Day: October 3, 2008

New vaccine required for green card holders causes controversy

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This is just for your information thanks to Blulitespecial.  I thought it was kind of interesting in light of the fact that we have immigrants running around the US with what I would characterize as more important diseases such as TB and HIV.  From AP:

DALLAS — An expensive cervical cancer vaccine is now needed by young female immigrants before they can become legal U.S. residents, a requirement that immigration advocates say is unfair.

Federal officials recently added the Gardasil vaccine to a list of vaccinations that immigrants must have before they can obtain green cards. The cervical cancer vaccine is required of females ages 11 to 26.

The vaccine protects against the sexually transmitted human papillomavirus, or HPV, which causes cervical cancer and genital warts. But the vaccine is one of the most expensive and controversial, primarily because it is given at a young age.

Gardasil, given in three shots over a six-month period, costs about $400. That puts an added burden on green card applicants already paying more than $1,000 in fees and hundreds of dollars for mandatory medical exams, advocates say.

I’m going to bet this cost issue is bogus because likely the taxpayer will end up picking up the tab.

Numbers, numbers, numbers! Pew says the number of illegal aliens is down

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

However, the number of legal immigrants remains unchanged according to this story in the Washington Post today.  

The Pew report found that the number of illegal immigrants entering the United States has declined from an average of 800,000 a year in 2000-04 to 500,000 a year in 2005-08.

By contrast, the flow of immigrants who are legal permanent residents has remained unchanged at 650,000 a year and has exceeded the number of illegal immigrant arrivals since last year.

650,000 is a lot of people looking for work, needing to be educated, fed, housed etc.

Sorry I don’t have time tonight, trying to get out of here for weekend meetings on immigration, to do this story justice.  But, for all of you who know that immigration holds a key to most of America’s ills—environment, jobs, home ownership (the bailout!) even terrorism—do you find it as incredible as I do that the ‘I’ word (immigration!) never crosses the lips of any candidate in the debates?

By the way, Numbers USA has a new ad here.   It is all about the numbers.  I disagree with them in one respect and that culture matters too, some cultures are willing and able to assimilate and some aren’t.  There is nothing wrong with us being discriminating about who gets the privilege of living in America.

Also, several groups including FAIR (Federation for American Immigration Reform), Numbers USA and the Social Contract ran an ad about immigration a couple of days ago in the Washington Post.  If anyone has a link for the text, please send it along.

The resettlement agencies “ambulance chase refugees”

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This is an incredibly revealing story yesterday in Mshale (The African Community Newspaper) entitled, “Why are African Immigrants Settling in Minnesota?”   

Speaking at a conference, Africa Today, Wynfred Russell, the director at the Center for Multicultural Services at Normandale Community College had this to say about the volags (supposedly voluntary agencies) contracted by the federal government to resettle refugees:

Russell attributes the large settlement of refugees to the presence of ten refugee humanitarian organizations in Minnesota who settle refugees here through the American Refugee Resettlement Program. These organizations he asserts are aggressive in resettling refugees in Minnesota: “they ambulance chase refugees.”

The cycle, he says, continues because these organizations need to continue receive funding to stay in business so they settle refugees in Minnesota so that they (the organizations) can offer services, such as trauma therapy, cultural adjustment among other social services to these new Americans.

Russell observed that “unfortunately, many people make money in the name of helping poor people.” He also said that not all humanitarian organizations and people were out to make money out of refugees.

Once refugees are settled through the American Refugee Resettlement Program, they bring in their families and soon a thriving community begins to establish itself; another reason explaining the large number of refugees in Minnesota.

I hope the editor of the Ft. Morgan Times, who doesn’t get the connection between volags and the federal government sending more refugees to Ft. Morgan, is taking note.

Interestingly, in another link on the same page of Mshale is a story about the high rate of unemployment among black Americans, but the article has not one word about the high immigration numbers from Africa and the fact that immigrants are getting relatively high paying jobs in food processing plants.  Are those jobs American born blacks won’t do?

We have written on several previous occasions about tension building between American born blacks and African immigrants (archive here).