   Methusla is asking how these non-profit church groups can get away with paying no taxes and then use our taxpayer money to work against the wishes of the people in a community.

….they [church groups]  should not be allowed to use taxpayer funded grants to further their church beliefs or religion, nor should they be allowed to force a community to abide by their wishes of creating a direct refugee resettlement community for refugees in a town or city using taxpayer funded government grants.

And, I’ll add, because they are a special category of non-profit groups– churches– they do not file a Form 990 with the IRS that would reveal where all their funding comes from, what it is used for, and how much goes to salaries etc.   Basically they are completely unaccountable to the taxpayer whose money they use.   We found that 90% of the funds for the so-called “church” group (Virginia Council of Churches) that came to our Maryland city came from the federal and state government.  So where is the ACLU now when it comes to the separation of church and state?

Actually the ACLU joined an affiliate of Church World Service and the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) to block Homeland Security (acting under the Patriot Act) from interviewing an Iraqi refugee.  See our post here.

On the subject of separation of church and state, check this early post we did about a PUBLIC school in California that was setting up a special program for its Muslim Somali students.

For you diehard researchers, read our entire category–September Forum— beginning with the earliest post  about the public meeting held in Hagerstown this fall. 

Notes for the folks in Emporia

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I haven’t put Kansas on “Your state” yet but I promised yesterday to get you some information on Kansas and refugee resettlement, so here you go:

Go to the handy database at the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement.   You will see statistics such as only 51% of refugees brought to Kansas  in 2006 found employment.  Average pay was $7.86 an hour (can’t take care of a family on that).

For the 2005 ORR Report to Congress go here.  Scroll down to Appendix A for refugee admission numbers by state.

Go to this interesting article at VDare about your Senator’s past role in the Somali refugee issue.

Your local Catholic Charities is a subcontractor of the US Conferance of Catholic Bishops.  Go here , here and here for more information.

We have covered several stories involving Somali “cultural” problems like abuse of women and female genital mutilation.  Go to our coverage here, here, here.

Also, some of you might want to read Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s rivoting book Infidel to get a better understanding of Somali Muslim culture.

**** Note to “reservist” a commentor to the Gazette who said,   “Imagine how you would feel if Iraqis or Afghanis started pouring into Emporia tomorrow.”  The Iraqis are coming, maybe not to Emporia yet, but the US is taking 12,000 Iraqi refugees this year and if Sen. Kennedy has his way the number will be even larger.  See our Iraqi category here.  We have posted 49 times on this hot topic!

Are the volags up to speed on this?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Editor:  This is a guest post by a ‘church-planting’ missionary with experience in Africa.   This is written in response to our post on Atlas Shrugs/Somali refugees.

Are the polititians, volags (voluntary agencies) and others doing refugee assistance, aware of THIS ingrained anti-assimilation mindset of Muslims desiring US Citizenship?

” … This is the Muslim society.  In this society, the beliefs and ideas of individuals, their devotional acts and religious observances, and their social system and their laws, are all based on submission to God [Allah] alone.  If this attitude is eliminated from any of these aspects, the whole of Islam is eliminated, as the first pillar of Islam – that is, the declaration, ‘there is no deity except God [Allah], and Muhammad is the Messenger of God [Allah]’ – becomes eliminated.

“Thus, and only thus, can this group become a Muslim group and the community which it organizes be Muslim.  Before adopting this purity of attitude no group can be a Muslim group, and before organizing its system of life on this principle no society can be a Muslim society.  The reason for this is that the first principle on which Islam is based, that is “La ilaha illa Allah, Muhammadar Raul Allah”, is not established in respect to both its parts.

“It is necessary, therefore, before thinking of establishing the Islamic social system and organizing a Muslim community, that one should give attention to purifying the hearts of people from worship of anyone other than God [Allah], in the way we have described above.  Only those whose hearts are so purified will come together to make a group, and only such a group of people, whose beliefs and concepts, whose devotional acts and law, are completely free of servitude to anyone other than God [Allah] can start a Muslim community.  Anyone who wants to live an Islamic life will automatically enter into this community, and his belief, his acts of worship and the laws which he follows, will also be purified for God [Allah] alone.  In other words, he will be an embodiment of “La ilaha illa Allah, Muhammadar Rasul Allah”.

“This was the manner in which the first Muslim group was formed which eventually developed into the first Muslim community.  This is the only way in which any Muslim group is started and a Muslim community comes into being.

“A Muslim community can come into existence only when individuals and groups of people reject servitude to anyone except God [Allah] – in addition to Him or exclusively – and come into submission to God [Allah], Who has no associates, and decide that they will organize their scheme or life on the basis of this submission.  From this a new community is born, emerging from within the old Jahili society, which immediately confronts it with a new belief and a new way of life based on this belief, presenting a concrete embodiment of the creed, “There is no deity except God[Allah], and Muhammad is the Messenger of God [Allah]”.

[Milestones, Sayyid Qutb (Abdul Naeem for Islamic Book Service, reprint 07, ISBN 81-7231-244-X, pp 78-79) emphasis Qutb’s.  The quote is taken from Chap 5 … The Way of Life of Islam]

 Qutb’s little book is one of the most influential in the world among the ordinary Muslims, i.e., those who are not given to “lying with confidence,” who “just” seek a peaceful life.  It is central instruction for the Sunni of today.  PEOPLE HAILING FROM SOMALIA, for instance, ARE MOSTLY SUNNI MUSLIMS.  Should they have come through Somalia from other places, it is likely that they are Sunni.

It well may be that VOLAGS give up on their “projects,” for their collective approach is usually American and Christian and their intent is to encourage immigrants to ASSIMILATE, when, in fact, the newcomers shall not and that becomes obvious early on, but, however, after entry into the country.

There is need, then, for educating Americans concerning what may be waste of effort to cause these to assimilate, should the above teachings be allowed to be inculcated and reinforced HERE by those teachers (imams) charged with that task.  The teachers, if imported under present law, no  doubt know Milestones very well.  OBL does.