Day: December 2, 2009

Some Burmese refugees evicted in Pittsburgh

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This is an article over a month old, but I’m just seeing it now thanks to Madeleine.  I’ve written two posts on the difficulties Burmese refugees are having in Pittsburgh with the all-too-familiar twin problems of employment (or lack of it) and lousy living conditions.

I wish I had seen this story before I wrote the post on the Burmese demonstrating here, because this gives us more background on why they would picket Catholic Charities.

Although the U.S. government has welcomed them, many immigrants who’ve relocated to the Pittsburgh region are struggling just to get by.

KDKA Investigator Andy Sheehan has found a group of refugees from Burma who have yet to find the American Dream.

They fled one of the most brutal regimes in the world in search of American freedom, but so far, the promise of a new life has eluded them.

A family of eight is living in a two-bedroom apartment and after three years of working, they say the money they make is not enough to support themselves.

Through an interpreter, an immigrant told Sheehan life was better back in the refugee camp.  [We heard this in Bowling Green, KY, too]

Two families were evicted for “over-occupying.”   Well, who set them up that way, the resettlement agency?  I just want to remind readers that the US State Department has an Operational Guidance requirement that sets guidelines for how many people can be resettled together.  If the “over-occupying” happened later, then I’m guessing it’s similar to what we heard in Bowling Green, KY—one family can’t pay rent and moves in with another!

The U.S. has taken in more than 10,000 Burmese refugees with the promise of housing, jobs and eventual citizenship. However, the 400* or so who have settled in the Pittsburgh area have not fared well.

Two families are being evicted from their apartments at the Prospect Park housing complex in Baldwin.

Apartment complex managers refused to come to the door when Sheehan attempted to ask them about the evictions, but the Burmese interpreter, Paw, says Prospect Park has rejected his pleas to let the families stay on.

“You know I talk with the landlord, they told me because they over-occupy,” Paw said.

What do you know?  It’s the Prospect Park housing complex—a favorite of Catholic Charities.  Check out this post I wrote about the dilapidated apartments, here, last March (follow links back and see a photo of the apartment building).  Almost makes you wonder if there is some sort of insider deal going on with the landlord.

So where have the evicted families gone, are they homeless like the Burmese man in Greensboro, NC?

*  Checking the stats it appears that all the Burmese brought to PA in the last few years must have been resettled in Pittsburgh.    I don’t have numbers for 2009, but in 2008, 414 were resettled in PA, in 2007, 170, in 2006 the number was only 16.   Virtually all of the Burmese refugees have not been in Pennsylvania very long.

No family Thanksgiving at the White House for Auntie Zeituni

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The Associated Press has a story, linked on Drudge, that updates us about President Obama’s Aunt Zeituni Onyango.  She is the Aunt who was living illegally in the US and almost became an election-eve nightmare for candidate Obama.  According to this story, only George Bush saved Onyango and Obama from a major political trainwreck days before the November 2008 election.  

We reported previously, here, here and here, about Auntie’s deportation order and her life in Boston subsidized housing.  Actually we have a bunch more posts on her case, but those three links should give you adequate background.

From time to time Rush Limbaugh will point out how Obama (now rich from his Bill Ayers written book), the defender of the poor and downtrodden, has left his impoverished brother in a tiny hut in Kenya and this story about Obama having nothing to do with Aunt Zeituni further demonstrates the point.   Leftwing leaders talk a good game about helping the poor but don’t do a whole hell of a lot personally.

At this point Aunt Zeituni is not a political liability to Obama because she is not hiding out, she is pursuing remaining legal options.*  Therefore, Obama’s apparent abandonment of her only serves to make Obama look like a chicken and a cheapskate.

How many readers, even those of you who think she was wrong for skirting the law, would object to Obama paying for her housing and food rather than the US and Massachusetts’ taxpayers footing the bill?   And, heck, he should have had her to Thanksgiving dinner!   (Since she says she hasn’t seen Obama since his inauguration we assume she was not among the “extended family” at the White House dinner.)

Here is the AP story:

BOSTON – President Barack Obama’s aunt buried her face in her hands and sobbed as she described her anguish over no longer having contact with him and his family after the revelation she had been living illegally for years in the United States in public housing.

Zeituni Onyango (zay-TUH’-nee awn-YAHN’-goh) told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview that she is troubled that her immigration woes have made her a political liability to her nephew.

Onyango, the half sister of Obama’s late father, said she has exiled herself from the family after attending Obama’s inauguration because she didn’t want to become fodder for his foes. Obama and his family have not reached out to her either, she said.

“Before, we were family. But right now, there is a lot of politics, and me, I am not interested in any politics at all,” said Onyango, whose appeal for asylum from her native Kenya is before an immigration judge in Boston.

There is no way Obama didn’t know her immigration status when they were previously so close.

Onyango said she previously had no trouble visiting Obama when he was a state senator in Illinois or after he became a U.S. senator, though she declined to discuss details of how often she had contact with Obama and his family. Her tiny apartment in a modest subsidized public housing complex for seniors and the disabled is adorned with photographs of her with Obama at the Illinois Statehouse, the president’s official portrait, his family, the inauguration, her children and African wildlife.

George Bush is her number one man!

Onyango reserved special words of kindness for former President George W. Bush for a directive he put in place days before the election requiring federal agents get high-level approval to arrest fugitive immigrants, which directly affected Onyango. The directive made clear that U.S. officials worried about possible election implications of arresting Onyango.

She said she wants to thank Bush in person for the order, which gave her a measure of peace but was lifted weeks later.

“I loved President Bush,” Onyango said while moving toward a framed photo of Bush and his wife standing with Barack and Michelle Obama at the White House on inauguration day. “He is my No. 1 man in my life because he helped me when I really needed that help.”

I’ll betcha George Bush would have invited her to his Thanksgiving dinner if she had been his Auntie.

* She will have a hard time convincing a judge she would be persecuted in Kenya where the Obama’s are rock stars!

Somalis using Obama photo for target practice

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Here is an AP story that appeared in the Boston Globe BEFORE OBAMA’S ANNOUNCEMENT LAST NIGHT that is really a re-hash of the missing Somali (former refugees) youth story from Minnesota.  You can just imagine what the Jihadists are doing to Obama’s photo this a.m.*   Entitled “Somali camps may pose threat to US,” it begins:

MOGADISHU, Somalia – The recruits gather in scorching desert hideouts in Somalia, use portraits of President Obama for target practice, learn how to make and detonate bombs, and vow allegiance to Osama bin Laden.

Training camps in the lawless nation of Somalia are attracting hundreds of foreigners, including Americans, and Somalis recruited by a local insurgent group linked to Al Qaeda, according to local and US officials. American officials and private analysts say the camps pose a security threat far beyond the borders of Somalia, including to the US homeland.

In interviews, former trainees gave rare details on the camps, which are scattered along desert footpaths, rutted roads, and steamy coastal dens. They say the recruits are told the United States is the enemy of Islam.

US and Somali officials say Somalia’s Al Shabab jihadist, or holy war, movement is growing, and uses foreign trainers with battlefield experience from other conflicts.

The threat posed by the training camps was underscored in federal court documents unsealed Nov. 23 in Minneapolis, home to a large ethnic Somali community. An indictment against several Somali-Americans who allegedly fought in Somalia said trainees at one camp included dozens of ethnic Somalis from Somalia, other African countries, Europe, and the United States.

[….]

“The message is simple,’’ Dahir Muhiyadiin, 18, said three months after finishing his training at a camp run by Somalia’s main insurgent group. “We are taught how the Western infidels want to eradicate pure Muslims, about how the US government does nothing as Israel harasses our Muslim Palestinians.’’

*Remember too how the American Al-Shabaab laughed at Obama here.

Good debate at Jihad Watch on why the Left loves Islamists

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

At Jihad Watch yesterday Robert Spencer has posted a piece by Chuck Hustmyre in which Mr. Hustmyre attempts to explain something that has puzzled me ever since I saw it first hand in Washington, DC in March 2007 when International ANSWER’s demonstration was sponsored by the Muslim America Society.   I don’t understand why Far Leftwingers and Communists like the ANSWER coalition work in tandem with radical Islamists who truly hate the lifestyles of Leftists.

Here is a bit of what Mr. Hustmyre says:

Consistent with the Arabic proverb that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, the American Left has formed an alliance with fundamentalist Islam to transform this country into something far removed from its Judeo-Christian origins and ideals.

The mistake the Left is making is that its so-called progressive goals have nothing in common with the medieval tenants of fundamentalist Islam. Militant Muslims have no respect for American progressives, any more than they respect the very existence of Israel.

Fundamentalist Islam is using the American Left to advance its own agenda. Militant Muslims want Islam and sharia law to dominate the West. Their goal is to subvert the U.S. Constitution and our way of life to the will of Allah. The word Islam means submission.

What members of the American Left seem blind to is the fact that in countries where Islam dominates, their progressive ideas would be crushed and many of them would be thrown in jail simply because of their lifestyle choices.

Yet, the American Left continues to serve as apologist-in-chief for fundamentalist Islam.

Why?

Because deep down American Leftists are terrified of Islamic fundamentalists.

I agree with a lot of what Mr. Hustmyre says, especially the part about the ‘enemy of my enemy is my friend,’ but commenter Natalie, I think, comes closer to my view and one I have expressed on our pages previously (especially relating to SEIU organizing Somalis).

I disagree with the article. I don’t think it’s a love-fear relationship at all. Both sides are using each other to advance their own individual agendas and think that once they’re in power, they’ll be able to eliminate the other. I don’t think the Left fears Islam at all–they are very arrogant and overly confident and think that they can handle the Islamists who would actually love to see them dead.

If, God forbid, the Radical Left and the “Fundamentalist Muslims” should win, I have predicted that the first to be eliminated will be the Leftists (oh, maybe Jews first, then Leftists)—the Islamists will eat them alive.