Month: January 2008

American Somalis detained in Ethiopia with links to terror?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Read this post at Jihad Watch yesterday about an AP story which quoted Ethiopian officials saying they have detained terror suspects who are American Somalis.  Be sure to check out the comments.  

Here is what Brian at UsorThem said to me this morning, and he says it better than I could:

We bring them here at our cost. Give them support, make them healthy, teach them another language, so they can return to Somalia, more educated, healthier, better connected, more free to move about the world with American passports, so they can become better Jihadists.

________

I wonder if they finagle a free ride back to the U.S. by claiming refugee status again.

And, if this turns out to be true, will the US State Department dash over there and bring ‘home’ these American jihadists?

Answering Katie

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Yesterday we received a comment from Katie in Dallas critical of what we report at RRW.  It was posted with the fact sheet and so would likely not get very many readers.   But, because she raises some important issues I’ll respond here just as Judy responded to Will recently.

Katie says:

I have purposely chosen to live in an area of Dallas where refugees are resettled (going on 3 years in low income urban apts). My neighbors are all refugees. It seems that are some frustrations towards their resettlement in your article, but i would like to offer my experience. They are the best neighbors i’ve ever had.

She goes on to describe how wonderful, patriotic, generous and kindhearted one neighbor, a Congolese man, is and how much he helps her and her other neighbors.   I am sure that is absolutely true.  But, it’s funny she should mention a man from the Congo, because we had exactly the opposite experience in Hagerstown with a Congolese man.   He was recently evicted from his apartment because he refused to work.   Somehow he had gotten the idea that he would come to America and be taken care of.   As the police attempted to remove him to a homeless shelter he said he just wanted to return to the Congo.    So whose experience with Congolese men is more valid, Katie’s or ours?

The reason I mention this is not to get into a back and forth with Katie or anyone about our emotional feelings about individual refugees.   Do you think anyone revels in the misery that poor unhappy man is going through?  Hearing about it causes us all emotional pain.  But instead of brushing the issue aside we feel that our role at RRW is to get to the facts and address the policies and practices that placed him in that situation in the first place, and insist the program be reformed. 

Was our Congolese man properly instructed about what his life in America would be, before he arrived in our city?  Did he think people didn’t work here?   He spoke virtually no English but had been here for nearly a year (maybe longer).  Did anyone get him to ESL classes and make sure he went regularly?  Did he have a church or other organization sponsoring him?   I bet he didn’t, because if he had he would have had a roof over his head.    Did he have anyone like you, Katie, who cared about him and helped him become an American?

Whose fault is all of that?  In my view, it’s the fault of this entire refugee resettlement program from top to bottom.   Frankly, we are bringing too many refugees.  It has become a big business for volags—bring ’em in, get paid by the head, send them out on their own at 4 months and bring in the next batch.     Citizens in small cities and towns become overwhelmed and angry to see incidents like our Congolese man’s eviction and the result is your whole cause suffers.  

I say “your cause” because it isn’t my cause, one of the things people do who push refugee resettlement is to try to bully others into working on their personal charity.   I have lots of charitable things I work on, but I don’t guilt trip others into being involved in my charities and I don’t expect the taxpayer to support them either.

Then Katie wraps up her comment with a personal attack on us.   Somehow people like Katie think they can only make their point by calling us names and suggesting we are cheap, hard-hearted, evil people.  It won’t work, Katie. 

Chill out. I’m proud that my nation offers freedom to starving and endangered widows and orphans.

_____

So I apologize on behalf of my African and Middle Eastern friends for wanting safety and food- at the expense of a few of your cents each year…

Katie does also bring up ESL, but this post is getting too long already.    After what we saw in Hagerstown, I would suggest that ESL classes be mandatory and that refugees not be pushed out to work before they really learn some English.

Katie, if I have mischaracterized your comment or you have more to add, please comment to this post.  

We look forward to continuing this discussion with anyone who wishes to jump in!

For Katie’s full comment, go to the Refugee Resettlement Fact Sheets page.

Shelbyville, TN update: Rights group visits the Times-Gazette

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Representatives of the Tennessee Immigration and Refugee Rights Coalition (TIRRC) met yesterday with Times-Gazette editor, John Carney, and reporter Brian Mosely in the wake of the Shelbyville Somali ruckus series of articles of recent weeks.   (If you are new to this controversy search RRW for ‘Shelbyville’ to catch up).

The TIRRC delegation thanked the paper for its series that helped “raise awareness” and brought festering problems to the public’s attention.  

They also expressed hope that:

….TIRRC can help the Somalis move beyond their former lives in the refugee camps and become better adjusted to western society.

If that should happen it will go a long way toward smoothing tensions that are building in many cities in America where immigrants refuse to blend in and even expect us to change our culture to accomodate their religious/cultural demands.   Read the whole article here.

Rohingyas coming? State Dept. say it isn’t so!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I’m starting to see a pattern.   News articles appear that tell us that this group or that group is living in some squalid camp somewhere in the world and a ‘durable solution’ is needed.  Watch out for that phrase ‘durable solution,’ that’s UN humanitarian refugee industry code for the West needs to take refugees pronto.  

So last night when I saw this article in the News from Bangladesh my alarm bells went off. 

The Rohingya refugee problem in Bangladesh is a decades-long pending issue. According to the official record, there are some 26,000 Rohingya refugees in two official camps in Cox’s Bazar, a southern district of Bangladesh bordering Burma. The government of Bangladesh manages these camps with assistance from UN refugee agency, UNHCR. These refugees are the remainder of some 258,000 Rohingyas who left Burma to escape the genocidal operation led by the Burmese military rulers against the Rohingyas in 1991- 92.
_________

So, as a part of their protection, the Bangladesh government should take urgent step to recognize them as refugees and to raise the issue in the international forum with a view to find out a durable solution to their problem.

The above is written by:    

Ahmedur Rahman Farooq, Chairman, The Council for Restoration of Democracy in Burma (CRDB) and a member of The Union of Rohingya Communities in Europe (URCE). Norway. 

Guess you folks in Norway already have Rohingyas and maybe we have too!    We were told in Hagerstown that the Burmese planned for our city were all Christian Karen people.  Were they?    I’ve also heard rumblings that the largest Burmese refugee community in the US, in Ft. Wayne, IN, has some tension growing between Karen and some Burmese Muslims.  Could it be Rohingya?

Who are the Rohingya?   Just google Rohingya and Al Qaeda and you will learn all you need to know.  Here is a quote from a Hudson Institute report.

In addition to minority flight, there have been other factors augmenting the relative power of the Islamists. Since 1991, perhaps as many as 300,000 Rohingya Muslims have entered Bangladesh across its southeastern border with Myanmar (Burma), a Jamaat-e-Islami stronghold.  Many reside between the port city of Cox’s Bazaar and the Myanmar border. Jamaat-e-Islami and its student wing, the Islami Chatra League, have worked to radicalize these refugees, who are probably more susceptible to religious indoctrination after their persecution in Myanmar. Indeed, according to reports by human rights groups on local minorities, many of Harakat ul-Jihad Islami’s newest members are recruited from the Rohingya settlements.

And, if you don’t believe the Hudson Institute, how about Time magazine:

Today, southern Bangladesh has become a haven for hundreds of jihadis on the lam. They find natural allies in Muslim guerrillas from India hiding out across the border, and in Muslim Rohingyas, tens of thousands of whom fled the ethnic and religious suppression of the Burmese military junta in the late 1970s and 1980s. Many Rohingyas are long-term refugees, but some are trained to cause trouble back home in camps tolerated by a succession of Bangladeshi governments. The original facilities date back to 1975, making them Asia’s oldest jihadi training camps. And one former Burmese guerrilla who visits the camps regularly describes three near Ukhia, south of the town of Cox’s Bazar, as able to accommodate a force of 2,500 between them.

So, by now you are thinking we can’t be that stupid.  We really wouldn’t even give a moments thought to bringing Rohingya into the United States.   Afterall, didn’t President Bush say we were fighting Al Qaeda over there so we didn’t have to fight them here?

You can imagine my shock to find this sandwiched in the testimony of Kenneth Bacon of Refugees International, the refugee industry’s lobbying arm,  before a House Appropriations Subcommittee hearing testimony on the funds needed for refugee resettlement for 2008:

I urge the Subcommittee to continue this support, while at the same time not forgetting often overlooked refugee and displaced populations, like the 29,000 stateless Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh.

So, State Department, tell me it isn’t so.  We aren’t actually bringing Rohingya into the United States?  These aren’t the refugees former Asst. Secretary Sauerbrey had in mind when she said we need to bring refugees here because they become terrorists in the camps?

By the way, these poor and destitute Rohingyas have their own English language website here.

200 Burundian Refugees arrive in Des Moines, IA

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Here is an article from the Des Moines Register a couple of days ago describing how tough it is to assimilate refugees from African countries who have lived in camps most of their lives.  This is worth a read to understand what is involved.  In this story 200 Burundians have arrived in Des Moines, IA for work in a meatpacking plant (what else!).      We are bringing 10,000 “vibrant” Burundian refugees into the US this year alone.

The article jogged my feeble memory about a report I read months ago and just found after searching through piles of documents spread around my desk and on the floor.  It’s entitled, “The New Face of America’s Refugees:  African Refugee Resettlement to the United States” by Heidi Boas and published in the Georgetown Immigration Journal.  I’m telling you the source because I haven’t the patience to find it on line.

Here is the pertinent section that jumped into my mind when I read about the Burundians (as the din of Presidential politics plays in the background).    Ms. Boas cites Congressional Black  Caucus support as one of the main reasons for our refugee resettlement program extending to Africa in a big way.

 *      “A coalition of refugee resttlement organizations in Washington, DC, known as the InterAction Commission on Migration and Refugee Affairs (CMRA), took select Congressional staff members on three separate trips to Africa during the late 1990’s.”   (this included members of the Congressional Black Caucus).

*      “With Congressional Black Caucus members as leaders on both these Committees [Judiciary/John Conyers and International Relations/Mel Watt]  during the mid-1990’s, the Caucus was ideally positioned to help refugee advocates push for their cause.”

*     The trips lasting a week to two weeks took staffers to camps in Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia, the Bururndi-Tanzania border, Guinea and Liberia.

*    “The trips that CMRA organized helped bring Congressional Black Caucus members on board to support increased African refugee resettlement to the United States.”

*    “Indeed several individuals interviewed for this paper identified the Congressional Black Caucus as one of the most influential groups advocating over the past decade for increased African refugee resettlement to the United States.”

So, that’s why 10 years later we have resettled over 80,000 “vibrant” Somalis and will have 10,000 Burundians real soon.   And, just think, we taxpayers likely paid for those CMRA trips to Africa.

See a previous post on Burundian Hutus to Tennessee here.