Category: Other Immigration

US Census says Somalis are the poorest of the foreign-born in the US population

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

More in my recent series on ‘having fun with numbers.’

The US Census Bureau released late last week the 2007 demographic numbers collected by the American Community Survey.*   Here are some poverty figures from their press release:

Among people for whom poverty status is determined, about 51 percent of residents born in Somalia are living in poverty. About a quarter of the population born in Iraq, the Dominican Republic, Jordan and Mexico are also living in poverty.

On the low end of the poverty spectrum for the countries of birth, U.S. residents born in the Netherlands and Ireland each have a poverty rate of about 5 percent.

About 13 percent of both natives and the total U.S. population are living in poverty, while about 16 percent of the foreign-born are.

Additionally the Somalis are among the newest comers and have the youngest population.

Meanwhile, among the nation’s foreign-born, Somalis and Kenyans living in the United States are the most likely to be newcomers, and Somalis are among the youngest and poorest.

In fact, we reported earlier that more than half of the Somali Muslim refugees we have resettled in the US have come since 9/11.

You can get information on your community here.  

*  If you scout around at the American Community Survey, you can find even more information on your county.  It took me awhile but I found it.

For readers who like to pore over statistics, see my posts yesterday here and here.

Senator Chuck Schumer to head Senate Immigration subcommittee

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I came across this information just now in a publication called  The Pakistani Newspaper.    It’s a statement by Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum welcoming Schumer as the new chairman of the important Senate subcommittee on immigration.   Check out both the Forum and Noorani to see where this organization stands on immigration issues; I think you can already guess.

Washington, DC – On Wednesday, it was reported that Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) would take over as Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Immigration. He replaces Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) in that role. The following is a statement by Ali Noorani, Executive Director of the National Immigration Forum, a non-partisan pro-immigrant advocacy group in Washington.

[…..]

No human could possibly fill the shoes of Senator Ted Kennedy when it comes to his stewardship of the immigration issue across decades of shifting political winds and economic ebbs and flows, but we have high expectations for Senator Schumer nonetheless.

Schumer’s subcommittee includes all the issues that interest us.

The Immigration Subcommittee has a wide portfolio, including oversight of Department of Homeland Security’s immigration-related entities (ICE ,CBP, USCIS), and Department of Justice immigration functions, and the U.S. refugee program.

For those of us working in the grassroots to secure our borders and reform legal immigration programs like the Refugee Resettlement Program, take a look at this list of directors of the National Immigration Forum that is working to bring amnesty to millions of illegal aliens:  US Chamber of Commerce, National Restaurant Assoc, United Food and Commercial Workers Union, American Nursery and Lanscape Assoc. and the list goes on.

Some interesting information from Dream Act activists

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I know this is a bit off topic, but wanted to share it with you anyway.   I came across a blog this morning, United We Dream, in which they give numbers for the Asian illegal aliens in the US.  Most of us following this issue think Hispanic when we think of illegals seeking amnesty.   But, according to this blog 14% of illegal aliens are Asians:

The most recent statistics I found from a March 2006 a report estimated the number of undocumented Asians living in the United States in 2005 was about 1.5 million ” 14 percent of the 10.5 million undocumented immigrants in the United States, and 12 percent of the Asian population. At the time it was estimated that of the 1.5 million 23 percent were Chinese, followed by Filipinos (17%), Indians (14%), and Koreans (11%).

Apparently they mostly got here legally with student visas and such and have overstayed their visas.    Then this interested me, the Vietnamese aren’t so sympathetic because they came legally (as refugees):

….when you talk to Vietnamese and Cambodian immigrants about the issues, there can be less sympathy because they largely came here legally and don’t understand….

If you don’t know about the proposed Dream Act, go here.

Then scouting around at United We Dream, I learned there is a petition campaign underway to have Attorney General (we are all cowards) Holder investigate the flamboyant and successful Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio.  The petition begins:

We, the undersigned, respectfully request that you direct your office to investigate Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Arizona, for gross civil rights violations in the name of immigration enforcement.

I guess this is what they mean by changing the tone.

Latest ruling: U.S. does not have to accept Uighur Gitmo detainees

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update Feb. 19th:  China opposes any country taking the Uighurs, they are Chinese terrorists and they want them back.

We’ve been following the case of the 17 Uighurs, Chinese Muslims who are among the detainees at Guantanamo Bay.  Last fall one court ordered them released into the United States and another one blocked their release. This is the issue, as described by the Washington Post last October:

The men, a small band of Chinese Muslims who have been held for nearly seven years, are no longer considered enemy combatants by the U.S. government, but they are caught in a well-documented diplomatic bind. Unlike other captives, they cannot be sent to their home country because Beijing considers them terrorists, and they might be tortured. The government released five of the detainees, known as Uighurs (pronounced “WEE-gurz”), to Albania in 2006, but no other country wants to risk offending China by accepting the others.

Andy McCarthy reports the latest at National Review’s Corner:

The majority opinion of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, reversing Judge Ricardo Urbina’s lawless order that 17 Uighur detainees be released in the United States, is emphatic. A sampling:

Justice Frankfurter summarized the law as it continues to this day:  “Ever since national States have come into being, the right of the people to enjoy the hospitality of a State of which they are not citizens has been a matter of political determination by each State” – a matter “wholly outside the concern and competence of the Judiciary.”

The case will now go to the Supreme Court, where it is uncertain whether a majority will agree with the previous court that federal judges do have the power to order detainees released into the U.S.

Shelbyville Times-Gazette editorial says federal government unfair to local workers

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We told you last week that 150 people, including a large number of  immigrants and refugees, mostly from Nashville, arrived at an employment office in Shelbyville, TN to compete for a few jobs at the local Tyson’s poultry plant.   The police had to be called in when a scuffle ensued.

This morning the Times-Gazette editorializes on the practice of non-profit groups, funded by the taxpayer, bringing immigrant labor to town and competing for jobs that locals would like to have.

Here is the background:

Concerns rose in Shelbyville this week after law enforcement was called out early Monday to quell a disturbance at the state unemployment office downtown after about 150 people, including a large number of refugees and others brought from Nashville by various charitable organizations, camped overnight to apply for Tyson jobs.

Members of our community have expressed anger that jobs are being taken by foreign nationals instead of local workers, and that anger has been wrongly directed at Tyson, which employs 1,300 people, the majority of whom are local residents. Tyson also recruits locally through job fairs and employment advertising.

We believe employment opportunities should be equally available for all legal workers, and agree that Tyson is following the law in its hiring practice, in this instance.

We do not, however, agree with our tax dollars being used to ship people to our county to apply for jobs.

Then here is an editor after my own heart.

We fear that current trends by the government to unwisely hand out our money to religious organizations that pass it on to foreign nationals seeking jobs in these difficult times may help reverse that.

World Relief, one organization that has shipped foreign nationals to apply for jobs in Shelbyville, told the Times-Gazette Monday that it contracts with the govenrment to do so. The organization received more than $31 million in federal grants in 2008, according to its financial report, available at www.wr.org.

This practice, funded by the federal government, makes it unfairly competitive to those who live here and are willing and able to take those jobs.

These are religious organizations. If they want to ship folks down here, let them pay for it out of their church coffers, rather than out of our tax dollars. If not, let the immigrants scratch up their own bus fare to Shelbyville.

Yes indeed!     Read the whole editorial, it was so good I wanted to post the whole thing here, but you should go visit the Times-Gazette.

Be sure to read the news update at the Times-Gazette today too.