Category: Who is going where

Somalis swarm to Shelbyville, TN

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The small town of Shelbyville, TN doesn’t know what hit them as about a thousand Somali refugees have arrived to work at Tyson’s Food.  Today the Times-Gazette  ran the first of a five-part series on the impact the Somalis are having on this Tennessee town.    The Somalis are part of waves of secondary migration of the African Muslim refugees brought to America by the US State Department with the help of volags (mostly church groups in this case) that have rocked small American cities over the last few years.   Lewiston, ME, Manchester, NH and most recently Emporia, KS have had to come to grips with Somalis who can now apply to bring more family members to the US.

According to Regina Surber, director of community services in Tennessee for the Department of Human Services (DHS), some of the Somali refugee arrivals to the area are direct resettlement clients while others may be “secondary migrants” who were originally resettled in other states and / or other parts of Tennessee.

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“What happens most often in new resettlement communities is that the first to move there are newly arriving refugees, who, after becoming familiar with the area, encourage their relatives and friends to join them,” she said.

I commend the Times-Gazette for this straightforward report on how Refugee Resettlement works.  Our newspaper, The Herald-Mail in Hagerstown, MD, steadfastly refused to even tell the public how the program works and as a result we publish Refugee Resettlement Watch to help other communities know what’s coming.

Note that the Times-Gazette has a forum for commenting at the end of today’s article.

Also, check our earlier post about the Tennessee Somali allegedly involved in a government funding scam.

Ft. Wayne folks are asking questions

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

It was just a matter of time before this “welcoming” city of Ft. Wayne, Indiana began saying “whoa” to more refugees.   I have to say I’m amazed it took them so long in light of the huge number of refugees they have been receiving and in light of the explosive reaction some other cities, like Emporia, KS, have had in recent months.  Here are some quotes from a column today in the News-Sentinel:

Predictably,the woman who called Wednesday afternoon didn’t want to identify herself. But she’ll speak for a growing number of Fort Wayne residents if the federal government doesn’t address the refugee crisis it has created here.

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“This is nonsensical, and I’m not the only one who’s (angry),” she said, her blood clearly boiled by a story in Tuesday’s News-Sentinel about how local social-service groups fear being inundated by another 1,000 Burmese refugees in 2008 on top of the 700 who were resettled in Fort Wayne this year. “This isn’t why people donate to the United Way or Catholic Charities. How many can we absorb? Citizens should have a say, but we’re turning into a socialist place.”

If you are dismissing that as the ravings of some crazy woman, then see what their Congressman has to say:

……U.S. Rep. Mark Souder fears Fort Wayne’s capacity for charity is at risk of being overwhelmed by the fear of rapid change and the desire for self-preservation.

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“Fort Wayne is one of America’s most welcoming communities. But there will be a backlash (against refugees) if Washington won’t help us. The tension over illegal immigration is spilling over, and it will get deeper.”

The column ends with this comment, one we have seen echoed around the country by people brave enough to not fear being labeled a racist, xenophobic, hate monger.

America must not turn its back on refugees, who are in this country legally and, as such, deserve appropriate services. But the people of Fort Wayne have legitimate claims, too – including the expectation their institutions will not be overwhelmed by a crisis they do not want, did not create and cannot control.

See our post here yesterday about the influx expected in 2008.    I noticed that the column I write about above has a forum for comments.   Some of you talkative folks from Emporia might want to say a word or two about your situation to the good people of Ft. Wayne, maybe prime the pump so to speak and get people debating.   It always helps to know you aren’t alone.

Look out Fort Wayne, IN, 1000 more refugees expected in ’08

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We have written about problems the city of Ft. Wayne (Allen County) Indiana has had with the impact on the Health Department with increasing numbers of refugees with TB, now it looks like the impact will be felt throughout all community services.   According to the News-Sentinel yesterday, the President of the United Way has called for a closed to the public meeting to address the coming “surge.”   

In addition to the 800 anticipated direct resettlement Burmese the community has been warned the number could go over 1000 when the refugees who have been resettled elsewhere also come to Ft. Wayne (this is called secondary migration).   Attendees at the closed meeting will discuss issues that should concern taxpayers such as housing, health, schools, translation services and so on.   Meanwhile Debbie Schmidt, executive director of Catholic Charities is headed to Washington to find more federal money for the volags.

Schmidt is planning a return trip to Washington to talk with HHS [Health and Human Services, Office of Refugee Resettlement] officials to get more money for Indiana’s four refugee resettlement-sponsoring agencies [non-profit federal contractors such as Catholic Charities].

We’ve heard rumblings that a culture clash is coming in Ft. Wayne as Karin Christians are being placed in neighborhoods with Burmese Muslims.   What I would like to know is why would these volags assume that conflicts from the camps would not extend to neighborhoods in America?

One final thought–if the community of Ft. Wayne is all for more refugee resettlement, why close the meeting to the public?   Doesn’t Indiana have ‘open meeting’ laws?

Iraqi refugees to Houston, another “lack of will” story

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

It’s laughable to watch how these refugee stories spread around the country using the same phraseology.   Here is another one from Houston, TX.    And, yet another organization involved.  These refugee groups are breeding like rabbits it seems.   The Refugee Council USA has a website but there appear to be no financial documents available to the public;  it looks like a lobbying outfit seeking more money all around for refugee resettlement.  [It is the same M.O. as the global warming ‘crisis’.  Hype = more government funding]

“There is a huge need and a lack of will,” said Elizabeth Campbell, director of Refugee Council USA, a Washington-based coalition. “They are failing to meet their own targets. People who worked for the United States find their lives are in imminent danger, and to simply leave them there is despicable.”

Then we have our old buddy Jacob Kurtzer from Refugees International, but this time he is a “researcher” (not a “congressional advocate”) trumpeting the same theme:

“When we talk of the lack of political will by this administration, we are thinking of President (Gerald) Ford, who gave a presidential order so there could be an airlift of 135,000 Vietnamese at the time of the fall of Saigon. He recognized the vulnerability of a huge population of South Vietnamese,” Kurtzer said.

There is one big differance here, maybe two.  First, the war is not over and we haven’t abandoned Iraq like we did Vietnam, and secondly the Vietnamese didn’t have terrorists hiding in their refugee ranks who wished to kill us.

It is so blatantly political it’s disgusting.  There are definitely some desparate Iraqis, the Christians, but these refugee lobbyists are so partisan they hurt those with a  legitimate claim to protection.

By the way, Refugees International is headed by Mr.Partisan himself, Ken Bacon.  Maybe you will recall that he was the guy working in the Clinton Defense Department who released Linda Tripp’s personel file to reporters during the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

Iraqis headed to Everett, WA, get warning from local Iraqis

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Today the Herald Net announced that Everett will likely be an Iraqi receiving area in the new year.   The story pretty much starts out in the usual template format for feel-good refugee stories, like this standard pitch about the plight of the Iraqis who worked for us.

“One of the most vulnerable groups is those people who have worked for the United States,” said Jacob Kurtzer, a congressional advocate for Refugees International in Washington, D.C. “If a man has been embedded with our troops, how can he then be a security risk?”

First, I just loved this newfangled terminology “congressional advocate”.   Mr. Kurtzer is obviously a lobbyist for Refugees International whose job it is to keep the refugee flow flowing into US and thus keep the refugee industry alive.  He is throwing out what he considers the most appealing argument to get ’em here soon, but the actual number of Iraqis “embedded with our troops” and seeking resettlement is minuscule, probably numbering less than 1000. 

Every refugee, whether a teenager from Myanmar or an adult from Afghanistan, undergoes a strict screening process, Kurtzer said. The federal government’s claim that additional security measures were needed reflected a lack of political will to remove Iraqis from danger, he said.

Mr. Kurtzer, if we call your office in Washington, will you tell us exactly what the “strict screening process” is? We would really like to know!

I’m no fan of the the Bush Administration, but this statement suggesting that the Administration has some irrational “lack of political will” to resettle refugees demonstrates that Mr. Kurtzer does not know or is not saying that there has been an on-going internal battle within the government between the US State Department and Homeland Security on the security question.  We reported this to you last week.   It is not in Mr. Kurtzer’s best interests to let the citizens of Everett in on this bit of information.

This is what really caught my attention in the Everett news story:

It’s unclear how many Iraqis live in Western Washington, but those who live in Everett say their community numbers nearly 1,000 people and is one of the largest and most close-knit in the western U.S. Many of Everett’s Iraqis came here from Basra in the early 1990s, after they resisted Saddam Hussein during Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, and more trickled in early this century.

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If more Iraqis come to Everett, the Iraqis who already live here will welcome them only if they have never been connected to Hussein’s Baathist government, al Ali said. “We have a good life here,” al Ali said. “If we know that somebody worked for Saddam, we’ll tell the FBI.”

We have asked in many previous posts in our Iraqi refugee category if we are just going to import thousand- year-old Middle East problems to America.  Sooner or later we are going to find out.

By the way, Washington State has received 89,719 refugees between 1983-2005 according to Appendix A of the 2005 Annual Report to Congress.  A quick look confirms that Washington State is the 4th largest refugee resettlement state in the US.