Month: May 2009

African refugees strain the school system in Cleveland

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This article in the Plain Dealer is pretty much a boiler-plate article about the “challenge” faced by a school district, and in this case a particular school, to educate a flood of third world children who come from cultures where school is not part of their lives.   I always wonder what is happening to the other city kids in these schools when teachers must integrate illiterate children at all grade levels.

Helping the newcomers get acclimated is a stiff challenge. Teachers say it takes up to seven years to proficiently read and think in an unfamiliar language, particularly one with so many words that sound alike or carry double meanings.

Aides translate in African or Asian languages that Gallagher teachers don’t speak, but sometimes concepts have to be conveyed by pointing at objects or drawing pictures.

So, for example, what are the other students doing when a teacher is pointing at a pencil and saying, “pencil” to a 5th grader?

Catholic Charities resettled this particular group of refugees (as a federal government contractor!) and says essentially, we are finished with them at 3-6 months. 

The federal government and Catholic Charities support the refugees for three to six months, after which they have to find work or other support. Families get by with the aid of food stamps, donated furniture and hand-me-down clothes. Employment may be spotty. Many are without cars. They may have to shift to run-down housing.

School nurses work to get the families on Medicaid, or find them primary doctors and eye and dental care. That keeps them from depending on hospital emergency rooms. 

In fact the refugees should be getting up to 8 months of outright government aid and  they are eligible for all forms of welfare for years.   Besides there is no law that says Catholic Charities can’t help them for years, or as long as it takes, with their own privately raised funds.  How many refugees do you think Catholic Charities would resettle if they had to do it without your tax dollars, without the lucrative grants and contracts they have from the State Department and the Office of Refugee Resettlement in the Dept. of Health and Human Services?

No melting here!  Somalis have said they won’t be melting either.

Bill Merriman is a deacon at St. Patrick Catholic Church on Bridge Avenue, where he assists Liberians who live in the surrounding neighborhoods. Stephanie Pritts of Lakewood works as a volunteer among Somalis through Cleveland’s Community of St. Malachi parish.

They say the Africans retain much of their nomadic, tribal ways. Order and responsibility sometimes get lost in the shuffle as families mix freely and fill their rental homes with stepfathers, aunts, uncles and half-brothers. Children may spend days at the houses of kin, or leave during a school week for a family gathering in another city.

Pritts said the Somali women are warm and welcoming but are relegated by male-dominated tradition to cooking, giving birth and watching the children. The mothers tend to be illiterate. Helping with homework, science projects or going to the library are not in the routine. Academically, the children are on their own.

“They bring notes home from school, no one can read it,” Pritts said. “There’s no understanding that they have to support that effort.”

This article reminded me of the Cloward/Piven Strategy, a strategy Obama learned well at Columbia University.   Nancy Coppock in American Thinker:

The Cloward/Piven Strategy is named after Columbia University sociologists Richard Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven. Their goal is to overthrow capitalism by overwhelming the government bureaucracy with entitlement demands. The created crisis provides the impetus to bring about radical political change.

Obama White House has scheduled a chit-chat with legislators on immigration June 8th

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update May 28th:  Connection between Sotomayor pick for Supreme Court and the June 8th meeting, here.

Just now Rush Limbaugh said that Obama hasn’t yet scheduled a White House forum of sorts on immigration reform, but I had just read last night that he has.  It apparently will be a little different then the previous Delphi Technique meetings in that it will be with only legislators.

From last week at Politico:

President Barack Obama is inviting members of Congress to the White House for a June 8 meeting to highlight immigration reform, an administration official confirmed to POLITICO Wednesday.

“The meeting will be an opportunity to launch a policy conversation that we hope will be able to start a debate that will take place in Congress later in the year,” the official, who asked not to be named, said.

Asked if the session would be billed as a summit or a forum, like similar meetings on health care and fiscal responsibility earlier in the year, another official said, “This isn’t a forum or a summit with outside groups, this is solely a meeting with members of Congress on both sides of the aisle and both sides of the issue.”

Readers concerned with reform of refugee resettlement, don’t get your hopes up, this reform is strictly involved with Amnesty and may not even be pushed this year.  Can you imagine in the middle of massive unemployment the firestorm such a move would set off among the general public.  I would love to see it happen—-the firestorm, that is!

Immigration reform advocates have been pressing Obama to vow to pass immigration reform this year. He has promised make the issue a priority, but has stopped short of setting a goal of getting a bill through Congress by December.

Iraqi refugees demonstrate in Syria, say they want resettlement now!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

From the Associated Press:

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) – Some 200 Iraqi refugees in Syria staged a sit-in outside the UN refugee offices in  Damascus Tuesday to protest perceived delays in measures to resettle them in a third country.

The protesters were trying to highlight the plight of the refugees, many of whom fled the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, and are still waiting for resettlement six years later.

The UN representative told AP:

……more than 200,000 refugees have registered with the agency in the past few years, adding that only 10,500 of them have already been resettled.

I wonder does AP ever do any google searches to follow what is happening to unhappy Iraqis resettled in the US, some of whom want to return to the Middle East because of lousy living conditions and unemployment here.

It was only two months ago that we learned that two Iraqi families who had been resettled in Fredericksburg, VA, borrowed money and RETURNED  to Syria!  Does anyone mention that to those protesters?  NO! 

I know it’s a cliche, but the deeper I get into this issue the more it becomes apparent that the major media outlets are downright disgusting with their politically correct bias.

Comment worth noting: reader says we are being “misleading” in diversity visa story

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Earlier this month I reported that NumbersUSA has begun a grassroots campaign in support of a bill in Congress to do away with the Diversity Visa Lottery.  Here is the post I wrote.

A commenter, Nick, says we are being “misleading”, but I am not sure what we are “misleading” about.

Ummmm- sorry but your article is grossly misleading. I am a recipient of a 2009 Diversity Visa (LPR since March 27th of this year) and simple fact is that no Green Cards are issued to those who do not have 12 years of formal education (I have a law degree, my husband has a Ph.D)or have at least 2 years work experience in a skilled profession. Furthermore we had to either have savings of $26,000 (how many Americans can say that in these difficult times?, a promise of a job (got one- that by the way only 2 Americans applied for- I was chosen for my unique legal skills, without the Diversity Vis I would have waited up to 10 years to get a Green Card) or have an American Citizen agree to sponsor us for the next 3 years. We are per definition excluded from claiming public aid for three years, cannot receive publicly funded health insurance etc so therefore cannot become a burden on American Tax payers (by the way we pay tax too)We were told under no uncertain terms during our Visa interview that the US does not let just anyone enter and is very strict when it comes to enforcing the Public Charge rule.If you can’t take care of yourself you can’t get in……

Note that Nick did keep an American from getting a job.   And, I am curious about what foreign legal skills would be of much value for our American legal system.

Coincidentally only a few days ago the Wall Street Journal reported that Egyptian diversity visa lottery winners were in line with Americans and refugees competing for meatpacking jobs at Tysons Food in Shelbyville, TN.  So what happened to their original “promise of a job?”

VDARE Review of Mark Levin’s “Liberty and Tyranny” set off lightbulbs for me

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Levin ‘gets it’ on immigration according to reviewer Paul Nachman at VDARE yesterday.   The review begins:

I’ve just read Mark Levin’s current book Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto, whose publication fortuitously coincided with the advent of Wonderboy’s reign. Levin, a lawyer who worked in the rarefied heights of the Reagan administration, hosts a syndicated, weeknight radio talk show based in New York and, until recently, wrote for National Review Online. 

It’s a solid book, a call for a return to the principles, now called “conservative,” of the American Founding. And it’s a sustained argument against the internal enemies of the nation’s future, those who call themselves “Progressives” — an appellation that’s always stuck in my craw — and whom Levin refers to as “Statists” throughout.

Although Nachman praises Levin throughout (except for the chapter on the environment), it’s on chapter 9, the immigration chapter, that Nachman offers his greatest  praise for Levin and calls it a “superb job.”   Please read the whole review.  

Then here is the part that really jumped out at me.  Discussing enactment of the Hart-Celler Act, Nachman quotes Levin:

The historical basis for making immigration decisions was radically altered. The emphasis would no longer be on the preservation of American society and the consent of the governed; now aliens themselves would decide who comes to the United States through family reunification.

Are we missing an opportunity?

Oh my gosh!   Faithful readers know that “family reunification” in the refugee program is presently under suspension by the US State Department following the discovery of widespread fraud in the program (revealed by random DNA testing in Africa.)   See this early story on the suspension at the Wall Street Journal, and my post here.

The State Department is getting ready to re-open the program and with its re-opening will be lost an incredible opportunity for immigration reformers to get in there and fight for changes to the largest portion of legal immigration—the P-3 family reunification program!

This past Friday I made a presentation to a luncheon hosted by the Center for Security Policy and recommended a GAO investigation of the program before it reopens.   That is the only thing I could think of, but surely there could be legislation introduced or other types of pressure put on the State Department to make sure this is done right, or if not, halted indefinitely!