Month: July 2008

Muslim immigrants and homeschooling

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I’m cleaning out my in-box containing links to all sorts of articles I missed over many previous months.  It takes a while because I’m finding all sorts of things I missed and am now reading!   Sorry to any reader who wrote to us and didn’t get a response—my in-box is a mess! 

Here is a blog report from way back in June that distracted me from my cleaning.  Homeschooling has been a part of our family for many years, so I especially found this enlightening and had been wondering just when Muslim immigrants and refugees would find the home schooling option in America.  I guess they have.

Referring to a New York Times article on Muslim homeschooling, blogger Martin Gaither comments:

In his article, MacFarquhar focuses mostly on Muslim immigrants in Lodi, California. The area is home to about 2,500 Muslims, 80 percent of whom are “interrelated” Pakistani villagers trying to “recreate the conservative social atmosphere back home.” One way of doing this is to shield their girls from American culture, especially once they hit puberty. Of the 90 South Asian girls in the district, 38 are homeschooled (in contrast to only 7 of the 107 boys).

MacFarquhar interviews two of the homeschooled girls and finds that they are being kept home so they will be able to “cook and clean” for their “male relatives” and also to avoid being shunned by others in the community. One of the students remarked, “Some men don’t like it when you wear American clothes – they don’t think it’s a good thing for girls.” Eventually, the girls are “married off, often to cousins brought in from their families’ old villages.”

Read the whole post here.  He goes on to pose the question about Muslim home schooling becoming a way to avoid assimilation but also to raise jihadis.

I’m wondering, where did all the Pakistanis come from?   I just checked the databases and the Refugee Resettlement Program has only admitted less than 100 Pakistanis in recent years.  I would like to know through which immigration program they are entering the US.

Utah refugee coordinator speaks the hard truth—too many refugees

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The director of Utah Refugee Services spoke to KCPW radio earlier this week about the problems he sees with the large number of refugees being resettled in Utah from cultures that are very differant than refugees of the past.

(KCPW News) Utah’s refugee services are not well-equipped to handle the large number of refugees being resettled in the state, says Gerald Brown of the new State Office of Refugee Services. But he remains confident the problems will be fixed.

The biggest challenge to the system is tracking refugees after their social service benefits end, Brown says. While the number of refugees has declined since the 80s and 90s, they now require more services, Brown says. Twenty years ago, refugees were mostly Russian or Bosnians. While different cultures, they were still based in Western philosophy. Now, many are from Africa, Asia and the Middle East and their cultural differences are greater. Integrating into the social fabric of Utah is more difficult for them, Brown says. But it is vitally important for the community that they do, he says. 

Unfortunately I can’t get the radio program to play, but maybe some of you will be luckier.  I would love to have heard what else he said.

Indeed Utah is having a lot of problems with refugees with certainly the saddest case being the one of the 7-year-old Burmese Karen girl’s rape and murder a few months ago.  She was killed by another refugee in the apartment building in which she lived.   Only now are those refugees venturing forth from their apartments.  See the latest at the Salt Lake City Tribune here.

For more on Utah, use our search function for ‘Utah’.  We have written many posts on the state.

Vietnamese refugees have brought a great skill(?) to America

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We’ve been writing so much lately about Congress, crimes, abuse of women and other such nasty business, that this post is a Saturday morning change of pace.    According to this article the number of original Vietnamese refugees and their children in the US today number nearly 1 million. 

Some of those have an interesting talent they apparently are naturally suited for—gambling!

Why i’m telling you this story is because fast forward 3 decades or so and some of these folks have become professional gamblers. Five of the those who walked away from the recent World Series of Poker after more than six weeks of gambling at the Rio Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas are Vietnamese, winning a combined total of 5.3 million dollars, with Scotty Nguyen on top, with $2 Million in his pocket.

In fact, Vietnamese have been dominant in the world of professional poker playing for the last decade. 

Read the rest of the story here.

Homeowner exonerated in Kentucky refugee shooting

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Here is the latest chapter in the story of the shooting death of a Bosnian teen, from a refugee family resettled in Kentucky.   We reported in April that the 15-year-old was shot while attempting to break into the home of Jeff Maquire.  Maguire shot the boy in the head after being awakened by the sound of breaking glass.  Hat tip: Pogo.

From the Bowling Green Daily News:

A Warren County grand jury decided Wednesday that a Bowling Green man was justified in shooting a 15-year-old boy who was apparently attempting to break into his home.

Eros Berisaj, 15, was fatally shot in the head at about 5:11 p.m. April 3 at 525 Creekwood Court by the homeowner, Jeff McGuire. The case was presented to the grand jury, which issued a “no true bill,” declining to charge McGuire. 

Looks like the teen picked the wrong house (in the wrong state) to rob. 

Kentucky law allows a homeowner to use lethal force to stop someone from committing a burglary, robbery or any other felony utilizing force at his or her home. McGuire also had a permit to carry a concealed weapon in Kentucky. 

The police report had this to say about the teen: 

Berisaj was considered a suspect in several burglaries in the same area where the shooting occurred, according to the report. People interviewed during the investigation also indicated there were at least two other people who could have been with Berisaj when he was shot, according to police records. There had been another burglary at McGuire’s residence several months before the shooting; McGuire had also told neighbors about someone peeking into windows before the burglary.

Other neighbors told police about suspicious activity in their neighborhood in the weeks before the shooting.

The investigation indicates that Berisaj might have been working with someone older who would identify a house to break into, and then Berisaj would actually steal items such as laptop computers and other electronics, according to the investigation.

The witnesses stated that Berisaj would brag about the burglaries in school, according to the report.

During the original 911 call from Maguire he told dispatchers he needed to move out of Bowling Green, presumably a reference to the increased crime in this immigrant “welcoming” city.

In the wake of Clinton’s Bosnian War we resettled over 100,000 Muslim refugees from Bosnia.

Honor stabbing reported at Jihadwatch—refugee?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Jihadwatch has a report today on another case of a Muslim immigrant defending his family’s honor by attempting to murder his sister because she apparently wanted to live an American lifestyle. Thankfully this girl lived.  You can read the whole post for all the details and the good comments.

I was interested in one of the last pieces of information in the article.

Mohammad’s mother, two sisters and a younger brother came to the United States in 2002 and Mohammad followed in 2005.

I’ll bet you a buck the mom and siblings came as refugees in 2002 and Mohammad came in the Family Reunification Program a few years later.  They got the appealing family members in first then applied for big brother.  (Wonder what big brother was doing in Afghanistan from 2002-2005?).    Family reunification produces the largest number of legal immigrants annually.

Volags resettle the family then busy themselves with the paperwork for more family members which keeps the volag collecting the government dough!  Anyone know which volags are operating in Rochester?

We have taken over 33,000 refugees from Afghanistan over the last number of years—over 4000 of those went to New York state.   And, now that I can again access the databases at the Office of Refugee Resettlement, I encourage you to do the same.