Day: September 8, 2009

Arizona van crash police report: more questions then answers

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Back in June a van carrying Burundian refugees near Tucson crashed killing six of its 17 passengers.  We first reported the story here.  If you are a new reader or have forgotten the tragic story, please go back and read that post.

Just now as I prepared to write this post, I tried to find any story that updated or reported on any further details that we have in the police report from the Arizona Department of Public Safety and all I could find is this one in the Arizona Daily Star which I encourage you to read and then continue below.

Some facts and then more questions.

The police report indicates that there were 17 passengers including the driver in a 15 passenger van and most were not wearing seat belts.  Did no one teach the refugees the importance of wearing seat belts?

Refugee agencies responsible for resettling these refugees—in this case it appears to be the International Rescue Committee because according to the police report they helped identify the victims next of kin—will say they can’t be responsible for refugees who have been in the US for two years.   It seems they and others were anxious to say the Burundians in the van had been here for a long time.  Not so according to this line in the Arizona Daily Star article I linked above.

The Burundian refugee, who recently turned 18, refuses to leave the bedside of his father, Ndururukije Leonidas, who is in University Medical Center suffering from a broken back and broken ribs. The family arrived in Tucson from a camp in Tanzania less than three months ago.

In fact the police report repeatedly tells us that they had a difficult time figuring out what happened because the refugees did not speak English.  Surely some would have rudimentary English if they had been here two years.

And, then again go back to the Arizona Daily Star and note this:

“This was a whole new world for them. They had been used to cooking over an open flame and walking everywhere,” Niyonkuru’s co-worker, Susan Asendorf, said Tuesday as she helped the family take care of the babies.

“A whole new world?”  Then who was letting them ‘rent’ a van and pile in unescorted by an American knowledgeable about rules of the road—like seat belts, speed limits, overloaded vans and tire inflation.

Which brings me to this in the police report.  The van had 4 different tires that were not of the appropriate size for carrying that much weight and were not properly inflated.  Indeed witnesses say the accident occured when a rear tire blew out while the van was traveling at a high rate of speed causing the van to flip.  Many of the passengers were thrown into the roadway a long distance from the van (seat belts not fastened!). 

 This is from a legal website in Arizona.

Studies by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration show that accidents increase when vans are loaded with 10 or more passengers, particularly if passengers are seated at the back of the van, behind the rear axel. Additionally, NHTSA has found that improper tire inflation is a risk factor in 15-passenger van rollover accidents.

O.K. by now you are asking who owned the van?   Further questions indeed.  The van was registered to Canyon Medical Care LLC of Tucson.  This directly from the police report, “However the VIN number listed on the registration did not match the VIN on the vehicle.”  The police found the VIN on the vehicle said it was registered to Tricare Medical Trans of Phoenix.

When the police called Tricare they were told that the vehicle had been sold 2-3 months earlier to Canyon Medical (turns out it was about 2 weeks earlier).  BTW, a search of both businesses incorporation papers indicated that they are both run by men with Middle Eastern-sounding names.  Are they both former refugees?  Are they affilitated with a resettlement agency in any way?  

The owner of Canyon referred further questions to his attorney but did tell police he hadn’t gotten around to changing the registration on the vehicle or insuring it!  He said he didn’t charge a fee for the Burundians to use the van.  Now, I am not a lawyer but I think once a fee comes into play, so too does a whole lot more legal liability.  No insurance must mean that we, the taxpayers, paid some huge medical bills (or the hospital absorbed them) based on the seriousness of most of the injuries.

I find this amazing.  I know where I live if you sell a vehicle you get your tags off immediately (that day) or you are responsible for the insurance.  Is Arizona a lot looser on such requirements? 

So, here is my next question, doesn’t Arizona in any way require any inspection of vehicles ostensibly used for transporting medical patients?  This van was obviously poorly maintained.   Even a complete auto-illiterate like me knows you can’t have 4 different tires on a vehicle.

Who was paying either of these medical “transport” companies to transport anyone?  Did anyone run any of this plan to send a van full of job seekers out to agribusiness Eurofresh by the refugee resettlement agency?

Then this was interesting.  I note that Eurofresh didn’t even know if these people were arriving or leaving Eurofresh.   The police report says they had left Eurofresh and were returning to the city where they lived.  But Eurofresh says this:

“Eurofresh, Inc. extends our sincere condolences to the families of the Burundian victims who died in an automobile accident on June 3 while traveling to our Willcox, Arizona greenhouse operation to seek employment,” said CEO Dwight Ferguson.

And the Arizona Daily Star confirms what the police report said.

The refugees’ van crashed as they were on their way back to Tucson from Willcox, where they had been applying for jobs that pay about $9 an hour at Eurofresh, a hydroponic vegetable grower. The driver of the van lost control of the vehicle shortly after 2 p.m. and it rolled, according to DPS.

Surely the CEO of Eurofresh would have known whether this group of refugees had been to their facility and put in job applications, wouldn’t he?   And, since we know that the IRC works closely with Eurofresh to supply them labor, did the IRC arrange this trip?

My questions could go on and on but this is a blog, not a book, so if any of our readers know the answers, I would love to hear them.  Either post as comments to this post or e-mail me privately at Ann@vigilantfreedom.com.

And, note in the Arizona Daily Star there is a list of agencies collecting money for the Burundians.  I would like to know how they have done with their collection and why they couldn’t have set up one bank account for this project rather than people sending money c/o each group.

CIS: Illegal aliens would be covered under HR 3200

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update September 11th:   Rep Joe Wilson’s outburst calling Obama a liar on this issue the other night has served a very useful purpose, the media must now admit that what CIS says here is true.  Illegal aliens will receive health care benefits, from Gateway Pundit, here.

HR 3200 is the House version of Obama’s health care reform, and although Obama claims illegal aliens will not be covered, this report from the Center for Immigration Studies disputes that claim.

CIS:

Based on our analysis of Census Bureau data, we estimate that there are 6.6 million uninsured illegal immigrants in the United States who could be covered by the new health care reform bill (HR 3200). Even though HR 3200 states that illegal immigrants are not eligible for the proposed taxpayer-funded affordable premium credits, there is nothing in the bill to enforce this. An amendment was defeated in committee that would have required the use of the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program, used by almost all other means-tested programs of this kind.

Read on here.

Of course, the Administration is also figuring on getting amnesty through this coming year and all this would be moot—illegals would be magically transformed to legals over night, and a whole new wave of immigrants would be flowing across the border.

The Obama Administration began gathering its amnesty lobbying forces last month here.  Check out the list, it’s an amazing array of interest groups, churches, unions, and big business.

Muslim Brotherhood member seeking asylum in Australia

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

If asylum is granted to a man who claims he will be persecuted in his home country of Egypt for being a member of the Muslim Brotherhood—considered a terrorist group in many countries including Egypt—one would have to conclude that Australia has reached the beginning of the end.

From Australian Jewish News:

SHADOW Minister for Immigration Sharman Stone has asked immigration officials to reconsider their recommendation that an Egyptian with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood be allowed entry to Australia.

The Refugee Review Tribunal recommended a protection visa for the man – described as an “active supporter” of the radical Islamic group, Muslim Brotherhood – after he successfully argued he would face persecution for his political beliefs if forced to return to Egypt.

The group, which has called for the destruction of Israel, is banned in several countries, including Egypt. Other splinter members of the group include Hamas in Gaza and the Islamic Action Front in Jordan.

The group, however, is not listed as a terrorist organisation by the Australian governent.

Don’t you just see a flood of asylum applicants from radical Islamists wanting to get into Australia if they open this door?

Shadow Immigration Minister Dr Sharman Stone said she has written to Immigration Minister Senator Chris Evans asking for the decision to be overturned.

“This person should be sent home to Egypt,” she said. “Here we have a situation where an individual is using his membership of the Muslim Brotherhood to seek asylum. The tribunal found there was no evidence of him ever having being threatened or harmed in Egypt, yet he is using his membership of the group to claim asylum and hence permanent residency in Australia.”

Jeremy Jones, director of international affairs with the Australia-Israel Jewish Affairs Council, had this to say:

“The Muslim Brotherhood has many different manifestations in many different countries, but overall it’s been banned in many countries for many sound reasons. They’re dedicated to replacing existing regimes with theirs. You would not think that Australia would want to be a haven for people advocating extremist political doctrine which, in this case, is masquerading as a religious doctrine.”

Of course we already have the Muslim Brotherhood active in the US as this 2004 Chicago Tribune investigation tells us.

Blogger power! The blogger who first spotted Communist Van Jones is from New Zealand

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update September 11th:  After reading this post go to Family Security Matters and learn more about “coercive utopians,” here.

I’m going to keep nagging my friends and fellow freedom fighters to start their own blogs and dig for the facts and expose them because the mainstream media has given up its investigative role leaving the job wide open.   Keith Olbermann has announced he is going after Glenn Beck over the Van Jones affair but it seems to me that he will have a heck of a time going after every blogger around the world.   The guy who first discovered self-avowed revolutionary Van Jones is from New Zealand!   Thank you Trevor Loudon!

From Cliff Kincaid at Accuracy in Media:

Loudon tells me, “I began to investigate Van Jones after seeing several separate pieces of information. I first came across the name in the mid 1990s in a New Zealand socialist publication which had a small clip about Van Jones-a Yale educated lawyer involved in STORM-Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement. The name stuck.“

While researching the far-left think Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), which Loudon considers the Obama administration’s “ideas bank,” Loudon found a piece by IPS staffer Chuck Collins recommending Van Jones for a top government job. A September 26, 2008 article, posted on the IPS website by Chuck Collins, offered 22 names they thought would make suitable appointments for an Obama administration. He included, “Van Jones, of the Ella Baker Center, to direct the Commerce Department’s new ‘green jobs initiative.'”

Remember that this was before the election.

I’ll be adding Loudon’s New Zeal to our blogroll and start visiting daily!   Here in the US, Gateway Pundit did lots of great work on this too.

What has all this got to do with refugees and immigrants?  The Open Borders crowd is aligned completely with the Communists* (aka Progressives) now seeded throughout our government (Van Jones is the tip of the iceberg), and with the mainstream environmental groups, unions, church groups (the religious Left) resettling refugees and even some big businesses (for a full list of the Open Borders lobby, go here).  The Alinsky strategy calls for the poor and angry to be the fuel for the revolution—immigrants fit the bill nicely.   Immigrants are Alinsky’s “Have-nots” in the battle with the “Haves.”    See previous posts here and here on the subject.  For everything we have written on Alinsky go to our category ‘community destabilization’ and scroll back to the beginning.

* Readers, I’m of the age where the word Communist is almost as bad a word as, well you know!   I grew up being discouraged from even uttering the “C” word in describing anyone, but since Jones and others are now using the word about themselves, I guess its o.k. for us to use it too!  Marxist, anarchist, revolutionary are all back in use!