Month: November 2009

Refugee overload in “Little Baghdad,” El Cajon, CA; summit attempts to find new model

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Editors note added March 21, 2013:  For all of the readers arriving here this week, please see our entire archive on El Cajon and problems with refugees there.

Here is one more story about refugee overload, this time from the San Diego area.  A refugee summit held November 6th sought to find answers about what to do about the flood of refugees arriving and suggestions were made for a new “national model.’

From East County Magazine:

November 12, 2009 (El Cajon) – Impacts of the Iraq War are hitting home in East County, where so many Iraqi refugees have settled that El Cajon’s mayor has dubbed a section of his community “Little Baghdad.” Last year, the U.S. admitted over 60,000 refugees—including 8,500 from Iraq. Since October 2008, San Diego has been taking in 400 refugee families a month. Nearly 85% are from Iraq. Almost 75% of all area refugees have settled in the Grossmont-Cuyamaca Community College District (GCCCD), straining resources beyond capacity in social services, education, and healthcare.

“Social Services predicts that 200 to 300 new families will be entering East County each month for the next two or three years,” Mike Lewis, PhD, assistant superintendent of education for the Grossmont Union High School District said at a November 6 summit at Cuyamaca College titled Spotlight on Refugee Education and Employment. Some have spent weeks or even years in refugee camps. Many don’t speak English and have not been able to receive an education. Many refugees are also physically maimed by war or suffer post-traumatic stress. Often they receive misinformation and find steep barriers to getting the help that they need.

I’m all for a new national model, but I bet the entrenched resettlement agencies aren’t interested in any model that doesn’t involve more taxpayer funding!

Below are a few random comments from participants (there are more, so check out the article).  Come to think of it, I’m not sure this article has any suggestion from anyone actually resettling the refugees as a government contractor.

A former Iraqi immigrant and state legislator said the following sensible thing:

“We have immigrants coming here who have been thrown out of their homes. They are scared to death,” said Deddeh, who formerly taught English under an immersion program in Monterey. He called for immersion programs in English to help new refugees and asylees. “Otherwise we are dancing around the issue. Without English, they cannot get jobs…English, that is the hope, that is the dream, that is the future” for refugee families and their children, he concluded.

This proposal sounds like just more bureaucratic talking when the problem is too many refugees for too few jobs:

The most ambitious vision at the summit, which was attended by over 150 people, came from Sunny Cooke, president of Grossmont College. Noting that the assimilation period for refugees has been shortened by the federal government from two years to eight months since the Iraq War began, she called for creation of a “transformation model of how this country greets and services its refugees.” Under her plan, a coalition of community leaders would examine what other countries do around the world.

Here is the typical leftwing new model, refugees make me feel good so lets get more taxpayer money for them.  Watch out for that word ’empower’ it always alerts us to more hits on the taxpayer:

A representative from Assemblyman Joel Anderson’s office urged refugees to write to elected officials about “wonderful effects the refugees have had on our communities” to empower politicians to obtain more funding for refugee programs.

Here is someone speaking truth to power, a welfare model is a faulty model!

A Sudanese man who said he spent four years in a refugee camp called local efforts “a faulty model. It’s a welfare model. These are new citizens. They need training—a model to create new citizens.”

Then this suggestion is in our opinion the only real hope of reform, REFUGEES MUST BE SPONSORED!

Janet Casteños said her La Mesa-Sunrise Rotary Club has adopted a refugee family. “It’s a fantastic way to understand the culture,” she said, urging other groups to do the same.

It is also a “fantastic way” for the refugee family to learn our culture (English too) and take the burden off the taxpayer and place it back where it belongs as the role of private charity!

Somali illegal aliens stuck in Nepal

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Reporter Deepak Adhikari at Time magazine tells us a twisted tale of how Somalis originally hoping to get to Europe, got duped, and ended up in Nepal.

Mahad Abdullahi Hassan had never heard of Nepal before the day he landed there. When the 28-year-old Somali boarded a flight from Dubai to Kathmandu on May 23, 2007, he was hoping he would finally reach his dream destination: Sweden. He had, after all, shelled out $4,000 to a human trafficker who promised to smuggle him to the Scandinavian country.

Oops, looks like Europe wins and Nepal loses.

Instead, when Hassan got off the plane, he found himself in the airport in Kathmandu, where a taxi took him and the trafficker, who was traveling with him, to a bustling tourist neighborhood in the Nepalese capital. “It was a strange place,” says Hassan. “All the buildings looked the same. Everything was new to me.” When they booked a hotel there, the trafficker assured Hassan that he was arranging the necessary documents to complete their journey to Sweden. But the next morning, when Hassan woke up in an empty room, he realized he’d been duped. “I realized I was completely at a loss,” Hassan recalls.

Nepal is swamped with refugees and fears becoming a human trafficking magnet.

….according to the U.N., developing nations like Nepal now host 80% of the world’s 15.2 million refugees, nearly 20% of whom are designated as urban refugees living outside refugee camps.

[….]

“We don’t want Nepal to be a hub for human-trafficking,” says Bhattarai. The government recently imposed a ban on issuing on-arrival visas for the residents of a dozen countries, including Somalia, Burma, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Nigeria and Sudan.

Then this little section of the Time magazine story leaves out an important fact.

Nepal is no stranger to people seeking shelter in its borders. Nearly 87,000 Bhutanese are now living in UNHCR-run refugee camps in southeastern Nepal, having fled the tiny kingdom of Bhutan after government policy stripped them of Bhutanese citizenship.

The “Bhutanese” living in camps, 60,000 of whom are on the way (or have already arrived) to live in the US are ethnic Nepalese who had gone to live in Bhutan, Bhutan expelled them, and now Nepal won’t take them back.   So, add to this mish-mash of displaced persons in Nepal there are “refugees” who are Nepalese!  Does that make sense?

To further demonstrate the insanity of Nepal’s situation, Hassan would like to go back to Somalia but Nepal deems it unsafe to do so, all of which leaves me in the end with no sympathy for Nepal.

Canada’s new “immigrant” from America

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update November 13th:  He has been released from custody, here.  Will have more later.

Vancouver seems to have more than its fair share of possible terrorists sneaking across the border.  First, we heard about the Sri Lankan ship that came ashore with “refugees” and now we hear about a mysterious ‘American’ who was stopped while coming across the border into Canada with nearly $1 million in GOLD.

VANCOUVER, B.C. — Paranoia and naivete led a Syrian man to lie about why he was crossing the border with nearly $1 million in gold and what’s been called “terrorist resources,” says the lawyer for the man who has been held as a potential security threat since early last month.

Khaled Nawaya, a flight instructor, was arrested by Canada Border Services agents when they found $800,000 in gold coins and other currency in his car and pockets on Oct. 6, as he crossed into Surrey, B.C., near Vancouver.

“He didn’t want to be taxed on it,” lawyer Phil Rankin said Tuesday.

The Saudi-born would-be immigrant to Canada holds Syrian citizenship, but had been in the US since he was 17.    Besides the illegal amount of cash and gold he was carrying he had a few other suspicious items in his possession.

…. his actions, along with other politically-charged items found in his vehicle, are now being used by government officials to build a case depicting him as a national security threat.

The 35-year-old faces the Immigration and Refugee Board on Thursday to learn whether authorities have grounds to keep him in custody

He’d been living in the U.S. since he was 17 and had gained approval for permanent residency in Canada.

[…..]　

Besides the gold, Canadian agents found a ring bearing the insignia of Hezbollah, which has been listed as a terrorist organization by the Canadian government since 2002.

They also seized 9/11 conspiracy theory-themed DVDs and a scarf adorned with the images of a former Israeli prime minister and a U.S. president depicted as monkeys.

His lawyer says the items are easily explainable.  Read the whole article for the explanations!   The lawyer concludes:

“I think they’re [he and his brother in America] probably sympathetic to what’s going on in the Middle East,” he said, but that’s no indication of “sinister” activity.

Oh, and did you notice, he is a flight instructor.  Me thinks this lawyer has an uphill battle.

Gotta stop those Muslims from trying to get across the border!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

What country has had it with Muslims sneaking across their borders—no not Norway, the UK, or Canada.  Of course not!  It’s Saudi Arabia that is now bombing a buffer zone along its border to stop those riff-raff Shiite Muslims from coming into their superior and wealthy Sunni Muslim nation.   What was it that the UN High Commissioner for Refugees said about beautiful and historic Muslim charity?  From the Associated Press via the Chicago Tribune:

SAN’A, Yemen (AP) — Saudi Arabia is trying to set up a buffer zone inside Yemen after its week-long offensive against the Yemeni Shiite insurgents along the border, a rebel spokesman said Wednesday.

Mohammed Abdel Salam said Saudi warplanes and artillery have been shelling deep into border areas to create the zone and drive the rebels away.

“Their goal seems to be establishing a buffer zone or a no man’s land on the border,” he said in a telephone interview from the rebels’ strongholds in Yemen’s northern Saada province. “It is obvious, they are trying to scare us and make us leave the area.”

Saudi Arabia launched an air and ground offensive against the Yemeni rebels last week after skirmishes along the border. Both Saudi Arabia and Yemen have accused Shiite Iran of backing the rebels raising concerns of another proxy war in the Middle East between region’s Shiite and Sunni powers.

[…..]

Fighting has intensified since August, displacing tens of thousands of people and limited their access to humanitarian aid.

According to the U.N.’s refugee agency, some 175,000 people have been displaced since the fighting began.

We will just keep coming because we are in search of a better life.

Abdel Salam, the rebel spokesman, also predicted the buffer zone won’t prevent infiltrators from Yemen — the most impoverished Mideast nation — from crossing into Saudi Arabia. He suggested many of those who cross are destitute Yemenis in search of a better life on the other side of the boundary.

“Poor Yemenis will keep crossing,” Abdel Salam said.

The Saudis have also been building a state-of-art border fence, here.  And, it’s not just Shiites they are persecuting, check out this post from last month where we learned that Rohingya Muslim refugees are languishing in Saudi jails, here.   Where is the world-wide condemnation of Saudi Arabia, heck, where is Obama’s condemnation of them?

Sudanese government plans closure of refugee camps

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Check out this story today.  Note that anyone trying to understand what is happening in Darfur (a popular cause for many in Hollywood) would never know from reading this that it is Islamic supremacism behind the displacement and persecution of the non-Muslim Sudanese population.   From the Hollywood-set and other humanitarians one never hears an outcry against the radical Islamists in power in the Sudan—the closest this article comes is to say the government is Arab-dominated—and the other radical Muslims trying to bring down that government.

Nairobi – The Sudanese government plans to start closing down camps for the displaced population in the war-torn region of Darfur next year, a senior official said on Wednesday.

Some 20 000 housing units are being constructed to accommodate the homeless in the towns of El-Fasher, El-Geneina and Nyala, Humanitarian Aid Commissioner Hasabu Abdel-Rahman told the UN-sponsored Miraya FM radio.

He said the displaced people will have the choice of returning to their village if they do not want to move to the new housing complexes.

Darfur rebel groups criticised the move, calling it a cover by the government to commit further crimes against the Darfur people.

A large segment of the population lives in camps while the Islamic government fights with other rebels, who also are Muslims.

Some 2.5 million people are living in refugee camps in Darfur.

The UN says up to 300 000 people have died and 2.7 million fled their homes since ethnic minority rebels in the region first rose up against the Arab-dominated government in Khartoum in February 2003.

If the camps are closed, will we see a new flood of Sudanese refugees to the US in some sort of emergency action by the State Department?

There have been many positive stories in the news about Sudanese refugees faring well in the US, and others (that didn’t make the mainstream news) not doing well.  See some previous posts on Sudanese refugees in the US in that latter group, here, here and here.