They are changing America by changing the people
Jesse Petrillo, head of the United American Committee, recently traveled to Europe to see for himself what uncontrolled immigration is doing to the Continent. It is a fascinating story which ends with Geert Wilders, the embattled Dutch member of Parliment, sending a message to America:
Our final day in the Netherlands MP Wilders gave us a message to take back to America, “Stand up, stand up before it is too late.”
Read it all at Frontpage magazine, here.
This is very cool, a sort of Refugees 101—a summary of how the Refugee Resettlement Program is structured. Taught by Barbara Day of the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, the seminar occurred as part of the Minnesota Refugee Health Conference, Nov. 5, 2008. Hat tip: Mars.
I was particularly interested in the section that listed requirements that NGO contractors (the volags) must follow and especially what sorts of items the refugees are to be given upon arrival and shortly thereafter.
Also, note that there is a requirement for the volags to coordinate with state and local governments. Both of those areas are the subjects of complaints we hear or read about often.
It got me thinking, there should be a Hotline to PRM and to the Office of Refugee Resettlement for citizens to report abuse, fraud or other types of complaints regarding the resettlement of refugees in a community. Hey maybe Obama’s folks, with the new emphasis on transparency, will get something like that going!
Is there a hotline already, does anyone know?
First, I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw this opinion piece at the Huffington Post this morning that readily admits terrorist recruitment and indoctrination is occurring in the US Somali community. The writer, Faisal Roble (of Wardheernews) begins with a summary of the Minneapolis missing youths that I’m repeating here in case we have new readers unfamiliar with the ever-expanding story.
It is believed that as many as 20 naturalized Somali Americans have recently vanished without any prior knowledge of their parents and joined the more radical Al-Shabab, “the youth” – an Islamist firebrand aligned to al-Qaeda. Al-shabab is an extremist group whose political objective is to establish a non-secular Sharia-based government in Somalia. So far, at least one naturalized American citizen had committed suicide in this past October, killing 30 people in northern Somalia. Most available evidence points at the Al-Shabab group who either train or commit the vanished youth to suicidal acts.
Then he goes on to blame the FBI (and the Somali families) for not spotting or reporting what is going on. My first instinct is to defend the FBI, but I can’t. I have heard first hand that people have attempted since 9/11 to alert the FBI to strange things going on in the Somali community and have been rebuffed by the agency.
It is disconcerting to learn that both the FBI and the Somali community did little to stop the anguish of boys disappearing from their homes. This is so because there is no meaningful cooperation between FBI and the Somali community either in Minnesota or elsewhere in the country. If any cooperation existed, protecting young Somali-American boys from exploitation by “terror networks” amongst us could have been a lot easier.
Both the FBI and the Somali community are at fault here and deserve serious criticism. For one, the FBI could be blamed for sleeping at the wheel in that it had failed to unveil a “network of terror” that has been transporting high school kids from North American cities to Somalia. It should have taken a little effort on the part of FBI to find out the adults who assist 17-year-old kids from our own American inner cities get their US passports, collect transport allowance amounting $3,000 each, a well arranged rout to Mogadishu, Somalia. But the FBI has royally failed in making any dent on a “network of terror” in our midst.
At one point Roble especially points a finger at the Bush Administration for not keeping a better eye on mosques. No doubt, they didn’t do their job, but in defense of Bush, the minute he would have suggested any sort of surveillance of Muslims the Leftwing crazies and CAIR* would have been on him like a big bird! And, if Roble, a big fan of Obama’s, thinks Obama will be any better, forget it!
Without witch-hunt, the FBI must seriously investigate the role of local mosques ran by extremist-leaning Islamist activists, if any, and the role they play in organizing infrastructural network for this particular operation. Unveiling these networks is a key component of national security as well as helping our vanishing Somali-American youths.
There is a lot of fascinating information in Roble’s article, so please read the whole thing. But, to me this is one of the most astounding revelations Roble makes:
Horrendous stories, where boys as young as 12-years-old are temporarily removed from the protection of their families to commit them to a religious obligation program called “Da’wa,” are abundant in Minnesota and elsewhere. For a child to complete his religious obligations, the presiding mosque would assign a local priest as a caretaker for a bunch of boys during the entire period of the “Da’aw,” sometimes an entire summer vacation with no communication with their parents. The only information availed to the parents during this period is occasional but limited status report on the kids and the progress of their religious obligation, most often provided by the Mosque-assigned caretaker.
Maybe now that a Somali writer (I presume Roble to be a Somali American) is saying what Robert Spencer at Jihad Watch and others have been saying for years, the leftwing loonies reading the Huffington Post might start to take notice.
Endnote: The FBI is on the alert now for terror recruitment among refugees, but this account from Atlanta suggests that they are not going about it very effectively.
*The FBI severed its ties and cooperation with CAIR just this week. Hat tip: Blulitespecial. I’m wondering if CAIR had actually kept the FBI from gaining more contacts in the Somali community.
Last night after I wrote this post where I was so angry at Time magazine and the refugee-pushing lobbyists, I knew I needed to further remind readers of the primary reason we are here—why we write this blog. And, gosh, I get up and here is a comment (from someone called CRD) worth noting to help me explain why we do what we do.
Dear Ann,
Your ancestors were once oppressed and discriminated against, so they got on a boat and came to a new county, the US, and gave it a try. I imagine when they landed they were helped by some nice people who maybe showed them how they could find work, where a good place to live was, where to shop. I imagine they also faced some discrimination. They were probably poor at first and spoke with accent, and didn’t know all street names by heart. Some people laughed at them I’m sure. Told them to go back to their country of origin. Told them they’d never fit in. Some people probably even formed groups and told them to get out of their neighborhood.
Which type of person are you? Would you have helped your great grandparents when they arrived in American or would you have discriminated against them?
Dear CRD, You are right to some extent, my parents were treated well and helped by nice people. But here are the differences worth noting, my parents were eager to be Americans. They shed their foreign language as fast as they could (they were literate in their own original languages). They received no welfare and they worked their butts off all their lives to send us kids to college. They had no taxpayer funded federal government contractor finding jobs and apartments for them. My father fought for the US in World War II. Although proud of their heritage, they never looked back. And, they accepted America, they didn’t seek to change our form of government, they were not Muslims.
Before I go on to what I really wanted to say, just a historical reminder the immigrant lobbyists like CRD often forget—-by the late 1920’s we were overloaded with immigrants. America took a breather and the numbers were cut dramatically until the 1960’s which gave those earlier great waves a chance to assimilate. Maybe if the economic panic continues, its time for another breather.
Now, more about why we write RRW.
The recent Time magazine article (not the one from 2002) on the Rohingya is an example. But, we first saw the phenomenon in our own county, and that is, the utter shameless skewing of the news in favor of refugees and immigrants. Most every story on refugees is a damn puff-piece. I call them the ‘refugees see first snow stories.’ No one (hardly anyone) in the mainstream media dares tell the public the whole truth, so the public needs us! That is why we are here—-to balance the biased mainstream media.
Why don’t they tell the whole story, the good and the bad, about refugee resettlement or immigration in general? Why, because they, in the media, are scared to death of people like CRD here. Ideologues like CRD want to guilt-trip everyone into shutting up and accepting their point of view and most people can’t take that sort of abuse, most people want to be considered good people, so they back down. We don’t.
The American public has a right to know all the facts about immigration and especially in our case, the refugee program, because only when all the facts are presented to the people can public policy be fairly debated and decisions fairly made—-for the general public and for the refugees. People like CRD want to WIN by guilt-tripping people and hiding some facts to lead people to their point of view. It is wrong. It is immoral. It is elitist. And, it stinks!
Two Chaldean bishops told Catholic News Service (CNS) that Iraqi Christians will not return, although conditions in Iraq have improved.
“No one in the United States will go back to Iraq or the Middle East because the future for children, (opportunities for) education and life are better here,” said Chaldean Bishop Ibrahim N. Ibrahim [of Detroit].
Also, experience has shown that once people have overcome the initial difficulties of adapting to a new culture, “no one will convince them to change it again” and rip up those freshly laid roots, said Chaldean Bishop Sarhad Y. Jammo [of San Diego].
The bishops were in Rome to report to the Vatican on their dioceses.
Bishop Ibrahim said 5,000 Iraqi Christians came to Detroit in 2008; it is the highest number of newcomers he has seen.
The economic situation in Michigan is not good and businesses are struggling, he said, so he offers the new arrivals encouragement to help them through the rough patches.
During a Christmas dinner he hosted last year, he said he told some 1,500 recent Iraqi refugees, “Don’t worry, don’t be afraid, because this country is blessed by God. You will sleep without fear at night. Be patient and things will improve.”
It would seem as if Michigan would be the worst place in the country for refugees to go to, with its economy in the pits. But there is a very large Chaldean community around Detroit, and the support that provides might outweigh the problems. There is another reason the Chaldeans will not go back:
“Constitutional rights and equality have not been provided for Christians and that is a major reason why Christians will not go back and why people continue to leave and go to the West and the United States,” he said.
The constitution establishes Islam as a main source of legislation and declares that no law may contradict Islamic and democratic standards. [Aren’t these standards contradictory?]
However, while there is freedom to worship, there is no full freedom of religion such as the freedom to change one’s religion, Bishop Jammo said.
Nonetheless, there is “a new season of hope” for Iraq, said Bishop Jammo. He blames the United States for the Christians’ situation.
He said, “it was a big mistake” on the part of the United States and the interim Iraqi government not to have protected the country’s Christians and promoted their “political and cultural leverage.”
Even though Christians in Iraq have always been a small minority, they were part of “the top elite of society” and made up 25 percent of the country’s professional class, he said.
Christians are also “a factor for peace and for national reconciliation because they don’t have militias, they don’t fight, and they don’t claim more rights” than they are due, he said.
He said Christians act as “a soft joint between tensions” within a multiethnic, religiously diverse community — sort of like cartilage that cushions hard bones.
“The United States should have paid attention to this asset” of the Christians serving as buffers in conflict, he said.
Instead, U.S. policymakers overlooked the role Christians could have played in favor of focusing only on the fate of the country’s Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish factions, he said.
He is right. We heard nothing about the Christians during the war. Everything was about the needs of the three Muslims groups. When the Christians fled we read some stories about their ancient communities being destroyed. But I don’t think our government did anything to help them. It’s as if we had to bend over so far backward to be “understanding” of the Muslims that we didn’t dare bring up the needs of the Christians. This is to our great shame.
Bishop Jammo said he thinks it is still possible for the Iraqi Constitution to provide full equality for Christians.
Otherwise, “what was the purpose of the U.S. going there (and overseeing the drafting of the constitution), if it did not emphasize the equality of all” ethnic and religious communities? he asked.
Unless full equality is provided, “peace, justice, progress and balance will not be realized” in Iraq, he said.
It’s not going to happen. If George W. Bush didn’t pay attention to the Christians, Barack Obama surely isn’t going to be any better. Islam doesn’t provide for equal rights for non-Muslims, and Iraq’s constitution is Islamic. Only our insistence could have made it happen (and possibly even that wouldn’t have), and now it’s too late.
The article doesn’t say anything about Iraqi Christians in other countries. I wonder if any are returning. From what I’ve read, life is difficult for them in most places. The ones who made it here are fortunate indeed.