Category: Who is going where

St. Cloud, MN: Somali population grows rapidly since 2009, Lutherans help make it happen

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update February 20th:  Just thought you might be interested in a comment this post received on Facebook, edit of F-word is mine:

Liban Abdullahi Well done, more muslims must go to united states we will invade back as you invaded our muslim countries, killing innocent and torturing guantanamo bay and you are sayind democratic.. F*** Off Democracy.. F*** Off United Nation..

A Somali blogger from St. Cloud says in his giddy report, here, that the population has expanded rapidly in last 5 years and is changing the face of St. Cloud.  Emphasis below is mine:

In 2010, St. Cloud students protest “systemic racism!” Professor and community organizer Luke Tripp said, the same “conservative white” mind-set led to the election of U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Stillwater.
http://wardheernews.com/News_10/Jan/23_Somali_students_protest_against_systemic_racism.html

The number of Somalia living in St. Cloud, MN, is growing. There is no official number of how many Somalis are living in the city now, but the unofficial estimate could be as high as 25,000 Somalis living in St. Cloud and the surrounding cities, like Waite Park, St. Joseph, Sartell and Sauk Rapids.

First Somalis moved to St Cloud in 2000, but about 50 percent of Somalis moved to the city in the recent years, from 2009 to 2013.  [Lutheran Family Services opened its satellite resettlement office there!—ed]

In the streets of St. Cloud, Somalis are visible and can be easily seen, especially Somali women with their colorful traditional clothing.

[….]

Many Somalis work in assembly line jobs [meatpacking—ed], but a great number of Somalis got educated and they work in white collar jobs. Others opened their own businesses: medical transportation companies, homecare companies and daycare centers.  [Home health and medical transport are companies rife with healthcare fraud as we have reported on many occasions—ed]

About 15 percent of the local school district are Somali, and a huge segment of Somalis are in the pipeline of the education process: in high schools, in colleges and in universities.

The biggest challenge facing Somalis in St. Cloud is housing, especially for families whose size is more than eight: there are families who consist of about 10 or 12 family members, there is no housing structures in the city designed for this kind of family sizes.

We have a huge archive, going back to at least 2008, on St. Cloud Somalis, here.

In 2010, Lutheran Social Services began resettling Somalis in St. Cloud directly from camps in Africa, here.

And, then I found this (below) at Friends of Refugees from 2010 (the St. Cloud Times link has disappeared, but blogger Chris Coen quoted the story):

Lutheran Social Services:  Let’s put the Muslims together in St. Cloud!

Lutheran Social Service of Minnesota has worked with refugees in St. Cloud since 2002, when it opened a refugee employment office. [I’ve told you these supposedly religious groups are headhunters for big business in need of cheap immigrant laborers!—ed] This year, the agency ratcheted up its efforts by establishing a refugee resettlement office in St. Cloud.

The office has contracted to resettle 100 refugees — mostly Somalis and a few Iraqis — in the St. Cloud area this year and in each of the next two years.

Jennifer Jimenez-Wheatley heads the new office, helping refugees find places to live, work, shop and worship. She helps them learn to speak and write English. She coordinates the resettlement process with local school, government and nonprofit agencies.

Iraqis too!  One big happy Muslim melting pot!

Somalis have established a presence in St. Cloud, but the handful of Iraqis she’s helping settle here won’t be joining such a large community from their home country. Jimenez-Wheatley says St. Cloud’s refugee advisory committee — composed of city, school district and nonprofit officials — decided resettling Iraqis here made sense in part because they share the Muslim faith with the Somali community.

For fun, be sure to check out how rich the leaders of Lutheran Social Services of Minnesota become while bringing the joys of diversity to your cities and towns!

Hey, Wyoming, isn’t it the Lutherans who want to bring change to Casper and Gillette?

Saudi Arabia deported 12,000 Somalis since the first of the year, says Human Rights Watch!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment
Farhia, deported from Saudi Arabia last month, says she was a domestic worker there for ten years.

I gotta hand it to ‘Human Rights Watch’ which seems to be the only private or public sector organization with the nerve to call-out Saudi Arabia.

The UN (where S.A. sits on the Human Rights Council) has been silent while it has been busy blasting Israel for its supposed mistreatment (“warehousing”) of Africans.   Israel is not deporting thousands weekly and detention in Israel is in a new cushy facility where the would-be asylum seekers can leave for a portion of the day.

Saudi Arabia is clearing out its ethnic diversity!  I guess they aren’t buying that multiculturalism is beautiful PR, or that they need to be charitable to their Muslim coreligionists.

Saudi Arabia for Saudis!

From Human Rights Watch:

(Nairobi) – Saudi authorities have deported more than 12,000 people to Somalia since January 1, 2014, including hundreds of women and children, without allowing any to make refugee claims. Saudi Arabia should end the summary deportations, which risk violating its international obligations not to return anyone to a place where their life or freedom is threatened or where they face other serious harm.

Seven Somalis recently deported from Saudi Arabia told Human Rights Watch researchers in Mogadishu, the Somali capital, that the Saudi authorities had detained them for weeks in appalling conditions and some said Saudi security personnel beat them. None had been allowed to speak with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to discuss possible refugee claims before being deported. UNHCR said in mid-January that “south central Somalia is a very dangerous place.” UNHCR also said the Saudi authorities have denied its staff access to detained Somalis in the country.

They don’t want those undocumented foreign workers!  Are there jobs Saudis won’t do?  Maybe not!

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) says the Somali Interior Ministry expects Saudi Arabia to deport another 30,000 in the coming weeks. The deportations are part of a Saudi campaign to remove undocumented foreign workers.

We will be anxiously waiting for the Obama Administration and the UN to blast those racist unwelcoming Saudis!

Saudi Arabia has not ratified the 1951 Refugee Convention and does not have an asylum system.

[….]

Major donors to UNHCR, including the European Union and the United States, should press Saudi Arabia to end its deportations of Somalis.

Meanwhile, another boat load of Somalis was rescued at sea this week and taken to Italy where you know all hell would break loose and the UN would blast those Mediterranean countries if they dared deport even one of the Somali illegal aliens.

Update from Calais (France): It is not the UK’s problem

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Thanks again to ‘pungentpeppers’ here is an update from the stalemate in Calais where hundreds of Middle Easterners and Africans have congregated for months demanding they be let into the UK.  (See our previous Calais posts here).

Camping in Calais where camps are divided by ethnic groups (by their own choosing!)

In a clear ploy to tug at heartstrings, The Independent begins and ends with sob-stories about the poor men who scratched together thousands of dollars to get this far in order to break into what they call “The House” (the UK).

But the British government again lays out the cold hard truth—in the European Union, legitimate asylum seekers are to ask for asylum in the first safe country in which they land.  For these men was it Italy, Malta, Greece, Bulgaria—any of the border countries?  And, indeed if they were legit, they could ask for asylum in France.

Going one step further, the UK says the condition of French “camps” is France’s problem! Yup!

The French government has asked Britain to consider a renegotiation of the agreement which led to the closure of Sangatte and share more of the financial and policing “burden” caused by the migrants. The French interior minister, Manuel Valls, said last month that the situation in Calais had reached an “impasse”. The response from his British opposite, Home Secretary Theresa May, has been a polite restatement of the status quo.

A Home Office spokeswoman said tonight: “The conditions of any camps in France and the policing of them is the responsibility of the French authorities. If individuals have a genuine need of protection they should claim asylum in the first safe country they reach.”

Indeed, the real passion and anger is among those with the least power and the most to lose.

For two consecutive weeks, the streets of Calais have been the scene of demonstrations by angry migrants waving placards proclaiming “Freedom to move”, “Liberté” and “No border, no nation – stop deportation”

The  list of grievances of the marchers – Afghans, Kurds, Sudanese, Eritreans, Egyptians, Syrians – is long and multifarious, from an unrealistic demand for Britain to open its border to a plea for the “basic dignity” afforded by washing facilities and an end to what they say is harassment by French police.

Read it all.

Hmong migrate to Oklahoma, bring crime

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Let’s make this focus-on-the-Hmong day at RRW.  See previous post.

Note that in this criminal case, the court could not find an impartial interpreter.  From ABC 8 Tulsa:

Products of the US State Department (and contractors)!

Two men appeared before a Tulsa courtroom for their reported roles in a shooting at a Hmong New Year’s festival.

Boonmlee Lee and Meng Lee made their appearance before the judge for their scheduled preliminary hearings. Both are accused of opening fire at the festival in east Tulsa last fall.

Court records indicate that both men have pleaded not guilty to the counts of shooting with intent to kill and assault and battery with a deadly weapon.

According to a report from the Associated Press, an Oklahoma judge delayed the preliminary hearings last month because attorneys were having problems finding a local interpreter who didn’t know the victims or defendants.

The Lees and the five people hurt in the October shooting are all ethnic Hmong, who hail from Asian countries including Laos, China, Vietnam and Thailand. Thousands of Hmong live in Tulsa, many arriving in recent years in search of work.  [But wait! We are constantly told that there aren’t enough immigrant laborers in America!—Hey Grover! Hmong over here looking for work—ed]

We know that tens of thousands of Hmong refugees were resettled in Minnesota, Wisconsin and California, but did you know that criminal gangs were forming in Minnesota in the mid-1980’s?  See this 2003 report on Hmong gangs in America.

Australian academic: the public is against asylum seekers arriving by boat!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Warns refugee activists that they are out of touch and have little chance of winning over the public!

Taking action! Fully-equipped Australian lifeboat reportedly used to ferry intercepted boat people back to where they came from!
By Timur Matahari/AFP/Getty Images

Meanwhile, in touch with public opinion, the government has proposed a significant decrease in the number of refugees permitted to stay in Australia annually.

From SBS.com (emphasis mine):

An academic says refugee advocates are out of touch with popular opinion, which is overwhelmingly against asylum seekers who arrive by boat.

Professor Andrew Markus is a member of the Scanlon Foundation which has been mapping public opinion on this issue since 2007.

He says asylum seeker advocates need to take notice of the fact that their opinions about asylum seekers are not shared by the majority of Australians.

Professor Andrew Markus from Monash University in Melbourne has researched widely in the areas of immigration and social cohesion.

Public concern for border protection second only to the economy!

He says in one recent survey of around 1000 people, border protection was rated as the second most important issue facing Australia after the economy.

Professor Markus adds that his own analysis suggests border protection is a growing public concern.

Young or old, educated or not so well-educated, less than 20% of those surveyed support boat people being allowed to stay in Australia.

“I’ve done all sorts of analysis by every different demographic you care to find. And one of the very unusual features on the asylum issue, it’s that normally by level of education or by age, there’s a big division. If you’re better educated you’re much more likely to be receptive to cultural diversity. But on the asylum issue you don’t get that just a marginal difference. Similarly young people are much more accepting and again we don’t get that normal split that we would normally get.”

The Scanlon Foundation has released a yearly report on immigration and social cohesion since 2007, based on surveys of around 2000 people.

Its most recent survey found that less than 20 per cent of Australians think asylum seekers arriving by boat should be given permanent residency.

Professor Markus says that’s a reality that refugee advocates can’t ignore.

But, of course they do, just yesterday the Refugee Council of Australia decried the plans by the  government to reduce the number of refugees permitted in Australia from 20,000 to 13,750 annually.  Imagine the furor in the US (from the resettlement contractors) if Congress said NO! to the President and cut US refugee admission by the same percentage!

Reports of asylum seekers rioting on Manus Island surely don’t help the Refugee Council’s public relations campaign!  Nor does news, like that we reported yesterday from multi-culti Blacktown, help their cause.  *Update: Asylum seeker dies in Manus Island escape attempt, here.

About the photo!  Read all about the “alien-looking” alien transport vessels reportedly purchased by the Australian government, here.  It sure looks like they mean business!