SOS (Same old ….) Albuquerque, NM this time

Hunger strike!  When I saw the headline for this story—‘Refugees plight focus of woman’s hunger strike’—-I expected to read about a camp in Africa, Thailand or Nepal, not the United States.  This African woman is on a hunger strike in Albuquerque because refugees are living in abject poverty and she wants to bring attention to their situation.

Of course if you are a regular reader here you know the only new thing in this story is the woman’s means of getting attention.  State Department are you listening!   By the way, this coming week the federal refugee contractors (like Catholic Charities mentioned in this news report) will be getting together outside Washington, DC to decide how many refugees they will be bringing to the US next year.  This year we are on target to bring the largest number of refugees to the US since 9/11—yes, in the middle of the great recession.  So, I ask for the umteenth time—how humane is this?

From KOB News 4:

State and city lawmakers have met with a woman who was on day 16 of her hunger strike Friday.

Advocate Nkazi Sinandile, known as Mama Kazi, is trying to raise awareness for people who left their countries to escape violence and now live in Albuquerque. She says refugees are trapped in poverty because they can’t speak English and don’t have much job experience.

“I said enough is enough. When I see people digging for used clothes and household items. And a lot of them wasting away in their homes without jobs,” she said. The man who provides resettlement services to all exiles who move to New Mexico said many refugee families struggle to make ends meet.

“I would say, in many respects, the system is broken, particularly with the recession,” said Marshall Jensen, the director of the Center for Refugee Settlement and Support for Catholic Charities in the Archdiocese of Santa Fe.

Catholic Charities is contracted by the State Department to provide refugee resettlement services. For many families, Jensen said federal money runs out in four months.

Officials are now desperately looking for families and other groups to sponsor or support refugee families.  Why didn’t they think of that before they brought the refugees?

Albuquerque joins Fredericksburg, VA, Boise, ID, San Antonio, TX, Manchester, NH, Boston, MA, Pittsburgh, PA, Chicago, IL, Kansas City, MO, Bowling Green, KY and Greensboro, NC as overloaded cities.  I’m just naming those off the top of my head, there are more!  (Use our search function to see the same old story in each city.)

Ethiopian man murders wife and daughter in Virginia

Federal marshals are looking for an Ethiopian man who brutally murdered his wife and 3 year old daughter in Northern Virginia.  The little girl had her throat slit and marshals call the man a monster.   From the Washington Examiner:

U.S. marshals searching for a 34-year-old man they say killed his 3-year-old daughter and the girl’s mother at an Alexandria apartment.

Officers responded to a report of a domestic disturbance in a high-rise apartment complex on South Reynolds Street on April 11, and found 27-year-old Seble Tessema and her 3-year-old daughter dead. Police said Simon Asfeha used a knife to kill Tessema and slash the little girl’s throat.

“We’re not hunting a man, we’re hunting a monster. We need the public’s assistance in getting Asfeha off the streets as soon as possible,” says Rob Fernandez, commander of the U.S. Marshals Fugitive Task Force.

[….]

He has an extensive criminal history including multiple charges for assault, weapons violations, drugs and making threats. Asfeha should be considered armed and dangerous.

Was April Ethiopians gone wild month?  We reported earlier this week on the Ethiopian man who opened fire at a hospital in Tennessee and then killed himself.

I wonder is Asfeha a refugee or asylee—only his resettlement agency or immigration lawyer knows for sure.

Immigration driving the cost of education

Bottom line: immigration (legal and illegal) accounted for all of the increase in K-12 enrollment between 1999 and 2007.

That according to a new report published today by economist  Edwin Rubenstein at the Social Contract.  Hat tip:  Izzy.  According to a compilation of several studies the cost of education in the US is being driven by high levels of immigration.  In fact, enrollment of school age children would have leveled off and even declined by now if it hadn’t been for our high immigration rates.  

The ultimate driver for new school construction is rising enrollment – and the ultimate driver for enrollment is immigration. In fact, without immigration school enrollment would have declined in recent years…

Read it all.