Month: January 2008

100 Foreign workers missing in Alabama tonight

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Coming right on the heels of the anger at Tyson’s Food for disrupting communities by bringing Somali refugees in large numbers to small American cities, comes the news that another big business has lost 100 Nepalese workers this week.   

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — About 100 people who came from Nepal to work at a north Alabama factory seemingly vanished from a pair of apartment buildings, along with a lot of furniture and appliances, and can’t be located, officials said Tuesday.

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Immigration agents are trying to determine what happened to the Nepalese workers, among hundreds brought to the United States to work at a DVD factory operated by Cinram Inc., said Lauren Bethune, a spokeswoman for the Alabama Department of Homeland Security.

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“We do not in any way consider it a security threat, but we do think it is important,” she said.

The AP article goes on to say that the workers were part of a group of 1350 foreign workers brought to the Cinram plant.  Missing along with the people are hundreds of thousands of dollars of furniture, TV sets, and kitchenware.   The Homeland Security agent went on to say maybe they went home.  Yeh right, they just loaded all the loot on commercial flights and headed back to Nepal!  (Hat tip: Lori)

More:  Blulite sent us a link (in comments) to a story in the Huntsville Times a day earlier that adds more to this shocking story.   These aren’t refugees admitted under the Refugee Resettlement program.   But, this further points to the need for someone to do a blog on other immigration programs that allow foreign nationals to enter the US from troubled parts of the world.

Somalis definitely leaving Emporia, KS

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

According to the Emporia-Gazette, news was received today that the Somali refugees who have been the center of much controversy are leaving Emporia.  They are among the 1500 workers who will be unemployed shortly.

City Manager Matt Zimmerman told city commissioners at today’s work session that the Somali community had decided to leave Emporia following Tyson Foods’ decision to shut down its Emporia slaughter operation, according to a refugee coordinator from the state.

You need to go and read the citizen comments at this article to know how much this Kansas city was disrupted first by the secretive arrival of hundreds of Somalis presumably lured by Tyson’s to Emporia, and now their abrupt departure with the plant closure.    The Tyson’s Food company and its quest to keep wages low  is primarily to blame for all the hard feelings and upheaval among the long time residents. 

And, a share of the blame goes to resettlement agencies like Catholic Charities who seem to latch onto any employer no matter how unscrupulous their business practices.   The bottomline is that if they don’t get these refugees employed quickly someone might just suggest we are bringing too many low skilled workers to the US and their gravy train and ‘good’ works would be halted.

Although we have sympathy for unemployed people whoever they are, the Somalis compounded their problems in Emporia by making no apparent effort to assimilate.  And, I will bet they were never seriously told they must assimilate by whatever agency resettled them in the first place. 

Residents asking questions from the get-go are now subject to comments like this one from Joe_Strummer:

Just wonder what all these poor Klansmen are gonna do on their Saturday nights now that there’s no one to whine about.

But, then JayJazz has a comeback:

Damn! I just washed my hood again with my red underwear… I hate it when that happens.

That’s right Jay, keep your sense of humor and laugh at those claiming this is all about racism in a so-called “unwelcoming” city.   They will throw the blame for bad government policies, mismanagement by volags and ruthless business practices by a large corporation back on citizens.  Resist! 

If you are new to this controversy and have the stamina, visit our category called  Emporia, Ks controversy and start at the beginning.  We have written 25 posts on this topic.

Bosnians busted in Driver License scam

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

In the aftermath of Bill Clinton’s war in Bosnia, the United States admitted over 100,000 Bosnian Muslims as refugees.  They got taxpayer funded airfare, a rent subsidy, food stamps, health care, and a caseworker to find them a job.    Here’s how they repay the charity.    (Hat tip:  Janet Levy)

The FBI has cracked a Spokane-based ring that it says paid bribes to a state contractor and used foreign-language interpreters to help Bosnian immigrants cheat on tests to obtain commercial driver licenses fraudulently from the state of Washington.

Read the whole story at the SpokesmanReview.com. 

Washington State has received 89,000 refugees through 2005 and nearly 5000 of those are from the former Yugoslavia.

Europeans waking up (finally) to the danger of Muslim immigration

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

See this excellent post at Jihad Watch reporting on an article from the Daily Express that begins:

AN “overwhelming majority” of Europeans believe immigration from Islamic countries is a threat to their traditional way of life, a survey revealed last night.

Read it all and remember that we are blindly heading down the same path as Europe, except maybe we still have time to turn it around.   We need to get to work!  (Judy admonishes me on this and says I need to explain ‘work’).   The first bit of  work that needs to be done is that we all need to publicize the information we gather about immigration to as wide an audience as is humanly possible, starting with your next door neighbor!  

Complaints fall on deaf ears at government agencies

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We have written before about the work of Chris Coen and his organization, Friends of Refugees.  He wrote to us recently out of sheer frustration, but still  filled with determination to get the government’s attention about the plight of some refugees who have been brought to America and virtually dumped by agencies contracted to care for them.  Here is his letter to us.  Keep in mind this has been going on for a long time and his letters to these agencies span years.

Dear Refugee Resettlement Watch,

Although I recently commented about our previous complaints to the Inspector General at the U.S. Department of State (DOS), I have a few more details to share. The first complaint we filed to the DOS’s Inspector General’s Office managed to be ‘lost’ by that office! Cute, isn’t it? They said that maybe the old Inspector General took it with him when he went to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). He’s now no longer with DHS either. They rotate people in and out quick to avoid any accountability. It’s very effective.

THEN, we put it in AGAIN – but we beefed it up with a lot more discrediting information about the refugee resettlement agencies that we had managed to get from the DOS’s own inspection reports. BUT, 2-3 months later our complaint letter to the Inspector General, sent via certified mail, was returned to us. They would not claim it. They use a post office box so that a USPS delivery person cannot get anyone to sign for it – and they just refuse to acknowledge all the notices left by USPS to claim it. They got us again! Then, we wrote to various Senators, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, etc. about this trickery — nooooooo response back from anyone.

Okay, then, we put in some complaints with the Inspector General’s Office at HHS[Health and Human Services] about their Office of Refugee Resettlement’s (ORR’s) failure to investigate our specific complaint about World Relief in New Port Richey, FL. It went nowhere. The Director of the ORR, who we targeted for complaint, then took retirement – he retired unscathed. He must be laughing now, living off the taxpayers via his government pension, and never had to answer for one bit of irresponsible stewardship of his refugee programs.

Not to say we won’t try again. We never give up. They’ll never wear us down – not via any length or level of corruption.

Christopher Coen

Director

Friends of Refugees

You can reach Mr. Coen by e-mail.    FORefugees@hotmail.com