Iraqis to Columbus, Ohio

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Columbus, Ohio has received its first family of Iraqi refugees according to the Columbus Dispatch today.   Sameer, a 37-year-old Sunni Muslim doctor has brought his entire family including his wife, kids, two brothers-in-law in their 20’s and an elderly father-in-law.   The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, one of the top ten volags, played a major role in resettling this family through their local affiliate Us Together (could find no information on this non-profit group).

Read the whole article here.   I bet the mainstream media won’t be reporting the final line in the story.

If the Americans pull out [of Iraq] now, Sameer said, “there will be a slaughter.”

The 2005 Office of Refugee Resettlement report to Congress says this of Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society:

HIAS, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, is the national and worldwide arm of the organized American Jewish community for the rescue, relocation and resettlement of refugees and migrants.

Appendix A of the same report says that Ohio has been the destination for 31,409 refugees between 1983 and 2005.

Iraq refugees, no leadership from Bush Administration

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

If you watch or listen to Glen Beck, a kind of crazy but right-on-the-mark talk show host, he often says this issue or that issue “will make blood shoot from your eyes.”    Well, this is one of those issues for me.   Every day (all day!) there are stories from every corner about Iraqi refugees.  Stories are generated by the United Nations, the volags (voluntary agencies), Washington DC think tanks, Senators such as Ted Kennedy, concerned Christian groups,  DC conservative pro-Muslim insiders(yes!) and of course, the mainstream media.   Most of them say we are very bad for not bringing a million or so here now.  Other stories give bits and pieces of “facts” that make anyone trying to follow this want to tear one’s hair out (while blood is shooting from one’s eyes).

Just yesterday the Washington Post featured yet another frontpage story entitled “Iraqis with ties to US cross borders into despair” which laments that 100,000 Iraqis who worked for the US government (or anyone obliquely connected to the US) at one time or another are trying to get into the US and describes the pace of resettlement as “glacial”.   The article focuses on well-educated, once prosperous Iraqis.   But, just a week ago the Post reported on the first Iraqis arriving in cities like Phoenix, Arizona indicating that those educated Iraqis are not too happy.

Before they arrived here, the refugees said they were told by U.N. representatives that they could get jobs based on their professional qualifications. But they said they have now been told that they should work as hotel housekeepers, an occupation many of them have refused because they deem it degrading.

Then we have the Associated Press reporting that in the month of October 46,000 Iraqis returned home as the violence subsides in their homeland.    One of my questions is, are we going to bring thousands and thousands of the best and brightest Iraqis to America to clean motels when it might be better for them and Iraq to be taken care of  (by us if necessary) where they are until they return to rebuild Iraq?

I cite the above to illustrate the confusion generated by an apparent lack of government policy on this very critical issue.

Bottomline,  we have no leadership in the Bush Administration on this, which allows all these special interests with their own sets of facts to wage a monstrous public relations battle in search of public consensus.  No, I take that back,  it won’t be public consensus, in this leadership vacuum the winner of the debate will be the biggest and loudest bully on the subject.    The Bush Administration should send a balanced fact-finding mission to look for the truth on the ground in the Middle East and convene a conferance on the Iraqi Refugee situation by bringing the best and brightest (without an agenda)  together in a public forum to craft a coherant strategy.

If you have the fortitude, read through our entire Iraqi refugee coverage here and you will understand why this is a “blood shooting from the eyes” subject.

Is refugee resettlement modern slavery?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

What follows is a comment that jumped out at me as I read through the recent comments on the situation in Emporia, KS.   We keep hearing bits and pieces from around the country about unhappy refugees who thought they would enter the good life in America through jobs for which they were trained or well-suited and instead are washing dishes in Florida hotels, or cleaning motels in Arizona, or still worse, packing meat in the Midwest.

As an aside, I have a Chinese friend, an attractive brilliant woman, who had run a company in China, but wanted to live in a free country.  She is now working in a convience store unable to break into any suitable work because she doesn’t have American credentials which she can’t get without attending American colleges which she can’t afford because she works in a convience store.

Here a person identified as only “create” had this to say about Emporia:

I have just finished watching the movie, “Amazing Grace” just out on DVD.

This is the true story of William Wilberforce and his quest to end British slave trade. As I watched this film, I began to put it all in terms of what is going on here in Emporia and other cities all over this country. This isn’t the fault of the Somali people, not hardly. This is the fault of Big Business like Tyson. The Somali people have been victimized by Tyson and other companies like it, just as their African ancestors were victimized by the Big Business Planters of the 18th century. And this is no different than the same kind of slavery going on today, only it’s legal because the Somali people fit into the category of refugees.

——–

In addition, Big Business is victimizing cities like Emporia too as they make their deals with labor contractors like Catholic Charities who are complicit in this entire sham and should also be held accountable as they milk the federal and state funds belonging to the tax payers themselves.

——–

The Office of Refugee Resettlement is also complicit in the legal slave trade. The more I research, the more I realize what is really going on beneath our very noses. So many have been willing to look and study and become informed; however, so many have allowed their bigotry to guide their reactions; so many have looked away, shielding their eyes as well as their faces; and so many have chosen to simply accuse others of racism — they too are complicit. You know what? I’m sick of all this. Not enough to stop, but just plain sick.

See our post on Louisville, KY here.  Is this the “sacrificial generation” that an official in that city called its Somali refugees?

Also, please reread our interview with Chris Coen, Friends of Refugees here.

Emporia, KS economics lecture turned contentious

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The talk of the town in Emporia, KS these days is the issue of Somali refugees coming in large numbers to work at the Tyson’s Food meatpacking plant.   So, it was no surprise to learn that an immigration economics lecture turned contentious on Wednesday evening forcing a Tyson’s representative to defend the plan that incidentally involves a local Catholic Charties organization.  From the Emporia Gazette yesterday:

After numerous interruptions that sometimes turned contentious, a forum on immigration economics ended with an unscheduled appearance by Fardusa Council, a Somali who is community liaison for the Tyson Fresh Meats plant here.

——–

The audience remarks focused on specific refugee issues, rather than the general topic of immigration. The complaints included refugees’ driving skills, cultural and religious differences, filling jobs Emporians could have, receiving tax breaks and welfare assistance and their lack of English language skills

——–

“This is a big country, and this country doesn’t have just one culture,” Council reminded the audience.

The citizens of Emporia would like answers to the many questions that have arisen.  One of their questions that merits additional scrutiny is, does Tyson’s Food receive any addtional benefits for hiring refugees over local Kansans looking for work.   Read all the comments in the blog associated with the article above.

See our previous coverage here , here , here and here  (listed in order from most recent to oldest).

Reform needed:  These same questions come up everywhere refugees are being resettled or coming  as a result of secondary migration.  Wouldn’t it be a good idea for the Federal agencies responsible for refugee resettlement to at least have a Fact Sheet with frequently asked questions?   A truthful fact sheet that includes information about food stamp use by refugees, about special savings plans that refugees can use to to put money away for cars, houses, schooling etc.,  and what tax breaks businesses are receiving. 

The reason people get so fired up is because they feel they are being snookered.  That is exactly how it appears when non-profit groups, businesses and government team up to quietly bring refugees into an unsuspecting community.   Hint to US State Dept and Office of Refugee Resettlement—tell people how the program works!

UN driving the debate with the truth? Not!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We’ve said this before, but every day there are stories after stories after stories about the “Iraqi Refugee Crisis.”     This is being driven by leftists, like those at the United Nations, for two reasons.  The first is to bash Bush; the second is to convince the public to bring tens of thousands (hundreds of thousands, if they could) of Iraqi refugees here this minute.   But, they are not giving you all the facts.

Here is a report of a press conference at the United Nations two days ago.   And, here are a few sentences that particularly caught my eye to demonstrate how the facts are conviently twisted to promote the UN agenda.

Of particular concern were the serious difficulties of women, who made up a large portion of the refugee population, including many women heads of households, single women, women with children and women without male support, she went on. There had been a resurgence of problems, such as “weekend marriages”, in which young girls in a family were made available for traditional marriage ceremonies for a weekend to men willing to pay for such a ceremony. A divorce was then arranged at the end of the weekend. Such an arrangement was not labelled as prostitution, but as marriage, although in reality it was “survival sex”. That protection issue also needed to be addressed.

First,  as we reported previously the majority of refugees (73%) in Syria are men between the ages of 18 and 50.   Gee, now why do you think men in that age range dashed over to Syria in large numbers in late 2006.  Could it have anything to do with the surge? Did they leave their wives home in dangerous Iraq?

And, then the UN won’t tell you that this Muslim (mostly Shiite) practice called Muta, or “weekend marriages,” is a centuries old practice supposedly sanctioned by Mohammed himself so that widows could make a little extra money.    Deplorable for any reason, still the UN wants you to think this has sprung up as a direct outgrowth of the war in Iraq and the supposed dire circumstances in which the refugees live.  The spinners at the UN just can’t bring themselves to mention cultural practices in Islam that might be seen as undesireable in western eyes.  

Instead it’s always America’s fault.   Everything fits this little template:   America/Bush bad, Middle East/Muslims good.