Friends of Refugees born out of Chicago experience

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Last night I wrote about how your tax dollars were being used in Chicago to do “community” organizing for the political promotion of grievances by the multicultural crowd.  You know it’s a shame they don’t use all that money to help refugees and immigrants assimilate—-too busy organizing I guess!

I had recently asked Chris Coen of Friends of Refugees to tell us how he got started helping refugees after we posted this from the “Notes from the North Country” blog.  I had known that somehow Mr. Coen started helping refugees in North Dakota.     The post at “North Country” has prompted a good exchange between the blogger, Jen, and Chris Coen (be sure to read it).

So, I found it an interesting coincidence that Friends of Refugees was born in this same Chicago immigrant community that has so much taxpayer money sloshing around.  You know the one that Senator Obama was busy organizing.

Read Mr. Coen’s shocking story!

In the summer of 2001 I was driving some of the ‘Lost Boys of Sudan’ refugees from Fargo to Michigan to visit their friends, when we stopped in Chicago to see some of their refugee friends there. While we were in Chicago many of the refugees complained to me about how they were being neglected by their refugee resettlement agency, USCRI affiliate Heartland Alliance for Human Needs and Human Rights. The young refugees were placed in dilapidated, roach-infested apartments. Many of them had stomach pains and where told it was all in their head (years later we would learn that public health agencies such as Heartland Alliance’s had failed to test the Lost Boys for schistosomiasis – a stomach parasite that many of them were afflicted with). A Somali case worker at Heartland Alliance had also threatened two of the Lost Boys, saying he would deport them for complaining that the agency had done nothing to help them find jobs. Many of the refugees were also being beaten-up and/or robbed on the streets by thugs, and neither Heartland Alliance nor the government oversight agencies would do anything to intervene.

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I wrote several letters to the State Department documenting what was going on. The State Department then got on the phone with USCRI and told them to investigate themselves – an ultimately useless strategy for rooting out problems – but this is the essence of the ‘public/private partnership’ notion of refugee resettlement. The USCRI so-called investigators then flew to Chicago and wrote a report concluding I – surprise surprise – had poisoned the refugees’ minds with distrust of their agency, and that their affiliate Heartland Alliance had gone above and beyond requirements in helping the refugees.

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After that defamation report USCRI did on me to cover up their abuses I was told by the State Department people that they would be making a monitoring trip to Chicago and I could meet with them at its conclusion if I wished to. I got in my beat-up car and drove all the way to Chicago (this was just after caring for a Sudanese refugee who died from liver cancer). When I got to the expensive downtown Chicago hotel the State Department people were staying at (that’s your money) I had to pay $40 just to park the car in the hotel parking structure. The State Department people were dressed in expensive clothing and aloof. They had their buddy, the Illinois state refugee coordinator with them – a Dr. Silverman – he’s real hostile and has to get up frequently to go out to smoke. We sat down to talk and I gave the State Department people additional information I had collected from the refugees. They didn’t believe any of the complaints the refugees made that I was forwarding to them.

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Yet, I had been in the dilapidated apartments and I had seen much of it with my own eyes. The State Department monitors also didn’t believe that the refugees were being assaulted on the streets (later, using a FOIA, I would get one of their own monitoring reports from Chicago from two years prior in which the State Department people themselves documented that one of the Lost Boy refugees had been robbed and assaulted in the lobby of his apartment building – and that the resettlement agency case worker had failed to tell them about it even though he had visited the refugee in the hospital after the assault). Yet, now they claimed it was not credible that refugees were being attacked and refused to take any action. Approximately a month after this meeting a dozen of the Lost Boys were playing basketball in a nearby north-side Chicago park and were attacked by the Latin Kings gang. They were beaten with bottles, fists, and a metal rod and three of them were stabbed. (I later gathered six Chicago police reports documenting attacks on dozens of the refugees).

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After my first meeting with the government monitors, they said that I could meet them again the next day at Heartland Alliance at the conclusion of their monitoring visit. I went with another Lost Boy refugee who had been resettled by World Relief. I figured this Heartland Alliance wasn’t his agency, so he wouldn’t be in a strange position. The State Department people refused to let him in. They said, “no way”, and wouldn’t explain why he couldn’t participate in the process. At the meeting I got lectured by a Bosnian case worker who said that the Lost Boys of Sudan are actually lucky being practical celebrity refugees in the U.S., and when she came here as a refugee no one looked in on her. The State Department people said that most of what the refugees had claimed that I had told them was not true. Dr Silverman was there again, seemingly there only to “defend” Illinois as a good refugee resettlement site (i.e. “bring in more government grants and low-wage labor”), and had to run outside in the middle of the meeting for another smoke.
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At the conclusion the State Department personnel promised to send me a copy of their monitoring report when they finished it, and then I left. They then never sent me the report. I had to do a FOIA and wait about 16 months for the report. When I finally read the report I observed that they had covered up most of the neglect, abuses, and contract-cheating that had gone on (that’s your tax money at work paying for so-called government ‘monitors’).

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After that, I founded my group and got to work on the issue, seeing that the root of the problems seemed to go all the way to the top in Washington. I’ve been at it ever since. I have used my own time and my own money to help refugees to resettle. Rather than finding refugee resettlement agencies and their supposed government oversight agencies being of assistance to the resettlement efforts, I have often found them getting in the way, if not outright siphoning off public money while neglecting refugees.

Obama and the taxpayer money trail

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Your tax dollars: 

The article that caught my eye appeared first at World Net Daily on February 28th entitled, “Obama raised funds for Islamic causes,”  and then I saw some of the same information posted at Atlas Shrugs here.   The articles suggest that Senator Obama is a closet supporter of the Palestinian cause (not a surprise in light of his Reverend buddy) and thus may be connected with questionable characters in the terror world, but I can’t speak to that.    What interested me is the more mundane issue of taxpayer money flowing through the “community” organizations of Chicago.

Here are some of the quotes from World Net Daily that sent me searching tax returns.

Abunimah (Ali Abunimah, a Chicago-based Palestinian-American activist) serves on the board of the Arab American Action Network, or AAAN, a controversial Arab group that mourns the establishment of Israel as a “catastrophe” and supports intense immigration reform, including providing driver’s licenses and education to illegal aliens.

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WND reported yesterday the Woods Fund, a Chicago-based nonprofit on which Obama served as a paid director alongside a confessed domestic terrorist, provided $75,000 in grants to the AAAN.

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Obama’s advocacy on behalf of Palestinians comes after WND reported yesterday the presidential candidate served on the board of the Woods Fund alongside William C. Ayers, a member of the Weathermen terrorist group which sought to overthrow of the U.S. government and took responsibility for bombings against government buildings.

It’s a free country right, and groups can form and advocate for their causes all they want.  It is one of our great freedoms.   But, what if the taxpayers are funding some causes and not others.    The Woods Fund is a private foundation with assets of over $70,000,000 in 2006.   The fund owns pages and pages of shares in companies of every sort, but pays only a pittance in taxes because it gives some (around $3,000,000 in 2006) of its earnings to charities of its choice and hires people like Bill Ayers and previously Barack Obama to govern it. 

The Woods Fund gave grants to groups such as the above mentioned Arab American Action Network, Prison Reform, Latinos United, Inner City Muslim Action Network and the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights to name a tiny fraction.    I was looking for groups like maybe Suburban Redneck Rights Coalition, or Nascar Fans United for Peace, or  Unemployed Conservative Trailer Park Citizens for Human Rights.   This community organizing B.S. that Obama brags about is really left wing political organizing couched in multicultural grievance language and paid for by us.

Maybe you are saying so what, it’s a private foundation.  But, get this!  The Arab American Action Network (AAAN) is getting direct government (taxpayer funded!) grants to work against you!   In the most recent Form 990 I could get for them (2004), they received $122,327 in government grants as part of their $394,687 income for the year.   That is about 31% of their budget to “organize” Chicago Arabs.   Lest you think they are running bake sales or pig roast fundraisers, much of the other “direct public support” they receive comes from grants from the likes of the Woods Fund.

Next I wanted to know what is this Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR).  See what they do here.  And, while you are reading think about the fact that in 2005 you funded this group to the tune of $5,276,202 as part of an overall income of $6,779,751.  YOU are paying 78% of what they do.  To be completely accurate, if you live in Illinois you are paying much of this.

But, rest assured the ICIRR isn’t greedy, it doesn’t roll around in your money it passes it on to groups like Council of Islamic Organizations, Chinese Mutual Aid Assn.,  World Relief (Moline), Instituto Del Progresso Latino, Muslim Women Resource Center, Arab American Family Services, Bosnian-Herz American Community Center. and of course the Arab American Action Network ($82,000 in 2005) among 40 some other similar groups.

Funny I didn’t see any groups for people like me.

So, first Obama was busy getting these folks organized in the “community,”  then as a State legislator in Illinois (I’ll bet you a buck) he  made darn sure all his “community” groups got their fair share of your paycheck so they could keep organizing against you.  

Some racket, huh!

Emporia Somalis going to Shelbyville, Yikes!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Today comes news from Shelbyville, TN that Tyson’s Foods is moving some of its Emporia, KS Somali refugee workers to Shelbyville, TN.  For regular readers of Refugee Resettlement Watch, you will immediately see this is a case of Tyson’s Somalis going from the frying pan to the fire, so to speak.   

Emporia was roiled for months over the sudden influx of Somalis who were lured by employment to that city by a Tyson’s meat packing plant that was ultimately suddenly closed.   For ambitious readers we have a whole category on Emporia, KS here.     At the same time, Shelbyville, TN was experiencing similar public unrest over an influx of Somalis there who seemed unable or unwilling to assimilate.   The Times-Gazette has covered the controversy extensively.  

Now citizens in Shelbyville are learning that some Emporia refugees are headed their way.

Tyson Foods officials have been working with the imam of Shelbyville’s Islamic mosque to bridge the cultural gap that exists between the Somali community and the rest of the public.

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Representatives of the company also dismissed lingering charges of Tyson hiring illegal immigrants as “myths and misconceptions.”

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Susan Brockway, manager of community and external relations, and Gary Mickelson, director of media relations, sat down with the Times-Gazette to speak about the refugee issue, which have been a hot topic of discussion with readers.

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Lola Hithon, human resource manager for the Shelbyville facility, has been in regular contact with Imam Haji Yousuf, the spiritual leader of the Somali Muslim community here, helping with issues such as cultural differences, how to get things translated and how to get services to the refugees.

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Informed sources also told the Times-Gazette this week that 80 to 100 Somalis who lived in Emporia, Kan., where a Tyson meat packing facility was recently downsized leaving nearly 1,500 without work, would be coming to Shelbyville. Micholson confirmed this, but stated the number working at the Shelbyville poultry facility would be 24.

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Tyson officials were in town last week speaking to various landlords and hotel owners about housing for the refugees, as well as holding one-on-one conversations with business owners and representatives of the school system.

Read the whole article.    As for housing the Somalis, please go back to this post earlier in the week.  I think the apartment building issue is going to be problematic for Tyson’s Food.

Note to State Department

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

For our readers at the State Department.  You really should come up with some sort of  easy-to-access blog or other site for refugees who are waiting to come to the US (and have access to computers).  They are sending questions to us about what they might expect when they get to America—what sort of housing and jobs they will have, etc.   Some even send us their case numbers.    Aren’t they given that sort of information in addition to contact information if they have other questions?