Category: Nashville

Somali sex-trafficking case inching toward trial in Tennessee

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

New readers may first wish to review stories about the indictments of 29 Somalis back in November 2010, here.

The case is expected to go to trial in March if the court and more than two dozen lawyers for the defendants can get it all together.

From The City Paper:

The federal courthouse in downtown Nashville was abuzz on Friday, Jan. 20. Outside, Occupy Nashville staged a small protest against corporate greed, using theatrics to hammer home their point.

But eight stories above, in courtroom A859, there was no acting.

Somali women, their heads wrapped in colorful cloth, smiled and waved to their family members and friends as 28 handcuffed defendants entered the room. Some of the accused returned the greetings. A federal marshal quickly stepped into the crowd and reminded one of the women in the crowd that she can wave, but can’t communicate with the defendants.

[…..]

The interaction was surprisingly cordial considering the violent, socially deviant nature of the defendants’ alleged crimes. According to the federal indictment, the defendants all played a role in child sex trafficking. They are charged with transporting pre-teens and teens between three states and forcing them to engage in commercial sex acts.

The defendants are all associates or members of gangs like the Somali Mafia, the Somali Outlaws and the Lady Outlaws, according to the government.

“I would call this one of the more significant cases we’ve investigated in recent memory,” said John Morton, director of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, at the time of the indictment in November 2010.

For new readers: We have admitted well over 100,000 Somali refugees to the US.   To check out the numbers visit this post, one of our most widely read posts over the last few years.   In FY2010 which ended September 30th the US State Department resettled 4,884 Somalis (here) to towns near you.   (I know, I need to update my numbers!)

Don Barnett speaks at New York’s Penn Club on refugees; reports on Tennessee law

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Center for Immigration Studies fellow, Don Barnett of Nashville, TN, recently traveled to New York to make a presentation on the Refugee Resettlement Program and tell the audience about the Tennessee initiative enacted into law last year that attempts to get some local control over the program.  Up until now the US State Department and non-governmental organizations are able to drop refugees off in communities against the wishes of many local residents.  Tennessee lawmakers want to see that changed.

Here is a report from the website American Rattlesnake:

One of the most harmful aspects of our nation’s current immigration policy is its manifold refugee resettlement programs, the disastrous consequences of which have been amply documented on this website. That’s why the speech Don Barnett, currently a fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies and expert on refugee resettlement in the United States, delivered to the Penn Club on Tuesday night is so crucial to understanding the scale of the problem faced by small towns and communities throughout America. A former employee of the United States Information Agency within the U.S. State Department, he spent an extensive part of his career working in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc, which produced most of the refugees brought to the United States during the Cold War Era.

Today we have a much different approach to refugee resettlement that, as Barnett pointed out repeatedly during the course of his speech, is completely untethered to any concrete American foreign policy goal, and which is divorced from any traditional definition of the term itself. Even as President Obama promises to end the signature law that allowed hundreds of thousands of refuseniks and political and religious dissidents to emigrate from Russia and the former USSR, the amount of refugees being sent to America from the third world increases exponentially. As Barnett noted in his talk, and as even open borders advocates readily concede, the United States accepts more than four times as many refugees as every other industrialized nation combined.

Read it all!

Local communities should decide if they can handle more refugees

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

That is the gist of an excellent piece by Don Barnett published in The Tennessean yesterday.  I can’t believe, that of all newspapers, The Tennessean would publish anything with this much information about the refugee program.

We’ve written a lot about “welcoming” Nashville and how businesses there looking for cheap labor (hotel workers and meat packers in particular!) and Lefties looking for Democrat voters have pretty much controlled the message coming out of The Tennessean.   The paper has also done “hit pieces” (here is one) on anyone daring to ask why so many Muslims are going to Tennessee and what their agenda might be.  (We have an entire category here on Nashville and you will see what I mean.)

Anyway, here is the whole opinion piece from Barnett (published in its entirety because it will be a handy guide for all of you to keep for future reference and because I fear that the link may not be available for very long at this newspaper).

Barnett:

Refugee resettlement in America has traditionally been the responsibility of sponsors — families who housed the refugees, charitable organizations which provided assistance and employers with jobs.

Until the federal Refugee Act of 1980, refugees were explicitly barred from accessing public welfare. Sponsors had to provide at least a year of lodging and support including medical coverage.

This is not the system we have today.

Today, refugee resettlement is almost entirely the responsibility of the taxpayer — both state and federal; the sponsors have become federal contractors. One of the main tasks of the contractors — misleadingly called Voluntary Agencies or Volags — is to link refugees with social services programs. The contractor/sponsor responsibility ends after just three months in most cases. Needless to say, with such a short period of engagement, assimilation is not on the agenda, even when assimilation is the desire of the refugees themselves.

Thirty days after arrival, refugees are eligible for all forms of public assistance on the same basis as a U.S. citizen.

This has resulted in staggering welfare dependency rates, despite laughable statements about refugee “self-sufficiency” found in official Volag reports.

Sen. Richard Lugar, R.-Ind.*, commissioned a report in 2010 entitled “Abandoned Upon Arrival: Implications for Refugees and Local Communities Burdened by a U.S. Resettlement System That Is Not Working.”

The report concludes that the federal government too often brings refugees to U.S. communities with inadequate resources and little planning who “place demands, sometimes significant, on local schools, police, hospitals and social services. Local governments are often burdened with the weight of addressing the unique assistance refugees require, yet they rarely have an official role in influencing how many refugees are resettled by local voluntary agencies and often are not even informed in advance that new residents will be arriving.”

The report recommends modifications to “Enhance formal consultations with state and local leaders, improve accountability and promote community engagement which improves chances of assimilation.”

Likewise, the National Governors Association (NGA) regularly pleads for more state involvement “in the congressional consultation process through which new refugee admissions levels are determined to ensure that program funding is provided to support the level of refugee admissions.”

On its website, the NGA speaks of “a major federal policy change that shifts fiscal responsibility for meeting the basic needs of refugees and entrants from the federal government to states and localities.”

Further, “governors continue to be concerned about the lack of adequate consultation on the part of the voluntary agencies (Volags) and their local affiliates in the initial placement of refugees and on the part of the federal government in the equitable distribution of refugees.

States have continually urged the federal government to establish a mechanism to ensure appropriate coordination and consultation. However, significant progress has not been made. …”

Tennessee is the first state in the nation to pass a bill which will address this issue. The Refugee Absorption Capacity Act (RACA)* provides common-sense guidelines which promote consultation between Volags and the U.S. State Department on one hand and local communities on the other.

The law also provides a mechanism for localities to request a slowdown or a moratorium in resettlement based on the capacity limits of social service providers, public schools, public housing, public health services and so on. The law is very modest in that a community may merely make a request, not assert a right, to refuse resettlement.

Hopefully, it is the beginning of a process where affected communities are granted a say in the resettlement program.

Don Barnett is an information technology professional and free-lance writer in Brentwood.

*We told you about the Tennessee law here, and about Senator Lugar’s damning report here.

Iraqi refugee: I need to see my mommy and daddy

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Here is an article from The Tennessean this week (from the same reporter who did a hatchet job on Brigitte Gabriel and the American Congress for Truth recently) that will make your blood boil.

Seems we are supposed to have sympathy for the budget cuts (that means the flow of your money to the “church” federal contractors which resettle refugees in your towns and cities) and resultant lay-offs due to enhanced security checks for refugees.  For new readers, resettlement contractors are paid by the head—more refugees they resettle more tax dollars they receive.

And, remember it was only earlier this summer when two Iraqis were arrested in nearby Kentucky on terrorism charges, but reporter Smietana doesn’t mention that. (What! Smietana doesn’t know how to google?).

It’s all just boohoo, refugee agencies don’t have money and Iraqis like this guy (who looks to be at least in his 30s) is stamping his feet and wanting to know when mommy and daddy will get here from Iraq!

From The Tennessean:

When Ahmed Ahmed left his home in Iraq as a refugee in 2008, he hoped his parents and sister would follow him soon.

Three years later, Ahmed, former translator for Iraq’s ministry of defense, is living in Nashville, and they are still in Baghdad.

“The wait is killing me,” Ahmed said.

The number of refugees being resettled in Nashville has slowed dramatically because of federal regulations enacted this year. The regulations are designed to weed out refugees who might pose a security risk, but they’ve left refugees like Ahmed waiting to reunite with family. And they’ve left charities that resettle refugees with six-figure budget deficits.

The Nashville office of World Relief, a Christian nonprofit, had expected to resettle about 550 refugees from Iraq, Bhutan, Myanmar and other countries this year. The slowdown has reduced that figure to about 430.

Since the charity receives government funding for each refugee, that has meant about $105,000 in budget cuts, said Nathan Kinser, director of World Relief’s Nashville office.

The charity made the budget cuts by not replacing employees who resigned.

[…..]

Catholic Charities in Nashville has seen a similar slowdown. It had hoped to resettle about 600 refugees. But its numbers are off by about 30 percent this year, said Kellye Branson, director of Refugee Services for Catholic Charities of Tennessee Inc., prompting budget cuts of about $125,000 and some layoffs.

Readers, go have a look at Catholic Charities of Tennessee’s Form 990 for 2010.   They had an income of $13,245,078 (yes millions of dollars) and $10,300,875 (yes, over $10 million came from taxpayer funding).  That amounts to 78% of their annual budget is paid by you!   So they are whining about losing $125,000 dollars in funding this year—so if my math is correct that amounts to a lose of less than 1% of their government-funded support!

World Relief in Nashville must be funded through the national World Relief headquarters in Maryland where the organization gets $32,701,335 ($32 MILLION DOLLARS FROM TAXPAYERS) and its CEO, Sammy Mah, is paid $323,302 in annual salary and benefits (LOL! Doing well by doing good!)  By the way, its highest paid contractor (for services) is $772,543 to something called True Sense Marketing (must be a PR firm).   See their most recent Form 990 here.  And, they are whining about losing $105,000 in funding.  Maybe Sammy and other 6-figure employees could chip in a little of their money—you know redistribute the wealth to the poor and suffering refugees like Ahmed!

So we are told that Ahmed, who had been working as a translator for the Iraqi defense department (and has his daughter here with him) doesn’t “understand” why it’s taking so long?  Come on Smietana, who do you think you are talking to with this silly reporting?

Ahmed said he doesn’t understand why the refugee resettlement process is taking so long. He just wants to see the rest of his family.

“I need to see my mom and dad,” he said.

Want to learn more about Iraqi refugees, see our previous 503 posts on them here.

New York Times targets anti-sharia lawyer

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

On the front page of the New York Times yesterday, above the fold, is an article by Andrea Elliott headlined Behind an Anti-Shariah Push: Orchestrating a Seemingly Grass-Roots Campaign. The placement of the piece shows how important the Times considers its “investigative” project, as does the almost full page devoted to it on the jump on page 16.

Oddly, the article is datelined Nashville. Why? Apparently to provide a lead that is connected to current news:

Tennessee’s latest woes include high unemployment, continuing foreclosures and a battle over collective-bargaining rights for teachers. But when a Republican representative took the Statehouse floor during a recent hearing, he warned of a new threat to his constituents’ way of life: Islamic law.

The representative, a former fighter pilot named Rick Womick, said he had been studying the Koran. He declared that Shariah, the Islamic code that guides Muslim beliefs and actions, is not just an expression of faith but a political and legal system that seeks world domination. “Folks,” Mr. Womick, 53, said with a sudden pause, “this is not what I call ‘Do unto others what you’d have them do unto you.’ ”

Similar warnings are being issued across the country as Republican presidential candidates, elected officials and activists mobilize against what they describe as the menace of Islamic law in the United States.

But it can’t be that Americans are increasingly aware of a real threat. No, it’s all the machinations of

an orchestrated drive that began five years ago in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, in the office of a little-known lawyer, David Yerushalmi, a 56-year-old Hasidic Jew with a history of controversial statements about race, immigrationand Islam. Despite his lack of formal training in Islamic law, Mr. Yerushalmi has come to exercise a striking influence over American public discourse about Shariah.

Working with a cadre of conservative public-policy institutes and former military and intelligence officials, Mr. Yerushalmi has written privately financed reports, filed lawsuits against the government and drafted the model legislation that recently swept through the country — all with the effect of casting Shariah as one of the greatest threats to American freedom since the cold war.

Richard Weltz of American Thinker summarizes the piece perfectly in his title: Blame the Jews and Republicans. Quoting from his piece:

And, of course, Americans’ concern about Islamic influence over our society is also “the same kind of rhetoric that appears to have influenced Anders Behring Breivik, the suspect in the deadly dual attacks in Norway on July 22. The anti-Shariah campaign, they say, appears to be an end in itself, aimed at keeping Muslims on the margins of American life.”

Forget the universities that have been pressured into installing footbaths for the religious demands of Muslim students; forget Harvard’s bowing to Muslim demands for gender-separate hours at the gym and swimming pool; forget the refusal of Muslim cabbies at the Minnestota airport to service passengers with dogs or alcohol; forget the establishment of Shariah-compliant investment funds and banking services by our financial infrastructure; and forget all the evidence in plain sight of efforts to inflict Muslim belief and practice on our society — and others in the Western world. It’s all just Jewish and Republican make-believe to the New York Times.

Just so. Tennessee legislator Womick is a Republican. Also mentioned as concerned about sharia are Newt Gingrich, Michele Bachmann, and James Woolsey (whoops, he’s a Democrat, but that isn’t mentioned). Also the major role of Brigitte Gabriel’s terrific group, ACT for America. Frank Gaffney co-stars as “a hawkish policy analyst and commentator who is the president of the Center for Security Policy in Washington. Well connected in neo-conservative circle….”  Neo-conservative is about the most damning name a Times reporter can call someone, so you know these anti-sharia folks are really, really bad.

And unfunny as it is, I couldn’t help laughing at the headline an article below the anti-sharia one on the NYT’s front page: Afghans Rage at Young Lovers; A Father Says Kill Them Both. That’s what sharia gets you, but the Times prefers to wander around America blindfolded.