Category: Iraqi refugees

Iraqis to Bowling Green, KY, where another refugee was killed while breaking into someone’s home

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This is another in my continuing series about Iraqis and “welcoming” cities.  There will be a flood of Iraqis and a flood of these puff piece articles  (this one by the Associated Press, no surprise there) over the next 4 weeks as the fiscal year comes to an end.   Today it’s a story about an Iraqi family (among 17 other Iraqi refugees) who have arrived in Bowling Green, KY.   A volag representative confirms, in a round-about-way that your city will be a chosen one if no one makes waves.

James Robinson, director of the Bowling Green International Center, has helped introduce many new citizens to the area. In the past 12 months, Robinson has helped resettle 188 refugees from Myanmar, 37 from Burundi and 30 from Cuba.

“They look to see what agency has had the best luck in relocating people,” Robinson said of how refugees find their way to Bowling Green. He said his agency is helped by having an Arabic-speaking population at Western Kentucky University.

The “best luck?”  What does that mean?  Shouldn’t refugee resettlement be based on many considered factors: jobs, affordable housing, whether the community is open to multiculturalism, or whether the county/state can afford the welfare, etc.   Could he possibly mean that “lucky” is when no one makes waves.  Obviously someone is asking, why Bowling Green?

Also, since this puff piece doesn’t mention it,  things have not gone smoothly in Bowling Green where a homeowner was exonerated last month after shooting a Bosnian teenage refugee who was attempting to break into his home.  Follow that story here.

Senator Biden wants more Iraqis to come to the US, and lies

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Senator Joe Biden, senior Senator from Delaware and now Barack Obama’s VP pick, has been Senator Ted (anywhere but Hyannisport) Kennedy’s right hand man on opening the door for more Iraqi refugees coming to the US.   We reported on his previous activities here and here.

Earlier this summer Kennedy and Biden introduced a bill to force the White House to create a special position, a coordinator, to focus just on bringing Iraqis here.  As I have said on many occasions, the Iraqi displaced persons are all Bush’s critics have left to demonstrate how badly they believe the Iraq war was carried out.  In other words, to satisfy their bloodlust against the Bush Administration you will be getting Iraqi Muslims to your city or town thanks to Kennedy and Biden.

Senator Edward M. Kennedy today introduced a bill to establish a senior position at the White House to coordinate, develop and implement strategies to more effectively address the plight of Iraqi refugees and internally displaced persons. Since the 2003 invasion, more than four million Iraqis have been displaced from their home or have become refugees. Senator Kennedy is Chairman of the Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security, and Refugees.

The bipartisan legislation is sponsored by Senators Joseph Biden (D-DE), Chuck Hagel (R-NE), and Gordon Smith (R-OR), and was introduced on behalf of the Senator by Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid. U.S. Representative Howard Berman (D-CA), Chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, has introduced companion legislation.

Note that they always say that the supposed millions displaced are the result of our “invasion” in 2003.  They never tell you that at least a million of the displaced were forced from their homes by the policies of Saddam Hussein.  And of course they never mention the inconvenient fact that some of those who high-tailed it out of Iraq were the bad guys.   Here is just one post where we addressed the Iraqis displaced prior to our arrival in that country.

Now here you have to laugh, in the very same article that Kennedy says there are 4 million Iraqis displaced by us, Biden puts the number at 5 million.

“As many as five million Iraqis have been displaced, the vast majority since the war began in 2003. American leadership is critical in providing the humanitarian assistance these people desperately need, especially since much of the international community considers this crisis the result of our intervention in Iraq,” said Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) [Edit.  So Joe, you can’t help set the record straight, you join right into the chorus singing the US is bad when you know the truth?]   “Because this leadership has been lacking, we are seeking an Iraqi refugee coordinator, reporting directly to the President, to manage the American response to the crisis and work with the international community towards long-term solutions. This is not just the honorable thing to do – we owe it to our Iraqi friends many of whom have risked their lives to help us.”

If anyone of these politicians or NGO’s would admit that we are not responsible for millions of displaced people and mentioned that Saddam Hussein displaced maybe more than a million who are still displaced, I would have some respect for them.  But they don’t; they lie and exagerate to make their political points in trying to convince the American public that the US is bad and should feel guilty and thus be airlifting Iraqi refugees from all over the Middle East to a city where you live.

And one last thing, in only a few minutes of research I found Biden saying in 2002 (BEFORE OUR “INVASION”) that Saddam Hussein had forced many Iraqis to flee to Iran.  Read about Biden’s policy suggestions for Iran here.

Iran has “a huge population of Afghan and Iraqi refugees,” Biden said.

Judy wrote about the Iraqis residing in Iran here.

Just a reminder, Homeland Security has identified 365 supposed Iraqi “refugees” with terrorist connections trying to get into the US.   See our post here.

See Biden the hypocrite here.

 

Iraqis to New Jersey and Massachusetts

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Over the next month there will be one article after another about Iraqi refugees headed to a city near you because the State Department is desperate to show critics they can reach the magic figure of 12,000 Iraqis resettled in the US by the end of FY08 and thus get the NGO’s (volags, non-government organizations) off their backs—but I bet you the NGO’s will still complain.

Here are a pair of articles from NJ and MA.   Please check them out here and here.  I’m focusing on the statements in these articles about the sort of places Iraqis will be resettled.   In the Massachusetts article the statement is made that the government is looking for new places, smaller cities, to place Iraqis.  It isn’t the government choosing, it’s the volags acting like they are the government (see my discussion with reader Jim at the Ft. Wayne post yesterday).

The government is seeking new communities to place the Iraqis, like Springfield, to avoid oversaturating cities such as San Diego and Detroit, where they have immigrated in large numbers, he said.

Then in NJ, some Iraqis are going to metropolitan New Jersey:

New Jersey – and the New York metropolitan area – are not usually major destinations for refugee resettlement.

Officials say the high cost of living and social service systems that are already overburdened in large urban areas are among the reasons why most refugees are often sent to smaller towns and cities across the U.S.

An official from the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration says New Jersey has received 65 Iraqi refugees since Oct. 1, 2007. He did not know how many Iraqis would be sent here in the coming weeks.  [State Department doesn’t know because they have no control over where these refugees are placed, unless some city puts up a stink.]

Because we have the Arabic-speaking community, and New Jersey has a lot of diversity, we do get them here,” she said.

However, Catholic Charities has chosen less diverse Atlantic County to place refugees.

Catholic Charities is just one of the agencies in New Jersey that handles refugee resettlement. Other religious-based groups of various denominations have refugee programs, as do some private social service agencies and non-governmental organizations.

Hickey said the Camden Diocese runs the largest Catholic Charities refugee resettlement program in the state. He said the program has been helping the recent Iraqi arrivals settle throughout Atlantic County.

This all reminds me of when I was a kid and my father would let me blame him for something I didn’t want to do.  If I didn’t want to go somewhere with someone, my father said, just tell them your father says you can’t go.   These volags—non-profit groups with no power of their own—are choosing your city or town for refugees and pretending that big Daddy (the US State Department) is making them place refugees there.

If citizens don’t speak up then your city will join the “welcoming” and end up like Ft. Wayne, IN. 

Reforms needed:  I’ve suggested many times that there needs to be a comprehensive social and economic impact study done on a city or county in advance of refugee resettlement.  Such a study would identify problems before refugees arrived.  If it was determined that a locale could handle refugees the area would be reassessed periodically over the years to help determine if the city needed to take a breather as jobs became scarce or housing declined and so on.    An open public process could also smooth the way for acceptance of the refugees—the present sneaky process dooms some refugees from the outset.

More Iraqi refugees return home: NGO’s say “it is political”

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Yesterday Reuters was reporting that another plane load of Iraqi displaced people left Egypt for Baghdad and home.  This is a good omen for the government of Iraq that is looking for its people to come back and re-build the country.  However, anti-war non-governmental organizations (NGO’s) are having a fit.

“It is political. The government wants to portray the situation as sustainably safe,” said Joost Hilterman, an Iraq expert in the International Crisis Group think tank.

I had to laugh.  Hilterman should know political when he sees it because he works for George Soros’ International Crisis Group.  I reported on them here just a couple of weeks ago.  Talk about political, check out who else is on their board besides Soros.    These guys are quoted as representing “think tanks” and the public doesn’t know any better.  These anti-Bush-anti-war-pro-grievance-America is bad NGO’s know full well that if they can portray the refugee situation as dire and unresloved that the Bush Administration will continue under a cloud into the Presidential campaign this fall and guess who benefits?

As always, we don’t want to downplay the danger Christian Iraqis are in, but Muslims have gotten their duly elected government and need to now get behind their country.   And, these NGO’s can stop whining.  As I have said before, America had its tough times in wars on our soil and I don’t recall hearing that large numbers scampered off to Europe or elsewhere to be taken care of.