Day: June 3, 2013

Mostly Christian refugees to be repatriated to Burma; US to end program for them

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This story has been languishing in my posting queue for weeks, so I thought I better get it posted so as to keep our archives up to date.

Thailand’s Mae La Refugee Camp

After taking tens of thousands of Burmese refugees to the US, and turning cities such as Ft. Wayne, Indiana into the Burmese capital of America we are now saying, it’s o.k. for the rest of you to go back home.    Truth be told, I think we’re bored with the Burmese Christians and are planning to make room for Burmese Rohingya Muslims to diversify our refugee collection (after all that is only “fair”, right?).  We have already taken some Muslims from Burma.

This is the AP story from early last month:

Since the day she was born, 20-year-old Naw Lawnadoo has known almost nothing of the world beyond the fence and guard posts that hem her in with 45,000 others — ethnic minorities from Myanmar and those like her who were born and raised in the Mae La refugee camp in neighboring Thailand.

School, family, friends, shopping and churchgoing — many of the refugees are Christian — have all been confined to a valley of densely packed bamboo-and-thatch huts huddled under soaring limestone cliffs.

Now, she and other camp residents face a future that will dramatically change their constricted but secure, sometimes happy lives. With the end of 50 years of military rule in Myanmar, aid groups are beginning to prepare for the eventual return of one of the world’s largest refugee populations — some 1 million people in camps and hideouts spread across five countries.

The US took-in about 92,000 Burmese refugees in recent years.

Some may melt into Thailand, joining the 2.5 million migrant workers from Myanmar. A few may be resettled in third countries, though the United States is ending a program under which it has taken 80 percent of the 105,000 settled so far. With shrinking options, most will likely have no choice but to return.

While camp life is hardly cosmopolitan, some of the young can meet foreigners, have access to the Internet and occasionally slip out to a nearby town, or even the shopping malls and bright lights of Bangkok, Thailand’s capital. For them, the prospect of planting rice in isolated villages to which they would probably go holds little attraction.

I guess it wouldn’t.

Just goes to show the fickle nature of the US State Department’s refugee admissions program.

Bowling Green, KY a growing Muslim community, the result of refugee resettlement

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Someone needs to tell Senator Rand Paul what is happening in his home town.

A mosque in Bowling Green. Saudi money?

Here is a gushy, politically correct, story (entitled: Growing Diversity) on the huge Muslim population in Bowling Green, but not one word about those Iraqi refugee terrorists convicted there last year.

From the Bowling Green Daily News (hat tip: Robin).    By the way, the Bosnian migration was a Bill Clinton project.  He wanted to help his meatpacking friends get some cheap refugee laborers.  I’m guessing he sold out America in exchange for some campaign cash from meatpacking giants.

But, you can bet that Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) was perfectly fine with it, or Kentucky wouldn’t be as high as it is on the list of states “welcoming” refugees.  The Bush State Department contributed also to the demographic change we see today.

Daily News:

When Sulejman Hasanovic moved to Bowling Green 15 years ago from Bosnia, he recalls the few Muslims who lived in the community at the time meeting in homes to worship.

Now, Bowling Green has two mosques and an estimated 7,000 Muslims, who make up about 10 percent of the city’s population. They have emigrated from as many as 23 countries, including Burma, Iraq and Russia.

Even with such a presence, Hasanovic still meets people who aren’t aware of Bowling Green’s Muslim population.

“It’s a big shock for them. They’re like, ‘Oh, you’re here,’ ” he said. “But after 15 years, I think people are getting used to us here.”

Thank USCRI!  That is the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants one of the primary resettlement contractors working in Bowling Green.  And, coincidentally that contractor is run by the woman, Lavinia Limon, who was Bill Clinton’s director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement during the initial Bosnian importation.  Back to the story:

A growing Muslim population

As they have in Bowling Green, Muslims have become part of the national fabric, with about 2.5 million living in the U.S., said Lawrence Snyder, associate religious studies professor at WKU. Bowling Green has one of the highest percentages of Muslims in the state, and it’s rare for a city of its size to have two mosques.

“For the most part, they have been welcomed without much backlash,” Snyder said. “I think that says a lot about the nature of our community.”

The large growth of Bowling Green’s Muslim community occurred in a relatively short amount of time because the city is seen as a good place for refugees to resettle and a lot of those refugees happen to be Muslim, Snyder said.

“In some ways it’s just kind of a quirk of history,” he said.

What the heck—a quirk of history! 

Snyder wants you to believe these Muslim refugees “found their way” to Bowling Green ’cause from a continent away they heard Bowling Green was lovely.  Bowling Green was targeted by the US State Department and its resettlement contractors.  The US State Department planned this demographic change! Maybe someday we will know why!

The rise of Muslim immigrants is not limited to Bowling Green, but is a trend across the nation as well.

Compared to 20 years ago, a smaller percentage of new U.S. green card recipients are coming from Europe and the Americas and a growing number are coming from Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and North Africa, according to a report from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

In 2012, Muslims made up about 10 percent of new legal immigrants to the U.S., compared to 5 percent in 1992, according to the report.    [This is the study we told you about here.—ed]

To learn more about what “diversity” has brought to Bowling Green, we have an entire lengthy archive on this Kentucky city.  I think we first became aware of problems in Bowling Green in April 2008 when a Bosnian teen would-be robber was shot and killed by a homeowner.  The homeowner was exonerated.

The photo is from this blog which has photos from other mosques in Kentucky as well.

I’m AnnC@refugeewatcher on twitter. Please tweet this and also follow me!

Eric Hoffer explained Palestinian refugees — in 1968

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The wise Eric Hoffer — the longshoreman who became a philosopher — said this in 1968, and it’s true today.  As quoted by Fred Gottheil on American Thinker:

The Jews are a peculiar people. Things permitted to other people are forbidden to the Jews. Other nations drive out thousands, even millions, of people and there is no refugee problem. Russia did it; Poland and Czechoslovakia did it; Turkey drove out a million Greeks, and Algeria a million Frenchmen; Indonesia threw out heaven knows how many Chinese — and no one says a word about refugees. But in the case of Israel, the displaced Arabs have become eternal refugees. Everyone insists that Israel must take back every single Arab. …  Everyone expects the Jews to be the only real Christians in this world.

The only update would be all the instances of nations driving out people since then.  And we can add that some people would like the United States to take all those other refugees in. Israel still has to take the Palestinians, and all their descendants.

Militant Islamists riot in Bangladesh, including militant Rohingya

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment
Rioting in Dhaka yesterday. Which one of these Islamists do you want in your town?
Photo: Dhaka Tribune

Watch for it, Muslim hardliners are trying to overturn the Muslim government of Bangladesh as riots broke out in Dhaka in recent days.

Here is the story from the Dhaka Tribune:

 Fearing militant attacks, law enforcers  have kept close and constant surveillance on at least 40 Islamist groups in the country.

According to the intelligence department, supporters of those Islamist outfits are plotting to launch militant attacks by whipping up the masses through anti-government propaganda.

The members of law enforcing agencies were asked to remain vigilant and report anything suspicious by those Islamist organisations.

The 40 Islamist groups under intelligence watch are: International Khatme Nabuat Movement, Arakan Rohingya Force, Islamic Solidarity Font, Arakan People’s Army, Liberation Myanmar Force, Arakan Mujahid Party, Rohingya Independence Force, Rohingya Independence Army, Rohingya Patriotic Front Al-Harat-Al Islamia, Tauhidi Janata, World Islami Front, Jumaatul Al Sadat, Sahadat-e-Nabuat, Allahar Dal, Islamic Front, Jamaat As Sadat, Al-Khidmat, Hizbullah Islami Samaj, Muslim Millat, Sharia Council, Ahle Hadis Andolan Bangladesh, Dawati Kafela, Hizbul Mahdi, Bangladesh Anti-terrorist Party, Al Islam Martians Brigade, Jommiat Ahle Hadis Andolon, Jommiatul Ehzia Utraz, Hayatur Ilaha, Sattabad, Anjumane Talamize Islamia, Kalemar Jamaat, Tazir Bangladesh, Forkan Movement, Sahaba Parishad, Ketal Bahini, Eshar Bahini, Al Fahad, Horkatul Mujahidin, Mujahidin-e-Tazim, Jadid Al-Kayda, Al Markajul Al Islami and Jamatul Falaiya.

Intelligence sources said the parties are mainly active in the Baitul Mukarram Mosque area and Chittagong district.

The Chittagong district is where tens of thousands of Rohingya are living.

Why do we care?

We care because the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (the largest of the top nine federal refugee contractors) testified that they want to resettle Rohingya from Bangladesh to your towns!

Here is what Anastasia Brown told the US State Department on May 15th, in her testimony for the USCCB:

…we strongly believe that the Rohingya in Bangladesh should receive a Priority Two designation from the U.S. government, allowing them to be resettled as members of a persecuted group.  [Meaning that someone need only say, I am Rohingya so therefore I am persecuted.—ed]

This is our 147th post in our Rohingya Reports category.  We have followed the “humanitarian” agitators public relations campaign to bring more Rohingya to the West ever since we began RRW in 2007.