Category: Obama

Obama extends TEMPORARY “refugee” status to Hondurans and Nicaraguans

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Josh Gerstein writing at Politico nails it when discussing our ludicrously-named backdoor immigration program—Temporary Protected Status.

“Temporary refugees!”  They came to America illegally and  Hurricane Mitch (in 1998!) became the excuse for never leaving! Photo: History Files

Here is Gerstein’s most “undercovered” story of the week!  (Emphasis mine):

My candidate for undercovered news story of the week: the extension of TPS for immigrants potentially subject to deportation to Honduras or Nicaragua.

What’s TPS? Unheard of in many communities, it stands for Temporary Protected Status and is well known in places with substantial populations of immigrants from Central America.

[….]

The provision allows the federal government to defer deportations, nominally temporarily, to countries where a problem such as natural disaster or unrest could put added stress on a country or make it unsafe for those abroad to return. Perhaps more importantly than halting deportations, it allows immigrants in the U.S. illegally from those countries to receive authorization to work here. [They can work, but there is no path to citizenship (yet!)—ed]

On Wednesday, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano announced that she was extending the legal status of immigrants from Honduras and Nicaragua for another 18 months. The action was purportedly taken to allow the countries more time to recover from a hurricane. If you’re having trouble remembering a huge hurricane that hit the region recently, it’s not you. The disaster which led to the deportation halt, Hurricane Mitch, took place in the fall of 1998—more than 14 years ago.

Napolitano’s designations for Honduras and Nicaragua are the eleventh extensions of the original grants of TPS. With the passage of time, the findings in the extensions become more and more implausible, as does the notion that there is anything temporary about the program and that the conditions in those countries today are fairly traceable to the 1998 hurricane.  [Technically to receive TPS status the illegal alien had to be in the US before the crisis occurred, but this is just more of the winking and nodding that surely goes on with this program.–ed]

The truth is it has become politically unthinkable to end the TPS designations, especially given how long they’ve been in place. The policies now stretch through three presidential administrations, two Democratic and one Republican [Bush of course!—ed]

In many ways, the extensions are a symptom of the nation’s broken immigration system. About 64,000 Hondurans and 3,000 Nicaraguans are affected by the programs. Another TPS for El Salvador based on earthquakes in 2001 affects even more people: 212,000, making it a major source of remittances* for that country.

Read it all!

They are all waiting now for the big break—amnesty. Yippee! New Democrat voters!

*We told you about the role of remittances here at Potomac Tea Party Report.  The most recent group to receive TPS status are the Syrians—just in time for amnesty!

Virginia Imam stirring up Ethiopian Muslims with Jihad talk

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This is the news from the Daily Caller earlier this week (hat tip: Cathy):

Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Center, Falls Church, VA

The controversial imam of a prominent mosque in Arlington, Va., has urged immigrant Muslims in the United States to wage war for Islam.

“The enemies of Allah are lining up. The question for us is, are we lining [up] or are we afraid because they maycall us terrorists?” Shaker Elsayed told a crowd of Ethiopian Muslims during a lecture at T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Va.

“Let me give you the good news: they are already calling us terrorists anyway. Whether you sitting at home, watching TV, drinking coffee, sleeping or playing with your kids, you are a terrorist because you are a Muslim.”

“Well, give them a run for their money. Make it worth it. Make this title worth it, and be a good Muslim,” said the Cairo-born Muslim.

[….]

At the end of the imam’s incendiary speech, a representative of the Ethiopian group walked to the podium and declared the speech was not calling for jihad.

Fire the Imam?  Never!

“If Dar al-Hijrah were like most American religious institutions it would fire Elsayed, but it’s not like most religious institutions,” John Rossomando, a researcher at the Investigative Project on Terrorism.

“The mosque operates as a front for Hamas … [and] has the distinction of being connected with more terror plots than just about any other mosque in America,” he said in a statement to TheDC.

So how did all these Ethiopians get here?  You guessed it!  Refugee Resettlement.

From 1983 to 2009 we resettled over 40,000 Ethiopians.  How many are Christians?  How many Muslims? We don’t know, but the State Department knows and doesn’t release that information to the public.

According to that treasure trove of information the 2009 ORR Annual Report to Congress (the first such report during Obama’s Presidency), Virginia received 1,262 Ethiopians through 2009.  And, by the way, the Office of Refugee Resettlement still owes Congress reports for 2010, 2011, and 2012!

Maryland and the District of Columbia each received over a thousand, but top resettlement states for Ethiopians were CA, MN, and TX  (see Table 1 Appendix A).

Remember it was only last month that we learned an Ethiopian man in Northern Virginia was sentenced to 25 years in prison for shooting at the Pentagon and planning to deface graves in Arlington Cemetery (wonder if he attended Dar al-Hijrah?).

Ethiopian Community Development Council

Did you know that one of the Nine major federal refugee contractors  is the Ethiopian Community Development Council headquartered in Arlington, VA?

For fun, see their most recent Form 990.   Their revenue listed on page 9 is $12,887,556.  You, the taxpayer, paid them $12,755,523 for their work!   99% of their revenue came from you!

Electing Obama!

In 2008 an Ethiopian community organizer in DC bragged that they could get 10,000 Ethiopian votes in Northern Virginia for the O-man, here.

Pakistan wants the Afghan refugees to go home

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

And, they are paying them to go back to a safer Afghanistan (provided to them by US blood and treasure).

So much for Muslim charity toward the stranger that we so often hear about.  Pakistan blames the Afghan refugees (some have been there for decades) for crime and terror attacks, according to the LA Times.

Pakistani officials have long expressed their frustration with the lack of progress in repatriating the world’s largest refugee community — Afghans who fled the Soviet invasion and later, Taliban rule. Many refugees have lived in Pakistan for more than three decades. Their presence is resented by many Pakistanis, who see the refugees as a source of escalating crime and accuse them of involvement in terror strikes across the country.

The news this morning is that Pakistan has extended the time they have to repatriate to their homeland and is paying them (and upping the anti!) to get the heck out of Pakistan.

They don’t want to go ‘home’ according to an earlier story in the Business Recorder.

From the Business Recorder:

ISLAMABAD: Minister for States and Frontier and Frontier Regions Abbas Khan Afridi on Monday informed the National Assembly that currently sophisticated computerized system was in placed for the registration of Afghan refugees and period for voluntary repatriation of the refugees was extended till June 30.

Replying to a various supplementary questions during Question Hour, he said the repatriation package for the refugees was also enhanced from$ 100 to $150 per returnee in order to encourage and motivate the Afghan refugees.

Earlier, the amount was paid to them in Pakistan, now it was being paid to them in Afghanistan to discourage their re-entrance practice, he added.

The minister said that over 55,000 Afghan refugee families comprising 296,192 individuals (registered refugees) were repatriated during the last four years, bringing the total repatriation to over 3.8 million since 2002.

He said that presently around 1.6 million registered Afghan refugees were in Pakistan and the Prime Minister has recently constituted a Cabinet Committee under the Chairmanship of the SAFRON minister to deal with repatriation of the remaining refugees.

We are bringing Afghan refugees to the US (we’ve resettled over 30,000 already) and I expect that as Obama withdraws our troops you will hear the lament that we ‘broke’ Afghanistan so we have to bring their people here.

Photo from the Business Recorder, here.

2009 Annual Report to Congress is now available

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I was just looking for statistics on Afghan refugees coming to the US in large numbers (for years) because of a post I’m writing about Pakistan wanting them OUT of their country when I came across the existence of the missing 2009 ANNUAL REPORT TO CONGRESS on the refugee program.

Here it is!

Now we can see what the program looked like in the first year of the Obama presidency.

The Office of Refugee Resettlement needs to now get cracking on reports for 2010, 2011, and 2012 which they are still LEGALLY required to produce and are breaking federal law every day by not producing them!

I won’t have time to scan the 181 pages chock full of information about how much this program is costing the taxpayer today, but look forward to reading it soon!

San Diego Somalis thinking about going “home” to Somalia!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment
Obama meets with Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud at the White House in January.

A few weeks ago we reported that the new Somali President (Hassan Sheikh Mohamud) had come to the US, stopped in with Obama and later Hillary Clinton before going on to Minneapolis where he exhorted his fellow Somalis of the “diaspora” to come on back to Africa.

Now, here is a story that Somalis in the City Heights section of San Diego, where there is (incidentally) a Somali terror-funding trial going on, are contemplating a return.  And, not only that, but they have been back and forth already.

So this is my fundamental question, if Somalis are traveling safely back and forth to Mogadishu, why are we still bringing in Somalis by the thousands to the US?

Here are the stats for this fiscal year (2013) that began on October 1, 2012.  In those four months, we have brought in 2,260 “refugees” from Somalia at a time when the country is considered safe enough for American Somalis to fly back and forth.  By the way, in all of Fiscal Year 2011 (when Al-shabaab was at its height) we brought 3,161 Somalis (all year!), so if we continue the pace of the previous 4 months of this fiscal year (when Somalia is safer) we will bring over 6,000!  Does that make any sense?

We will pay “church” contractors to resettle them, feed and house them, and educate the kids through college (disrupt communities!).

Wouldn’t it be cheaper to leave them in Africa and help them get Somalia functioning?

Also, remember that countries like Denmark are contemplating refusing Somali asylum seekers because they say Somalia is no longer a complete hell hole, here.

Here is the story from KPBS in San Diego:

The United States officially recognized the Somali government last month for the first time since 1991, alerting Somali refugees in City Heights and throughout the world their homeland is making a comeback.

Somalia has been called “the world’s most failed state,” enduring deadly famines and more than two decades of civil war with al Shabaab militants linked to al Qaeda.

The nation is rebuilding under a newly elected president, who recently urged refugees at a speech in Minnesota, home to the nation’s largest population of Somali refugees, to return to Somalia to help.

But will Somalis who have spent more than 20 years away – some even beginning life outside of their family’s homeland – make the move to Africa?

“The conversation, it’s already among the community,” said Mohamed Ahmed, a 23-year-old Somali living in City Heights. “People have already been back. People are planning to go back. And some people are a bit skeptical about going back and they’re not really comfortable about the situation back home.”

Ahmed left Somalia with his family when he was two months old and came to the U.S. at age of 4. He’s about to graduate from San Diego State University, alongside other East Africans who arrived in America in the 1990s.

He says the timing for a revived Somali state couldn’t be better. Many members of the Somali diaspora are poised to graduate from American and European universities, if they haven’t already.

Ahmed said Somalis who grew up in Europe are returning to work in their native country – at a rate of about 1,000 per month, according to some reports. Flights in and out of Mogadishu have multiplied. Rent has climbed. Last year, young Somali professionals hosted a TEDxMogadishu talk.

Nah!  Not so fast!  Few will go “home.”

Abdi Mohamoud, executive director of Horn of Africa, a San Diego nonprofit that provides support for local East African refugees, said Ahmed’s drive is common among children of refugees.

“With the tragedy of having so many refugees flee from Somalia, the advantage has become that many of those refugees went to other developed countries and many of them were able to get very high-quality educations,” Mohamoud said. “They’re very eager to try to improve the devastation that their parents have fled.”

But Mohamoud said he’s not convinced many young Somalis will actually make the move to Africa.

Mohamoud went on to say that he predicted 95% would stay in the US.

Remittances!  Another word for the “redistribution” of wealth!

The KPBS report also notes this extra cost to the US economy—the same one we reported here regarding El Salvador!

And Somalia’s economy has a long way to go. Currently, remittances from Somali families in City Heights and throughout the world account for about half the nation’s gross domestic product.