Day: August 27, 2009

IRC: Importing poverty and not letting a good crisis go to waste

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Here we go, yet another Iraqi refugee suffering-in-America story.  You know!  They had a good life, good job, servants, a BMW, nice house and all until the US invaded Iraq and religious extremism was unleashed.  Now, they are refugees in America living on welfare with no job and it’s all our fault.  That is pretty much the gist of these stories.  I really don’t care if this sounds heartless.  I do agree the refugees are suffering. 

But, the heartless ones are the bureaucrats at places like the International Rescue Committee (IRC) who, on the one hand, complain bitterly about having no money to properly care for the refugees they contracted to resettle,  and on the other continue urging the US State Department to bring more and more refugees.

I finally get it—this is about creating a crisis to bring about change, the refugees are the pawns in all this, the fodder for stories like this one in the Los Angeles Times planted by PR people employed by “struggling” (IRC got $104,622,578 from the US taxpayer in 2007) refugee agencies and spoon-fed to gullible (or worse, complicit) Leftist mainstream reporters.   The end goal is to expand the refugee program and send more taxpayer money to the federal contractors like the IRC.

Here is one section of this article I’m posting just so American citizens can see the full range of support refugees receive.

“It’s very much an up-by-your-bootstraps approach,” said Vice President Robert Carey. “I don’t disagree with that approach, but you need to give people an opportunity to get an adequate foothold.”

These days, the financial aid does not go far. Resettlement agencies receive State Department grants of $900 for each refugee, an amount that has gone up only $400 since 1975, according to the IRC. At least half of that is supposed to be used to procure and prepare an apartment — to pay the deposit and first month’s rent, buy furniture and food. The rest is meant to cover the services the agency provides in the first month, such as doctor appointments and registering children for school.

Some refugees qualify for a program funded by the Department of Health and Human Services and a matching grant from a private aid agency. That program provides four to six months of additional financial and other help to those looking for work. But the program has funds to assist only about 30% of resettled refugees, the report says.

Because Anwer and Avan have children, they can get the same help available to needy American families through CalWORKS and Medi-Cal. They were granted $850 a month — $130 less than the rent for their modest apartment.

The help is available for up to five years, but the amount will soon be reduced because of state budget cuts. Medi-Cal will no longer cover the parents’ dental and some other costs, a fact Avan discovered only after having two root canals. She will be on a mostly liquid diet until she can raise the money to replace the temporary fillings with crowns.

Refugees who do not qualify for any other help can apply for Refugee Cash Assistance and Refugee Medical Assistance. Shifa and Ann each were granted $350 a month plus medical coverage under this program. But the coverage lasts for only eight months. When the program was established in 1980, it was available for 36 months.

“People are being brought into the U.S. below the poverty level,” said the IRC’s Carey.

Indeed they are being brought in in poverty and that suits the goals of the Alinsky/Cloward-Piven/Obama community organizers just fine.   It’s creepy isn’t it to think that this is all part of a huge scheme, one that actually hurts people, that the average decent American can not comprehend.   For Alinsky and friends–the ends always justify the means!

By the way, go back and read the LA Times story and note that the IOM is warning Iraqis now that life will be tough in the US—that is a heartening thing to learn.

Kennedy (expletive deleted!) No fierce advocate for Mary Jo

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I wasn’t going to say anything about the death of Senator (bring them to Hyannisport) Kennedy until a reader last night asked me if I was planning on it.   Whenever Kennedy’s death crossed my mind yesterday the only thing I thought of was that poor Mary Jo, 40 years ago this summer, living for up to two hours, according to expert witnesses, in an air bubble in the submerged car at Chappaquiddick.

Besides being a murderer, Kennedy was a hypocrite.  He is responsible for the Refugee Act of 1980 but as my name for him indicates he was all for bringing the third world to America but not to his backyard at Martha’s Vineyard.  No ‘up close and personal’ diversity for him and his elite friends!

My reader tells me he had written to Kennedy some years ago to try to bring his attention to the abuses within the refugee system, a system Kennedy created and championed, and Kennedy never even answered his correspondence—further evidence to me that Far Left hypocrites like Kennedy never really cared about the poor refugees it was all about BUILDING A FRAMEWORK WITHIN THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT under a protective umbrella of  phony humanitarian concern. 

Somali Community organizers in Greeley praise Swift for caving to Muslim demands

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This is how it works, last year community organizer Graen (that is not his real name) Isse arrived in Greeley one week before the walkout at the Swift & Co meatpacking plant, snagged a job with the company and then was among those who was fired, led the protest and talked to the press.  Now he heads up the newly created Ethnic Community Based Organization (ECBO) officially called the East African Community of Colorado (EACC).  Amazing huh! 

Today we learn that Swift & CO is compliant—they gave the protesters bidet toilets, special his and hers prayer rooms, break times to pray and even dates to nibble on.

That is what Alinsky (Obama!) community organizers do.  Isse and his fellow EACC founders are trained agitators.  They have been trained by union strategists to first bring chaos and angry demands to force change.   Nobody likes chaos, crisis and anger, so they give in whether it’s a meatpacking company, your town government, or surprise surprise, the federal government!

Here is the story about everything going swimmingly at Swift this year.   Hat tip:  Jerry Gordon, please go read his excellent post at New English Review today.  He tells you where the funding for the EACC comes from, including a union,  Weld County, and Lutherans.  The EACC hasn’t gotten its direct federal funding yet, but is indirectly receiving federal help from the Lutheran Family Services of Colorado which is federally funded.   I bet at this very moment the EACC is writing a federal grant proposal to the Office of Refugee Resettlement and cynically saying, hey, let’s write a grant to help our women, he! he!

Muslim workers are on bended knee in prayer. Company officials are on their toes.

The result: a ruckus-free Ramadan.

So far, anyway.

“Everything is smooth now, and people are happy, and the company is happy,” said Asad Abdi, vice president of the East Africa Community Center in Greeley.

Abdi and Graen Isse, another East Africa Community Center leader, visited the JBS USA plant on Monday, the first day of Ramadan to fall on a workday, to see how things went at sundown. That’s when Muslims break their daily fast and pause for evening prayers.

“Everyone was saying ‘happy Ramadan, happy Ramadan,’ ” Isse said. “It was very welcoming.”

The company had even put out dates, which are customarily eaten to break the fast, for the workers. At 10-minute intervals, the Muslims were allowed to leave production lines and go to prayer rooms — one for men, another for women.

“The people were working together on the line. They’re covering for each other,” Abdi said. “When one person goes to pray, the other covers his place. … If (JBS) knew it would be this easy, they wouldn’t have had the problems before.”

Some local citizens are standing up and saying “NO!” to the Stealth Jihad.

Some will view JBS’s recent actions as caving to a religion that has a notorious extremist bent. Making concessions for Islam, they fear, will result in its practitioners gaining power until they reach their ultimate objective — global takeover.

The East Africans in Greeley say they have no intention to impose their religion on others. They love their new country, they say, and want to peacefully assimilate.

So, while the workplace tension has ebbed at JBS, the ideological divide between cultures is ever present, if not widening, as Muslims make inroads in practicing their faith on American soil.

The recent emergence of Coloradans Against Sharia Task Force, a local group that demonstrated outside JBS last week on the eve of Ramadan, is evidence that last year’s flare-up has morphed into a new pulse of tension. Michael Gale, the group’s leader, said the fact that Muslim workers walked off the lines last year is telling. “The fact they did walk off the job, they did demand these things, means they’re not moderate,” he said.

Note to radical Leftists and union-types:  You have let the Islamic supremacist genie out of the bottle and you won’t be able to control it.  They are smarter than you are and their goal is NOT the same as yours!