Read about the EID celebration in Seattle, WA, Falls Church, VA, Minneapolis, MN, Boston, MA and Lewiston, ME here.
Category: Who is going where
NJ and Nebraska articles led me to this site…
It is a US Census Bureau site for something called the American Community Survey. The reporters who wrote the story about South Jersey refugee and immigrant numbers and likewise the story from Omaha Nebraska about the foreign born population in that state relied on the most recent survey from the Census Bureau.
From the NJ article this little nugget jumped out at me:
According to the survey, just under 20 percent of the nationwide population age 5 and older spoke a language other than English at home in 2007, up nearly 2 percent since the 2000 census. For about 12.3 percent, that language is Spanish.
And, the Nebraska article which came on the heels of the Grand Island/Somali/Swift violence began:
The decline in foreign-born Cornhuskers in 2007 was not huge, about 1,000 people. But the reversal after years of growth suggests that Nebraska may be losing its distinction as a new destination for immigrants.
Iowa, by comparison, also a fast-growing immigration state, continued to see an increase in its number foreign-born residents: from an estimated 112,299 to 117,437.
A combination of factors most likely is behind the shift in Nebraska, national and local analysts say, including fewer employment opportunities and a less welcoming atmosphere.
There is that word again—welcoming. Do you think these advocates for open borders and increased immigration attend ‘spin workshops’ where they learn the proper jargon from community organizers? I guess one starts to become unwelcoming when one sees jobs being lost to immigrants and multicultural violence breaking out as it has in Grand Island between Somali Muslims and every other nationality in that town.
Some Ft. Morgan residents uneasy about Somalis flocking to town
Additional Update: See our lead story today about Somali gang murders in Minneapolis here.
Update September 27th: Part II of this story at the Fort Morgan Times about Somalis in that Colorado town is simply a recitation of refugee resettlement agency spin. However, it ends with the following lines. The Somalis have given Ft. Morgan a thumbs up:
Agencies receive feedback from Somalis and other refugees and federal monitors review it in order to make sure they are self-sufficient, Stein said.
Most of the feedback about Fort Morgan has been positive, he said.
“Fort Morgan has done a lot of good work,” Stein said. [More Somalis will soon be on the way. Did you know that Lewiston, ME has around 7000?]
Here we go again! Another American city struggling with the flow of refugees to their neighborhoods. This article, thanks to Blulitespecial for sending it, could be from Emporia, KS, Shelbyville, TN, Fort Wayne, IN, Grand Island, NE, nearby Greeley, CO, or even our county seat Hagerstown, MD.
There is so much in this article that this will be a long dissection, and I won’t even scratch the surface so read it all here.
There was a forum this week in Ft. Morgan, CO to discuss rumors about refugees coming to town in a big way. The article begins jokingly:
A rumor that 1,000 Somali refugees and 1,000 Iraqi refugees would descend on Fort Morgan is not true.
This tone, probably used by the advocates of resettlement, is to tell the reader that even by suggesting such large numbers those doing it are alarmists and nuts.
I am here to tell you that is not a joke! You will have thousands of refugees in the next few years unless the residents of Ft. Morgan and the elected leadership in that city say right now they want it stopped or controlled. You, the citizens and elected officials can decide how much you can handle. There are over 5000 refugees in Ft. Wayne, IN because that city never said NO! We first heard about Ft. Wayne last September because the health department couldn’t handle the large numbers of refugees with HIV, TB and other health problems.
This is not true!
When they are selected for resettlement in the U.S., they go to major cities which are chosen for the ability to house them and offer services, he said to a crowd of representatives from local agencies.
The large gateway cities do still get some refugees, but there is a concerted effort by the US State Department and the volags (supposedly voluntary organizations) contracted to resettle refugees to get them spread across America. What the volags do is sit around a table in Washington and pick cities, literally in a hit or miss fashion, looking for “welcoming” cities that offer low-skilled employment opportunities. They bring in a couple hundred refugees quietly and see how the city reacts.
In our Maryland county, the residents demanded to know what was going on. A year ago in September, we had a “forum” for the whole community and the State Department representatives and the volags did not answer peoples’ questions adequately, citizens were still angry, and the resettlement was shut down within two weeks after the forum.
Then this statement requires a response:
It can be a lot tougher when refugees show up without those kinds of support systems, which has meant that Fort Morgan had to react rather than be prepared, Horan [director Lutheran Family Services] said.
Yes, we can’t control where people go when they get to America. These resettlement agencies don’t even have to know where anyone they resettle is after only three months. However, in the case of Greeley and Ft. Morgan, the federal government knew in advance that they were going to be resettling more refugees in this part of Colorado to supply Cargill and Swift with meatpacking labor. Incidentally, some of the flow to Ft. Morgan now is the Somalis fired in Greeley.
I first discussed this back in July of 2007. Here is the article from the Greeley Tribune announcing the arrival of the Lutheran Family Services office. They shouldn’t have been “unprepared” because someone at the state level and at the federal level knew it (the flood of refugees) was coming because the federal government funded the volag (Lutheran Family Services) office which opened last summer. Here is more of what I said about the collusion between the meatpackers and the feds.
Then this outfit, One Morgan County, funded by the Colorado taxpayer, has been in the soup for awhile:
One of the reasons for the forum was to educate people on the culture and situation of Somalis and other Africans who are in Fort Morgan, said Brenda Zion, coordinator of OneMorgan County.
I wrote about a meeting they had this past August with federal officials from the Office of Refugee Resettlement who came to Ft. Morgan to mediate, and it sure sounded like problems were brewing.
Below is the sort of thing the volags promoting more refugees will say to guilt-trip other cities. If the city should balk, then the residents are labelled “unwelcoming.” My city of Hagerstown, MD was labelled “unwelcoming” as the Virginia Council of Churches packed up and left. Emporia, KS where Tyson’s closed its plant and moved its Somalis elsewhere, is also an “unwelcoming” city.
If you are a “welcoming” city you will be used to guilt-trip other cities.
Nonetheless, Morgan County has been open, welcoming and willing to work to receive the newcomers — a fact Horan cites to other communities he works with, he said.
This is turning into an opus. Bottomline, the citizens of Ft. Morgan can make the decision about more refugees or not. But, if you decide to let the federal government send more to your “Mayberry like streets” at least know what you are getting into.
Learn about Shelbyville, TN, Emporia, KS, Ft. Wayne, IN, Greeley, CO and Grand Island, NE and go into this with eyes wide open. Bt the way, in Grand Island violence is on the rise between the Somalis and the Sudanese refugees in that city.
Just one more thing. The reason you are not hearing about these on-going refugee hot spots in the mainstream media is that they don’t want Americans to know that everything in their multicultural dream world is not going so beautifully.
There are a few media bright spots however in the smaller papers. In Tennessee, reporter Brian Mosely, won his state’s top investigative reporting prize for his series on Somali refugees in Shelbyville, TN and the struggle the citizens there are having.
Japan to begin refugee resettlement and ‘I would like to meet Somalis’
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!
Fear growing: Russia to be a Muslim nation in our lifetimes
Right on the heels of the post I just wrote about the graying of Europe comes this story about Russia.
The Muslim population could outnumber ethnic Russians within 30 years.
Then here, uttered by some brave immigration activist in Russia is the truth that the worshipers of multiculturalism refuse to see:
Many ethnic Russians are terrified at the prospect of becoming a minority in their own country.
Alexander Belov, from the Movement Against Illegal Immigration, said: “History is a fight between races and religions.
“It’s the law of nature … people are used to being with people like themselves, speaking the language their mothers taught them.”
Read it all, it is fascinating (and frightening). Imagine Russia a Muslim-dominated nation.