Obama campaign suggests dirty tricks with Aunt Zeituni revelation

Update Nov. 2nd:  No dirty tricks just good investigative journalism here.

Update:  Obama says apply the law.  Let’s have an Aunt Zeituni Watch, first one to see her board a plane for Kenya gets a gold star.

Oh brother!   The Obama campaign is railing about the news that Auntie Zeituni is an illegal alien here in the US.  They question whether the revelation, coming just three days before election day, is a dirty trick—a leak by the Bush Administration to sabotage the election.

According to Politico, the Obama mafia has now sent its goons after Homeland Security chief Chertoff:

House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers has written to Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff requesting an immediate investigation of the leak, which he deemed “deplorable” and said “was not the first leak of law enforcement information apparently designed to influence the coming presidential election,” referring to an ongoing investigation of voter fraud by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN.

THIS STORY WAS FIRST REPORTED BY A BRITISH NEWSPAPER!

TO POLITICO AND ALL OF THE OTHER MAINSTREAM MEDIA IN THE TANK FOR OBAMA, MAYBE IF YOU HAD BEEN DOING YOUR JOBS ALL ALONG THIS WOULDN’T BE COMING UP NOW. 

AFTERALL, AUNTIE HAS BEEN IN THE US ILLEGALLY FOR AT LEAST FOUR YEARS!

Iraqi Palestinians suffer on border, but no Arab country wants them

Here is yet another story about the Iraqi Palestinians living in camps along the border of Iraq and Syria.  And, again it’s a plea from these ‘friends of Saddam’ for resettlement to a third country.  I will bet you if you examined the United Nations site where this article is located you will not find any similar desparate plea from the UN to resettle the Iraqi Christians whose plight is much worse than these Palestinians.

AL TANF, Iraq-Syria Border, October 30 (UNHCR) – The UN refugee agency has rushed assistance to hundreds of Palestinian refugees stuck in camps on the Iraq-Syria border after heavy rain and flooding caused chaos and misery.

Also, again the article is deceptive because it doesn’t tell you the reason these people are refugees.  They were favored by Saddam Hussein and those Muslims now in power don’t take too kindly to them. 

The flooding is just one more chapter in the ordeal suffered by the Palestinians in Al Tanf and Al Waleed since fleeing their homes in Baghdad to escape threats, kidnapping and violence. They have endured sandstorms, snow in the winter and soaring temperatures in the summer. In Al Tanf, two children have been killed by passing trucks and there have been a couple of major fires.

Some of the refugees have lived at Al Tanf for three years, barred from entering any of the countries neighbouring Iraq. “We cannot go forwards, nor back. We have a road on one side that threatens our children’s lives daily, a high wall on the other; in front and behind we have two impenetrable borders,” explained Abu Ziyad, a member of the Al Tanf refugee committee.

“Our only hope is resettlement. For the sake of our children, our wives, our elderly, we beg you, please get us out of here,” he pleaded.

UNHCR on Thursday reiterated its appeal to the international community to provide resettlement places for Palestinians from Iraq, with no other option currently available for the refugees. “We urge more countries to open their doors to resettle the Palestinian refugees and bring their precarious situation to an end,” said Daniel Endres, UNHCR’s representative in Iraq.

Where is the famous Muslim charity?   These people are Arabs.  Why isn’t the UN begging countries such as Jordan and Saudi Arabia to take them?    Hey, here is a thought, maybe if Obama becomes President, he and buddy PLO Khalidi could be sure they get resettled among their own folks in the Middle East.   But, don’t count on it, if Obama becomes President he will be welcoming them to a town where you live.

And, besides putting a guilt-trip on the world over Palestinians keeps the Israeli hate strategy going.   See my last ‘UN guilt-trips the world’ post here.  Search our site for “Iraqi Palestinians” for more information.

Al-Qaeda in Iraq blows up houses to keep refugees from returning

story in U.S. News and World Report by Alex Kingsbury tells about a tactic al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) is using to discourage refugees from returning home. (The headline, but not the writer, refers to AQI as “insurgents,” a description I don’t like as it implies these terrorists are local people, which most of them are not.)

NAQUIB, Iraq—Flying several hundred feet over the Diyala River basin in eastern Iraq, it’s not difficult to see why one government leader here calls it a disaster area. Shattered remains of houses dot the landscape, both over the brown and dusty desert areas and the lush, green river basins that have earned this area the title “breadbasket of Iraq.”

The destroyed homes are the result of one of Al Qaeda in Iraq’s latest strategies—converting homes into bombs, or “house-borne improvised explosive devices,” as they’ve been dubbed. It’s a tactic particular to this province, which is a combustible mix of Sunni, Shiite, and Kurdish residents.

AQI has destroyed some 60 houses in the last year and they continue to do so. The central government representative in the province

explains that the families need to return soon to harvest the local date groves. IEDs buried in the groves have understandably kept many farmers out.

Like many areas of Iraq, this one has local reconciliation committees that have taken responsibility for their own security. They have developed a plan.

In response to the dozens of households moving back to the area, local Iraqi reconciliation committees have devised a new strategy. Iraqi and coalition teams will de-mine the areas where fighting has taken place so that residents can return. Then, some of the sons from returning families will be hired as security guards, with a guaranteed paycheck for several months. This has the dual impact of employing returning residents and making the area more difficult for AQI to re-establish itself.

“The area is in decay because of all the fighting and it clearly needs help. The issue is creating lasting solutions,” says Col. Burt Thompson, who commands the 25th Infantry Division’s 1st Stryker Brigade Combat Team, and the U.S. commander with responsibility for all of Diyala province. “What’s encouraging here is that Iraqis are moving to clear these areas of explosives left by AQI, and they are moving to find their own ways to get residents to return.”

Note that the Iraqis still need the coalition to help them. If we leave Iraq quickly, as Barack Obama intends, this area like many others will be left to the mercy of AQI, which is well funded from outside Iraq.

The article does not say whether the families returning are internally displaced or had gone to neighboring countries. I wish we knew that. Also, we don’t know how the returning families will be housed.

Anti-amnesty candidate hits a nerve

Ann mentioned in her story about Obama’s Auntie Zeituni that immigration hasn’t come up as an issue in this election campaign. True for the presidential campaign. But in one congressional race it is THE issue.  Mark Krikorian reports in National Review on the campaign of Lou Barletta, the mayor of Hazleton, Pennsylvania, who made national news for his actions to protect his town from an onslaught of illegal immigrants who raised crime rates and made Hazleton an unpleasant place to live.

In 2006, in response to a growing number of illegal residents in his city, he passed an ordinance that would fine those who hire them or rent them apartments; illegal residents started streaming out of the city despite the fact that the measure was struck down by a federal judge in response to an ACLU lawsuit. (The Third Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments in the case yesterday, and since a similar Arizona law has been upheld, Hazleton’s odds are good.)

Now Barletta is running for Congress and is one of the few Republican challengers with a good chance at defeating a Democrat incumbent — he’s up five points in the latest poll. Here’s how important the immigration issue is:

It’s not just that immigration control landed Barletta on national and international news; his stance is wildly popular in his city, where Democrats outnumber Republicans two to one. In Hazleton’s 2007 elections, not only did he defeat a Republican primary challenger, but so many Democrats wrote his name in that he also won their primary and was reelected with close to 90 percent of the vote.

Those Hazleton voters must be some of the bitter gun-owning religious folks. But wait, the people of Arizona, John “Amnesty” McCain’s own state, are fighting to keep their toughest-in-the-nation immigration law against a coalition of businesses that want to get back to hiring illegal aliens. This coalition is promoting a ballot measure that seeks to roll back the law but is being presented as just the opposite — the usual tactic of those who want to do something the public can’t stand.

No matter who is elected president, the issue of illegal immigration is alive and well.

Obama’s auntie is in US ILLEGALLY!

Update May 17th, 2010: Zeituni Onyango is granted asylum in the US, here.

Update Dec. 31st: After I recently read Obama’s “Dreams from my father” I concluded there is no way Obama didn’t know she was in the US, she is not a bit player but an important part in the Obama family story.

Update Nov. 9th: Aunt Zeituni will fight deportation.

Update Nov. 2nd: No dirty tricks just good investigative journalism, see the latest here.

Update: Obama campaign claiming dirty tricks by Bush Administration.

You probably guessed it from the story at the Times that Judy reported the other day, but AP (yes AP!) is now reporting that Obama’s Auntie Zeituni entered the US illegally, sought asylum and was denied.  Four years ago she was ordered deported!  Hat tip:  Blulitespecial

WASHINGTON (AP) – Barack Obama’s aunt, a Kenyan woman who has been quietly living in public housing in Boston, is in the United States illegally after an immigration judge rejected her request for asylum four years ago, The Associated Press has learned.

Zeituni Onyango, 56, referred to as “Aunti Zeituni” in Obama’s memoir, was instructed to leave the United States by a U.S. immigration judge who denied her asylum request, a person familiar with the matter told the AP late Friday. This person spoke on condition of anonymity because no one was authorized to discuss Onyango’s case.

Information about the deportation case was disclosed and confirmed by two separate sources, one of them a federal law enforcment official. The information they made available is known to officials in the federal government, but the AP could not establish whether anyone at a political level in the Bush administration or in the McCain campaign had been involved in its release.

Why would any of the three, Bush, McCain or Obama, officially make this information available?  All three are complicit in our disastrous immigration policy and this is the first time the subject of immigration has come up in this entire overly long Presidential campaign.

The disclosure about Onyango came just one day after Obama’s presidential campaign confirmed to the Times of London that Onyango, who has lived quietly in public housing in South Boston for five years, was Obama’s half aunt on his father’s side.

Did you hear Rush Limbaugh play excerpts of the audio version of Obama’s “Dreams from my Father” yesterday where Obama says that Auntie Zeituni didn’t have a government support system in Kenya if things got tough, they had only family to fall back on!   It was hilarious!   How come Obama isn’t taking care of his family?   We know why now, the US taxpayer has been taking care of this family member.

It was not immediately clear how Onyango might have qualified for public housing with a standing deportation order.

The difference between refugees and asylees is that refugees are screened in advance of being admitted to the US and we pay their airfare.   Asylees are people who come to the US illegally and then seek legal status by claiming and being required to prove that they have been persecuted for one of many reasons and thus have a fear of returning home.  We have an entire cottage industry of lawyers being trained in law schools across America to serve as immigration lawyers for asylees.

Asylees are treated as refugees with all the perks, welfare, housing, food stamps, medical treatment as a refugee.  I guess in Massachusetts they never bothered to check if her asylum status had been denied, or more likely they knew it and ignored the deportation order—any surprise?

One last point, in the earlier story at the Times, Auntie Zeituni admitted:

It is not clear when Ms Onyango first came to the US. She said: “I have been coming to America ever since 1975. I always come and go.”

So in all those trips back and forth to the US, for 33 years, no one ever spotted her as an illegal alien!

I guess the pressing next question is, where is Uncle Omar?

More here: Obama campaign flabbergasted yesterday.