Day: July 13, 2011

Sounds like Obama Administration snow job on Iraqi refugee terrorists today

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Here is the first story (from Bloomberg) I’m seeing on the Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing today on just how those Iraqi alleged terrorists got into the US through the Refugee Program.  Sure sounds like it was a complete waste!

Obama administration officials defended policies for admitting Iraqi refugees into the U.S. at a Senate hearing on preventing terrorists from entering the country.

Programs such as granting special immigrant visas for Iraqis working on behalf of the U.S. government were intended to fulfill a “special responsibility” to these people, Janice Jacobs, assistant secretary of state for consular affairs, told the Senate Homeland Security Committee.

Officials make “every effort to streamline” the visa process while ensuring that those who receive them “do not pose a threat to the security of the United States,” Jacobs said.

Concerns about the program were underscored by the May arrests in Kentucky of two Iraqis who had entered the U.S. through the resettlement program and were charged with conspiring to provide weapons, money and other support to al- Qaeda in Iraq.

Senator Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican, urged tougher controls in granting the special immigrant visas. He said he didn’t fault the government for “missing the needle in the haystack, but you need to make the haystack smaller. It’s hard to know who your friends are and who your foes are.”

About 58,000 Iraqi refugees have come to the U.S. since 2007, with about 30,000 still in Iraq who have been approved for resettlement, said Senator Susan Collins, a Maine Republican and her party’s ranking member on the committee.  [possibly a few more needles in the hay stack!—ed]

I’ll see what other stories I find tomorrow.

By the way, these Special Immigrant Visas were one of the last “gifts” we got from Senator Ted Kennedy in a late night maneuver before he left to join Mary Jo (oh, that’s right he and Mary Jo are likely in different places).

New twist on food stamp fraud: buy guns with food stamps!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

New readers probably want to know what food stamp fraud has to do with refugees—-not much except that refugees use a lot of food stamps and the subject interests me.

As a matter of fact, according to the 2008 Office of Refugee Resettlement Annual Report to Congress(p.93), food stamp use is at 50% (in 2008) for all refugees, but at 61% for Middle Eastern refugees.  Could they have figured out how to turn their food privileges into cold hard cash (and guns!).

Here we have several Mohammed’s indicted in Ohio for food stamp fraud—Millions of dollars worth this time!

From the Dayton Daily News:

DAYTON — A federal grand jury indicted two men on food stamp fraud and other felony charges in connection to alleged illegal trafficking activities at several Dayton businesses that resulted in police raiding those stores in May.

The indictments — unsealed last week by the U.S. District Court Southern District of Ohio — show charges were filed against Mohammed Zaid, who owns A&M Meats at 1609 Gilsey Ave., and Mohammed Qaqa, an employee at Food City, 1829 Germantown St.

[….]

Al-Idu Al-Gaheem, the owner of Cup of Dreams and Five Pillars Market and a local imam, allegedly received more than $2.5 million in food stamp reimbursements from the federal government, between $890,000 and nearly $2 million of which was from “unexplained” food stamp charges, according to an IRS agent’s affidavit in support of seizing Al-Gaheem’s bank account.

New meaning for phrase guns or butter:

During a 13-month period, Qaqa, 29, is accused of selling 11 handguns to a confidential police informant while he worked at Food City. Qaqa allegedly sold the guns in exchange for $1,220 in cash and $390 worth of food stamps, according to the indictment.

For more on food stamp fraud just type those three words into our search function and you will find dozens of posts on immigrant food stamp fraud—the big stuff, turning cards into cash/sending money to the Middle East.  I’m not interested in the petty stuff.  And, my fervent hope is that one day a real investigative reporter will come on the scene who will expose the convenience store food stamp scams—how for instance are all these little stores being bought up by Middle Easterners?

Another diversity is strength alert from Portland, Maine

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Reader Susan sent a short story about the opening of a murder trial in Portland where an African immigrant (refugee? asylee? diversity visa lottery winner? illegal alien, who knows) from the Democratic Republic of Congo who killed his supposed friend also from the Democratic Republic of Congo but aided in the murder by his friend from the Sudan whose brother was killed in another incident when the brother pulled a gun on the police a couple of years ago and the African community blamed the police.   Golly isn’t diversity just great!  Sure does liven things up and keep the police busy!

Here is the opening of the trial for Daudoit Butsitsi.   His murder victim Serge Mulongo had a brother awaiting trial for manslaughter and drunk driving, here last year.

Here is a story about the original arrest and Moses Okot (the brother of the guy the police shot in an earlier confrontation).   There was some reference in one story I read to Okot’s large family so maybe there are more brothers yet to come.  More here.

And, here is what I posted about the brother of the accomplice in the second murder getting killed two years ago.

Oh, and I wonder what happened to Sudanese Jimmy Odong who gave the police a good chase in 2009, here.

Did you follow all that?   There is more.  Use our search function for Portland to see what I mean.

Oops!  Almost forgot, just last week I reported that the police had a nearly 8 hour stand-off with a multicultural mix, here.

By the way, Portland is also where the immigrant “community” wants the right to vote even before becoming citizens.

What are they all doing in Maine?  Maine in the past was a “welcoming” welfare state where Catholic Charities has been busy resettling refugees.

Action Alert from NumbersUSA: Help kill the diversity visa lottery

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

[This is cross-posted from Potomac Tea Party Report]

Yesterday I said Asylum was the great American immigration scam, but then there is the Diversity Visa Lottery and Temporary Protected Status, etc.—I just can’t make up my mind which is the most outrageous!  And, next time someone says ‘I’m o.k. with legal immigration, it’s illegal immigration that I don’t like,’ ponder the Diversity Visa Lottery.

I venture to guess many of you may never have heard of one more of our LEGAL immigration programs that is truly outrageous— on a par perhaps with the Temporary Protected Status I’ve written about here and plan to write more about today or tomorrow.

Right now I am talking about the Diversity Visa Lottery!  Every year in its infinite wisdom, the US State Department runs a lottery for immigrants to come to the US PERMANENTLY called the Diversity Visa Lottery (because we don’t have enough diversity!).    Go, here (faint of heart? do not open!) and see the list of the one hundred thousand semi-finalists in the 2011 lottery (12.1 million applied).

Just for fun I picked out the countries with the most applicants in the final round:

Ethiopia: 5,200

Kenya: 4,689

Egypt: 4,251

Bangladesh: 5,999

Iran: 2,819

Tomorrow the House Judiciary Committee is voting on a bill to kill this program and NumbersUSA urges everyone in the following House districts (listed below) to contact your member of Congress this afternoon and early tomorrow.

Here is what Numbers says:

The U.S. House Judiciary Committee votes tomorrow (Thursday) on what would be the first law to REDUCE immigration since 1924!!!!

It would be a small but significant step of killing the Visa Lottery and ending the practice of randomly selecting more than 50,000 new permanent immigrant workers every year from countries that have the least ties with the United States.

With 22 million Americans unable to find a job, there is no need for the Visa Lottery that randomly doles out 50,000 visas to individuals with no special skills. These people will invariably compete with America’s unemployed for the few jobs our economy is creating.

The visa lottery promotes massive illegal immigration by people who think they may some day win the lottery and be allowed to stay in the United States. The late Barbara Jordan, as Chair of the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform, recommended the elimination of the visa lottery.  [People who have already gotten into the US either illegally or on some other visa can apply for this lottery too—ed]

Although the Democrats are most likely to vote against this bill, don’t let them off the hook. Demand to know why they would support giving away 50,000 U.S. jobs a year through the lottery instead of letting the unemployed in their own District have those jobs.

Here are the Members of the Committee who need to hear from you!  Tell them no changes, no shifting of the 50,000 number to some other immigration program.

PHONE NUMBERS for JUDICIARY COMMITTEE MEMBERS

ARIZONA

REP. TRENT FRANKS 202-225-4576
REP. BEN QUAYLE 202-225-3361

ARKANSAS

REP. TIM GRIFFIN 202-225-2506

CALIFORNIA

REP. HOWARD BERMAN 202-225-4695
REP. JUDY CHU 202-225-5464
REP. ELTON GALLEGLY 202-225-5811
REP. DARRELL ISSA 202-225-3906
REP. ZOE LOFGREN 202-225-3072
REP. DAN LUNGREN 202-225-5716
REP. MAXINE WATERS 202-225-2201

GEORGIA

REP. HANK JOHNSON 202-225-1605

FLORIDA

REP. SANDY ADAMS 202-225-2706
REP. TED DEUTCH 202-225-3001
REP. DENNIS ROSS 202-225-1252

ILLINOIS

REP. MIKE QUIGLEY 202-225-4061

INDIANA

REP. MIKE PENCE 202-225-3021

IOWA

REP. STEVE KING 202-225-4426

MICHIGAN

REP. JOHN CONYERS 202-225-5126

NEW YORK

REP. JERROLD NADLER 202-225-5635

NORTH CAROLINA

REP. HOWARD COBLE 202-225-3065
REP. MELVIN WATT 202-225-1510

OHIO

REP. STEVE CHABOT 202-225-2216
REP. JIM JORDAN 202-225-2676

PENNSYLVANIA

REP. TOM MARINO 202-225-3731

SOUTH CAROLINA

REP. TREY GOWDY 202-225-6030

TENNESSEE

REP. STEVE COHEN 202-225-3265

TEXAS

REP. LOUIE GOHMERT 202-225-3035
REP. SHEILA JACKSON LEE 202-225-3816
REP. TED POE 202-225-6565
REP. LAMAR SMITH 202-225-4236

UTAH

REP. JASON CHAFFETZ 202-225-7751

VIRGINIA

REP. RANDY FORBES 202-225-6365
REP. BOBBY SCOTT 202-225-8351

WISCONSIN

REP. JIM SENSENBRENNER 202-225-5101

Here is more at NumbersUSA about the bill, check out whether your Member of Congress is a co-sponsor!  I note that Maryland’s two Republican Members of Congress are NOT co-sponsors.

Watch NumbersUSA instructional videos on Immigration numbers, here.