10/07/2017 - Refugee Resettlement Watch

What is wrong with this sob story?

This Syrian family and the brothers left behind were in Saudi Arabia (one of the brothers had already emigrated to S.A.). Saudi Arabia is a safe country! Therefore, why are these people now the responsibility of the US taxpayer? They weren’t living in some sqaulid camp.

They were in arguably the richest country in the Middle East!

SA tent city — So tell us again why Saudi Arabia couldn’t house millions of Muslim refugees in their tent cities reserved for the brief Hajj period? Instead we are taking Syrian ‘refugees’ from S.A.!

From the San Diego Union-Tribune.

It is worth reading the whole article because there are lots of useful nuggets and some important comments by critics of the program (besides the story of a Syrian family that came to the US as ‘refugees’ from Saudi Arabia!)

By the way, I’m sure many of you are saying—yes! If we must have them, keep them in California!

Even though overall arrival numbers in fiscal 2017 dropped by more than half from the previous year, San Diego County continued its legacy as the California county that took in the most refugees.

In a year that began with a promise of more refugees than ever before coming to the U.S. and ended with an ongoing court battle over how many and whom the president could block from coming, about 1,500 refugees resettled in San Diego County, according to data from the State Department. That’s down from just over 3,100 the year before, and it’s the only time that number has dipped below 2,000 in the last decade.

“The fact that we remained the largest county, it definitely makes us proud to continue the tradition of San Diego being a safe haven,” said Etleva Bejko, director of refugee and immigration services for Jewish Family Service, a resettlement agency.

Where refugees resettle once the U.S. agrees to take them is a complicated decision-making process that factors in whether they already have family living here, which agencies have the bandwidth to support them and which places have infrastructure in place to help them succeed. That often means that places like San Diego that already have large populations of people from a country will continue to take refugees from that country. [Multiplier effect! Like Ft. Wayne in my previous post—ed]

San Diego County has been known for leading the state in refugee arrivals since large numbers of Iraqis fleeing war began arriving in late summer of 2007.

Confirmation again! Federal resettlement contractors paid by the head!

Bejko said her organization has had to reorganize support efforts because of the overall decreases in arrivals. Resettlement agencies receive funding based on the number of refugees that they help.

[….]

Three members of the Tarakji family, originally from Damascus, Syria, were some of the few who made it to the U.S. after the travel ban. The slowdown in accepting refugees has separated them from two other members of their family.

Catholic Charities resettled mother Alshifaa Hammoush, 52, father Manaf Tarakji, 58, and daughter Maria Tarakji, 21, in April. Two sons, Yasser Tarakji, 29, and Yaman Tarakji, 27, remain in Saudi Arabia.

They had already been trying to immigrate to the U.S. to reunite with their extended family who live in San Diego County when the war in Syria broke out. [They hit the jackpot because the refugee category is the most desirable way to get into the country. They get their hands held by a federal contractor who helps them get all of their welfare (not available to other categories of legal immigrant)!—ed]

After bombing destroyed the pharmacy where Hammoush worked and scared off Manf Tarakji’s clients for his electronics repair business, and a car exploded outside their building, the family fled in 2013 to Saudi Arabia, where the oldest son was already living and working.

Once in Saudi Arabia, they couldn’t continue the process to get family-sponsored green cards.

They stayed there in limbo, unable to fully establish new lives because they were on visitor visas that they had to renew every three months, until they were accepted as refugees to the U.S. Yaman Tarakji was separated into his own refugee case because of his age, and he is still waiting for processing.

The oldest brother, Yasser Tarakji also tried to apply but never heard back from the U.N. agency that registers refugees.

[….]

Still, separation from the two sons is painful for all of them. Whenever Maria Tarakji looks at photos from their last day together in Saudi Arabia, her eyes wet with tears.

“The U.S. was accepting refugees forever. It’s unfair to do this now,” Maria Tarakji said. “It’s really hard to live here, and our brother is not here.”

She said she’s had to take responsibility for tasks that her brothers used to handle, like choosing an internet router.

Both brothers work in computer programming and repair.

Continue reading here.

See my San Diego archive here. It wasn’t too long ago that we reported that the IRC there was involved in some housing fraud controversy.

Update October 8th: 22 Rohingya (posing as refugees) in Bangladesh charged in massacre of Hindus, here.

This is not new news to me!

I’ve been hearing about this problem for years—the US State Department, with unwavering faith, seems to think it can place Muslims in Christian communities and the melting pot will perform its magic and presto! there will be love and acceptance all around.

esar-met-evil-face — Burmese Muslim Esar Met was placed in a housing complex in Salt Lake City (by the US State Dept. contractor there) housing mostly Burmese Christians. He was found guilty in 2014 of brutally raping and murdering a Burmese Christian child. A reporter for the Salt Lake Tribune found that the Muslims were separated from the other Burmese minorities and were housed in separate parts of the camps in Thailand. But housed together in America! https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2014/05/15/utah-burmese-muslim-refugee-sentenced-in-brutal-rapemurder-of-little-girl/

Burmese Christians and other Burmese religious minorities (including the Chin) have been terrorized back home by Rohingya Muslims for decades and they fear it will begin again in Ft. Wayne, Indiana!

(Ft. Wayne first came to my attention ten years ago because of the very high TB rates there in the Burmese community. Also, many years ago I received a call about how fearful the Burmese Christians there were when resettlement contractors began placing the Rohingya in their neighborhoods.)

Please pay attention readers!

We have been admitting thousands of Rohingya to the US for the last ten years (just short of 20,000 so far)! Trump will be admitting more!

From this article we learn that the Rohingya enclaves growing in the US are in Chicago, Milwaukee and Ft. Wayne. But, don’t forget the brutal murder in Salt Lake City! And, I have some recent stories about Rohingya in Phoenix and that sexual pervert in New Hampshire in my HUGE Rohingya Reports archive, click here.

Do you know what is the most remarkable thing about this story?

It is the fact that a publication like VOA is even putting this in print! The times they are a changin’…..

From Voice of America (hat tip: Joanne):

The crisis [latest conflict began in 2012 when a gang of Rohingya men raped and murdered a Buddhist girl—ed] has increased the number of Rohingya refugees arriving in the United States, and since 2015 they outpace the number of Syrians resettling here.

But instead of landing in Chicago or Milwaukee, two cities home to a large number of Rohingya, Tahir and her family instead arrived in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and became one of the first Rohingya families in the area. [Don’t you just love it—arrived! Arrived like they picked Ft. Wayne on a map. They were placed there by the US State Department and its contractors!—-ed]

A Burmese community

Burmese community members believe there are now more than 150 Rohingya families living in Fort Wayne, and although their numbers are growing, their community remains a small fraction of the more than 6,000 Burmese of various ethnic groups now living in the city.

Can you believe it! VOA continues:

Most of the foreign-born Burmese population in Fort Wayne speak a different language and practice different religions than the Rohingya, and the ethnic tensions and religious persecution that fueled their flight from Myanmar don’t necessarily end once they arrive here.

“Why I don’t like Rohingya to come to Fort Wayne is … most of them, almost 100 percent, are Muslims,” said Burmese Chin community leader Abraham Thang, who moved to Fort Wayne in the 1990s.

“They’re blood is Muslims, not Buddhist, not Christians. They did very terrible job, like attacking the military and police post, and killing and murdering the Hindus. That is not good for Rohingyas. That is the big mistake by Rohingyas.”

Thang, a pastor at the Myanmar Indigenous Christian Church, was one of the few Burmese willing to talk to VOA about Rohingya resettlement in Fort Wayne, and while he emphasizes these views are his own opinions, they are indicative of the same resentments Rohingya face in Myanmar.

“I don’t mind they practice what they believe,” Thang explained to VOA. “What I mind is extremism. Most of the terrorists come from the Muslim community. This is what I am thinking in my mind personally. So my opinion is, rather than sending Rohingya to Fort Wayne, and not sending them here is better don’t send Rohingya to Fort Wayne.”

Mayor-Henry-file-2 — With mayors like these! “We try to pride ourselves in being a welcoming community…”

Mayor: All welcome here

“That’s unfortunate,” said Fort Wayne’s mayor, Tom Henry. “I want anybody from Myanmar to know they are welcome in our community.”

Henry, a Democrat, has made Burmese integration into life in this city of more than 250,000 a priority of his administration.

“We try to pride ourselves in being a welcoming community, an inclusive community, a community that allows people to assimilate throughout our community and if they want to ultimately become an American citizen, we’ve got the tools in place to help that happen. So when I hear that there is that kind of tension and anxiety behind the scenes, that disturbs me.”

But some community members, like Thang, worry that an increasing number of new arrivals will only fuel tensions.

“I foresee the Burmese people and the Rohingya people in the future, sooner or later, we will have conflict and that is not good for the Fort Wayne community.”

Much more here.

My Ft. Wayne posts are here.

Again, my Rohingya Reports category is here (209 previous posts) with enough material to write a book!

See also my post yesterday about political action that should be aimed at mayors and local elected officials.

Go here to see which contractors are working near you. Surprise! Not! Looks like Catholic Charities is the resettlement contractor in Ft. Wayne. I believe they were responsible in Salt Lake too. Memory lane: In 2013 I was there to hear a Catholic Bishops’ lobbyist tell the State Dept.—we want more Rohingya!

Day: October 7, 2017

San Diego: Unfair says Syrian refugee that her brothers can’t come to US from Saudi Arabia

She said she’s had to take responsibility for tasks that her brothers used to handle, like choosing an internet router.

Tensions grow in Ft. Wayne, IN over placement of Rohingya Muslims in Burmese neighborhoods

Most of the foreign-born Burmese population in Fort Wayne speak a different language and practice different religions than the Rohingya, and the ethnic tensions and religious persecution that fueled their flight from Myanmar don’t necessarily end once they arrive here.

“I foresee the Burmese people and the Rohingya people in the future, sooner or later, we will have conflict and that is not good for the Fort Wayne community.”