Day: October 6, 2008

Presidential Determination for FY09 calls for 80,000 refugees to be resettled

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Each year the President of the United States submits a Presidential Determination letter in which he sets a ceiling for refugees to be resettled in the US in the coming year.  On September 30th, President Bush released a statement setting the ceiling for FY’09 at 80,000 refugees.

You can read it here.

I don’t know what the final number for FY’08 was but it was somewhere in the 50,000-60,000 range. We resettled 60,192 in FY08.   Over the years the actual number of refugees resettled have ranged from a high of over 150,000  200,000 to a low of around 40,000  27,199 directly after 9/11.

‘No child left behind’ educational system blamed for Somali violence…

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

…..and RRW gets called names!

This is Part II of the series from a publication of the University of Minnesota in which an explanation for Somali gang/clan violence in Minneapolis is sought. (See Part I here.)   I’ve heard of all sorts of negative consequences of the federally mandated ‘no child left behind’ program but this is the first time ethnic gang violence is being blamed on it (that I know of!).     And, look who is supporting the notion—Omar ‘Jesse Jackson’ Jamal.

Actually to be fair, there are many other reasons suggested in this article that are more plausible reasons for gang violence than the local school system, but just as Jesse Jackson has been unable to admit that the responsibility for stemming such violence rests within the family, so too does this article make a stretch to such excuses as the BUSH Administration’s efforts to fix our educational system (and that there is not enough of your tax dollars thrown at the problem!)

Here is what the article says about ‘no child left behind’:

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 forced public schools, for budgetary reasons, to withdraw resources from programs that helped students transition into American culture.

“They fired maybe 70 teachers,” Adan said. “As soon as that happened, kids started dropping out and failing. It’s moving from the school system to the criminal justice system.”

Somalis in the American education system sometimes struggle to keep pace, Somali Justice Advocacy Center director Omar Jamal said, which is a key factor in Somali youth shying away from formal schooling and turning to the street life.

“When they hit the wall, they find out they won’t be able to fit in here,” he said, “then they went and picked up the things they knew the best: Violence and gangs.”

 

Now here is the best part of this article, a comment from anonymous (most everyone commenting here is anonymous):

They’re  [not clear who the ‘they’ is]  probably here already, but I wanted to make people aware of a certain type of person that will inevitably show up in the comments section of articles like these. Please check out this website, but only if you can stomach reading the views of xenophobia, racism, and intolerance. Read a couple articles, and be sure to skim the comments sections.

[I guess anonymous didn’t read enough to know that words like ‘racism’ and ‘xenophobia’ don’t deter us from presenting information to the public.]

refugeresettlementwatch

Now some google stats for that site:
945 pages from that site with the word somali
239 pages with the word tax on it
196 pages with the words somali + tax

They seem to be awfully concerned about the Somali community, if you know what I mean. And taxes too. Taxes are really important to them.

[I wonder if it occured to anonymous that perhaps the reason RRW has so many posts on Somalis is because Somalis are making news across this country and it isn’t good news.]

Now, some people that are ignorant or misinformed are worth talking to, or arguing with to convince them they are wrong. And some people are not, they are beyond reason. Either way, it might be a good idea to take a look around that site to see what their talking points are, so you can decide for yourself if someone is worth engaging in debate or discourse. Don’t blow a gasket on someone that isn’t even worth honking at!

While I appreciate these comment sections, I sometimes wonder if they really benefit the community.

[I guess they don’t ‘benefit the community’ if they are opposed to anonymous’ view of the world.] 

Personally, some of the comments make me so angry it distracts me from the importance of the issue at hand. In conclusion, if you really care about this issue and want to help or just learn more about what’s going on, show up at community meetings. Volunteer. Talk to your neighbors. Don’t be held hostage by fear and intolerance.

I have to laugh, we didn’t “inevitably show up” as anonymous says, but were put in the comments by anonymous who brought new readers to RRW, so thanks!

A new way of gaining jihadi-Americans

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update: New post on judge’s decision is here.

Update:   CNN reports the Uighurs will be in a Washington DC courtroom this Friday (Hat tip:  Blulitespecial)

Thanks to the Supreme Court’s June Boumedienne decision, which gave habeas corpus rights to the Guantanamo prisoners, we’re now getting a new group of jihadists here. The Washington Post reports in Uighur Detainees May Be Released to U.S.:

A federal judge is considering whether to order a group of detainees held at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay released into the United States, in what would instantly become a landmark legal decision in the years-long battle over the rights of terrorism suspects there.

The men, a small band of Chinese Muslims who have been held for nearly seven years, are no longer considered enemy combatants by the U.S. government, but they are caught in a well-documented diplomatic bind. Unlike other captives, they cannot be sent to their home country because Beijing considers them terrorists, and they might be tortured. The government released five of the detainees, known as Uighurs (pronounced “WEE-gurz”), to Albania in 2006, but no other country wants to risk offending China by accepting the others.

The Justice Department opposes the move.

But its lawyers have argued in court papers and at hearings that only the president has the authority to allow the men into the country. They also said the judge is barred from ordering their entry if they have ties to terrorist groups.

In court documents, they have contended that one of the men received training from a group that was later determined by the Bush administration to be a terrorist organization. The Justice Department is expected to make the same argument for the other 16 Uighurs, an official said.

“It’s an executive branch matter, and not for some technical reason,” Judry Subar, a Justice Department lawyer, said at the August hearing. “It’s because that goes — particularly in a case like this — to very serious, important and sensitive diplomatic . . . considerations.”

Serious considerations like the war we’re in.

The government has asserted that the Uighurs were members of the East Turkistan Islamic Movement and trained at camps affiliated with the Taliban or al-Qaeda. The Bush administration designated ETIM a terrorist organization in August 2002, after the Uighurs were taken into custody.

The Uighurs’ attorneys have said the men never took up arms against the United States. And the Uighurs have told military court officials that they are sympathetic to the United States.

Trained with the Taliban or al-Qaeda? I’m sure they’re very sympathetic to the U.S. Andy McCarthy is an attorney who successfully prosecuted the jihadists who bombed the World Trade Center in the 1990s. He comments at National Review’s Corner:

This is the very nightmare scenario I warned about. The courts’ steps are outrageous, but predictable and inevitable. A lot of the blame here, however, goes to the administration and the military. They have long taken the position that radical Islamic ideology is not the problem, and that we need only worry about actively those taking up arms against the United States. They don’t want us to talk about jihad — the better to keep us in the dark about jihadist ideology. Thus, the government rationalizes, the Uighurs are not a threat to us, only to the Chinese. That was all the daylight the judges need to say: OK, then release them in the U.S., since no other country — except China, where they’d be persecuted — will take them. The government’s self-defeating argument is preposterous. Jihadists — and there is not question that the Uighurs are jihadists — do not recognize distinctions based on the Westphalia world of nation-states. In their view, it is Dar al Islam or Dar al Harb: i.e., you are either part of the realm of the Muslims or the realm of war, and the goal is to turn Dar al Harb into Dar al Islam by any means necessary. Releasing trained jihadists into the United States on the theory that their beef is with the Chinese and they have no problem with us would be a delusional act of suicide.

We pointed out a year ago that nobody, even the Canadians, wants the Uighurs.

Michigan Muslim who threatened blogger Debbie Schlussel gets nailed

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I’ve been away and am just beginning to catch up on my reading (well sort of, I never really catch up) and came across this hopeful story from Detroit.   Seems an adherent of the Religion of Peace threatened to rape and kill blogger Debbie Schlussel in 2006 when she expressed her political views on her popular blog (that is not the hopeful part!)

In a victory for free speech, the immigrant who threatened her has been sent to prison!   Read all about it here.

Speaking of Somalis who need to go into the night (and out of the country)!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Part I

While I was away at immigration meetings this weekend, Blulitespecial did a little scouting around the internet for us and came up with a three part series about Somali violence in Minneapolis.  It’s a head-scratching exercise in which good Somalis are trying to figure out how other Somalis have gone bad.

To avoid writing another opus, I’ll bring it to you in pieces.   Read Part I here.

Notice we have Omar (Jesse Jackson) Jamal with his nose in the issue.   See this post about how Jamal is involved in things beyond Minneapolis and interjected himself into the Somali Cyanide case in Denver recently.

Here he is weighing in on the Somali murders in Minneapolis:

Omar Jamal, director of the Somali Justice Advocacy Center, which provides legal assistance to the community and deals with law enforcement, said surrounding communities should care.

“If the students at the West Bank of the U of M act as if this is business as usual, then they’re not paying enough attention,” Jamal said. “These people are going through hell.”

Hell of their own making!   And, it’s all about the “pain.”

Community members will merely continue to live through the problems, Jamal said, though many will slowly disappear back to Somalia or simply away from Cedar-Riverside.

Wherever they go, he said, they’ll take their pain with them.

“There’s nothing much the community can do,” Jamal said. “They can just go gently into the reach of the night.”

So I wonder why ‘Jesse Jackson’ Jamal hasn’t gone back to Somalia after his conviction for Immigration fraud?

For new readers:  Start here and follow links back for posts on Somalis murdering Somalis.