Category: Other refugees

Where is that big city video outfit when you need them?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

In the same week that a CHICAGO-based community organizing video documentary outfit arrived in Shelbyville, TN a homeless Ethiopian man was found sleeping in the town square.   The fellow says he is working at Tyson’s Food but can’t afford a place to sleep yet.

“Hey … hey! Are you OK?”

It was a little after 9 a.m. Monday when Shelbyville codes official David Langford roused the man from his slumber outside John Norton’s law offices on the public square.

The slender man called himself Mustoff and said he was from Ethiopia, in town to work for Tyson Foods, which was evident from the rubber boots he wore.

But Mustoff was sleeping on a piece of cardboard with nothing but the clothes on his back, a coat, pillow and part of a sleeping bag. He had no cash and no one in town he knew to call.

Homeless.  [Illegal or a refugee/asylee?]

The video crew was in town to coincidentally (!) film the Unity Meeting held last night, but it appears they didn’t cross paths with Tyson’s homeless employee (or at least these reports don’t tell us they did).

A crew from Chicago has been in Shelbyville for the past week shooting footage for a documentary focusing on the impact that immigration and refugees are having on the community.

The project is headed by director/producer Kim Snyder, who works with the BeCause Foundation [creating social change through the power of film] an organization created by Richard Kincade, the former president and chief executive officer of Equity Office Properties Trust (EOP).

“We believe in the power of story to help highlight communities and individuals tackling complex social issues right now,” Snyder said.

This reporter will also be interviewed by the crew about the Times-Gazette‘s series of stories on the influx of Somali refugees and their impact on Shelbyville.

The foundation has previously done documentaries on the homeless and its officials feel the topic of immigration and how towns like Shelbyville is grappling with it is a big issue.

“We have been told that Shelbyville was not only an interesting example but a possible way for people elsewhere in the country to learn a bit through open dialog about what is happening here and what people are really thinking and feeling about it,” Snyder said.

The film crew was at the American Legion Thursday to shoot footage of Catalina Nieto, public awareness coordinator for the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Collation (TIRRC) and Abdul Farah, the social adjustment director of the Somali Community Center of Nashville, who both spoke to the Rotary Club of Shelbyville.

Shelbyville BeWare BeCause, they are using your town!   They will gloss over the tensions and problems of the Tyson’s African employees and then show what great work the TIRRC and the Somali Community Center are doing to bring you all together in harmonious unity.  This is a politically motivated campaign.  Your film, your town, will then be used to shame other towns into silence. 

All of a sudden these “change” agent/activists are everywhere you turn!  This is from BeCause’s scanty website:

The BeCause Foundation was founded in 2007* to heighten awareness about a number of complex social problems and promote change through the power of film.

The BeCause series of short documentaries highlights the groundbreaking work of pioneering individuals and organizations providing solution-based models for social change. The films and adjoining outreach campaigns are designed to raise awareness, illuminate the resilience of the human spirit, and inspire others to become involved. The series aims to break stereotypic images of victimization and “charity” and replace them with ones of empowerment, hope, and transformation.

Each film is created as the cornerstone of a larger media campaign to promote advocacy about the profiled cause and related organizations.

It is starting to feel like a horror movie where all these creepy manipulative “change” people are everywhere!

* I couldn’t find any financial information on this organization, wonder who is funding them?

Bhutanese Maoist threatens more violence toward refugees

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We’ve been writing about this for months and months, but this week there are fresh threats from Bhutanese Maoists living in refugee camps in Nepal to use violence against fellow refugees who have signed up for resettlement. 

The long and short of the issue is that the Maoists want to overthrow the government of Bhutan (Shangri La) and they need numbers.  They won’t have numbers if 60,000 refugees head to the US over the next five years.

BELDANGI REFUGEE CAMP (Nepal), Oct 16: In a secluded corner of a refugee camp in southern Nepal, Nirmal Chettri outlines his plans for waging a bloody “people’s war” on the tiny Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan.

With the intense stare of the ideologically fervent, the 26-year-old said his organisation, the Bhutan Communist Party (MarxistLeninist-Maoist), was ready to start killing for its cause.

He also warned that his faction would step up attacks on thousands of Bhutanese refugees who are leaving the camps in Nepal to start new lives abroad.

“There will be a lot of casualties and destruction but we cannot shy away from fighting for justice,” said Chettri, one of around 100,000 Bhutanese of Nepalese origin who were forced to flee Bhutan in the early 1990s.

The refugees have languished in UN camps in southern Nepal for more than 15 years, and now — after the United States of fered to resettle at least 60,000 — many are preparing to leave.

Around 50,000 have signed up for international resettlement, and 5,000 have already left.
But Chettri and his comrades want to stop the exodus, because he believes the refugees have been “brainwashed and hypnotised” and that the resettlement programme reduces his party’s chances of destroying Bhutan’s monarchy ….

For those of you who think this Bhutanese refugee flow to the US is driven purely by humanitarian zeal, think again.  The Bush Administration has apparently chosen to save Bhutan from communism by bringing tens of thousands of third worlders to the US.  I guess they figure they will have a twofer as well by supplying big businesses, like meatpacking companies, with cheap labor.

The Refugee Resettlement program of the US State Department is used for political reasons.  It is aided and abetted by the ‘do-gooder image’ cover it gets in the media and among the volags that make their living resettling refugees.

If you would like to know what we have previously written on this subject, just type “Bhutan” into our search function.

Immigration: Australia is in the same deep stuff as the US

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update:  More on immigrant conflicts in Australia here.

Here is an article from Australia that asks the same questions of the Australian government that we ask of ours.    How can a country support opening its doors to low-skilled immigrants in huge numbers at this point in history?     In this case, the Rudd government has announced it plans to allow 500,000 immigrants to enter Australia over the next three years.

So how are they going to offer land, water, power and transport to more than 500,000 permanent newcomers Rudd hopes to settle here permanently in just three years?

Read the whole article and ponder how it is that Australia too has caught the civilizational death wish disease.

Japan to begin refugee resettlement and ‘I would like to meet Somalis’

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

One of the many stories that just passed me by (I saw it but wasn’t moved to write about it) is that Japan has agreed to begin a refugee resettlement program.  One of the most generous nations in making financial contributions to humanitarian causes around the world,  Japan has taken very few refugees until now.  They have recently been guilt-tripped into changing their policy on refugees by the UN and other nations.

Behind Tokyo’s shift in its refugee policy is the view spreading in the government and the ruling Liberal Democratic Party that Japan will have to accept more refugees to fulfill its humanitarian responsibility as a member of the international community. In addition, Japan has to increasingly depend on foreign people for labor as the population ages and the birthrate remains low.

Some analysts have voiced concern that the government will select only refugees who are easy to accept in the screening process.

Doesn’t that last make sense to you!   Would you go out of your way to take refugees that are not easy?  Would you purposefully go around picking out the troublemakers and the hard to assimilate.  Well, yes, some countries do.   We do!  

And, so what finally inspired me to write about Japan was this post from an incredibly naive Japanese blogger writing about Somalis in the most simplistic and uninformed way.  The only other reasonable explanation for what he says is that the whole post is a joke.

He wants to meet Somalis and thinks they would get along swimmingly in Japan.  You would think this line in which he jokes about Somalis coming car shopping might have given him a tip.

……second hand car buyers from the Somali region visit Japan and sometimes ask us about Toyota Landcruiser and Nissan Hilux. One of the buyers jokingly told me that the rebels would buy these cars and cut off the roof of the car to mount machine guns!

But, no, here is some of this incredible post about Japan welcoming Somalis:

In a nutshell, Japan may seem too far and too different from the Somali region. This is certainly true but there are good things as well. One day if Japanese and Somali meet, we can probably be good friends. Why? This is because Japan is not like typical Western countries where Somalis can get insulted because of their country of origin or religious belief (this is what I hear). Japan has very limited relations with Africa as a whole and there are few Africans in Japan and almost no immigrants. Believe it or not, Africans in general are warmly welcome here. People here will even say to you, ‘Welcome! You travelled all the way from Africa. Thank you for coming!’ This means that there will be no barrier to the initial contact.

Moreover Japan is certainly not a Muslim country but almost all Muslims who visit Japan say Japan is a more Muslim country than any other ‘officially’ Muslim country. This is because of its cleanliness and the way people behave in public places, according to Muslim visitors to Japan. Also most of Japanese people are not familiar with Islam and so do not discriminate against Muslims; they can be curious but do not offend you. Why not come to see it for yourself? I am afraid there is no khat to chew available but there are masjids and Halal food shops in the major cities of Japan, including our city!
We are very far apart but I am one of the few in Japan, thinking of Somali people all the time, hoping others will also know about Somali-related issues! We Japanese and Somalis will meet in the near future!

No doubt, you probably will.    Dear Japan, if this guy is serious, and represents the thinking of the Japanese people, before you do meet, use our search function and type in the word ‘Somali’ and know what you are getting into.

Note to readers, when you visit this Japanese blog notice this link he has in the upper lefthand corner, entitled “Somali Parliment Chair Fight”.  Makes me wonder if his whole blog post is a spoof!

Hottest boys in town—the Bhutanese?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Here is a story from the Times of India that will make you laugh (well sort of).   We are going to resettle about 60,000 Bhutanese (many are of Nepali origin) who had been expelled nearly two decades ago from Bhutan and have been living in camps in Nepal ever since.    So last year the US swooped in and said we’ll take a bunch over the next five years.  That isn’t the funny part.

This is the funny part (not really):  Always in search of an angle to get into America, Nepali girls seem to have hit on just the ticket—marry a refugee.

KATHMANDU: Young Bhutanese refugees have now suddenly become the most sought after for marriage among the eastern Nepalese girls, thanks to a resettlement offer by the US and European countries.

Nepali girls are vying to marry such boys as it would provide golden opportunity to go abroad. This phenomenon is amply visible in Jhapa and Morang districts of Nepal where Bhutanese refugees are settled for the last 17 years.

From January to August some 113 Nepalese girls have tied nuptials with the Bhutanese refugee boys. Earlier, the Bhutanese refugees were seen as source of trouble to them but now they are seen as cause of good fortune.

Type ‘Bhutanese refugees’ into our search function and learn more.  We have written extensively on this resettlement plan.