Category: Immigration fraud

Investigation: Nearly 20,000 ‘Mom and Pop’ stores involved in trafficking food stamps

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

First, according to Hot Air which tipped us off to this news:

During President Obama’s first term in office, participation in the federal food stamp program increased from about 32 million Americans in 2009 to approximately 48 million by October of 2012 — an average growth rate of just over 11,000 recipients per day…..

And, now the Obama Agriculture Department is going to crack down (they say!) on the practice of swapping food stamps for cash—a practice I believe is behind the sharp rise in food stamp use (not that we have more hungry people)!

RRW readers know that Food Stamp Fraud has been a side interest of mine ever since I noticed a trend in who is actually committing the fraud—immigrant store owners and their customers.*  If you search RRW for ‘food stamp fraud’ you will very quickly see exactly who I mean (LOL! the ‘Mohammad’ coefficient is very high).

Mohammad Khan was busted for trafficking food stamps in this convenience store in Hagerstown, MD in 2008. Joe Crocetta, Staff Photographer Hagerstown Herald Mail

I believe there is an international understanding that all one needs to do is to get an “investor” visa, buy a cheap convenience store and set up the “trafficking” of SNAP (taxpayer) dollars from the patsies in the federal government to one’s wallet and to wallets across the world.

It works like this:  customer exchanges his benefit by receiving approximately 50 cents on every dollar exchanged.  The store owner then submits the charge for the full dollar to the government agency administering the program as if food has been purchased in that amount.   Some stores I’ve reported on have scammed the taxpayer to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars before being caught—prison terms are for less than 5 years generally (and although there may have been deportations, I don’t recall seeing one).

Here is The Hill yesterday (the last line is the best):

The Obama administration is taking additional steps to crack down on cash payments for food stamps.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) on Thursday announced it would take action against the “bad actors” who abuse the program by extending the legal definition of “trafficking” to include indirect ways of receiving cash for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits.

It is already illegal to sell SNAP benefits directly for cash, but the new rules would also bar cash refunds for products purchased with food stamps.

“Where there is a will to commit malfeasance, bad actors will try to find a way, and we must do everything we can to stay ahead of the curve,” said Agriculture Under Secretary Kevin Concannon. “Today’s announcement reaffirms USDA’s ongoing commitment to cracking down on abuse and protecting taxpayers’ investment in this critical nutrition lifeline.”

The USDA is also mulling a proposal to immediately freeze the payment of SNAP benefits to retailers “suspected of flagrant trafficking violations,” rather than waiting for an investigation to suspend the store’s ability to redeem the SNAP benefits. Comments are being accepted on the proposed rule.  [The investigations can take more than a year, as we saw in our local bust in 2008, so this is an important change.—ed]

Last year, the USDA permanently disqualified almost 1,400 retailers from participating in SNAP for exchanging cash for benefits or falsifying applications.

According to the most recent SNAP fraud report by the USDA, food stamp trafficking “diverted an estimated $330 million annually from SNAP benefits –— or about one cent of each SNAP dollar — between 2006 and 2008.”

Out of the nearly 240,000 stores active in the SNAP program, about 8.2 percent trafficked, according to the 2011 investigation.

Get that!  They disqualified 1,400 stores, but they estimate 8.2% are crooks!  If my math is correct 8.2% of 240,000 stores is 19,680 stores!  They have a long way to go!

*Note to “customers” who sell their stamps for cash, you are criminals and can be prosecuted too!

Update!  Here is a story from New Mexico with a greater variety of food stamp scamming techniques.  What does this tell you!

She said the biggest issue is people who sell their EBT card and report it lost or stolen. Out of the 138,927 cards issued to New Mexicans in 2012, more than 93,000 were replacement cards, Squier said. That’s about 70 percent.

 

British Imam: We are populating Europe and being paid on welfare to do it

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

That’s what Anjem Choudary was caught on tape telling his followers (Thanks to Drudge).    Gates of Vienna has the story too, here.    So why is it so hard for infidels to see and believe?

From The Telegraph:

Anjem Choudary was secretly filmed mocking non-Muslims for working in 9-5 jobs their whole lives, and told followers that some revered Islamic figures had only ever worked one or two days a year.

“The rest of the year they were busy with jihad [holy war] and things like that,” he said. “People will say, ‘Ah, but you are not working’.

“But the normal situation is for you to take money from the kuffar [non-believers].

“So we take Jihad Seeker’s Allowance. You need to get support.”

He went on to tell a 30-strong crowd: “We are going to take England — the Muslims are coming.”

Ridiculing the daily lives of UK workers, Choudary said: “You find people are busy working the whole of their life. They wake up at 7 o’clock. They go to work at 9 o’clock.

“They work for eight, nine hours a day. They come home at 7 o’clock, watch EastEnders, sleep, and they do that for 40 years of their life. That is called slavery.”

Choudary, a father-of-four, claims more than £25,000 a year in benefits, £8,000 more than the take-home pay of some soldiers fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan, according to the Sun, which covertly filmed the preacher at three meetings.

At another meeting in Slough infiltrated by the Sun, Choudary was filmed proclaiming that Islam was taking over Europe.

“Now we are taking over Birmingham and populating it,” he said.

“Brussels is 30 per cent, 40 per cent Muslim and Amsterdam. Bradford is 17 per cent Muslim.

The Barbarians at the Gate get it!

Yes! The Barbarians are at the gate(s) of Europe

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

They are at the Gates of Vienna and they are at the Brandenburg Gate in Germany demanding they be allowed to stay. Some, as this gushy piece in the International Herald Tribune (appropriately titled: Barbarians at the Gate) tells us, are “asylum shoppers” meaning they have been turned down for refugee status in another western country and now are camping on public streets in Germany demanding stuff.

Here is writer Lucian Kim making sure the reader hears the warm and fuzzy side of the nice folks just yearning for a better life!  And, it’s all about how Germans don’t like outsiders, don’t you know!  (emphasis below is mine)

BERLIN — There’s a refugee camp in the center of the German capital filled with people who have fled conflicts around the world. They sleep in tents and eat donated food. Almost all of them are breaking German law just by being here.

For more than four months, about 50 asylum seekers and their supporters have been braving the elements on a square in Berlin’s bohemian Kreuzberg neighborhood. The Occupy-style camp appeared in October after a group of refugees marched from Bavaria to Berlin to protest Germany’s restrictive asylum law. Some even held a hunger strike at the Brandenburg Gate.

Refugees shout slogans during a protest by asylum seekers calling for fairer treatment from authorities, as they pass through Brandenburg Gate in Berlin October 13, 2012. Credit: REUTERS

Their main demand: the abolition of the so-called “Residenzpflicht,” or residence requirement, which limits asylum seekers’ freedom of movement while their applications are pending. Critics contend [pdf] that Germany is the only country in the European Union with such a restriction, and that the regulation’s real purpose is to isolate and intimidate refugees.

When I visited the camp on Monday, laundry hung over unmade beds and worn couches inside one of the tents. Two gas heaters gasped against the cold seeping up through the pallets that raised the floor from the ground. A photographer’s lamp provided the only light.

This is where Waleed Mohamed Adam lives. The soft-spoken 28-year-old said he had fled his home in Darfur in 2007, reaching Europe via Libya. He has lost all contact with his family.

And he has no documents. As Adam put it, “My fingerprints are in the Netherlands.” Because his asylum application there was denied, he can’t get a second hearing in Germany and faces deportation.   [The EU doesn’t allow “shopping” for another country if you’ve been previously denied, so you can bet there is much more to Adam’s story—ed]

Gee, could that be “soft spoken” Waleed Mohamed Adam with his fist raised in that photo from October?

The squatters were given the equivalent of $300 a month to live on, but demanded and got $500 from that  foreigner-hating German government!

Kim continues:

Without any legal status, the refugees aren’t treated much better than criminals. They find themselves in a trap: Dependent on meager state handouts because they are restricted from working or studying, they are under constant suspicion of milking the social welfare system.

This contemptuous treatment was confirmed by Germany’s Constitutional Court in July, when it ruled that the $300 monthly allowance for refugees — which hadn’t been adjusted in 19 years — must be raised to the minimum social benefits granted to Germans, about $500.

[…..]

Germany’s harsh asylum law reveals its lingering discomfort with “ausländer,” or foreigners — even as an aging, shrinking indigenous population is projected to lose its standard of living unless it welcomes immigrants.  [Does Kim actually believe that opening a western country to mass immigration—to colonizers—from the third world will improve the living standards of westerners!—ed]

Kim tells us there is one woman in the camp and she speaks fluent English. I suspect she is the Commie agitator in this group.  This is about flooding the West with needy third-worlders to bring instability and chaos and to ultimately bring down capitalism.  They have advanced pretty far don’t you think!

….. The only woman in the camp, Napuli Paul Langa is a born leader. Although she had to break off her schooling in her native South Sudan, she speaks fluent English. She said she had to flee because of her human rights activism. [If she really cared about human rights she would stay and fight for her own country! How can anyone fall for this propaganda!—ed]

She didn’t expect to have to carry on that struggle in Germany. In November, Langa was one of the refugees’ delegates at a meeting with members of Parliament that turned out to be fruitless.

“This is the fighting place, the political place,” she said of the camp. “We’re staying here. We’re going to protest in the streets until they meet our demands.”

Kim has more, read it all.

They are squatting and demanding all over Europe, here in the Netherlands and then there is poor Greece.  You can bet this is all a coordinated strategy.

Maryland Delegate: “…money is a principal driver of the foreign governments’ interest in immigration reform.”

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Editors note:  I posted this yesterday at Potomac Tea Party Report but since we frequently write about “Temporary” Refugees here, I thought this might be of interest to RRW readers as well.

That quote would be from Del. Ana Sol GUTIERREZ  of  Montgomery County, Maryland when she was being interviewed by The Hill a week ago on why she wants her El Salvadoran countrymen, who are now here on Temporary Protected Status, included in “comprehensive immigration reform.”  In fact, she wants them first in line.

She is referring to the hundreds of thousands of immigrants who came here illegally decades ago, but were given “temporary” refugee status (because back home there was a long-ago civil war or more likely a big storm or earthquake) and can do everything any American can do except vote.  However, they do get drivers licenses and I’ll bet you a buck they vote!

So what’s this about money to foreign governments?  And, beyond humanitarian concern?

Gutierrez in front of Salvadoran Money transfer business. Photo credit: Greg Dohler/The Gazette

The Hill tells us it is all about “remittances” here (emphasis mine):

Foreign governments are working hard to shape the debate on immigration reform as momentum for a comprehensive bill builds in Congress.

[….]

A number of countries with significant immigration ties to the United States — notably Mexico, Ireland and several Central American nations — have been making their concerns known while doing their best to avoid meddling in domestic affairs.

For many countries, the issue goes beyond humanitarian concern: Remittances from foreign nationals living in the U.S. provide a significant boost to the economies of their home countries.

Mexicans are here illegally but many Central Americans have TPS:

An estimated 7 million Mexicans in the country illegally stand to benefit from reform.

While Mexico has adopted a wait-and-see attitude, other countries have specific changes they hope to see in the law. However, they’re happy to do so discreetly — letting American groups take the lead.

That’s the case with El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua, three countries whose citizens have long been eligible for a temporary immigration status first offered in the wake of the civil wars of the 1980s.

The countries hope that immigration reform will include a path to permanent legal status, and eventually citizenship, for the estimated 300,000 or so Central Americans who are in the United States under the Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, which is up for renewal periodically. [LOL! for Salvadorans it was renewed just in time for the November 2012 election!—ed]

Gutierrez:  We want the Salvadorans first in line

The Salvadoran embassy has requested updated data from U.S. Immigration and Citizenship Services, said Maryland state Del. Ana Sol Gutierrez (D), a Salvadoran-American immigration activist.

The embassy reached out to other embassies to do the same in order to get a better sense of how many Central Americans currently benefit from the program. El Salvador is believed to have about 210,000 of its citizens currently in the U.S. under the program.

“We just need to be able to say, ‘These are the people we want to be first in line because they’ve already been here,’ ” Gutierrez said. “First of all, they have to pass background checks every 18 months, they have to pay taxes, they’ve been here with a legal status.

So far! (So far!) “Temporary” refugees are not included in Obama’s amnesty plan.  Let the squabbling begin!

TPS reform is not included in the principles of the White House immigration reform proposal, Gutierrez said.

So readers, the next time someone puts you on an emotional guilt-trip about the poor and downtrodden seeking a “better future,” remember! as I said yesterday, this is all being driven by money for big businesses in need of cheap labor and by foreign governments  propping up their economies as Gutierrez makes clear!

The Hill story continues:

Gutierrez said money is a principal driver of the foreign governments’ interest in immigration reform.

[….]

Total remittances to El Salvador in 2010 were $3.6 billion in 2010.

For Mexico, the figure was $22.7 billion, or 2.1 percent of GDP.

That says it all, fewer jobs for Americans because we need to prop-up the third world.

Read the entire Hill story, there is much more.

For more on the TPS racket, see all of our previous posts at Potomac Tea Party Report .  And here are the posts at RRW on the topic.

Senator Rand Paul: Did the meatpackers, hungering for cheap captive labor, get to him?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

…..or was it Grover Norquist that got to him?

Oh brother, looks like we are having another invasion of the body snatchers moment.  Just when I thought there was someone speaking up for American workers besides NumbersUSA and Rush Limbaugh we learn that Paul has been snatched by big business interests.   (Imagine a conversation) Kentucky big meatpacker to Paul:  Get with the program boy if you want to move up!

Looks like Paul is singing a different tune now that he has Presidential aspirations compared to 2011 when he stood up to one of the leading LEGAL labor importing programs in the US—the Refugee Resettlement Program—when it imported two (now convicted) Iraqi refugee terrorists to work in the Kentucky meatpacking industry.

Read it all at Potomac Tea Party Report, here!