However, Obama has a chance in just a few weeks to redeem himself with the Muslim world and open the gates wide.
Watch for it! Syrian refugees to get big boost in FY2014 Presidential determination?
What Arab News is referring to here (below) is that by the end of September Obama will submit to Congress his annual determination letter which will lay out his Administration’s wishes for which refugees and how many will be admitted to the US in FY2014. Here is information on his FY2013 request. By the way, for those of you who sent testimony to the State Department in May this is the culmination of that process.
We will be watching for it. And, we are told that Members of Congress “NEVER” make changes—too preoccupied, too lazy or too chicken to do so?
Should Western governments get a free pass on accepting Syrian refugees? Certainly not, although they will find it politically hard to accept large numbers of Muslim refugees*.Nevertheless, the West must demonstrate its willingness to bear part of the burden. So far this fiscal year, the US has admitted just 33 Syrian refugees. The new fiscal year will permit President Barack Obama to provide for a significant number of Syrian refugees within the 70,000 total allotted to the US refugee program. In turn, the US willingness to accept more refugees can also help accelerate resettlement efforts by other Western countries. Under normal US procedures, resettlement could take a few years. So as the United States has done with Indochinese and other refugee groups, it must expedite processing.
The President also has the authority to go well beyond 70,000. That number just happens to be the number they have been stuck on for several years.
* Note that there is never any suggestion of saving the Christians!
According to one more report on the topic, “community leaders” are trying to counter the recruitment efforts they believe are still on-going in the “Somali community” in Minneapolis. Here is the latest on that film we reported here last month.
American-born Omar Hammami aka Abu Mansoor Al-Amriki may now be dead, killed by Al-Shabaab leadership who got sick of him.
This is the news at KAAL.TV.com. Give ’em jobs and they won’t go to Africa to kill people!, but the fallacy in that argument is that those who have gone back “home” to join the terrorists were well-educated Somalis with excellent prospects for employment.
Leaders in the Somali community are fighting hard to beat back a ramped up recruitment effort following a sophisticated video. The video depicts men who traveled from Minneapolis to Somalia for jihad and is being used as a recruiting tool.
Community leaders say as many as 40 Somalis have disappeared from Minnesota since 2006. That’s double the estimate reported previously. Many have turned up on battlefields in Somalia.
Headway is being made, though, as community leaders say they are winning over the community and convincing young men to ignore Al Shabaab. However, a high unemployment rate in the Somali community makes the population vulnerable.
As a result, an effort is underway to provide training and job skills to Somalis.
American stuff and American jobs just don’t cut it when Allah calls!
Just ask Omar Hammami aka Abu Mansoor Al-Amriki (if he is still alive that is!).
I have no interest in re-telling the story of an American-born Muslim (Mom is Christian, Dad is Syrian Muslim) who grew up a normal kid in Alabama and went to Somalia to become a Jihadist. Here is our complete archiveon Hammami.
Rumors of his demise have surfaced several times over previous years, but it looks like he may now be dead for sure—killed by his Al-Shabaab former buddies who aren’t really happy with their recruits from the West. They turn them into handy suicide bombers!
Read Al-Amriki’s story here at TheStar Phoenix. He has been hunted by Al-Shabaab leaders for some time and his fate may have a chilling effect on recruitment in Minneapolis say experts.
For new readers: We should have made a special category for ‘Somali missing youths’ (former refugees) who went to Africa to join the Jihad. Since we didn’t, just type those words into our search function and you will probably get at least 100 posts on the topic going back to 2008.
Also, I used to put this (below) information at the bottom of most of my posts on Somalis, but haven’t recently. I know we have a lot of new readers who probably don’t know the background so here is a place to start:
We have resettled more than 100,000 Somali refugees to cities large and small in the US over the last 25 years (more than 25 now). See one of the most widely read posts here at RRW. Large numbers went to Minneapolis, and now they are spreading out throughout the state. In three years since 9/11 ( Bush years 2004, 2005, 2006) the number of Somalis arriving topped 10,000 per year. Those refugees then began bringing in the family (chain migration!) until 2008 when shock of shocks! the State Department discovered that as many as 30,000 Somalis had lied about their kinship and weren’t related at all. The State Department then closed the “family reunification” program for Somalis. It has recently been re-opened for new and legit family members, but they have no intention of finding and deporting the liars.
Since RRW isn’t really about food stamp fraud (although it’s become a side interest of mine especially as it relates to immigrants as the perps), here are three quick mentions of the latest scams found in my alerts.
For my critics who say I purposefully pick out immigrant fraud cases, I’ve thrown in the rare case of the fraudster being (apparently) an American because it is such a novel (creative!) case of fraud and I wanted you to see it.
First is one of our many ‘Mohammed’ arrests and convictions and an update of the story we postedhere(“big fish” indeed!).
Authorities say the owner of four dollar stores in northern New Jersey has admitted to a scheme in which patrons were allowed to make more than $5 million in fraudulent food stamp transactions.
Essex County prosecutors say 49-year-old Muhammed Farooq of Somerset pleaded guilty Wednesday to theft by deception and agreed to forfeit $832,830.
He faces up to seven years in state prison when he’s sentenced Jan. 6.
So, where did the rest of the $4 plus million go—out of the country?
Now to Waltham, Mass. where another man with Middle Eastern origins has been indicted.
BOSTON (MyFoxBoston.com) – The manager of a Waltham convenience store has been indicted in connection with the fraudulent use of the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP), known commonly as food stamps.
Attorney General Martha Coakley’s Office announced Wednesday that 30-year-old Hassan Mounajed, of Fall River, had been indicted on charges of procurement fraud, conspiracy to commit procurement fraud, larceny by false pretenses, access device fraud over $100, and conspiracy to commit access device fraud.
An American food stamp fraudster! Readers, honestly about one in ten of the cases I see in my alerts involve people with American names.
A Raleigh tattoo parlor is accused of taking hundreds of dollars in welfare benefits for tattoos, Raleigh Police say.
Warrants show Raleigh police learned in early 2013 that Ink Addiction Tattooz at 2012-B Poole Road was accepting Electronic Benefit Transfer cards as payment for tattoo work.
Court documents show an informant purchased tattoo work from owner Clifford Craig Tittleusing two EBT cards. The informant also sold Tittle two more EBT cards.
Through further investigation, the U.S. Department of Agriculture found four instances of tattoo work being paid for using EBT cards.
