My alerts are filled to the brim day after day with stories from around the US featuring a sob story for some refugee who won’t be able to reunite with a family member because there is a meany in the White House.
Inevitably a sad tale anchors a story which tells readers in a state—in this case Idaho—about how bad the Trump Administration’s proposed refugee ceiling of 18,000 is going to be on the refugee resettlement industry that derives most of its funding from the taxpayer—from you and me.
At least this story does mention the fact that federal funding is tied to the number of refugees admitted. But, I got a laugh when I saw thatthe report from Idaho Press uses the International Rescue Committee as the example of an agency singing the budgetary blues.
Heck! TheIRC’s head honchomakes nearly a $1 million a year salary—a figure that has jumped at least a quarter of a million since Trump took office!
They simply can’t be that bad off!
Idaho IRC Director Tzul. https://www.eyeonsunvalley.com/Story_Reader/4359/Photographs-Chronicle-New-Step-for-Refugees/
The IRC’s Idaho representative Julianne Tzul told the Idaho Press:
Much of IRC’s funding comes from federal grants based on the number of refugees it serves, and Tzul expects to have “a wild ride to plan a budget when you don’t know if a major (funding) component is zero or is healthy.”
Still, Tzul said the agency has “no intention of going away.”
But, that isn’t the part that I want to tell you about. It is the part about their featured Iraqi refugee sob story.
(Virtually every article I’ve read in recent days features some family that has been separated. Instructions must have gone out to every resettlement office in America to find a family separation story to feed to the local press!).
What new refugee limit could mean for the Treasure Valley
BOISE — Under the Trump’s administration’s latest cap on refugee resettlement, Idaho refugees who have been separated from their families will likely have to wait longer to be reunited, and local resettlement agencies are expecting a dip in federal funding.
“We are going to see fewer refugees make it to Boise,” said Julianne Tzul, director of International Rescue Committee’s Boise office. “When total national numbers contract, they contract everywhere.”
The Trump administration last week announced an 18,000 cap on the number of refugees resettled in the U.S. this fiscal year, which started Tuesday. Trump’s final decision on the cap must include consultation with Congress, which could push for a higher total, according to the Associated Press.
Ahmed Al Abboodi wants his son to join him in Idaho, but Trump is standing in the way.
The historically low cap would affect people like Ali Al Abboodi, a 28-year-old from Baghdad who was separated from his family in 2014 while they were traveling to Boise to be resettled. His family has worked with U.S. Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, in trying to secure his entry into the U.S.
.[….]
After seven years in Syria, the family moved back to Iraq to await permission to become refugees in the United States. They received refugee status and flew to Boise in January 2014. Ali Al Abboodi’s case was separated from the rest of his family, but the plan was he would follow the family to Boise a few days later.
I want to know why wasn’t he with the family as they were shuffling around between Syria and Iraq? Why was his case separated as the family left for Boise?
And then this: Are we really expected to believe that someone just dying to be reunited with his family in the US missed TWO scheduled flights that would take him to America?
Idaho Press continues….
Republican Senator Crapo to the rescue!
Ali Al Abboodi missed his first flight because of traffic and missed his second because of a car wreck, according to the family. After that, his case for refugee status was closed.
In 2017, Trump restricted travel from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Iraq, further hindering Ali Al Abboodi’s ability to travel to the U.S.
Ahmed Al Abboodi did not let the travel bans stop him from trying to get his son to Boise. He met with Crapo with his caseworker, and urged the senator to help his family. Crapo helped reopen Ali Al Abboodi’s case for refugee status.
What do you think? I’m thinking there is more to this story than we are being told!
As we have reported on several previous occasions, one of the categories of refugees we are taking now are gay men and lesbian women (Bi’s and Trannies too) who have been persecuted by their fellow Muslims in the Middle East and elsewhere. Here is news, with no further comment, from Boise State Public Radio (emphasis mine):
The US Department of State pledged to lead the world in accepting refugees from Syria at a meeting in Geneva this month. The organization says it is currently reviewing about 9,000 UNHCR referrals from Syria and is receiving approximately a thousand new referrals each month. A Boise refugee support organization anticipates many of those people will come to Idaho.
Shadi Ismail will help the Syrians who are coming soon to Boise. Says he will tell them to go home if they don’t accept homosexuals. Photo: Jodie Martinson Boise State Public Radio
But one Syrian man has already arrived as a refugee and believes he’s uniquely positioned to help the incoming population of people from his home country — even though the reason he left Syria is different from why many people are leaving now.
Shadi Ismail fled the region about two-and-a-half-years ago because he feared his family would kill him for being gay. He says he always knew he liked boys.
“I see a friend take shirt off or something,” he explains. “It’s like ‘Oof!'”
Ismail says being gay was unacceptable in Syria, especially in his family.
What follows is a long discussion of the abuses he suffered at the hands of his family and the Muslim community. However, another gay man suggested he apply to America as a refugee, and here he is.
After many months of waiting, Ismail was accepted as a refugee and sent on his way to Boise, Idaho.
He plans to help his fellow countrymen (and give them a message) when they start arriving real soon in Idaho:
The Syrians coming to Idaho as refugees escaping the war will have very different reasons to flee than Ismail. But Ismail is the only Syrian refugee he knows of in the Boise area. So he feels a duty to help newcomers fit into their fresh American lives. He plans to explain to them how life works, and he knows what he’ll tell them about how they should treat lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans people.
“You have to accept me [in] America,” he said. “I left everything to be who I am. If you want to still have your mind crazy [about sexual intolerance], go back to your country. Do your thing there.”
For more on the booming resettlement state of Idaho…
Go herefor a map of the US and links to federal refugee contractor offices including those in Boise.
Here (all states listed) are the resettlement contractors in the State of Idaho (a Wilson-Fish state which means the contractors and the feds run the program with no state government control):
DFMS (Episcopal Migration Ministries)
ID-DFMS-01: Agency For New Americans
Address:
1614 West Jefferson Street
Boise, ID 83701
Phone: 208-338-0033-X25
IRC (International Rescue Committee)
ID-IRC-01: International Rescue Committee
Address:
7188 W. Potomac Drive
Boise, ID 83704
Phone: 208-344-1792
WR (World Relief)
ID-WR-01: World Relief Treasure Valley
Address:
6702 Fairview Avenue
Boise, ID 83704
Phone: 208-323-4964
USCRI (US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants)
ID-USCRI-01: College Of Southern Idaho Refugee Programs
Address:
1526 Highland Ave E
Twin Falls, ID 83301
Phone: 208-736-2166
This is an update of my post this morningwhere I only surmised that Boise’s Uzbek terror suspect is a refugee.
In the case of Boston’s Tsarnaevs, they came here seeking political asylum and in Fazliddin Kurbanov’s case we actually brought him to America. The refugee resettlement program and our asylum program are basically two sides of the same coin. We “welcomed” both to America. But, one thing the resettlement contractors can’t seem to grasp is that with most Muslims their Jihad imperative trumps the American ‘good life’ and it’s just a matter of time before Allah calls.
Are we seeing the beginning of a trend? I suspect we will see other young bucks seeking fame and martyrdom having been emboldened by the Tsarnaev’s ‘success.’
Fazliddin Kurbanov, your friendly refugee next door!
AP confirms Kurbanov’s immigration status here at USA Today:
BOISE, Idaho (AP) — He was a Russian-speaking truck driver who came to Idaho in 2009 to join hundreds of other Uzbekistan refugees for whom the state has become a sanctuary from violence in their home country.
But federal officials say in an indictment that Fazliddin Kurbanov also was teaching people to build bombs that would target public transportation.
It’s unclear whether those alleged targets were domestic or abroad — or how far Kurbanov would have gone. Prosecutors said Friday only that they believe he is no longer a threat.
[….]
Kurbanov is among about 650 Uzbeks living in Idaho. He was admitted to the U.S. as a refugee in August 2009, the same month he moved to Boise, said Jan Reeves, director of the Idaho Office for Refugees, citing immigration records. Kurbanov was here legally, federal officials said.
He didn’t just move to Boise! A federal refugee contractor, possibly Boise’s office of the International Rescue Committee, was paid by the US State Department (paid by you!) to get him hooked up with social services, find him an apartment and get him a job.
Uzbeks began coming to Idaho’s two refugee settlement centers, in Boise and Twin Falls, in 2003, Reeves said. The centers connect refugees with services such as language classes and help finding work.
The flow of Uzbeks to the state escalated around 2005, when a violent clash between protesters and the government left hundreds dead. [We took in the troublemakers in a special airlift! Now we are reuniting families in sanctuary cities like Boise—ed]
[….]
About 90 percent of Uzbeks in their home country are Muslim. Representatives of the Islamic Center of Boise, a meeting area for the region’s Muslim community, didn’t immediately return a phone call Friday.
Radical Uzbeks have a broader mission now! Don’t they all!
Although the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan started in the 1990s with the stated aim of overthrowing the Uzbek regime and establishing an Islamic government, its goals have expanded to create a broader Islamic influence in Central Asia.
