State Department close to reopening previously fraud-ridden program

11/20/2009 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Here is a story I am ashamed to say I missed two weeks ago! According to Matthew Lee of AP, yes, apparently the same Mr. Lee who reported on the last day of every month in the waning months of the Bush Administration that that awful Mr. Bush didn’t let in to the US enough poor Iraqis, here, tells us the State Department will soon re-open the controversial family reunification program.

And, he reports that nothing will likely be done about the estimated 36,000 Africans (mostly Somalis) who may have gotten into the US by lying. We admitted over 80,000 Somalis over 25 years.

Although no final decisions have been made, the State Department said it “was close to the end” of a review that had been delayed by the change in administrations. “Now that policy-level people responsible for this issue are in place, we expect to reopen the program with revised procedures in the near future,” an official said.

The suspended pilot program, known as Priority 3, allows foreign — almost all of them African — family members of legal U.S. residents to join relatives here.

With little fanfare [Edit: little fanfare! It was because they wanted to keep it quiet, the WSJ had it, where were you?] , the program was halted in March 2008 after DNA testing on applicants in Africa found that up to 87 percent of their familial claims were fraudulent.

The experimental program was conducted in late 2007 and early 2008 on about 3,000 people mostly from Somalia, Ethiopia and Liberia who claimed blood relationships with each other and wanted to be reunited with a family member who had been resettled as a refugee in the U.S.

DNA testing was not done on the alleged relatives in the United States. The State Department said it targeted Africans abroad only for genetic testing because they make up 95 percent of applicants to the program. The testing started, officials said, only after suspicions of fraud arose in applications originating among refugees in Kenya.

“We were … only able to confirm all claimed biological relationships in fewer than 20 percent of cases,” the State Department said in a fact sheet. “In the remaining cases, at least one negative result was identified or the individuals refused to be tested.”

Ho hum, fearing the ire of civil rights groups nothing will be done about the possibly 36,000 illegal aliens.

As the U.S. review winds down, questions were raised about what to do with the estimated 36,000 African refugees who arrived in the United States under the resettlement between 2003 and its suspension. [Edit: I don’t get why they are only going back to 2003 for this number, we have been resettling Somalis and other Africans long before that, I bet it’s more than 36,000 questionable refugees.]

The Homeland Security Department has jurisdiction to determine if any of those applications were fraudulent but department officials said Thursday they had no plans to check those already in the United States. Such a move would likely draw opposition from civil rights groups.

Gosh, maybe some of those are involved in the Kansas City, MO murder, or the recent Somali murder in Fort Morgan, CO, or the Boys in the Hood we heard about just two days ago, or Somali gangs in Minneapolis and Seatttle, or the mosque arson we reported this morning, or maybe some of the Somali missing youths—one of whom was arrested just today for attending terrorist training in Somalia. Nah, it couldn’t be, and besides it’s not worth riling up the diversity-is-strength gang !

Shades of Major Nidal Hasan, wouldn’t you say?

Columbus: Mosque fire exposes Somali infighting

11/20/2009 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I’m starting to feel like I should rename this blog ‘Somali Watch’ because just when I thought I had a window of time to write the much needed post about that boring “Targeted Assistance” program I’m procrastinating about, comes two hot Somali stories in the US and another in Finland. And, oh geez, I forgot to tell you about the Somali missing youths from Canada!

Here is Patrick Poole, an expert on radical Islam from Ohio, writing on the intrigues surrounding a battle between a moderate Somali mosque and an Al-Shabaab-terror-supporting mosque in Columbus, Ohio. Hat tip: Jerry Gordon.

Poole begins:

In the early morning of October 19, a fire ravaged through the property surrounding Masjid Salama, a growing Columbus, Ohio, mosque frequented primarily by members of the local Somali community. Several Somali-owned businesses surrounding the mosque were heavily damaged, but the mosque itself was not touched. However, because of the surrounding damage, the mosque itself has not been cleared for reopening.

As reported by the Columbus Dispatch, fire investigators immediately determined that arson was to blame for the blaze.

But rather than blaming the arson on unknown anti-Muslim individuals engaged in a religious hate crime, many inside the Columbus Somali community are fixing their suspicions on leaders of another local Somali mosque, Masjid Ibn Taymiya. This mosque is dominated by supporters of the al-Shabaab terrorist group, and members have made repeated attempts to take over the rapidly growing Salama congregation through an unsuccessful campaign of legal and physical intimidation.

Following the blaze, I met with two leaders of Masjid Salama, who described the ongoing efforts by the leaders of Ibn Taymiya to take over their burgeoning year-and-a-half-old congregation. On November 12, the Salama leaders had to obtain a temporary restraining order to prevent the bulldozing of their rented facility by a leader of the Ibn Taymiya mosque, Mohamed Hassan, who, they say, is the ringleader of the campaign.

Read the whole article. Poole wraps up with this:

While arson investigators continue to look into the fire that has temporarily displaced Masjid Salama, the leaders are waiting to see whether local officials and the media in Ohio — who have thus far ignored the larger controversy surrounding the fire — will finally recognize the larger battle between Muslim moderates and extremists happening in the Columbus Somali community.

And waiting to see exactly who the politicians and media will side with in this struggle.

Minneapolis, MN, Columbus, OH, Seattle, WA, San Diego, CA, Nashville, TN, Boston, MA and even little Lewiston, ME (see the Mayor of Lewiston just this week talking up the joys of multiculturalism) are “welcoming” cities for Somali refugees and residents can expect similar warm and fuzzy diversity-is-strength experiences in the near future. You can thank the US State Department and its Ten federal refugee contractors for this opportunity.

For new readers:

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. That specific program has not yet been reopened, but thousands of Somalis continue to be resettled as I write this.

Only ten more days to apply for the diversity visa lottery…

11/20/2009 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

….and be one of those lucky 55,000 immigrants to win the big prize and come to America! That’s right, new readers will be shocked to learn that Congress in its infinite wisdom has mandated we increase America’s diversity and take immigrants from countries that have sent less than 50,000 immigrants here in the last 5 years.

I’ve written about this on several occasions, but was reminded that it must be application time when reader Cristina sent me this link to an immigration law firm that will help you get your ducks all lined up to participate in the lottery (for a fee I’m sure!).

Here is the press release, dated September 29th, from the State Department.

The congressionally mandated Diversity Immigrant Visa Program is administered on an annual basis by the Department of State and conducted under the terms of Section 203(c) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). Section 131 of the Immigration Act of 1990 (Pub. L. 101-649) amended INA 203 and provides for a class of immigrants known as “diversity immigrants.” Section 203(c) of the INA provides a maximum of 55,000 Diversity Visas (DVs) each fiscal year to be made available to persons from countries with low rates of immigration to the United States.

The annual DV program makes visas available to persons meeting simple, but strict, eligibility requirements. A computer-generated, random lottery drawing chooses selectees for DVs. The visas are distributed among six geographic regions, with a greater number of visas going to regions with lower rates of immigration, and with no visas going to nationals of countries sending more than 50,000 immigrants to the United States over the period of the past five years. Within each region, no single country may receive more than seven percent of the available DVs in any one year.

For DV-2011, natives of the following countries are not eligible to apply because the countries sent a total of more than 50,000 immigrants to the United States in the previous five years:

BRAZIL, CANADA, CHINA (mainland-born), COLOMBIA, DOMINICAN REPUBLIC, ECUADOR, EL SALVADOR, GUATEMALA, HAITI, INDIA, JAMAICA, MEXICO, PAKISTAN, PERU, PHILIPPINES, POLAND, SOUTH KOREA, UNITED KINGDOM (except Northern Ireland) and its dependent territories, and VIETNAM. Persons born in Hong Kong SAR, Macau SAR, and Taiwan are eligible.

No countries have been added or removed from the list of eligible countries. The list of eligible countries remains the same as for DV-2010.

Here is a breakdown of last year’s applicants, I don’t know who the “winners” are.

“Winners” get to come stand in line overnight in places like Shelbyville, TN to compete (and scuffle) for scarce jobs with refugees and Americans at the Tyson’s chicken plant there as we learned from the Shelbyville Times Gazette in February and reaffirmed by the Wall Street Journal here in May.

In May I also reported that legislation had been introduced in Congress to halt this program, here, but with the Leftwing progressives running the place, the bill could hardly be more than symbolic.

The refugee resettlement program brought in about 75,000 refugees this past fiscal year, and in 2010, the goal is 80,000 (No! We are not cutting back in this recession). Only about 20% of refugees are finding jobs, and they will compete with 55,000 new immigrants in this program. One difference is that refugees get all sorts of public assistance and the diversity visa immigrants are on their own.

Horowitz publishes pamphlet on rules for revolution

11/20/2009 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

David Horowitz has published a pamphlet that helps to educate us about Saul Alinsky and his influence on Obama and his Administration, something we have addressed in our “community destabilization” category which we began at this time last year. Here is what Frontpage magazine says about Horowitz and the pamphlet:

David Horowitz was one of the founders of the New Left in the 1960s and an editor of its largest magazine,Ramparts. He is the author, with Peter Collier, of three best selling dynastic biographies: The Rockefellers: An American Dynasty (1976); The Kennedys: An American Dream (1984); and The Fords: An American Epic (1987). Looking back in anger at their days in the New Left, he and Collier wrote Destructive Generation (1989), a chronicle of their second thoughts about the 60s that has been compared to Whittaker Chambers’ Witness and other classic works documenting a break from totalitarianism. Horowitz examined this subject more closely in Radical Son (1996), a memoir tracing his odyssey from “red-diaper baby” to conservative activist that George Gilder described as “the first great autobiography of his generation.”

Since taking office Barack Obama, who promised during his campaign to create a moderate, inclusive administration, has engaged in actions that have created division and fear because they are meant to radically change America, not improve on what has always worked. As a result, David Horowitz writes in Barack Obama’s Rules for Revolution: The Alinsky Model, “Many Americans have gone from hopefulness, through unease, to a state of alarm as the President shows a radical side only party visible during his campaign.”

Barack Obama’s Rules for Revolution: The Alinsky Model provides an understanding of the roots of the current administration’s effort to subject America to a wholesale transformation by looking at the work of one of the President’s heroes—radical Chicago “community organizer” Saul Alinsky.

Read on and learn how you can get a copy.

How does this involve refugees and immigrants? My theory is that since Alinsky said in order to “change” America one needed to continually pit the “have-nots” against the “haves,” as Americans generally rose out of poverty, the immigrants were needed to continually build the “have-not” armies. Now with Obama’s policies and the far left activists he has spread throughout government we will see an acceleration of immigrants, refugees and Americans arriving at the poverty level. That is the goal! That is why it is so baffling to logical people who wonder how we can continue to bring in tens of thousands of refugees and other immigrants when there is no work for them. Their strategy is to build the “have-not” armies.

By the way, as I write this Judy is at David Horowitz’s Restoration Weekend, so maybe we will get a report about this auspicious gathering of conservatives when she returns.

Endnote: I was looking for something else and came upon this post from earlier this month to help illustrate what I’m saying about a strategy and a goal, here.

Not all that “welcoming” in Sweden; girls convicted for harrassing refugees

11/20/2009 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This is an update of a story we reported last May, here. Seems that the country highly praised for its generosity to immigrants has its refugee conflicts on-going as well. Swedish girls involved in the “mob” attack on an apartment building housing Iraqi refugees have been convicted of terrorizing refugees. From The Local:

Two teenage girls have been convicted for their role in terrorizing refugees in Vannas in northern Sweden last May in what was described at the time as a “lynch mob”.

The girls, aged 16 and 17 when the incident took place, were sentenced to juvenile care by the district court in Umea for harassment and vandalism, Sveriges Radio (SR) reports.

The charges stem from a May 9th incident in which a group of 30 to 50 young people shouted and threw stones at an apartment building housing a large number of refugee tenants, predominantly from Iraq.

Authorities decided to evacuate about 40 refugees to avoid potential violence. Within two weeks, nearly half of the refugees had decided to leave the area permanently.

According to the Västerbotten-Kuriren newspaper, the incident stemmed from a dispute involving a group of local youths who confronted a refugee boy about the alleged assault of a local girl.

Tensions from the school yard confrontation escalated over several days, culminating in the assembling of what police described as a “lynch mob” outside the apartment building.

Not a word in the story about any investigation into the origin of the incident—a refugee boy possibly assaulting a local girl.

The famous blogger Fjordman said this at the time of the original incident.

This is the price you pay for destroying the cultural and social fabric of a nation through mass immigration. Similar problems are now rapidly emerging throughout the Western world for roughly the same reasons. The state can no longer uphold law and order and frequently doesn’t even try. The only option left to ordinary citizens is vigilante justice and the formation of armed clans and groups to withstand the attacks of other armed clans and groups. It’s the re-tribalization of society, which is and always has been the logical consequence of Multiculturalism. If you’re a Westerner, it’s coming to a street near you very soon, accompanied by loud cheers from the intelligentsia.

I guess they didn’t get the “diversity is strength” memo.

Search RRW for ‘Sweden’ and you will see lots of posts on the immigration issues affecting this European welfare state. For whatever reason (I have no clue), this 8 month-old post, “Muslim immigration killing Sweden” still gets many visitors every day here at RRW.