Maine has a reputation in the country (and probably in Africa too!) as the go-to state for welfare benefits before one is even a legal resident. In fact, it is the welfare magnet that brought the first of what is now tens of thousands of Somalis to Maine. (Click herefor one of our most-read posts about Maine the welfare magnet).
Maine Somali community organizers: We want our welfare! Photo: Bangor Daily News
On Friday, Maine Attorney General Janet Mills ruled that it would be unconstitutional for Maine to disallow social services to those seeking asylum or generally illegally in the state.
Keep in mind that federal laws do not give benefits to asylum seekers UNTIL they have been granted legal asylum status. Just because one says one is seeking asylum that does not give them the rights of legitimate ‘refugees.’ Maine has been giving benefits to one and all, thus the flood of migrants to Maine.
AUGUSTA, Maine — Maine Attorney General Janet Mills has ruled that a proposal by Gov. Paul LePage to bar immigrants and asylum seekers from receiving General Assistance is illegal and unconstitutional.
Health and Human Services Commissioner Mary Mayhew reacted with dismay and said she will continue to pursue implementation of the rule.
The proposed new rule, which was unveiled late last year by the Maine Department of Health and Human Services, was meant to align qualification for the state’s General Assistance program with other public assistance programs such as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. In essence, the proposal would block anyone from receiving General Assistance until they receive full U.S. citizenship.
Mayhew said Friday in a written statement that she has revised the rule so that only illegal immigrants — and not legal noncitizens — would be barred from the General Assistance program.
Lewiston, the Somali capital of New England, is one of three migrant-overloaded cities in Maine.
The rule would allow towns and cities to continue to provide the benefit, which is intended as an emergency measure to help individuals and families through financial crises, but without any financial support from the state. In most municipalities, the state pays 50 percent of the benefits, though there are three cities — Bangor, Portland and Lewiston — where state support ramps up to 90 percent after local spending reaches a certain threshold.
General Assistance cost the state and local municipalities a total of $12 million in 2013 and provided an average benefit of $966 to approximately 12,000 people. About 64 percent of that cost was in the immigrant-heavy cities of Bangor, Lewiston and Portland.
Go herefor our extensive Lewiston archive and herefor everything we have on Maine.
A heated debate continues over the Australian government’s offer of funding to Cambodia if that country agrees to take some of Australia’s ‘refugee’ overflow.
The Abbott government came into office promising to reduce the illegal migration to Australia and they are working tirelessly to follow up on the pledge.
And, frankly, moves like this one—sending asylum seekers to Cambodia—will surely have a chilling affect on those human traffickers and would-be migrants to not try to get to Australia in the future.
The Cambodian government is in the final stages of considering a refugee resettlement agreement with Australia and wants to sign a memorandum of understanding as soon as possible.
[….]
“So far the working group already finished [its] studying on the draft proposed by Australia and I think that maybe soon, maybe a few days, maybe next week … we’ll send our counter-proposal to the Australian side.”
The human rights industrial complex is understandably having a cow over this plan and also blasted Cambodia for returning Muslim Uighurs to China. So I assume this would also mean that Cambodia wouldn’t want to take too many Muslim potential jihadists from Australia either.
Do these do-gooders really believe that Cambodia could stand up to China which surely must have demanded the Uigur’s return.
Cambodia is a signatory to the refugee convention but in 2009 it forcibly deported 20 ethnic Uighur back to China.
However, Mr Borith said any refugees resettled under a deal struck between Cambodia and Australia would be safe.
“Different story, different from the refugees that we have discussed with our Australian friends to … settle here,” he said.
“The Uighur come here illegally. Far away from China to Cambodia, how many thousand miles is Cambodia?
“They come here illegally. We can say that they [are] all illegal immigrants. That is different from the refugees that we discussed today with Australia.
We will be watching this story because honestly a get-tough strategy is the only thing that could possibly deter the invasion of western countries (do you hear that Europe! America!).
This is our 137th post in our Australia category, here.
This story is nearly a month old, so we presume she is out of her tree now, but couldn’t quickly find any news account of that.
From Russia Today(last month) Hat tip: ‘pungentpeppers’
A Sudanese asylum seeker has moved to the treetops in central Berlin after local authorities evicted her refugee camp. Police forbid residents bringing her food or water, but Napuli Langa vows to stay aloft till death in a fight for her dignity.
Wrapped in an anorak and a blanket, Langa, 25, has already spent three days on branches atop a tree in Berlin’s Kreuzberg neighborhood, just walking distance from main tourist landmarks.
Hoping that weak and exhausted she will sooner or later jump down, police have spread out cushions on the ground. But Langa does not seem to be giving up.
“I am happy protesting for my rights and as long my energy can take me, I will stay here,” Langa shouted to RUPTLY’s crew under the tree.
She has vowed to expose what she says are the “colonial” methods Germany uses in treating refugees and asylum seekers from outside Europe and, particularly, Africa.
In fact, as we have reported many times, the German government is probably Europe’s most “welcoming” government toward refugees and asylum seekers. See our archive on Germany, here.
The invasion of Europe continues…. See Afghan migrant and his sail boat, here.
The Punjabis come from Eastern Pakistan or Northern India and they are coming to the US illegally with some seeking asylum in ever-larger numbers. The primary religions of Punjabis are Islam, Hinduism and Sikhism. Most of those in our post today appear to be Sikhs. Reader ‘pungentpeppers’ has come across these important stories over the last few days.
First, this one is from The Tribune in India. I’m sure when the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Servicehears this news they will want to take the “youths” home with them— not to their neighborhoods, but to yours!
Look at this route! They are clearly getting help in Russia, Turkey, Guatemala and Mexico!
The well-oiled human trafficking network and business, involving the ferrying of hundreds or thousands of Punjabis to North America, is alive and kicking. Unscrupulous travel agents operating from the USA and New Delhi are minting money from these shady deals.
As many as 64 Punjabi youths [numbers vary, some reports say 40, this one 64 and yet another says 100—ed], who travelled across more than half the world in search of greener pastures, have been detained in El-Paso processing centre (jail) in Texas, USA.
Forty-two of them are on hunger strike against their prolonged detention and the jail authorities’ “inhuman” action of withdrawing communication and other facilities to them. The startling revelations made by some detainees there and their families in the Doaba region of Punjab has indicated that human smuggling to the USA by travel agents from India is going on unabated.
[….]
At times, youths (mostly from India and Pakistan) were concealed in containers — having little air or almost no food and water for days — for the purpose of shipping them to North America.
One account of the “youths” (believed to be young men in their twenties) has them coming through Cuba as well.
In that same story, we learn that the North American Punjabi Association has gone to their defense, but ICE says there are no hunger strikers among the “youths.”
And, as for this “greener pastures” comment it tells us these are economic migrants not legitimate asylum seekers. By the way, some think if they are granted asylum they can never go back “home,” but that was not the case with that charming Tsarnaev family (of Boston bombing fame)—we know they traveled back and forth. And, we have had many reports of Somali ‘refugees’ traveling back to Somalia (even though they claimed they needed protection from persecution).
What about persecuted Americans?
Punjabi youths driving a Mercedes arrested. One charge against them is “elder abuse.”
California: Punjabi “youths” arrested for ATM robbery of former Marine
FREMONT — Two men and a teenager were arrested Wednesday on suspicion of robbing a retired U.S. Marine at a bank ATM last week, authorities said.
Prabhleen Singh, Manjot Dhillon, and a 17-year-old boy were arrested in connection to the April 9 armed robbery in Fremont, police said. The arrest came hours after authorities released surveillance photos of the suspects.
Police say the 67-year-old was using the ATM at a Fremont Bank of America, located at 46650 Mohave Drive, at 1:05 a.m. when a Mercedes car pulled up. Singh, 22, of Fremont, allegedly got out of the car, pointed a gun at the victim and demanded his wallet. The former U.S. Marine threw his wallet to Singh, authorities said.
Dhillon, 24, of Union City, allegedly drove the getaway car. Authorities did not release the 17-year-old’s name because he is a minor.
While Australia and New Zealand increase the number of detainees—migrants who have arrived illegally on their shores and asked for asylum, in the US the Open Borders lobbyists, including federal refugee contractors at the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services, if it were up to them, want no one detained.
Is there (more) money in it for the contractors? That is what I want to know!
Keegan Hamilton (a freelance reporter from NYC who writes for the Village Voice) has picked the wrong poster boy for his detention sob story published at the Houston Press!
Reporter Keegan Hamilton really lays it on thick in this propaganda piece.
Hussein Mohamed, the Somali star of the story, had a legal pathway to America (see yesterday’s post, 3,708 Somalis came to the US legally in the first six months of this fiscal year). He was living safely in Kenya (not Somalia) when he launched his trek to America. And, it strains credulity that he had a life savings large enough to pay traffickers the cash needed for his half way around the world travels to the Mexican border.
From the Houston Press ‘For Many Refugees, the Journey to America Ends in a Cold Jail Cell’ (wahhhhhh!):
Hussein Mohamed took a hard road to America. Born into a minority clan in a nation rife with ethnic conflict, the boyish 24-year-old with gangly limbs and intense brown eyes describes fleeing his village in Somalia in 2012 after gunmen threatened to kill him. Mohamed says he was forced to quit his jobs as an English teacher and taxi driver and escape to neighboring Kenya. After making his way to South Africa, he forked over his life savings to human smugglers, who shipped him across the Atlantic to Brazil and guided him north through the jungles of South and Central America into Mexico. [I bet if you gave this one paragraph to the average American and asked if he should be detained while his asylum claim is adjudicated, 90% of those asked would say ‘incarcerate him.’—ed]
When he finally arrived at a border crossing in Brownsville, Texas, this past summer, Mohamed thought he’d safely reached the end of a harrowing ten-month journey. He had no inkling of the ordeal awaiting him on the other side of the Rio Grande.
Mohamed approached a U.S. Border Patrol agent and recounted his story.He explained that he wanted to seek asylum, a classification of refugee status granted to people who arrive in the United States having fled persecution in their homeland. He was immediately handcuffed and placed in immigration detention: a cold, cramped cell in a privately owned and operated prison facility. Soon after, along with hundreds of other detainees, he was herded onto a cargo plane and transferred without explanation to a jail in Newark, New Jersey. [Newark—eeek!—ed]
Then we are told about his dreams of a job and a family in California—blah! blah! blah!
Instead, he will likely be deported, shipped back to the war-torn country on the Horn of Africa he worked so hard to escape. Mohamed’s request for asylum was denied because he lacks a passport or other documents to confirm his identity. [He could be al-Shabaab—ed] He has filed an appeal, and his detention ticks on indefinitely. [He is safe and is fed, right!—ed]
There are no statutory limits to the amount of time a non-citizen like Mohamed may be held in immigration detention. When the process goes smoothly, asylum seekers tend to be released in a matter of weeks. Many end up imprisoned for much longer. [Obviously for a reason!—ed]
So how many ‘poor souls’ like Mohamed are in detention? A measly 6,000 (in the last three years) out of the tens of thousands who arrive each year asking for asylum.
Approximately 6,000 survivors of torture — exiles from Iran, Myanmar, Syria and other nations with brutal regimes — were detained in immigration jails while seeking asylum over the past three years, according to a 2013 report by the Center for Victims of Torture.
Now, are you ready for it! Below is the most revealing paragraph in this whole pathetic propaganda story! The Lutherans have a contract to get asylum seekers out of detention and house them in your neighborhoods.
The Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIARS oops! LIRS) is a federal refugee contractor (96% of their income comes from you!) and they seem now to have parlayed that role into one where they are the guardians of people like Hussein Mohamed in several US cities. Recently they lobbied the administrationfor a relaxation of detention for illegal aliens, are they looking for future ‘clients’ for their ‘services’?
Thirty two detainees have been released into the care of LIRS (and signed up for welfare) in the last 20 days in the trial project! They say they aren’t being paid yet for this effort (although remember 96% of their funds already comes from taxpayers, did Keegan know that? Did he ask how they would pay for this pilot project?), they want to convince Congress that this is what should be done—halfway houses you might call them—for thousands eventually. LOL! Like any good business they are expanding their client base!
Though the political climate looks bleak for advocates of asylum reform, an ongoing pilot project offers a glimmer of hope. The project allows Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials at facilities in New York City, Newark, San Antonio, Chicago and Minneapolis-St. Paul to release select detainees seeking asylum into a program coordinated by the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service. As of March 31, the program has helped secure temporary housing and social services for 32 people, including survivors of torture, victims of domestic abuse and LGBT individuals, all of whom would otherwise have remained jailed indefinitely.
Read it all, Keegan does eventually discuss the frauds in the asylum racket, but having chosen Hussein Mohamed (if that is his name because he came with no papers), he obviously thinks Mohamed (with the gangly limbs and intense brown eyes) can’t possibly be a fraud.
