Day: April 20, 2010

SOS (Same old ….) Boston this time

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Boston again, Iraqis again, evictions again, no jobs again, International Institute screws up again, commenters almost uniformly critical again!

I am truly sick to death of these stories.  We’ve had Fredericksburg, VA, San Antonio, TX, Boise, ID and Chicago, IL recently reporting the same story—no jobs, refugees suffer, resettlement agencies screwing up, some refugees are sorry they came, citizens ask why we are doing this!

From the Boston Globe:

“This is the tip of the iceberg. [Iraqi] families are coming to Chelsea on a weekly basis,’’ said Rushdan. “Housing and jobs. That’s what they need.’’

According to the Massachusetts Office for Refugees and Immigrants, 5,836 refugees have arrived in Massachusetts since 2007, including 1,199 from Iraq, the biggest refugee population in the state. Of those, 214 Iraqis were resettled in Greater Boston.

Unemployment and homelessness affect other refugee populations, but those who work with refugees say Iraqis are especially vulnerable.

Read the whole sorry tale.

Only two things I want to comment on.  First this case involves the International Institute in Boston.  We heard about them involved in a screw up with refugees in New Hampshire here last year.  International Institutes are USCRI (US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants) affiliates.  The former VP at USCRI now heads the whole refugee program in the Department of Health and Human Services—the revolving door in action.

Now look at this segment of the Globe story, does this sound like a woman who loves the refugees and her work?  Sounds like she doesn’t like Iraqis very much at all.

Carolyn Benedict Drew, International Institute president, said she agreed that the financial assistance was inadequate but also said many of the Iraqis came from well-to-do families and had higher expectations than refugees from poorer backgrounds.

“If somebody has been in a refugee camp all of their life, and has never really used a fork and spoon, that’s a very different expectation in coming to America than somebody in Iraq who was a physician and did very well,’’ Drew said.

What the refugees and the resettlement agencies can agree on is that before the Iraqis immigrated, they were given unfounded promises about America from refugee agency workers in Iraq.

“People were sometimes promised things, or perhaps misunderstood, before coming, that a car would be waiting, that they would have a home, that they could continue their medical practice. And that’s clearly not the case,’’ said Drew.

I can’t tell you the number of times we’ve heard this complaint, that someone is telling Iraqis that everything is great in America and they will be provided for.  Can’t the State Department get this rumor-garbage under control!

Then here we go again, Bob Carey of the filthy rich International Rescue Committee whining about not having enough tax payer money!

Carey, of the International Refugee Committee, said the problem lies in the formula used to calculate how much money and how much time refugees need to become independent: It was devised during better economic times.

“The program is not working because it’s reliant on people going to work, and that’s not happening in this economy,’’ said Carey, whose group shuttered its Boston office in 2008 because it felt it lacked enough money to effectively help the refugees here.

We told you about the corporate humanitarians at the IRC closing their Boston office here last spring.  I’ve speculated that all of these Iraqis suffering stories are legit but fueled by an International Rescue Committee media campaign to get more federal funding for the resettlement industry.  You know crisis begets change!   Maybe the IRC could use some of its own millions to help refugees.  I just this week came across a funder list for the filthy rich IRC—check it out here!  Those millions are in addition to the nearly 100 million they get from the taxpayers of the US.

Oh, just one more thing.  If the IRC felt that Boston did not have the “capacity” for more refugees last spring then why in hell is the State Department still sending refugees to Boston to another agency for more refugees to suffer this year?

P.S.  Be sure to read the comments at the Globe story!  And, visit Friends of Refugees where Christopher Coen posted this story yesterday.

Send in the National Enquirer to find the missing illegal Somalis!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

That is the suggestion of radio talk show host Roger Hedgecock writing at World Net Daily yesterday!  The National Enquirer has gotten so good at investigating maybe they could show the FBI* a thing or two.   Although obviously meant to be humorous there is a grain of truth in the suggestion in addition to a bit of news I didn’t know about this case (for background see Judy’s recent post)!

Anthony Joseph Tracy has been arrested on charges he conspired with the Cuban Embassy in Kenya to smuggle some 300 Somali young men into the U.S. Immigration officials are “concerned” about Mr. Tracey’s admitted contacts with the Somali terrorist organization Al-Shabaab, an al-Qaida ally.

In support of the charges, Justice Department attorneys told the federal court that prosecutors had “issued numerous subpoenas, reviewed Department of Homeland Security records and conducted witness interviews throughout the U.S., as well as in Australia and Africa.”

The feds allege that Mr. Tracy got the Somali men visas from the Cuban Embassy in Kenya. The Somalis then traveled from Kenya to Dubai to Moscow to Cuba to South America to Mexico – then entered the U.S. illegally across the Mexican border.

No evidence was presented as to how poor young Somali men could afford such an expensive, circuitous travel itinerary.

However, under questioning by Federal District Judge Leonie Brinkema, the feds admitted that they could not identify any of the Somalis smuggled into this country or identify where in the country they might be. The judge threatened to dismiss the charges unless the government could produce evidence that even one of the Somalis was actually illegally in the country and was here through the efforts of Mr. Tracy. [Wow!  I did not know that Tracy could escape prosecution if they don’t find any evidence that these guys are in the US–ed]

So far, the federal government cannot find any of these Somalis.

Send for the National Enquirer.

Good idea! 

* By the way, shouldn’t the Secret Service and the FBI have known about John Edwards affair with a staffer that was ultimately exposed singlehandedly by the National Enquirer?

Not everyone is fleeing Somalia

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Some are going to Somalia…..

The Washington Post published a story on Saturday that would lead readers to believe that the brutality of Al-Shabaab (Islamic supremacists) was driving everyone from Somalia.  No doubt the brutality of SHARIA LAW is responsible for the flight of thousands of refugees, but nowhere in the front page story does it mention that some Somalis from the so-called Diaspora in the West are going to Somalia to join the Jihad.*

Nowhere does it say that Al-Shabaab supporters are busy recruiting in the Somali “community” in major US cities (use our search function for ‘missing Somali youths’ for our dozens of posts on the subject), and nowhere in the story does it mention that Al Shabaab may be responsible for sending 300 Somalis across our Mexican border over the last year—Somalis who have disappeared into American Somali “communities.”  It is all about the suffering of the refugees.

Many are running from al-Shabab’s radical dictates and increasing savagery, as well as fears of a major government offensive. [Later in the article there is a mention that people fear the US is going to attack Somalia—this is the ‘US is bad’ template–ed]

[…..]

“If they could all afford to come, not a single person would remain in Somalia,” said Allawi, 37, seated with her children on the reddish, sunbaked earth a day after they arrived. “There is no freedom in Somalia, only death.”

[…..]

Yet al-Shabab, which the United States has labeled a terrorist organization, now controls large swaths of Somalia. It has imposed Taliban-like Islamic codes in a region where moderate Islam was once widely practiced. Urged on by Osama bin Laden, the group has steadily pushed into Mogadishu, importing foreign fighters and triggering U.S. concerns that the movement could spread to Yemen, across East Africa and beyond. Somalia’s government controls only a few blocks of Mogadishu and has little legitimacy elsewhere.

This strikes me as just one more story planted by the Far Left refugee industry to play on our sympathies so that we open our doors to thousands more Somali refugees this year.

For new readers, more Somalis are on the way:

For information on Somali missing youths, American citizens who have gone to Somalia to learn the Jihad trade, some leaving through Mexico, use those search words.  We have written dozens of stories on the case.  For more on Al-shabaab (sometimes spelled Al-shabab) also use our search function.

The US State Department has admitted over 80,000 Somali refugees to the US (this linked post continues to be one of the most widely read posts we have ever written) in the last 25 years and then in 2008 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 by the State Department as I write this. We recently learned that we will be taking 6000 Somalis this year from one camp in Uganda and as many as 11,000-13,000 total from around the world.

* Update:  Here is an annoying story about maligned Muslims in the US that discusses the recruitment of the poor disinfranchised Somalis and others.  I’m posting it here so I don’t lose the link—nowhere does it place the blame on the Islamic religious  imperative to fight Jihad.

Oh, and here is another link I don’t want to lose from Loganswarning, an excellent blog on Islamic supremacism—the call has gone out for Muslims around the world to fight the final jihad!