Month: May 2009

North Carolina: Refugee magnet in sour economy

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The headline for this story from the News & Observer from Raleigh, NC, “Despite economy, refugees still flock here” implies that refugees look at a map of the US from some dismal camp half a world away and pick North Carolina.  They don’t, in fact until they get on a plane most have no clue where they will be deposited.   North Carolina is one of the states suffering the most from unemployment, yet volags (supposedly voluntary agencies) such as Church World Service just keep bringing them in.  The volags choose!

One of the main points that attracted my attention in this story is that the volag public relations machine tells reporters that all the refugees come from god-forsaken camps and so any living conditions in America are better than what they had.  Well, it isn’t true.  Yes, the Burmese and Bhutanese were in camps, but the Iraqis (the largest group arriving in the US) were not in camps, nor were the Meshketian Turks (Russian Muslims) that Church World Service ‘s subcontractor Virginia Council of Churches was bringing to the county where I live.   We were told some of them had homes to sell before coming to the US.

Refugee agencies say that most refugees find ways to manage, no matter how tight their finances. After months or years of living in refugee camps, sometimes without such basics as running water, they don’t expect luxuries.

Actually that last part is not true.  We have reported about 20 times that Iraqis do “expect luxuries” and maybe that is why they aren’t very popular with the resettlement agencies—-they aren’t grateful enough!

In the opening lines of this News & Observer article, longtime critic of the Refugee Resettlement Program, Don Barnett, had this to say.

Refugees get cash assistance from the government for up to eight months. After that, they are eligible for the same government welfare programs that other U.S. residents may receive. Many also get support from churches and community organizations.

Don Barnett, a former State Department employee, has become a well-known critic of the U.S. refugee program. He says the government has started bringing in refugees who struggle to assimilate. He cites a 2005 report from the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement, which surveyed refugees who arrived in the previous five years. It showed that more than half were receiving food stamps and 39 percent were using Medicaid.

Those who find jobs hurt the labor market for native workers, especially now, said Barnett, a software developer who lives in Nashville, Tenn.

“They are taking some pretty lousy jobs,” he said. “It’s allowed corporate America to keep some abusive models, and it’s had a significant impact on keeping wages down.” [See Center for Immigration Studies report here on immigrant labor depressing wages.]

The state report says refugees who found employment recently earn an average of $8.50 an hour.

These North Carolina refugees are now so fortunate, thanks to the employment services of the humanitarians at Church World Service and any other volags operating in North Carolina,  that they get to work in a chicken processing plant.   So what else is new!

Several dozen refugees from Myanmar recently started commuting two hours each way to a Perdue chicken processing plant in Rockingham. Some are paying a transportation service to take them to and from work each day.

I would like to know, but no one ever asks, does Perdue (or Swift & Co. or Tysons Food) give charitable contributions to Church World Service for the employment services it provides?

Endnote:  We have written about North Carolina many times, use our search function at the left to find more posts.  However, please be sure to return to this one in February where I discussed the inter-volag competition for territory in NC.

Iraqi refugees returning to Iraq, maybe, maybe not

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We hear so much conflicting news, who is to say what is correct and what isn’t anymore as it relates to Iraqi refugees.   Here is a story that says Iraqis (Muslim Iraqis) are returning to Iraq in a big way.  Tomorrow there will be a story that says they aren’t.

More than a million Iraqi refugees and internally displaced people have returned to their homes in Iraq over the past six years, despite the violence that prevails in the country. 

As of April this year, 609,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) and approximately 409,000 refugees had returned to their homes in Iraq, according to the latest figures published by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

UN Return Assistance Centers

The Iraqi immigration authorities are encouraging refugees to return, explaining that the security situation in the country has improved.

The UNHCR has opened return assistance centers in Baghdad, with the aim of supporting returnees and assisting them to integrate back into communities.

Most of the people returning to Iraq are middle class, Sidky said. Christians and other minorities in Iraq have faced persecution since Saddam Hussein was ousted and many of them have fled the violence to seek better lives elsewhere.

However, she said most of those returning were Muslim, since they are a majority in the country and most of those who fled were Muslim.

I will say that if Obama pulls us out precipitously and a bloodbath follows, it will be Obama’s bloodbath.

By the way, I haven’t seen any news stories about unhappy Iraqis leaving the US recently, I wonder if there hasn’t been a big effort made by the volags to keep them happy and out of the newspapers.

Tennessee ‘community organizers’ win a big prize

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This is such a joke but a very clear example of how all this works—by giving a prize to a community organizing group like the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition (TIRRC), the big moneybags in the Open Borders crowd legitimize their agenda even if it isn’t working. 

Members of the public, who generally know no better, say ‘how nice’ that people are getting along in Tennessee where they are told that dropping third world cultures into a conservative southern state works great.   We know it works great because some big Leftwing foundations, like Kaplan, with secret sources of funding (their invested funds must be dropping like a stone) are giving large money prizes to make it LOOK like it’s working!

From the Shelbyville Times-Gazette this morning:

The Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition (TIRRC) has won a $50,000 award for its Welcoming Tennessee Initiative, which has been partially focused in Shelbyville over the past year. 

The prize, called the E Pluribus Unum national award for exceptional immigrant integration initiatives, was given to the TIRRC in Washington, D.C. Wednesday by the Migration Policy Institute (MPI), which describes itself as an independent, non-partisan think tank “dedicated to analysis of the movement of people worldwide.”

TIRRC and three other groups were honored at the Library of Congress and the ceremony featured remarks by Labor Secretary Hilda Solis and other national policy makers. [Edit:  Shouldn’t Ms. Solis be worried about AMERICAN workers losing jobs to immigrants in places like Tennessee?]

According to a press release from MPI, this is the first year the awards are being given and were established by the Institute’s National Center on Immigrant Integration Policy with support from the J.M. Kaplan Fund*.

The award “seeks to inspire others to take on this important work and encourage the adoption of effective integration practices,” MPI says.

TIRRC launched its Welcoming Tennessee Initiative (WTI) in 2006, and began to focus on Shelbyville in last year, beginning with a billboard campaign, followed by several events held by the organization in conjunction with local groups such as El Centro Latino.

Integration, my foot! 

How funny that just yesterday the Wall Street Journal informed us that it is going pretty badly in Shelbyville where American workers are rightfully angry about jobs going to refugees—refugees arriving from Nashville or as far away as Boise, ID.     By the way, I’m starting to wonder if the big moneybags behind awards like this are the big immigrant-exploiting businesses—-the meatpackers themselves!  Does Kaplan get money from Tysons Food?   (not that far-fetched when you consider we learned on Glenn Beck recently that Soros passes money through the Tides Foundation)

Then just yesterday also, I told you about the World Net Daily article which reports that federal authorities are keeping an eye on Somali communities.   Shelbyville is mentioned:

The suburbs of Shelbyville and Dover have also become Somali strongholds. Local newspapers have reported that police are hesitant to even patrol after dark at the apartment complexes where the Somalis live.

TIRRC projects cited in the Times-Gazette story.

Check out the patronizing billboard campaign they are lauding here.

And, then there is that infuriating “forum” where “Welcoming Tennessee” hauled Somali leaders to Shelbyville to give the ‘rednecks’ a lesson in Somali culture.  I suggested a forum for immigrants put on by local Tennesseans in American culture!     Come to think of it, I wonder if these events were just to add to the resume so TIRRC would get the “prize.”

*The final irony—go check out the Kaplan Fund at that link I posted above.  Note that they are huge funders of the major environmental groups in the US.  Having worked for one of those groups in my naive youth, I am constantly amazed that they don’t get the fact that OPEN BORDERS AND INCREASED IMMIGRATION POSE THE GREATEST THREATS TO THE US ENVIRONMENT.   Kaplan is working at cross purposes when it funds environmental activism and open borders.  Why?

Oh, and one more question for the wizards at the Kaplan Fund, do you think that one day the Somalis you are encouraging to “integrate” into rural Tennessee will wake up and have only two children so as to save the US from over-population and the inevitable degradation of our environment?   Not likely.

Note:  This post is filed in our “community destabilization” category.  For  new readers you might want to check out our whole community destabilization category to better understand the strategy used by “community organizers” to “change” America.

DC area Somalis watched by federal authorities

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

By the time I read through this article at World Net Daily, I thought I was reading a summary of Refugee Resettlement Watch posts from the last year!    Except I didn’t know about this Northern Virginia cluster of Somalis.

Fearing the next terror attack could emerge from America’s growing Somali refugee population, federal authorities have stepped up surveillance in Somali communities – including a large enclave just outside Washington.

In fact, WND has learned that the Baileys Crossroads area of Northern Virginia – about 10 miles from the capital – was a critical focus of security investigations in advance of the presidential inauguration in January.

Investigators say a troubling number of the area’s Somali men hold “militant” anti-American views and sympathize with al-Qaida. They typically work as taxi drivers, gathering at local coffeehouses during their breaks, as well as at a nearby mosque tied to 9/11.

We told you about the inauguration scare at the time.

“Somalis were the hot topic during the inauguration, and they still are,” said a senior investigator assigned to the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force in Washington. “They’re very militant, and they’re all over that area.”

What do you know!   Food stamp fraud too.

The local [Minneapolis] Somali community has also been the subject of federal investigations into terrorist money-laundering. Agents suspect Somali refugees have funneled millions of dollars from food-stamp fraud and drug sales through Somali grocery stores into overseas bank accounts used by al-Qaida.

Then here is the Nashville connection as well.

A large number of Somali refugees have also settled in Nashville, Tennessee, stirring up fears of radicalization there as well. A predominantly Somali mosque in Nashville – the Al-Farooq Islamic Center – sells Islamic texts and tapes that support violent jihad, according to former federal investigator Dave Gaubatz, who recently conducted an undercover investigation at the mosque.

“The leadership is very sharia-compliant,” he said, “and has several manuals by Islamic terrorists, as well as lectures by Ali al-Timimi,” a radical American Muslim cleric who in 2005 was convicted of soliciting violent jihad.

And, another locale we mention frequently, Shelbyville, TN.  It is all here!

The suburbs of Shelbyville and Dover have also become Somali strongholds. Local newspapers have reported that police are hesitant to even patrol after dark at the apartment complexes where the Somalis live.

It is a good summary, read it all.

A different kind of Iraqi refugee story

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

With all the stories we’ve put up about unemployed Iraqi refugees,  I thought I’d post one outside of that template. Adam Ashton of the Modesto Bee reports on a group of Iraqi refugee women who are learning hair styling at Modesto’s Dior School of Cosmetology.

Sam Rasho, the school’s owner, lent these students a hand up, waiving $12,000 in tuition for them and 13 other refugees. They must spend eight more months in class before they’ll be ready to seek a license from the state Board of Barbering and Cosmetology.

“People helped me, so I felt it was my duty to help them,” said Rasho, who left Iraq and arrived in Chicago in 1974.

This is typical of how immigrants have traditionally made their way in America — earlier arrivals helping new ones to make a living and to assimilate. So how come this story is so different from those previous ones of Iraqi refugees disillusioned with America? I suspect the answer is here:

Rasho heard about their trouble finding work through a network of Assyrian Christians in Stanislaus County.

That’s all it says about Christians, but it’s clear these are Iraqi Christians, not Muslims. Not something a reporter who values his job would want to emphasize, but probably the crux of the story.

“They are so dedicated,” Bradley said. “They’re going to get jobs because they’re eager to work and they work hard.”

There are plenty of Iraqi Muslims who have been here a long time and have prospered. Perhaps they could help out some of those unemployed Iraqi Muslims refugees by teaching them a useful trade. Perhaps they already are doing that and we just haven’t heard of it, but I doubt it. It makes such a good story that some reporter would have picked it up.