Iraqi Palestinians set to arrive in the US: when and how many?

From time to time I’ve written about the Palestinians who originally went to Iraq at Saddam Hussein’s invitation, but when Saddam met his end, they became targets of Iraqis who hated Saddam.   So they fled, but no Muslim country would take them and they live in camps along the Iraq-Syria border.   A few have gone to Chile and Iceland, other places in Europe too.

These Palestinians have not been shy in speaking out about the hypocrisy of the Arab world—the mythical Muslim charity has not been offered to them.   And, by the way, the reason Palestinian “refugees” continue to live in Gaza after decades is that no Muslim country wants them either.  Those countries need the refugee hammer (sword!) over Israel.

Well, now it appears thousands of Iraqi Palestinians will come to the US.  Exactly how many and when seems to be up in the air.   Or better still, it probably isn’t up in the air as far as the State Department goes, it’s just that we don’t know.   Note this comment thread on the post I wrote the other day about Palestinians going  to Canada.

Kristen:

the US will also be taking 5000 of these Palestinians this Fiscal Year, i think they are scheduled to start coming in July.

Me:

Kristen, are you speculating that we are taking 5000, or do you know something we don’t know yet! 

Timisoara:

Kristen, as far as I know, the US will also be taking about 1200 (not 5000) of these Palestinians, and most will arrive in the next US government fiscal year (e.g. in the Fall). They’re coming from the Al Waleed refugee camp, near the Iraq-Syrian border. There are discussions about accepting Palestinians from the Al Tanaf and Al Hol refugee camps, but both camps have problems with access, and they’re fewer than 500 individuals each.

Kristen:

Sorry for the late response. Until Friday, I was working for an affiliate of ECDC [Ethiopian Community Development Council, one of the Top Ten government contractors], and we had started to receive assurance forms for a few of these Palestinian cases. According to ECDC, the US will be taking 5,000 of these cases on an “emergency” basis before this fiscal year ends. I am not working there, but that was the last that I had heard.

The US doesn’t normally take Palestinians.  We  have taken less than a dozen Palestinians in FY2008 and about the same number this fiscal year so far.  I wonder if the Iraqi Palestinians will be listed as Palestinians or hidden in the Iraqi refugee data?

Searching around just now to see if I could find any confirmation of what our commenters are saying, I did find this at Relief Web:

The Iraqi Palestinian population is fairly small – only a few thousand. So far the U.S. has not taken in any of the refugees from Al-Tanf. To its credit, it has agreed to take in many of the Palestinian Iraqis staying in Al-Waleed camp, another of the three similar border camps. But the US can do more.

Wonder when the mainstream media will notice this story, probably only when they are moving in next door.

Civil rights complaints have been filed in Greeley, CO

Possibly related story update:  I almost forgot Blulitespecial sent me this link yesterday about E Coli tainted meat being recalled from this very same meatpacking plant in Greeley.  Seems some people are getting sick around the country.  How safe is our food supply?

 

The Denver Post this week published another of those puff-piece stories about how Somalis, former refugees,* are blending nicely into Greeley, CO, opening shops and getting along just great with the local people—the same template story (later corrected by city officials) we heard from Newsweek about the Somalis in Lewiston, ME.  

So after wading through the article I find there is “related news” tacked on at the end—-Somalis have filed a civil rights complaint with federal and state officials about their supposed mistreatment at the Swift & Co. meatpacking plant which employs about 300 of them.

Complaints center around alleged mistreatment by Hispanic supervisors, while Swift & Co. is scrambling to give the Somalis what they demand.  Apparently bidets for Somalis were not enough to satisfy them!

GREELEY — State and federal civil-rights officials are investigating claims that Somali workers at the JBS Swift Beef Co. meatpacking plant were mistreated.

Complaints have been filed with state officials and the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, said Steve Chavez, director of the Colorado Civil Rights Division.

Chavez met with Somalis in Greeley last week. He said federal officials are taking the lead on the investigation.

EEOC officials declined to comment.

Concerns surfaced last year after JBS managers refused to let late-shift Somalis pray at sunset during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. Workers walked off the job, and more than 100 were fired. Somali workers have since claimed ongoing issues with their Latino supervisors, Chavez said.

“They believe they were treated differently because they were Somalis,” he said.

JBS spokesman Chandler Keys said the company has attempted to accommodate religious practices by installing foot washes in locker rooms for foot-cleansing prior to prayer and bidet-type spray devices on toilets to assist with cleansing after using the rest room.

Be sure to see my post last night on the strategy being used to disrupt communities to bring about “change.”

Greeley and the historical roots of radical Islam. 

The irony of all of this happening in Greeley, CO is surely not lost on the Islamists driving these demands for religious accommodation.  I have speculated before that they are having a good laugh over the fact that Greeley is considered the birthplace of some of the most extreme Islamic fundamentalism rampant in the world today.

This is what I told you last September when much of the controversy with the Somalis and Swift & Co. came to our attention.

Here is the answer to my comment at this morning’s post about what role Greeley played in the birth of Al Qaeda. Sayed Qtub had come for a visit:

Communism had Karl Marx. Al Qaedaism has Sayed Qtub. Who’s he, most people would ask. The ideology that nurtured modern Islamic extremism, and spawned every violent movement from Hezbollah to al Qaeda, was born in 1952 when Qtub, an Egyptian writer, returned from studying American literature at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley, Colo.

The tipping point from detached observer to extremist ideologue took place at a church dance in Greeley when, as Qtub recalled in “The America I Saw,” the pastor dimmed the lights and put on the come-hither number “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” a hit tune from the MGM movie “Neptune’s Daughter” — a guy, girl and bathing suit lemon — with Esther Williams and Ricardo Montalban.

“The room,” Qtub wrote “became a confusion of feet and legs; arms twisted around hips; lips met lips; chests pressed together,” That was the scene that turned him off American culture in particular and Western culture in general — and onto Islamic fundamentalism.

Read more here and consider how Greeley could just be an excellent target city in which Shariah might be planted in America. The irony.

*To new readers:    

The US State Department has admitted over 80,000 Somali refugees to the US in the last 25 years and then last year had to suspend family reunification because widespread immigration fraud was revealed through DNA testing.

Greeley, CO Round 2 in the Ramadan battle? What is this all about?

Yesterday I directed readers to this excellent and extremely informative article in the Greeley Tribune that basically suggests a new round of protests is likely at meatpacking plants as the Muslim Ramadan holiday approaches.   Read my post yesterday and be sure to go back and read the Greeley Tribune as well. 

Since the ruckus began first in Shelbyville, TN with the decision by Tyson’s Food to give up the Labor Day holiday in exchange for Eid-al Fitr, the last day of Ramadan, and through the demonstrations in Greeley, CO and Grand Island, NE it wasn’t so clear to me what this was all about other than a spontaneous demand by mostly Somali “refugees”  for religious accommodation in the workplace.   However, in the last year we have learned a lot and we now know this is much bigger then a few spontaneous demonstrations.  There is nothing spontaneous about this—protests are being orchestrated.

So I don’t get too long, I’ll tell you what is happening in bullet format.

* Progressives (radical leftwing community organizers) are using the Alinsky model of community organizing.  We call it community destabilization and we have a whole category on the topic, here.   The gist of what they are doing is using angry poor immigrants to create chaos to bring about “change.”     And, “change” means socialism and ultimately a world without borders, without sovereign countries.

* The Progressives, including Obama’s friends at the SEIU (Service Employees International Union) and their helpers at CAIR (Council on American Islamic Relations) have “organized” Somalis in certain cities in the US and trained them to disrupt the workplace by demanding religious accommodation.  I have noted that Somali “community” centers are springing up and Somali “community” organizers are arriving in meatpacking company towns.   The most recent one I mentioned was Ft. Morgan, CO where Somalis are already agitating through their new “organizer” that they don’t have any supervisory positions at the Cargill plant there (did you notice this issue is also being raised in the Greeley Tribune story?).  In addition to special treatment for prayer times, mark my words, this supervisory promotion issue will be popping up everywhere this year.

* You might say the Progressives, the socialists, are using the Somalis, but the Somalis are also using the Progressives.   Baron Bodissey writing last year at Gates of Vienna blog says this is all about probing western countries to see how much Shariah law we will tolerate.   Always on Watch reminds us what the Eid-al Fitr holiday is all about—it’s about conquering people (well, infidels!), about creating a worldwide caliphate.

So as the battles begin later this summer, keep what I have said in mind.  It is planned, it is organized, it is a strategy to change America.   The only thing that makes no sense to me is, do the Progressives think they can control the Islamic fundamentalists in the end?    If they do, they are miscalculating very badly.

*To new readers:    

The US State Department has admitted over 80,000 Somali refugees to the US in the last 25 years and then last year had to suspend family reunification because widespread immigration fraud was revealed through DNA testing.

White House Amnesty chit-chat happened last Friday

The bipartisan White House strategy meeting to discuss Amnesty and border security that we originally heard was scheduled for June 8th, finally occurred Friday the 26th according to this news report from NumbersUSA.   No consensus was reached but Obama still says he wants Amnesty.    From NumbersUSA:

Pres. Barack Obama took the first step on Thursday towards immigration reform and an amnesty for more than 11 million illegal aliens. Members of the Administration met with 30 Members of Congress from both sides of the issue and both sides of the aisle to get the debate rolling, but Pres. Obama said after the meeting that there was “not by any means consensus across the table.”

Despite the differing opinions on how to handle the illegal alien population, how to secure the borders and how to monitor the flow of future immigrants, Pres. Obama said he’s committed to getting an amnesty through Congress.

See the NumbersUSA story to see who attended.

And, by the way, to one of our Progressive (radical leftwinger) commenters the other day who said I didn’t  know the difference between refugees and other immigrants, as long as the refugee agencies who are contracted to take care of refugees conflate the two and lobby for amnesty, so can I put the two together.   Frankly, it defies logic when federal contractors, like the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI), can say that giving amnesty to 11-12 million illegal aliens won’t hurt refugee job prospects.

If you haven’t done so previously, check out the NumbersUSA permanent link at the top of our home page and see what the growth charts tell us about immigrations’ impact on the US over the next few decades.  If you are concerned about overcrowding, the loss of farmland and open space (more schools, more houses, more roads), the impact on air and water resources and a diminished quality of life for your kids and grandkids, Roy Beck’s demonstration is pretty scary.

Question for Progressives visiting RRW:  I’m curious, how do you justify in your minds the obvious impact millions of additional people arriving as immigrants to the US will have on our resources and our environment, since Leftwing policies promote both environmental protection AND more immigration?

Prosecutors get rare conviction in Somali murder case

Apparently regularly stymied by the unwillingness of anyone in the Somali “community” to talk, Minnesota prosecutors managed to get a conviction against a Somali, former refugee,* for murdering another Somali, former refugee, in what is being described as gang and clan related violence.  From the Minneapolis Star Tribune:

A 23-year-old Richfield man was found guilty Friday in Hennepin County District Court of what police said was a misdirected revenge killing outside a south Minneapolis mall that is popular with Somali immigrants.

A jury convicted Hassan Mohamed Abdillahi of second-degree murder in the shooting death of 21-year-old Abdishakur Adan Hassan, of Minneapolis, on Sept. 29 at the Village Market Mall.

According to the charges, Abdillahi wanted revenge for the April 2008 shooting death in Minneapolis of his cousin, but because he believed the shooter had fled the country, he killed that man’s friend instead.

Cycle of violence will continue.

It’s a cycle of violence that Hassan’s sister, Deka Hassan, said likely won’t end soon, but the conviction of the man she said murdered her brother in cold blood shows that Somalis and their families will not be intimidated. [Good for this brave woman to stand up to the Somali men!]

[…..]

The killing was part of what authorities and community leaders called a disturbing string of crimes in the Somali community. Outrage flared again last month when second-degree murder charges against 17-year-old Ramadan Shiekh Osman were dropped. That happened after witnesses recanted their statements about what they saw the night a 20-year-old Augsburg College student Ahmednur Ali was shot and killed. That killing happened seven days before Hassan’s. 

[…..]

“Witnesses wouldn’t cooperate; witnesses didn’t come forward; witnesses had to be arrested,” Connors said. “And despite being arrested, one witness still would not testify. The witnesses that did testify showed great courage.”

We have written many times about Somali gang violence in cities with large Somali populations—Minneapolis, Seattle and Columbus.   Even Salt Lake City is seeing an increase in Somali gangs.

Note to Lewiston, ME and Ft. Morgan, CO:   You have this to look forward to as your Somali populations grow!

*To new readers:    

The US State Department has admitted over 80,000 Somali refugees to the US in the last 25 years and then last year had to suspend family reunification because widespread immigration fraud was revealed through DNA testing.