Month: September 2009

Debbie Schlussel: Immigration down generally, but Muslim immigration is up

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This is a post yesterday from Debbie Schlussel sent to us by Janet, that directs readers to the latest Census numbers for immigrants in America.  You probably heard the news bullet yesterday that immigration numbers are generally down mostly due to the lack of jobs in the US.  Debbie says, not so for immigration from Muslim countries.

But that’s hardly the real picture. In fact, while immigration is down from places like Mexico and Peru, immigration is up from Middle Eastern Muslim nations like terrorist-host states Syria and Iran. I did my own investigation into the census numbers and uncovered the important story here that no-one else is telling you. The countries that hate us the most are still exporting their haters to our shores. Those numbers are up, not down.

See her entire post with links to the report.

Of course, the concern is that immigrants from Muslim countries could hate America and wish to do us harm as was apparently the case with the Afghani immigrants at the center of the latest terror investigation.  From AP:

DENVER (AP) – An airport shuttle driver under arrest in Colorado may have been planning with others to detonate backpack bombs on New York City trains in a terrorism plot similar to past attacks on London’s and Madrid’s mass-transit systems, officials said.

The investigation into the possible terror plot has prompted counterterrorism officials to warn mass-transit systems around the nation to step up patrols.

Two law enforcement officials speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss details of the investigation told The Associated Press late Monday that more than a half-dozen individuals were being scrutinized in the alleged plot.

In a statement, the FBI says that “several individuals in the United States, Pakistan and elsewhere” are being investigated.

Investigators say Najibullah Zazi, a 24-year-old* Afghanistan-born immigrant who is a shuttle van driver at the Denver airport, played a direct role in the terror plot that unraveled after an overnight 1,600-mile trip from Denver to New York City around the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. He made his first court appearance Monday and remained behind bars.

Everytime there is mention of a Muslim immigrant involved in some criminal or terrorist activity, I wonder how the immigrant got here in the first place.  Was he a refugee? An asylee? On a student visa and never left? A work visa of some sort?   Why do most reporters not tell us that information?  Are they too lazy,  would the information challenge their worldview, or is it too difficult to find out because the federal government keeps that secret?

* An afterthought:  According to this AP story, Zazi came to the US ten years ago making him 14 years old at the time.  I guess ten years in America didn’t help him assimilate any.

Jeffrey Goldberg takes on myths about Gaza “refugees”

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

In The Lucrative Business of Israel-Bashing in the current Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg quotes an Israel-bashing statement from a current MacArthur grant recipient, James Longley, and corrects every single sentence in it. Great job. Read it if you want the Gaza “refugee” situation in a nutshell.  The reason for the title of his piece is that MacArthur “geniuses” receive $100,000 a year for five years, no strings attached.

US Conference of Catholic Bishops tied to ACORN and Obama

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We first told you about this connection last November when the USCCB cut off its ties to ACORN likely fearing they would be dragged into the growing scandal.  See that earlier post here.

Our interest in the US Conference of Catholic Bishops is that it is one of the largest (if not the largest) federal refugee resettlement contractor (see the ten federal contractors here) with the US State Department and the Office of Refugee Resettlement in the US Department of Health and Human Services.

Now comes more information about how the USCCB is tied to ACORN, other leftwing community organizing groups, Obama and to the teaching of Saul Alinsky.  From Accuracy in Media yesterday (hat tip:  Janet):

While Obama has strong ties to ACORN, they were originally established through the U.S. Catholic Church, which has also funded ACORN and similar organizations to the tune of millions of dollars. This is another taboo topic for most of the media. Even conservative news organizations are afraid of raising the issue, apparently fearing being tagged with the “anti-Catholic” label.

[…..]

Deputy National Security Adviser Denis McDonough was quoted as saying that Obama’s work as an organizer on the South Side of Chicago “was funded partly” by the “Catholic Church campaign for human development…” He was referring to the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD), an annual collection authorized by the U.S. Catholic Bishops which is advertised as a charity to “break the vicious cycle of poverty” but in reality has funded left-wing political organizations such as ACORN to the tune of millions of dollars.

Reforms needed!

I think someone needs to do an audit of the USCCB—a financial audit not just a program audit to make sure that all the money they get from the taxpayers actually goes to the refugees and not to Leftwing political activities.  Did you know that the US State Department only does program audits?

Be sure to visit this report from the Capital Research Center, “Leftwing Radicalism in the Church.”

This post is filed in our “community destabilization” category where you can find many more posts about Saul Alinsky, the Radical Left and how they are working to “change” our communities and ultimately our form of government.

French government bulldozes “the Jungle” at Calais

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Last night Blulitespecial tipped me off to the story that the government of France had finally decided to take action against the immigrant slum that had been growing at Calais and that it would be shut down today.  This morning reader BL sent the story that the deed had been done. 

Just a reminder that we discussed Calais last year when a naive reporter was raped when she ventured there to see what an awful life the poor souls were leading, here.

From CNN today:

CALAIS, France (CNN) — French authorities on Tuesday dismantled a makeshift camp dubbed “the Jungle,” which housed illegal migrants fleeing dangerous homelands to seek a more prosperous life in Europe.

French police broke up protests by refugee rights advocates and began clearing the squalid camp. The French government said it was targeting human smuggling and did not say where the migrants would be relocated.

Police arrested 276 migrants, 125 of whom were minors, said Calais prefecture official Catherine Mande.

A statement from the French immigration minister’s office said the “illegal encampments” would be destroyed and then three bulldozers, a dozen trucks and a logging company would return the land to its natural state.

The statement said the goal was to destroy the Jungle and other migrant shanties, “which have become the main launch pad for clandestine immigration into the United Kingdom.”

[…..]

The Jungle — shanties cobbled from cardboard, plastic tarpaulins and scraps of wood — housed as many as 1,000 men from nations such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and Somalia.  [One report tells us that the mostly Muslim migrants had built a makeshift mosque in the shanty town.]

Here is a SkyNews story with additional details.

Palestinian “refugees” are getting restless, and so is their staff

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

ISRIA, a Paris-based consulting and information publishing service, reports: 

The United Nations agency tasked with assisting millions of Palestinian refugees may not be able to pay the salaries of its 29,000 staff through the end of this year because of a funding crisis, its top official said today as she urged Member States to donate more generously.

….Most of UNRWA’s running costs go to staff salaries, she said, and without an injection of nearly USD 17 million each month the agency will not be able to guarantee salaries into 2010.

Ms. AbuZayd said she has written in the past week to every country that has ever donated to UNRWA to ask them to contribute “special pledges” given the current situation, and she hopes they will respond urgently.

All the donor countries have fulfilled their pledges, but the agency needs more because of inflation, exchange rates, and other issues. Imagine that! Has an agency anywhere of any sort ever announced it needed less?

Two points to note. One is this:

She said that both staff and refugees were “becoming restless” about the funding problem and contingency plans may have to be taken unless money is provided soon.

What contingency plans would those be? Stepping up terrorist attacks so donor nations would realize they really, really, really need more money? And as for “both staff and refugees,” they are often the same people as most of the staff is drawn from the local population. In Gaza that means most are from Hamas, and we’ve written about how much of the donated money goes to Hamas. With all the, um, obligations Hamas has in other areas, it’s no wonder UNRWA’s humanitarian mission is running short.

The second point is this:

UNRWA… provides education, health care, social services, microfinance, camp improvement and emergency aid to an estimated 4.6 million Palestinian refugees living in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.

Refugees living in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. Has the world lost sight of how weird that is? How many Jewish refugees are living in Israel? None, because Israel takes in every Jew who wants to come, including the 900,000 who were expelled from Arab countries. But do Arab countries take in Palestinians, who are also Arabs? No! We’ve written about the Iraqi Palestinians, who were not welcomed back into Iraq, and now the U.S. is taking some in. What is wrong with these Arab governments? Oh, maybe it’s because the Jews whom Israel takes in don’t produce suicide bombers. They don’t plot against their host government. The Arab governments created the Palestinian refugee problem, and they don’t want anything to do with the pathology they brought about. So the civilized nations of the earth have to keep ponying up money to keep these “refugees” quiet.

(See our Israel and refugees category for our previous posts on this subject.)