Salt Lake City: Violent Somali teen shot by police

02/29/2016 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update March 2: No surprise! Protesters come out in rage against police, here.
Update March 1: Mohamed was resettled in Utah by Catholic agency, here.
You watch, this will turn into another story about overzealous police. There will be no mention of the refugee resettlement program bringing Somalis and other Muslim refugees to colonize Utah and no mention of the huge problem with many refugees not assimilating. Or, maybe they are assimilating—-to American black gang violence.

Utah shooting — **17-year-old Abdi Mohamed (a Somali refugee) was shot when he wouldn’t put down his “metal object” weapon**

Here is the news. Wish I had the energy to tell you more about what is happening in Utah where, although the Mormon Church doesn’t directly resettle refugees, they encourage their Catholic brethren to do so.
From Fox 13 Salt Lake City (hat tip: Utah reader):

SALT LAKE CITY — The day after an officer-involved shooting sparked unrest on the streets of Salt Lake City, the police department has issued an official statement on the incident and family members say they’ve learned the teen has awoken from a coma.

Family of 17-year-old Abdi Mohamed tell FOX 13 News detectives have told them the teen is now awake and speaking in a hospital room Sunday evening, but they have not yet been able to see him. He was reportedly in a coma after being shot three times by police.

According to a press release from the Salt Lake City Police Department issued Sunday afternoon, officers witnessed two males with metal objects attacking a male victim around 8 p.m. in the area of 300 South Rio Grande Street.

The release states, “Officers confronted the two suspects and ordered them to drop the weapons. One of the males complied and dropped the weapon, the other continued to advance on the victim and was shot by officers.”

[….]

The teen was taken to a hospital in critical condition, and Sunday his family identified him as 17-year-old Abdi Mohamed. Mohamed reportedly lived in West Valley City with his girlfriend and their son. He reportedly moved to the U.S. from Kenya about 10 years ago. [Gee, so who pays for the care of the girlfriend and the son—I’ll wager you do, the taxpayers of Utah and America!—ed]

We get a large number of our Somali refugees from Kenya. Note that in the line above the police weren’t willing to identify the ‘man’ but his family did. Then this is no surprise:

The press release from police states that immediately after the shooting, a crowd gathered and became hostile, with some people throwing rocks or bottles at police. Officers asked the crowd to disperse to allow police and medical personnel to respond to the scene, but many in the crowd did not comply.

More here.
See our previous posts on Utah by clicking here. Just yesterday I was telling a reader (who was looking for refugee crime stories) about that dreadful case of Burmese Muslim Esar Met raping and murdering a Christian girl in Salt Lake City, here. Oh, and by the way, we have 1,931 refugee crime stories categorized from all over the world, here. Feel free to mine that archive if you are working on a report, legislation or letter to the editor.
And, for more information on who resettles refugees in Utah, our Utah reader sent this story. Here come the Syrians!

As predicted, ME migrants riot at Greek border as stricter controls are placed on European borders

02/29/2016 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Invasion of Europe news……

We told you (here, pressure cooker!) on Saturday that the flow out of Greece was effectively halted when many countries north of Greece closed their borders to the invaders wanting to get to Germany.

Today there were riots at the Greece/Macedonia border. Al Jazeera says this:

A riot broke out as hundreds of desperate refugees stranded at the Greek-Macedonia border smashed down a gate guarded by security forces on Monday.

The razor-wire barrier was ripped open and border guards fired tear gas in response.

Angry crowds shouted and pushed towards the barrier. Several men used a large steel post to ram the gate while trying to pry it open.

The Balkan route — Map and story at Deutsche Welle: http://www.dw.com/en/hampered-by-new-border-controls-migrants-make-case-for-asylum/a-18869422

Nearly 8,000 refugees are in limbo at the overcrowded border camp – with a capacity of 2,000 – at the village of Idomeni, according to Greek officials.

The Idomeni camp is rapidly turning into the main focal point in the largest migration crisis in Europe since World War II.

It was set up to shelter refugees as they wait for passage to Macedonia, which has greatly reduced the number of people allowed to pass in recent days.

For readers who might not have been paying attention until just now and are wondering how and why so many are in Greece, look to Turkey for allowing them to launch from Turkish shores.
Go to the interactive map that tracks the movement in to Greece and northward and see how many arrived in Greece in this last week alone and how few moved north!
Go here for all of our posts on the ‘Invasion of Europe.’

Local and state taxpayers do contribute to refugee welfare

02/29/2016 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Over and over again we hear from political leaders and grassroots organizers looking to bring refugees into new (unsuspecting) communities that this is a federal program funded by the feds. (LOL! as if Washington has an orchard of money trees!)
However, this short model letter-to-the-editor in Tennessee quickly dispels the notion that the resettlement of refugees in your town will cost you nothing.

don-barnett (1) — Don Barnett, a resident of Tennessee, is a longtime expert on the US Refugee Admissions Program, and is a fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies.

The letter, by Don Barnett of Nashville, is in response to the debate on-going in the State Legislature which we reported recently, here. Tennessee is a Wilson-Fish state (a state where a federal contractor, Catholic Charities of TN, is making decisions for the state taxpayers with no accountability to those elected to protect the state’s purse).
Barnett in The Tennessean (emphasis is mine):

The reporting on Senate Joint Resolution 467 is proof that, at the very least, something must be done to bring the refugee resettlement program out of the shadows.

So misunderstood and secretive is the program that contractors who profit from it are able to make blatantly false statements and be assured they will be reported as fact.

According to Tennessee’s state refugee coordinator, who is an employee of the main federal resettlement contractor, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the program does not cost state taxpayers a dime.

But the contractors refuse to publicize the number of refugees they place into TennCare, a program paid for by state taxpayers as well as federal taxpayers. The last time they released this data, 2011, nearly 60 percent of refugees went into TennCare upon arrival.

The 2011 report of TennCare usage is consistent with national trends. According to the latest data available — a federal study of refugees who had been in the country five years or less as of 2013*** — 47 percent of refugees were dependent on cash assistance, 74 percent were in the food stamp program, and 56 percent were in Medicaid (TennCare) or short-term federal refugee medical assistance. Twenty-three percent were in public housing or receiving public housing assistance.

There is considerable evidence pointing to long-term dependence. The federal cash welfare program SSI is a good indicator of long-term welfare dependency rates. It is generally a lifetime entitlement and usually automatically includes Medicaid and other social services. The federal study of arrivals over the previous five years found that 21 percent of refugee families had one or more members receiving SSI.

For refugees from the Middle East, 91 percent of this population was on food stamps and 32 percent of families from this group had one or more members on SSI.

Is there really no cost to the state? And what about those costs to the federal government?

This is a letter you should use as a model where you live. Not mentioned by Barnett are the costs to local and state taxpayers to educate the children and the costs to the criminal justice system (for even minor legal infractions involving court interpreters).
***The report referenced here is the Office of Refugee Resettlement Annual Report to Congress for 2013. You can find all of the very useful reports (as of today) through 2013, here. But once again, the ORR is breaking the law! As of January 31, 2016 they are TWO years behind in sending reports to Congress.

Where are the reports?

In December, Senator Jeff Sessions and Rep. Marsha Blackburn sent a letter to ORR wanting them to deliver the 2014 report, see here. And, since reports to Congress are legally required to be delivered 3 months after the close of the fiscal year, ORR should now be providing the report for 2015 as well. Are they hiding something at ORR or is it just sheer incompetence and mismanagement? It certainly looks like a (excuse the expression) middle finger to Congress.