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.