ORR Annual Report to Congress hot off the presses!

NOT!  It is three years late!

I was hoping to have a quick look at the long-awaited 2008 Annual Report to Congress from the Office of Refugee Resettlement before posting this, but unfortunately have run out of time today to skim through it.

Here it is! (thanks to a reader).  All of you who have asked me lately how much money is expended supporting refugees and asylees and where the refugees were resettled, this is the latest report and I encourage you to study it.

Next, to get the full picture of how the refugee program has fared in the great recession, we will have to start nagging for the 2009 and 2010 reports that are also late.

Rumford, ME gets a little colorful diversity

According to wikipedia, Rumford, ME had a population of just over 6,000 (in the 2000 census) and averaged 98.67% white.  So,  now thanks to a pair of Sudanese (refugees? asylees?) they have gained some of the vibrancy only diversity can bring to a small boring American town.

From the Sun Journal in Lewiston, ME* (the Somali capital of Maine!), two arrested for trafficking cocaine:

RUMFORD — A man and a woman from Portland were arrested early Saturday on charges of trafficking cocaine.
Michael O. Okot, 25, and Reaksmey C. Tang, 18, both of 155 Anderson St. in Portland, were charged with trafficking in schedule W drugs.

According to an arrest affidavit by Rumford police Cpl. Lawrence T. Winson, the two were arrested during a traffic stop Saturday just after midnight and found to have marijuana, crack cocaine and a digital scale.

[….]

Okot and Tang were transported to the Rumford Police Department without incident and then to the Oxford County jail. Okot’s bail was set at $30,000 cash, while Tang’s was set at $25,000.

*Lewiston is about 40 miles from Rumford.  You can thank the US State Department and Catholic Charities for the diversity they’ve brought to the old mill towns of the Pine Tree State.

Legal immigrants sure can liven up a dull town!

Wasn’t it just last week that federal refugee contractors were testifying before the State Department and pontificating about diversity being beautiful and now to prove it we have this morning  three examples of ‘diversity is beautiful’ from Maine to Louisiana—food stamp fraud diversity in Louisiana, terrorism diversity in NYC, and now drug-dealing diversity in Maine!  Wow! Can you feel the vibrancy?

One of those arrested in NYC terror plot was asylee

I predict this will be one of many stories from now into the future about Muslims who received asylum being involved in terror plots against the United States.

The refugee industry knows that the number of refugees admitted to the US in coming years will necessarily be diminished, and so the the big push by the Leftists in the open borders movement (including some among the federal refugee contractors) is to encourage the asylum process.   Indeed I have theorized*** on these pages that the volags and NGOs are actually helping people get to our borders and then instructing them to ask for asylum.

From Bloomberg News (Synagogue targeted by Islamic extremists) Hat tip, Ed:

New York police arrested two men who allegedly plotted a terrorist attack on an unidentified, major synagogue in Manhattan, authorities said.

Ahmed Ferhani, 26, a native of Algeria, and Moroccan immigrant Mohamed Mamdouh, 20, both residents of Queens, New York, were arrested in a sting operation last night after allegedly paying an undercover police agent for two Browning semi-automatic pistols, a Smith & Wesson revolver, ammunition and a grenade that they didn’t know was deactivated.

The men were described as “Islamic extremists” by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr., who said at a news conference today that the two suspects “did it for Jihad.”

Ferhani, who was unemployed, said “he was fed up with the way Muslims were being treated around the world,” New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said at the news conference, citing recordings of Ferhani made by the undercover agent. “They’re treating us like dogs,” Ferhani allegedly said.

I wonder does he know about the Israeli dogs?  But, I digress!

The heck with the melting pot—it’s the jihad stupid!

Ferhani would have been a boy of about ten years old when his parents received asylum (all you have to do is arrive here, and claim you are being persecuted back home), so he was clearly radicalized here and obviously didn’t buy into the American dream—two kids, a car, a job and a house—gee I wonder why?

Ferhani came to the U.S. in 1995 from Algeria with two siblings and his parents, who secured asylum, Kelly said. Ferhani, who was granted permanent residency under the asylum claim, has lived in Queens since, Kelly said. He was arrested at least once before and has served time in New York’s jail on Rikers Island, Kelly said.

Mamdouh, a livery service dispatcher, is a U.S. citizen by virtue of his parents’ naturalization.

***When I attended the 30th anniversary celebration of the Refugee Act of 1980 in 2010, it was evident that attendees had shifted some focus over to the afterthought-portion of that Act—the asylum process.   This is from a recent post, here.

In March of 2010, I attended the 30th anniversary celebration of the passage of the Refugee Resettlement Act of 1980Here is one post I wrote at the time.   I wondered then about how much of the conference was being devoted to talking about these immigration courts and asylum generally.  Now I realize that they have been at this for some time—expanding the use of the asylum process to get more and more immigrants into the US. A program that was originally expected to allow the odd ballet dancer to defect (according to Doris Meissner mentioned here) has become a major avenue for bringing third worlders into the US—heck, I guess the refugee program at 80,000 or so a year wasn’t doing it fast enough.

Asylum!  Remember that word!

Israelis have effective border guards—dogs!

The other day, Barack Obama insulted all of us who want to see our Mexican border sealed by joking and saying the next thing you know they [racists, xenophobes, hate mongers and Islamophobes] want moats with alligators on the border.   No, not yet, but how about dogs!  Dogs are effective against those sneaking into Israel on several levels including the fact that dogs are considered dirty in some forms of Islamic doctrine.

From Yahoo News:

RAMADIN, Palestinian Territories (AFP) – Palestinians desperate for work in Israel will go to extremes to sneak past the West Bank barrier, but now they face a new hurdle — army attack dogs sent to sniff them out.

Workers say the use of dogs to hunt down anyone trying to enter Israel illegally is a new phenomenon which has only been occurring for about two months.

But it is a development which has quickly spread fear and anger among the worker population living in the south Hebron Hills, one of the poorest areas in the occupied Palestinian territories.

The Israeli army readily admits to using dogs in its operations in the West Bank, but says they are only brought in as a way of protecting the sprawling separation barrier from Palestinian vandals looking to create openings which would allow “terrorists” to infiltrate Israel.

“In order to prevent damage to the security fence, the IDF (army) uses a number of different measures, including the canine unit and its trained dogs, while taking appropriate precautionary measures to avoid unnecessary injury,” the army said in a statement sent to AFP.

If the dogs don’t work out, they could try herds of pigs on the border.