“Whoop-de-do” in Waterbury, CT

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Here is the latest installment of the controversy we have been following in Waterbury, CT where the International Institute of CT has been criticized for not caring for Burmese refugees. 

We don’t get enough money to do a good job is the whining response from officials including the President, Lavinia Limon,  of the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) the government contractor that passes funds down to its Connecticut subcontractor.

This is what Limon told the Republican-American reporter:

The government provides a one-time $850 per person stipend to resettlement agencies. Of that, half must be used for the refugees, and half for administrative costs. In 1975, that figure was $500. “Whoop-de-do,” said Lavinia Limón, president of the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants. “God help us if our salaries had not kept pace with inflation like that. The capacity of agencies like (the institute) has been severely curtailed. I would really criticize that.”

You can be sure these volags get more funds in addition to the half of $850 for their “administration” and just so readers aren’t mislead and think that these are poor struggling outfits, a little check of USCRI’s 2006 Form 990 reveals the following:

USCRI’s gross income was $18,352,000.   $16,905,312 was from government grants (that’s you the taxpayer) while another $675,868 included government contracts.

Total compensation of officers was $358,587 and other salaries were $2,966,521.  Other pension, payroll and employee benefits amounted to around $809,000.  Rent was $572,367.  Travel $213,680.  Conferences and meetings $168,559.  You get the picture.  You are paying for all this and they complain that it is too little to do a good job caring for refugees.

And as far as Ms. Limon’s “whoop-de-do” comment regarding salaries.  Yes indeed, she didn’t have to worry about her salary which comes out of this same government pot of cash.  In 2006 her salary and other compensation was $195,478.  That is up about $20,000 from the previous couple of years.

Oh, I almost forgot,  they also said they spent $1,000,000 for lobbying.  I guess that was for more refugees and more money.

In defense of Ms. Limon, her salary isn’t as large as another of her peers.  The President of the International Rescue Committee (another of the top ten motherships), George Rupp, received according to Guidestar in excess of $325,000 in salary and compensation in 2005.   But, of course his volag was receiving over $88,000,000 from the taxpayers.

Here is my fix!  US State Department take a smaller number of refugees and be sure each family or family unit has a church or other such group sponsoring them, caring for them, and helping them assimilate and cut these refugee industry middlemen out!

More on Congressional Hearing on Iraqi refugees

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

So where have you been Washington Post?   Just today (five days after RRW) the Washington Post reports on the House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on Iraqi refugees.   See our coverage last Wednesday here.

This is how the reporter, Walter Pincus, begins his report:

A House hearing last Tuesday led to an unusual discussion about U.S. obligations to the 4.5 million Iraqi refugees who live inside and outside that country.

What does he mean by “unusual?”    Could he possibly mean that what Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) said was so unusual? 

Democrats demanded that the Bush administration take responsibility for the refugees displaced by the five-year-old war, help them survive in Jordan, Syria and elsewhere, and allow some into the United States.

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But one Republican’s view is that U.S. aid might deter Iraqi refugees from going home, where those who aided the U.S. Military and could be essential to building democracy are especially needed.

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……. Rohrabacher had another view: “They’re wonderful people who’d like to live here, especially the ones who have helped us, but the last thing we want to do is to have people who are friendly to democracy . . . moving here in large numbers at a time when they’re needed to build a new, thriving Iraq.”

I was tickled to see that the Congressman is a man after my own heart!  

We have written 110 posts on Iraqi refugees (since last July) and other than the very desperate Christians we have said all along Iraqis must go home and rebuild Iraq.

Refugees from Darfur in Ft. Wayne, IN

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Not only is Ft. Wayne, IN home to the largest population of Burmese Karen refugees in the US it is also home to refugees from Darfur.   I didn’t know that and as a matter of fact this article in the Journal Gazette today is the first mention I’ve seen of refugees from the Darfur region anywhere in the US.

Mastora Bakhiet’s family was forced to flee their home in 1996, after Arabs in her Darfur province threatened to kill everyone in her tribe.

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Six years later, after a journey that took her throughout Sudan and the Arabian Peninsula, her family won the U.S. green card lottery and eventually settled in Fort Wayne.

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Back in Darfur, members of Bakhiet’s non-Arab tribe, the Zaghawa, are not so lucky. They live in fear of attacks by the Janjaweed, the Sudanese government-backed Arab militia.

I’ve been confused about the political situation in the Sudan and this article actually helped clear up some of that confusion — mostly because it’s the first I’ve read that so explicitly blames the trouble there on “Arabs.”  So, help me clarify something else.    Why do American leftists want American troops to fight militant Muslims (the Janjaweed)  in this region of Africa but then condemn the Bush Administration for fighting militant Muslims elsewhere?

BTW, searching around just now I learned that we have given nearly $3 billion (that is with a ‘b’) to Sudan and eastern Chad just since 2004.   Wow, that must really put us up on the compassion meter!

Muslims hold strategy session to shut us up

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Well, not us directly anyway (yet!).    I’ve been away so this article may have been thoroughly discussed this weekend elsewhere, but thanks to blulite special for sending it our way.

DAKAR, Senegal – The Muslim world has created a battle plan to defend its religion from political cartoonists and bigots. [who me?]

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Concerned about what they see as a rise in the defamation of Islam, leaders of the world’s Muslim nations are considering taking legal action against those that slight their religion or its sacred symbols. It was a key issue during a two-day summit that ended Friday in this western Africa capital.

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The Muslim leaders are attempting to demand redress from nations like Denmark, which allowed the publication of cartoons portraying the Prophet Muhammad in 2006 and again last month, to the fury of the Muslim world.

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Though the legal measures being considered have not been spelled out, the idea pits many Muslims against principles of freedom of speech enshrined in the constitutions of numerous Western governments.

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“I don’t think freedom of expression should mean freedom from blasphemy,” said Senegal’s President Abdoulaye Wade, the chairman of the 57-member Organization of the Islamic Conference. “There can be no freedom without limits.”

Huh?  

“Free cases” Kuwa and Shog

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Reading these refugee stories is turning me into a cynic.  Here is one from New Haven, CT from a week ago.  I guess I missed it because I was so preoccupied with the happenings in another Connecticut city, Waterbury. 

This story is about Kuwa and Shog, two African “free case” refugees.    These are the single men (mostly) that the UN seems to pluck from wherever and drop into American communities.  Read this article in the Courant to get a better picture of the issue of “free cases”.

At least one of these men has a wife back in Africa while he went from country to country until one day the UN said hop on a plane and go to New Haven.

…..for Kuwa and Shog finding a more permanent home is difficult. Most stay in one place a number of years, until the U.N. shuffles them to another safe haven. Both men fall within the U.S Department of State definition of “free cases” — refugees who have come to the U.S. on their own, without a family member or close friend to sponsor or assist them.
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If a refugee cannot return home within a reasonable amount of time or resettle in his or his initial country of asylum (many times due to an overwhelming number of people in similar situations), the U.N. will often refer him or her to the U.S. Resettlement Program. Once he or she passes screening for public health, political circumstances and possible violations of the U.S. Patriot Act, the refugee has sometimes only days to prepare for departure.

Oh, let me go back to my initial assertion about my cynicism.  At the top of this article is a photo and the caption says that one of the refugees is:

…….working second shift as a machinist at the Marlin Firearms factory in North Haven. He hopes to return to Sudan someday, bringing all that he has learned back to his country.

Does anyone other than me laugh to see an editor write that one is working in a gun factory and wants to take everything he learns back to the Sudan?  Hmmm!

The reporter makes much of the fact (maybe not a fact) that one of the refugees is Muslim and the other is not and yet they get along just great in America while in Africa they would be killing each other.  The Muslim one (Kuwa) spends his free time in the library on the internet.  

Once online, he first checks his Yahoo account for news about the family he left in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, and then an Arabic newspaper site for information about the social and political climate in Darfur, his native region.

So, his poor family over in the Sudan must have access to a computer or he wouldn’t be able to check on them, right? You see, I am such a cynic.

The two, Kuwa and Shog, are good friends and share tips about getting stuff in America.

Shog fills Kuwa in on such things as places to find telephone calling cards for Africa and how to get a driver’s license.

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“I got mine in Nebraska” he explains to a bewildered Kuwa on a cold January afternoon. “In Nebraska, you can take the test in Arabic; you can’t in Connecticut.”

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Both want to return to Sudan, but in the meantime Shog has found a moderately happy life in New Haven, with friends, some money and a growing African community. “I have come here to make money; I have come to learn things I can show people when I get back.”

Did you all know that refugees could just hop over to Nebraska for a driver’s license test in Arabic?  Wonder who pays the bus fare….just call me a cynic!