Month: June 2010

New Australian Prime Minister: no “lurch to right” on immigration

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

They are coming on boats from everywhere trying to get into Australia, just as our Southern Border is being overrun by mostly economic migrants including Middle Easterners with possibly other motives, making illegal immigration a critical issue for new Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard.   Indeed the nearly two-month-long messy stand-off with the Sri Lankan Tamils may have diminished the voter’s view of Rudd’s effectiveness.*

From ABC News (Australia):

The issue of border protection is looming as a major challenge for new Prime Minister Julia Gillard as she approaches the election.

The arrival of boatloads of asylum seekers off Australia’s north-west coast has hurt Labor in the opinion polls, and the problem that eroded Kevin Rudd’s popularity in marginal seats is now Ms Gillard’s to deal with.

Ms Gillard says she will not “lurch to the right” but she does understand the fears Australians have about illegal arrivals.

“I do understand the anxiety and indeed fears that Australians have when they see boats intercepted,” she told the 7.30 Report.

“It does make people anxious. I can understand that, I really can.”

* Incidentally, remember those Australian asylum-seeking Tamil “bachelors” we resettled in Oakland, CA (here five days ago).  They are a prime example of how refugee/asylum decisions are made that have nothing to do with the legitimacy of the aliens’ case and everything to do with them being pawns in a larger political game.  It is clear to me that we took the Tamil’s to help Australia out of its political predicament.

Former refugee indicted for lying about involvement in Rwandan genocide

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Thanks to reader Jayson, here is more refugee crime news from New Hampshire.

From AP published in the Union Leader:

Concord–A New Hampshire woman charged in connection with the 1994 Rwandan genocide is related to members of a small group accused by a U.N. tribunal of being masterminds of the 100-day slaughter.

Beatrice Munyenyezi, 40, of Manchester was indicted Thursday on two counts of lying to obtain U.S. citizenship.

Federal prosecutors say Munyenyezi directed kidnapping, rape and murder during the genocide, in which about 800,000 people were killed during an ethnic bloodletting.

Shock of shocks!  She lied!

Prosecutors say Munyenyezi lied about her connection to the genocide when applying for entry into the United States in 1995. Because of the genocide, the State Department developed a Rwandan questionnaire* in an attempt to weed out genocide participants. Munyenyezi denied having any role in the genocide.

She entered New York City in March 1998 as a refugee. On applications for permanent resident status in 1999 and for naturalization in 2002, Munyenyezi stated under oath that she had never persecuted anyone based on ethnicity and that she had not participated in any crimes for which she was not arrested.

On April 29, 2003, Munyenyezi was sworn in as a U.S. citizen in Concord, N.H.

If convicted, Munyenyezi could be sentenced to 10 years in prison and stripped of her citizenship.

Read it all.

* Imagine that, a questionnaire!  Would anyone fill out a questionnaire to get into the US and admit that, heck yes, I helped kill people in Africa?

Poor starving Gazans — not!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Gaza Opulence is an entertaining but important blog post by Benyamin Korn on The American Thinker today. It begins:

It began with an innocent trailer on YouTube — a plug for a club called “Roots.”  The scene showed well-fed women wearing traditional Muslim head coverings but otherwise garbed in chic clothing enjoying themselves at the club’s “fine dining restaurant, banquet hall and terrace cafe.”  What was startling was the club’s location: in the heart of Gaza City.

You can watch the video. Korn comments:

Gaza, the territory which, to judge from international news media reports, is the most impoverished place on the planet earth.  Gaza, which is supposedly suffering from such terrible shortages that “activists” from around the world have no choice but to ram blockades to bring in desperately needed goods.  Gaza, which has managed to capture the sympathies of the United Nations, Europe – and even the White House.

He goes on to cite more examples of prosperity in Gaza — modern fishing trawlers, fancy wedding gowns, a traffic jam which includes late-model BMWs. These are from a New York Times photo piece about Gaza.

And on and on it goes, with each photo providing more evidence that the dramatic claims about impoverished Gaza, which are routinely used to bash Israel and justify billions in Western aid to Gaza are, at the least, vastly overstated.  See for yourself.

These are the pitiful refugees to whom Obama is sending hundreds of millions in aid. But truth doesn’t matter. The world is on a binge of Jew-hating, and the facts be damned.

State Department memo: resettlement agencies can say ‘no’ to more refugees

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

In another memo from the US State Department, resettlement agencies can say they have reached “capacity” and turn down placements as the end of the fiscal year approaches (FY 2010 ends September 30th).  The memo dated June 15th from the Office of Admissions, Bureau of Population Refugees and Migration begins:

The following revised end of fiscal year Adjusted Assurance and Placement Policy is designed to serve the best interests of refugees and to allow the USRAP to admit the greatest possible number of refugees in Fiscal Year FY (2010) within current domestic refugee placement capacities.  No agency or affiliate will be asked or expected to assure more refugees than it can competently resettle under the terms of the FY 2010 Cooperative Agreement.

Apparently to get out of one’s cooperative agreement, the agency can claim “unusual capacity challenges” within the agency or within the community (assuming they mean the broader community, ie. the city).   I guess I should be grateful that capacity in the community is even being addressed.

Frankly though this is a bit confusing.  How can the USRAP (US Resettlement and Placement) admit the largest number of refugees (they are aiming for 80,000 this year according to Obama) if a large number of agencies determine that they have “capacity challenges?”

I’m glad the State Department recognizes there are “capacity challenges,” but I wonder that it’s left to the agency to determine if they are competent to continue resettling refugees or need to halt resettlement especially since I view their work as a kind of ponzi scheme where they are paid by the head to resettle refugees—cut off those coming in and the money stops too!

Many times on these pages I’ve recommended that “capacity” of resettlement towns and cities must be determined in the local community by a legal process I’ve dubbed the ‘social and economic impact statement’ requirement.  It goes like this (patterned after the National Environmental Policy Act, EIS requirement):   In advance of refugee resettlement in a new town or city, or in an existing resettlement city, the federal government initiates a process to assess the capacity of the area to absorb refugees.  Both economic and social factors would be considered.  There would be PUBLIC hearings where experts would report on the job market, schools, health system, affordable housing and so forth.  There would also be a frank discussion about whether the community wants diversity.

If the report produced by such hearings was favorable to refugees, a limit would be set on the number of refugees that locality could handle over say a 2 or 3 year period.  The “capacity” would be regularly reassessed.

The federal government would also assure there would be no unfunded mandates for the state, county or city.

LOL!  Don’t hold your breath that this reform will show up in the White House reform expected out this summer!

AP confirms Detroit refugee resettlement to resume

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update June 24th:  Debbie Schlussel has some good comments on this story, here.

I told you the other day about the State Department memo where the State Department gives its blessing for more resettlement of Iraqis in the Detroit area.  Here is an Associated Press story on the announcement.

DETROIT – The U.S. State Department has decided to relax a two-year-old policy that limited refugee resettlement to the Detroit area because of Michigan’s struggling economy.

An influx of Iraqi refugees have come to the area in recent years, many of whom were attracted to the Detroit area because of its large Middle Eastern population. But authorities said two years ago only those with close relatives could resettle there, in part out of fear that they would be unable to find work.

Now, the State Department says anyone with family and friends can come to the area, Lawrence Bartlett, the department’s deputy director of refugee admissions, told The Associated Press.

Why do they say they can lift the restriction—because they got more of your federal tax dollars to redistribute.

One big reason for the change was the State Department’s decision in January to double the payments to resettlement agencies on behalf of each refugee to $1,800. That money is designed* to help refugees with their expenses, such as food and housing, for up to 90 days.

With the increase, “we were able to take a new look at this restriction,” Bartlett said.

Meanwhile in the Detroit area, Christians are arrested attending an Arab festival.

By the way, those Iraqis flowing to Michigan are both Christians and Muslims.  If they weren’t getting along in Iraq, why would we assume everything will be peachy in Detroit?

* “Designed” is the operative word here, readers should know that the agency gets to keep some of the money for its own overhead.  The program was originally ‘designed’ as a public-private partnership.  That means that the agency was supposed to raise money on its own to contribute, but over time most volags (the big federal contractors) and their subcontractors are largely funded by taxpayers’ dollars.