The school system in this refugee ‘seed’ community must educate students speaking 30 different languages. (Imagine what that costs the local tax payer!).
Welcoming Winooski: Remember this story from last summer? The ‘bacon’ ad had to be removed from this coffee shop when a Muslim woman claimed she was offended by the sign. http://www.jihadwatch.org/2014/08/vermont-restaurant-ad-for-bacon-removed-after-muslim-claimed-it-offended-her
This story is about the first Somali School Board member in Winooski’s history.
“There’s over 30 languages spoken among the families in our schools,” said Winooski School Superintendent Sean McMannon.
[….]
“The only challenge we have here was the weather, and we compared that between cold weather and the other violence in other cities, then we chose to be here,” Abdi said. [He is talking about violent American cities, not those in Africa!—ed]
Mr. Abdi hopes his voice will speak for those who can’t, in a Winooski community that sees more and more refugees move here every year.
“In the Winooski school district about 38 percent of our students qualify for English language learning services,” Superintendent McMannon said.
This story is from January of this year. Thanks to ‘Pungentpeppers’ for sending it earlier, but I just never got around to it.
Fatmata Jabbie a refugee(?) from Saudi Arabia complains about her hourly wage at Walmart.
So, the gist of the story is that in late January a group calling itself ‘ Money Out Voter’s In‘ held a rally in Washington protesting the 5-year anniversary of the ‘Citizens United ‘ Supreme Court decision. You can read all about it here(but remember this is the Daily Kos!).
One of their targets is Walmart (for the record, I am no fan of Walmart). And, who do we have speaking about Walmart’s purportedly low wages, but a “refugee” from Saudi Arabia. Huh?
Readers, we don’t take Saudis as refugees, but (if this woman is a real “refugee”) we must be flying to America Somalis and other Africans who got into Saudi Arabia illegally and calling them ‘refugees.’
I’ve been writing for years about how we are perverting internationally understood refugee law by bringing some of Malta’s overload of illegal aliens to the US as refugees. Are we doing that for Saudi Arabia too?
Remember readers that Saudi Arabia deports most who manage to get into the country. Here is one of many postson Saudi Arabia kicking out Somalis who got into S.A. They promptly deport other Africans as well.
Fatmata Jabbie is a cashier at Walmart in Alexandria, VA. Originally from Saudi Arabia, she came to the US in 2010 as a refugeeseeking a better life for her kids. She is a mother of two with a third child on the way, and supports her family making just $8.40/hour.
Fatmata works hard, and has asked Walmart repeatedly for more hours to support her family and even switched her schedule in an attempt to get full-time hours. As a pregnant working mother, she cannot afford Walmart’s health care. Meanwhile, the Walton family and Walmart as a corporation spend billions donating to politicians who support undermining public education. Walmart also maintains corporate policies that keep wages low and silence workers who speak out for better working conditions Fatmata sees how Citizens United has bolstered the power of billionaires like the Waltons at the expense of hardworking people and their families.
I’ll bet you a buck that you, the American taxpayers, are supplementing her “low” wages with generous welfare—food stamps, subsidized housing etc.
And, by the way, new baby on the way, where is hubby?
More importantly, where is Congress? Isn’t it time to investigate the Refugee Admissions Program of the UN/US State Department?
Our many new readers may not know that the US State Department has agreed to a UN request to resettle 50,000 or so impoverished, uneducated, (mostly) women from DR Congo over a period of several years.
Congolese women and children waiting for their turn to come to America.
This is an informative article from Episcopal News Service that basically reports how needy these refugees are.
It is also interesting to me because we rarely see articles about refugee resettlement contractor Episcopal Migration Ministries, one of the top nine. Apparently they are less media savvy as they rarely turn up in news stories (like this one) intended to be puff pieces on refugees.
We previously reported on the great need for mental health services for women from DR Congo, here.
A Congolese refugee, Zaburiya arrived in Tucson seven months ago with five children, aged 10 to 26, after spending 18 years in a refugee camp in Rwanda.
Illiterate and not speaking a word of English, she became a member of a women’s empowerment group operated by Refugee Focus, which receives support from The Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society’s Episcopal Migration Ministries service through funding from the United States government’s Office of Refugee Resettlement.
(The Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society is the legal and canonical name under which The Episcopal Church is incorporated, conducts business, and carries out mission.)***
[….]
Through Episcopal Migration Ministries, the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society partners with 30 resettlement affiliates in 26 dioceses nationwide. It is one of nine agencies working in partnership with the U.S. Department of State to welcome and resettle refugees to the United States.
For the umpteenth time, the UN is picking our refugees!
In 2014, the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society and its partners worked to resettle 5,155 of the tens of thousands of refugees who came to the United States through the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ (UNHCR) screening process.
[….]
Over the next several years, UNHCR plans to resettle 50,000 refugees from the Congo, with 70 to 90 percent to be resettled to the United States,said Kurt Bonz, Episcopal Migration Ministries’ program manager…
[….]
“Most of the refugees have been in camps an average of 20 years, education is low, and many are single women with children who continue to experience trauma related to living in the Congo, the journey out and living in a refugee camp,” he said.
So who are these refugees from DR Congo and where are they going?
I checked the State Department’s data base for the following dates: 10/1/2012 through 2/28/2015 and this is what I found:
We resettled 9,022 Congolese refugee “seedlings” in that approximate 2 and 1/2 year period. Most were Christians of some sort, but I was surprised to learn that 356 were Muslims (from DR Congo?).
Then here is a list of the states that received over 200 Congolese refugees over that same 2 and 1/2 year time period (apparently all of these states have run out of American poor people to care for):
Arizona (862)
Colorado (290)
Florida (236)
Georgia (398)
Idaho (303)
Illinois (339)
Kentucky (405)
Maryland (259)
Massachusetts (322)
Michigan (417)
Missouri (301)
New Hampshire (260)
New York (325)
North Carolina (379)
Ohio (288)
Pennsylvania (445)
Texas (1078) Working hard to turn Texas blue!
Utah (200)
Washington (273)
*** When you visit this post, you will see more about why this structure of the Episcopal Migration Ministries makes it hard to track their finances. They must be claiming they are a ‘church’ and as such do not have to do a Form 990.
The Somali (refugee!) cab driver was familiar with the Washington, DC Metro area and therefore extremely valuable to Al-Shabaab, so why did the Justice Department not move in on him sooner?
Heck, he has been gone from the US for almost three years and that is a lot of time to divulge what he knows to the Islamic (America-hating) killers with Al-Shabaab!
Gee, maybe Mohamed even knows where Eric Holder lives!
Who in the US Justice Department overruled the FBI allowing Liban Haji Mohamed to leave the country?
Here is how the news at the Washington Post begins, but it is near the end where we learn the most significant piece of this story (I think they call this buryng the lead). (Hat tip: Cathy):
A Northern Virginia man who fled the United States more than two years ago and was recently placed on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists list is in the custody of the Somali government, U.S. officials said.
Liban Haji Mohamed, 29, was detained shortly after prosecutors unsealed a warrant for his arrest and the FBI added him to the wanted list in late January. It is unclear how he was taken into custody or how soon he could be brought back to the United States.
The former cabdriver is charged with providing material support and resources to al-Shabab, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization allied with al-Qaeda. He is suspected of having an operational role in al-Shabab and of trying to recruit people to join the group.
When FBI officials announced his inclusion on the most-wanted list, they said Mohamed was “an asset to his terrorist associates who might plot attacks on U.S. soil.” Officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation, noted that he had detailed knowledge of potential targets in Washington.
Unbelievable!
U.S. law enforcement had been attempting to track Mohamed, a naturalized U.S. citizen, before he slipped out of the country and into Mexico on July 12, 2012. The case had frustrated FBI agents who strongly believed Mohamed should have been charged with material support of terrorism while he was living in Fairfax County.
Some federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia were willing to do so, though they were overruled by others at the Justice Department, officials said.
In the wake of the terror scare over the past weekend, the Washington Timeshas published a pretty thorough piece on how the Refugee Admissions Program of the US State Department has changed/stressed Minnesota with the resettlement by three refugee contractors—Catholic Charities, Lutheran Social Services of MN, and World Relief MN (now Arrive Ministries)—of thousands of Somali refugees. (For anyone interested in finding the resettlement contractors in your state and city, click herefor a handy directory).
Someone should prepare a map showing all of the towns in Minnesota that have ‘welcomed’ refugees of all stripes. Some of the towns we mention are here especially the hottest sites: Minneapolis, St. Paul, St. Cloud and Rochester.
We told you here, that Minnesota is the go-to state for the resettlement of Somalis. Generous welfare was the original draw.
You can read the whole Washington Times article by reporter Kelly Riddell,here. As of this writing there are 626 comments!
If you are living in small town/suburban Minnesota (or small town America) and are thinking this isn’t happening where you live, it is a big city issue, think again.
I went through the State Department data baseagain yesterday to see just where in Minnesota Somalis had been resettled over the last ten years (I started my search in February 2005).
I was shocked!
Remember as you look at this list below that the Somalis may not have stayed where they were originally placed, they may have moved to bigger cities in the state or others may have joined the ‘seed community’ in these other towns.
Do you think all of these towns (over 60 in number!) were consulted before they were expected to take on the financial burden of housing, healthcare and education for the kids?
The total number of Somalis placed in Minnesota, since February 2005 to date, is 10,804.
(Many more were resettled in Minnesota before 2005, but we only looked at the last ten to eleven years.)
Anoka (2)
Apple Valley (13)
Barnesville (5)
Blaine (5)
Bloomington (124)
Brooklyn (2)
Brooklyn Center (38)
Brooklyn Park (50)
Burnsville (282)
Chanhassen (6)
Chaska (2)
Colombia Heights (112)
Coon Rapids (16)
Crystal (16)
Eagen (38)
Eden Prairie (400)
Edina (27)
Fairbault (10)
Falcon Heights (7)
Faribault (211) (is this the same town as Fairbault, or is this a typo?)
Fridley (14)
Golden Valley (9)
Hill Top (1)
Hopkins (143)
Hutchinson (5)
Inver Grove Height (7)
Inver Grove Heights (11) (typo again?)
Lakeville (4)
Mankato (34)
Maple Grove (6)
Maplewood (4)
Marshall (35)
Mendota Heights (1)
Minneapolis (4,868)
Minnetonka (40)
Moorhead (8)
New Brighton (18)
New Hope (80)
Norcross (1)
North Mankato (14)
Norths St. Paul (2)
Oakdale (1)
Owatonna (140)
Pelican Rapids (113)
Pine Island (3)
Plymouth (58)
Richfield (193)
Richville (7)
Robbinsville (4)
Rochester (595)
Rosemount (9)
Roseville (52)
St. Anthony (7)
St. Cloud (1,123)
St. Louis Park (100)
Saint Paul (1,491)
Saint Peter (11)
Savage (30)
Shakopee (18)
South St. Paul (11)
Waite Park (23)
Waseca (6)
West St. Paul (13)
White Bear Lake (1)
Willmor (122)
Woodbury (2)
By the way, Minnesota also ‘welcomed’ many other refugees of many nationalities, but we only looked at Somali numbers because they are dominating the news.
