Month: June 2009

Modern Slavery Comes to Kansas….

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

….and maybe your state too!   That title is from an opinion piece at the Wall Street Journal today and all I can say is, ‘I told you so!’    This is the reason big business is so pro-open borders—cheap labor is the driver.  In this case it was truly slave labor!

On May 27, a federal grand jury indictment was unsealed accusing a group of 12 people, mainly Uzbekistanis along with a company called Giant Labor Solutions, of running a labor trafficking ring in Kansas City, Mo., and its suburbs. If the indictment is to be believed, the scam involved the same sort of debt-bondage tricks that have pushed workers elsewhere into servitude for years.

The way it allegedly worked was this: The Kansas City ring recruited hundreds of workers from Jamaica, the Philippines, and the Dominican Republic with promises of visas through the federal H-2B seasonal worker program. To get the process started, however, the indictment says that workers had to pay the accused racketeers hefty fees.

Once in America, the workers found themselves at the mercy of the traffickers, who allegedly kept “them as modern-day slaves under threat of deportation,” in the words of James Gibbons of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

How do you think the Uzbekistanis got here—the Refugee Resettlement Program of the US State Department tops my list as a the likely source.   As of 2005 we brought in a half a million so-called “refugees” from the former Soviet Union.   If you are checking the numbers, it is only in recent years (2008 and 2009) that the Uzbekistanis are separated out on the data charts kept at the Office of Refugee Resettlement.

Guess what Kansas industry was using the “slaves” supplied by Giant Labor Solutions—-the hotel industry!  Ring a bell anyone?   Is that why the Loew’s Vanderbilt Hotel in Nashville and its manager Tom Negri are so pro-immigrant?   Surely, it’s out of the goodness of his heart that Negri helped start pro-immigrant phoney-baloney grassroots groups in Nashville with Chicago-style community organizers.   That’s why they gathered all the bleeding hearts of Nashville together for a press conference at the hotel just a couple of weeks ago to proclaim their love of immigrants.  LOL!

The days of appreciative servitude are over now, however, and a spokesman for the city’s hoteliers told the Kansas City Star that they had nothing to do with the labor recruiter’s alleged distasteful practices.

But I suspect this problem won’t be brushed off so easily. Hotel chains may denounce their former labor recruiter, but the Web site of the hotel industry’s trade association still bellows its support for the federal H-2B visa program that may have made it all possible. 

Author Thomas Frank wraps up with this!

The answer comes in another choice phrase from the Web site of the accused: Bring on Giant Labor and “your recruiting, hiring and payroll expenses will drastically drop.”

It’s a “labor solution,” all right. It’s “a win-win situation,” even. For everyone but the workers.

Note to do-gooders:  This is all about an unholy alliance between big business (cheap labor) on the one hand, and using immigrants to destabilize communities on the other hand.    You may care deeply about the plight of the world’s downtrodden but the driving force behind the open borders movement is BIG BUCKS for some and more Leftwing angry demanding voters for others.

Question for Ms. Sebelius, former Governor of Kansas and now Secretary of Health and Human Services that oversees the Office of Refugee Resettlement—-what did you know about this back in Kansas?

IRC uses Iraqi refugees as ‘poster children’ to get more funding

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update August 20th:  Three more sob stories IRC helped plant here.

Update June 21:  Arizona Republic, just give them more taxpayer money, no questions asked.

Update June 20th:   Two more mainstream media outlets buy the IRC report hook, line and sinker,  The Contra Costa Times, and  Time magazine which reports that Obama is going to fix the problem.

Update June 19th:   Houston Chronicle buys the IRC press release hook, line and sinker too, but their readers don’t—check out the comments—here.   See my comment on the comments, here.   Christian Science Monitor does a little more digging and doesn’t swallow the story whole, here.

Update later today:  Lazy AP reporter swallows IRC press release hook, line and sinker here.

The International Rescue Committee (IRC) has begun (is proceeding with!) a public relations campaign using the plight of the Iraqi refugees now entering the US and ending up in poverty as the focal point of a campaign to get more federal funding.   Calling it reform, the IRC doesn’t tell the public all the facts.   Their press release from earlier in the week begins:

16 Jun 2009 – The U.S. Refugee Admissions Program is outdated and under-funded and is resettling Iraqi refugees into poverty rather than helping rebuild their lives in the country that offered them sanctuary, says the International Rescue Committee.

In a new report, “Iraqi Refugees in the United States: In Dire Straits,” the IRC’s Commission on Iraqi Refugees says resettlement continues to be a critical and lifesaving intervention for thousands of at-risk Iraqi refugees who are living in precarious conditions in exile and unable to return home safely. Yet the federal program no longer meets the basic needs of today’s newly arriving refugees and requires urgent reform.

The IRC is one of the richest and most heavily government subsidized of the Top Ten (volag) Government Contractors hired to resettle refugees.   Here is a recent post in which I told you about the IRC’s “corporate humanitarianism.”   And,  here is another post where the IRC is making a plea for more taxpayer money.

In this week’s press release the IRC uses guilt about the war in Iraq on the American people.  I suspect they did some polling and found that the Iraqi refugees somehow had more appeal to the public then the large numbers of Burmese and Bhutanese that are being resettled.  However, the Iraqis serve as a twofer—they are not quiet about their desperate situation here with unemployment, and by focusing on the Iraqis the IRC gets to continue bashing  America (Bush/Republicans, that is) for the war in Iraq,

“Nearly all of the Iraqis we surveyed had expectations that they would receive better care from a government whose policies had a hand in their upheaval, particularly those who put their lives on the line to work for the U.S. military and government and were targeted as a result,” says IRC president George Rupp. “Few imagined that they would receive such short-term and limited assistance upon arrival or that they could become homeless in the country that offered them shelter. They deserve better.”

Incidentally, someone set-up the Iraqis to think they were going to have a great life here and be well-taken-care of.  Why, and who would do such a thing?

Some things the IRC doesn’t tell you:

* The IRC received $108,201,276 from government grants in 2006 (see 2007 Form 990 here).  And, they resettled 5029 refugees according to the 2006 ORR annual report to Congress, here.     So that works out to about $20,000 per refugee, if my math is correct.    So when you hear this claptrap about how all they get is half of $900 to resettle a refugee, consider the numbers.

* George Rupp, IRC President, takes in a cool $400,000 in salary and benefits and there are 8 either board members or vice presidents making 6-figure salaries.  Where is the redistribution of wealth among these bigwigs?  

* The IRC reported to the IRS in that Form 990 I’ve linked that $444,000 went to financial auditors, $363,000 was for fundraising consultants, $100,725 for a human resources consultant and telemarketers got $255,582.  They spent nearly $1.5 million on meetings and conferences.  Since nearly 50% of IRC’s funding is from the taxpayer, you paid for a lot of this.    How many refugees could be helped with this sort of money?

* Meanwhile, the IRC is lobbying for more Iraqis to be resettled in the US.  They never suggest that the spigot be turned off until we pass this economic downturn. 

*  Some Iraqis are so unhappy here they are returning to the Middle East, so what does that say about how much danger they were in.

One of those six-figure salary VP’s is Bob Carey:

“The U.S. resettlement program was designed nearly 30 years ago and hasn’t been seriously looked at since,” says Bob Carey, the IRC’s vice president of resettlement policy. “The success of the program is premised on refugees being able to find employment and become self-supporting in a short period of time. When that doesn’t happen, the system doesn’t work.”

He is right, the Refugee Act of 1980 has likely never been reauthorized and I agree it’s time for Congress to have another look at it—as long as it’s a review of the whole program—not just a plea for taxpayers to pay more!  I bet they have all avoided reauthorization hearings so as to keep the whole program off the national radar screen.    I, for one, will be lining up for an opportunity to testify!  One reform I would propose is doing away with these volag middlemen.

The IRC press release lists “reforms” they want to see, #1 is they want more money, and extended welfare for refugees.   They know the timing is perfect to use Iraqi refugees to guilt-trip the public and Congress into shelling it out.

The IRC’s Commission on Iraqi Refugees offers the following recommendations:

1. Increase Federal Assistance: Congress should appropriate emergency funds to aid refugees at risk of eviction, ensure that funds for new arrivals keep up with the cost of living, expand eligibility for cash assistance and extend the time frame during which services can be accessed.

Let’s see, how about if the IRC cuts back on some of its salaries, accountants, fundraising consultants and telemarketers and uses the savings to keep some Iraqis from being evicted from their homes.

Endnote:  See also that the IRC is a benficiary of the questionable pass through funding of the Tides Foundation, here.

More fluff and puff from the Tennessean…

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

….and from openly pro-Open Borders reporter Janell Ross.   I can’t stand it.  I read so much biased reporting it makes me sick and the Tennessean is one of the most biased of the biased papers in the nation on immigration.   Here is the title for this blatantly promotional piece for the Tennessee Immigration and Refugee Rights Coalition (TIRRC):

Tennessee group seeks straight talk on immigrants

‘Welcoming’ effort addresses residents’ fears and perceptions

This deceptive article may as well have had the word “advertisement” across the top!  Makes you wonder if the community organizers even bring in their own reporters.

Ms. Ross sets the stage by suggesting that regular Tennessee folks standing around coffee shops are a bunch of redneck boobs filled with irrational fear for the unknown and the outsider.

Then she goes on to say:

The people inside those coffee shops are the kind Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition workers want to reach. The group recently received a $50,000 grant to expand its Welcoming Tennessee program, money to fund thought-provoking billboards or gather people to air fears and complaints.

Other groups are joining in — starting conversations about the estimated 4 percent of Tennessee’s population born in other countries. The topics are as simple as why various groups settled here and as complex as immigration and tax laws.

“We’re not so much trying to change the public’s concept of who is American … but to get people to think, to use reason instead of reacting to immigrants from a place of frustration and fear,” said Stephen Fotopulos, the coalition’s executive director.

I previously told you about the so-called $50,000 grant prize here.  Please go read it and then come back. 

Ms. Ross then tells us about the “grassroots” campaign that made sure the English Only ballot initiative failed earlier this year.   She doesn’t tell you that the “grassroots” were major big Nashville players and huge companies funding the campaign to kill it!   The TIRRC was on the side of BIG BUSINESS against the average “coffee-shop” Nashville citizen.   Big funders against the little guy were Caterpillar, HRC (mega giant hospital company) and even Vanderbilt University.  All told the “Nashville for all of Us” coalition—the opposition to English Only— raked in a cool $286,000.   See Judy’s post entitled, “Communism, Socialism or Fascism and Corporatism here to understand why Leftwing groups are in bed with big business.

I don’t want to overwhelm readers but here in a nutshell is what is going on in Nashville.   Community organizers from Chicago arrived in Nashville a few years ago and proceeded to set up a whole host of phoney-baloney “grassroots” groups (Soros strategy) with a few people involved in most of them (interlocking boards etc.).   That gives the general public the impression that there is a groundswell of support for anything having to do with immigrants.  There is even one called Tennesseans against Genocide that did virtually nothing that I can tell except take in money.

We saw a demonstration of how the few key players gathered together their myriad faux groups to give the public the idea that they represented hoards  of people in favor of amnesty for illegal aliens at this recent press conference at Nashville’s Loew’s Vanderbilt hotel.  And, what do you know, this politically correct story was written by Janell Ross.

Human nature is such that people don’t want to be outside the group, outside of what they perceive most of their peers are thinking and doing.  Judy told me the other day that that is part of the strategy that Obama used to win election, but I can’t remember if Judy posted on it!   That is what today’s Tennessean article is about—it is meant to tell the “coffee-shop” people that they are out of the mainstream.

In addition to making people feel that the smart people are all for more immigration, the mission of the TIRRC and its elitist community organizers is to continue to keep the community of Nashville in turmoil —- angry poor immigrants are ideal for that.  If you are thinking that can’t make sense, I didn’t think so either when I first learned about Saul Alinsky’s method of destabilizing communities by creating chaos.  The “have-nots” have to be continually fighting the “haves” to bring “change.”    By the way, tonight Glenn Beck opened his show with a discussion of the method.

And, of course one of the most galling aspects of all this is that in addition to corporate funding of these groups, ethnic organizations such as the Somali Community Center of Nashville,* get federal and state grants and contracts.  Their mission to destabilize communities is funded by the taxpayer which surely gives the organizers hearty laughs about pulling the wool over the eyes of those redneck “coffee-shop” citizens.

The jig is up!

Ms. Ross, how about a little real reporting for a change.

* For 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.

Somali Community Center opens in “welcoming” Ft. Morgan, CO

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I am fascinated by the fact that Somalis, almost anywhere they go, magically get a Community Center just for them.   Yesterday, I told you what I think is going on, here.  Although ostensibly set up to help Somalis transition to American culture (what a laugh!), these are political agitation offices modeled after the Alinsky/Obama/ACORN/SEIU school of community organizing.* 

I also told you that coincidentally “Somali community organizers”  happened to show up in Greeley, CO and Grand Island, NE just before those meatpacking demands started flying late last summer.  We have a whole category on the controversy here.

For background, the Somalis flocked to Ft. Morgan to work at a nearby Cargill meatpacking plant after the demonstrations (religious accomodation demands) in Greeley, CO turned violent and many were fired at a Swift & Co. plant there. 

The Ft. Morgan Times welcomed the influx with open arms and glowing editorials, this is how I opened a post on an embarrasingly naive and politically correct editorial.

Today the Ft. Morgan Times has an editorial entitled, “Refugees taking root in Ft. Morgan.” I have read a lot of politically correct, diversity is beautiful, let’s all sing ‘kumbaya’ articles, but this one I’m going to print out and hang by my computer and wait for the day when something happens in Ft. Morgan, CO and I can refer to it again.

Read it all here.

Back to this week’s article in the Ft. Morgan Times.

A Somali Community Office has opened in Fort Morgan, and it will help deal with several issues affecting the refugees and the surrounding community.

Somali elders asked Khadar Ducaale to come help their Morgan County community with issues ranging from the driving skills of the newcomers to how to find housing, he said.

The office will be an additional base from which supporters can help Somalis and advocate [Edit: press their demands?] for them as they face learning how to live in a new country, Ducaale said.

Ducaale has been in the U.S. for about five years, coming here from India, where he had studied microbiology, he said. [Oh yeh, so if he was happily studying microbiology in India, what immigration program did he use to come here, clearly not refugee resettlement, we don’t take Indian refugees and refugees must ask for asylum in the first country they arrive in after supposedly escaping persecution in their homeland, did anyone ask?]

After moving to the U.S., he became involved in the issues facing his fellow refugees and went to college in Rochester, Minn., for a couple of years to study social work in order to have better skills to help them, Ducaale said. [In Rochester, MN he was in a hotbed of Muslim community agitation.]

Most recently, he was working in Nebraska before being called to Fort Morgan, he said. 

Working in Nebraska?  Called to Ft. Morgan?    Where was he working in Nebraska, did anyone ask—could it have been Grand Island?  Or, was he being trained by Mohamed Rage in Omaha?   So, the elders just picked up the phone and said we need someone here in Ft. Morgan to organize our community and got this guy from Nebraska?  Who is paying him?  Is this another federal grant?   Don’t you lazy “state run media” reporters ever ask any questions?

As for this issue of helping Somalis learn to live in America, one thing we have observed with these Somali Centers is that yes, they may “advocate” for such things as better housing etc., they also make sure that especially their women don’t assimilate. We saw in Nashville where a federal grant was supposed to help Somali women with such issues as female genital mutilation (common among Somalis in the US) but that in fact the money was used for other purposes.   And, sources tell us the Somali women in Nashville live in fear of their male “community organizers.”

Cargill, look out!

Ducaale also said he would like to work with Cargill Meat Solutions — which employs a number of Somalis — to find ways his people can advance.

Until now, even Somalis who have worked at Cargill for two or three years are still in the same positions as those coming to work now, which is frustrating and disappointing, he said.

It seems like there are only two levels of employees outside top management — supervisors and floor workers — and no Somalis have made it to supervisory positions, Ducaale said.

Somalis want to learn from managers and executives what type of education they need to be desirable enough to be promoted, he said.

“We want to work with them to solve these problems, but it’s very discouraging,” Ducaale said.

Cargill’s Fort Morgan General Manager Mike Chabot said everyone at Cargill has a chance for promotion and the company works hard to give advancement opportunities to all employees of any kind.

Somalis are paid as well as any employees and pay is negotiated with the Teamsters union, so Somalis are treated like any other employees, Chabot said, adding that ethnic background is not a factor in hiring or promotion.

Cargill also offers educational programs to its employees.

Ducaale said his Somali brothers and sisters are very thankful to be employed, but they want some chances to improve their lot in life.

I can’t wait to see what the next step is for Mr. Ducaale, sounds to me like the Somalis are getting ready to charge that Cargill is discriminating against Somali workers.  Also, Ramadan is just around the corner in August!   Swift & Co. expects a new round of demands from its Somali Muslim workers at that time.

* If you are a new reader and want to understand how political agitation works and how it brings about chaos and ultimately “change,” please go to our Community Destabilization category and read some of the posts on Alinsky and “Rules for Radicals” (the bible on Community Organizing).

Also, for 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.

Refugees are bringing in alien cultural attitudes

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

In a fascinating article, The Economist reports on a study showing that “attitudes toward redistribution have a strong cultural component.” They point out:

Understanding why people hold different opinions on the topic interests economists, not least because citizens’ attitudes towards such matters are likely to influence the governments they elect…. opinions about redistribution also seem to vary from one country to another. And this has led economists to ask whether “culture” or “values” independently influence those opinions.

Surveys show that Americans are on average less favorable toward redistribution of income and wealth than Europeans.

Barack Obama got an unsolicited reminder of this on the campaign trail in 2008, when an off-the-cuff remark about the need to “spread the wealth around” provoked some shrill retorts. Such views, said Mr Obama’s detractors, went against the grain of American values. [Some might call the retorts “hearty” rather than “shrill,” but the Economist is a British magazine so they probably don’t like anyone to critize The One.]

And within Europe, citizens of countries that used to be communist are more disposed toward redistribution than western Europeans. Ideologically, those who lived under communism are anti-communist. But the idea of wealth distribution has entered their mentality as part of their culture.

Two Harvard scholars, Erzo Luttmer and Monica Singhal, studied the  attitudes of immigrants to see how the culture of their country of origin affected their views on redistribution.

Even after controlling for income, education and other relevant economic and social factors such as work history and age, views about redistribution in an immigrant’s home country are a strong predictor of his own opinions. Indeed, this measure of “cultural background” explains as much as income levels, and three-fifths as much as income and education combined. These results hold even for immigrants who moved 20 years before they were surveyed; they cannot be attributed to people not having had time to adjust their views.

And the effect lasts for a while:

Even more convincing evidence of the impact of culture comes from second-generation immigrants. The opinions of children born in the host country about the desirability of redistribution are strongly influenced by the norms that prevail in the countries their parents came from. That denotes some transmission of values and attitudes between generations. But the effect of culture is only about two-thirds as large as it is for foreign-born immigrants. Although durable, it apparently fades with time.

The article concludes:

Immigrants from pro-redistribution places, and their children too, are much more likely to vote for political parties that champion greater redistribution of wealth. That leads the authors to ask whether, over time, the composition of immigration into a country could end up having a meaningful impact on its tax policies.

Obviously it could. And matters far beyond tax policies. What about people who have lived for years in refugee camps, their needs being taken care of, however poorly? What might their attitudes be towards self-sufficiency? We’ve seen how some of the Iraqi refugees seem to expect everything to come to them without much effort on their part (while others are quite enterprising).

As for immigration in general, we used to allow in mainly people from countries that were culturally similar to ours. But now the situation is quite the opposite. Very few immigrants come from countries where entrepreneurship and individual initiative are cultural norms. Those who do tend to be successful, like Indians and Chinese.  (Funny how quickly the Chinese reverted to those norms once communism relaxed its grip.)  Every member of Congress should read this study.  But not only won’t they read it, most wouldn’t care anyway. They’re too busy redistributing the wealth.

Hat tip: Mark Krikorian.