The headline of the AP piece from CBS Las Vegas, calls her a “refugee” but it’s not clear if she was actually granted asylum. Hat tip: ‘pungentpeppers.’
LAS VEGAS (AP) — A Chinese woman who says she sought asylum in the U.S. after taking part in pro-democracy demonstrations in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1989 was sentenced in Las Vegas to nearly four years in federal prison for her role in a multi-million dollar casino baccarat fraud scheme.
Irene Li’s lawyer, Assistant Federal Public Defender William Carrico, said Thursday he’s virtually certain his 53-year-old client will be deported to China after her 47 months in prison.
Li pleaded guilty in October to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud in a plea deal that had other charges against her dismissed.
U.S. District Judge Andrew Gordon also ordered Li on Wednesday to repay $2.2 million in damages to five Las Vegas casinos.
Officials say Li’s husband remains a fugitive in the case.
Chinese make up the largest percentage of asylum seekers granted permission to stay in the US
Go to Table 6, page 6 of the Department of Homeland Securities 2012 Annual Flow Report. Here are the stats for Chinese given refugee status (after arriving in the US on their own either illegally or as visa overstays).
2010: 6,693 Chinese granted asylum (31% of the total)
2011: 8,585 (34%)
2012: 10,151 (34%)
Astounding!
By the way, a large number of Chinese men are being granted asylum because they tell immigration judges they want to have more than one child and that is grounds for admission! Once asylum is granted, the asylee can access all of the welfare programs open to refugees. See ourfact sheet.
A school district in Minneapolis is trying to figure out how to bring new Somali kids up to speed educationally, how to “jump-start” them.
Somali students in the lunchroom. http://daughternumberthree.blogspot.com/2010_04_01_archive.html
The story at the Star Tribune this past week mentions that there are many more kids arriving from Somalia than in recent years, but no mention of why that is. Somali family reunification from Africa is now up and running again after about a four year hiatus that ended in 2013. It had been closed for years due to the widespread fraud uncovered by the US State Department in 2008.
Going to the DHS’s Annual flow report, see that in 2010 we resettled 4,884 Somalis, 2011—3,161 and 2012—4,911.
Shuttling between classrooms at Anne Sullivan school in Minneapolis, teacher James Kindle noticed that classroom teachers were stretched mightily to serve the wide range of abilities in a school with many immigrants.
A teacher might be showing one group of students how to measure the angles in a triangle, while other students in the same class were just learning that “triangle” is the word for a three-sided polygon.
Kindle did some research, talked to other teachers and together they went to school district officials. The result is a pair of “newcomer classrooms” and a concentrated effort to jump-start the adjustment of Somali students in American schools.
The timing is good for Sullivan and other schools receiving a surge of Somali refugees.
“This is a heroic effort on Sullivan’s part,” said Lynn Harper, a district K-8 multicultural specialist.
The newcomer program is aimed at Somalis, but the concept could be adapted to any immigrant group, she said.
Students new to the country are steered into a classroom with other newcomers, so they can learn things like “triangle” before heading into classes with other students.
The district is ramping up the effort even before knowing results. The school board last month approved an expansion from Sullivan’s two classrooms to eight newcomer classrooms, split between Sullivan and Andersen United school. Together the two schools account for one of every six K-8 students in the district from a Somali-speaking family. The expanded program starts next fall.
The Sullivan experiment comes as the school district sees an influx of students from Somalia. At the start of this year’s classes, 336 refugee students had registered recently enough that they could have been eligible for newcomer classes. That’s a marked increase over previous years.
The influx won’t be ending anytime soon for “welcoming” cities like Minneapolis.
For the numbers of Somalis arriving in the last three decades, visit one of our most-read postshere at RRW. In three years of the Bush Administration the numbers topped ten thousand per year!
***While you are checking those stats for Somalia at WRAPSnet, note that Somalis make up the fourth largest number of refugees resettled in fiscal year 2014. The top three in the first three months of this fiscal year are:
Resettlement contractor: You don’t have to “go across the ocean,” you can get diversity right here in Memphis!
This morning I saw this article in a college newspaper about World Relief’s Memphis office promoting its internship program where local college students put in hours saving the agency time and money by helping refugees get settled, get to doctors appointments, apply for jobs etc. and I realized we haven’t said much recently about World Relief or Tennessee’s other big resettlement cities. We mention Nashville all the time and the huge role Catholic Charities plays in Tennessee generally.
We’ve had a lot of posts lately about Catholics, Lutherans and even Jews (Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society) resettling refugees (including Muslim refugees), so maybe if you are an Evangelical Christian you are thinking it’s those otherfaith groups doing all the contracting for the US State Department, but your people are involved too! World Relief’s full name is World Relief Corp. of National Association of Evangelicalsand it is one of nine major federal contractors.
The headquarters office of World Reliefis in Baltimore, MD and according to its most recently available Form 990, here, they received $51,828,435 in income and $34,109,484 was from “government grants.” As is the case for the other eight contractors, they could not exist if it weren’t for the fact that you are supporting them with your tax dollars.
Incidentally they don’t pay the big fat salaries we reported for Lutheran Social Service of Minnesota the other day, here.
This is the story, nothing earth-shattering here, just your basic puff-piece.
I suspect, but don’t know for sure, that World Relief keeps track of the student intern hours, assigns them a financial value and is basically reimbursed that money through the federal match grant program (out of the taxpayers’ pocket) as so many contractors are. In other words, you pay for the student ‘volunteers’ too!
Refugees from countries often have already overcome innumerable hurdles, and World Relief is there to provide just what the name suggests: relief.
Across the United States, World Relief has many stations such as Chicago, Nashville, and, the most recent work-in-progress, Memphis.
“It’s a global organization, and not all of them are refugee relief,” said summer intern Peyton English, a junior sociology major attending Union University.
[…..]
Once refugees get their paperwork approved, World Relief sets up their living quarters and figures out their job experience, strengths and weaknesses, along with family information.
The refugees will then receive monthly checks from the government for the next eight months — a period in which employees and interns will work with them to teach the basics of American culture as well as set them up for a life here.
[…..]
While this is an organization that has Christian values, one does not necessarily have to be of that religion to participate. [Muslims are welcome!—ed]
Moses encourages students to join in with this experience.
“I think that Memphis is diverse, and this is one avenue of many to get involved with people of different faiths, backgrounds and socioeconomic backgrounds as well,” he said. “You will get a wide range of experience, and you don’t have to go across the ocean to do that. You can do it right here in Memphis.”
Usually I look up the Fiscal year numbers but this time I inadvertently used the Calendar Year database. The only difference is that the Fiscal Year numbers are recorded from Oct. 1 to Sept. 30 of the following year. In any case these data bases are up to date until August 31st of this year.
From 2001 to August 31, 2013 Tennessee resettled 12,812 refugees. “Welcoming” Nashville resettled 7,273 and 1,395 of those were Somalis. Memphis looks to be the second largest resettlement city in the state with 2,006 refugees and 805 of those were Somalis. In calendar year 2013, Memphis (World Relief?) resettled 103 refugees and 59 of those were newly arrived Somalis.
Reader ‘pungentpeppers’ alerts us to a new “pocket of resistance” to refugee resettlement and it’s in the ‘Peoples’ Republic of Massachusetts’ of all places!
Democrat Mayor Sarno hopefully has the fortitude to stand up to the criticism that will come his way from the Open Borders/Religious Left lobby! Photo: The Republican
Here is the stunning news. I say stunning because very few Mayors or local elected officials have the guts to do what Mayor Sarno has done. There have been a few others, most notably Mayor Gatsas from Manchester, NH, but most local officials believe they have no recourse against the federal government and the contractors—in this case Catholic Charities, Lutheran Social Services and Jewish Family Services—and just have to take it!
Most also fear the political ramifications of being labelled a “racist” for saying they are overloaded.
One reform we should all be pushing for is to legally enable cities and states to say NO to the feds!
Note to the Mayor: I see you supported Ed Markey for the US Senate, you need to ask his office for help!
The State Department ( Office Population Refugees and Migration) is very aware that they have a problem finding “welcoming” communities for the growing number of refugees AND asylees they are trying to place. Earlier this summer we learned they and the Office of Refugee Resettlement were having secret pow-wows (ORR did not answer several requests from me to learn of the location of the July “placement” meeting) to jointly agree on what communities might be welcoming. This is what I learned in June (see Lancaster meeting):
….apparently in light of failed attempts to get new seed communities established, the feds are having ORR-PRM joint quarterly placement meetings. The next one will be in July. Before any new site is opened (usually because some contractor thinks it would be a good place), ORR-PRM will visit the site together and decide if it will be “welcoming.”
By the way, when you read the whole Springfield story, note that one contractor says they aren’t resettling so many in Springfield directly, but are spreading them out throughout the county—this is one of their tricks when they start getting heat.
From The Republican (emphasis is mine). We have seen this before—refugees placed in slums!
SPRINGFIELD — Mayor Domenic J. Sarno on Tuesday urged federal officials to stop the flow of refugees into Springfield, saying the influx has become “a pressing issue of public safety.”
Sarno, in a letter to the U.S. State Department, said Springfield has “a long and successful history” of taking in refugees, but the growing numbers have led to his concern “for the safety of both our citizens and the refugees themselves.”
Many of the refugees are being placed in substandard housing, and are placing burdens on the Code Enforcement, Police and School departments, Sarno said.
The Police Department has reported an increase in fraud, robbery and property crimes committed against refugees, Sarno said. In addition, the refugees are placing a strain on the school system, coming from around the world,*** he said.
In his petition, Sarno said he has become aware of “some startling facts” from reports he has received from city departments. That has included housing with “significant life safety violations” of the state building and sanitary codes that have included “rampant insect and vermin infestations, the absence of any smoke detectors,” and illegal wiring, broken doors, and blocked exits, he said.
“The fact that refugees are being placed into properties containing the reprehensible conditions, cited above, is compelling evidence that local agencies are not employing people with the necessary qualifications to conduct adequate safety and habitability inspections for potential settlement units, and are not properly utilizing the funding being provided by the Federal Government,” Sarno said.
Sarno’s four-page letter was sent to Barbara Day, chief of domestic resettlement, refuge admissions for the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration.
“We have done more than our fair share,” Sarno said Tuesday in an interview. “It’s not fair to the refugees or Springfield.”
“I have to draw the line,” Sarno said. “The number of refugee children who have little to no English language skills has overwhelmed the very limited interpretation capabilities of our public schools, and funding that was intended for use in assisting existing pupils.”
The mayor and some of his department heads met in July with organizations involved in the refugee resettlement efforts — Catholic Charities, Lutheran Social Services and the Jewish Family Services.
Read on to hear what Jewish Family Services said about shifting refugees to the county. There was no comment from the Catholics or the Lutherans.
The numbers do not represent those who might have come to a town or city as ‘secondary migrants’ (refugees resettled elsewhere but who have gone to certain cities to be with their own kind of people).
Springfield has “welcomed” 1,712 refugees since 2001 from the following countries:
Afghanistan
Azerbaijan
Belarus
Bhutan
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Burma
Burundi
Dem. Rep. Congo
Eritrea
Estonia
Ethiopia
Iran
Iraq
Kazakhstan
Kyrgyzstan
Latvia
Liberia
Moldova
Russia
Rwanda
Sierra Leone
Somalia
Sudan
Syria
Ukraine
Uzbekistan
Vietnam
An afterthought: I wonder does the Mayor know that the Refugee Resettlement Program run by the State Department was the brainchild of former Mass. Senator Ted Kennedy?
Immigration reporter Elise Foley seems to sneer at Senator Paul and may have purposefully left a few facts out of this article on Paul at HuffPo yesterday— ‘They Bring ‘Em In,’ Sign Them Up For Welfare.
Huffington Post immigration reporter Elise Foley
Perhaps we should direct Ms. Foley (and her editors!) to our new Fact Sheet here at RRW!
Paul is exactly correct in paragraph one:
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said on Wednesday that the U.S. should be skeptical of accepting refugees, from Iraq in particular, because they take welfare and could plan attacks on American soil.
She continued, in paragraph two, with a glaring error (one I feel sure Paul did not make and if he did should have been given the opportunity to correct). And, yes, Ms. Foley we did have refugees attack us here (have you forgotten about the Tsarnaevs in Boston?). But, that isn’t the error I’m focused on here. It’s not 95 people of 70,000 on food stamps, it is 95% of 70,000.* By leaving it uncorrected she clearly is happy to make Paul look ridiculous because who would quibble with 95 refugees out of 70,000 getting help with food.
Foley continued quoting Paul:
“We have had refugees attack us here.Ninety-five [percent!–ed] of our 70,000 Iraqi refugees are on food stamps, majority are in government housing, 46 percent are unemployed,” he said on “The Simon Conway Show” — incidentally a day before World Refugee Day [reporter snark!—ed]. “It’s one thing to have a big heart and invite people to our country, and if you do it in a small fashion, the churches and the people take care of them, that’s one thing. But like in my town in particular, they bring ’em in and there is someone whose job and expertise is to sign them up for welfare as soon as they get here.”
Paul has it exactly right, a taxpayer funded refugee resettlement contractor in Bowling Green gets the refugees signed up for welfare benefits and then this idea, that Paul throws out of churches and people taking care of refugees (privately!), is the solution to our entire refugee mess! It has been my view from day one that if refugee families were PRIVATELY sponsored by churches or civic organizations (no contractors!) for a year or two we wouldn’t have the huge drain on the federal treasury; tensions between refugees and the community would be lessened; and we would have a better chance that refugees would ASSIMILATE!
Paul questioned previouslywhy we should be taking Iraqis to America in the first place since we gave them a democratically elected government and their internal Islamic (Sunni v. Shia) squabbles are not our problem. But, here Ms. Foley wants the reader to believe that Iraq is still our problem because we went to war there. There is the legitimate Christian persecution issue, but we (US State Department or even the Catholic Bishops) are not going out of their way to rescue Iraqi Christians anyway.
The U.S. has a long tradition of accepting refugees and has resettled more than 3 million since 1975, according to the Office of Refugee Resettlement. Since 2007, the country has admitted nearly 85,000 Iraqi refugees, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, with more people fleeing the country due to escalated violence stemming from the Iraq War. [Or stemming from their Islamic internal conflicts—ed]
***Update*** State Department said yesterday that 30,000-40,000 Iraqi refugee applications are pending, here.
Senator Paul’s amendment to beef up security measures in the Gang of Eight bill was defeated:
Paul proposed an amendment to the comprehensive immigration reform bill in the Senate, which he called “Trust but Verify,” that would increase the already intensive screening of those refugees and asylum-seekers.
Opponents of the amendment, which failed 37 to 61, argued that among other things, it painted foreign students, refugees and asylum-seekers as potential terrorists. The amendment would also hold up a path to citizenship in the “gang of eight” immigration bill until Congress had voted that the border was adequately secure.
Paul did the unthinkable according to Ms. Foley! He used the word refugees in proximity to the word terrorist! So, Ms. Foley what about the Iraqi refugees sentenced to prison in KY or the Tsarnaev carnage in Boston? We have nothing to fear from refugees that would warrant a little extra screening?
In a statement ahead of the vote on his amendment, Paul referred to refugees in one sentence, and then terrorists in the next.
“Individuals here under asylum or refugee status must register in a program providing increased screening and a means to make sure that the federal government has an idea where people in these programs reside,” he said. “We should remember that most of the 9/11 hijackers were here on visa overstays.”
Paul also said, if Iraqi refugees aren’t finding work, maybe they should just go back to Iraq! Funny thing is, disgusted with America after finding life is tough here, some have gone back to Iraq or elsewhere in the Middle East, but the State Department isn’t telling you that!
* Readers, this statistic 95% of Iraqi refugees are receiving food stamps comes from the 2009 ORR Annual Report to Congress. The figure may have improved since then, but we don’t know because every day the ORR is breaking the lawby not supplying Congress with the reports for 2010, 2011 and 2012. There are only two possible reasons for failing to submit those reports—incompetent management or they don’t want Congress and the public to know how horrible the stats are for refugee employment and welfare use (or how much largesse the contractors are receiving!).
Maybe Senator Paul should look into the missing reports problem. Hint! Contact Ken Tota, Deputy Director ORR, 202-401-4858.
