It’s the china shop rule—you break it you own it!

That is what Amnesty International says about Libya and that is how we also got tens of thousands of Iraqi refugees over the last four years or so—never mind that brutal dictators are gone and democracy is blossoming (well, maybe).

Here is a story from Voice of America last week that I never got around to posting:

European countries have been accused of a totally inadequate response to the refugee crisis on Libya’s borders. Hundreds of thousands of mainly sub-Saharan migrants were forced to flee Libya following the brutal crackdown on anti-government protests earlier this year.

[….]

Human rights group Amnesty International says they are being forgotten by the outside world.

Charlotte Phillips is a refugee activist for Amnesty.

“Many are from countries such as Somalia, Sudan, and Eritrea, countries where we know there are conflicts and people are being persecuted,” said Phillips. “These are people who have been displaced not just once, but twice. They’ve been forced to flee from their homes and they’ve been forced to flee again from Libya.”

Libya under Colonel Moammar Gadhafi attracted hundreds of thousands of migrant workers from across Africa and beyond.

[….]

Amnesty says just eight European countries have offered fewer than 700 asylum slots between them, and as Europe took part in the NATO bombing of Libya, it has a duty to take action.

“European countries can and must resettle refugees,” added Phillips.

Since Obama and his girls (Hillary, Samantha and Susan) helped to bring “democracy” to Libya by supporting the rebels, I assume Ms. Phillips will be telling us the same thing shortly (if she hasn’t already).

Check out how that rebel-run country is doing now, here!

Catholic Charities of Houston-Galveston accused of covering up sex abuse incident

Oh brother, here we go again!

Readers may not know that the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement doles out federal grants to all sorts of agencies and “church” groups to care for abandoned immigrant minors who have either entered the country illegally on their own, or been dumped by illegal immigrant or refugee parents on the move.  For more on ORR’s programs for unaccompanied minors, go here.

Turns out Texas has thousands of them (LOL! wanting a taxpayer supported college education I’m sure, but that’s another story).

This story is about how a multi-million dollar federally funded Catholic Charities agency in Houston is in deep doo-doo after allegedly attempting to cover up a sexual abuse incident last summer.

Here is some of the shocking report at the Houston Chronicle:

Senior management with Catholic Charities attempted to mislead federal officials about a sexual assault at St. Michael’s Home for Children, doctoring incident reports and failing to seek medical treatment for the child victim for days, according to a federal report.

The report, obtained by the Houston Chronicle, and a letter from the director of the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) detailed the findings of a federal investigation into a July 1 sexual assault at the north Houston shelter for immigrant children.

Managers with Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston “deliberately misled” federal officials about the incident, which involved the anal penetration of a child at the shelter and implicated two other youths housed there, according to federal documents.

The findings prompted ORR, which places children and teenagers caught crossing the border without family members into temporary care, to begin removing all the children and teens from the three area St. Michael’s shelters run by Catholic Charities – a process still under way.

In a statement issued Friday, Catholic Charities officials said that “when Catholic Charities learned of ORR’s concerns, the individual employee at St. Michael’s responsible for those concerns was subsequently terminated.”

“Catholic Charities is working with ORR and has every expectation that it will meet ORR’s recommendations and address its concerns and reopen the St. Michael’s Program soon,” the statement said.

The statement also said that Catholic Charities reported the sexual assault to Texas Department of Family and Protective Services officials within 24 hours of the incident, though state records show the incident was “self-reported” by the shelter on July 13.

Federal investigators conducted an unannounced site visit in August to investigate the sexual assault, reporting that the Catholic Charities senior management doctored initial reports to omit details of the sexual assault and tried to pressure staff not to disclose details of the incident to “protect the program,” according to the report.

“The ORR monitors found significant concerns, including the fact that management had full knowledge of the extent of the assault and submitted erroneous … reports to this office, which deliberately misled ORR,” the agency’s director wrote in a Sept. 8 letter to the president of Catholic Charities.

ORR moving the kids out.

On Sept. 8, ORR’s director sent a letter to Bonna Kol, the president of Catholic Charities Galveston-Houston, detailing the results of the investigation and saying the agency planned to remove all of the children from the organization’s care until the “corrective actions” called for in its report were addressed.

St. Michaels says with federal money (taxpayer funding) cutbacks they are closing anyway.

Joanie Wentz, vice president of development and communications for the organization, insisted the closure was not related to the July 1 incident. She said the St. Michael’s program, which is approaching its 25th anniversary, suffered a $1 million cut from the federal government in the last budget, reducing the number of beds from 88 to 52 and resulting in the layoffs of 19 employees.

The other day I told you about how much federal money was going to Catholic Charities of Ft. Worth, here—enough for  the creation of fiefdom, but chicken scratch compared to the Houston CC!   Check out how much government money goes to Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Houston-Galveston, the one crying poor mouth now.  Here is their most recently published Form 990.   Out of a gross income of $29 million, you, the taxpayers gave them $21 million that year!

So how many abandoned immigrant kids are there?  The Houston Chronicle goes on to report:

U.S. immigration officials placed 6,074 immigrant and refugee children in the care of ORR in 2009, the most recent data available. More than half of those – some 3,200 – were detained in Texas, the statistics show. [And, they need to go to college subsidized by you too—no they didn’t say that!—ed]

The Houston Chronicle reporter did a very detailed piece so I recommend you read the whole thing.

We have written a lot about problems in Houston, check out all the posts, here, where Houston is mentioned.

Palestinian refugees would not become citizens of a Palestinian state

This is the most unbelievable item I’ve seen in a long time. No, I guess it’s not that unbelievable, since it concerns Arab leaders.  The Daily Star of Lebanon reports:

BEIRUT: Palestinian refugees will not become citizens of a new Palestinian state, according to Palestine’s ambassador to Lebanon….

The ambassador unequivocally says that Palestinian refugees would not become citizens of the sought for U.N.-recognized Palestinian state, an issue that has been much discussed. “They are Palestinians, that’s their identity,” he says. “But … they are not automatically citizens.”

This would not only apply to refugees in countries such as Lebanon, Egypt, Syria and Jordan or the other 132 countries where Abdullah says Palestinians reside. Abdullah said that “even Palestinian refugees who are living in [refugee camps] inside the [Palestinian] state, they are still refugees. They will not be considered citizens.”

Abdullah said that the new Palestinian state would “absolutely not” be issuing Palestinian passports to refugees.

In addition, such a state would not settle the conflict over the “right of return.” That is the claim by Arab leaders that all the descendants who claim descent from an Arab who lived in what is now Israel has the right to move to Israel. The intention is to destroy Israel, since millions of new Arab residents would either vote or terrorize Israel out of existence.

Oops, that’s the old definition. Now there’s a new game:

The right of return that Abdullah says is to be negotiated would not only apply to those Palestinians whose origins are within the 1967 borders of the state, he adds. “The state is the 1967 borders, but the refugees are not only from the 1967 borders. The refugees are from all over Palestine. When we have a state accepted as a member of the United Nations, this is not the end of the conflict. This is not a solution to the conflict. This is only a new framework that will change the rules of the game.”

Furthermore, we’d still be paying billions to the corrupt Palestinian leaders:

The Palestinian Liberation Organization would remain responsible for refugees, and Abdullah says that UNRWA would continue its work as usual.

I’m focusing on the refugee situation here because that’s what RRW is about. But the article that pointed me to the news, by  David Meir-Levi  at FrontPage Magazine, contains quotes from other leaders showing that a Palestinian state is only the next stage in the continued fight to destroy Israel.

Note to commenters

Once again we are drifting into foul language in comments.  If you have commented recently and haven’t seen your comment posted, that’s why.  Just present your argument without name-calling and cursing—O.K.!

Also, I have offered several commenters (again) the opportunity to write a guest column about why the average American taxpayer, trying to make ends meet in his own family, should be taxed to support third world immigrants coming to the US with the encouragement of the US State Department and their contractors (and big industry employers who want cheap labor).  I’m still waiting for an essay based on reason and not on feelings of guilt.   After all, we have plenty of poor Americans who could use your care and attention.

Italian police clash with so-called “refugees” on Lampedusa

Here they come—Africans escaping the Arab Spring!

Before you read the story, watch this youtube clip (hat tip: Ed)!*

Now, here is the story from The Independent (emphasis mine):

The Italian island of Lampedusa, where 50,000 migrants have landed this year following political upheaval in north Africa, descended into chaos yesterday with hundreds of immigrants clashing violently with police and residents.

Tensions first erupted on Tuesday night when Tunisian detainees torched the holding centre on the tiny Mediterranean outcrop in protest at plans to repatriate them. Serious clashes broke out yesterday when about 50 residents pelted a large group of Tunisians with stones after the migrants had threatened to explode gas canisters by a petrol station at the port.

Some 1,200 migrants were relocated to a sports field where further clashes took place. Riot police with shields and batons herded them into the corner of a raised terrace and beat them, forcing many to drop 12ft into a courtyard to escape the blows, according to reports on Italian television.

Angry residents of Lampedusa surrounded the town hall, calling on the mayor, Bernardino De Rubeis, to take a stronger line against the refugees. The local population of 5,000 has often been outnumbered by migrants.

The mayor replied by saying, “I have to defend myself and am ready to use it”, before producing a baseball bat from a desk drawer in his office and showing it to journalists. “It’s like a war zone,” he added, calling on the state “immediately to send helicopters and ships to evacuate the Tunisians”.  [Mr. Mayor, eventually you will need more than a baseball bat!–ed]

The Italian government has made it clear that it believes most of the Tunisians are economic migrants and wants forcibly to repatriate them.

Economic migrants should go back to Africa, after all, they will have democracy now right!  Isn’t that what Obama and NATO told us?

The Corriere della Sera newspaper quoted the Interior Minister, Roberto Maroni, as saying: “Within the next 48 hours all the illegal immigrants on Lampedusa will be transferred from the island and then repatriated.”

UN (the backers of a multicultural nirvana/borderless world) says NO!

The United Nations refugee agency warned last week that the situation on Lampedusa was deteriorating because of the prolonged detention of Tunisians and people fleeing Libya – without any moves to determine whether they might qualify for asylum. The UN urged the Italian government yesterday to speed up the transfer of refugees from Lampedusa to more permanent centres. It said they were harming themselves and staging protests.

Until the recent mass influx of north Africans, Lampedusa was a quiet community that relied on fishing and summer tourism for a living. The endless flow of arrivals and the catastrophic effect this has had on tourism have seen tempers fray.

Coincidentally, reader Paul sent this report from Pew (also wishing for a borderless world) from last year showing that Italy was the only European country that gets it about the impact of immigration on the country—73% of respondents said immigration had a bad impact on Italy.  That was in January 2010!  Imagine what Pew would find today.

You might want to revisit my posts on Europe (beginning with this one) from a week ago.  The end is near.

* When I watched this clip, I couldn’t help think of  ‘The Camp of the Saints!’