Category: Obama

Texas: another guilty plea by immigrant in food stamp scam

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

It’s the same old story, but interesting to note that ICE is involved so the guy must have some immigration ‘problems’ too:

From MMD Newswire:

BROWNSVILLE, Texas (MMD Newswire) August 26, 2011 – – The owner of a local supermarket pleaded guilty on Wednesday to defrauding the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), commonly known as food stamp fraud, announced U.S. Attorney José Angel Moreno, Southern District of Texas. The case was investigated by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) with the assistance of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Office of Inspector General.

Parviz Sheikh Rezaei, 56, the proprietor of the Pariz Dollar Supermarket was arraigned by U.S. District Judge Andrew S. Hanen on Aug. 23. According to court documents, Rezaei repeatedly exchanged Lone Star card benefits from participants in the food stamp program for discounted amounts of cash. Then, he charged the government for the full value of the Lone Star card transaction. Some of those transactions were with undercover federal law enforcement agents.

“Today’s guilty plea is an example of the impact we can have when law enforcement combine their expertise,” said Jerry Robinette, special agent in charge of ICE HSI in San Antonio. “ICE HSI will continue to work with our law enforcement partners to aggressively investigate these cases and ensure that those who profit by taking advantage of others face justice for their crimes.”

He might go to jail for a few years but in light of Obama’s amnesty by fiat, he likely will never be deported.

Type ‘food stamp fraud’ into our search function and learn about dozens of other cases like this one.

Obama administration wants to “continue the conversation” on our “broken immigration system”

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

….blah, blah, blah!

Big problem is we have very different ideas on what exactly is broken.

This is an article I’ve had kicking around for over a week.  Nothing surprising here, but want to post it so as to not lose the link.  Earlier this month the Obama Administration had a chit-chat meeting in the White House with members of the African Diaspora.   They like that word “diaspora” because it makes it sound so what—chic, exotic, acceptable? to spread throughout the world like the Somalis have done and as reported in this Taki’s Magazine article I’ve also had kicking around in my queue for more than a few days.

From the Office of White House Public Engagement:

This past Friday (a couple of Fridays ago), White House and senior administration officials – including representatives from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), Department of Education, and HHS Office of Refugee Resettlement – met with African community leaders to discuss immigration issues specific to the African immigrant and refugee population. The convening brought together leaders and advocates representing communities from the countries of Mauritania, Somalia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, South Africa and Guinea Bissau.

Cecilia Munoz, Director of White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, opened the forum and highlighted the challenges in fixing the legal immigration system and reassured the community leaders in the room of the President’s continued commitment to a legislative solution to fixing the broken immigration system.

Get your White House community organizing “tool kit.”

Stephanie Valencia, Deputy Director of the Office of Public Engagement, encouraged everyone in the room to help broaden the dialogue and elevate the debate by hosting immigration action roundtables in their own communities check out the roundtable toolkit to sponsor your own immigration roundtable.

After you have your local “immigration roundtable” turn in the names of those attending to help build for Obama’s reelection efforts (they don’t really say that, but they do want the attendees names).

For more on Obama’s “conversation” on “broadening the dialogue,” and “elevating the debate” about our “broken immigration system” go here, so we can “win the future.”  Blah, blah, blah…..

Immigrants send money back home, prop up world economies…..

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

….but what about the US economy?

Every article I see on the subject of remittances casts the practice in glowing terms—isn’t it great we are told, the immigrants work hard to send money to their family members back home.  But, doesn’t that have a negative impact on the US economy?  That money isn’t being spent here when it’s sent to El Salvador or Somalia or wherever, therefore its not generating new jobs, right?  (Remember Obama is supposedly trying to put more money into circulation to stimulate spending!).

Recently, doing research on the Sanctuary Movement, Temporary Protected Status (TPS) and the large number of Salvadorans in and around Washington, DC, I came across a piece in the New York Times where Pres. George Bush was positively gleeful to extend TPS for Salvadorans here illegally so they could continue to send money to El Salvador and thus prop up that economy.  Ten years later we are still extending TPS so we can support El Salvador.

Now I see Somalis working abroad are sending a billion dollars a year back to Africa.  But, American banks want nothing to do with making sure the money doesn’t end up in the hands of terrorists.

From the Columbus Dispatch:

Thousands of Columbus Somalis send millions of dollars home each year to family members struggling to survive after two decades of bloodshed.

But banks in Ohio want no part of that business.

Banks, including Huntington National Bank, Key Bank and PNC, do not accept accounts from companies that electronically transmit money to Somalia, fearing that the money could end up in the hands of terrorists.

That upsets Hersi Suleiman, the Chicago-based regional manager of Amal USA, a money-transfer company that has outlets in Columbus and electronically transmits $3 million a year from Columbus to Somalia.

Worldwide, the Somali diaspora sends $1 billion home each year, he said.

And, you can bet that much of this money is being sent through illegal money transfer (is that what is going on in the backrooms of all those little Somali shops popping up everywhere?).

Many Somalis pulled their money out of local banks after they stopped dealing with money transmitters, Tiberi said.

Until there is a fix, Levine, the D.C. lawyer, said some people might turn to illicit, unlicensed money transmitters.

“Underground transmitters threaten the security of the United States,” he said.

Read it all and think about it—more immigrants employed and sending money abroad means the money isn’t spent at the local appliance dealer or other local retailers.

Somalia and the “famine industry”

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Everywhere you turn these days there are pictures of starving Somalis trekking across the Horn of Africa headed to refugee camps in Kenya with the hope of being resettled in places like the US and Australia (here is one story from Australia saying heads-up, more are coming).

Even last week the US State Department was scrambling to explain to the clamoring media what the US would be doing in light of the “catastrophe” (but “senior administration officials” didn’t want their names publicized!).

[Incidentally I think there is a good chance that the Obama Administration is getting ready to unleash Samantha Power and her ‘responsibility to protect’ doctrine (recently on display in Libya) on the problem.  Basically, she says war is justified wherever we have good intentions to “save” the people.]

Now along comes a story from the East African questioning whether some of the “crisis” is exaggerated so as to keep the aid money flowing to the United Nations and NGOs whose staffs and offices need a steady flow of fresh capital.

The title of the story is:  The unholy alliance in Somalia; media, donors and aid agencies by Rasna Warah (emphasis mine).

The season of giving has started — and it not even Christmas yet. Leading international aid agencies, including the United Nations, Oxfam, Save the Children and Islamic Relief UK, have launched massive campaigns to save the thousands of Somalis who are facing hunger in their own country and in refugee camps in neighbouring Kenya and Ethiopia.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has asked donors for $1.6 billion in aid for Somalia and the World Bank has already pledged more than $500 million towards the relief efforts.

The appeals for food aid have been accompanied by heart-wrenching images: children with swollen, malnourished bellies, emaciated mothers with shrivelled breasts that no longer lactate, campsites bursting at the seams with hordes of skeletal refugees. Almost all the large humanitarian aid agencies are rushing to the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya to witness, photograph and film the crisis. We have seen these images before — in the mid-1980s when Mohamed Amin filmed the famine in Ethiopia that triggered the trend of rock stars becoming do-gooders. Since then, famine has become the biggest story coming out of Africa — and one of the biggest industries.

Images of starving Africans are part and parcel of fund-raising campaigns, as are journalists. As one leading humanitarian official told the BBC’s Andrew Harding, the UN can produce endless reports, but it is only when the images of starving people are televised or placed on the front page of newspapers that politicians take action.

The problem is that the story that they see or read is not as impartial as they would like to believe.

Journalists are not impartial (no kidding!)

The cosy relationship between aid workers and journalists has thus distorted the way Africa is reported. Journalists often do not get to the heart of the story or take the time to do the research into the causes of a particular crisis. Africans do not feature much in their stories, except as victims.

“In public affairs discussions the term ‘starving Africans’ (or ‘starving Ethiopians’ or ‘starving Somalis’) rolls from the tongue as easily as ‘blue sky’,” wrote former aid worker Michael Maren in his 1997 book The Road to Hell.

“Charities raise money for starving Africans. What do Africans do? They starve. But mostly they starve in our imaginations. The starving African is a Western cultural archetype like the greedy Jew or the unctuous Arab.”

Political correctness reigns supreme!

In a recent phone conversation, Ms Polman [Dutch journalist Linda Polman] told me that the “starving African” story is not just the easiest to tell, especially in a continent that does not generate much international media coverage, but is also the most “politically correct.” After all, who in their right mind would want to be accused of doing nothing for dying people?

UN and aid agencies:  we need money for our stuff!

He [Ahmed Jama, a Somali agricultural economist based in Nairobi] adds that it is in the interest of UN and other aid agencies to show a worst-case scenario because this keeps the donor funds flowing.

[…..]

The other fact that is conveniently overlooked is that a large proportion of the funds raised is used to cover aid agencies’ administrative and logistical costs. Staff has to be hired, four-wheel-drive cars have to be bought, offices have to be set up, highly paid international experts earning hefty per diems have to be flown in or consulted. All this costs money, lots and lots of money.

Complicity of African governments shouldn’t be overlooked

So we have the journalists, the donors and the aid agencies, and the African governments motives to consider before you open your checkbook.

However, neither the donors nor the aid agencies could play their part without the complicity of African governments, which have unquestioningly taken on the roles of victim and beggar.

I recommend you read the whole article, it is packed full of all sorts of information including a discussion on how Somalia became the hell-hole it is.

This isn’t the first time we’ve heard all of this.  In 2009 the Wall Street Journal published an article entitled, ‘Why foreign aid is hurting Africa’ and reported here at RRW.  And then Irish author Kevin Myers* was rhetorically crucified when he dared to challenge the politically correct notion of more aid to Africa and said this:

The wide-eyed boy-child we saved, 20 years or so ago, is now a priapic, Kalashnikov-bearing hearty, siring children whenever the whim takes him.

* It’s amusing to consider that Ireland has produced Samantha Power and Kevin Myers in not quite the same generation, but within a few decades of each other.

Refugees still flooding into Italy (some still dying) trying to leave Libya…..

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

…..and in a recent news report Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi says it was all America’s idea to go into Libya and support the rebels.

From National Review OnLine today:

Back in late March, shortly after the start of the NATO bombing campaign against Libya, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates told Meet the Press that the U.S. had no “vital interest” in the country. The remark famously inspired Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to cut in and attempt to explain why, then, the United States was getting involved. Secretary Clinton’s explanation was that the Libyan campaign was in the vital interest of America’s NATO allies and that they had asked for U.S. support. “When it comes to Libya,” she said, “we started hearing from the U.K., France, Italy, other of our NATO allies. This was in their vital national interest.”

NRO author John Rosenthal goes on to tell readers that Italy did not push for the ouster of Qaddafi, first fearing that al-Qaeda was involved with the “rebels” and because of fears of just what has happened—thousands of refugees trying to leave Libya and aiming for Italy.

The Italian reluctance to support a military intervention also had to do with fears of seeing such an intervention provoke an exodus of tens of thousands of refugees from Libya, many of whom would inevitably end up in Italy. These fears have proven well founded.

Not in so many words, but Berlusconi now says this is Obama’s (and Hillary’s) War:

But now, according to a report in the Saturday edition of Il Corriere della Sera, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has confided to colleagues not only that he was opposed to the NATO intervention in Libya, but that he was pressured into making available Italian military capabilities by precisely the United States.

In a report from AFP today, we see that 330 more refugees reached the Italian island of Lampedusa while 25 others were asphyxiated in another boat confirming for all that  Berlusconi’s fears were justified as Italy takes the brunt of the invasion of Europe.

ROME — A boat carrying 330 migrants from Libya arrived late Tuesday on the Italian island of Lampedusa, a day after officials found 25 people choked to death in the engine room of another Libyan refugee boat.

[…..]

Lampedusa, which has a surface area of just 20 square kilometres (7.7 square miles), is Italy’s southernmost point and is closer to North Africa than to the Italian mainland.

It is now the biggest gateway for illegal immigration into the European Union following the arrival of tens of thousands of people from North Africa this year.

Meanwhile those friends of America—-those rebel “freedom” fighters—are killing each other (here).  Division and lawlessness in the ranks?  No kidding!

What would we do without Leftist ideologues like Samantha Power bending Obama’s ear on the RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT.  She is credited along with Susan Rice and Hillary Clinton with persuading Obama that the US needed to save the Libyan people from Qaddafi, here.

What a mess!

Endnote and related I think:  Go to this photo essay of supporters of the Libyan rebels.  I especially want you to scroll down to photo #10.  That is Tammam al-Barazi (a Syrian by birth) who was arrested in the county where I live last month for killing his daughter’s new dog (he threw it in front of traffic).  He objected to the dog for “religious reasons.”  LOL! Of course our politically correct local paper leaves readers wondering which religion hates dogs?

I have no proof, but I think he may be one “advising” Hillary on the Middle East, here.  He predicted in May that the Syrian Army would split (signs of that happening now).  If this good agent provocateur is advising the Obama Administration, you can see why our Middle East policy is going up in flames.  BTW, when arrested in Hagerstown his bags were packed for Egypt!