Month: February 2009

Rohingya illegal aliens to be returned to Burma, maybe

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This is an update on the international conflict swirling around the fate of Rohingya Muslim boatmen (no women and children in these boats) arriving by the hundreds on the shores of Thailand and Indonesia.

Burma (Myanmar) says it will take any back who can prove they originated in Burma while still claiming they have no Rohingya Ethnic minority.   From the Bangkok Post:

The Burmese government says it is ready to welcome people who can prove they are Bengalis born in Burma, but it does not accept that the Rohingya boat people are a Burmese ethnic minority group, Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya said on Friday.

Meanwhile, everyone else, including CNN here, say they will be not treated humanely if they go back to Burma (although we don’t know if they even originated in Burma or in Bangladesh where hundreds of thousands of Rohingya are thought to live).

Scores of boat people who fled Myanmar and are now in Thailand are to be sent back despite human rights groups’ concerns they could be tortured or killed upon return.

“They will have to be sent back, according to our law,” Thailand’s Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva told CNN. “They are entering the country illegally. We do what they would do.”

The 12 boys and 66 men who arrived are among thousands of members of the Rohingya minority who have fled Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, because of persecution and in search of a better life.

Of course none of these news sources ever mention the Thai government’s concern that these Rohingya Muslims are arriving to join the jihad in Southern Thailand discussed (here) yesterday at Jihad Watch.

To catch up on this issue, read our Rohingya Reports category.  We have written 66 posts on the subject over the last year.  Note there is a lobbying campaign underway to resettle Rohingya in the West, some have already arrived in the UK and Canada.

Beheader said headless wife can’t reach paradise

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update March 14th:  Beheader pleads not quilty, at Jihad Watch here.

Daniel Pipes, Middle East scholar and anti-jihad fighter, has a column today on the New York State beheading case with a new piece of information. He writes:

A reliable source informs me – and this is breaking news – that the police found Muzzammil repeatedly told his wife that she had no right, under Islamic law, to divorce him. They also quote him stating that Aasiya, because beheaded, cannot reach paradise.

Presumably this is why he beheaded her.  After all, what’s the point of killing a wife who dishonors you if she’s going to go right to paradise? And it makes clear why beheading is a favorite method of killing by jihadists. Remember Daniel Pearl, among many others? 

I remember as a child hearing once in a great while about kidnappings or gruesome murders and being frightened and haunted by them. I feel somewhat like that now about this case; maybe that’s why I keep writing about it. I never heard of beheading as a child, except in folk tales. Probably the only Muslims in Philadelphia in the 1940s and 1950s were foreign students at the University of Pennsylvania, and I doubt they were adherents of Sharia.

Pipes also brings up the question of whether this is an honor killing or generic domestic violence:

Did Aasiya die in a crime of passion or to reinstate a family’s reputation? Was the violence generic or specifically Muslim? The Islamic Society of North America opts for domestic violence while the National Organization for Women‘s New York State chapter sees an honor killing.

The crime at Bridges TV fits neither model exactly, suggesting we need more information to determine its exact nature. But as the forces of political correctness inevitably bear down to exclude an Islamic dimension to the murder, the motive of family reputation must be kept alive. Enough with the pleasant deceits – time has come to utter hard truths about Bridges TV.

If you want to read more deeply into the issues raised by this case, a previous column by Pipes has many facts about the case, a review of Muslim reactions, and a discussion of honor killings. And an older column, continuously updated, follows the fortunes of Bridges TV, the cable channel the murderer and his wife founded.

How Obama won — and will continue to get his way

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The American Thinker has a brilliant article today on Obama’s strategy for winning the election, with a diagram that will blow your mind. “How He Did It: A Diagrammatic Analysis Analysis of the Obama Campaign,” by Paul Shlichta, begins this way:

“All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia.” —George Orwell.
The audacity and speed with which Obama railroaded the stimulus bill through Congress took Republicans by surprise. It shouldn’t have; it was a logical extension of his campaign tactics.
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Like the spear-carrying soldiers of Ethiopia, overwhelmed by Mussolini’s tanks and poison gas in 1936, the Republicans simply don’t know what hit them in last year’s election. Some felt that they had conducted an old-fashioned 20th century campaign while Obama mounted the first truly information-age 21st century political blitzkrieg. Others blame the blatant media bias, the race issue, or the unprecedented scale of fund raising and spending.
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The first month of Obama’s regime has provoked a similar bewilderment. A dazed Congress hastily authorized a huge document, filled with hidden booby traps like RAT, that none of them had actually read, let alone comprehended. Republicans are now cowering in corners, wondering what atrocity will come next.
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In order to fight back we need to analyze how he did it, the author says. He explains his diagram, which is very complex because Obama’s strategy is complex. So far, Republicans don’t seem to have a clue how to counteract this strategy, which is understandable. As Schlicta says, it’s spear-carriers versus tanks. I hope the chart and the explanation get circulated far and wide, and some smart conservatives figure out what to do.
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The alternative is to wait until Obama fails — the economy collapses and/or we undergo major terrorist attacks. But even then, you can just see Obama blaming it on his opposition and positioning himself as the One who will save the country. Obama learned well from Alinsky, but he is miles past him now.
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In Refugee Resettlement Watch’s little corner of the political world, I predict huge increases in refugee quotas. Whatever is destabilizing and disruptive, that’s the way he will go.
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Comment worth noting: Refugee agency neglect

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This is a comment received last night from reader Mark.  We have heard this story over and over again.  Many of  the volags (federal taxpayer-funded contractors) are not taking care of the refugees in their charge and indeed are often not fulfilling their contracts with the government which require they provide refugees with adequate clothing among other things.

I met an Iraqi refugee couple today and I’m glad they were allowed to come here because the wife worked as an English teacher and was threatened for supporting foreigners. The family however was not given any clothes by their resettlement agency other than some jackets. She showed me the jacket she was given and it doesn’t fit her. We are in a very cold state and these people have no winter coats, no hats, no gloves, no scarves, and no boots. She was lucky to find a job that starts next week, but she has to take a bus and walk 5 blocks each way. She said she has already fallen down twice on the ice. I told her to call her refugee resettlement agency caseworker, but she said the caseworker doesn’t return messages. Tomorrow the windchill factor will be negative 20-30.

How many of you reading this know how easy it is to find second hand winter clothing?  I bet you have many extra winter jackets in your own closets.  If this family had a church or other group sponsoring them, just them, they would have their needs met.   These volags often even discourage such sponsorship as we saw in Waterbury, CT last year.

Now this is a story from New Paltz, NY that helps make my point.  Read it here.  There is no mention of a refugee agency involved.  This Iraqi family will probably make it because they have two American families who have taken them under their wings.

For new readers:  You might want to visit a post I wrote in January—Refugees 101—where we call for a complaints hot line for refugees like the one mentioned by Mark.

Add Texas (Texas!) to the list of states where Iraqis are not finding work

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I just last night told you again that Refugees International is still pushing for us to resettle 105,500 Iraqi refugees in the US this fiscal year!  Now, here comes news that Texas has become state number 16 in our list of states* with unhappy Iraqi refugees (that we know of!).  We thought Texas was one of the few US states not in dire economic circumstances yet.

From the Houston Chronicle:

Rand Hikmat-Mahmood, an Iraqi refugee who arrived in Houston with her husband and 13-year-old son five months ago, is weighing one of the most difficult decisions of her life.

She is considering packing up her family and returning to Iraq.

“The economic situation is very difficult here,” she said. “We cannot find jobs.”

It’s getting worse.   And, the State Department and Office of Refugee Resettlement consider Houston a “preferred community.”

Refugees from across the globe are discovering a difficult economic reality in much of America, including Houston, according to multiple resettlement organizations. Caseworkers in Houston are dealing with a major influx of refugees while faced with a smaller pool of available jobs for them.

“We are feeling the consequences of the downturn in the economy, like everyone else is,” said Oleg Jolick, refugee resettlement director for the Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Galveston-Houston. “The trend is worsening.”

Refugees keep coming.

While the economy is declining, the number of refugees is increasing. The Houston area is considered a major destination for refugees in large part because of the availability of jobs, affordable housing and the warm climate.

Catholic Charities expects to resettle 700 refugees and Cuban parolees this year, up from 600 last year. YMCA International Services has already resettled about 200 refugees since the start of the fiscal year in October, compared with 187 in all of last year. The organization estimates it may settle 600 this year.

This (below) is such a crock.  It is not always a choice between living on welfare in the US or dying!  Obviously this Iraqi woman, the subject of this article, is not fearful of dying if she returns to Iraq.  She and her also well-educated husband should be cared for in the region, if not in Iraq, by the Iraqi government so that they will be able to help Iraq re-build when the time comes.

This is how these government contractors, like Catholic Charities, sell refugee resettlement to the public by offering up this false choice.

While some critics have questioned why the State Department continues to settle refugees in tough economic times, refugee organizations said the U.S. government cannot turn away people fleeing persecution.

“Refugee resettlement is a humanitarian effort of the government, and the role is first-and-foremost to protect people’s lives and take them from the situation where their life is in danger to where their life is not in danger anymore,” Jolick said. “Even with all of these problems, even with all of this economy and all of this uncertainty, they’re still better off here than they were where they were.”

The reality is that Jolick would be on the unemployment rolls himself if the State Department spigot was turned off for awhile due to our economic woes.   Don’t let them fool you, the flow could be slowed.  The numbers were dramatically cut immediately following 9/11, they could be cut again.

Indeed the refugee program will be seriously damaged in the eyes of the public if tent cities begin to spring up around US cities as was mentioned in Boise, ID recently.

Reforms needed:

One final thought, I bet this family doesn’t have its own sponsor, a church or other such group that is looking out for them.  Some of these families’ transitions might not be so challenging if we went back to that system of resettlement.

* Texas becomes state number 16 in our parade of states with no jobs and unhappy Iraqi refugees. The 15 others are: Arizona, Maryland, New Hampshire,Virginia, New York, Michigan, Ohio, Georgia, Idaho, Connecticut, New Mexico, California, Utah, North Carolina and Washington. See our Iraqi refugee category for all these stories and more.