Missoula, MT refugee arrivals could begin in August, most will be Muslims

06/18/2016 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This is the latest from Montana, a state which hasn’t had any refugee flow for a number of years, but is now about to get its first resettlement office. We have been following the controversy for months and urge you to go here and review the political strife in Big Sky Country over the plan.

Bob Johnson IRC — IRC’s Bob Johnson said he was instructed by his superiors in New York to not discuss recent Islamic terror attack against gay night club in Orlando. Photo: http://www.rescue.org/blog/bob-johnson-refugee-resettlement-director-seattle

Early on, suggestions were made by the proponents and those carrying the water for the International Rescue Committee (the primary federal refugee resettlement company in charge of the office), that there probably wouldn’t be Syrians in the initial flow. But, it seems all that has changed and that most of the refugees that could be chosen for Montana are in fact Muslims.
Here is the news at the Missoulian:

Bob Johnson, a senior adviser for the IRC’s Seattle office, returned to Missoula this week to make preparations for the reopening of a refugee resettlement office. He said the agency for whom he’s worked 40 years instructed its people to abstain from commenting publicly in the wake of the Florida shootings.

Announcement of the Missoula office’s executive director is still a couple of weeks away, and it now looks like it’ll be August before the first refugees arrive in town. In March the IRC contracted with the U.S. State Department to resettle up to 100 refugees in Missoula in the first year, a figure that can be adjusted up or down in subsequent years.

The State Department approved a staff of 2 1/2 in Missoula – the executive director, a caseworker and a half-time finance manager. The latter two jobs are still being advertised.

The IRC says it will give from two weeks to two months notice of where the first refugees will come from, said Mary Poole of Soft Landing Missoula, the volunteer organization that successfully made the case to the IRC to open the Missoula office.

[….]

What is clear is there’s a better chance than first thought that some of the refugees will come from Syria. The U.S. has been slow to meet President Barack Obama’s pledge to resettle 10,000 displaced Syrians this fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30. National Public Radio reported this week that so far that number is just 2,800, but a White House National Security spokesman said the U.S. remains committed to the president’s plan.

Virtually all Syrians arriving in the US now are Muslims. Of course Afghans and ROHINGYA*** are Muslims. Most of those from DR Congo are very needy, mentally troubled, but mostly non-Muslims. Does Missoula have good mental health facilities?

An IRC official in April told a reception hosted by Soft Landing that because Missoula has no established nationality base of refugees, it’s likely that its first families will come from a population that has no family ties in the U.S. According to the Missoula Independent, those could be Syrian families of four to 10 members; Afghans; families and single-woman households from the Republic of Congo; or Rohingyas, an ethnic Muslim minority from Myanmar (Burma).

What a wonderful coincidence, the schools in Missoula have been teaching Arabic (the number one language of refugees entering the US) for a few years already!

The 6-year-old Arabic language and culture program in Missoula’s three public high schools was another unexpected asset to the IRC.

Continue reading here.
And, if you feel like it, visit reporter Jared Goyette’s piece from several weeks ago. It is a typical warm and fuzzy, touchy-feely discussion about how one opponent of the plan got friendly with a proponent of the plan. I have been meaning to write about it, but the only point I need to make is this: Mary and Drew are nice people, but don’t fall for the emotional stuff that Jared is peddling.

You have every right to question, in a clear-eyed unemotional way, public policy in your state that will effect your wallet, your safety, your health and the social cohesion of your community forever!

***Learn more about devout Rohingya Muslims here. We have 189 posts on this ethnic group and only yesterday we mentioned that we are admitting them to our towns and cities now by the thousands. Remember this! The Rohingya are not our problem. They have been fighting for decades with the Buddhists in Burma. We did nothing to make the Rohingya our responsibility! (Not that any others are ours either. But, the Left loves to tell us we are responsible for wrecking Iraq and so those are ours!).

A quick review of some critical refugee numbers for this fiscal year, it isn't just Syrians that should concern you

06/17/2016 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

As you know the Obama Administration is aiming to bring in 85,000 refugees from around the world (many religions and nationalities) this fiscal year (FY 2016 ends on September 30th).

Rohingya-Migration-Map-BGR — So what do we know about thousands of Rohingya Muslims we are now picking up throughout this region of the world? No data bases there either! No criminal records to search. http://www.cfr.org/burmamyanmar/rohingya-migrant-crisis/p36651

And, yes, refugee resettlement supplies a small portion of the million or so ‘immigrants’ of all stripes we admit every year.
Our focus here at RRW is primarily (obviously) on the refugee portion or as the feds like to refer to them—humanitarian arrivals, which along with the refugees include a number of different categories of legal and illegal migrants (see a description here) that the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement takes responsibility for.
There has been so much news about the Syrian, mostly Muslim, refugees entering the US this fiscal year and I wanted to see how those numbers compared with some other Muslim-sending countries (again this is for refugees!), and so I checked the State Department data base for this fiscal year (which began on Oct. 1, 2015) and up to June 15, 2016.
This is what I found (I did not check every country) and I want to emphasize that we really can’t properly vet any of these people especially the devout Rohingya Muslims coming from Burma that have been scattered throughout South East Asia.

Afghanistan (1,455) virtually all Muslims

Burma (8,693) with 2,102 of those being Muslims (this is very new, we only in the last year or so admitted large numbers of Rohingya Muslims)

Iraq (5,781), 4,722 of those are Muslims (mostly Sunni but a large number of Shiites as well).

Somalia (5,956) all Muslim and we pick them up around the world!

Syria (4,328) virtually all Muslims

There are also many Muslims from other Middle Eastern and African countries coming, I just checked the major ethnic groups.
Again! Security screening any of these refugees is almost impossible and certainly won’t stop the 2nd generation jihadi killers.
So, as you freak out over Syrians, consider that they aren’t the only Muslim ‘refugees’ being spread out through America this year.
P.S. One day the Rohingya will be on the national news, so anyone interested in learning more about them can visit our Rohingya Reports category, here. It goes back to 2008 and has 188 posts in it!

Illinois: Zakat Foundation to open cultural center specifically for Rohingya Muslims in the state

04/07/2016 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

While we focus on Syrians, thousands upon thousands of equally questionable Muslim refugees are being admitted to the US—most notably Somalis, Iraqis, Uzbeks and now enough Rohingya Burmese Muslims to warrant a special “cultural” center for them!

My! My! how times have changed. When I first began writing RRW, the US State Department would not admit Rohingya Muslims. Now thousands are here!
We have probably the largest archive anywhere on the Rohingya Muslim ‘refugee’ issue with 187 posts extending back to 2007 where we first learned from Time magazine about how Islamic terror groups had infiltrated the devout Rohingya population.
If someone wanted to write a book on how the ‘humanitarians’ and the international Leftists can wear down a country (the US) by creating a media drumbeat to the point where our leaders have now thrown previous caution to the wind and are admitting refugees who definitely cannot be properly screened, your research is done on these pages! (Unfortunately, most of our so-called leaders in Washington don’t even know this is happening!)
Here is one of many posts I wrote way back when. And this is what Time magazine said about the Rohingya in 2002!

Here is what Time magazine said about Rohingya on October 14, 2002 in an article entitled, ‘Deadly Cargo’ by Alex Perry.

Today, southern Bangladesh has become a haven for hundreds of jihadis on the lam. They find natural allies in Muslim guerrillas from India hiding out across the border, and in Muslim Rohingyas, tens of thousands of whom fled the ethnic and religious suppression of the Burmese military junta in the late 1970s and 1980s. Many Rohingyas are long-term refugees, but some are trained to cause trouble back home in camps tolerated by a succession of Bangladeshi governments. The original facilities date back to 1975, making them Asia’s oldest jihadi training camps. And one former Burmese guerrilla who visits the camps regularly describes three near Ukhia, south of the town of Cox’s Bazar, as able to accommodate a force of 2,500 between them.

This is the news today from Illinois (hat tip: domstudent11) from The Daily Northwestern:

Home to more than 2,400 new refugees from 29 nations that migrated in the past year, residents say Illinois has historically been an open and welcoming place for asylum-seekers and immigrants alike.

“Illinois is easier to resettle because it’s so diverse,” said Suzanne Akhras Sahloul, a Syrian refugee and founder of the Syrian Community Network. “It’s important to see people who are of different ethnic backgrounds because then that makes our transition a little bit easier.”

rohingya_flyer__large — Rohingya Cultural Center to open in Chicago on Saturday. http://www.zakat.org/news/rohingya-cultural-center/

But following Governor Bruce Rauner’s call in November to halt the flow of Syrian refugees into Illinois and Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric on immigrants, including a proposal to temporarily bar all Muslims from entering the United States, some say the state may turn in a different direction. [Illinois is in the top five states for the resettlement of Syrian Muslims, see here.]

Muslim ‘charity’ to open cultural center just for Rohingya.

In the 2015 calendar year, Syrians made up about 6 percent of all refugees in Illinois, preceded by those from the Democratic Republic of Congo at 12 percent, Iraq at almost 20 percent and Myanmar at nearly 40 percent, according to U.S. Department of State data.

The Zakat Foundation of America, an organization that provides resources for low-income communities, plans on opening a culture center just outside of Evanston this weekend. The center, which has been in the works for six months, is the latest effort by the organization to provide resources for Rohingyan refugees fleeing Myanmar.

“There are two basic things motivating the project,” said Jamie Merchant, public relations coordinator at Zakat. “The specific problems of this uniquely disadvantaged community of the Rohingya and also trying to establish a new angle for approaching the general challenges of resettlement.”

Catholic Bishops lobbied for Rohingya!
The US Conference of Catholic Bishops is one of the major lobbying groups to push for the seeding of America with Rohingya Muslims as we reported here in 2013. I was in attendance when the USCCB said we must bring more Rohingya to America.
One more thing….
Although there is no evidence any of your tax dollars are going to this group, but generally the federal government (with grants) encourages the establishment of cultural centers specifically for ethnic groups to be with their own kind of people, how does that help assimilation to America?

Homeland Security chief reiterates: Syrian and Iraqi refugees pose security threat

03/17/2016 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

They must really be seeing something they aren’t telling us about for Homeland Security Director Jeh Johnson to be so forthcoming at a Congressional hearing yesterday.
And, it isn’t just the Syrians and Iraqis we should worry about!

From The Hill:

The head of the Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday said that the United States’s acceptance of Syrian refugees could pose a national security threat.

Even as President Obama has called for the U.S. to welcome 10,000 Syrian refugees this year, Secretary Jeh Johnson maintained during a hearing on Capitol Hill that the initiative is not risk-free.

“In all candor, I do agree that the refugee flow coming out of Iraq and Syria represents a potential opportunity for terrorist organizations to move its members into other nations for potential attacks,” Johnson testified before the House Homeland Security Committee. “So I agree that there is that potential, which is why just within the last several months we have enhanced our vetting for refugees.”

The claim hints at the problems vexing the Obama administration as it seeks to ramp up the number of refugees brought into the country.

The administration is so far falling far behind Obama’s pledge to bring in 10,000 new Syrian refugees this fiscal year. Since October, the U.S. has brought in just 1,115 of the refugees.

Meanwhile, during this same time period, Canada has admitted 25,000 Syrians with apparently little concern for thorough vetting.

Rohingya at sea — It isn’t just Syrians we should worry about. Rescued Rohingya are being resettled in the US by the thousands. They can’t possibly be screened any better than Syrians! https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2016/02/27/european-ship-headed-to-asia-to-help-rescue-rohingya-why-you-should-care/

How about security threats from other countries? What do the numbers look like?

(The 2016 fiscal year began on Oct. 1, 2016, numbers below are through February 29th—5 months).
Truth be told: they can’t screen the others below any better than the Syrians!

Syria: 955 (with 946 of those being Muslims). Not sure where The Hill got the 1,115.

Iraq: 3,476 (2,856 are Muslims)

Somalia: 3,036 (3,034 are Muslims)

Burma: 4,774 (1,135 are Muslims) Yikes! We must be making a big push to get those Rohingya Muslims in to the US before Obama leaves office. I had no idea the number of Burmese Muslims would be this high!

Be sure to see our whole category on the Rohingya of Burma/Bangladesh. Scary!
If you missed it, see the New York Times on terror threat posed by refugee program, here.

European ship headed to Asia to help rescue Rohingya (why you should care)

02/27/2016 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

If you are saying to yourself, ho hum, this doesn’t affect me, think again!
Rohingya Muslims by the tens of thousands are piling up in countries like Malaysia and Indonesia (both safe Muslim countries!) and we end up bringing thousands to America.

You don’t hear much about it because the Rohingya are slipped into your towns and cities right along with the Burmese Christians and other ethnic minorities and all are labelled simply Burmese. Last fall we learned that 13,000 Burmese Muslims were already in the US.
This is the rescue ship story which is really a ho hum story, but I’m mentioning it since we haven’t talked much about Rohingya lately, although we have an entire category, here (185 previous posts), devoted to the subject.
From the International Business Times:

A rescue ship credited with saving thousands of migrants stranded in the Mediterranean Sea is to embark on a new mission in south-east Asia. The MY Phoenix, owned by charity Migrant Offshore Aid Station (MOAS), has been used to rescue almost 13,000 people making the perilous journey from north Africa and the Middle East to Europe.

But now its crew is sailing the 40-foot vessel to the Bay of Bengal and Andaman Sea, where it will spend four weeks helping rescue Rohingya refugees. Last year tens of thousands of migrants from Myanmar and Bangladesh attempted dangerous sea crossings to reach Malaysia and Indonesia.

By all means, save them at sea, but resettle them in Muslim countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia!
About the photo: It is here in a story from May 2015. The story tells us about the latest round of violence between the Rohingya and the Buddhist Burmese and leaves you with this line (below) that gives the impression that all the deaths and displacement were on the Rohingya side of the ledger. It just isn’t true!
We followed the conflict as it boiled up in 2012 and it started when Rohingya men raped and murdered a Buddhist girl! But, in the retelling, the pro-Muslim propagandists never tell you that! Buddhists were among the dead and homeless!

Clashes in 2012 between the state’s Buddhist community and Rohingya Muslims, a long-oppressed linguistic and ethnic minority in this majority Buddhist country, left hundreds dead and more than 140,000 people homeless.

Visit our ‘Rohingya Reports’ category. In 2013 the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (testimony here) asked the US State Department to bring in more Rohingya (it is only ‘fair,’ they imply, since we have resettled so many Christians!). Doesn’t it make enormous sense to bring in the centuries-old warring factions? Not!