Month: June 2008

Want to be a volag?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Last week the State Department released the FY2009 ‘Funding Opportunity Announcement’ which is all the rules and regulations for being chosen as a government contractor to resettle refugees.   It is very instructive and demonstrates too how the same volags (some are non-profit church groups) have a lock on the contracts year after year.   One has to have experience and have been a non-profit for three years among other requirements.   How would some new outfit ever get experience?   I doubt anyone is giving newbies a few refugees to practice with! 

Although now that I think about it, maybe that isn’t such a bad idea.  I doubt they could mess up any worse then some of the long-time contractors have recently.

Russia: Christian education in public schools will help immigrants assimilate

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Wow!  I would never have guessed this:  The Russian government is allowing Christian education in public schools as a way to assimilate immigrants, especially Muslims, to Russian society.

Here is how the Los Angeles Times report begins:

KOSTROVO, RUSSIA — Today they would learn about drawing, Russian Orthodox saints and God. The 7-year-olds sat straight at their desks, sun pouring through lace curtains and cherry trees blooming in the fields beyond. The teacher set a birch branch before the children and told them it was fragile and unique, just like their souls.

“If you think you can’t draw properly, who will help you?” she asked.

“God will help us,” a boy called out.

“Yes, God will guide your hand, so be confident, have faith.”

This is Tuesday, one of the two days a week dedicated to Orthodox education at this sleepy public school in the lush forests outside Moscow. All the girls and women have forgone pants in favor of skirts, and every student is learning Christian catechism along with reading, writing and arithmetic.

It’s an unlikely scene, not least because this is a public school in a country that, just a few decades back, prided itself on institutional atheism. It’s also a strange sight because as many as half of the pupils are Muslim, with a few Jews, Buddhists and nonbelievers mixed in. Many of their families arrived recently from Central Asia and the Caucasus in search of better schools and jobs.

At school, the students paint massive murals of Jesus, memorize myriad details about Orthodox saints and discuss New Testament stories with the local priest, who barrels into class in flowing black robes to oversee the students’ spiritual formation. At home, some of the children are learning to read the Koran in Arabic.

Unbelievable!  Did you ever think you would see something like this in your lifetime!  Most European nations are running from their Christian roots and Russia is embracing them. 

The government has so far avoided entanglement in a growing debate over whether the classes are appropriate for public education. The decision over whether to add them — and the nebulous question of where culture ends and theology begins — has been left in the hands of local school officials.

 The Russians are basically saying that multiculturalism stinks!

….. supporters believe that the courses in Orthodox history and culture will unify Russia by filling an ideological void left by the collapse of the Soviet Union. Orthodox Christianity is the defining core of Russian history and identity, they say, and should be a compulsory subject for every student. Muslim immigrants from Central Asia and the Caucasus are in particular need of Orthodox understanding, they contend, so they can grasp the culture of their new home.

Unbelievable!  I’m so stunned I don’t know what else to say! 

Refugees speak: revealing radio program from San Francisco

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

If you have about an hour and enough interest listen to this radio program (Your Call) broadcast from San Francisco for World Refugee Day last week.   I found it very informative to hear three refugees, a representative of the International Rescue Committee (IRC) and Livonia (whoop-de-do) Limon of the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, discuss refugee resettlement in America.

Here are a few nuggets from the program and my observations and interpretations of what was said:

*  The hostess (with what I call the NPR woman voice) of the program asked the Iraqis if they were surprised by the invasion and they said ‘no’ and one mumbled something about how bad Iraq had become.  They said they were however surprised by the aftermath of the invasion (presumably the chaos with insurgents and Al-Qaeda).

*  The hostess asked these men, who were billed as fluent in English, how hard the “sanctions” were.  When the men didn’t understand what she was asking, she said something to the effect of ‘you know the “economic” sanctions that the US put on Iraq’ and still neither man could answer her.   It struck me as obvious that the “sanctions” had not affected them!

*  When the Bhutanese refugee spoke he talked about his first miserable day in America and how he and another man arrived in the city and no one met them.   They got on the wrong bus, got off in a bad neighborhood, walked around for hours, lost and thirsty, until some kind merchant gave them water.  I’m wondering where were the volag employees who are supposed to meet them.  This refugee praised America and was hardly heard from again during the program.

It gets better:

*  One of the Iraqi single young men told the audience that he was a college-educated civil engineer who had worked for Bechtel in Iraq but decided he needed a change (no mention of threats) and that he went to Dubai and got a job (they need engineers).  He said something that wasn’t completely audible but something like ‘Iraqis aren’t liked in some of those countries’.   What?  Other Middle Eastern Muslim countries are not kind to their fellow Muslims?    So he just was “looking for an opportunity” and applied as a refugee to the US and here he is.

*   Asked by the moderator of the show when did he decide he wanted to come to the US, he said, ‘I always wanted to come to the US, ever since I was 13 years old—I wanted to see the movies and TV.’

I’m listening to this Iraqi engineer and thinking, what is going on?  He didn’t sound like he was having a horrible time living in squalor and fear—he was living in Dubai with an engineer job!  Where are the destitute widows with children we hear about?  The ones supposedly selling their bodies to feed their kids!

*  The second Iraqi ‘refugee’ relates his rotten trip to the US, not to be outdone by the Bhutanese fellow.   It was long:  Jordan to Paris, Paris to NYC, NYC to San Franciso and can you believe it a kid cried in the seat behind him from Paris to NYC.   Imagine how miserable that was—flying to freedom (airfare paid by the US taxpayer) and he is annoyed by a crying child!  Life is tough!

*  This second guy had been in Jordan for surgery because he had been caught somehow in a bomb blast.  In Jordan he was helping journalists do something illegal, but it wasn’t clear what he was saying.   A Doctors without Borders employee told him he should apply to go to America as a refugee and so he did, and here he is rooming with the Iraqi engineer.

BTW, the IRC representative said at one point that they were resettling mostly single men in the Bay Area.

*  The host then asks about culture shock, but she asks how they plan to ‘maintain their Iraqi culture’ (this question is not about how they will assimilate to our culture, but how they can resist our rotten culture).

You would never guess in a million years what one of the Iraqis answered about what was so hard for him here.  The dogs!  The many dogs!   He can’t stand the dogs!  The dogs are everywhere you go! [Editor: In Islam dogs are as dirty as feces, urine and dead bodies.]    After the dogs, it’s the sex.   The moderator, wondering what about sex has shocked him and looking for clarification asks in approving tones, does he mean the same-sex marriage recently legalized in California?   No! It was the sex change operations.  What?!  I’m thinking, how many sex change operations could he have been exposed to in three months?  Then I remembered this was San Francisco.   Need I say more.

Here then are two fine examples of so-called Iraqi “refugees” we have been hearing about for years.

 

Britain’s ‘Forced Marriage Unit’, are we next?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Yesterday the Washington Post ran an eye-opening account of Britain’s Forced Marriage Unit and a brave diplomat who travels the world rescuing British citizens who have often been taken against their wills to Islamic countries, such as Pakistan, to be forced to marry a Muslim of the parents’ choosing.  You really must read the whole frontpage story here, but I’ve copied a bit of it as follows:

Before 2000, British officials tended to view forced marriages as a foreign custom not theirs to judge. But these British-raised young women are increasingly worldly and assertive, and many now have cellphones hidden in their burqas or handbags.

From even the remotest villages, they are increasingly calling for help. And the British government has set up a special group to rescue them.

The Forced Marriage Unit operates out of an office on the edge of Trafalgar Square in London and rescues hundreds of women every year. Many of the 4,000 calls it receives each year involve cases in the United Kingdom, but the unit has diplomats in embassies around the world on standby for overseas rescues.

Uncontrolled immigration from Muslim countries has put many European and UK countries into this bind.  I wonder if the US State Department is readying itself for a similar unit.    Actually they could kind of roll all these issues into one unit to save American citizens (mostly women) from forced marriages, female genital mutilation, polygamy and honor killings.   How about if they make all federal offenses?

I guess this is one of those things that multiculturalism adds to America.