Refugees being beaten by blacks in Denver, get cellphones for security

Here it is Christmas Eve and every bit of news I’m seeing is troubling.  This story, hat tip Mars, is headlined ‘Denver cops give 911-only cellphones to refugees worried about recent attacks.’  What do you think the chances are that hate crime charges will be brought against the thugs?  And, where is the ‘diversity is beautiful’ in this story?

If they kill me and my son, who will take care of my wife?  Not the refugee agency that is for sure!

From the Denver Post:

Recent beatings of South Asian refugees have prompted Denver police to hand out cellphones to newcomers from abroad.

The hope is that the emergency-only phones, which require no payments, will help refugees reach paramedics and police to prevent future trouble, said Scott Snow, director of the Denver police Victim Assistance Unit.

“It gives a sense of security,” Snow said.

A dozen refugee victims of recent attacks now carry police-issued phones. Police are talking with a potential corporate partner to supply 50 phones, he said. Ultimately, police aim to give phones to all refugees, along with orientation information and safety tips.

On Dec. 11, a group of men beat and robbed teenage refugees from Bhutan in east Denver, following them from an RTD bus, according to police.

Six were beaten, one requiring emergency-room treatment. The attack spread fear among refugees from Bhutan, Burma and elsewhere — who are concentrated in low-rent apartments and have been victims of previous robberies.

“If they kill me and my son, what will my daughter and wife do?” said Dambar Bhujel, father of an 18-year-old victim, who is now wary of letting his son go to school.

“At first, I was happy to come to the United States. After one year, I’m feeling very bad and I don’t want to stay longer. But we can’t go back to Bhutan and we can’t go back to Nepal,” Bhujel said. “They told us America was secure.”

[…..]

…when police arrived, about 50 refugees approached. Many spoke little English. “Several members of the group had been assaulted by a large group of black males,” the report said.  [Were they Somali or American blacks? That is what I would like to know.]

No arrests have been made. “It’s possible it is bias-motivated,” police spokesman Lt. Ron Saunier said. Detectives “are still looking at that aspect of it.”

Who told the refugees America was safe and who put them in squalid neighborhoods?  Bingo!  You guessed it—-their federal refugee resettlement contractors, that is who!  

These efforts are appreciated, said Paul Stein, director of refugee services in the Colorado Department of Human Services. Federal funding for refugee resettlement is insufficient for safer apartments, Stein said.

It’s always about the money!  Not enough taxpayer money!  Mr. Stein, how about raising adequate private funds so that refugees like the Bhutanese (ethnic Nepalese) and Burmese aren’t living in slums.  If you can’t raise the money, don’t bring the refugees!  New readers should know that the resettlement of refugees is supposed to be a public-private partnership, but is increasingly the responsibility of the taxpayer.

Readers, I told you previously that someone I know had the occasion to be in one of the Denver slum apartments of a Bhutanese refugee woman.  She and her daughter were living miserably and scared to go outside.  Some life!   I think refugee agencies, not taking proper care of refugees, should be required to offer them airfare home.

Meanwhile over on the East Coast, Bhutanese refugees were seriously injured this week in an apartment fire in North Carolina, here.  Was it a slum too?

Oh, and lest we forget, a promising young Bhutanese man was murdered at point blank range by a black thug in Florida last July here.

Ft Wayne, IN: World Relief keeping it in the family?

Here is a story from back in May which I missed at the time from Ft. Wayne, Indiana, home to more than 5000 Burmese refugees that is your usual puff-piece about how refugees are doing great in America.  An engaged couple (he is Burmese and I assume she is Thai) were lucky to get to the top of the list of hundreds of lower-income applicants  in the Ft. Wayne area to get a house built for them.  I wondered right off, why a house didn’t go first to a whole family, but there is more to wonder about.

Here is the basic story to help make you feel warm all over:

The yard is mostly still piles of dirt and gravel, but the house is finished. Cheery flowers are planted in front, and a few items, including a Mac computer, sit on the front porch, ready to be moved in.

After being built by Habitat for Humanity volunteers, the house at 523 Douglas Ave. now officially belongs to Tha Wai, a native of Myanmar, formerly Burma, and his fiancée, Thailand native Mai Shwe.

At a dedication ceremony Saturday, the couple [when is the wedding?] moved into their new home.

The house is the 126th home Habitat for Humanity has built in Fort Wayne. It was funded mostly by proceeds from the organization’s aluminum can-recycling program.

[…..]

Pastor Jeff Keplar gave the house blessing. He and his wife, Habitat for Humanity Executive Director Carol Keplar, were Tha Wai’s family advocates. Advocates support families and help them acclimate to owning a home.

Besides being the husband of Carol Keplar, Executive Director of Habitat for Humanity, who is Jeff Keplar?

The article about the Habitat house fails to tell readers that besides being a pastor, Keplar (we assume there aren’t two Jeff Keplars!) heads up the relatively new World Relief refugee resettlement office in Ft. Wayne.  That is the office that I said was in a ‘cat fight’ with Catholic Charities way back in June 2008,  here and again here in December.  I pointed out that there were so many refugees coming to Ft. Wayne that agencies were fighting over the lucrative turf.

From Everyday Christian about Keplar’s new office:

FORT WAYNE, IND.—Jeff Keplar has lived in the Fort Wayne, Indiana, area for 30 years. As a former instructor at the Christian-based Taylor University and a well-connected [his wife is too] member of the local church community, Keplar knows the northeast Indiana city as well as anybody.

That knowledge is an asset which also gives him pause as the new director of World Relief’s office in the city.

Go read the article, you will love the discussion about how having lots of people on unemployment is good for refugee resettlement because those people are looking for useful things to do instead of sitting around home!

“Because I know the churches and know the network of people here, I anticipate we’ll be able to mobilize quickly,” Keplar said. “We already have five refugees and 30 to 35 more in the pipeline awaiting travel arrangements. We’re going to have some substantial needs pretty quick.”

That was in April when 30-35 were in the pipeline.   Funny that World Relief , three months earlier in January, told the News-Sentinel this:

At the outset, World Relief is going to work with refugees already here. Whether the agency will sponsor more refugees to the area – and how many – is undetermined.

Were they afraid there would be a public outcry over more refugees arriving in an overloaded city with a second resettlement office now in town?

Well, I guess they made the determination to bring more refugees pretty quickly and just think, lucky, well-connected refugees, may get a house too!

Does anyone know if one or the other of the fortunate couple happen to work for World Relief ? Surely not, that would be way too obviously ‘keeping it in the family!’

New readers:  Use our search function for Ft. Wayne.  We started following the problems there way back in 2007.  Most recently we posted this controversial comment.

Somalis ripping-off welfare and health care in Maine; so what else is new!

Thanks to Susan yesterday, here is the latest from Maine and lucky Lewiston.   From the Sun Journal, a paper that has been doing some good reporting (see this story last week) on the subject of Somalis and crime:

LEWISTON — An Auburn man and a Portland woman were indicted on 23 combined federal counts in an alleged attempt to defraud the government of thousands of dollars from state and federal programs in a case that likely is linked to a federal raid of a Lewiston office building in June.

According to the indictment filed in U.S. District Court in Portland, Yusuf Guled, 74, of Auburn arranged to have Dahabo Abdulle Osman, 58, of Portland serve as his personal care assistant to provide services for him at his home.

The indictment says Osman was paid based on false and fictitious time sheets that totaled more than $61,000.

Guled allegedly made false statements to nurse assessors to qualify for the services Osman was to provide, but which weren’t necessary.

Both defendants were charged with making false statements on their applications or for their continued eligibility to receive federal benefits, Assistant U.S. Attorney James Chapman said Tuesday.

Those benefits included:

• Supplemental Social Security income payments.

• Public housing or Section 8 subsidized housing.

• MaineCare.

• Temporary Assistance to Needy Families.

• Food stamps.

Guled failed to disclose or falsely reported the number of bank accounts he held and the amounts they contained, the indictment says.

Someone has got to find out who is training these Somalis in the art of ripping-off the taxpayers.

Then here the Sun Journal reminds us of the story we posted on the raid of Home Health Care Offices in Lewiston last June and makes a connection to these two.

In early June, federal agents swarmed two floors of a downtown Lewiston office building, apparently seizing documents from two health care related organizations that provide personal home care assistants. The agents worked for the FBI as well as inspector general’s offices at Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Health and Human Services and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The agents spent hours packing up boxes of documents, then loaded them into government vehicles and drove off without answering reporters’ questions.

The two agencies that were raided were Global Home Health Care and Decent Home Care Inc. The two Lewiston agencies to which the indictment refers are not named but are identified generically as Agencies 2 and 3.

A similar raid was carried out that day on Allen Avenue in Portland.

In July 2006, Guled arranged for Osman to be hired as his personal care assistant, according to the indictment. From that date until November 2008, Osman was paid by the two Lewiston agencies and the unnamed Portland agency to provide Guled with services. At various times in 2006 and up to around March 2007, Osman lived with Guled in his public housing, the indictment says.

Just a reminder, we wrote about how Maine’s welfare was a big reason that secondary migrants (Somalis who had been resettled elsewhere in the US) were attracted to Maine in the first place, here.

Think about it, if Obama’s expanded health care plan goes through there will be expanded opportunities to rip-off the taxpayer, not just in Maine, but from one end of the country to the other!

More Somali crimes reported on Debbie Schlussel

Thanks to Richard at Blue Ridge Forum for the tip, here is a post at Debbie Schlussel this week that includes some Somali crimes we hadn’t yet  heard of.

Please go read her post. 

Readers should know that in the first two months of this fiscal year, FY 2010, October 1- November 30th, 2009 we resettled 670 new Somali refugees.   See these handy statistics updated monthly, here.

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 (that we know of), but will be soon.  Nevertheless, thousands of Somali Muslims continue to be resettled as I write this.

Comment worth noting: Burmese in Bowling Green update and questions

Yesterday we had a comment from Cindy (an American friend of the Burmese) writing from Bowling Green, KY.  For new readers you might want to first visit this post that set in motion a controversy last month about the care, or lack of care,  Burmese refugees are receiving from their resettlement agency in an obviously overloaded refugee resettlement community in Bowling Green, Kentucky.

This is what Cindy asks yesterday in response to a post about the Office of Refugee Resettlement Match Grant program, here.

Recently, one refugee family in Bowling Green, KY was placed on Match Grant by the International Center.

They will receive $460.00. $240.00 is cash and the other $220.00 is a Walmart gift card. This is how the International Center will distribute the $$ from the Match Grant monthly. They are receiving Food Stamps. Why would International Center give them a Walmart Gift card in lieu of the $460.00 cash?

They said the International Center has not helped them to locate a job. They have been communicating with other refugees to locate employment.

Lovers Lane Apartments is charging $500.00 per month in their uncleaned roach infested apartments which needs to be turned into the Housing Authority once again.

I wonder how is this refugee family will come up with the $500.00 for rent in January? Will Lovers Lane apartments evict them immediately (from what I am told by other refugees) or will they go through the legal process for eviction by Kentucky law.

Answers anyone?   What’s up with the Walmart cards?  Do Walmart and the International Center have some sort of deal going on?   And, on the rent coming due issue, maybe the refugees could better use their entire ‘cash’ payment for rent?  Any lawyers out there who could help them with making sure Kentucky law is followed regarding evictions?

I know it makes no sense but it’s almost like the US State Department and the US Dept. of Health and Human Services (Office of Refugee Resettlement) and the volags (supposedly voluntary organizations but really federal contractors) want this program to explode because that is where it’s headed!   Eventually even the mainstream media will see behind the presumption of good intentions.