Month: February 2009

Jewish groups not in tune with all Jews on immigration reform

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I am going away for a few days so this is going to be a quick post.

Although we try not to get too far off track from refugee issues into the broader immigration reform issue, this story got my attention because it involves the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society one of the top ten federal contractors for refugee resettlement. 

A coalition of Jewish community leaders is urging the reform of immigration policy before Passover begins on April 8.

Called “Progress by Pesach,” the campaign began with a Jan. 29 conference call to members of the Jewish media chaired by the president of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, Gideon Aronoff of South Orange.

Aronoff went on to say:

“We are calling upon President Obama and Congress to make immigration reform a top priority,” Aronoff said. “For too long, our government has relied primarily on enforcement, but immigration raids only cause suffering for immigrants and communities and do nothing to solve the underlying problem of immigration.”

Not all Jews support these groups.

But Stephen Steinlight, senior policy analyst at Center for Immigration Policy, disagreed strongly with those aims. Steinlight, a frequent critic of immigration policies promoted by the major Jewish policy groups, did not take part in the telephone conference.

“There is a gigantic chasm between those who purport to speak in the name of Jews and what real Jews think,” he told NJJN. Those promoting immigration reform “are dead wrong on this issue, and they do not represent Jews. It is an outrage that they claim to. Real Jews are horrified by the positions taken by Jewish defense agencies.”

I’m wondering if the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, that receives federal grant monies, is using any of those funds for lobbying efforts on immigration reform.  We keep hearing stories that the resettlement agencies (volags) are not adequately caring for refugees which should be taking priority over political activities.

It’s just like the issue now where taxpayers have every right to complain about practices of big businesses that took taxpayer funds in the bailout—once a group or business takes government (our) money it becomes everyone’s business how it is spent.

So who the heck is Mark Potok anyway?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update April 24th, 2010:  Potok quoted on murder of white nationalist lawyer by black neighbor, here.

Update February 19th, 2010:  Potok singles out the Oath Keepers, here.

And, do you care?

Potok (really, who is this guy?) we know is a practitioner of Saul Alinsky’s Rule 13.    We know he is part of an extreme leftwing cabal at the Southern Poverty Law Center and we know from this press release (of his own work) at the Huffington Post that he is really running scared (or running low on funds).  And, we know he even looks like a looney leftie from his photo (check out his bio, any doubts about media bias this will dispel them!).

Remember Alinsky’s Rule 13,  Obama used it unsuccessfully last week on Rush Limbaugh (I laugh every time I think about it).  Basically Rule 13 is a tactic which says you gotta pick one person on the other side and isolate that person.

Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.

Alinsky says the target has to be a person and one needs to make the person the poster boy (or girl) for evil.   That is what Potok is trying to do here with John Tanton.

At some point, probably later this year, Congress will once again grapple with legislation to reform our broken immigration system. During the campaign, President Obama promised to make this a “top priority in my first year.”

Standing firmly in the path, however, will be the same triumvirate of Washington, D.C.-based organizations that were most responsible for blocking comprehensive immigration reform in 2007.

These supposedly independent groups – the Federation for Immigration Reform (FAIR), the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) and NumbersUSA – enjoy a great degree of credibility among the media and many prominent members of Congress. They shouldn’t.

In reality, they are part of a network conceived by John Tanton, a man who has been at the heart of the white nationalist movement for decades.

Potok wants to cause these groups to split from Tanton and start to question each other and he wants to place seeds of doubt in the minds of their members.  Don’t fall for it!   You have got them on the run now!  Potok is scared!   Hang tough, and take a lesson from Rush and laugh and laugh and laugh (Rule 5)!

Check out all of our posts on Alinsky in Community Destabilization here.

Addendum February 6th:   I just had a look at the Southern Poverty Law Centers most recent Form 990 (2006).   They sure are fighting poverty—among their Board members anyway.  Their CEO made $334,886 in salary and compensation that year.  Potok made a measly $140,000 in comparison.  

To be fair, I wonder if Obama shouldn’t cap non-profit group salaries too.

The Southern Poverty Law Center took in almost $45 million in 2006, spent millions on lobbying, and its assets are over $226,000,000.  Oh, and their so-called ‘Poverty Palace’ office building cost almost $100,000 to clean that year.

China wants its Uigher terrorists back

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The debate is apparently raging in Canada about whether that country will take some of the Uighers (Uyghurs), Chinese Muslims, detained now at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.  Judy told you the other day about the Canadian interest.  It is increasingly unclear if that is government interest or just leftwing activists wishful thinking.

Here is an article from Canada.com (CanWest News Service) containing a little bit of biographical information on one of those Muslims seeking asylum.

China has unsuccessfully pressed the U.S. to repatriate the Uyghurs, saying that they are terrorists who are seeking an independent Muslim homeland in the northwestern part of the country.

The only refugee applicant whose name has been revealed is Anvar (Ali) Hassan, a dissident who fled China to live in Afghanistan in 2001. He was later caught in the hills of Pakistan and handed over to the U.S.

Hassan contends he will be tortured if he is forced to return to China, where authorities assert that the Uyghurs detained at Guantanamo were fighting with the Taliban forces in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

[….]

A summary of Hassan’s case, supplied by his lawyers, says that he admitted to military training in Afghanistan, but that his motivation was “to fight the oppressive Chinese government.”

He says that he was tortured and beaten in prison in China in 1999, where he was held for one month just for being Uyghur.

No decision has been made on any of those Gitmo guys going to Canada. 

There are also several other Guantanamo detainees eyeing Canada for settlement and the federal government has been adamant it will not accept anyone believed to be a threat to the security of Canada.

By the way, I am assuming Canada treats asylum seekers in a similar fashion as we do in the US.  They are accorded all the privileges that refugees receive:  subsidized housing, food stamps, a caseworker, health care, and English language instruction.

What do you think the chances are that Hassan will settle down in Canada with a wife, a job and a house with a picket fence?

Missing Somali youths press conference cancelled yesterday

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I should have mentioned this yesterday, but there really isn’t much to report here.  I did decide to post this little bit just to keep our chronological order of events up to date.

Imams, community leaders, and parents of Somali youth who have disappeared in recent months planned a press conference in response to recent media coverage. But disagreements led the organizers to cancel the event.

[…..] 

Members of the Somali community organized a press conference to take place in Cedar-Riverside today to respond to the media coverage. It was not immediately clear why the press conference was canceled.

It is not clear to me why the press conference was called in the first place.

Rohingya: Not as important as the Palestinians?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Whoa!  This article from the Jakarta Globe earlier this week was stunningly frank.  By the way, I am behind on my updates on the Rohingya situation; there are a dozen or more stories every day, and it’s hard to keep up.

Here is where we are:   more Rohingya boatmen are coming ashore in Thailand and Indonesia and the clamoring is growing louder from their advocacy groups and from international human rights groups for them to be treated as asylum seekers and not illegal aliens.    Asylum seekers can ask for refugee status from the United Nations and then possibly end up in the west (in your town!).

Now to the story that says a whole lot about the Palestinian issue and makes my point that Muslims don’t take care of fellow Muslims generally (except when they can make Israel the bad guy).   Christians and Jews are guilt-tripped into doing the caring.

From the Jakarta Globe:

Indonesian Muslim hard-liners have adopted a cautious tone in their reactions to the plight of 193 Rohingya Muslim refugees who fled to Sabang Island in Aceh Province after being persecuted in their home country of Burma.

Their measured approach stands in sharp contrast to their hard-hitting outcry in defense of their Muslim peers in Palestine during the three-week Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip in January. At the time, many groups were quite vocal in their condemnations of the Israeli attacks and in announcing their intentions to send fighters to the region.

Irfan Awwas, chairman of the Indonesian Mujahidin Council, or MMI, said on Monday that his organization was strongly committed to defending any Muslims who suffered mistreatment.

“However,” he continued, “our attention has been focused and our energy has been exhausted on the Palestinian issue.”

Irfan said that his organization would investigate what manner of persecution the Burmese government had exacted on the Rohingyas.

Taking care of Muslims is the government’s job, not our job!

Irfan stressed that providing for the refugees’ welfare was first and foremost the government’s responsibility, and not just the duty of fellow Muslims.

I will remind readers that wealthy Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia are NOT taking in Muslim refugees anywhere that I know of.   There will be much hollering that European countries, the US, and Australia take care of and resettle these Rohingya Muslim boatmen.

Human rights groups say there are hundreds of thousands of stateless Rohingya Muslims but I guess there is no political gain for the Islamists to criticize Burma.

Chep (Chep Hernawan, head of the Islamic Reform Movement) denied that his organization was treating the Rohingyas differently than their Muslim brethren in Palestine, saying that the emergency faced by Gazans was greater than the Rohingyas’.

Hey, Chep, I would argue that these Rohingya are in a much worse predicament then the Palestinians in Gaza who have an entire UN agency feeding them and taking care of their every need.   These guys are hungry and desperate.  I don’t see the Gazans getting in boats to try to find work and a place to live.

Then there is this!  Can you imagine the western politically correct mainstream media making this point:

But Muslim scholar Anis Baswedan said Muslim hard-liners had to be careful in their advocacy to avoid appearing discriminatory, otherwise the public would wonder whether their primary concern was the welfare of Muslims or the welfare of Palestine.

Right on Anis!

Catch up on the Rohingya issue in our special category here.