Category: Legal immigration and jobs

St. Cloud, MN: Battle resumes today in zoning dispute over Somali mosque

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update October 8th:  Contentious hearing ends with Somali Islamic Center withdrawing its plan, here.

Update:  I have just heard from the editor of the St. Cloud Times who asked me to remove their copyrighted story.  I am therefore honoring his request.

St. Cloud is a city on the Mississippi River in central Minnesota with a population of about 66,000.  Although no one seems to have the definitive answer (a published number that I could find!), I’m told the Somali population has grown to over 10,000.  Now the Somalis want a mosque, a school and an entire Islamic complex in the middle of a residential neighborhood.

St. Cloud City Hall where citizens can speak up this evening about the Somali mosque and school planned for a residential community.

Organized opposition (see below for their website) has grown and tonight the City Council could vote (after hearing from residents) to support their Planning Commission’s recommendation for the Mosque and School portion of the proposed plan.

This is the news we have removed from the St. Cloud Times  (please follow the link to the story).

Were they planning a city within a city for THEIR people?

One of the first questions I have is where is all the money coming from for this ambitious project?  Saudi Arabia? The city’s Somali population has grown rapidly in only a few years and is largely made up of ‘poor’ “refugees,”  right?  Primary employment for Somalis in the area is in meatpacking.  They can’t possibly be getting rich doing that!

How did the population grow?

And, if you are wondering how so many Somalis got there—thank the US State Department and their contractors, specifically Lutheran Social Service!  St. Cloud had originally been a secondary migration site, but in 2010 the US State Department made it a primary resettlement city, meaning Somalis were being settled there directly from Africa rather than having migrated to St. Cloud from another US city.  See our December 2010 post on the change.

Note the involvement of SASSO (an ECBO like the one in Seattle we told you about yesterday) in St. Cloud.

We have an extensive archive on St. Cloud, click here.  Be sure to take a few minutes to visit this 2010 post about how the Somalis have joined forces with the hard Left to destabilize the community with one of several aims—-to get rid of Rep. Michele Bachmann whose district includes St. Cloud.  She has recently announced her retirement from Congress.

If you want to do something, visit the website for the group (St. Cloud Citizens for Responsible Zoning) opposing the zoning change, here. 

Note they have a petition you can sign.

But, if you really want to do something more permanent—someone needs to thoroughly research how St. Cloud is being changed by Muslim migrants and write a book about it and get as much media attention as possible for its release.  

A friend asked me in an e-mail this morning about how one reaches Members of Congress on what is happening and how they are funding community organizing by Muslim groups, and I told her that they aren’t going to listen until the issue gets to the national stage.  A book would help get it there.  And, hey, the book could include several other small cities being transformed—Lewiston, ME comes to mind!  Update!  how about Ft. Morgan, CO too!

One more thing!  Read this post from 2008 about the stages of the Quiet Jihad in Minnesota.

Just because there aren’t planes flying into buildings doesn’t mean it isn’t jihad.

Refugee advocates! Just so you know, you are in bed with Grover Norquist and big business

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update October 23rd:  More news on Norquist at Potomac Tea Party Report today, here.

This is an article about “amnesty” but it reminds me to remind the human rights gang and you “church” people that you are working side-by-side with big business interests looking for cheap labor (it is not about having a humanitarian heart!) and that Grover Norquist is a ring-leader of the cabal.

We first reported on Grover Norquist in 2007 when he was pushing for the importation of Iraqi refugees and we wondered how that would benefit the US taxpayer.
AP photo

For new readers, type ‘Grover Norquist’ into our search function.  We have been following his activities for years.  Here is one post I wrote at Potomac Tea Party Report in 2011 about Rep. Frank Wolf linking Norquist to the Islamic infiltration of the US Government.  As Wolf admonished his fellow Members, “you can never say again that you didn’t know!”

From Policymic:

“People are an asset, they’re not a liability” were the words with which Grover Norquist chose to commence his Immigration Reform Coming Out Party at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing back in April.

Known as the man who launched his political career by founding Americans for Tax Reform and led the right on its anti-tax agenda through the fiscal cliff and sequestration, Norquist is now proposing that conservatives “[get] past this sense [of being] anti-immigrant.”

Norquist’s sentiment is echoed by many Republicans, in particular the very donors who raised the most funds for last year’s presidential election. Charlie Spies, the founder of Restore Our Future, the most prominent super PAC behind Romney’s 2012 presidential bid, also happens to the leader of a new super PAC, Republicans for Immigration Reform. Another such group, Partnership for a New American Economy, has seen a great influx of conservative businessmen including independent and GOP members. It is backed by the likes of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, an independent, the head of Marriott International hotel company Bill Marriott Jr., and the CEO of Overstock.com Jonathan Johnson, both of whom are Republicans. With a majority of members evidently boasting ties to Wall Street and large businesses, this growing network is putting its money and influence behind what other GOPers dub “amnesty.”

Why do you think CEOs like Marriott want amnesty and refugee resettlement?  Can you say chamber maids, baggage handlers and kitchen help?   Or, why are the meatpackers pushing amnesty?  Think of it, with refugees they don’t even have to feel guilty about paying low wages because the refugees lives are being subsidized by the taxpayer via food stamps, Section 8 housing, health care etc.

Compared to the many Republican politicians and media figures who pulled a fast one when they saw the demographic tides changing, Norquist’s and Republican business leaders’ immigration activism seems unexpectedly genuine. As early as 2010, Norquist demonstrated his pro-immigration stance while toeing the line on traditional GOP values.

And, why is it “unexpectedly genuine”—they genuinely want to increase their bottom line as the reporter makes clear at the end of the article.

However, it is no coincidence that Norquist and well-off GOP businessmen share two central tenets in their political agenda — one, preventing tax increases, and two, giving immigrants a path to citizenship.

[….]

As such, it should come as no surprise that business-minded Republicans, usually strong advocates of low taxes, are now the spokespeople for creating a path to citizenship. For big business owners, what is not to like about an increased supply of labor, driving competition in the job market up and wages down?

So we shuffle poor people around the world in the name of humanitarianism disrupting their cultures (and ours!) so they can make beds for the wealthy (or cut meat) and the church do-gooders (the resettlement contractors who are also, by the way, pushing amnesty) can convince themselves that they are good people.

If one wants to be a “good” Christian or Jew, then support some poor individual or family on your own dime, either here or abroad.

Why Somali refugees shouldn’t join the jihad (unless they have a death wish)

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

According to one more report on the topic, “community leaders” are trying to counter the recruitment efforts they believe are still on-going in the “Somali community” in Minneapolis.  Here is the latest on that film we reported here last month.

American-born Omar Hammami aka Abu Mansoor Al-Amriki may now be dead, killed by Al-Shabaab leadership who got sick of him.

This is the news at KAAL.TV.com.  Give ’em jobs and they won’t go to Africa to kill people!, but the fallacy in that argument is that those who have gone back “home” to join the terrorists were well-educated Somalis with excellent prospects for employment.

Leaders in the Somali community are fighting hard to beat back a ramped up recruitment effort following a sophisticated video. The video depicts men who traveled from Minneapolis to Somalia for jihad and is being used as a recruiting tool.

Community leaders say as many as 40 Somalis have disappeared from Minnesota since 2006. That’s double the estimate reported previously. Many have turned up on battlefields in Somalia.

Headway is being made, though, as community leaders say they are winning over the community and convincing young men to ignore Al Shabaab. However, a high unemployment rate in the Somali community makes the population vulnerable.

As a result, an effort is underway to provide training and job skills to Somalis.

American stuff and American jobs just don’t cut it when Allah calls! 

Just ask Omar Hammami aka Abu Mansoor Al-Amriki (if he is still alive that is!).

I have no interest in re-telling the story of an American-born Muslim (Mom is Christian, Dad is Syrian Muslim) who grew up a normal kid in Alabama and went to Somalia to become a Jihadist.  Here is our complete archive on Hammami.

Rumors of his demise have surfaced several times over previous years, but it looks like he may now be dead for sure—killed by his Al-Shabaab former buddies who aren’t really happy with their recruits from the West.  They turn them into handy suicide bombers!

Read Al-Amriki’s story here at The Star Phoenix. He has been hunted by Al-Shabaab leaders for some time and his fate may have a chilling effect on recruitment in Minneapolis say experts.

For new readers:  We should have made a special category for ‘Somali missing youths’ (former refugees) who went to Africa to join the Jihad.  Since we didn’t, just type those words into our search function and you will probably get at least 100 posts on the topic going back to 2008.

Also, I used to put this (below) information at the bottom of most of my posts on Somalis, but haven’t recently.  I know we have a lot of new readers who probably don’t know the background so here is a place to start:

We have resettled more than 100,000 Somali refugees to cities large and small in the US over the last 25 years (more than 25 now).  See one of the most widely read posts here at RRW.  Large numbers went to Minneapolis, and now they are spreading out throughout the state.  In three years since 9/11 ( Bush years 2004, 2005, 2006) the number of Somalis arriving topped 10,000 per year.  Those refugees then began bringing in the family (chain migration!) until 2008 when shock of shocks! the State Department discovered that as many as 30,000 Somalis had lied about their kinship and weren’t related at all.  The State Department then closed the “family reunification” program for Somalis.  It has recently been re-opened for new and legit family members, but they have no intention of finding and deporting the liars.

Canada tilting away from open-armed multiculturalism

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

No kidding!  That’s what the Wall Street Journal reported over the weekend in it’s longish front page story entitled, ‘Canada seeks immigrants who fit better.’

Revisit my post yesterday about ‘Little Mogadishu’ in Toronto before reading on.  Ha! Ha! I wonder what gave them the first clue that certain immigrants today aren’t integrating or helping the economic health of Canada.  The problem for Canada (and the US) is that hard left open borders advocates think they can tame the barbarians and you can be sure they are already hard at work to undermine this plan.

From the WSJ:

TORONTO—As American lawmakers debate how to revamp U.S. immigration policy, Canada has embarked on a major immigration overhaul of its own aimed at choosing newcomers who are a better fit for its economy and society.

[….]

This August, Canada began to accept its first immigrants under part of an overhaul that puts greater emphasis on factors such as an applicant’s job skills and fluency in English or French.

A major objective: Fix what the Canadian government sees as a growing economic chasm between locals and many of the immigrants that Canada’s old applicant-screening system selected—a chasm it worries could spark the sort of immigration-related social tension that has flared in other developed countries.   [Hint to the WSJ and the Canadian government it isn’t all about who makes more money—this is a cultural war between ‘civilization and barbarism.’—ed]

Canada accepts more immigrants per capita than any of the Group of Seven most-advanced economies. The country, which has officially embraced multiculturalism for decades, won mostly praise for how it selects newcomers, particularly through a points system that tries to evaluate an applicant’s ability to thrive economically.

But since the 1970s, pay among new arrivals has increasingly fallen further behind pay of locals. And some Canadians question whether immigrants are integrating well enough into Canadian society.

The WSJ reporter states the obvious!  Canadians have had it with this multicultural bulls***.

By some measures, public opinion also appears to have tilted away from Canada’s traditional open-armed multiculturalism.

Canadians went through a round of soul-searching last year after the high-profile convictions of three Afghan family members who murdered four other members they deemed too Westernized. In a December survey, 70% of respondents said too many immigrants aren’t adopting Canadian values, up from 58% in 2005, according to Environics Institute, a Toronto research group.

Editors note regarding the graph above.  European countries, and Canada too obviously, lump all ‘Asians’ together leaving you with the notion it’s mostly some nice Chinese grannies running dry cleaning businesses filling up the ‘Asia’ category.  To get a more accurate idea of who is coming, those from Muslim countries should have their own separate category on such a graph.

We have an entire Canada category, click here for our previous 116 posts on problems with refugees and asylum north of the border.

Springfield MA Mayor stands by moratorium demand, says agencies “dumping” refugees

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This is an update of our post from Tuesday about the meeting that was held in Springfield, Massachusetts last evening where Mayor Domenic Sarno invited representatives of the refugee contractors to a gathering to discuss the city’s complaints about refugee overload.

08/28/13-Springfield-Republican Staff Photo by Dave Roback-Archbishop Timothy Paul, left, president and CEO of the Council of Churches of Western Massachusetts listens to Katheryn Buckley-Brawner during a press conference after meeting with Springfield Mayor Domenic J. Sarno on the refugee matter in the city of Springfield.

Let me say at the outset—Springfield is not an isolated case.

RRW is filled with stories of resettlement contractors “dumping” refugees on communities.  I am here to tell you, the agencies are paid to get refugees into their first apartments, try to find them some menial job (even if it is short-lived so their records show they did find them employment), arrange for the refugee’s legal social services and health care and then basically let the refugees sink or swim—sometimes as soon as three months, but rarely does any agency hang around over 8 months.

From The Republican:

SPRINGFIELD – Mayor Domenic J. Sarno did not budge from his request for a moratorium on new refugees in Springfield on Wednesday, but agreed to have the city take part in a joint task force to evaluate the current resettlement program and consider improvements to reduce any hardships on the refugees and the community.

Sarno and numerous city officials met for 90 minutes with approximately 30 representatives of agencies and advocacy groups involved in the refugee resettlement program.

During the meeting, and thereafter, Sarno continued to say the influx of refugees in recent years has strained city services, including the schools, police and code enforcement officials. He said he has serious concerns about refugees living in poverty and substandard housing, and not getting enough help and follow-up services from the service agencies.

He described the situation as “dumping” them on the city’s doorstep with language gaps, and lack of knowledge to get help and basic services.

“This is not an attack on refugees,” Sarno said. “It is about accountability of the agencies following through. What we are saying now is we are at a tipping point.”

Catholic Charity’s spokeswoman, Kathryn Buckley-Brawner, says they (the resettlement agencies) will investigate themselves about the “alleged” failure to follow-up on refugees (seems more and more lately, Catholic Charities is involved somewhere!):

Kathryn Buckley-Brawner, a spokeswoman for the coalition of refugee service groups, said there were “healthy disagreements” during the meeting, but it was “certainly very encouraging,”

“It’s our position that we want to maintain open communication with the mayor’s office,” Buckley-Brawner said. “What we want is to create a pipeline, so decisions are made in collaboration and communication with each other so that small problems don’t become huge problems, and to ensure resourses are there.”

The agencies will research the alleged lack of sufficient follow-up services “to determine to what extent the service agencies can do a better job with the city in meeting the needs of the refugees,” she said.

In your face Mayor!

The mayor cannot legally block refugee resettlement in the region, advocates said.

Frankly, I don’t think this is true!  No one has ever tried it!  I think there is a 10th Amendment (state’s rights) case to be made here. The problem is that the side that wants to bring the decision about refugees back to the state level hasn’t the resources to take this through the legal system, or politicians like Sarno don’t have the political will to do it.

But, short of a long drawn-out legal battle, citizens in the city can make such a political (media!) fuss that sometimes the State Department will step in and close a program so as to avoid bad publicity that might go national and damage the whole effort. 

Maybe some of you remember that the State Department yanked the contract of another resettlement agency in nearby Waterbury, CT in 2008.  The agency had come under fire in the newspaper for refugees living in sub-standard conditions.  They may be up and running again by now, I don’t know, but they were at least stopped at that point in time.

The State Department and its contractors have been doing this, quietly resettling refugees to target cities for over three decades, and they have done so because the program is under the public’s radar screen, and heretofore the word “refugee” has invoked only warm, fuzzy feelings in the general public.  I think all that is changing and I hope we have helped just a little to elevate the issue.

Click here for all of our coverage on Springfield.