Category: Other Immigration

Immigrants cost Maryland a whole lot of money

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Here is a study from the Federation for American Immigration Reform (Hat tip Help Save Maryland) entitled “The Costs of Illegal Immigration to Marylanders,” but interestingly some of the  numbers also take into account legal as well as illegal immigrants.  This is what Brad Botwin, President of Help Save Maryland, reports from the study:

Maryland has a fast growing illegal alien population of about a quarter million persons, more than quadrupling since 2000. Between 2000 and 2008, the state’s foreign-born population has grown by 34.6 percent while its native-born population has increased by 3.3 percent.  Public school enrollment of students who require special instruction in English has soared even more, rising by 93.5 percent from 2000 to 2008 while overall enrollment declined slightly.

This illegal alien population represents a major burden on the state budget and is borne by Maryland’s taxpayers. The costs imposed on law-abiding Marylanders are unfair and unwelcome even in the best of times, but are especially burdensome at a time when the state has been cutting jobs and funding for schools and health care. Furthermore, the state is facing what the Maryland Budget and Tax Policy Institute projects will be a $2 billion deficit in the 2010 budget.

In 2008, the foreign-born population in Maryland represented nearly one in every eight residents (12.4%), and illegal aliens constituted more than one-third of that immigrant population. This illegal immigrant population costs the state’s taxpayers more than $1.4 billion per year for education, medical care and incarceration. The annual fiscal burden amounts to about $790 per Maryland household headed by a native-born resident.

This reminded me to have a look at Maryland’s (our home state) refugee numbers, something I hadn’t done for a long time.  From 1983-2005 Maryland took in 30,766 refugees.  That’s an average of about 1400 a year.  However, interestingly, in the last 3 years Maryland resettled well below that average:  2006—675 refugees, 2007—648, and in 2008—862.  (See databases here) I can only guess that there aren’t enough jobs in Maryland to bring in greater numbers, possibly all the illegal aliens crowd refugees out of work?    Although as we have learned from other states, a lack of jobs hasn’t stopped resettlement agencies from bringing in unsustainable numbers of refugees, I’m thinking of Bowling Green, KY for example.

Readers may want to visit FAIR for other useful reports on immigration issues, here.

Legal Immigration numbers: NumbersUSA has another great graphic demonstration

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Posted at the top of our blog is a link to a NumbersUSA clip about the large number of immigrants coming to the US.  Today, Roy Beck, Founder and CEO of NumbersUSA has posted a fascinating youtube clip in which he demonstrates to the ‘man on the street’ how high (and how they are not in line with our past immigration tradition) our legal immigration numbers are compared to years prior to 1965.  Check it out here.

Just a reminder that higher numbers of immigrants mean less open space, more energy demands, more housing, more pollution, fewer jobs for American low income citizens, more deficit spending for public assistance, more roads, more schools, more crime and the list goes on.

For information on what you can do, go to NumbersUSA, here.

Also related, the Washington Times is reporting this morning that all versions of health care reform working their way through Congress will make health care coverage available to illegal aliens.

Another (Muslim) immigrant food stamp scam, this time near Trenton

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This immigrant food stamp scammer was caught before he had ripped off US taxpayers for too much, but I’m posting the story because it contains some additional information on the magnitude of this welfare fraud crime.

Police said the owner, Mohammad Imran Mumtaz, 35, of Middletown, admitted that he knew most of his “customers” cashed their government Access cards to buy heroin and cocaine.

Food stamps can be used to put a turkey on a poor family’s table, to make lunch for a needy child or put breakfast in a child’s belly before school.

They also can be taken to a store and illegally changed into cash, which then can be used to buy street drugs.

That’s what was happening at one Morrisville grocery, police said. Now the owner and former owner of 3 Star Deli Mart at 336 West Bridge St. face hundreds of criminal charges for trafficking in food stamps, fraud and related offenses.

For readers wishing to help authorities identify convenience stores in your community that might be involved in illegal food stamp transactions, there is a pattern.  The store is usually pretty new (or newly re-opened) and in many cases run by an immigrant who is new to town.  They are often located in communities with large immigrant populations (btw, refugee use of food stamps is way up).  This article tells us they are in close proximity to crime areas of the city.  One additional tip-off is that the store shelves are not fully stocked.  Alert your local police and they will most likely set up a sting operation.

Big bucks are involved:

According to a 2007 Government Accountability Office report, about $241 million worth of food stamps were illegally used in 2005. The GAO report recommended targeting stores most likely to traffic in food stamps, promoting state-level enforcement and developing a plan to increase the penalties for dealing in food stamps. The agency also recommended oversight of early operations at newly authorized retailers. One example in the report referred to a store that illegally redeemed almost $650,000 in food stamps in nine months.

The GAO said that while the study showed trafficking had declined in larger stores, it remained more common in small grocery and convenience stores.

Early on, investigators noted the 3 Star Deli Mart fit that description, and that it was a short drive from the open air cocaine, heroin and crack markets of Trenton.

This guy, however, was more generous than some scammers we have written about. He was giving 60 cents on the dollar, usually its only 50 cents!

The informant told police that Mumtaz would run the Access cards used for the food stamps in Pennsylvania as if a purchase was being made and give the cardholder 60 percent of the value, according to court records.

For new readers, this is a side issue that has interested me ever since the same thing happened where we live.  The ‘Mohammad’ in our town is now in prison.  If it interests you, just type ‘food stamp fraud’ into our search function and notice the number and variety of locations where this scam has been busted. 

I’m convinced there are training programs abroad to teach certain immigrant types how to set-up these schemes, and provide them with the seed money to buy the ‘mom & pop’ business.  Here, for example, is the E-2 Treaty Investor program which I sure hope authorities are examining closely.

White House gate crashers connected to radical Palestinian group

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I’ve been switching off Fox News whenever they start one of their silly reports on Tareq and Michaele Salahi, the couple who crashed a state dinner the other day.  They’ve been treating it like gossip, with perhaps some questions about security. But now I’m paying attention after reading a post from Gateway Pundit on various connections of  these gatecrashers. First comes a 2005 photo of the couple at an event for the polo cup, with President Obama at the center of the group.  Then comes a link to American Power, which has this to say:

Tareq Salahi, the polo-playing intruder, is a Palestinian nationalist with ties to the American Task Force on Palestine (ATFP) , a pro-Palestine lobby demanding the “right of return” for all Palestinian refugees and their descendants. The “right of return” has long been considered the backdoor to Israel’s destruction. But not only that: ATFP President Ziad Asali is an America-basher who blamed 9/11 on U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Asali was a lead U.S. official to PLO terrorist Yassir Arafat’s funeral in 2004. And in a position paper in 2007, the ATFP called for a power-sharing agreement at the Palestinian Authority, which would have included the State Department’s designated-terrorist group, Hamas.

Gateway Pundit goes on to cite the Canada Free Press saying that the ATFP has removed references to Salahi’s membership from its website. And Discover the Networks says Rashid Khalidi, Middle East Studies professor at Columbia and a militant Palestinian rights activist was vice president of ATFP. Khalidi is an old friend of Barack Obama’s.

So there are two links to President Obama. It looks as if there is more to this than just a case of uninvited guests crashing a White House dinner. My first thought when I read about the links to radical Palestinian rights people was that perhaps they were testing White House security with an eye to something bigger. But the connections with Obama don’t fit in. Very puzzling, and probably very significant.

Note from Ann:  Here is a post I wrote last fall about that 2003 dinner when Rahshid Khalidi was leaving for Columbia University—you know the dinner that was filmed and the Los Angeles Times is still sitting on the film.  We know that Khalidi and Obama knew each other well and we know that the dinner was put on by the Arab American Action Network.  Someone should check with the Los Angeles Times and see if the Salahis “crashed” that dinner too!

Canadian educators challenged by wave of Roma immigrant children

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Here is an immigration issue facing Canada that I wanted to bring to your attention.  I find it interesting that educators were caught by surprise.  Is there no way in Canada (or the US for that matter) to alert school systems to expect waves of new immigrants, afterall government agencies must have granted admission to Canada for large numbers of Roma?

They are Europe’s Least Wanted – reviled for their unorthodox ways, hounded by white supremacists. Now the sudden arrival of Roma “gypsies” in Ontario has teachers here grappling to connect with some of the most perplexing students in the world.

With no English, limited education and an often shaky regard for school, the wave of Roma children give fresh urgency to the term “at-risk.” Schools across Toronto and Hamilton, caught largely by surprise, are rushing to educate staff, hire more ESL teachers and find Hungarian and Czech interpreters for everything from report cards to welcome kits.

“We’ve got major problems with this wave of students and we need help – we’ve had more than 100 kids show up this fall and our staff are scrambling,” said Trustee Irene Atkinson at a recent crash course on Roma culture organized by the Toronto District School Board, one of several this fall in Toronto and Hamilton.

See also, Roma in Ireland, here.