Month: July 2009

Alaska gets refugees too

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This is the first time I’ve seen anything about refugees being resettled in Alaska.  It appears that there is a stepped up effort going on to be sure Alaska gets to share in the joys of diversity too!   From Catholic News Agency:

Anchorage, Alaska, Jul 18, 2009 / 02:21 pm (CNA).- In Anchorage, Catholic Social Services is committed to living out the Gospel mandate, in which Jesus called his followers to welcome the stranger. This is a blessing for people like the Kafley family, who fled the terrors of ethnic cleansing in their homeland of Bhutan in the Eastern Himalayas.

“The government of Bhutan was trying to rid Bhutan of people of Nepalese origin,” explained Patrick Pillai, who mentors the Kafleys through a CSS program. “People were fleeing the country, but Nepal did not want to accept them all because it would sanction the persecution.”

As the official refugee resettlement agency for Alaska, CSS is commissioned to receive people who can no longer live in their own country due to political or religious persecution, war, famine, ethnic cleansing and a host of other woes. If Alaska has been chosen as their destination from among those sent by the United Nations to the U.S., CSS does the work of acclimating them to their new homeland.

And, check this out Alaskans, you are getting Somalis as well.

Last year, CSS welcomed 85 refugees directly from their countries of origin. They came from the Congo, Somalia, Sudan, Togo, Iraq, Georgia, Ukraine and Russia. This year refugees have included those from Bhutan and Cuba.

Statistics for Alaska and your state too can be found here, just follow the links to the ORR databases.   I just looked up the previous few years for Alaska and in 2006 Alaska resettled 4 Cubans, 16 from the former Soviet Union, and 4 Vietnamese, for a total of 24 refugees.   In 2007, 30 former Soviet Union (they don’t break it down, maybe Uzbeks) refugees were resettled in Alaska.   So, the numbers are increasing.

To new readers:  I haven’t kept up the “your state” page at the top of our home page, but you can use our search function for your state to see what we have written previously and then use the link to the databases and you can go all the way back to the early 1980’s to see who has come to your state.

Congressman Keith Ellison: Retrieve Somalis and re-integrate them!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

NOOOOOOO!

Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), one of two Muslim Congressmen in the US House of Representatives has called for “retrieving” the missing Minnesota Somalis from Moghadisdu, continuing the theme that is obviously developing to paint these former refugees turned Jihadists as “victims” as one of our commenters reminded us recently*.   From Minnesota Public Radio:

St. Paul, Minn. — Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison said the U.S. government is trying to ensure the safe return of some of the young Somali-American men believed to be fighting with a terrorist group in their homeland.

Ellison said he has been included in classified briefings about efforts to bring the missing men back to the Twin Cities.

At least four Somali-American men from Minnesota who left to fight in the Horn of Africa have died there in recent months.

If the Obama Administration sends even one of our young military people to Somalia, risking their lives to rescue Ellison’s voters, it will create a firestorm of outrage across this country!    Excepting the teenaged (and now dead) Burhan Hassan, the majority of these Somalis who rejected the good life to become jihadi fighters are grown men.

I have an idea!  Send Ellison to talk with Al-Shabaab and RETRIEVE these supposedly gullible men!

Congressman Keith Ellison thinks the U.S. should try to retrieve the Minnesotan men who may have been misled into joining Al-Shabaab and want out.

“We can’t have a knee-jerk emotional reaction,” Ellison said. “We’ve got to have an intelligent reaction. If a young person says, ‘I have been lied to. I don’t like these people. I want to get away from them,’ we should help them do that, as long as we know that does not create a public safety issue for Minnesotans and Americans.”

Ellison wouldn’t offer more details of the plans, saying the discussions were classified. But he said the efforts involve private non-governmental organizations as well as government entities. A State Department official did not respond to requests for interviews.

These MEN pose a danger to the US if returned.

But bringing the remaining recruits back to the U.S. isn’t without risk. John Radsan, a former assistant general counsel for the CIA, said the U.S. government is taking such a heightened interest in the case of the Somali-American fighters because of broader concerns on global terror.

“These people are trained, perhaps over there. They become radicalized over there,” Radsan said. “They are engaged in combat, and if those people can be put on that cycle, it’s only another step before they might come back here to do bad things in the Twin Cities.”

But, nevermind,  Ellison says let’s “re-integrate” them into American culture!

Congressman Ellison agrees that the U.S. government’s first responsibility is to protect its residents. But he also thinks if the recruits pose no threat to national security, they should be allowed to re-integrate into the American culture they left behind.

Mr. Ellison, are we going to take their word for it—that they pose no threat.  And, by the way, they were obviously never integrated into American culture in the first place!

* This is what commenter Mars said when the indictments were unsealed against two of the “youths” who returned from Somalia:

It’s clear to me that there is an attempt being made, by defense attorneys, the Somali community and relatives, to portray these guys as victims. Let’s try to guess how many people these “kids” may have killed themselves. While they may be young, they were/are adults and responsible, just like the rest of us, for their own actions. It’s not some simple youthful folly like getting a body tattoo. Were they influenced by someone? Undoubtedly, but they also have free will. I really see the media attempting to portray them as beguiled innocents , when in fact they were out to willingly create their own victims in the name of Allah

Bhutanese to Canada: clever photo—from mud hut to metropolis

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

For regular readers of RRW, there isn’t a lot new in the article about large numbers of Bhutanese (ethnic Nepalese) going to Canada and the US (other western countries too), but I specifically wanted you to see the clever photograph at the top of the story published here in the Gorkhatimes (original story from the Globe and Mail).   I don’t know if someone was thinking ahead and set this pair of photos up this way, or are they cleverly photo-shopped?

The family depicted here is going to British Columbia.

Seven Western countries agreed to accept the Bhutanese after years of talks between Bhutan and Nepal ended in stalemate. Most – about 60,000 – will go to the United States. Many of the Kattels’ friends and relatives have plane tickets to places like Dallas, Salt Lake City and Phoenix. Mr. Kattel wishes more of his friends were going to B.C.

In Canada, the Bhutanese are to be settled in nearly 30 communities from Newfoundland to B.C. Eventually, about 900 refugees – including the Kattels – will move to Coquitlam, just outside Vancouver.

It’s a daunting prospect for the suburban community, and for the country as a whole.

Nine hundred Bhutanese are scheduled to go to a suburb of Vancouver—Coquitlam.   I found this paragraph interesting because apparently Canada does what I have recommended we do—hold community meetings well in advance of refugees arrival and line up host families.

In fact, city officials, community groups and residents in Coquitlam have laid out the welcome mat for the refugees from a little-known land. The local school board and the Immigrant Services Society of B.C. have set up a summer camp for the kids to polish their English and learn basic computer skills. Host families have come forward to help the refugees with basic tasks such as shopping and learning transit routes. Community meetings held in the spring to discuss the refugees’ arrival were overflowing.

Here is a webpage from the Canadian government’s Immigration department (Citizenship and Immigration Canada) spelling out very thoroughly what the plans are for Bhutanese going to Canada and a status report on how many have arrived, etc.    I don’t think the US government has any website that is as clear as this one in Canada.

For all of our government readers, please let us know if there is a US government website comparable to this one!  It is your chance to disprove my contention that refugee resettlement is done as secretly as possible here.

For more information on the Bhutanese, please use our search function.

Syracuse: two former refugee police officers assigned to help protect new refugees

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This is an update of the story I told you about last week where Burmese and Bhutanese refugees in Syracuse, NY were being attacked by Blacks.   The Police Department has assigned two officers to help the new refugees.  From Metro Voices:

Dzenan and Varosh can related to Nar. They came here as refugees–Dzenan, from Bosnia and Varosh, from Armenia. They both worked as refugee caseworkers at the Catholic Charities refugee program on the North Side.

They’ve been assigned to help foster relations between the police department and the refugee community. In addition to their regular patrol duties, the officers will be doing bike patrols on the North Side.

We’re hoping to ease the the circumstances of integration,” Varosh said. “The refugees have been picked on for a number of reasons–they look different, they just arrived in this country, and so there’s some jealousy that they’re getting more help. Being refugees ourselves, we know how the system works.