Month: April 2010

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!

Roy Beck at NumbersUSA: Immigration has undercut environmental progress

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Thursday is the 40th anniversary of Earth Day.  Roy Beck is the President of NumbersUSA and today he has a message for America about how the high levels of immigration (legal and illegal) have an unsustainable impact on our environment.  For the rapidly increasing numbers of immigrants we lose open space as we must provide land for schools, roads, housing, and as the population expands we will undoubtedly see a degradation of air and water quality as well.   As Beck points out in his message today, I too wonder why the leftwing Democrats don’t see that.

Sustainability was the big idea 40 years ago when much of the nation’s attention was drawn to the events and news of the first Earth Day. I was a cub newspaper reporter covering the events. And I remember well that an important theme in 1970 was that sustainability required the U.S. to begin to stabilize its population after having added the SECOND 100 million in just 55 years.

Well, now we’ve added the THIRD 100 million in less than the 40 years since that first Earth Day and we’re on pace to add the FOURTH 100 million even faster!

[….]

Nearly all of the population growth is caused by the increases in immigration that Congress ordered or allowed since 1970. For every restriction and cost that the government has put on us since then to improve environmental quality, it has negated part or all of the benefits by forcing high population growth through radically increased immigration numbers.

[…..]

Without all the increases in immigration, our communities would have around 250 million inhabitants right now, with little likelihood of ever going over 265 million.

Instead, because of a quadrupling in legal immigration numbers, we have more than 310 million inhabitants and are on a trajectory to cross 600 million well before the end of this century!

How the Sierra Club and to a lesser degree the Natural Resources Defense Council sold out the environment. 

I’ve written a lot of posts on the subject here, here, here and here for starters.  Readers need to know that the Sierra Club and NRDC * are part of the far left, pro-union, pro-open borders Apollo Alliance which is credited with drafting the stimulus bill to redistribute the wealth (as Van Jones would say) to an increasing number of the world’s poor while hiding behind a faux green jobs agenda.  Heck, one Apollo Alliance board member—John Podesta of the Center for American Progress— is a big open borders advocate and the CAP pushed for an airlift of 100,000 Iraqis to the US last year when we have no jobs let alone the mythical “green” ones.  And, would someone explain to me how all the immigrants Podesta is pushing won’t compete with the union workers supposedly represented by union leaders on the Apollo Board.

* I note that since I wrote my first post on the Apollo Alliance that Frances Beinecke, President of NRDC, has gotten off the Apollo board (I’m glad I had copied the board of directors list in that earlier post), and she doesn’t even mention her Apollo Alliance role in her bio, here.  I wonder why?

One more thing:  After I posted this, I searched NRDC’s website and found only one obscure mention of the Apollo Alliance in reference to an employee who had previously worked there.  Interesting—not proud of their earlier key role on the Board of the Apollo Alliance?

Episcopal Migration Ministries lobbies for more money, forget meaningful reform

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Episcopal Migration Ministries held its annual conference in Washington, DC recently so that they could lobby Congress for more money for the refugee program.  They call it “reforming” the program but I have doubts we will see any meaningful reform anytime soon—it’s all about the funding stupid.

Before I proceed with more of this recent news about the lobbying campaign, I remind readers that critics of the financially struggling Episcopal Church USA claim the church is staying afloat with the money it receives for refugee resettlement.  See a post here, in March, that is the second post we’ve written on the subject.  I don’t know if its true, but it warrants looking into.   The first reform we should be demanding is that the volags (supposedly voluntary agencies) undergo regular rigorous financial audits.  Readers are probably surprised to learn that there are no financial audits required at this time.

From Episcopal News Service:

The U.S. Department of State works with and funds 11 volunteer agencies — five of them faith-based, including EMM — and the State of Iowa Bureau of Refugee Services to resettle refugees in the United States. Each year, Congress and the president determine the number of refugees permitted to resettle in the U.S.; for 2010 they set the ceiling at 95,000.

What?  Where did we pick up an extra 15,000 refugees for FY2010?  The Presidential Determination letter for 2010 put the ceiling at 80,000 (the highest number since before 9/11)!   And, by the way, the State of Iowa has dropped out of the refugee program and a Kurdish volag has stepped in to bring refugees to your town (see links in this post).

Throughout the four-day conference, EMM offered training for its frontline staff, including job development in today’s economy and church co-sponsorship, and in areas specific to its partners, the Department of State and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement.

Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees and Migration Eric P. Schwartz gave the conference’s keynote address April 14 and praised EMM and its affiliates for their work.

“Your ministries and your network are important partners in refugee protection,” he said. “In the last fiscal year you resettled some 5,000 refugees through 31 affiliates in 21 states, which is a marked increase from previous years, and you are managing your network responsibly through opening offices in new locations, all during a very difficult economic period,” he said.

Schwartz also talked about the doubling of the reception and placement grant — $900 to $1,800 — passed by Congress for 2010. But, as important as the funding increase is in addressing refugees’ immediate needs — a roof, a clean bed and basic assistance — more still needs to be done for refugees. To that end, Schwartz said, it’s important for the State Department and resettlement partners to “stay the course.”

“The White House is leading a comprehensive effort to review the resettlement program and we will remain deeply engaged in this enterprise,” he said. “We will be working closely with the White House and the Department of Health and Human Services to secure additional job training, education, cash and medical assistance in the months that follow reception and placement.”

The White House reform is a joke!

There isn’t any real reform coming from the White House whose main mission is to make it easier for more refugees and asylees to get into the US (more voters!) and to redistribute wealth.   They don’t care about the biggest problem they have—too many refugees (immigrants) causing stress for communities and potentially social unrest (remember crisis brings change!) like the extreme kind in Los Angeles yesterday (here too) and resettlement agencies running amok mostly because they are overloaded and unmonitored and simply demanding more money, more money, more money!

Cities have reached their capacity to absorb more needy people and the powers that be have no way of knowing what that capacity is.  Rumors are circulating that some locations have told Schwartz’s shop in the State Department to stop sending refugees.  We know for sure that Fredericksburg, VA is one of those and San Antonio, TX  and Boise, ID officials were expressing the same concern just in the last few weeks.  How many more are there?

So how do the powers in Washington assess a community’s capacity to take in more refugees—they don’t, and they don’t have a clue how to go about it.  I do!

Reform suggestions from me

Regular readers know that this is a reform proposal I’ve been harping on for years.  We need social and economic impact studies done for each city or town that is, or is proposed to be, a resettlement city.   This federal study would be patterned after the Environmental Impact Statements (EIS) required by the National Environmental Policy Act which requires that when a major federal action is proposed for a location a public hearing is held and all pertinent information is reported to the public.  A finding is made as to whether the impact on the community is significant.  In the case of the EIS a determination might be made to not proceed with the project.

I envision a similar study for resettlement cities.   Economic factors such as job availability, housing, medical care, schools etc. would be incorporated in the study.  Public input would be obtained.  Contrary to the present view that resettlement should be done in secrecy so that citizens won’t be able to object, a full public debate on how many refugees will be brought to a community and from where they might originate will cause less social unrest then the sneaky strategy employed today.

I repeat:  if the State Department and the volags cannot sell the program to the community with all the facts on the table then maybe it’s not a good fit for the community!

The strategy employed obviously since the inception of the Refugee Act of 1980—keep pouring refugees into certain cities until people scream—stinks!    It’s not good for the refugees and it’s not good for social cohesion.

If at the conclusion of the initial Social and Economic Impact study it was determined how many refugees a city (town, county) could manage, only that number would be resettled.  After a given period of time —three years, five years(?)— a new study would be ordered that would determine whether the city had the capacity to continue at that level or be increased or decreased based on changing economic and social conditions.

And, of course, I continue to suggest we remove all the middlemen volags from the program—-it should be run through the State Department and each State’s refugee agency.  All the churches and other caring groups could provide true charity by giving their own time and private resources to the refugees.  They just would no longer handle the taxpayers’ money.

SOS (Same old ….) from Chicago

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The New York Times has a story this week (another story!) about how refugees are left in the lurch in Chicago.  (Check out Friends of Refugees, here for more details).  I just wanted to focus on this one section of the article.

Even as budgets are slashed, arrivals are surging. Since 2003, refugee arrivals in Illinois have increased 175 percent, and the number of countries sending refugees has gone to 60 from 31. Iraqi refugees, according to the United States Office of Refugee Resettlement, went from zero to 1,298 from 2006 to 2009, making Chicago home to the second-largest Iraqi population in the country after Detroit.

Readers should know that in the wake of 911 the number of refugees brought to the US was dramatically (and I mean dramatically! reduced) so it’s a little disingenuous to use 2003 (39,201 refugees) as a benchmark year.  As a matter of fact, in 2000 we resettled 91,960 refugees ( a much higher figure than today, in 2008 it was 60,192—still down by a third from 2000 levels).   Budgets have not been slashed—the amount of federal funding of the refugee program has just been dramatically increased! 

And, by the way, although we know Detroit is a huge reciepient of refugees, San Diego claims they are number one for Iraqis (here).

Illinois and nine other states received more than half of all incoming refugees to the United States in 2008, the last year for which data is available. Yet severe cuts in financing —Illinois will receive $2.8 million in 2010 for resettlement services, down from $7.5 million in 2000 — have strained the budgets of local resettlement agencies.

Once again, cherry picking numbers to make the point they want to make which is—- wahhhhh! we need more money from the taxpayer.   In 2000, 3207 refugees were resettled in Illinois. If the $7.5 million figure is correct that means it cost  the taxpayer a whopping $2338 per refugee (every man woman and child!) to resettle them in Illinois.  To paraphrase the Burmese refugee I heard speak in March in Washington, DC (here), ‘where did all the money go?’

Then note that they say Illinois is only getting $2.8 million for FY 2010, but there is no information about how many refugees are to be resettled in Illinois for 2010.  Is it possible that the numbers are being greatly reduced for Illinois this year because of all the refugee horror stories reported there?   The reporter (or more accurately whoever was spinning the story for the reporter) is comparing apples and oranges.

Gee, was it Ed Silverman spinning and whining?

What was once a public and private partnership has become increasingly private, said Ed Silverman, who directs the Illinois Bureau of Refugee and Immigrant Services.

We’ve told you about Mr. Silverman before, here and here (Ethiopian resettlement agency is discussed here too!), and about how refugees are left in the lurch in Chicago.   What he is telling the NYT is a flat out lie.  The resettlement agencies were supposed to be public-private partnerships but have definitely become increasingly funded by the public—with your tax dollars—as we have noted ad nauseum on these pages!   Some resettlement agencies are as much as 90% and up funded by you.  That doesn’t leave much for the private portion, does it?

For new readers:  If you are interested in numbers of refugees arriving in previous years and to what states they were initially resettled, start your research, here.

Update:  Geez!  It never ends.  Here Friends of Refugees has another post this time about Church World Service and its cohorts crying for more federal funding for refugees.

Muslims vs. McDonalds

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

If I were a betting person I would put my money on the Muslims especially since you can be sure that CAIR is already on the scene.  CAIR is the Council on American Islamic Relations (aka the Muslim Mafia) and if I were a betting person, I’d bet CAIR is behind this.   An immigrant from Bangladesh was told she could not wear her head scarf while working at McDonald’s in Detroit. From UPI:

DETROIT, April 14 (UPI) — A Muslim woman in Michigan says she was turned down for a job at McDonald’s because she wears a headscarf or hijab.

Nasihah Barlaskar, 19, the daughter of immigrants from Bangladesh, has filed a discrimination complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission [many critics call the EEOC CAIR’s handmaiden-ed], the Detroit Free Press reported. She alleges she failed to get a job at a McDonald’s restaurant in Rochester Hills because of religious bias.

In an interview with the newspaper, Barlaskar said a manager asked her during a March 27 interview whether she was required to wear “that thing,” referring to her headscarf. She said she responded: “I do. Is that a problem?”

The manager told her she would not be able to wear the hijab on the job, she said.

Meanwhile other western countries are actually attempting to ban the hijab, most notably Canada, Belgium and France.  I haven’t followed the news that closely on the issue in those countries so I don’t know where it stands, but will report it here when I find out.

Just for your information, Bangladesh is a Muslim country that has been making the news lately for its attacks on Rohingya Muslims seeking refuge there.  Because Bangladesh is discriminating against its co-religionists we have begun resettling Rohingya to the US.   That is a whole other story that you can learn about in our Rohingya Reports category here.