Comment worth noting: Refugee agency neglect

This is a comment received last night from reader Mark.  We have heard this story over and over again.  Many of  the volags (federal taxpayer-funded contractors) are not taking care of the refugees in their charge and indeed are often not fulfilling their contracts with the government which require they provide refugees with adequate clothing among other things.

I met an Iraqi refugee couple today and I’m glad they were allowed to come here because the wife worked as an English teacher and was threatened for supporting foreigners. The family however was not given any clothes by their resettlement agency other than some jackets. She showed me the jacket she was given and it doesn’t fit her. We are in a very cold state and these people have no winter coats, no hats, no gloves, no scarves, and no boots. She was lucky to find a job that starts next week, but she has to take a bus and walk 5 blocks each way. She said she has already fallen down twice on the ice. I told her to call her refugee resettlement agency caseworker, but she said the caseworker doesn’t return messages. Tomorrow the windchill factor will be negative 20-30.

How many of you reading this know how easy it is to find second hand winter clothing?  I bet you have many extra winter jackets in your own closets.  If this family had a church or other group sponsoring them, just them, they would have their needs met.   These volags often even discourage such sponsorship as we saw in Waterbury, CT last year.

Now this is a story from New Paltz, NY that helps make my point.  Read it here.  There is no mention of a refugee agency involved.  This Iraqi family will probably make it because they have two American families who have taken them under their wings.

For new readers:  You might want to visit a post I wrote in January—Refugees 101—where we call for a complaints hot line for refugees like the one mentioned by Mark.

Check it out: Coalition formed to protect the American Worker

I saw an ad on TV today for the Coalition for the Future of the American Worker.   You can see it too by going here.

From their mission statement:

CFAW has been formed to help America understand the needs of American industry and commerce to ensure the best outcome for both workers and industry. The growing practice of seeking large numbers of workers abroad, rather than committing to the training and advancement of American workers, is ultimately harmful to both labor and industry. It is CFAW’s goal to find solutions that will ensure that employers can gain access to workers they truly need, while protecting job opportunities for American workers and students and allowing them to advance their skills and maintain high wages.

Just yesterday I told you about a scuffle that broke out between refugees in an employment line in Shelbyville, TN.   It’s the first we have heard about, but likely won’t be the last.  Here is a comment worth noting that just came in from reader Vicky Carder:

I live in Shelbyville. The population of this town is approximately 18,000 people. There has already been cultural problems in this town because of the Somali’s attitudes toward the citizens.

We have as large a crisis with jobs as any other area. Since September, approximately 300 jobs have been lost in this town. By the end of March, another 300 will definitely be leaving.

It is like a slap in our face to have immigrants brought to a town this size which is already suffering and will continue to suffer.

Comment worth noting: Australian warns us about Muslim immigration

This is a comment sent to my post on the proposed Iraqi airlift.   A reader named Vle wrote and said he had served in Iraq and we owed the Iraqis the opportunity to live in America.

Last night a reader, BL, sent this response:

Hi Vle, America and the rest of the free world are grateful for your service in Iraq and we thank you. With all due respect to your opinion sir, I am from Australia and live in Sydney, which has a very large community of people from the Middle East, of whom many are Muslims. I am by no stretch a racist, just a realist who views the world for what it truly is.

I am a colored person and my parents migrated to Australia so I do sympathise with the plight of the misplaced Iraqi refugees and their situation. However, having lived in Sydney my whole life, experiencing and witnessing first hand the negative impact that Muslims have had on this City, I can only hope that your beautiful country doesn’t go through what Sydney has had to tolerate for so long. You will consistently hear in the news of another gang rape, gang violence, drug related crimes and another nonsensical rant by a Muslim cleric. Sure, you will argue that many of those crimes are committed by all and not just them but the ugly reality is it is more often them and it’s consistent and in your face. I talk to and have been friends with Muslims and their way of thinking is just different than ours’. It is very hard for me to express and portray all of this accurately but if these leftist groups have their way, America will soon experience what we have had to tolerate for a long time now in Sydney.

The truth behind the unrealistic ideals is that Muslims will not and from my personal experiences, can not integrate with Western society. I do truly wish the ideals of a peaceful co-existence between the Muslim world and Western world was a reality, but sadly it is not so. I can only hope and pray that the Obama administration with all their diluted leftist views, will let logic and real world analysis dictate their policies and world changing decisions in the future to come for America’s sake.

God bless and peace to all.

Comments worth noting is a category we recently set up for important comments from readers, like this one, that new readers might not normally see.

Now, in light of this warning from BL, please go back and read Judy’s excellent post of a couple of days ago, ‘Not everybody is “just like us”‘ here.

Comment worth noting: Rohingya group accuses UNHCR of creating recent boat men crisis

This (below) is part of a comment (press release) from a group called the Rohingya Boat People Watching Group that we received in response to my angry post on Friday about Time magazine whitewashing the Rohingya story.

I don’t completely understand what is going on, actually maybe I don’t understand it at all!  The group appears to be claiming that rumors about the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) giving out “International Citizenship Cards” is responsible for hundreds (thousands?) of Rohingya risking their lives to get to Malaysia.

The Rohingya Boat People Watching Group is deeply shocked over the involvement of United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Kuala Lumpur in encouragement of dangerous traveling for the persecuted Rohingyas.

Recently, the UN Refugee Agency has asked Rohingya Information Center (RIC), a separatist group led by Abdul Ghani and Haji Mubarak to enlist undocumented Rohingya refugees in Malaysia which involved in making money to support both UNHCR’ Field Survey Team and Protection Unit.

Following the collection of lists, at least 15 to 20 boats of Rohingya people are ready to jump into the sea to come to Malaysia as most of their relatives and friends have sent information in Arakan State that UNHCR in Malaysia is going give International Citizenship Cards for the Rohingya by late February and early March 2009. Later, the Government of Malaysia will issue Malaysian Citizenship Card together with those who were registered for IMM-13 in August 2006.

The group ends its press release with a demand that UNHCR stop putting Rohingya in danger.

So, we urge upon UNHCR to immediately cease all kinds of ill-motives in pushing people in danger and thus must stop boat traveling of Rohingyas from Arakan State, Burma (Myanmar). It also must register all those undocumented refugees who are passing vulnerable lives. It would also protect all the boat people who are stranded in Indonesia and Thailand without any hesitation.

One of the things that annoyed me so much about the Time article was that it said the Rohingya have no support groups providing publicity.  This strikes me as lazy journalism because we have run across quite a few such groups in the last year.  Maybe he means no groups saying exactly what the refugee pushers want to hear, and a criticism of the UN is not one of those things.

What is the real story here?

Comments worth noting: tired old arguments about immigrants

Last night after I wrote this post where I was so angry at Time magazine and the refugee-pushing lobbyists, I knew I needed to further remind readers of the primary reason we are here—why we write this blog.   And, gosh, I get up and here is a comment (from someone called CRD) worth noting to help me explain why we do what we do.

Dear Ann,

Your ancestors were once oppressed and discriminated against, so they got on a boat and came to a new county, the US, and gave it a try. I imagine when they landed they were helped by some nice people who maybe showed them how they could find work, where a good place to live was, where to shop. I imagine they also faced some discrimination. They were probably poor at first and spoke with accent, and didn’t know all street names by heart. Some people laughed at them I’m sure. Told them to go back to their country of origin. Told them they’d never fit in. Some people probably even formed groups and told them to get out of their neighborhood.

Which type of person are you? Would you have helped your great grandparents when they arrived in American or would you have discriminated against them?

Dear CRD,   You are right to some extent, my parents were treated well and helped by nice people.  But here are the differences worth noting, my parents were eager to be Americans.  They shed their foreign language as fast as they could (they were literate in their own original languages).   They received no welfare and they worked their butts off all their lives to send us kids to college.  They had no taxpayer funded federal government contractor finding jobs and apartments for them.  My father fought for the US in World War II.  Although proud of their heritage, they never looked back.  And, they accepted America, they didn’t seek to change our form of government, they were not Muslims.

Before I go on to what I really wanted to say, just a historical reminder the immigrant lobbyists like CRD often forget—-by the late 1920’s we were overloaded with immigrants.   America took a breather and the numbers were cut dramatically until the 1960’s which gave those earlier great waves a chance to assimilate.   Maybe if the economic panic continues, its time for another breather.

Now, more about why we write RRW.

The recent Time magazine article (not the one from 2002) on the Rohingya is an example.   But, we first saw the phenomenon in our own county, and that is, the utter shameless skewing of the news in favor of refugees and immigrants.  Most every story on refugees is a damn puff-piece.  I call them the ‘refugees see first snow stories.’   No one (hardly anyone) in the mainstream media dares tell the public the whole truth, so the public needs us!   That is why we are here—-to balance the biased mainstream media.

Why don’t they tell the whole story, the good and the bad,  about refugee resettlement or immigration in general?  Why, because they, in the media, are scared to death of people like CRD here.  Ideologues like CRD want to guilt-trip everyone into  shutting up and accepting their point of view and most people can’t take that sort of abuse, most people want to be considered good people, so they back down.  We don’t.

The American public has a right to know all the facts about immigration and especially in our case, the refugee program, because only when all the facts are presented to the people can public policy be fairly debated and decisions fairly made—-for the general public and for the refugees.   People like CRD want to WIN by guilt-tripping people and hiding some facts to lead people to their point of view.   It is wrong.  It is immoral. It is elitist.  And, it stinks!