Day: February 28, 2010

Michigan county to decide if they will do health screening for refugees

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This is a local issue, but it caught my attention because obviously this county government, Washtenaw County where Ann Arbor is located,  isn’t even fully aware that refugees are being resettled in their county—until now anyway.   A Michigan state office and a resettlement agency want the county to take on refugee health screening and the state is offering a measly $7,800 as payment for what is going to amount to ultimately tens of thousands of dollars in expenses. 

Just ask the Allen County Health Department located in Ft. Wayne, IN how much all this will cost in the end!  Seriously, County Commissioners, call Ft. Wayne!

Here is the full story from the Ann Arbor Chronicle:

Commissioners voiced several concerns over a new refugee health program, funded with $7,800 from the state Dept. of Community Health’s Office of Refugee Services. The program would pay for health screenings at the county health department’s clinic at 555 Towner St. in Ypsilanti.

In briefing the commissioners, Joanna Bidlack of the county administrator’s office reported that about 50-100 refugees settle in Washtenaw County each year, primarily in the Ypsilanti area. Currently they get health screenings from a clinic in Dearborn. The county was approached about this program by the state and the Jewish Family Services nonprofit, which serves as a refugee resettlement agency.

According to a cover memo on the resolution, the proposed medical screenings are designed to identify people with communicable diseases, or whose health conditions may impact resettlement – by affecting their ability to get a job or attend school, for example. The screenings would also identify conditions that might be grounds for exclusion (affecting their refugee status) or that would be significant enough to alert authorities at the relevant consulate.

The county health department currently provides some services to refugees – including tuberculosis screening and immunizations – without reimbursement.

In discussing the program, Wes Prater asked if these refugees are illegal immigrants. “I think we need to know if they’re illegals,” he said. Ken Schwartz said the status of “refugee” was a legal designation. His concern was whether they’d be bringing communicable diseases into the county.

Barbara Bergman raised another issue – if the screenings turned up a medical condition that needed treatment, then what? Who would pay for treatment?

Bidlack said she’d follow up, prior to their March 3 meeting, on the issues raised by commissioners.

The Commissioners have some good questions, but again I am struck by the fact that resettlement is going on in their county and they have apparently not been briefed (as required by law!) by the State refugee coordinator about what refugee resettlement means for them—costs of medical care, welfare payments, school expenses and the list goes on.  We had the same problem in the county where Judy and I live—the local government had no idea in 2007 what refugee resettlement meant for the community.

Reforms needed!

I’ll bet the supposed “reform” of the refugee program going on at the White House isn’t addressing the transparency issue for local governments.

NC Rep. Sue Myrick tries to have a dialogue with her growing Muslim constituency

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update March 1st:  Charlotte Islamic leader and Myrick critic connected to terror-funding group, here!

We have mentioned Rep. Sue Myrick (R-NC) on a couple of occasions at RRW (here and here), and Judy and I heard her speak in Washington a few years ago.  We were glad that someone in Washington was speaking as forcefully as she was about Islamic supremacism. 

However, this week she held a townhall meeting in her hometown of Charlotte, NC that turned contentious at times.   There are dozens of stories about this meeting you can find with a search on the internet, but here is just one I chose from the local paper, the Charlotte Observer.   I understand her desire to try to build bridges, but she will be attacked and continue to be attacked whenever she links terrorism to Islam no matter how truthful a point she makes.   This whole initiative, urging a public meeting, demonstrates a clever Muslim community (likely with Far Left backers) has targeted her for defeat in her re-election bid.  I don’t see where doing a public meeting benefited her at all and it looks to me that she was politically out-maneuvered. 

In a testy two-hour town hall meeting, U.S. Rep. Sue Myrick argued Thursday night that the threat of homegrown Islamist terrorism is real and defended herself against charges by local Muslims that she was spreading fear about their religion

Using charts, maps, handouts and even a video slamming a Charlotte TV station, the Charlotte Republican told the crowd of about 175 people, most of them Muslims, that she has never condemned Islam or linked moderate Muslims with terrorism.

“I’m talking about the sympathizers and supporters of a radical agenda,” she said. “It’s not that all Muslims are bad or all Muslims are trying to do this.”

Hoping to repair her relations with a Muslim community that has taken her comments over the years as inflaming hatred, Myrick said she agreed to the town hall meeting to “build bridges” with her Muslim constituents. She invited them to join her in opposing those who she said were “trying to hijack” Islam.

Several Muslim speakers at the Government Center in uptown Charlotte commended Myrick for sponsoring the beginning of a dialogue, and invited her to follow-up sessions at mosques around town.

Still, many of the questions and comments from Muslims showed an anger that has simmered for years over often-provocative comments by Myrick, a member of the House Intelligence Committee.

In 2003, for instance, she seemed to suggest that convenience stores run by Muslims might be havens for homegrown terrorists.

Read the whole article and note how this convenience store statement in 2003 was used against her.

On this point about convenience stores, Myrick’s staff needs to do some research so that she can answer this criticism more thoroughly because she is correct as we have reported many times on these pages (search ‘food stamp fraud’).  The federal government is raiding mostly Muslim-run or owned convenience stores in many states because of widespread food stamp fraud and in many of those cases the charges involve sending money overseas.   Here is one in her home state of North Carolina.  It doesn’t say the money is going to terrorist activity but you can bet the seed money to start these stores in many immigrant cities isn’t the result of some poor immigrant schlub scraping his few dollars together.  This scam is obviously a well-orchestrated and funded strategy to rip off American dhimmis initiated abroad.

I hope she had a comeback on the Timothy McVeigh comment as well, but the Charlotte Observer doesn’t mention one.

She would have also been wise to mention that one of 5 states where the 270 Illegal Somalis (possibly linked to the terror group Al-Shabaab) have been reportedly dispersed is North Carolina.  Why North Carolina?  It’s my guess that since North Carolina is being flooded with refugees by the US State Department (NC is in the top ten refugee receiving states), it becomes a good state in which to hide illegal aliens.  And, for some reason North Carolina is growing a large Muslim population and this is not happening by chance.  They need to get rid of Myrick (make sure she is not re-elected)  in order to move forward with their plans for a stealth jihad in North Carolina.

Catholic Charities criticised for treatment of gay Iraqi refugees

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

It is not clear which Catholic Charities neglected this gay couple, but it looks like Nashville Catholic Charities is one of the agencies that did not follow the Operational Guidance required by the US State Department as part of their contract with the government.   Here is the gist of the story from the Dallas Voice:

Two gay Iraqi refugees who are living in Houston came to Dallas for the Creating Change conference earlier this month seeking assistance.

After being kidnapped, raped, robbed and stabbed in Baghdad, Yousif Ali and Nawfal Muhamed escaped to Syria and were given refugee status by the United Nations. The United States granted them asylum.

But after arriving in the United States, Catholic Charities, which administers many of the federally funded programs for refugees, provided only limited assistance.

Other refugees are given furnished apartments. Ali and Muhamed were sent to different cities.

On his own, Muhamed made it to Houston from Nashville where Ali had been given a bare apartment and left to sleep on the floor. [This is a State Department no-no but we keep hearing the same story—bare apartment, no beds—from many cities in the US.]

They were housed near other Iraqis where they remained in danger and continued to be abused because of their sexual orientation.*

The Unitarian Universalist office at the United Nations, the only faith-based U.N. office with an LGBT refugee program, brought the pair to the Dallas conference hoping to find some help.

* In some Muslim countries homosexuals are even killed because of their sexual orientation.  Coincidentally we only last month heard a professor from Vanderbilt Univ. in Nashville confirm the Islamic prohibition about homosexuality.  When choosing a neighborhood in which to place refugees, Catholic Charities in Nashville should have been more knowledgeable about that Muslim prejudice and the Islamic (Shariah law) requirement that gays be killed.   Watch the film from Vanderbilt, here, at Jihad Watch.