OTTAWA – Canada has taken in 1,500 Syrian refugees, Immigration Minister Chris Alexander told the House of Commons Monday.
The government had been under pressure from opposition politicians to bring more refugees to Canada more quickly.
“If they are here, where the heck are they?” NDP MP Andrew Cash asked. “Response by this government has been incredibly slow and it’s not commensurate with the tragedy unfolding.”
Alexander said the system has been improved so that refugees can get to Canada more quickly.
New readers interested in Canada’s refugee problems, go here for our archive on our “welcoming” northern neighbor.
By the way, how many Canadians (former refugees and others welcomed by Canada in years past) are fighting with ISIS now?
If you are following the refugee resettlement program closely you should occasionally visit the Refugee Processing Centerfor the data the US State Department is willing to allow the public to see.
They have taken away from public view one data table that we previously found interesting and that was the information on which nationalities were resettled in which city. That was very useful and they surely still track those numbers but are only available to special people who have a pass code to get in. Likewise they track the religions of refugees but again only friends of the refugee program are allowed to see those.
Before I get to those useful tables that you can still access, I noticed one more way to keep you in the dark. One table that you might think would be useful and which I initially directed readers to in my previous post (removed now) is one in which it lists which refugees went to which state, BUT, on closer examination, it is useless! Why? Because it only shows the processing country and the US state to which the refugee was resettled. Processing countries are virtually meaningless!
We don’t process refugees directly from Somalia yet we took in 9,000 Somalis in FY 2014 from all over the world apparently. If you do look at that data table, check out Minnesota to see what I mean—they list no Somalis going to MN last year (2014), but we know they did (see data tablefrom Minnesota listing 977 Somalis arriving there as of August 31), we just don’t know how many were processed in Kenya, in Malta, in Thailand etc.
Just a reminder to states (like Wyoming!) and cities which will “welcome” refugees in FY2015, you will not get refugees just from certain countries, but will get a smattering from a wide variety of countries which will make it even more difficult to deal with the language problems in the schools, the health department and the criminal justice system. See the language stats by going here and clicking on ‘top ten languages.’
But, the government got him on only ripping-off the taxpayer for his disability payments! He could get ten years in the slammer (on our dime), but no mention of deportation!
The next time you hear about how thoroughly refugees are screened, remember this story!
By the way, he is not the first to lie, nor will he be the last!
SAN ANTONIO — An Iraqi man who was resettled in San Antonio to escape purported persecution pleaded guilty Monday to lying to get refugee status and stealing from the U.S. government.
Ahmed Khudhur Tayyeh, 39, was arrested last year after counterterrorism agents investigated him on suspicion that he had ties to al-Qaida.
He was set to go to trial Monday on charges of withholding information from the Social Security Administration and withholding information on his refugee application. He abruptly accepted a plea offer instead, pleading guilty to one count of theft from the government and one charge of making a false statement. A charge of Social Security fraud was dismissed.
As one of nearly 200,000 Iraqi refugees approved by the U.S. government for resettlement in America since 2007, Tayyeh was given a green card despite his giving conflicting stories about how he injured his leg.
In one story, he allegedly said he took a hit from an improvised bomb; in another, he said he was kidnapped by Iraqi police and shot in the leg.
[….]
In court Monday, Tayyeh admitted that on his refugee application he failed to list two brothers and claimed his father had been killed. His brothers are believed to have al-Qaida links, and his father is still alive.
Off the top of my head here are a few other Iraqis now spending time in US prisons on our dime. By the way, I’ve advocated that the US State Department pick up some of the prison tabs for those they have resettled (not just Iraqis) now living in prison on us!
See, KentuckyIraqi terroristshere. Colorado Iraqi rapists here. Arizona Iraqi bombs Social Security Office, here.CaliforniaIraqi who murdered his wife and pretended Islamophobes did it, here. South Dakota Iraqi sex trafficker gets life, here.