Month: February 2015

Three-fourths of Norway’s Somali refugee children live in poverty; why we should stop importing poverty

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I don’t think this news surprises anyone, but what does it mean as this generation grows up—not just for Norway, but throughout Europe and the world for people without jobs and ultimately nothing to do all day?

Yesterday I happened to catch a bit of a Glenn Beck interview I want to share with you.  Beck can be pretty doom and gloom, but what his guest was saying we can already see happening in parts of Europe.  So why do we think we will be spared the societal chaos?

Somali women protesting in Oslo a few years ago. http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/category/current-events/

First Norway, from The Local:

Three quarters of children of Somali origin in Norway now live in poverty, according to new figures from Statistics Norway, and numbers are on the rise.

Children from Somalia have been over-represented in the poverty statistics for years, but the proportion of children living in families with persistently low income has risen during the last year, Norwegian state broadcaster NRK has reported.

Other immigrant groups are also struggling, with more than half of poor children in Norway now living in immigrant households. Afghani and Iraqi groups also have high levels of poverty, yet none rival the Somalis.

Beck interview with Jason Calacanis on the not too distant future (a few decades!) as jobs become more scarce for a whole host of reasons.

We better be planning for this as we admit more and more low-skilled migrants to America.  This is Beck’s transcript that I cleaned up a little (What does the future hold? Glenn talks to entrepreneur and angel investor Jason Calacanis):

CALACANIS: You can see what it looks like. If you go to the Middle East, if you go to some of the under-performing European countries, referred to as the PIGS, Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain, and you see what happens when 20-something-year-old males hit 20, 30, 40% unemployment, it means riots in the street. And it could mean people hanging out, drinking coffee all day, getting a stipend from the government, looking for somebody to hate for their lot in life. And having a lack of purpose in life is dangerous. Those are the people who can get picked up presently easily by people who are using religion to do bad things in the world and drugs and just whatever?

Beck then asked, well what do we do? You won’t like some of Calacanis’s answers! But, at least he has some ideas! However, he suggests that few in leadership positions are even thinking about it.

How about we save ourselves and start with not overloading America with new poverty!

See our Norway archive here.

By the way, we are on target to resettle 10,000 more Somalis to the US this fiscal year which brings our grand total now way over 100,000.

RRW Weekly round-up for the week ending February 13th

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Welcome to new readers/subscribers who arrived here after my few minutes on Fox & Friends this week. 

Most weeks (if we have time) we like to let readers know which stories during the week were being most widely read.  You can see our daily top posts in the right hand side bar, but here are the ones that topped the list for the whole week:

 

1) Somalis colonizing Nacogdoches County, TX

2) Mass Exodus from Muslim Kosovo into Europe

3)  Maine Governor LePage says immigrants pose a health threat to America

Top countries from which readers arrived are many of the ones we are familiar with.  Interestingly, although not making the top ten, but high on the list is the Russian Federation.  We haven’t seen that before.  Here are this week’s top ten (excluding the US of course):

Canada

UK

Australia

Germany

Sweden

France

South Africa

Jamaica

India

Thailand

 

Really the primary purpose of our occasional weekly updates is to help new readers get oriented and to help you all find useful information among our 6,000 plus posts!

For new readers!

Since we get new readers every day, here is my usual spiel with two points I need to make:

First, we do screen our comments and don’t post any that threaten any kind of violence and we don’t post ones filled with foul language.  An occasional expletive might slip in if the comment is otherwise a good one.  You are always free to disagree with our point of view if you follow those two simple rules.

And the other thing I want to mention is about e-mails that come to you every time we post.  They come directly from wordpress to subscribers.  We don’t send out e-mails.  So, if we are posting too much for your e-mail inbox, then just unsubscribe and visit RRW when you have the time.  I understand completely about too many e-mails!  You might want to simply follow us on twitter or on facebook (below).

This is where you can find information if you are arriving here at RRW for the first time (in addition to our fact sheet). We have over 6,000 posts.

*  See our categories (left hand sidebar)

*  See the tag clouds (right hand sidebar)

*  Also, we have a great search function and since neither the categories nor the tags go all the way back to our first posts more than seven years ago, use the search window with a few key words.  You might want to first try your city, state, or country to see what we have reported from there over the years.

Readers from Europe should search for key words ‘Invasion of Europe’ for all of our many posts on the migration crisis on the Continent.

By the way, our category entitled ‘where to find information’ is filled with reports and documents, but with 321 posts archived there, it is pretty unwieldy now.

Past weekly roundups can be found in our category entitled ‘blogging.’

If you wish to be notified when we post, consider subscribing or follow us on twitter (@refugeewatcher) or facebook (RefugeeInfoResource).  ‘Like us’ on facebook!

And apologies to all who e-mail and comment, sorry if I don’t respond much, there are just not enough hours in my day!

It occurs to me that I do see everyone’s comments to posts because we do screen them (no foul language, no threats), so if you have something you want me to see, I don’t at all mind if you send the link as a comment to a post, even if it’s off-topic.

To regular readers, thank you for your continued concern for this very important issue.

 

St. Louis: Bosnians plead not guilty in terrorist funding case, 6th defendant arrested in Germany

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment
North American Bosniaks distance themselves from the alleged ISIS supporters. http://www.stlbosnians.com/statement-about-six-individuals-of-bosnian-descent-accused-of-terrorist-activity/

This is an update of the story that broke here a week ago.

New readers may wish to visit that post for a little background on how the Clinton Administration brought in thousands of Bosnian Muslims when they helped break up Yugoslavia.

From AP at Yahoo News:

ST. LOUIS (AP) — An immigrant couple from Bosnia pleaded not guilty Wednesday to federal charges of funneling money and military supplies to extremist groups in Iraq and Syria.

[….]

Each of the six suspects is now in federal custody after the Tuesday arrest in Germany of Jasminka Ramic, 42.

[….]

Bosnian community leaders in St. Louis, which has the largest population among U.S. cities of refugees from the former Yugoslavia, say the arrests of the Hodzics and a third local resident, 37-year-old Armin Harcevic, tarnishes a community whose members have worked tirelessly to embrace their adopted homeland. Most of the estimated 70,000 Bosnians in St. Louis are Muslim and arrived after the war that broke out in the early 1990s.

Click here for some previous posts we have written on Bosnian refugees here in America.   We also have a bunch of posts on all sorts of refugee problems in St. Louis, here.   See especially this post about how a refugee contractor wants to further ‘diversify’ St. Louis by 2020.

State Department downplays Somali refugee concerns about new banking restrictions

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I’ve been meaning to at least report on the latest round of angst over restrictions on sending American money from the Somali ‘community’ here to Somalia.  Of course the banks are worried that the dollars (that probably came through various US welfare programs) will end up in the hands of terrorists.

State Department Spokeswoman Psaki (of the beaded necklaces): no big deal that they can’t send cash to Somalia.

So, here is a report from Foreign Policy summing up where things stand now.  As expected, Rep. Keith Ellison is going to bat for his Minnesota Somali constituents.

Remember readers that the remittance practice is a big deal and is an important driver for migrants of all sorts to get here—those Central American governments, happy to see their ‘children’ go to America, are driven by the desire for the cold hard cash that the migrants send home.  The cash thus leaves the US economy.

Foreign Policy:

Many companies that send money from immigrants in the United States to friends and family in Somalia shut down this week, but the State Department doesn’t see any need for an emergency response.

State spokeswoman Jen Psaki downplayed the impact that a cutoff of remittances could have on millions of Somalis who the U.N. says depend on the money for basic survival. It would be a “stretch,” Psaki said Wednesday, to connect remittances to economic opportunity in Somalia.

Psaki said the U.S. government had “engaged in ongoing communication with the Somali community in the United States and financial institutions serving that community” in an effort to effectively regulate remittances and keep them from financing terrorism.

At issue is the fallout from a decision by the main bank facilitating international wire transfers to Somalia to close the accounts used to hold and then send the money. Merchants Bank of California, which handled 60 to 80 percent of those funds, closed all Somali accounts on Friday, as Foreign Policy was the first to report. The closure was a result of regulatory pressure on banks to verify where the money is going to make sure it isn’t funding terrorism, which is hard to do in Somalia because the country doesn’t have a central bank or formal banking system.

[….]

Oxfam, the humanitarian organization, responded to Psaki’s comment by pointing out that Somalia receives $1.3 billion in remittances every year, which is more than the country gets in aid or foreign investment.

“It is critical that the Department of State recognize the catastrophic consequences that the current disruption in remittances will have in Somalia,” Scott Paul, a senior advisor for Oxfam America, said in an emailed statement.

There is more, see what Rep. Keith Ellison has to say, here.

For the many new readers who joined us yesterday, we have resettled over 100,000 Somali refugees to the US in the last couple of decades, here.  Minneapolis is ground zero because of the refugee contractors operating there which include:  Catholic Charities, Lutheran Social Service, and the evangelicals, World Relief (new name is Arrive Ministries), here.  The original attraction of Minnesota was its generous welfare system.

The US State Department and its contractors brought in 9,000 new Somalis to America in 2014 and are on target for 10,000 this year.  They will be distributed around the country.

US lacks intel to adequately screen Syrian refugees (no kidding!)

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

While I was distracted over the last two days (here), some of our readers were on top of the news.  Thanks to reader Joanne for spotting this story about why the Syrian refugee flow to America is only a trickle.  I am still puzzled why the UN and its “humanitarian” cheering squad are not squawking at Obama over the hold-up as they went absolutely nuts when George Bush did the same thing in his Presidency about Iraqis.

So, when Asst. Secretary of State Anne Richard went to Berlin recently and made promises, she jumped the gun?

By the way, the foolish German government says Germany will take 30,000 Syrians!  (can anyone say “death wish!”)

From Newsmax:

Michael Steinbach, assistant director of the Counterterrorism Division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)

 US authorities are facing a difficult task screening Syrian refugees for potential extremists because of a shortage of intelligence from the war-torn country, officials told lawmakers Wednesday.

Michael Steinbach, assistant director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, said the US government had data and intelligence to draw on when it performed background checks on refugees from Iraq in recent years but in the case of Syria, there was “a lack of information.”

“The difference is, in Iraq, we were there on the ground collecting, so we had databases to use,” Steinbach told the House Homeland Security Committee. [And they still let in the Kentucky Iraqi refugee terrorists!—ed]

“The concern is in Syria, the lack of our footprint on the ground in Syria, that the databases won’t have the information we need,” he said.

“You are talking about a country that is a failed state, that does not have any infrastructure so to speak, ” he said.

Washington has decided to let in more Syrians displaced by the civil war and announced plans in December to review about 9,000 refugee cases referred by the UN refugee agency.

US officials told AFP on Wednesday that nearly 11,000 cases referred by the UNHCR will be examined. [Once again an admission that the UN is picking our refugees!—ed]

[….]

Lawmakers at the hearing voiced dismay at the possibility that some of the male refugees heading to America could be potential jihadists.

The US was already working to stop foreign fighters from returning to America and admitting large numbers of refugees “would be a federally sanctioned welcome party, if you will, to potential terrorists in the United States,” said Michael McCaul, Republican chairman of the committee.

Such a move would be a “huge mistake,” he said.

Here is a thought to solve the problem and keep us safe—stop all Muslim migration to America starting with the large numbers of Muslim refugees we are resettling in 180 cities across the country! 

Click here for our now very extensive Syrian refugees archive.