Refugee contractors launch PR campaign! Refugees don’t cost local taxpayers a dime!

02/26/2014 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I’ve seen several stories cross my desk in the last few days like this one from North Dakota—Lutheran Social Services trying to dispel “rumors” that local/state taxpayers are on the hook for refugees placed in their towns and cities.

The Lutherans are trying to get their hooks into Wyoming. Could that be the motivation for this campaign!

Here is the story from WDAY.TV that makes me laugh!

Fargo, N.D. (WDAY TV) -It’s a number that may surprise you. Every year, 400 some refugees make their way to North Dakota.

I love it how they leave the impression that these Africans/Middle Easterners/Asians etc. just “make their way” to a place like North Dakota—they are in North Dakota because Lutheran Social Services has a lucrative contract with the US State Department (federal taxpayers!) to bring them there and drop them off!

Tonight, Lutheran Social Services held a forum at Fargo Public Library to educate people on refugee integration into the community.

Event organizers say they wanted to dispel the rumors that local tax payers are footing the bill for new Americans.

Of course, some of the cost of refugees rests with local taxpayers! Who else is paying for the education of the refugee kids but local taxpayers, not to mention the costs to local health clinics and the demand put on local subsidized housing that would normally be available to American low-income citizens.

What did the murder trial of Omar Mohamed Kalmio cost the taxpayers of North Dakota? What will his life sentence cost them? http://www.vdare.com/posts/immigrant-mass-murder-again-somali-quadruple-murderer-is-sentenced-in-north-dakota

And, let’s not forget the cost to local police and county court systems when refugees break the law. Here is just one case—Somali mass murder in North Dakota—that you know cost local taxpayers a bundle and presumably will cost North Dakota a bundle for his incarceration.

Readers might want to visit this breakdown of the costs of refugees in Georgia showing the federal and state share of the cost (prepared by Refugee Resettlement Relief). North Dakotans should be asking their state legislature for a similar accounting.

WDAY.TV continued:

Instead, they say, Social Services offers a federally funded program to help refugees.

Yes, sure! And, the federal funds grow on trees in Washington. What about federal taxpayers (are North Dakotans not federal tax payers?). From our fact sheet (here):

The federal programs available to them include:

∙ Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) formerly known as AFDC
∙ Medicaid
∙ Food Stamps
∙ Public Housing
∙ Supplemental Security Income (SSI)
∙ Social Security Disability Insurance
∙ Administration on Developmental Disabilities (ADD) (direct services only)
∙ Child Care and Development Fund
∙ Independent Living Program
∙ Job Opportunities for Low Income Individuals (JOLI)
∙ Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP)
∙ Postsecondary Education Loans and Grants
∙ Refugee Assistance Programs
∙ Title IV Foster Care and Adoption Assistance Payments (if parents are ⌠qualified immigrants – refugees, asylees, etc)
∙ Title XX Social Services Block Grant Funds

Then do they think that citizens are this stupid? Refugees live on $335 a month for 8 months!

Kavidhe Gundale, Lutheran Social Services: “They get only 335 dollars per month, for 8 months. They have to pay the rent, they have to pay for the gas and everything. “

Good luck North Dakota!

Every year 300 refugees will call Fargo, 90 in Grand Forks and 10 in Bismarck.

While we are on the subject of who is paying for all this, have a look at the most recent Form 990 for Lutheran Social Services of North Dakota, here.

In the most recent year available, they had total revenue of $12 million (rounded number) and $8.4 million (70%) came from you via federal grants and contracts.

Here is how most of that was spent (rounded numbers):

$465,000 for current directors and officers compensation

$6.7 million for salaries

$223,000 for pensions

$762,000 for other employee benefits

$1.2 million office expenses

$715,000 travel (who knew ND was that big!)

$124,000 conferences

They would not exist without taxpayer dollars!

Washington State Pakistanis arrested in convenience store fraud

02/26/2014 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Pakistani, Fraz A. “Tony” Mushtaq, (now US citizen) was sending your tax dollars to Pakistan! http://www.kirotv.com/photo/news/fraz-mushtaq/p7cZ2/

They allegedly reaped hundreds of thousands of dollars through food stamp fraud, selling drugs and trafficking in stolen property, then sent money to Pakistan.

Readers, since the availability of the facebook page Diversity’s Dark Side, run-of-the-mill immigrant food stamp frauds will be posted there, but this one had a couple of juicy bits that add to our extensive archive on food stamp fraud here at RRW.

From the Herald Net (Hat tip: ‘pungentpeppers’):

EVERETT — A police raid on a downtown mini-mart Tuesday morning was the culmination of a 17-month investigation into food-stamp fraud.

Fraz A. “Tony” Mushtaq, 34, the owner of the A One Smoke & Grocery store at Everett and Colby avenues, is suspected of paying people cents on the dollar for access to their state food-benefits cards.

He also is under investigation for allegedly buying and selling merchandise shoplifted from area stores, money laundering and selling an illegal form of synthetic marijuana known as “spice,” police say.

Everett police believe a significant amount of the store’s inventory has been ill-gotten, said Lt. Jim Duffy, who leads the special investigations unit.

The police department has received complaints about the store for several years, he said.

[….]

Police believe the amount of stolen merchandise moved through the store, including pop, energy drinks and cigarettes, could total in the millions of dollars. Careful financial investigation has documented hundreds of thousands of dollars in questionable transactions, Duffy (Lt. Jim Duffy) said.

The police have been investigating this case since 2012. So, did he already have US citizenship or get it after the investigation had begun?

Mushtaq is from Pakistan and became a U.S. citizen a couple of years ago, Duffy said. Investigators believe he was sending money from his store back home to Pakistan.

And, this next bit is ludicrous! Everett investigators claim the money was not used for any “improper activities” in Pakistan! We are expected to believe these local investigators (or anyone else!) were able to follow the money in Pakistan! Not to mention the fact that tax dollars from food stamp fraud going to a foreign country constitutes an “improper” activity all by itself!

They found no evidence the money was being used there for any improper activities, Duffy said.

For new readers: Immigrant-perpetrated food stamp fraud became a side interest here at RRW in 2008, click here for our extensive archive.

More from Gates of Vienna on still unexplained Minneapolis Somali explosion/fire

02/24/2014 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

And, LOL!, a question for the Minnesota Republican Party? Do you know who your neighbors are?

MN GOP moved to be in the “middle of every day Minnesotans!”

From GOV (which has continued to investigate the suspicious explosion/fire on New Years Day and might be considered the lead ‘agency’ on the investigation!):

On New Year’s Day 2014 a powerful explosion and fire occurred at 514 Cedar Avenue South in Minneapolis, in a predominantly Somali neighborhood of the city.

The building was gutted by the blaze. Two bodies were found in the rubble, and fourteen people were hospitalized, one of whom died later. Within 72 hours, the building had been pulled down into a heap of rubble by a backhoe.

Two days after the blast, before any real investigation occurred — which could never be conducted, anyway, with the potential crime scene destroyed — Greg Boosalis, the supervisory special agent with the FBI in Minneapolis, told the press that there was “no evidence of terrorist activity”.

Ever since that day I have been asking the question: How did the FBI know there was no terrorist activity without examining the scene of the explosion?

The question becomes even more urgent with the emergence of the latest wrinkle in the case.

Read the incredible paper trail from Europe, to the Middle East, to Somalia and back involving Somali Garad K. Nor.

Then this! Republicans move into office suite down the hall from Nor’s Tawakal Money Express and the “every day Minnesotans!”

Since being listed as a terrorism-associate by the U.S. Treasury and the European Commission, Garad K. Nor has managed to clear his name. A press release issued in 2012 says the President and CEO of Tawakal Money Express successfully completed a four-day training workshop (teleconferenced from Somalia) for its staff and agents regarding procedures for complying with anti-money laundering regulations in the USA. Tawakal Money Express, a franchise of the Tawakal Express global enterprise, is located at… 2200 E Franklin Ave, #204.

To reiterate: that’s the same location as the offices of Wadani Properties, the company that owned and managed the exploded building at 514 Cedar Avenue South.

As a final irony, the Minnesota Republican Party has just moved its headquarters to the same address, 2200 E Franklin, Suite #201.

Hmmmm!

All of our previous posts on the Somali fire/explosion may be found by clicking here.

Be sure to read ‘Why so many Somalis in Minneapolis’ where a reader tells us about the Seward neighborhood.

NYT: “Asylum Fraud in Chinatown: Industry of Lies”

02/23/2014 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Can you believe that headline at the New York Times of all places! Earlier this morning, we reported on the Wall Street Journal story about questionable asylum-seekers (Syrians), and now this! Are we reaching a tipping point—when even the NEW YORK TIMES writes about asylum fraud? Hat tip: ‘pungentpeppers.’

Just make it up!

Emphasis below is mine:

A Chinese woman walked into a law office in New York’s Chinatown and asked to see her lawyer. She had applied for asylum, claiming that she had been forced to get an abortion in China to comply with the country’s family-planning laws, and she was anxious about her coming interview with immigration officials.

She had good reason to be worried: Her claim, invented by her lawyer’s associates, was false.

But the lawyer, John Wang, told her to relax. The process, he said, was straightforward, and as long as she memorized a few details, everything would be fine. “You are making yourself nervous,” he said in Mandarin. “All you would be asked is the same few rubbish questions.”

“Just make it up,” the lawyer added.

The conversation, in December 2010, was secretly recorded by federal officials conducting a wide investigation of immigration fraud in New York’s Chinese population. The inquiry has led to the prosecution of at least 30 people — lawyers (including Mr. Wang), paralegals, interpreters and even an employee of a church, who is on trial, accused of coaching asylum applicants in basic tenets of Christianity to prop up their claims of religious persecution. [Do-gooder-itis!—ed] All were charged with helping hundreds of Chinese immigrants apply for asylum using false tales of persecution.

The transcript of the conversation in Mr. Wang’s office, which was disclosed in a recent court filing, offered a rare look at the hidden side of the Chinese asylum industry in New York.

To asylum-seekers it’s not an issue of right or wrong:

Though the prevalence of fraud is unknown, federal officials appear to regard the applicant pool in New York with considerable suspicion. In fiscal year 2013, asylum officers around the country granted 40 percent of all Chinese asylum requests, according to government data. In New York City, asylum officers approved only 15 percent.

Peter Kwong, a professor at the City University of New York and an expert on the Chinese population in New York, said it was an open secret in the Chinese community that most asylum applications were at least partly false, from fabricated narratives of persecution to counterfeit supporting documents and invented witness testimony.

To asylum-seekers, he said, “it’s not an issue of right or wrong. It’s an issue about whether they can get it and their means to get it.”

In my post on Syrians coming across the Mexican border, I mentioned an AP story that blames the backlog of cases in the immigration courts on the government shutdown (blame the Republicans), but here the NYT report says that the sheer volume of fraudulent cases is to blame.

The volume of petitions has clogged the federal bureaucratic machinery, overwhelming asylum officers and judges. The deputy director of the New York asylum office blamed fraud, in part, for the deluge, and said she had tripled her team of asylum officers to dig out of a two-year backlog of cases.

The schemes “wreaked havoc on the asylum system as a whole,” the official, Ashley B. Caudill-Mirillo, wrote in a letter to a federal judge in November.

Asylum fraud cuts across all immigrant groups (I still can’t believe this is the NYT reporting this!).

False asylum petitions are among the most common forms of immigration fraud, in part because they are difficult to detect, experts said. Since many claims are based on events that took place amid armed conflict or political turmoil, the narratives and supporting documents can be hard for the American authorities to verify.

And while the Chinese asylum pool has drawn increasing scrutiny in recent years, asylum fraud cuts across all immigrant groups, officials say, cropping up among populations from societies in turmoil such as Guineans seeking refuge from political upheaval, Afghans fleeing war, Russians looking for sanctuary from homophobia and Mexicans running from drug violence.

There is much more, so much more that I didn’t know where to stop excerpting! Read it all.

From a post here at RRW last month:

Chinese make up the largest percentage of asylum seekers granted permission to stay in the US

Go to Table 6, page 6 of the Department of Homeland Securities 2012 Annual Flow Report. Here are the stats for Chinese given refugee status (after arriving in the US on their own either illegally or as visa overstays).

2010: 6,693 Chinese granted asylum (31% of the total)

2011: 8,585 (34%)

2012: 10,151 (34%)

Remember! Once granted asylum, the asylee is then able to access all of the welfare programs open to refugees who were brought in by the US State Department. Fact sheet here.

Comment worth noting: It is Do-gooder-itis!

02/23/2014 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This is from a comment thread at our post Friday—about African immigrants arrested in a massive DC Medicaid fraud ring bust. But, it might just as well be applied to why so many Americans can’t wrap their minds around the fact that someone would lie to get into our country (or any civilized country) so that they might destroy us someday.

I asked reader ‘momodoom’ this:

Momodoom, Why are Americans so vulnerable to this….why don’t we ‘get-it’ that some cultures/ethnic groups are so willing to lie, cheat and steal—especially from Americans—they do not think like us!

http://www.womanhonorthyself.com/?m=200801&paged=2

Here is ‘momodoom’s reply this morning:

* sigh! * That’s the Question Of The Year! It’s Do-Gooder-itis, an illness of the perennially obtuse. Most of them are Christians and Jews who can’t be bothered with the intricacies of their religion, so they boil it down to simplistic phrases, like “God is good”, and then try to live their entire life by that phrase.

It’s also too much work for them to understand the intricacies of human nature, so they decide that everyone is, deep down, Just Like Them. Everyone is essentially good, no one wants to do any harm to anyone, everyone just wants to get along with everybody…

They just can’t conceive of a place where everyone learns, from birth onward, that life is a dog-eat-dog kind of place, that getting anything is hard in this life and that if you can find something to take for free you should grab it. Where cleverness is measured by how much you can take (and they just don’t call it “stealing”), that honesty is only for duping a person, and that good people are fodder for the evil ones, living in crushing poverty, and being butchered at will.

Readers: ‘Comments worth noting‘ is a category I sometimes forget about. When a reader sends a particularly informative or otherwise interesting comment, we post it (as a post) so most of you don’t miss it.

Look for the tag ‘Do-gooder-itis!’ going forward!