Chicago: Story about Rohingya Muslim airport workers is instructive

01/08/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Thanks to Joanne for sending this story about supposed discrimination against non-English speaking workers at O’Hare airport in Chicago.

rohingya-boat — Explain to us again how we are security-screening the Rohingya who have fled Burma (Myanmar) and Bangladesh in boats and are scattered throughout Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand. Do they have any documents in plastic baggies on these boats? I doubt it! https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2016/04/07/illinois-zakat-foundation-to-open-cultural-center-specifically-for-rohingya-muslims-in-the-state/

Before you read it consider these points:

~The ‘star’ of this story and his Rohingya Muslim fellow worker are ‘boat people’ who arrived in Malaysia, likely with no papers, and only stories about abuse in Burma, or possibly Bangladesh. We brought them as refugees to America.*** So while Congress and others focus their energy on Syrian refugees who CANNOT be thoroughly screened, we admit Rohingya Muslims who have been wandering all over Southeast Asia and we don’t know who they are either!

~This article describes a growing practice of hiring Muslim refugees in airports!

~While there is squawking about companies, like the airplane cleaning company, using non-English speaking workers with suggestions they are being cheated, there is no suggestion that the notorious union SEIU is also using them for its purposes!

~We have admitted (Wrapsnet.org) 13,500 Rohingya Muslims during the Obama Administration. 543 arrived in the last three months.

Here is the news at DNAinfo:

WEST RIDGE — A Rohingya refugee who immigrated to the U.S. two years ago from war-torn Myanmar hoped he would find opportunity and a second chance by settling in Chicago, with a job at O’Hare. Instead, Amir Hussin Bin Mohamadur Rahman has found himself at the center of a workers rights struggle unfolding within Chicago’s labor force.

Rahman, 25, got a job shortly after his arrival in June 2015 with Scrub, Inc., a company that employs workers who clean the cabins of planes after flights.

That relationship ended in late November after Rahman publicly rallied alongside Service Employees International Union members and other airport workers in a one-day strike with the “Fight For $15” minimum wage campaign.

Rahman also spoke out at an employee meeting advocating for Scrub, Inc. workers to unionize, an act he alleges led to his firing.

[….]

At different times, Rahman and Ahmad made their way to Malaysia before immigrating to the U.S. and resettling in the Rogers Park/West Ridge area where an established Rohinga refugee community exists. [It exists because the US State Department and a refugee contractor place them there. Just what Chicago needs (poor refugees competing with poor Americans for jobs)—ed]

Continue reading here.
***We have an extensive archive on Rohingya resettlement, click here (193 posts).

Very strange story as Africans nearly freeze to death crossing our northern border to leave US!

01/07/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Editor: It has been another frustrating day with computer problems, so won’t get everything posted in between internet outages that I hoped for today, and if you don’t hear from me, you know why!
I did want to get this very fishy story up as quickly as I can, so am hustling before I lose internet again. Before you read on, know that Ghana is a relatively prosperous majority Christian country in Africa. According to wikipedia it is about 17% Muslim. We take only a tiny number as regular refugees from Ghana (and that would be because it is a functioning country!). That said, if a Muslim claims he is gay (as this guy does), he is a shoe-in for asylum in the US, yet he says he was turned down.
So if he was in detention and denied asylum in America how was he loose to cross the US/Canadian border?

screenshot-118 — Maybe Donald Trump needs to be thinking about our northern border with Canada. We might not care who leaves, but those coming in that way should be stopped and returned to ‘welcoming’ Canada! (A reader tells us that this map we used is missing part of Michigan, sorry about that!)

And, where did he get the money for his extensive travel odyssey?
Here is the story at the Grand Forks Herald (Hat tip: Joanne). BTW, the headline says he crossed from Minnesota, but the story text says North Dakota.

WINNIPEG—We’ve seen the desperation of refugees risking their lives crossing the Mediterranean Sea to get to Europe, but we haven’t seen any risking their lives crossing the frozen prairie to get to Canada—until now.

On Dec. 24, Seidu Mohammad nearly froze to death walking from North Dakota toward the Canadian border at Emerson, Man.

The man from Ghana spent more than seven hours walking outside and expects to lose most of his fingers.

[….]

Mohammad said a fellow refugee claimant from Ghana with him was taken to hospital in Morris, Man., with less severe injuries.

They walked through deep snow to avoid alerting U.S. officials and reach the Canada Border Services Agency at Emerson, he said. “It was up to my hips.”

What kept them going was knowing that if they gave up before getting to Canada, they would be taken to a detention facility in the United States, then be deported to Ghana.

Refugee admissions ticket par excellence!

“I can’t go back,” Mohammad said. He had to flee Ghana because of his sexual orientation, he said.

They knew that if they managed to get to the Canadian border, they could file a refugee claim and make their case before the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada. Canada’s immigration system is seen by human rights advocates and lawyers as more fair and thorough than that in the U.S. [So are human rights activists advising people like Mohammad, and coaching them on stories about being gay?—ed]

The US supposedly denied his claims. What? They didn’t believe he was gay?

Their refugee claims were dismissed, as most are.

I’ve written previously about these world traveling phony refugees who seem to have the funds to travel for months across the world, but don’t stop in the first safe country and apply for asylum which is how asylum is supposed to work if one is a legitimate refugee!

For Mohammad—who left his home in Ghana in 2015 and spent six months on planes, boats and buses to get to the U.S. before hoofing it into Canada—the perilous journey was worth life and limb.

More here.
When I was in North Dakota this past summer, I learned that locals do report Somalis coming in from Canada over the ND/Canadian border.

First Syrians to Rutland, VT in direct challenge to Donald Trump

01/07/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) said in a press release in recent days that they were going ahead with their plans to open an office in Rutland, VT for the purpose of placing 100 Syrians (the first 100!) in the city where those plans have drawn heated controversy since last spring.

screenshot-14 — Lavinia Limon with Chobani CEO Hamdi Ulukaya. Ms. Limon’s organization, USCRI, helps Chobani Yogurt by sending refugees to Twin Falls, Idaho. Limon headed Bill Clinton’s Office of Refugee Resettlement. Warning to Mr. Trump: These are not squishy do-gooder organizations and people who you can easily roll. They are sharp, experienced political fighters.

Throwing all caution to the wind (shelling out money they don’t know they will have) and gambling that they can back Trump down, the federal resettlement contractor headed by longtime Clinton ally Lavinia Limon is hiring staff for a proposed opening in a couple of weeks—timed, I surmise, to happen just about the time Donald Trump is inaugurated.
Setting up a showdown with Donald Trump…..
If Trump does what he said he would do and quickly pauses refugee resettlement at least from terror-producing regions of the world, USCRI will be in a position to scream bloody murder—how dare Trump stop these poor women and children who were headed to a ‘welcoming’ Vermont town.
By the way, the NYT puff piece on Rutland recently was likely part of the propaganda set up to nail a heartless Trump.
These resettlement contractors have been around for over 30 years! Lots of big salaries depend on the continuation of the industry (yes, it is an industry), not to mention cheap labor for global corporations. Goals also include increasing Democrat voter rolls and generally driving all of us to accept a multicultural borderless world.
They are not going to give up easily or quietly!
From Valley News:

Rutland —

The Vermont Refugee Resettlement Program’s Rutland office is expected to open and be fully staffed within a couple of weeks.

According to Stacie Blake, director of government and community relations with the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, the office will have three full-time employees. Primary guidance will come from the Colchester, Vt., office and will be based on the organization’s 35 years of experience working with refugees in Vermont.

“The program expects to welcome the first refugee families to Rutland in January,” Blake said in a news release.

[….]

“Sites across the country are continuing to welcome new arrivals as their travel from overseas is booked,” Blake said in an email. “We have no information regarding changes to the resettlement program.”

I’ll bet you those travel bookings at IOM are going through the roof!
The article goes on to say how excited the volunteers are who are anticipating their very own Syrians (how cool is that!), and these local refugee advocates can be counted on to wail if Trump pauses the program (and they will have no clue that USCRI used them).
See our extensive archive on Rutland, here. And for more on Lavinia Limon, go here.

IOM: Mediterranean migrant ships won't stop until Europe finds ways to let them come legally

01/07/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Invasion of Europe News….

Sheesh! The International Organization for Migration (IOM) yesterday said, don’t stop the boats and the boat people from Africa and the Middle East, find ways for them to migrate legally to Europe. (See former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott tell the Europeans to turn back the boats, here.)

iom-bags — Scene from the movie that fizzled ‘The Good Lie.’

The IOM was for years a quasi-non-profit organization (getting most of its money from governments) and a US refugee contracting agency whose job it was, and still is, to get refugees ready to fly to your towns and cities. You will see refugees in US airports with blue IOM bags.
Now the agency has been folded in to the United Nations and it is one more reason to sever our ties with the UN!
Here, yesterday, they reported on the number of illegal migrants who have arrived in Europe in 2016.

Switzerland – IOM on Friday (06/01) reported preliminary totals for all 2016 migrant and refugee arrivals to Europe via the Mediterranean Sea, as well as estimated fatalities. Arrival totals were 363,348 split almost evenly between Italy and Greece, with much smaller numbers arriving in Malta, Cyprus and Spain. Fatalities and missing migrants reached at least 5,079 although IOM emphasizes that some incidents reported in the month of December and earlier have not been fully accounted for.

According to IOM’s Missing Migrants Project, incidents off Spain, Morocco and Tunisia have been reported whose victim totals could add another 300 or more fatalities to the 2016 total. The year 2016 already is the deadliest for migrants ever recorded by IOM in the region.

The probable addition of several hundred more fatalities recorded in 2016 only deepens the tragedy, said IOM Director General William Lacy Swing, who added, Europe’s frustration with a seemingly endless cycle of migrant rescue followed by reports of shipwrecks and more drownings won’t end until governments throughout the region find a way to manage migration comprehensively.

“Migrants and refugees aren’t coming because they believe their lives will be rescued at sea once they leave Africa or Syria or wherever conflicts drives people to seek safety,” Ambassador Swing said. “They’re leaving because they believe their lives will be doomed if they stay. The answer lies in finding creative means to permit safe, legal and secure migration, be that through work visas, family reunification or temporary protected status. [UNHCR is searching for “alternative pathways” to move the third world to the first since most of these migrants are not legitimate refugees.—ed] Instead of doubling down on tactics that don’t work, let’s use this New Year to try something that’s actually new.”

mediteranean-arrivals — Italy and Greece suffer the most.

Read the whole article, these numbers are way down for Greece, but up for Italy.
See our complete ‘Invasion of Europe’ archive by clicking here.
Editor: I hope to get a lot of things posted today, yesterday was a wipe-out due to computer problems!

Virginia does not note refugee status in records on active Tuberculosis cases diagnosed in the state; 44 other states do!

01/06/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

tb-us-surveillance_cases_fb — WTH! Too many people in US STILL have TB! Well, gee, that might be because we keep bringing in new cases!

Michael Patrick Leahy at Breitbart continued his excellent series of investigative reports on the incidence of active TB in the US refugee population with this report from Virginia. Yesterday we told you about two other Leahy articles on TB in refugees earlier this week, see here.
Leahy on this Virginia revelation:

The state of Virginia refuses to track the number of refugees it resettles who are diagnosed with active tuberculosis (TB).

[….]

… the Virginia Department of Health (VDH) does not think it should be a priority to track foreign-born TB cases by category, as do 44 states who have provided the CDC with that data since 2012 (Tennessee became the 45th state to do so in 2014) in its annual Report on Tuberculosis in the United States.

“The Virginia Department of Health does not collect the data you have requested,” a spokesperson for VDH responded when Breitbart asked to know the immigration status upon first entry of the 168 foreign-born residents of Virginia diagnosed with active TB in 2015.

More here.
For more on refugee health see our ‘Health issues’ category by clicking here. And, remember readers, your tax dollars pay for expensive TB medication (if the case is discovered!).
BTW, still have had no one tell me if volunteers, working with resettlement agencies, are trained to spot symptoms or are educated on how to protect themselves and their families from becoming infected with TB when they work with newly arrived refugees.