Month: May 2010

Don’t tell me they are STILL thinking of an Iraqi airlift!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Oh geez, this is an idea that the Far Left at John Podesta’s Center for American Progress was floating awhile back—airlifting tens of thousands of Iraqis to the US (with a Guam stopover for processing and a security check), see here.  Now it appears that the idea is still being discussed.   Here is my question, if there is going to be a bloodbath as we begin to pull our troops out of Iraq later this summer, should we be leaving?  Is Obama going to make sure we do have another Vietnam?

This is Travis Wheeler writing at Change.org (where else!):

The withdrawal of some 50,000 U.S. troops from Iraq is underway, and expected to wrap up by summer’s end. While a lighter U.S. military footprint in Iraq is a welcome development, it’s likely to leave thousands of American-affiliated Iraqis — the interpreters, engineers, economic experts, and others who’ve lent a hand to security and reconstruction efforts — even more vulnerable to Islamic extremists who’ve promised “nine bullets for the traitors.”

At this late stage, drastic measures are probably needed to avert a humanitarian catastrophe. Yet, by their nature, eleventh-hour efforts can only bear modest fruit. Without a doubt, many U.S.-affiliated Iraqis will be overlooked in the rush to save even a few, while others — those understandably unenthusiastic about the prospect of leaving their homeland, friends, and family behind — will gamble that their already star-crossed fortunes won’t take yet another turn for the worse with the departure of American soldiers, contractors, and aid workers.

The upshot of these realities is that many American-affiliated Iraqis won’t benefit from, for instance, a last-ditch airlift operation to the Pacific island of Guam. These people will be forced to navigate the non-emergency resettlement channels that have managed to resettle precious few of their fellow Iraqis. Why is the United States doing such a poor job of getting its Iraqi allies out of harm’s way and resettling them?

List Project report cited

Wheeler directs readers to this report from The List Project, “Tragedy on the Horizon.”  I haven’t read it but I sure hope they too aren’t looking to airlift tens of thousands of Iraqi refugees to the US because they know full well how screwed up the Refugee Resettlement program is right now.  They know that we don’t have the resources in our floundering economy to do the job.  They know that some Iraqis who have been resettled want to go back to the Middle East and their own culture.

Incidentally while you are visiting The List Project, note the map of the Middle East showing where Iraqi refugees have resettled and make note of a fact we have reported many times at RRW—rich Muslim Saudi Arabia takes no refugees!  So much for Muslim charity.

Leave no Iraqi ally behind

That is the name of the political campaign Change.org is kicking off with this news.   They want people to sign their petition (in sidebar) and thus build momentum for more Iraqis to be resettled here, and likely build momentum for a crisis airlift at some point.

As of April 30th (FY2010) we have resettled 10,201 Iraqis, the highest number of any ethnic group of refugees this year so far.  Our overall ceiling for refugees from the whole world is 80,000 for FY 2010.  If that number is reached it will be the highest number we have taken since before 9/11.  Meanwhile jobs are few and some refugees have been evicted from their apartments, others have returned to the Middle East…..and the beat goes on.

We are a blog, not an agency of the government

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I wish I didn’t have to say this again, but we have been getting more and more requests for us to help people get into the US.  Prospective immigrants/refugees even send us their case numbers and other personal facts.  We have stated clearly on this page that we are a news disseminating publication only.

Just before one signs in to comment we have this statement prominently displayed:

We are not a refugee resettlement agency, do not appeal to us for assistance in getting in to the US!

In addition, we have placed a notice to the same affect across the top of RRW which when opened says this.

Sorry, we do not publish any comments that are appeals for help.   Frankly, that is the UN’s job and the US State Department’s job.

Head Start and some funny money business makes the news….

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

….but not too much news.   That theme is the gist of this piece at Big Government by Robert Bluey a couple of days ago.   An undercover investigation has unearthed proof of major scams on-going with the program and Bluey argues that this should be as big news as the ACORN scandal has been.

Arguably, the Head Start scandal deserved front-page headlines on newspapers across America last week. Outrage over ACORN centered on the group’s taxpayer funding. The total amount of federal funds that flowed to ACORN was about $53 million dating to 1994.

Head Start, a Great Society program created in 1965 for low-income children, received $9 billion — yes, billion — in appropriations and stimulus funding last year alone. Over the lifetime of the program, it has cost taxpayers more than $150 billion.

There are more than 3,300 Head Start programs operating in America, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. A government-funded impact study criticized the effectiveness of the program earlier this year. Given the cost of the program and the group of people it primarily serves, Head Start deserves some much-needed scrutiny.

Read the whole Big Government article.

Until a few years ago, I never gave Head Start a second thought and in the back of my mind I assumed it was run from government offices at the state level, but apparently not so.   Again, at least in the case I’m familiar with, it is one of those programs that is run with taxpayer money passed along to unaccountable non-profit groups (I loathe this concept of public-private partnerships!).

What got me thinking about this a few years ago is that the Virginia Council of Churches quietly began resettling refugees in the county where I live (that, by the way, also was the genesis of this blog) and in the course of researching who they were, imagine my surprise, when I learned they were almost completely funded with tax dollars.    The biggest portion of their income comes from Head Start.   See this pie chart from their 2007 annual report.  (Incidentally, this is 2010, what is taking them so long to put up more recent annual reports?).

In 2007, almost 58% of their funding came from Head Start.  And, do you see that 17.5% from Church World Service, that is really your tax dollars passed through from the federal government to Church World Service to Virginia Council of Churches for refugees.    The Episcopal Migration Ministries money is also likely passed through from the Feds.  Add up the other pieces of the pie and it looks to me that only 2% of their income comes from other sources and the church. Readers should know that there is virtually no federal financial auditing of this federal money and since Virginia Council of Churches claims to be a church, they don’t file a Form 990 with the IRS that I have ever  been able to find.

And, this is interesting, they do their lobbying through something called the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy.

On matters related to public policy in Virginia, the Council of Churches works in special cooperation with The Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy. Each year, the Council considers the legislative agenda that is developed by the center and upon action of the Coordination Cabinet of the Virginia Council of Churches, endorses and supports the agenda.

I sure hope none of your money (for refugees or Head Start) is passed through to promote “social justice” political causes!

For your serious consideration—-Head Start is grabbing young minds early.  They’ve gotta separate kids from parents, that is the clear agenda of the Far Left!

Teachers in Lewiston school to be moved out because test scores are below average

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

O.K. sounds like your standard public education problem—test scores are low, teachers blamed, feds want changes and have offered money to bring “change” faster.  But, what is the whole story?

We have written many many times about Lewiston, Maine a city coping with the joys of diversity and multiculturalism.  Here is a story yesterday (to add to our growing Lewiston archives) from the Sun Journal entitled, ‘Longley school staff sad about changes.’  Hat tip:  Susan

…. “it’s very sad here now,” said veteran school secretary Pauline Valliere. “Everybody’s bonded together. There are close relationships. … It’s being broken up.”

Longley is one of 10 Maine schools offered federal money to improve persistently low test scores. Longley could get as much as $2 million to try to improve its test-score standings.

But the money comes with a catch: Grant providers want dramatic improvement and change. Half of the school’s teachers, and the principal, have to go.

Half of Longley’s 20 teachers will be transferred to other Lewiston schools this fall; 10 other teachers will be assigned to Longley.

[…..]

The changes have some Longley staffers feeling bruised. They’re worried that new faculty may not understand their students.

Who are their students?

An estimated 96 percent of Longley students qualify for free and reduced lunches; the state average is 42 percent. Situated in the city’s poorest neighborhood, for years many Longley students began kindergarten already academically behind youngsters the same age in other neighborhoods. In recent years, Somali families have moved in, which means 62 percent of the students are learning to speak English.

Another telling sign is that at Longley there is no parent-teacher group. “We can’t get parents to come in,” said secretary Valliere.

Students don’t speak English and parents are not involved with the school, so what are a new principal and a bunch of new teachers going to do about it?  One solution is a longer school day.   Oh, brother!

Help is needed, Hayes (Linda Hayes who works in the cafeteria) said, but she questioned what any teacher could do when her sixth-grade class has 26 students, half of whom cannot speak English well enough to learn their lessons.

The Longley plan in the grant application proposes to boost student learning in part through longer school days and a longer year for students who need more learning time.

There is something missing here.  This doesn’t make sense.  What will a new bunch of different teachers be able to do?  Unless the entire school becomes a school for foreign students, the American students will still be held back in classrooms dominated by immigrant/refugee students.  Test scores cannot improve under those circumstances.

Last month I told you about DeKalb County, Georgia which has a whole separate school for immigrant children, here.  But I wonder about that too.  Didn’t we long ago make separate but equal schooling illegal?   Are we returning to that?  I have to admit I don’t follow the trends in public education since my family left the public school system going on two decades ago for homeschooling and private schools.

My advice: get out of the system— homeschool your kids (it is not that hard) or find a good and affordable private school.

For new readers, more Somalis are on the way:

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.

Through the Refugee Resettlement program alone 2141 legal Somalis have already arrived in this fiscal year (2010) as of April 30th with an unknown number arriving through other legal programs and  illegally across both our borders.

Former Congressman issues another call for moratorium on immigration across the board

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We reported in April that former Virginia Representative, Virgil Goode, had called for a moratorium on all immigration.  Today at Frontpage magazine Goode repeats that call.

If we really want to put Americans back to work, we need a moratorium across nearly all categories of legal immigration. A moratorium will free up jobs for American citizens, reduce the stress on social services, and allow the immigrants already here to assimilate.

The only people who will lose out from a moratorium are the ethnic interests who want new constituents and the business lobbies who want cheap labor. Unfortunately, both political parties are more concerned with the well-being of these special interests than the well-being American citizens.

Read it all!