Month: November 2008

CAIR slapped with subpoenas at annual banquet

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

You must go check out this delicious article at World Net Daily today!   Hat tip: Richard at Blue Ridge Forum.

WASHINGTON – When the Council on American-Islamic Relations held its 14th Annual Banquet at the Marriott Crystal Gateway Hotel tonight, it was planning to raise funds and honor some of its supporters, but instead several top officials of the Muslim lobby group were served with subpoenas for various civil and criminal offenses.

The dramatic surprise, caught on video, was a result of the research work of the Mapping Sharia Project, headed by Dave Gaubatz. He personally served CAIR Director Nihad Awad at the banquet tonight while North Carolina state Sen. Larry Shaw, D-N.C., a CAIR national board member, was addressing the festivities.

Read on and rejoice.

We have written about CAIR on several previous occasions as they and their handmaiden the EEOC ( Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, an agency of the federal government) are responsible for pushing religious (Islamic) accommodations in the workplace because of Somali complaints of discrimination.  See here, here and here.  There are more but am too lazy to link them all!

P.S.  I betcha CAIR knows where all the Somali young men have gone.

Catholic Charities still resettling refugees in jobless Michigan

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Recently we reported that the US State Department was trying to halt resettlement of refugees in Michigan whose unemployment rate is near, or at the top, of the list of States that have no jobs to offer.   I guess Catholic Charities* didn’t get the message because here is a puff piece article in the Lansing State Journal about  65-70 refugees being resettled there recently.   Once again this reminds me why we need to reform the Refugee Resettlement Program and take it out of the hands of non-profits which use taxpayer funding and then do what they want to do.

A commenter (Zolton) to the article is repeating a common (soon to be an even more common) refrain:

Until our current economic crisis is solved, we should stop the flow of refugees coming into this country. It’s time to put America, and Americans first.

We provide food a housing for these refugee’s and at the same time we let American’s get thrown out onto the streets.

These refugees’s do not come here with the intention of picking fruits and vegetables. They come here expecting to get skilled training and an education. Eventually to displace a hard working American, for a much smaller wage…

The last line in the article say’s it all: “If my life is good here, I will stay.”

In other word’s… If this guy doesn’t like the winter here, he will leave – after Americans have spent thousands of dollars on him… Money that could of been better spent helping an American.

It sounds like all were spending our money on, is giving Nandal Dangal an all expenses paid vacation in the US….

AMERICA FIRST…!

* Catholic Charities is a subcontractor to the US Conference of Catholic Bishops which is one of ten major US government contractors in the field of refugee resettlement.

Minnesota mystery: where have all the Somali young men gone?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update Nov. 26th:   Now 40 men are missing!

Update Nov. 25th:   Looks like we are beginning to get an idea–recruited for terrorist training!

Update:   More insight (and humor) on this story at Gates of Vienna here.

Thanks to the Baron at Gates of Vienna for this shocking news.   Well maybe not so shocking if you’ve been following our extensive coverage of Somali refugees in the US.

Somali young men are missing in Minneapolis, according to MyFox:

MINNEAPOLIS — Young Somali men are vanishing off the streets of the Twin Cities. More than 20 have left in the last few months, and the community fears they’ve gone back to Somalia to fight in a holy war.

If this is true (a big ‘if’) in light of the Somali Jesse Jackson’s involvement, then think about it.   We have resettled Somali refugees by the tens of thousands and just last week had confirmed to us that a large percentage are here fraudulently.    Now, we learn that some of those young men we were giving educations, homes, food, and healthcare to, have up and left to fight in a war in Africa.  In other words, are we breeding and raising warriors, not young people wanting to be Americans to follow the American dream?

The other possible scenario, since Omar Jamal is quoted as the expert here (again!), is that they are somewhere else preparing for jihad.

The families and community leaders believe the men have gone back to fight in a bloody civil war, in which Al Quiada is a major player.

“They’re concerned emotional and in shock,” Omar Jamal, of the Somali Justice Center said. “They’re completely grief stricken.

Omar Jamal is the ultimate spinmeister.  We first heard about him in August 2007, only a month after RRW was launched.  He was spinning and defending a Somali rapist in St. Paul who had been caught on camera doing the crime.   I’ll let you review our Omar Jamal archive which includes posts about his extensive activities as follows:

I called him the Somali Jesse Jackson when he got involved in the Denver Somali Cyanide death telling the media that the Canadian found dead with enough cyanide to kill hundreds was just a nut, not a terrorist.  In that post we learned Jamal had been ordered deported due to immigration fraud.  He reportedly lied to get into the US.  Of course, the big question now is why is he still here?

We also learned in that post that Jamal is the uncle to a Canadian Somali indicted for giving material support to Al-Queda in 2003.

Then we caught sight of him again in an article in which it says the Socialist Workers Party helped him fight his deportation.

He crops up in every story on Somali gang murders in Minneapolis, seemingly the go-to guy for local law enforcement.

We’ve heard him blame ‘no child left behind’ for problems Somali students have in US schools.

Most recently he was in the middle of the mess involving a possible election fraud in a predominantly Somali community.  We learned in that article that Jamal is related to the president of Somalia.

And, now here he is again telling us how distraught the families are that their young sons have gone off to Africa to fight in the Somali civil war.    Or possibly they heard how much they can make from piracy, beats working in meatpacking for a living?  See “…where everyone wants to be a Somali pirate.”

Or, maybe, just maybe, they are somewhere else in the world getting ready for jihad?

Germany to take 2,500 Iraqi Christians

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

A while back Germany was talking about taking in 30,000 Iraqi Iraqi refugees. Now Deutsche-Welle reports on plans to accept up to 2,500 of them “in the framework of a European Union agreement.”

We posted several times on Germany’s plans, beginning last March. The churches began by pushing for 30,000. Naturally, some people thought it was unfair to specify Christians. We thought it was sensible, since that’s who is the most persecuted, Germany is (or was) a Christian country, and why shouldn’t churches ask for Christians? Chancellor Angela Merkel seemed to approve.

Then Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki visited Merkel and told her he wants the refugees back in Iraq. We’re all for resettling the refugees back home. But Maliki has not been straightforward about the Christians, or he has been living in a fantasy. The Christian communities are being utterly destroyed, unless something has happened since I last read about the situation. But Merkel seemed to be rethinking taking a lot of refugees.

Also, the UN is involved.

[The plan for 2,500 refugees] comes on the same day as the UN’s Special Commissioner for Iraq, Staffan de Mistura, expressed his concern about the situation of Iraqi Christians in Iraq in talks with the German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin. De Mistura said a further exodus had to be stopped and called upon Germany and other EU countries to urge Baghdad to give more protection to the minority grouping.

Urge, shmurge. Baghdad hasn’t done anything for the Christians and doesn’t know what to do. Unless they get their own militias and training, they’ll all be killed off or driven out. Urging Baghdad to do something is about as effective as urging Ahmadinejad to give up his nukes. (I’d love to be proven wrong.)

The article is interesting for something else — how differently Germany treats refugees from the way we treat them. First of all, they have to get acculturated.

Hessen’s Interior Minister Volker Bouffier (CDU) stressed that the process foresaw long-term resettlement of the refugees and that they would be expected to take part in a three-month integration course, which would also involve language teaching.

Then, unlike refugees here, who are permanent residents once they arrive,

Berlin’s Interior Minister Ehrhart Koerting (SPD) said the refugees would initially be given three-year residence permits. These could be renewed and lead eventually to German citizenship. 

Why don’t we do that? Kind of probationary residence. If they don’t behave and start to become Americans, out they go. Think of the trouble that would prevent.

At the end of the article is something that’s new to me. (I admit I haven’t been following the Iraqi refugee issue as closely as I should have.) The last I heard the UN was talking as if millions of Iraqi refugees needed resettlement. Now:

Stefan Teloeken, a spokesman for UNHCR Germany, said a small fraction of the two million refugees sheltering in countries neighboring Iraq were neither able to return home nor to integrate into their host countries.

“For these people we have to find third countries,” he said on Thursday. “There is a program set up to this end and we hope that many countries will join this program.

I guess I missed the part where the UN realized Iraq really is being pacified and most of the refugees will be able to go home. Well, hallelujah.

A reader knowledgeable about the State Department’s P-3 program speaks up

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

By now, regular readers of Refugee Resettlement Watch are familiar with the bombshell news a week ago about the suspension of the so-called P-3 family reunification program of the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration in the US State Department.    DNA testing of prospective new immigrants revealed widespread fraud in certain parts of Africa.   You might wish to first return to our original post on the subject here before reading this response.

Subsequently, when the State Department modified its original statement (fact sheet) on the suspension, I raised several questions about what might be going on (here).

Now, in response to my questions, we have received the following letter of clarification from a person with firsthand knowledge of the P-3 program (posted here in its entirety).

To the editors at Refugee Resettlement Watch,

The suspension of the P3 program has generated some comments that I’d like to address. I should start by saying that I believe all of the comments, particularly those from Mars and Tennresident [Ed: those comments can be seen in the first link noted above], who clearly know what they’re talking about.

The problem is that the comments as a whole don’t seem to capture the big picture. I work for one of the overseas contractors implementing the program, and our view from over here is a little different.

For one thing, it’s not clear how anyone could have predicted the 80% fraud rate that shut down the program. To me, saying “we always knew” is incorrect, and is applying hindsight.

The resettlement agency workers who were submitting the AORs (e.g. the invitation letters) may have seen a high level of fraud, but that was never clear to those of us overseas. The State Department initially brought in the DNA testing as a formality, a test run, and an experiment. The managers of the programs welcomed it. The families that underwent it were all volunteers who were extensively counseled on what was going on, and who could have opted out. In other words, the process was supposed to be the end result, and the DNA tests were not supposed to be meaningful. Those of us implementing the program always suspect fraud in all refugee programs, but our surprise was genuine.

Two, it’s almost certain that LESS than 80% of those who are in the States already are fraudulent. The “80%” figure comes from a sample of undeparted cases that are still in East Africa. Cases currently in the U.S. almost certainly have a lower rate. The majority of them were either “P1” cases, individual referrals, or “P2” groups. No volags, AORs, or US anchor relatives were directly involved. Also, the fraud rate of refugee programs almost always begin at zero and creeps up with time. Nobody knows the fraud rate among those who have already arrived, but it’s almost certainly less than those who are at the tail end of the beneficiary chain.

I’ll admit that I might be giving too much benefit of the doubt to my co-workers. None of us are in the refugee business for the money, that’s for sure–we work with refugees because we think we’re doing good. And with this P3 scandal, we’ve actually done harm. The program is stuck with an enormous scandal that discredits everything, and an awful lot of people are looking at us suspiciously, wondering why nobody took action sooner, or if there’s more that we know about but aren’t telling. It’s devastating.

I’d also like to answer some of this blog’s earlier questions:

* Was the first [P3] fact sheet put out with a factual error (benign reason for the discrepancy)?

Yes. The P3 program was suspended worldwide several months before the recent announcement on the state.gov web site. The initial online announcement confused us when it mentioned that non-African programs were continuing as before. We knew that was not true.

* Has this problem become so thorny that some good people felt they had to do something before the waning days of the present administration?

No. The issues with the P3 program pre-date the election by about a year. DNA testing has been discussed for at least a year, if not more. The delay in getting the announcement might have been related to getting a political appointee’s signature approving the suspension, but it was implemented long before then. It’s pertinent to note that the actual decision was made by permanent civil servants, i.e. individuals who are not affected (in theory) by the politics of any given administration. The signature from the political appointee was truly a formality.

* And, why then halt the processing for refugees from countries that have not demonstrated fraud? Or, is this more of an equal rights issue? If we are going to cut off Muslims from Africa, we gotta be fair and cut off those Burmese Christians too? Did CAIR call the State Department? (politcally correct explanation)

It’s an equal rights issue, but it has nothing to do with political correctness. Other countries’ P3 beneficiaries were suspended for two reasons. One, there are very few of them. It’s not a big deal in a program of several thousand to put another hundred or two on hold. Two, DHS says the other countries haven’t demonstrated fraud, but they haven’t proved themselves as non-fraudulent either. It’s not a big deal, but both arguments seem to be spurious. Telling someone they’re irrelevant in numbers, and possible fraudulent because other groups are, is unfair . One of the underlying aspects of our work is that we work with people, and every person matters. Two, some countries document relationships well, and credible birth certificates should be available. Claiming the refugees haven’t proved themselves as non-fraudulent is ignoring the facts.

* Or, is this just such a can of worms that the remnants of the Bush Administration are simply washing their hands of it and leaving (the crisis!) for the Obama Administration to sort out? (sneaky explanation)

Incorrect. The high fraud rate took everyone by surprise, and the general course of action was pretty obvious.

* Has Homeland Security found a serious possible threat from the thousands of now unknown Somalis (they couldn’t have been screened, if they aren’t who they say they are) living in the US and decided it all should be shut down until more safeguards are in place? (serious security threat)

It’s correct to point to DHS, but the concern is different. The individual DHS staff do not want to be held responsible, so it’s easier to make no decision at all. DHS feels that mistakes should be prosecuted. In the few years after 9/11, that included prosecution of the individual staffer who made the decision; that “zero tolerance” memo was lifted a few years ago, but the paranoia among the staff persists, and it still has the power to paralyze the Department.

Let me thank this blog for making very valid points about the refugee program’s negative social effects, the costs, and the level of fraud. However I still believe in it, and I think it does good. I hope its problems will be resolved, thanks not least to this blog which points out the very real problems, but I also hope it will continue for a long time to come.
Signed,
Venus

Thanks so much to Venus for being so open and forthright about this recent decision and the refugee program in general.    We can get a little one-sided around here from time to time, so it is good for us and our readers to get other perspectives!  Thanks again, Venus.