Day: August 17, 2008

Somalis in Pittsburgh: kids will be kids

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I know, I just wrote a post this morning and said I wasn’t writing about Somalis today, but this article is a good companion article to this morning’s post and to the Lewistown post of just a few days ago so I couldn’t resist.

“When we first came in here, we didn’t get along with nobody,” said Fatuma Muya, 14, who was born in a Kenyan refugee camp and looks after the group’s younger children. “Now, we get along, at least, with somebody.”  [at least its somebody].

Somali kids seem to be the same all over!  Remember the Somali kids were having problems in Roanoke, VA too.  This article in the Tribune-Review says things are going along swimmingly now.

This statement is incorrect however.

The refugees came to Pittsburgh as part of a U.S. State Department program to relocate about 11,000 Somalis throughout the United States.

The number resettled is now over 80,000.  There were some years following 911 that the number was 11,000,or nearly that much, in a single year.   I really must pull all the numbers together, I’ve been saying that for weeks.

If you would like to check numbers yourselves, go here and follow links.

Pittsburgh area school district needs money for refugee program

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Your tax dollars:

Just so readers don’t think all we do is write about the titillating issues involving refugees, or that this blog has become Somali Watch, here is a story from the “welcoming” Pittsburgh, PA area.   School administrators there were hoping for a federal grant to cope with the large number of refugee children in the Baldwin-Whitehall school district.

Assistant superintendent of secondary education John Wilkinson said there are about 130 refugee students in the district, with 40 students in the high school and 90 in the elementary schools.

“It’s our legal and moral responsibility to do what we can for our children,” Korchnak said. “Regardless of the type of student, we need to make sure their needs are met and reach as many of them as possible.”

The district may not be getting the federal grant (your tax dollars) it was counting on for a new program for refugee and immigrant children.

Baldwin-Whitehall administrators are adding a new facet to their refugee assistance program, though federal grant funding could be in jeopardy.

The Student Success Center at Baldwin High School is funded through the Refugee Children School Impact Assistance Grant, which gives the district about $60,000 a year to offer programs for refugees.

It’s typically distributed by August, but Baldwin-Whitehall officials have yet to see the funding this year.

When refugees come to your “welcoming” community, they often come with what legislators call “unfunded mandates”, in other words the local government is legally responsible even if they have had no say in what the federal government drops in their laps.

Here is what the National Governor’s Association said in a policy statement in 2007:

If the federal government is unwilling to sufficiently fund the necessary services, then it is incumbent upon the federal government to decrease the flow of refugee admissions. Under no circumstances should there be any further shift of costs to state and local governments.

You know what is even worse, the US State Department isn’t picking cities for resettlement its a gang of non-profit groups (volags) sitting around a conferance table and deciding which cities are “welcoming”.