They are changing America by changing the people
Another short post:
You know I think I have seen more angst by the NGO’s and the UN over the Palestinian friends of Saddam (now refugees) then over the Christian Iraqis suffering at the hands of Muslim extremists. Here is an article about the Palestinians being resettled in Chile. Did you know that Chile has a substantial Palestinian population?
A month ago today, I told you about the unhappy Iraqi refugees who have been resettled in Concord, NH. Well, things are getting worse.
Note to reporter Chelsea Conaboy: Keep up the good work! Your fellow reporters in Shelbyville, TN and Waterbury, CT are winning awards for their investigative work into how refugees are settling (or not settling) into communities or how the volags have been neglecting refugees. In Waterbury, CT the volag was actually shut down by the State Department. I am sure reporters at the Salt Lake City Tribune will also win awards for their extensive work. In the meantime, national reporters, like AP’s Matthew Lee, continue to advocate for more refugees entering the US, but never look into the reality of what is happening in city after city in America.
So now to the latest at the Concord Monitor where Iraqi refugees are saying they have been humiliated by Lutheran Social Services (a federal contractor):
Aleaa, a 31-year-old doctor from Iraq, urged her family to leave their home country after she was nearly killed last year. But months into her new life as a refugee resettled in Concord, Aleaa considered going back to Iraq. She even began packing her bags.
She had come to the United State full of hope and gratitude. But as the weeks went by, those feelings were replaced with anger.
Aleaa, who asked that her last name not be used because she fears for the safety of friends still in Iraq, says she and her family were mistreated and, at times, neglected since arriving here. She points the finger at Lutheran Social Services, the agency charged with helping them start their lives in Concord. She’s not alone.
Part of the problem revolves around something we have written about on so many occasions I’ve lost track. Many Iraqi refugees are highly educated and expect to walk into middle or upper class lives in America.
In Iraq, the refugees lived middle-class lives. They owned homes and cars and had professions. The life they are offered in Concord includes sparsely furnished apartments, minimum-wage jobs and food stamps.
How they were not properly prepared for the reality of life in America is a fault of the US State Department, but I gather from this article the State Department is now trying to rectify the problem and prepare them better.
Iraqis actually protested on the street which I assume prompted this meeting.
Lutheran called a meeting with the Iraqis on Thursday to discuss their concerns. The meeting was not open to news media.
The last thing these volags want is negative publicity. Of course it isn’t open to the media, the less the US State Department hears in the news about a volag (supposedly voluntary agency) screwing up the better the chances the volag will keep its government contract.
Then there is this curious comment. I say curious, because although I have heard of this before, volags shutting out other volunteer help (it happened in Waterbury, CT), frankly, it makes no sense. You would think these “church group” contractors would be looking for all the help they could get.
Each refugee interviewed for this story said he or she was told by Lutheran staff members not to take help from people outside the agency, a claim that some African refugees in Concord have echoed.
Lutheran Social Services say they just need more money and imply that the Iraqis are irrational due to war trauma.
She [Lutheran rep] said it is caused in part by a lack of funding by the federal government. And, she said, the Iraqis have experienced such trauma that adjusting to their lives here is particularly difficult.
Aleaa hits the nail on the head with this line:
“It’s like we’ve asked for millions of dollars or something,” she said. “They humiliate us. To treat a human with respect, does it require funds?”
Reforms needed! As I have said dozens of times since we started writing Refugee Resettlement Watch, we can disagree about how many refugees come to the US and from where, but when we do take refugees and their resettlement is paid by the taxpayers, then we darn well better do it right.
I have lots of ideas on what needs to be done!
Mark Tooley has a story about the Iraqi Christians at FrontPage Magazine today. He takes to task the World Council of Churches for their reluctance to blame Muslims for murder.
At least 14 Christians were targeted for killing in Mosul, about 260 miles north of Baghdad, earlier this month, prompting more than 1,300 Christian families to flee what had previously been a safe haven. The Geneva-based World Council of Churches has declared it is against the killings…but cannot bring itself to identify the killers.
“Of course, al Qaeda elements are behind this campaign against Christians,” said Nineveh provincial governor Mohammed Kashmoula, who relayed the obvious to the Associated Press. But the World Council of Churches (WCC), in a nearly 500-word public statement, seemed to imply the Christians were slaughtered by anonymous forces. “We have heard that people are being killed, houses bombed, thousands are fleeing their homes, and churches and church properties are being destroyed,” fretted the WCC, pronouncing all of this news in the passive voice, unwilling to add a noun to such verbs as “killed,” “bombed,” and “destroyed.”
Oh yes, that good old passive voice. No surprise there. We’ve commented before on the reluctance of the liberal media to portray Muslims in a negative light. Tooley goes on:
For the WCC to express specific concern about persecuted Christians is progress of sorts. But naming radical Islam as a persecutor remains taboo for the politically correct and highly multiculturalist WCC, for whom interfaith dialogue is more important than solidarity with besieged Christians.
He goes on to point out the absurdity of the WCC’s stand — that the U.S. should withdraw from Iraq, and that the U.S. has a special responsibility to protect Iraq’s Christians.
The indispensable Ken Timmerman reports in the Washington Times today:
Assyrian Christians are fleeing Iraq in record numbers, following a spate of recent bombing attacks and targeted killings of Christian families in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul.
Over the last month, 13 Assyrian Christians have been murdered in targeted killings in Mosul. A week ago, three Assyrian homes were fire-bombed. Al Jazeera reported last Monday that 15,000 Assyrian Christians have been driven out of Mosul in the last two weeks, some 2,500 families in all.
Failure to prevent the mass exodus of Christians from Iraq will lead to an Islamicized Iraq, a tragic legacy for the presidency of George W. Bush. This can only be averted by taking urgent steps aimed at “anchoring” the Assyrian Christian population in their historic homeland.
We reported on the murder of Father Rahho, Archbishop of Mosul, a Chaldean Christian, in March. There has been no good news for Iraqi Christians since then — and there wasn’t really any before then either, but things have gotten worse since then. Here are our posts on Iraqi Christians. Many of the Christians fled to the Kurdish area when things got bad for them in other parts of the country, thinking they would be safer there. They were for a while, but they do not appear to be now.
On Oct. 17, Iraqi security forces arrested six men in connection with the most recent targeted killings of Christians, and found four of them had ties back to the KRG [Kurdish Regional Government] militia, not al Qaeda.
Prime Minister Maliki has promised to do something for the Christians. He even discussed their plight with Pope Benedict XVI and with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in July. But I haven’t seen anything about measures taken to help them or to protect them. Timmerman’s recommends these steps to help the Christians:
1) Pressure the Iraqi government, and especially the KRG, to uphold their commitment to allow the recruitment and training of 770 Christians into the national police force. For nearly two years, the Kurdish deputy general of the Mosul governerate has blocked this program. Without immediate security, the Assyrian population in northern Iraq will simply flee.
2) Support efforts by Assyrian lay leaders, the Chaldean Patriarch and others to convene a meeting in Washington, D.C., of Iraqi minorities, to forge a consensus on how best to anchor and protect Iraq’s Christian population, whether through an autonomous region in the Nineveh Plain, firm guarantees of minority rights under the federal constitution or some combination of the two.
3) Fulfill the pledge made in July by National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley to Mr. al-Maliki to transfer $100 million in development aid to the Nineveh Plain. Until now, the United States has delayed the transfer over concerns that the KRG will pocket the money, as in the past. Instead of transferring fresh funds to Erbil, the United States should make the money available directly to local town councils through US AID, without Kurdish control.
4) Pressure the Iraqi national government to guarantee representation of minorities in the upcoming parliamentary and regional elections, under Article 50 of the constitution, which was recently suspended.
But instead of these useful steps, look at what is happening:
Christian leaders learned recently that the State Department has been secretly planning to hold a “summit” meeting on Nov. 19 at George Washington University to decide their fate, in tandem with Muslim groups whose motives remain suspect.
WHAT???? I’m so speechless at this I can only quote Ken Timmerman’s reaction:
Have we become so politically correct that we will protect Muslims in Bosnia, Kosovo and Iraq but allow one of the world’s first Christian populations to be snuffed out because we are afraid to come to their aid?
I’m afraid the answer to that question is yes. And I don’t think this attitude will change very much no matter who is elected president.
So, as I just said in my previous post, North Dakota is looking for more refugees this fiscal year, while Ohio isn’t. Seems a downturn in the economy, and a reduction in state spending for welfare is making Ohio less attractive as a refugee magnet. (But, don’t ask me what North Dakota has to offer in the way of jobs!).
Educated Iraqis are among those going to Ohio, but as we have pointed out on many previous occasions they are not finding jobs that are commensurate with their training. See our Iraqi category for the many posts on unhappy Iraqis. From the Columbus Dispatch:
The flow of refugees being resettled in central Ohio seems to be slowing, and the newest arrivals will include some who are well-educated and speak fluent English.
The class of 2009 includes Iraqis who became political targets in their homelands after helping U.S. forces, perhaps as translators.
One thing remains unchanged: In Ohio, “Franklin County is, by far, the largest county for handling refugees,” said Douglas E. Lumpkin, the county’s human-services director.
But, he noted, “We are seeing a slowdown.”
The U.S. State Department has told Franklin County Job and Family Services to expect 515 refugees between now and September 2009.
That’s less than half of the 1,215 refugees the county was told to expect this year, or the 1,110 anticipated in 2007. Not all those refugees actually showed up, shaping a more-realistic federal estimate for 2009 resettlements.
Ohio didn’t get all the anticipated Africans last year because of the rampant fraud found in the Refugee Resettlement program in Africa.
Paul Fraunholtz, deputy director of the Ohio Job and Family Services family-stability office, keeps an eye on trends in the urban counties that absorb refugees.
Last year at this time, Franklin County was told to expect 1,095 African refugees. With a quarter of the year yet to go, he found that 182 actually showed up.
“What played out was that U.S. government officials started scrutinizing Africans who were being resettled claiming family reunification,” he said. “They’re actually doing DNA testing now” to determine whether they’re really part of the same family.
The new policy slowed the flow that, since 1999, has brought more than 5,200 Somali refugees from Africa to Ohio. Other Somalis have moved here to join friends or relatives after arriving in other parts of the United States.
Yup, and I bet all those Somalis who slipped in before the DNA testing got underway are now registered to vote for Obama!