Day: May 25, 2008

Now to Maryland…our home state

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

For the last few days I’ve written about immigration hot spots around the world (Italy, Switzerland, South Africa, and shortly I’ll tell you about Scotland), but now to Maryland, my Maryland.  

This is part of a story from a man who demonstrated recently at one of several Motor Vehicle Administration offices in the state.  Here is part of what he says:

I’m at the rally because Maryland is one of only four states that give drivers licenses to foreign nationals who are illegally in the United States. An illegal alien can get a Maryland driver’s license simply by having a foreign driver’s license – that’s all! Or, an illegal alien with merely a foreign birth certificate, an auto registration card, and an apartment rental contract qualifies for a Maryland driver’s license. There’s no requirement to prove legal presence in the U.S.; and needless to say, I’ts relatively easy to forge an apartment lease.

Maryland MVA is giving drivers licenses to foreign nationals as fast as it can – 1,700 a week according to officials (if we can believe them they have the authority to give as many as 5,000 a week)! Maryland even pays Spanish translators to help illegal aliens apply for driver’s licenses and offers a Spanish version of the driver’s test to license applicants all at taxpayer’s expense!

Now 5,000 a week totals 1.3 million in 5 years about of the State’s population! Why on Earth does Maryland’s government want to give drivers licenses to that many foreign nationals?

I bet  you are thinking he is some rightwing xenophobic racist redneck.  He isn’t!  Here is the opening paragraph of his narrative: 

This morning, I participated in a citizen’s rally at the Motor Vehicle Administration (MVA) facility near my home in Maryland. A group called Help Save Maryland had arranged these rallies at three different MVA sites for the same day – May 17th. Now you have to understand, I am 57, a professional manager, and haven’t participated in a demonstration since college. I’m politically progressive and adopted my son from Guatemala.

I’m not saying we are going to end up in flames like France, or Italy or South Africa, but I am saying that the heat is turning up.  Just this last week when Senator Diane Feinstein successfully attached an amendment to give amnesty to farm workers on an Iraq funding bill those of us concerned about uncontrolled immigration got in gear and defeated it (again!).  I can’t tell you how furious people are getting over these maneuvers by many in government to defy the will of the majority of Americans.

When 50 year-old self-described progressives like this fellow, Bob Fireovid, are willing to stand outside a Motor Vehicle office holding a handmade sign things are getting bad.

So what does this have to do with refugees?   You are saying refugees are legal!  The demonstration was all about illegal immigrants.  Yes, and so far that has kept the spotlight off refugees for the most part.   Most of those active in pushing for border control readily say, “I’m not against legal immigration.”  That is going to change as time goes on and there is growing resentment about out of control immigration shoved down our throats by governments.

To prove my point check out the agenda for a meeting coming up in Maryland in which a government supported agency teaches participants how to sell refugees and immigrants on communities or how to find an asylum lawyer or how to get a drivers license. 

Read about this June workshop of the Maryland Coalition for Refugees and Immigrants (MCRI) and see what your tax dollars are doing for you.

 

Misc. stuff that passed me by recently

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I’ve been way overloaded  lately, so have had little time to post on some important issues.   What follows is a roundup of articles you might find interesting, annoying, enlightening:

News team attacked at Muslim school in Minnesota as reported by Jerry Gordon of ACT.

Recommendation that “innocent” Guantanamo inmates be treated as refugees and resettled in the US.

British proposal to ban the word “asylum”.

Australia donated $1.4 million for Rohingya housing in Bangladesh camps.

Church World Service and Ethiopian Community Development Council team up to lobby for more Africans to come to the US.

Muslim immigrants sue federal government to speed up their citizenship process, reported in another post at ACT. 

Burundi’s First Lady visits Tennessee and urges Burundian refugees to return to Africa to help rebuild the country.  We have resettled 10,000 Hutus from Burundi recently.

Canadian blog discusses new book which says Canada should limit Muslim immigration.

Media threatened in Bhutanese refugee camps in Nepal.

World Refugee Day is June 20th, get ready for media blitz with crisis stories and puff pieces on refugees.

LA Times: A bunch of xenophobes running Italy

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update May 26th:   Islam in Action blog reports that Italy is getting serious and has just razed a mosque.

In the last few days we brought you articles about the growing anger against immigrants in such disparate countries as Switzerland and South Africa and now here is one about Italy.    I’m going to say more about this later, but if you are wondering why this has anything to do with refugee resettlement, this is why:  to the average person fed up with feeling besieged by immigrants they make no distinction in their minds about whether someone is legal or not when they see obvious foreigners helping themselves to welfare and jobs.  Or, when they hear about crimes committed by immigrants.

But, back to the LA Times and Italy.   I’ve copied a large section of this article because I couldn’t seem to find a good place to quit, it was so interesting.   Note that the reporter gets in a couple of hits at Bossi’s “shooting at boats” statement.    I’m wondering if the reporter ever read Jean Raspail’s “Camp of Saints?” 

Umberto Bossi, who once suggested shooting at boats carrying immigrants, is a key force in the right’s return to power. Measures against foreigners and violence toward Gypsies has followed. 

The head of a small xenophobic political party, Bossi has emerged as Italy’s kingmaker, the power player who was key in returning Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to office in recent elections and who will continue to call many of the shots.

That victory last month, which included the election of Rome’s first right-wing mayor since World War II and the stiffest rejection ever of communists, was part of a significant shift in favor of the Italian political right, composed of restyled former Fascists, anti-immigrant forces and traditional conservatives.

In this climate, it came as little surprise that the government’s first action has been a harsh police crackdown on the Rom, an oft-targeted minority also known as Gypsies.

Bossi and the Northern League are widely seen here as the moving force behind the decision to target Gypsies and illegal immigrants, two groups blamed for a rash of recent crimes. Hundreds of Rom and foreigners were arrested, scores deported, and ramshackle Gypsy camps razed or burned to the ground by either authorities or vigilantes.

The league, which is based in Lombardy, would add most Romanians and Muslim immigrants to the list, Boni said. Overall, he said, the party advocates reducing immigration to between 5% and 10% of its current level. “That way, you have immigration and integration,” he said. “What you have now is invasion.”

The league and its right-wing partners, including Berlusconi’s People of Freedom party, were able to capitalize on Italian fears about and prejudices toward the foreign-born, sentiments that are intensifying as the number of new arrivals grows and the economy plunges into recession. Their electoral victory also reflected a deep-seated admiration among many Italians for the kind of populist demagoguery that Berlusconi and Bossi represent.

“People want this country to remain theirs,” said Bossi, who once advocated shooting at boats bringing immigrants to Italy’s shores.

Then way down in the story there is this bit of information that confirms comments that Italians are worried about immigrant crimes (we heard that in Switzerland and South Africa).   The Italian reaction is to burn the immigrants out just as the mobs in South Africa have done recently. 

….many of the Rom, by their own account, make a living through petty theft….

The most shocking incidents occurred last week in Naples, where residents, reacting to reports that a Gypsy woman had attempted to kidnap an Italian child, torched several camps, forcing hundreds of men, women and children to flee. Many were later loaded in the back of trucks and taken to safety, in scenes that United Nations officials compared to “ethnic cleansing” in the Balkans in the 1990s — the very events that drove some of these Rom to Italy in the first place.

LA Times and the rest of you pro-open borders/pro-multiculturalism uber alles advocates, keep calling it xenophobia and make yourselves feel better to label opponents as racist xenophobes, but do it at your own peril.