Month: July 2009

Khat in Kansas

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This is one more in the continuing story of how beautiful diversity can be when it arrives in small town America, this time (again!) Garden City, KS.  This is the third story in two days that demonstrates the axiom ‘diversity is strength’ in Garden City.   The previous two posts are here and here.  

Don’t you wonder who made up that ‘diversity is strength’ business?  I can just see a bunch of ’60’s radicals like Bill Ayers and Wade Rathke sitting around with a little Mary Jane and coming up with it, and hey, if we repeat it enough it will be true.

But, I’m digressing, this is the whole (very informational) article from the Garden City Telegram on June 20th:

The local recipient of an international parcel containing khat, a flowering evergreen shrub native to East Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, has been arrested on allegations of possession with intent to distribute and no Kansas drug-tax stamp.

Mohamed Ahmed, 312 W. Mary St., Apt. H3, was arrested Monday and lodged at the Finney County jail during a traffic stop, after he picked up his delivery containing the illegal drug substance at the post office, said Lt. Gibson Auten of the Garden City Police Department.

Officials from the U.S. Postal Service first contacted the Garden City/Finney County Drug Task Force June 13 about the suspicious package from Ethiopia and addressed to Ahmed. Officers inspected the package with a large tear on the top and found a vegetable substance inside blue packaging material, Auten said. Auten said Ahmed admitted the package contained khat after his arrest.

A search warrant subsequently served at Ahmed’s residence revealed individual packages of khat as well as another large package of khat being stored in an abandoned vehicle in front of the residence, Auten said.

More than 30 pounds of khat were recovered and a 2001 Chevrolet Impala and a 1995 Pontiac Grand Am were seized. Auten did not have a total cash value for the alleged seizure.

According to the Drug Enforcement Administration, the fresh leaves, twigs, and shoots of the khat shrub are chewed, and then retained in the cheek and chewed intermittently to release its active drug.

While illegal in the United States, the plant is legal in much of Europe, East Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, and individuals of East African and Middle Eastern descent most often are responsible for the importation, distribution, possession and use of khat in America, according to the DEA.

For new readers, here is our khat archive.

Burmese Refugee head count

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Yesterday I told you about the ‘adjustment’ going on with the large number of Burmese refugees arriving to work at Tyson’s Foods in Garden City, KS.   Also, we had just heard how many Burmese have been resettled in recent years around the world—50,000.  So I thought it would be a good idea to check the numbers for the US.  So here is a rundown of where we stand.   Most of these numbers can be found by following the links here.   However, 2008 and 2009 numbers are not published, but we have them.

I only went back to 2002.

2002: 128

2003:  200

2004:   1054

2005:   1447

2006:   1323

2007:   9776

2008:   18,139

2009 (until the end of April):  8149

That comes to 40,216 Burmese refugees that we took of the 50,000 worldwide so far.   Small potatos I suppose when you consider how many Somali Muslims* we have taken. 

I don’t know what the magic total number planned for the Burmese is, but former Bush head of Population, Refugees and Migration, Ellen Sauerbrey, committed the US to resettling 60,000 Bhutanese (really Nepalis) over 5 years in addition to the apparent infinite number of Burmese.   Most Burmese and Bhutanese are NOT Muslim, although some Muslims are hidden among the Burmese.   Both groups are thus less demanding.

I envision a scenario where the big companies, like the meat packers, who use immigrant labor to keep wages low, lobbying the State Department and telling them: these Somalis aren’t working out so well, bring us some other cheap laborers—ones who are more grateful and thus more malleable.

* 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.

What do Garden City, KS and Ft. Morgan, CO have in common?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

And, Greeley, CO and Shelbyville, TN?   If you said lots of refugees and immigrants and meatpacking you would be right.  But, also lousy immigrant drivers are reported in each community as well.   When one reads these stories from several cities, one wonders how on earth are they passing driving tests?

Yesterday I told you about Garden City, KS and the large immigrant population it is struggling with, but there was another article in the Garden City Telegram about the problems with Burmese refugees not knowing how to drive.

A developing pattern of parking accidents at a local apartment complex has raised some concerns for some area community members, including one landlord.

Steve Burgess, the property owner of Garden Spot Rentals, 305 W. Mary St., said since 2005 there have been about 15 incidents in which tenants have crashed into his rental property while attempting to park or leave the parking lot.

Ten or 11 similar incidents over the last two years have involved members of Burmese families, many of which have formed a community at the complex, Burgess said.

In the latest incident Sunday, one of Burgess’ tenants, Ya Sin, 33, 305 W. Mary St., Apt. C7, drove a van into a bench in front of his residence on which his 9-year-old son was seated. Officials from the Garden City Police Department who responded to the accident reported that Sin accidently hit the gas instead of the brake, Sgt. Michael Reagle of the GCPD said. The 9-year-old suffered only minor scrapes from the incident, and Burgess has not yet assessed property damage.

However, Burgess said his concern about his and other tenants’ safety is growing.

In Garden City refugees can get “free” (not really free, you the taxpayer pay for them) drivers classes.

Free drivers’ education courses are available at the Refugee Center at the Garden City Community College’s Adult Learning Center, said Velia Mendoza, a refugee coordinator. However, because of limited resources, classes run on a rolling basis dependent on student needs and are capped at 10 students, she said.

In Fort Morgan the subject of lousy Somali drivers was discussed in an article in the Ft. Morgan Times on June 11th.  I had meant to post on it then, but it drifted to the bottom of my stack and now I’m sorry (it is for sale only).   The title of the article is “Agencies eye Somali driver training” (if you would like to buy it) and came in the wake of a fatal car accident earlier in the month involving a Somali driver.   The summary begins:

The Fort Morgan Police Department, the Somali Community Office and Lutheran Family Services of Colorado are all looking at ways to improve driver education for refugees who come to Morgan County.

There has been mounting community concern over the number of accidents, both large and small, in which Somalis have been involved over the past few months, said Fort Morgan Police Chief Keith Kuretich.

The points in that article that interested me were:   a suggestion that more taxpayer funded grants were needed for driver training for refugees and that there was a hint that refugee drivers were fraudulently passing the driving tests when interpretors helped them cheat.

We have heard basically the same story from Greeley, CO and Shelbyville, TN in recent months.

Reform idea!  Let the big meatpackers pay for driver education for the low-wage laborers they recruit, and make sure immigrants aren’t cheating on the driving tests.  Think about it,  Tyson’s Food, Swift & Co, and Cargill get to keep wages low with the help of the US State Department and the volag government contractors  who bring them legal immigrant labor, while the taxpayers pick up other expenses these “cheap” workers have—English lessons (if they bother to take them), food stamps, subsidized housing, health care and even driving lessons!

How the Alinsky strategy was used against Sarah Palin

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Off topic, I know!  But, not completely!  Since we have extensively discussed Saul Alinsky’s strategy (“Rules for Radicals”) for destroying political opponents in our “community destabilization” category I didn’t want to lose this important link.   After we returned from a Tea Party, at which we discussed Alinsky/Obama, Judy sent me this column from National Review by David Kahane.

Remember the Alinsky mantra:   The ends justify the means, the ends justify the means, the ends justify the means!   One brings down capitalism by fueling the war of the “have-nots” against the “haves.”    Angry, poor, demanding immigrants are the fuel and the pawns.

Endnote:  Read Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals.”  It is a slim volumn, it won’t take long, but all will then be clear about the strategy of the Left.   Yesterday I heard radio talk show host Mark Levin say he has read it five times!

Another Kansas meat packing town struggling with immigrants

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The Tyson’s meat packing plant is down the road about five miles from Garden City, KS, but the spillover of refugee workers into Garden City seems to be starting to have an impact on the town according to a pair of stories in the Garden City Telegram.   I’ll report on the driving problems refugees are having in a second post today because, lo and behold, I have a similar driving story from Ft. Morgan, CO from a couple of weeks ago that I never posted.

In the first story, Burmese refugees gathered recently to express their concerns about life in Kansas.   The story is written in such a way that you can tell there is a ‘back story’ with more concerns also being expressed by local residents but not reported in this politically correct version of what is going on.

Incidentally Tyson’s is also employing Somalis, Ethiopians, Cubans and other refugees at the Holcomb, KS plant.  Many of the Somalis came from the Emporia, KS plant that was closed last year.   The Emporia story became so controversial we created a whole category to cover it, here.

This is from the Garden City Telegram a couple of weeks ago:

Members of a burgeoning Burmese community are hoping their efforts to band together in spite of their multiple ethnic backgrounds, dialects and religions will aid them in their hopes to assimilate to life in southwest Kansas.

Several families of Burman, Karen and Chin background have formed the Burmese Refugee Community of Southwest Kansas and met for the first time with local officials Sunday night in the shade of an apartment building at Garden Spot Rentals, 305 W. Mary St., where an estimated 40 of Garden City’s Burmese families live, said Zuali Lal, one of the group’s leaders.

“A lot of the families are struggling,” said Zuali, who moved to Garden City last month with her husband and two children. “Some do not have chairs to sit in their homes, and some men do not have enough money to feed their pregnant wives.”

Most all of the Burmese residents, many of whom work at the Tyson Fresh Meats Holcomb plant, do not speak more than broken English, Zuali explained, which exacerbates cultural and social barriers.

[….]

Many of the leaders of the Burmese community echoed her sentiments during Sunday’s gathering, where many of the adult men sat in their longyis, traditional sheets of cloth worn around the waist and running to the feet, in the folding chairs sprawled across the lawn.

The leaders expressed their consternation about how and where to go for help for concerns such as putting food on the table and assistance with their immigration statuses.

In an effort to adapt to new policing laws, understand the educational system, and be good tenants, Zuali and several other leaders in the community organized what they hope is the first of several meetings with representatives of local agencies, including the Garden City Police Department, Garden City Community College, Grace Bible Church, other social service agencies, and even their landlord.

My first thought on reading this story was, O.K, where is the refugee resettlement agency?  Who resettled these refugees and left them without proper furniture and no help with their paperwork.  Or, were these all refugees resettled elsewhere and became secondary migrants when they were recruited by Tyson’s Food.   It does sound like someone formerly affiliated with a refugee agency is involved, but not officially involved in the resettlement.

For the short time she has been a Kansan, the former case manager for the Refugee Women’s Alliance, based in Seattle, has voluntarily served as an interpreter and advocate for her neighbors, she said.

Reforms needed

If it’s the latter, that Tyson’s Food recruited these refugees from elsewhere, maybe one reform we should be promoting is that when the State Department and the taxpayer- supported volags bring in cheap labor for big business that the company should then be called upon to take on the role of caring for its workers.   It doesn’t sound fair to be passing on the welfare needs of refugees to the taxpayer so Tyson’s can get cheap labor!

Lots of Burmese refugees are coming to the US.

The United States has been accepting a growing number of Burmese refugees relocating from places such as Malaysia and the Burmese-Thailand border since mid-2006.

No kidding!  The 50,000th (worldwide) Burmese refugee was recently resettled in financially strapped Camden, NJ, here.   Update July 8th:  We have taken over 40,000 of these Burmese refugees since 2002, here.

LOL!  I’m betting Tyson’s is going to like the mostly Christian Burmese a whole lot better then the demanding Muslim Somalis and their campaign to disrupt meat packing plants with complaints about religious accommodation.   I predict, we will soon have more and more unemployed Somalis—great huh!