Day: March 31, 2009

Obama’s Aunt Zeituni back in court tomorrow, President staying out of it (he says)

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update April 1st:   Auntie gets to stay until 2010 when another hearing is scheduled, here.   Just kick that can down the road some more.

President Obama’s Auntie Zeituni is back in immigration court tomorrow in Boston according to a report from the Associated Press today.   Readers will recall that Obama was supposedly surprised just before election day last fall to discover his Kenyan aunt,  Zeituni Onyanga, who had been ordered deported years ago, was still in the US illegally.   You can read all of our previous posts on Onyanga here.

BOSTON (AP) – Barack Obama’s Kenyan aunt lost her bid for asylum more than four years ago, and a judge ordered her deported. Instead, Zeituni Onyango stayed, living for years in public housing.

Now, in a case that puts the president in a tough position both personally and politically, Onyango’s request is being reconsidered under a little-used provision in U.S. immigration rules that allows denied asylum claims to be reheard if applicants can show that something has changed to make them eligible.

Such as the ascension of her nephew to the presidency of the world’s most powerful country.

“If she goes back to Kenya, she is going to be much more in the limelight, and that, in and of itself, could put her at a greater risk. The chances of her going back and keeping a low profile are gone at this point,” said Boston immigration attorney Ilana Greenstein.

Onyango, 56, the half-sister of Obama’s late father, moved to the United States in 2000. Her first bid for asylum was rejected, and an immigration judge ordered her deported in 2004; she continues to live in public housing in Boston.

In December, a judge agreed to suspend the deportation order and reopen her case. An initial hearing is scheduled Wednesday in U.S. Immigration Court in Boston.

Obama acts like he had no idea how Onyanga got into the US the most recent time, however, she attended his swearing in as a US Senator in late 2004 (or January 2005, whenever it was), and according to the AP at that point in time she had already been ordered deported.  Do any of  you believe she never told her nephew about problems with her immigration status?  So, what did Obama know and when did he know it?

What does asylum mean? *

People who seek asylum must show that they face persecution in their homeland on the basis of religion, race, nationality, political opinion or membership in a social group.

We admit a staggering number of asylees each year, over 81,000 in 2007, but rarely from Kenya considered a relatively stable country.

Over the past decade, relatively few Kenyans have sought asylum in the United States: 223 in fiscal year 2007 – compared with 7,934 asylum requests from China and 10,522 from El Salvador – and only 50 Kenyans that year were granted asylum. From 1998 through 2007, about 20 percent of Kenyans who applied were granted asylum, according to an Associated Press review of immigration records.

Onyanga’s attorney is not talking about her grounds for an appeal of the earlier decision, but Onyanga’s tribe, the Luo, happen to not be in power at the moment.  (See one of the many articles about Obama’s complicated family tree, here, with suggestions that one of them will be taken for blackmail.)  I guess that is one of the many issues never discussed by the mainstream media in the Presidential election campaign last fall —- what happens when we have a President with far-flung  foreign family members? 

Onyango’s reasons for seeking asylum have not been made public, and her immigration hearing will be closed at her lawyer’s request.

Kenya has been fractured by violence in recent years. In 2008, more than 1,000 people were killed in the East African nation following a disputed presidential poll, which saw a Luo candidate, Raila Odinga, declared loser to President Mwai Kibaki, a Kikuyu, the largest tribe in Kenya.

Obama is between a rock and a hard place.  If he hangs Auntie out to dry, the open borders crowd will pounce.  If he shows any favoritism the rest of us will be steamed, but since we obviously don’t count, what do you think might be going on behind the scenes?

Onyango has not responded to requests for interviews. Her case is being closely watched by people on all sides of the immigration debate. Some critics say her status has already damaged the president’s credibility on immigration issues.

“The president’s moral authority has been compromised by his aunt’s situation,” said Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform. “Americans have the right to expect aliens to respect our law, to leave when they are supposed to and not thumb their nose at the legal system.”

Yes, Mr. Stein, we expect it, but I wouldn’t count on it.

 

  • In Europe a debate is raging about changing the definition of asylum and allowing anyone coming from any trouble spot in the world to seek asylum without proving they themselves are personally in danger.   From the Wall Street Journal:

BRUSSELS — Refugees seeking asylum in the European Union don’t have to demonstrate that they are specifically targeted for harm if there is widespread and indiscriminate violence in their home countries, Europe’s highest court ruled after reviewing the case of two Iraqi nationals who had fled the war in their country.

The case could lead Europe to admit more asylum-seekers — a touchy subject on a continent that prides itself on broad human-rights protection but often struggles to integrate immigrants and is wrestling with growing unemployment.

Immigrants who need a doctor in Minneapolis know where to go

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The Hennepin County Medical Center has been the hospital of choice for the huge immigrant population of Minneapolis and on Saturday, in an article entitled ‘Foreign Ways and War Scars Test Hospital,’ the New York Times told us all about the good, the bad and the ugly of treating patients there.  Please read the whole article, often couched in touchy-feely terms, to see what medical professionals are up against.

Many arrive with health problems seldom seen in this country — vitamin deficiencies, intestinal parasites and infectious diseases like tuberculosis, for instance — and unusually high levels of emotional trauma and stress. Over time, as they pick up Western habits, some develop Western ailments, too, like obesity, diabetes and heart disease, and yet they often question the unfamiliar lifelong treatments these chronic diseases need.

Some also resist conventional medical wisdom or practices, forcing change on the hospital. The objections of Somali women to having babies delivered by male doctors has led Hennepin, gradually, to develop an obstetrical staff made up almost entirely of women.

Doctors here say that for many of these newcomers, the most common health problems, and the hardest to treat, lie at the blurry line between body and mind, where emotional scars from troubled pasts may surface as physical illness, pain and depression.

The article goes on to tell readers about the mental and cultural problems the staff must cope with in a hospital that spends $3 million a year on interpreters alone.

The Times reporter works so hard to tell us that the negative aspects are balanced by rewards, but as you wade through to the end, even the good natured Dr. Pryce has his limits.

The Personal Care Assistant racket

Calling the Somalis entrepreneurial, the reader has to go over this a couple of times to grasp how the Somalis have figured out how to game the system.

Somali patients have been asking them to fill out forms stating that they need personal-care assistants. Some do not need the help, Dr. Pryce said, but are being egged on by Somali-run health care agencies that want to collect insurance payments for the services.

Somalis in Minneapolis, often entrepreneurial and business minded, have opened the agencies to take advantage of relatively generous rules in Minnesota that were originally meant to help keep the elderly and chronically ill out of nursing homes.

Tricia Alvarado, director of home care for the Minnesota Visiting Nurse Agency, which evaluates requests for home help, agreed that there had been an explosion of Somali agencies, with 100 or so opening in just the last three years. Many are run by people without any medical training. And Ms. Alvarado confirmed that the agencies were putting a hard sell on potential clients.

” ‘Diabetes?’ ” Dr. Pryce said, relaying what he said was a typical conversation between a sick Somali and a Somali-run agency. ” ‘You need a personal-care assistant. Here’s a form. Give it to your doctor.’ “

Dr. Pryce turns down requests that he thinks are unwarranted, but patients argue and sometimes even act sicker than they really are.

The whole thing leaves him “hopping mad,” Dr. Pryce said. “I want to be a good steward of our resources, the tax money we’re all paying.”

The State of Minnesota is looking into the fraud.

The current situation with the Somalis is part of a larger problem in Minnesota: the number of clients, and the costs of personal care, more than doubled from 2002 to 2008, and the number of agencies more than tripled. A report in January by the state legislative auditor said, “Personal care services remain unacceptably vulnerable to fraud and abuse”; the state is drawing up plans to tighten its control of the services.

“I love the Somali people and their culture,” Dr. Pryce said. “I like taking care of them. It’s rewarding and interesting. They don’t drink, they don’t smoke much, they’re living the American dream, they need our help. Then you have this other side that’s really painful, this contentious issue of who gets what.”

Endnote:  I wonder what Dr. Pryce thought of the Somalis when shooting victims  were brought to Hennepin over the weekend, victims of Somali men shooting up a trailer because they were not invited to the party.

For new readers:  Here is a post I did in September of last year which shows how many Somali refugees we have taken in the past 25 years or so.  For some reason it is getting lots of readers lately so it reminded me to post it more frequently.

While I’m at it, here is another old post about how the State Department has had to shut down family reunification because of fraud in the Africa refugee program.

American missing Somalis are watched, guarded and heavily trained

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Here is a report from Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) yesterday that sheds more light on the Somali missing youths (former refugees) believed to have joined the terrorist group Al-Shabaab in the Horn of Africa.  It seems that family members here in the US are working the phones and their contacts in Somalia to find their missing young men.

Minneapolis, Minn. — The Somali community in Minneapolis is still well-networked into the homeland. Family and business ties make it surprisingly common for people to stay in touch with the social life and economy of this failed state. Somalia hasn’t had a working government since 1991.

Osman Ahmed [Ahmed testified in the recent Senate Homeland Security hearing], whose 17-year-old nephew Burhan Hassan disappeared last November, has been working his contacts back home to try to find his nephew. He knows the FBI is also on the case, but he says law enforcement is mainly concerned with making sure the men don’t cause harm in the United States.

Can the men receive immunity?

Mohamed [Abdirashid Mohamed], the commerce minister [old friend of Osman Ahmed], said his government has had no direct contact with the missing men, but is trying to reach them through appeals on the radio.

“We cannot get to them directly, but through the media,” he said. “We would like to give them forgiveness. And if they join in the peace process, we will assist them and we will appeal to the international community that they will not take any action against them.”

The transitional government is advertising immunity if these men return to their home countries. Young Somalis have reportedly gone missing from Britain as well.

But immunity is a big promise, considering it’s a major violation of U.S. law to join and fight with a terrorist group or to fight against an ally of the U.S., such as Ethiopia. Somali-Americans in their teens and 20s have told MPR that they believe some of the missing men sought to defend their homeland from Ethiopian troops, which invaded Somalia in 2006 but have since left.

The Somali commerce minister said he’s reached out to staff at the American embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, to ease the way for these missing men to return home.

Relatives are painting a picture of brainwashed youngsters.  Hum!

Another uncle of 17-year-old Burhan Hassan is constantly calling up his old friends about the fate of the missing men. Abdirizak Bihi said these friends from his homeland have told him that the missing men are being held captive in the southern part of Somalia that Al-Shabaab controls. He believes an unknown recruiter in Minnesota lured his nephew to Somalia under a false pretext.

“Someone here — some people, some group, someone — has been painting a perfect picture of Somalia,” Bihi said. “That is being confirmed by some of the conversations we’ve been having with people on the ground in Somalia.”

Bihi said his friends have told him that the young Americans “are being watched, they are heavily guarded, and heavily trained — mentally and physically.” He declined to explain how they were gathering such information, saying he didn’t want to jeopardize the ongoing investigation.

MPR reports that there is no confirmation that any have returned to the US.

There remain unconfirmed rumors that some of the missing men have returned to the U.S. But it’s obvious to Bihi that his nephew and many others are still in Africa. He said the young men have made phone calls to their families right before press conferences to address their disappearances.

A phone call doesn’t confirm where they are calling from, this only confirms they are hearing the news from Minneapolis.