This sob story from the Associated Press is meant to make naïve readers feel so very sorry for educated refugees, some in medical fields, who can’t get work here because they must get US licenses to practice (so that they can compete against your kids coming out of medical schools with degrees that cost you a fortune to provide).
But that isn’t the angle that interested me most in this report.
First and foremost, when someone is admitted as a refugee to the US under the US Refugee Admissions Program they are affirming that they can never return to their home country due to a legitimate fear of being persecutedfor one of several factors—religious, racial, political among them.
Here we see that since the parents in this story can’t immediately jump into professional lives here, one has opted to return to Kurdistan—TO WHERE THEY CLAIMED THEY WERE NOT SAFE! in order to keep money flowing to the family back here being supported partially by US taxpayers.
Workforce barriers keep refugees out of health care field
RICHMOND, Va. — Ferwerdin Al Barzanji has nightmares about what could have been — the promises she could have kept — if her almost 30 years as a university professor and medical researcher in Kurdistan were enough.
When she fled her home homeland bordering Iraq, Syria and Turkey to find refuge in Harrisonburg in 2016, families were depending on the monthly stipends she provided for food and housing. Students awaited her go-ahead to apply for grants at the college where she would teach.
She planned to bring more Kurds in!
Harrisonburg is a prime resettlement site. Protesting Trump’s refugee policies in 2017.
But within two years, she sent apologies instead. There was no money to send. There was no university job, no lab that would let her continue her work.
Like so many refugees, Al Barzanji’s options were limited, even with decades of experience and her fluent command of English, Arabic and Kurdish. Credentials, including her doctorate, were worthless in Virginia. To continue her career, she’d have to start over and go through school again. She couldn’t afford it, and it would be years before money flowed in again.
Eight months of tax payer financial assistance did flow in!
Refugees in the U.S. receive roughly eight months of financial assistance upon arrival, and after extensive interviews from federal officers abroad who determine their eligibility for resettlement, they’re immediately able to work. But neither Al Barzanji or her husband, Heja Al Sindi, could find employment that paid them a living wage.
Confirmed! Refugees are needed for cheap labor—“food factories” and “distribution centers!”
“They told me from the beginning, ‘You (can’t) think about your degrees. Ph.D.? Master’s? Teaching? No. You have to go to either the food factories or these distribution centers. Places like that in order to work,'” she recalled. “‘You can’t start like a university professor or a lab scientist.’“
So if they told her that in the beginning why is she whining now?
If both of them stayed in the U.S., they wouldn’t be able to give their five children [presumably being educated now in Virginia’s public school system—ed] a better education — the reason they left their hometown after 50 years and the one promise Al Barzanji refused to let go.
The ‘refugee’ Dad went back to the place of their supposed persecution, Kurdistan, so he can make more money!
So they made a decision that would separate their family: Al Sindi would go back and work as the vice president of the University of Kurdistan and send his salary to his family in Harrisonburg while Al Barzanji continued her work as an interpreter and full-time mother.
“I put all my feelings and everything into their success. I have to forget about myself,” she said. “So I have to think about it like this. This is it. I have to live like this.”
Oh poor baby!
There is much more we could discuss in this AP story. Virginia readers should definitely read on.
Recently we reported on the news from Reutersthat a massive fraud investigation is underway involving the admission of Iraqi so-called ‘refugees’ to the US.
Now a former State Department officer comes forward with a first hand account of the Iraqi fraud and charges that the entire program involving refugees from many continents is riddled with fraud.
The Iraqi refugee fraud is just one of many scandals
The State Department’s recent admission that thousands of Iraqis likely filed fraudulent refugee applications for resettlement in the United States is not a surprise. Instead, the actual shock is that the State Department is finally admitting to what has long been known.
Disturbingly, in terms of the fraud-laden U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, history is simply repeating itself — as it appears that the massive deception inherent in the Iraqi resettlement program can no longer be willfully ignored. According to the Reuters report, U.S. authorities are pursuing what they termed a “sweeping fraud investigation” of potentially more than 100,000 Iraqis. At least 500 Iraqis have already entered the U.S. as “refugees,” while tens of thousands of others are pending resettlement.
The inquiry, although being called one of the “biggest fraud investigations in recent history,” is only one in a long line of resettlement scandals. As early as the 1990s, fraudulent refugee claims werecommonplace in the in-country refugee program in Cuba, which ultimately resettled more than 90,000 Cubans, and among the over 36,000 Somalis who entered the U.S. in the early 2000s under false identities. Similarly, as many as 1,700 individuals who posed as Burmese “refugees” gained fraudulent entry into our country a decade later by falsifying their own data or using the personal information of other persons. To date, at least for the Somalis, it appears that none of these fraudsters have been prosecuted or deported despite violating federal law and swindling the refugee program.
These are but a few of the scandals that have plagued the USRAP since its inception more than 40 years ago. Sadly, the refugee resettlement industry, which morphed into a numbers-driven, financially motivated business, grew blindly at the expense of the public and our national security.During my eight years as a State Department refugee admissions coordinator who served throughout the Middle East, Africa, Russia, and Cuba, I saw firsthand the flagrant abuses and scams that permeated the resettlement program. I witnessed widespread exploitation and misuse from identity fraud and marriage and family relation scams to private individuals profiting from their involvement in USRAP and the distortion of the actual refugee definition to ensure greater numbers of people who were simply migrants were admitted as refugees.
Is Hetfield saying that the ends justify the means?
Far too often, both the governmental and semiprivate power brokers within the industry consistently found ways to ignore, and at times cover up, the fraud and abuse.
Commenting on the Iraqi investigation, Mark Hetfield, the president of HIAS, one of the nine federally funded refugee contractors that implement refugee resettlement, called resettlement a scarce and valuable commodity.
“People … are going to do anything they can to access it,” he said to Reuters.
There is more, but please visit the Washington Examinerand help drive their numbers.
One of my astute readers pointed out the failure in logic of this line from the June Reuters story:
A State Department spokesperson declined to comment on the scope of the investigation and internal government deliberations, but said the fraud scheme did not affect security vetting of refugees.
If they are finding that the Iraqi refugee wannabes are liars, then how do they know if “security vetting” is not affected. Hmmmm!
See Doetsch’s earliest attempt (in a letter to the Chicago Tribune) to reveal the extent of the fraud she witnessed. And, as far as I know, no one in authority in Congress or even in the Trump White House in 2017 had asked to debrief her.
“It is important to hold accountable those who would seek to defraud such programs, particularly when the crimes compromise our national security and public safety, when they impose such high costs on taxpayers…”
(Michael R. Sherwin, acting U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia)
Yes, you heard that right. The Special Immigrant Visa Program for Iraqis (and their family members) who have supposedly helped us in Iraq was suspended as a result of that fraud bust we reporteda few days ago. I had missed this part of the story.
Feds stop special Iraqi refugee program after troubling DHS security breach
The State Department announced an emergency 90-day halt on admitting refugees from Iraq who helped the U.S. war effort after authorities revealed Friday that the program had been breached in a brazen conspiracy to steal refugees’ files.
Michael Sherwin
Acting Secretary of State Daniel B. Smith said they need to study the Iraqi program’s “vulnerabilities,” but insisted the broader refugee program is still safe.
His announcement came just hours after federal prosecutors unsealed an indictment charging three people, including two Homeland Security employees accused of selling secret files on refugee applicants.
Prosecutors said the secret information, including applicants’ employment records, security checks, military history and their very personal accounts of persecution, were all able to be breached by the employees.
Just so you know, more Afghans are admitted in this special program that came into existence as a hidden rider by Senator Ted Kennedy to a Defense authorization bill. The program did not go through regular order in Congress.
The three-year-old chart below does not show that tens of thousands more dependents came along with the SIV applicant.
“It is important to hold accountable those who would seek to defraud such programs, particularly when the crimes compromise our national security and public safety, when they impose such high costs on taxpayers…”
(Acting U.S. Attorney Michael R. Sherwin for the District of Columbia)
Three foreign nationals from Russia, Iraq and Jordan have been charged in stealing information about refugees from the US State Department’s WRAPs data base.
And, this case might explain why the flow of Iraqis to your American towns had slowed dramatically late in the Trump administration.
As we have been saying for over a decade, the US Refugee Admissions Program is filled with fraud and corruption. These three are likely small fish in the overall scheme of things.
Three Foreign Nationals Charged with Conspiracy to Steal U.S. Government Records and Defraud U.S. Refugee Program
WASHINGTON – An indictment charging three defendants was unsealed in the District of Columbia today.
The indictment charges Aws Muwafaq Abduljabbar, 42; Haitham Isa Saado Sad, 42; and Olesya Leonidovna Krasilova, 43, with conspiracy to steal U.S. government records and to defraud the United States, theft of U.S. government records, and conspiracy to launder money, all related to the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP).
[….]
According to the indictment, Sad was employed in Amman, Jordan from 2007 to 2016 by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and Krasilova held a similar position at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, Russia. Part of their duties included processing applications for refugee resettlement in the United States through the USRAP.
The indictment charges that, from approximately February 2016 until at least April 2019, the three defendants, led by Abduljabbar, conspired to steal U.S. government records related to hundreds of USRAP applications.The records contained sensitive, non-public information about refugee applicants, their family members, their employment and military history, their accounts of persecution or fear of persecution, the results of security checks, and internal assessments by U.S. officials regarding applications.
[….]
As outlined in the indictment, the theft of USRAP records creates a number of risks to public safety and national security while imposing significant costs on the U.S. government, its taxpayers, and otherwise legitimate refugee applicants negatively impacted by the scheme. Defendants Abduljabbar and Sad were previously arrested and remain held without bond. Defendant Krasilova remains at large.
[….]
“Individuals like Ms. Krasilova and Mr. Sad are entrusted to protect the integrity of the U.S. immigration system and sensitive information vital to our national security interests,” said Department of Homeland Security Inspector General Dr. Joseph V. Cuffari. “The Office of Inspector General remains committed to aggressively investigating DHS employees who abuse their positions, betray the public trust, and conspire with persons such as Mr. Abduljabbar to defraud the United States.”
We will have more to say, but just wanted to get a preliminary story out.
For those with inquiring minds, here is the indictment itself. (If this doesn’t open, send me a comment to this post and I’ll send it to you directly.)
We expect the Biden administration to be doing a better job of hiring people for this work than Obama did… Ha!
And, I just came across this cutesy video created as Obama was leaving office explaining to potential refugees the process for admission to the US. Thought you might find it interesting.
Nevermind that it is the United Nations that halted refugee travel due to the Chinese virus crisis.
Refugee contractors are trying to “chart a path forward” as refugee admissions this year are set to be the lowest they have ever been since Senators Ted Kennedy, Joe Biden and the peanut farmer, Jimmy Carter, created the US Refugee Admissions Program that became law in 1980.
But, oh how they love their sob stories featuring poor suffering families seeking to be reunited.
Sob story design and promotion is one of the Leftwing media’s greatest skills!
Sorry, no sympathy from me for a mother who leaves her INFANT daughter in a hellhole refugee camp to come to America with a supposedly sick husband expecting then to have the US government fly her daughter to her at a later date.
A family was set to be reunited after nearly four years apart. Then coronavirus struck.
(CNN) More than three years ago, Deman Aman Abshir, a Somali national, faced an impossible choice: leave behind her newborn daughter to come to the United States or watch as her husband’s health worsened.
She left behind an infant daughter, now three years old, to hop on that plane with a supposedly sick hubby. She had another choice!
Abshir and her husband, fleeing deteriorating conditions in Somalia, worried that any delay in leaving could hinder their chances to resettle in the US and get medical treatment, she said. So they left.
[….]
In 2011, amid an ongoing civil war in the country, Abshir decided to leave Somalia and fled to a refugee camp in Ethiopia.
“Life was hard and there was a lot of struggle,” she said.
Over the years, the health of Abshir’s husband, Mohamed Hussen Ibrahim, who was being treated for a neurologic condition that prevented him from walking and doing other daily activities, started to worsen.
His “neurologic condition” apparently didn’t prevent some daily activities!
And, he sure must have gotten some magical medical treatment in the US (on your dime!) because he got a job, but there is not one word in this story about his diagnosis, treatment or recovery.
In late 2016, more than a year after their case had been approved, the couple was ready to depart to the United States.
“Three different situations happened at the same time: my husband’s situation got worse; we had our newborn; we had the process approved,” Abshir recalled. “It was 2016 so Trump was getting elected, so we knew if we had to delay, the opportunity would never come so we had to choose sacrifice to be with our child or leave for the US with my husband to get better treatment.”
She had another choice: Let her husband go on to America (so you could pay for his medical care) and she could stay in Africa with her INFANT daughter!
Now we are expected to believe she is so emotional over the separation that she can’t work!
Abshir’s four-month-old daughter had not been part of the original case, therefore adding her would delay their departure and postpone obtaining medical treatment for her husband. Abshir called the decision to leave Nimco behind “painful,” recounting the difficulty she had in keeping jobs in the US because she was overwhelmed with emotions.
Plummer is described as the family’s lawyer, but she also happens to be the Executive Director of CRIS a Columbus, Ohio based subcontractor of Church World Service, facts not reported by CNN. https://www.crisohio.org/about-us/
Since then, Plummer has tried to get Nimco’s case approved to reunite with the family. The nearly four-year uphill battle appeared to be reaching a conclusion when the coronavirus pandemic shut down arrivals.
[….]
Abshir, whose husband also lost his job because of the pandemic [“also”? weren’t we just old she couldn’t hold a job due to being emotionally distraught?—ed] has remained hopeful, but extended separations often weigh on families.
[He had a job, wow! He must have recovered from his serious health issue and inability to walk.—ed]
CNN continues….
“I see these cases and it’s joyful when a child reunites with a parent and it’s all wonderful superficially but you can’t get that time back. The child doesn’t know their parents … just the psychological impact to the family for as long as the delay continues,” Plummer said. [Taxpayer-funded counseling ahead?—ed]
All of that is to set the tone for the rest of the article that goes on to bash the Trump Administration.
We do learn that no date has been set to resume refugee resettlement.
Refugee arrivals to the US were suspended as of March 19, with the exception of certain emergency cases, a State Department spokesperson told CNN.
No date has been provided on when admissions will resume.The spokesperson said State “will seek to resume refugee arrivals when it is safe and logistically feasible to do so, subject to any travel restrictions in place at that time.”
WASHINGTON – An indictment charging three defendants was unsealed in the District of Columbia today.
Refugee contractors are trying to “chart a path forward” as refugee admissions this year are set to be the lowest they have ever been since Senators Ted Kennedy, Joe Biden and the peanut farmer, Jimmy Carter, created the US Refugee Admissions Program that became law in 1980.
