I knew it! Newsweek did not tell the whole truth about Lewiston Somalis

Update Jan. 28th:  Judy posted more information on the Bates College study here.

Four days ago I posted on a story from Newsweek that said the economy was booming in Lewiston, ME because of the huge Somali immigrant population.   Well get this, the AP is reporting today that more than half of the Somalis in Lewiston and Auburn, ME are unemployed.   The most significant reason for the high levels of unemployment—they can’t speak English!

I thought the whole story in Newsweek sounded fishy.  Here is what AP is reporting:

LEWISTON, Maine (AP) — A Bates College study finds that a lack of English language skills is the biggest barrier to employment for many new Somali residents of Lewiston and Auburn.

The report also cites frustration among Somalis that many entry level jobs require certification that the applicant has U.S. high school-level academic skills. Somalis say prior job experience in other states should be accepted as a substitute for the General Educational Development certificate.

The Maine Department of Labor says the 2006 unemployment rate among Somalis in the Twin Cities was 51 percent. The statewide jobless rate among all Mainers at that time was 6.2 percent.

The Bates study was done for the Androscoggin County Chamber of Commerce and the Maine Career Center in Lewiston.

So, if, if, if there is any economic advantage to the area due to the large immigrant influx it’s only because they bring federal and state grant money, special home and business loans, and welfare payments to the cities.

Now, readers, please go back to this post on the true cost to the economy of each immigrant family.

Obama puts Comprehensive Immigration Reform (Amnesty) way down the list

Note to readers on April 2nd:  This is an old post, so lots of things may have changed, don’t take this as the definitive word on the amnesty issue.  We now know that Obama is a wild card and he may not care if he ticks off millions of unemployed Americans.

Update Jan. 24th:  Obama immigration agenda posted at White House website here.

The pro-open borders news site ‘Immigration Daily’ reports today that unless Congress gets some gumption, President Obama will not be pushing the amnesty legislation, sometimes called Comprehensive Immigration Reform, anytime soon.    Seems that Rahm Emanuel understands really well the issue of jobs, jobs, jobs!

From Immigration Daily

Immigration advocates have been concerned about the priority that President Obama assigns to immigration. A New York Times report dated January 10th said “On issues like immigration and climate change, Mr. Obama may focus on narrow moves first.” A more recent report in the Arizona Daily Star dated January 18th says “the consensus is that the economic crisis will put immigration on the back burner until late this year or early 2010.” All this has led to the anti-immigrationists gleefully crowing that “The outlook for [CIR] is so bleak that even Obama’s ‘immigration transition team’ — two law professors, Tino Cuellar of Stanford University and Georgetown’s Alexander Aleinikoff — has nothing to say.”

Be sure to read our friend Joe (gleefully crowing) Guzzardi’s VDARE piece linked above.  He says immigration is number thirteen (out of thirteen!) on Obama’s priority list.

Unbelievable! Obama friends have stolen my e.mail, say I support them!

Update Feb. 3rd:    I got an e-mail yesterday from this cheating union, SEIU, telling me they are taking my signature to Capital Hill this week to show Congress how many millions were supporting the Employee Free Choice Act (which I never ever supported).   Read below to learn how they got my signature.   But, after all the tax cheats Obama has surrounded himself with what could I expect of the Obama grassroots other than more cheating!

 

I am in complete and total shock.  Do you remember a while back that I told you about a petition that Citizen Warrior posted on a site called Care2.   The petition’s purpose was to demand a halt to all Muslim immigration to the US.  I did point out at the time that it was a FAR LEFT site and that I immediately received an ad from SEIU (that is the Service Employees International Union that helps organize Somali workers in the US among other things and is deeply involved in the Blago mess in Chicago).

Well, I didn’t mind getting some very leftwing cause appeals because I like seeing what they are doing.  One recently savaged Sarah Palin on the wolf hunt issue in Alaska, but this in incredible!

The SEIU has essentially stolen my identity and e.mail address and says I signed a petition supporting the Employee Free Choice Act.  So, this is how they do it, how they generate numbers!  You sign a petition for anything at Care 2 and you are automatically supportive of all the looney causes on the site!

Here is what I just received:

Dear Ann,

You recently signed a petition on Care2.com supporting the Employee Free Choice Act – thank for you joining our important campaign to bring Change that Works to America’s working families.  Below is an important message about our campaign.

I did not sign any petition but the one about Muslim immigration!

They go on to ask me to oppose the bailout of Bank of America.  Loved to hear that because it means the Left is getting organized against the bailout (or at least this one) because they see it as bailing out fat cats.

But, can you believe the nerve of SEIU using my name and e-mail and saying I supported something I would never support—The Employee Free Choice Act!

I guess I shouldn’t be so surprised afterall I’ve been reading Saul Alinsky and these socialists have no moral core—-the ends always justify the means for them!

I’m curious to know if others of you got this appeal from SEIU!

Alinskyism (Day 20)

Saul Alinsky wrote the ‘bible’ for community organizers titled, “Rules for Radicals.”   Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama learned his methods, took them to heart and executed them.  Of course, we know now who was the better student.

Today I’m bringing you Rule #4 of Alinsky’s tactics for beating the enemy partly because I was eager to show a chink in the Obama ‘we are all one’ rhetoric.

Here is Rule # 4:

Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules.  You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.

Obama claims to be a pragmatist and says he abhors ideologues who he linked with bigots in his speech in Baltimore the other day.    But, as Jonah Goldberg pointed out here, Obama is just what he claims to abhor—an ideologue (and I will add a bigot!).

In his Philadelphia speech kicking off his inauguration weekend train ride to Washington, Barack Obama proclaimed “What is required is a new declaration of independence, not just in our nation, but in our own lives – from ideology and small thinking, prejudice and bigotry – an appeal not to our easy instincts but to our better angels.”

Few sentences give us a better sense of Barack Obama’s – dare I say – ideology.

Look at the things then-President-elect Obama lumps with the i-word: small-thinking, prejudice, bigotry. It certainly sounds like Obama thinks ideology is not only bad, but really bad. This is hardly the first time he’s made it clear that he thinks ideology is backward and undesirable. Remember his famous comment that small town folks who bitterly cling to their guns and religion because of the lack of jobs and other progressive economic policies? The press downplayed the rest of the quote. He went on to say that the same people might also cling to “antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

Goldberg goes on to ask,  isn’t it ideology when one insists, as Obama has,  that only government can solve the economic crisis?  

If Obama’s rule book proclaims ‘ideologues’ are bad then show how he too is an ‘ideologue’ and in fact a “bigot.”   Obama’s comments about the ‘bitter clingers’ shows an elitist and BIGOTED attitude toward people who live in the country.  

Here is a definition of a bigot:

A person obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices, especially : one who regards or treats the members of a group with hatred and intolerance.

Isn’t that the perfect description of how Obama and friends in the media treated Sarah Palin and the millions of Americans who live like her (with guns and Bibles) in rural America?

Seems to me that Obama should be held to account if he doesn’t follow his own rules.    As Alinsky says in Rule # 4,  make him live up to his own book of rules!

P.S.   When the ‘church’ group started bringing refugees to Hagerstown, MD near where we live, and long time local residents (who had grown up in this rural county) questioned why third worlders were being brought here, they were treated with much hatred and intolerance by the ‘church’ group and the local paper.   The hypocrisy of that just infuriates me—while claiming the locals were bigoted they didn’t see their own bigotry!