Category: 2008 Presidential campaign

Refugees International: Tell Obama to resettle 105,500 Iraqis into US

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Ken Bacon*, head of a major refugee industry lobbying group, Refugees International (RI), urged his supporters to send letters to President-elect Obama and tell him to increase the number of Iraqi refugees entering the US to 105,500 (and they aren’t promoting the truly persecuted Christians), while the Bush Administration has proposed 17,000.    Our worldwide ceiling for FY2009 is 80,000.

From a Refugees International action alert this past week:

Increase the number of Iraqis resettled into the U.S. to 105,500.

The number just keeps growing!  Everytime they put out a release the number goes up by 10,000 or so.   Here is a post back in September where groups including RI were talking 80,000-90,000, and were very displeased with the State Department’s measly 17,000.

We brought around 13,000 in FY 2008 and a large number of these refugees are very unhappy as we have reported many times recently.   Well educated and expecting work according to their educations, Iraqis entering the US in large numbers over the last few months have not been silent about their disappointment.  See one of many posts on the unhappy Iraqis here.

Are these groups like RI completely isolated  and out of touch that they don’t know this dissatisfaction is going on in city after city in the US?  How can they continue to advocate for more Iraqis when the ones we have are not being cared for?  It makes no sense!  

And, won’t these 105,500 competent Iraqis be competing for increasingly scarce jobs if the economy continues to tighten as predicted?   How is that going to sit with out-of-work Americans, after so many fellow Americans fought and died for Iraq to have its freedom? 

 

*Ken Bacon, if you recall, was the Pentagon spokesman in the Clinton Administration whose claim to fame was that he released Linda Tripp’s personel file which served to draw the media to Linda Tripp and away from Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky.   Bet you a buck, he ends up in the State Department if Hillary is Secretary of State, afterall, in the ways of Washington—she owes him.

Refugees International is chaired by Farooq Kathwari.  You can read more about him here.

Minnesota: Tangled web of possible voter misconduct involving Somalis

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Charges continue to fly in the Twin Cities in the wake of charges and counter charges involving a Somali-dominated polling place.  The opening lines of this article challenge the reader to try to figure out what the heck went on.

A mixture of first-time voters, translators, competing community leaders, political issues in Somalia, and clan-based allegiances in the Minnesota Somali community boiled over at the Brian Coyle Center on Election Day.

Omar Jamal, the Somali ‘community organizer’ who we have written about on several previous occasions seems to be at the center of the whole mess.   Jamal had been ordered deported in 2005, so those of us reporting on Somali intrigues in the US are wondering how he escaped being shipped back to Somalia.  Or, was it the same story as Obama’s Aunt Zeituni, he just didn’t go.   Apparently nothing is being done about Jamal’s charges because he hasn’t filed an official complaint, just yakking it up.  From The Bridge:

Omar Jamal accuses Jamal Hashi, the director of Somali Action Alliance*, of improper behavior in the polling place. Somali Action Alliance is an organization that is involved in civic engagement and social justice work, including voter registration. Hashi says that community leaders worked hard to educate Somalis as new immigrants on the election process.

The big question I have is, are these “new immigrants” citizens with the right to vote?   Are they even legally in the US?

Critics of Omar Jamal point to the following information as the reason Jamal is complaining, and supports Coleman:

….Coleman met with Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed at the beginning of the year, when he urged the president to work towards reconciliation with other Somali leaders. Coleman’s assertion that the transitional government is “credible” has irked those Somalis who feel that their government is run by warlords. Ahmed’s government has come under fire for its association with Ethiopia, whose presence in Somalia is seen by many as an infringement of Somali sovereignty.

Clan allegiances continue to be important for Somalis in Minnesota. These allegiances may play a part in fear of political retaliation, which was cited by five local Somali community leaders as a reaon for refusing to talk on the record about the controversy at Brian Coyle Center.

Some in the Somali community say that it is hard to believe Jamal is getting as much airtime as he is, as they do not find him a credible source on issues going on in their community. Some feel that Jamal, who is related to President Ahmed, supports Coleman for this reason.

Jamal is related to Somali President Ahmed?   Is that why he hasn’t been deported?  Did Jamal himself vote?

To confuse you even further, go to this report on Congressman Keith Ellison (first Muslim in US Congress) lobbying for Al Franken.

Go back and read the whole story from The Bridge and see what a mess this is.  And, sorry I haven’t helped much to sort it out and have maybe even complicated it further!

The final vote count for the  Somali-dominated ward was:

The final vote totals from Ward 2, Precinct 10, reported by the Secretary of State’s office, was 938 for Barack Obama and 122 for John McCain, 854 for Al Franken and 161 for Norm Coleman. [Ward and precinct number corrected, 11/19/08]

Just think, the US Senate, our whole US government (!), could hinge on Somali clans and the politics of that hell hole in the Horn of Africa.

 

*Somali Action Alliance was granted 501(c)4 status in 2006.  The IRS 501c(4) status allows the organization to be involved in political activity and donations are generally not deductible.  In its 2006 Form 990 the Somali Action Alliance received $235,765 in grants and gifts.   It is not clear how much this Catholic social justice organization (here) contributed.   The Form 990 was signed by Hashi Abdi.  Who knows if that is the same person mentioned above, Jamal Hashi?

Obama and refugees

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Where does Obama stand on the question of refugees?   After a little searching around, I don’t have a definitive answer for you.   What got me thinking about this today (admittedly I should have already been looking into it) was a post at Gates of Vienna yesterday about Danes being inflamed by a 2007 report that Obama was going to insist that European allies in the Iraq War should step up to the plate and take more Iraqi refugees.   Denmark already has some experience with Iraqi refugees who were interpretors and turned out to be spys (here).

See the post about a Danish hubbub at GOV here first, then continue below:

The Europeans are already stressed by excessive Muslim immigration and don’t need Obama lecturing them about their supposed duty to bring more.

I am guessing that BHO will be in favor of increased refugee resettlement because it fits his Leftist (we love all of humanity) view of the world as we have been discussing in the category “community destablization.”  Professionals in the State Department are probably pretty excited about increased numbers and the Leftwing volags who hold all the government contracts are likely jumping for joy since they are paid by the head for each refugee resettled.

Only time will tell how the new Administration will tackle the issue at a time when unemployment is on the rise here and any sane person would see that bringing more people seeking employment to our country will only continue to sink the ship.   Already we have complaints across the country of refugees not finding work.

The Iraqi refugees now arriving by the thousands to America are complaining that they can’t find work.  Generally the Iraqis are more highly educated and skilled, unlike the Somalis who can be shipped off to the meatpacking plants.  The Iraqis want meaningful work and aren’t getting it.  See our recent post here and follow links to other unhappy Iraqi refugee stories.

One hint of how Obama feels about the subject is that he supported legislation passed into law last year to increase the number of Iraqi refugees to the US over what the Bush Administration was already doing.  See mention of that here.   That bill was pushed by Mr. Refugee himself, Ted Kennedy.  Kennedy is the chief sponsor of the Refugee Act of 1980 along with guess who, Senator Joe Biden—a law that set in motion the multimillion dollar government contract program to non-profit groups.

Although it would be nice to think that somehow we, at RRW, played some role (as suggested at GOV) in the slow trickle of Iraqi refugees to the US, all we have really been able to do is chronicle the situation (256 posts to date) from a distance.  There are all sorts of reasons given why the US was slow to start bringing Iraqis to America, I think a primary one was a rigorous screening process (365 “refugee” terrorists screened as of July) at Homeland Security.  I think the security people put brakes on the State Department for a long time.   But, all that is behind us now and the floodgates are open to Iraqi refugees.

Other than the truly persecuted Christians, we have been maintaining (in agreement with the Iraqi government) that Iraq needs its well-educated people to rebuild Iraq not cleaning motels in Baltimore.

I found a couple of things that might give us a slight hint at where things will be going with refugees in The One’s administration.

From the Obama/Biden website:

Barack Obama and Joe Biden believe that America has both a moral obligation and a responsibility for security that demands we confront Iraq’s humanitarian crisis—more than five million Iraqis are refugees or are displaced inside their own country. Obama and Biden will form an international working group to address this crisis. He will provide at least $2 billion to expand services to Iraqi refugees in neighboring countries, and ensure that Iraqis inside their own country can find sanctuary.

At least there is no mention of an airlift to your town!   But the last line in this issue statement was interesting, although slightly off topic:

They will reserve the right to intervene militarily, with our international partners, to suppress potential genocidal violence within Iraq.

So, I guess if we leave Iraq and a bloodbath follows we are going back in?

An indication of where the Obama Administration might go on the subject of refugees comes from the lobbying arm of the Refugee industry, Refugees International (Chairman of the Board is Farooq Kathwari).  Note this message to Obama suggests a more subtle approach and doesn’t mention the word “resettlement.”

This is getting way too long, but I wanted to comment that at GOV Japan was mentioned.  Until now Japan has resisted taking refugees, but they were finally beaten down by the guilt-tripping “radicals who love all humanity” at the UN to begin bringing third worlders (Somalis!) to Japan.   See my post here in September.

I have no doubt that the pressure is on Japan to bring in Iraqis too.

The Cult of Obama and bye-bye WaPo

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This is off topic, but what the heck, the beauty of writing a blog is that one has no boss!  We have a good website in Maryland called the Baltimore Reporter and this story (cross-posted from Flopping Aces) attracted my attention today.  It includes mention of how the Washington Post admitted on November 8th that they had completely gone overboard in their adoration for The One.  No kidding!

After subscribing to the WaPo for 28 years, we are this week cancelling our subscription.  They can write what they want, but we don’t have to pay for it.  The Post is in deep financial doo-doo so I hope this (the adoration of Obama) will be the final straw for them.  Bye-bye WaPo!

P.S.  If you hadn’t seen it already elsewhere see Obama’s creepy cult of personality  discussion at Newsweek.  The Washington Post Company owns Newsweek too, so they all knew, in advance!