Category: Africa

Santorum soars on immigration!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Readers: this is cross posted from Potomac Tea Party Report (my other blog).   You may want to check out other posts there over the last few days as they are related to immigration issues.  Keep in mind the post is written for an audience which may not be as savvy as RRW readers on Legal immigration problems and programs.

Yesterday I wrote a post based on a Washington Times story from Thursday that said that the immigration control crowd was forming behind Mitt Romney.  But, all that appears to have changed when Rick Santorum gave a speech on Friday in South Carolina that will change the playing field for many.  Michael Savage, for one, should be pleased that one of the candidates has finally come out forcefully on immigration.

In a press release late last night, NumbersUSA announced that the former Pennsylvania Senator had soared to the top of their Presidential scorecard primarily because he didn’t just stick to the usual talking point—illegal immigration is bad, legal is good—he told people that the numbers are too high.  He took on, without prompting, the Diversity Visa Lottery and chain migration (that is when you get your foot in the door, you can bring a whole host of relatives in with you).

Somalis are a case in point

Not to get too deep into the weeds, but on this business of chain migration, the US State Department in 2008 halted “family reunification” for Somalis (and a few other African groups) when they discovered through some random DNA testing that the would-be family members weren’t family at all.   It is believed that as many as 36,000 Somalis got into the US illegally by claiming family connections.

Diversity visa is insane

Also, I haven’t mentioned it here much (here is one post this past July), but the Diversity Visa Lottery (yes, a real lottery) allows 50,000 immigrants from countries—Nigeria, Egypt, Kenya, Bangladesh etc.—that we don’t (supposedly) have enough people from to apply for a lottery to get into the US to increase our diversity.  NumbersUSA has been working with certain members of Congress in recent years to kill the program.

So, here then is what NumbersUSA is saying about Rick Santorum:

Former Sen. Rick Santorum zoomed from the back of the GOP pack on immigration issues to way out FRONT at a C-SPAN televised event in South Carolina on Friday. For the first time in many years,  we have a Presidential candidate who says LEGAL immigration numbers are too high!

[…..]

Congratulations to all of you Santorum supporters who have been pushing him to greatly improve his immigration platform.  You succeeded beyond most of our wildest dreams.

Now, the rest of you who are supporting other GOP and Democratic candidates need to increase your pressure on them to catch up to Santorum.

Roy Beck explains what happened—Santorum from a D- to an A literally overnight:

We have long said that candidates don’t need a long speech or a huge position paper to make it clear to the American public that they think American workers should get the next U.S. jobs, that illegal aliens should not be rewarded with U.S. jobs and that legal immigration categories should be cut if they don’t serve the national interest.

When Santorum began moving up in the public opinion polls late November and December, we devoted blogs and webcasts to his poor record on immigration that worked out to a D-minus.

But we always said that his bad grade was mainly based on bad decisions in the 1990s and on a lack of statements on various categories during the campaign.  We said that it would be easy for him to improve his platform and grade very quickly with a set of new statements and promises.

Here is the clincher.  Santorum went beyond the usual—I oppose illegal immigration—and took it one step further.

But for the first time in the year-long Presidential campaign thus far, we have a candidate who has brought up the Visa Lottery and Chain Migration.

Go to NumbersUSA to see what Santorum said.

I guess we will now be testing the Michael Savage thesis!

Somalis protest at Minnesota state capitol over money transfer issue; millions of questionable dollars sent back to Africa

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This is an update on a story I wrote about just ten days ago, and didn’t think it was worth posting at first (you know, ho hum, same old story), but there was a bit of information that I found stunning.

So here is the story from the Twin Cities Daily Planet which began with the standard journalistic practice of telling a sob story (or do only Leftwing/mainstream media writers start with such stories?) about a woman who can’t send a few bucks to her starving relatives in the Horn of Africa because of new banking regulations.

By the way, it doesn’t start with the story of the Minnesota Somali women convicted recently (see how Minnesota political leftists are rallying around them)  for sending money to the terror group—Al Shabaab.

Twin Cities Daily Planet (via Hiiraan):

Hassan was one of about 200 mostly Somali and Oromo protesters outside the State Capitol last Friday, January 6, demanding that the state and federal government come up with a solution to allow Africans in the diaspora to send remittances to loved ones in the Horn of Africa.

[…..]

Sunrise Community Banks, the last Minnesota bank to work with Somali-owned money services businesses (MSBs), stopped transferring remittances abroad on December 30. The Somali community has scrambled to figure out alternatives ever since.

It is not just in Minnesota:

….there have been growing fears that Somali-owned MSBs may help facilitate terrorist activity abroad. Concerns heightened after two Somali women from Rochester, Minnesota, were convicted last October of sending money to the terrorist group al-Shabab in Somalia.

As a result, banks in Minnesota, Ohio and Washington State — all centers of Somali refugee population — have stopped working with Somali-owned MSBs.

The closures aren’t new. Most corporate American banks cut off ties with hawalas in 2005, after Congress passed stricter banking regulations in a post-9/11 era. The regulations designated MSBs as “high risk.”

Then here is the part I found astounding!

From Minnesota alone, $100-120 million in remittances is sent every month through MSBs, part of a global two-billion-dollar industry, Hassan said. He added that the term “hawala” is actually a misnomer, since hawalas are informal businesses. Technically, hawalas don’t even exist in Minnesota, he said.

Up to $120 million a month?  From Minnesota alone!  Readers keep in mind that many Somalis are on welfare and receiving food stamps.  Also note that earlier in the article we learned this:

Somali families typically send between $50 and $200 on a monthly basis to support the livelihoods of relatives in the Horn, she explained.

So, if I’ve done the math correctly that would mean there are 60,000 families sending $200 a month from Minnesota if they are each sending the highest amount we are given.   If they are giving the smallest amount ($50) then there are 240,000 Somali families in Minnesota—no way!

We learned just this past October that the US Census Bureau estimates the Somali population in Minnesota has risen to 32,000!    (I think the number is low, but that is what our government is saying):

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) – Minnesota’s Somali population is still the largest in the United States after a new Census Bureau estimate early Thursday raised the number of people of Somali ancestry in the state to more than 32,000.

That would mean that every man, woman, and child of Somali origin was sending $3750 a MONTH to Somalia. (LOL! Someone check my math!).  No way, but if the $100 -$120 million number is accurate someone is sending a whole heck of a lot of US dollars to Somalia.  Incidentally that census article says the average black family in Minnesota makes $27,500 a year.

Bottomline, there is a lot of money involved and so it is no surprise that Rep.Keith Ellison (first Muslim Congressman) and the Local SEIU leader were ringleaders at last weeks rally to demand that the banks reinstate the transfer of your money to prop up Somalia.  In addition there must be lots and lots of money involved in the transfer “business” right there in Minnesota.

Changing the subject only slightly, it is the huge amounts of money involved (remittance money) that drives decisions on such things as TPS, here.  Your social welfare money is propping up El Salvador too (while some, like certain people in Montgomery County, Maryland) are making money in the transfer business.

Add a new Islamic terror group to your lexicon

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

It is BOKO HARAM.  It is the Islamic group that recently took credit for the Christmas day bombings in Nigeria.  The group is looking to establish a shariah government in that country, but they could get in here—into the US.

Recently I picked up the December issue of Government Security News on my kitchen table and noticed this story (below).  Turns out that there were hearings in the US House of Representatives on Boko Haram with an emphasis on the possibility that they could be in the US.

Everybody knows Al Qaeda by now, and readers of RRW surely know the name Al Shabaab (or Shabab), so here is a new African Islamic supremacist group:

The Nigerian Islamist sect that bombed the United Nations headquarters in the Nigerian capital on Aug. 26, killing more than 20, could bring its terror tactics to the US, warned a report from members of the House Homeland Security Committee and its counterterrorism subcommittee.

The report, issued by Rep. Patrick Meehan (R-PA) and Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA), chairman and ranking member of the subcommittee on counterterrorism and intelligence, said Boko Haram could be the next face of terror in the U.S. Their report, issued following a House hearing on the group, said it has quickly evolved and “poses an emerging threat” to the US homeland and interests. They requested the State Department to investigate classifying it as a terror group, saying it could be working with Al Qaeda affiliates in Algeria and Al Shabaab in Nigeria to develop and coordinate on operational plans.

Boko Haram Islamists want to create a Sharia-only nation in northern Nigeria and ignore Nigeria’s constitution and the country’s President Goodluck Jonathan.  They also believe western education and any product of it are blasphemous. Experts on the group say the name “Boko Haram” is a rough combination of Arabic and Nigerian words that mean “western education is a sin.”

And, then I note in this report on the hearings, that the report urges the intelligence community to begin work in the  Nigerian diaspora in the US.  I guess they now realize they were asleep at the switch as Al Shabaab recruited in the US Somali “community” about 5 years ago.

Conduct outreach with Nigerian Diaspora communities in the United States: The US government should develop relationships with Nigerian Diaspora communities in the United States to learn more about Boko Haram and the factors driving its evolution, intent, capability, and targeting. Through familial and personal relationships, Diaspora communities in the United States provide a unique and invaluable perspective on their home country.

So far we aren’t taking Nigerian refugees (that we have been told!), but plenty get into the US through the Diversity Visa  Lottery Program, here (6000 in 2011).

I’m sure you will be hearing much more about BOKO HARAM!

Millions of Iraqis “abandoned” by US

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

You can’t win with these Leftists.  They screamed and hollered that we had to get out of Iraq.  In fact, they played a huge role in getting Obama elected because he promised just that—he would get us out of Iraq and Afghanistan.  So, Obama yanks all of our troops out of Iraq (at once) and headlines (from Leftwing publications) like our title above are everywhere.

Below is how a story from New America Media begins.  But, read about NAM first—started in 1996 they say this in their ‘about:‘

NAM is dedicated to bringing the voices of the marginalized – ethnic minorities, immigrants, young people, elderly – into the national discourse. The communities of the New America will then be better informed, better connected to one another, and better able to influence policy makers.

NAM on the Iraqis (likening them to the Vietnamese where the actions of the political Left/antiwar movement caused their abandonment).  We can argue about whether getting into both Vietnam and Iraq was a good idea, but in both cases we should have stayed to win and help stabilize the country.   Maybe the political Left (the Communists and Socialists) wants this “abandonment” story (US is bad story!).  Gee, could the refugees just be their pawns in a larger game?

Each time Uncle Sam ventures abroad he leaves an unfinished story, and nowhere is it most unfinished than the story of Iraq, where despite flowery speeches regarding freedom and sovereignty by the Obama administration, despite assurances that tyranny has been “cast aside,” the tragedy caused by the United States invasion, occupation and inevitable abandonment is on an epic proportion.

Read it all.

So where was the political Left condemning Obama for getting us involved in Egypt and Libya for instance?  Watch for it, we will soon hear calls for us to take Egyptian and Libyan refugees (maybe they have already begun!).

Where is the love in Lewiston?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

No more “layabouts and deadbeats” in Lewiston, says mayor-elect Bob Macdonald!   And, needless to say the Somalis took offense.

After years of the mainstream media and Maine (and Washington, DC)  liberals trying to tell us that everything was lovey-dovey in Lewiston, the election of another mayor signals that all is not going smoothly between the locals and the large (and growing) Somali population.

Readers may recall that the city was embroiled in controversy ten years ago when Somalis (mostly from Georgia where they were originally resettled by the US State Department) scouted out the welfare haven of Maine for a mass migration.  New readers may wish to read this post—Somali migration to Maine: it’s the welfare magnet, stupid— to catch up on the story.

In 2002, then Mayor Raymond did the politically-incorrect thing and sent an open letter (scroll down wiki page) to Somalis begging them not to send more of their people to the overloaded city. (google this because there was lots of news coverage of his “racist” letter).

The next mayor, Laurent Gilbert,* pandered to the Somali population and even went to Washington at the behest of none-other than Soros-favorite John Podesta (Center for American Progress) to proclaim how lovely everything was in Maine where diversity was now its strength (Here is our coverage of that trip in December 2010).

This after Newsweek trumpeted a 2009 piece, with the improbable title, The refugees who saved Lewiston where the reporter paints a picture of a veritable love fest in Lewiston now that the folks (the Mainers and the Africans) have gotten to know each other better, here.   (This is how propaganda works—I have seen this Newsweek piece mentioned repeatedly).

Rumblings out of Lewiston since then (from individual contacts) confirmed that the love affair might have been a Leftwing media fantasy.  Now, with the election of Bob Macdonald as Mayor just a couple of weeks ago, it looks like the citizens there might be signaling with their vote that they have had it with the drain on the welfare system in Lewiston.

While running for office MacDonald reportedly referred to the section of town where Somalis live as a “fourth-world country” (quite a contrast to how it was characterized in Newsweek!):

During his campaign, Macdonald made a number of remarks that some people characterized as racist, while others said they were merely ignorant and insensitive. He referred to downtown Lewiston, where many Somali immigrants live, as a “fourth-world country.”

Then Mayor-elect Macdonald seems to have  really stepped in it on his victorious election-night (in a strange turn of events his “moderate” opponent in the race died a couple of days before the election!) when he made his remarks about “layabouts and deadbeats.”   Hat tip:  Friends of Refugees

From the Bangor Daily News:

LEWISTON, Maine — Mayor-elect Bob Macdonald apologized to the city Thursday for his election-night comments — but his apology wasn’t enough for some members of the city’s immigrant community.

Abdifatah Ahmed, a local landlord and pharmacist, said Macdonald ought to apologize for his tone throughout the mayoral campaign, not just his election-night comments.

During his campaign, Macdonald said he wanted to make the city less attractive to layabouts and deadbeats, many of whom didn’t speak English.

“Enough is enough,” Ahmed said. “Very few people in our community get assistance, but when we get selected and called names, enough is enough.”

Macdonald must stop such talk and explain himself, to go forward with healing, Ahmed said.

“There was a lot said, and a lot of it was on camera,” Ahmed said. “You said people like me are great. But there are old people and children, and you’ve said to them that you have a problem with their fathers. As the mayor, how can you be a role model to those young children?”

Macdonald said his target was not immigrants but welfare recipients.

“If you are working here, I was not talking about you,” Macdonald said. “I was talking about the people that take money, money, money — and they come in all colors.”

Afterward, Ahmed said he and other members of Lewiston’s immigrant community believe they still deserve a more thorough apology from Macdonald.

The apology was not enough for the Somali activists (I wonder what constitutes a “more thorough apology”?).  Watch this Youtube clip and see for yourself.  It is very enlightening.  When I watched it, it had only 37 views so please send it around far and wide.  Pay attention to the beginning when the person doing the filming pans the ‘massive (not!)’ audience.

For more on Lewiston, just type the word into our search function.  It has been a favorite topic here at RRW.

* By the way, out-going Mayor Laurent (sometimes Larry) Gilbert said in August that he was going to Somalia in December to deliver needed humanitarian supplies, does anyone know if that ever happened?

An afterthought:  I should have mentioned that Lynn, Mass is having similar problems with refugee overload.  I wrote about it here the other day.