Maybe you’ve seen this news, it all happened earlier this summer.
Just last Friday, we gave you an update from Syracuse where another Catholic Church became a mosque and it makes me wonder—in how many cities is this happening?
Former St. Johns Catholic Church with crosses now removed.
On Saturday, July 12, I sat down to talk with Feisal Elmi, a representative of the Darul Uloom Islamic Center, the new owner of the buildings on East 5th Street previously occupied by St. John’s Catholic Church and school.
As a former Catholic, I didn’t know much about Islam, so Feisal began with the basics.
After the basics of Islam are discussed:
The center’s goal is to be a catalyst for the growth of small business in the community, and its leaders see East 7th Street as a prime location for Somali stores and restaurants, akin to the Karmel Mall in South Minneapolis.
Somali refugees are still arriving from that war-torn country. Feisal told me that the first wave of Somali immigrants to Minnesota were refugees, but tended to be from the wealthier strata of Somali society, while the most recent ones are in more desperate circumstances. A couple of generations ago, many of them were Ethiopians who fled to Somalia; now, they are seeking to escape the strife in Somalia. The former rectory at St. John’s is housing some of these new arrivals, and the center will provide assistance in finding them permanent housing***. As with many mass inflows of refugees, they are sponsored by religious agencies (in this case, Lutheran Social Services), and must qualify for refugee status under federal law.
[….]
An Islamic center is something new in our neighborhood, but it wasn’t all that long ago that the St. John’s campus was the religious home of newly-arrived Irish immigrants, and Sacred Heart Catholic Church that of the German Catholics. If there’s one constant about the East Side, it’s that it’s always changing.
***It sounds like this Somali Center has become a refugee subcontractor, if the reporter has this right.
How did we get so many Somalis in Minnesota?—thank Catholic Charities, Lutheran Social Services and World Relief Minnesota (Evangelicals). Read all about itat one of our most read posts (from 2011).
“Why work when money just pours in from Western Union regularly?”
Update August 12th: More on remittance culture in Breitbart article about illegal Hondurans in US.
A few years ago when I was researching a story on “temporary protected status” I came across a comment by George Bush, or someone in his State Department, saying that they had to extend TPS for Salvadorans because the money they sent home kept the country afloat.
That money being sent out of the US by immigrants is known as remittances. Indeed, we have lots of posts here over the years about remittances to Somalia and the problems with it.
MD Del. Ana Sol Gutierrez in front of Salvadoran Money transfer business. Photo credit: Greg Dohler/The Gazette http://potomacteapartyreport.wordpress.com/2013/02/14/maryland-delegate-money-is-a-principal-driver-of-the-foreign-governments-interest-in-immigration-reform/
But, I hadn’t noticed much written about whether the three major countries (Honduras,Guatemala, and El Salvador) sending their ‘unaccompanied alien children’ to America were turning a blind eye and actually condoning the illegal migration because they know money (a lot of it taxpayer dollars!) would soon flow southward.
In fact when Rush Limbaugh was making fun of Obama and saying why was he so willing to steal the best and the brightest of Central American youths and thus rob those countries of a future, I wondered then why the leaders of those countries weren’t angry at the loss of their children. Is it because the lure of easy money now is greater than any concern for the future of their countries?
So I looked around and found this really good article by Seth Daniel at the Chelsea Record (Massachusetts) entitled: Influx Has Everything to Do with Remittance Culture.
The gist of it is that the “children” will send money ‘home’ and that the flood of easy money ultimately destroys those poor countries, and it destroys local economies in the US as well.
After a lead-in about men coming to America to support their families and finding things tough, Daniel says this:
But make no mistake, they did and still do send money.
The Record reported last year that in 2012, nearly $250 million cash left the communities of Chelsea, Revere, East Boston and Everett in the form of remittances (money sent back to one’s home country). Some $2 billion left the state of Massachusetts alone in 2012. That’s a fortune, and most of it went to Central America – specifically El Salvador and Guatemala. The paper is still waiting to get those same numbers for 2013 from the state, but early reports are that even more was remitted.
Consulates from those countries told the Record in that very same report last year that their countries are deeply dependent upon money sent to family members from American relatives. It has become an important part of life in their countries.
And so what about those countries?
If you talk to assimilated natives of those particular countries – and really any country with a large remittance culture – they will tell you (maybe only secretly) that sending so much money home has ruined the society. People who keep residences in their home countries will tell you that they cannot find anyone to hire in order to maintain those properties. So many formerly hard-working people prefer to just wait for the weekly remittance from America. Why work when money just pours in from Western Union regularly?
This isn’t only in Central America, again. It’s the status quo wherever large sums of remittance money make up a significant portion of a country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
Then there’s the problem with what happens to a poor economy when so much money starts rolling in without anything being produced or anybody earning said money. Prices skyrocket for food and housing. Land prices go through the roof. Heavy taxes are imposed. Everything all the sudden costs way more than it did, and the money that rolls in suddenly isn’t enough. The more money that is sent, the shorter it stretches.
Then the frantic phone calls begin to come – the money you sent isn’t enough. We need more.
What once cost $1 is now $10.
Destroying the local economy in Massachusetts
Daniel continues:
….right now we have hundreds of thousands of young adults and older teens pouring over the border to get to America by whatever means necessary. They are certainly fleeing violence, but there is also an aspect of them fleeing in order to get a job and send more money home.
That was expressly said by two women who spoke last week at the Collaborative – one of which who said she needed to send money home to her mother as soon as possible. Naturally, $1 doesn’t go as far as it used to and people need to eat.
The remittance culture needs to be addressed within this debate, but no one wants to talk about it. Just like Broadway Chelsea seems to be ground zero for the unaccompanied minor debate, it is also ground zero for cash leaving the country. Millions upon millions of dollars leave the community via Broadway Chelsea every year. Just a million of that money would transform the outlook of business on Broadway. That’s why this system cripples the community – puts local business out of business because any and all disposable income is being sent instead of spent.
Read it all. And please spread it around, it deserves greater attention then it’s gotten at this local news outlet.
Of course the NGO drivers of the illegal migration don’t give a damn about such matters—it is all about more Democrat voters, sinking our social service system, and changing America forever.
Our complete archive on ‘unaccompanied minors’ goes back several years,click here for all of those posts.
We told you about Dawari, an Afghan “convenience store clerk” who is also supposed to be a doctor, arrested on immigration fraud charges here a couple of days ago. Now we learn that Dawari may have been passing coded messages glued in religious books from a terrorist group which he allegedly then sent on to others.
I’ve looked around at several reports on the case and can’t find a photo of Dawari (if someone does, please send it and I’ll insert it), and I have found no mention of how he got into the US in 2008—he very well could have been a refugee (or a successful asylum seeker) in order to now be ready for citizenship so quickly.
The feds really should check EBT records for his convenience store to see if there is any sign of trafficking in food stamps that might have yielded a windfall for a foreign terrorist group.
Asst. US Attorney Williams: the note appears to direct some urgent action.
From Philly.com yesterday (hat tip: ‘pungentpeppers’):
A 62-year-old Afghan doctor detained in Philadelphia this week on immigration fraud charges received and passed along coded messages from an anti-Western terror group with ties to al-Qaeda, federal prosecutors said.
At a court hearing Friday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jennifer Arbittier Williams said FBI agents discovered the documents written in Pashto and hidden between glued pages of religious tracts mailed to Hayatullah Dawari’s Northeast Philadelphia home.
The package, intercepted during a January raid, came from Pakistan and included instructions to forward several books inside to various people across the United States.
A later search uncovered a coded message similar to that found in Dawari’s possession at the home of another associate in Philadelphia.
“The note, when translated from Pashto to English, appears to contain a message directing some urgent action,” Williams said.
[…..]
Dawari, his lawyer said Friday, worked as a doctor in his home country – cooperating with American Red Cross efforts as part of American military operations in Afghanistan – before moving to Philadelphia in 2008 [Could he have gotten into the US on a Special Immigrant Visa for those who helped the US in Afghanistan?—ed]. Since his arrival here, Dawari has become an active member of his mosque and a legal permanent resident, and was seeking citizenship to cement his life in America, Tinari said.
Though he recently became disabled, he worked for years as a convenience store clerk.
….by funding citizenship and training services. You will recognize some of the usual suspects, not just getting grants from the Office of Refugee Resettlement but also from Homeland Security which makes finding all of their federal bucks more complicated.
This is from reader ‘Julia’ who found this list of grantees for “Citizenship and Training”at USA Spending.gov. For a little summer Saturday fun, check out the over $30 million that has been expended so far through quasi-non-profit groups (I hope someone is monitoring how all this taxpayer money is being spent!).
Julia especially noted the DACA grants. By the way, just this week the HuffPoreported on how many Dreamers have signed up and how it’s going, here.
Signing up the kids!
Julia:
Below is a list of organizations that received funding for Citizenship and Training programs from the Department of Homeland Security. Funding for these programs began in FY 2010. Most of the organizations provide other services to the immigrant population. Note the organizations that provide assistance with DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals). Also, note the organizations that coordinate their efforts with other organizations. Website information for the organizations is still being completed and will be updated.
It seems that if DACA is expanded through executive order, there is already a network of organizations in place to facilitate the DACA application process. Please note that this list is not a compilation of all organizations that provide assistance with DACA.
One of the first on the list to sign up new citizens (and be sure to check out the $$$ going to the Colorado African Organization):
BOWDOINHAM Maine (Reuters) – A Rwandan man accused of war crimes was arrested by the U.S. Border Patrol in northern Maine after a local citizen reported a “suspicious person” walking near the Canadian border, law enforcement officials said on Thursday.
Jean Leonard Teganya, 42, a Rwandan who authorities said had violated international law and the Canadian Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act, walked across the border into the United States illegally on Sunday when he was spotted, according to a statement issued by the Department of Homeland Security.
He was later detained and processed for removal from the United States, a spokeswoman said.
This is not our first Rwandan war criminal by any means. We posted extensively on a multi-million dollar federal trial in New Hampshire which ended last summer with a prison sentence for a Rwandan woman who lied to get into the US as a refugeebut was then found to be a war criminal (and is alleged to have killed a nun). See that post here and follow links back.
