This is an update on a story I wrote about just ten days ago, and didn’t think it was worth posting at first (you know, ho hum, same old story), but there was a bit of information that I found stunning.
So here is the story from the Twin Cities Daily Planet which began with the standard journalistic practice of telling a sob story (or do only Leftwing/mainstream media writers start with such stories?) about a woman who can’t send a few bucks to her starving relatives in the Horn of Africa because of new banking regulations.
By the way, it doesn’t start with the story of the Minnesota Somali women convicted recently (see how Minnesota political leftists are rallying around them) for sending money to the terror group—Al Shabaab.
Twin Cities Daily Planet (via Hiiraan):
Hassan was one of about 200 mostly Somali and Oromo protesters outside the State Capitol last Friday, January 6, demanding that the state and federal government come up with a solution to allow Africans in the diaspora to send remittances to loved ones in the Horn of Africa.
[…..]
Sunrise Community Banks, the last Minnesota bank to work with Somali-owned money services businesses (MSBs), stopped transferring remittances abroad on December 30. The Somali community has scrambled to figure out alternatives ever since.
It is not just in Minnesota:
….there have been growing fears that Somali-owned MSBs may help facilitate terrorist activity abroad. Concerns heightened after two Somali women from Rochester, Minnesota, were convicted last October of sending money to the terrorist group al-Shabab in Somalia.
As a result, banks in Minnesota, Ohio and Washington State — all centers of Somali refugee population — have stopped working with Somali-owned MSBs.
The closures aren’t new. Most corporate American banks cut off ties with hawalas in 2005, after Congress passed stricter banking regulations in a post-9/11 era. The regulations designated MSBs as “high risk.”
Then here is the part I found astounding!
From Minnesota alone, $100-120 million in remittances is sent every month through MSBs, part of a global two-billion-dollar industry, Hassan said. He added that the term “hawala” is actually a misnomer, since hawalas are informal businesses. Technically, hawalas don’t even exist in Minnesota, he said.
Up to $120 million a month? From Minnesota alone! Readers keep in mind that many Somalis are on welfare and receiving food stamps. Also note that earlier in the article we learned this:
Somali families typically send between $50 and $200 on a monthly basis to support the livelihoods of relatives in the Horn, she explained.
So, if I’ve done the math correctly that would mean there are 60,000 families sending $200 a month from Minnesota if they are each sending the highest amount we are given. If they are giving the smallest amount ($50) then there are 240,000 Somali families in Minnesota—no way!
We learned just this past October that the US Census Bureau estimates the Somali population in Minnesota has risen to 32,000! (I think the number is low, but that is what our government is saying):
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) – Minnesota’s Somali population is still the largest in the United States after a new Census Bureau estimate early Thursday raised the number of people of Somali ancestry in the state to more than 32,000.
That would mean that every man, woman, and child of Somali origin was sending $3750 a MONTH to Somalia. (LOL! Someone check my math!). No way, but if the $100 -$120 million number is accurate someone is sending a whole heck of a lot of US dollars to Somalia. Incidentally that census article says the average black family in Minnesota makes $27,500 a year.
Bottomline, there is a lot of money involved and so it is no surprise that Rep.Keith Ellison (first Muslim Congressman) and the Local SEIU leader were ringleaders at last weeks rally to demand that the banks reinstate the transfer of your money to prop up Somalia. In addition there must be lots and lots of money involved in the transfer “business” right there in Minnesota.
Changing the subject only slightly, it is the huge amounts of money involved (remittance money) that drives decisions on such things as TPS, here. Your social welfare money is propping up El Salvador too (while some, like certain people in Montgomery County, Maryland) are making money in the transfer business.