Is the New York bombing suspect a refugee?

09/20/2016 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I don’t know. Maybe someone has already dug out the immigration information for Ahmad Khan Rahami (and I will be pleasantly surprised).
But, I woke up this morning and figured you would be wondering so I needed to at least address the fact that I don’t know, and am not going to spend a lot of time trying to figure out which of many LEGAL programs his family might have used.
***Update*** Here is a report that says he came as a child in a family that sought asylum here, so that makes him a refugee. The asylum process is the other half of the Refugee Admissions Program and the difference is that in the case of asylum, the migrant gets in here on his or her own steam, usually illegally, and then applies for asylum. Clearly, if he is now a citizen, his father/family were approved political refugees. The other type of refugee we usually write about is chosen abroad and flown here.

screenshot-24 — This is a map from the Refugee Processing Center showing where nearly 10,000 Afghan refugees have been resettled between FY 2003 and up until September 1, 2016. http://www.wrapsnet.org/Reports/InteractiveReporting/tabid/393/Default.aspx

It is not as simple to figure out how Afghans got here as it is with the Somalis. The Somalis we know are probably 95% (higher maybe) refugees admitted through the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program, but Afghans have gotten in here over decades through many legal and illegal avenues.
By the way, when I opened RRW just now I see that our old post about Lutheran Social Services of Minnesota being responsible for the large number of Somalis in St.Cloud went viral overnight. You might want to have a look at it if you’ve never seen it, or have forgotten it. Click here to see all about LSS of Minnesota and St. Cloud.
People who have never paid attention before are starting to ask—how the h*** are we getting so many Muslims admitted to the US?
Back to Rahami:
CNN has a rather lengthy discussion about his activities as an adult, see here, this morning. And, I did see in one report yesterday that he really hates gays! But, like with so many other Islamic terrorists, the federal government is going to hold tightly any information on the immigration history of the terrorist’s family.
I do know that Elizabeth, NJ (Rahami’s home town) is one of three major resettlement sites in New Jersey and it is the International Rescue Committee that is placing more Muslims there. (The IRC is the same federal contractor operating in Missoula, MT now.)

Enterprising reporters might call the IRC in Elizabeth and ask if the Rahami’s are one of their families.
Or, maybe Senator Sessions could wring it out of the USCIS for his hearing tomorrow.
I did find this interesting article on how Afghans can get to the US. It’s a how-to guide in English. The article mentions using the Diversity Visa Lottery:

The easiest way is to enter the Diversity Immigrant Lottery. Each year approximately 50,000 green cards are issued to foreigners chosen randomly from a computer program.

If more Americans understood how that works there would be as much outrage as there is now about refugees. But, I’m not going there now because I have many more interesting things I want to post today.
So, as soon as someone finds out how this particular terrorist’s family got here, let me know and I’ll post it (it could years from now before we find out!).

Maine: Former Iranian refugee who died for ISIS was on welfare in US

08/19/2016 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

That is the headline, but what has the Leftwing media done in Maine? They are attacking the governor because he released the information thus not respecting the Islamic terrorist’s privacy in death! Ahhhh!
By the way Governor LePage is one of only a few governors who have had the guts to criticize the UN/US State Department Refugee Admissions Program over the years.

Robyn Merrill (left) speaking at the State House in support of continued state welfare for the many refugees and asylum seekers arriving in Maine. Photo: http://www.centralmaine.com/2015/03/03/critics-turn-out-in-force-to-oppose-lepages-plan-for-general-assistance/gallery/

Here is the news at Maine Public Radio:

Gov. Paul LePage has pounced on the recent unsealing of court documents showing an Iranian refugee who resettled in Maine and later joined the terror group ISIS.

But the governor’s eagerness to use Adnan Fazeli’s radicalization here to rail against welfare benefits for refugees may have led him to run afoul of a federal law designed to protect the identities of welfare recipients and their families.

State officials have not confirmed that Fazeli, or his family, received welfare benefits when he lived in Maine between 2009 and 2013. According to federal laws governing food stamps and cash assistance, they’re not supposed to.

“It’s concerning if that was indeed reported by Maine officials because federal law is clear that people’s confidentiality should be protected,” says Robyn Merrill, director for Maine Equal Justice Partners, an advocacy group for the poor.

Merrill’s concerns were raised by a report in the Boston Herald in which Maine state officials are quoted as saying that Fazeli, and his family, received cash and food stamp benefits. [Here is one of several stories about the terrorist on welfare in Maine—ed]

Those benefits, known also as SNAP and TANF, are federal programs, funded mostly with federal tax dollars.

According to federal rules, the identities of benefit recipients are confidential — only law enforcement, immigration officials and state administrators are allowed to know who receives the benefits.***

Those same officials, according to the law, “must adequately protect the information against unauthorized disclosure.”

The Herald story also contained an interview with LePage, who told the newspaper that the Fazeli case prompted him to order a review of all benefit programs for refugees.

More here.
***Now how does the claim by Maine Equal Justice Partners square with a law we told you about in the previous post where the federal ‘Work Opportunity Tax Credit’ is available to businesses that hire people (refugees!) who are on welfare, including food stamps. If there is supposed to be secrecy surrounding one’s status as a welfare recipient, how is a company which wants to take advantage of the Work Opportunity Tax Credit know which welfare programs the refugee (the prospective employee) is receiving?

It seems everyone is allowed to know who is on welfare, but you! the taxpayer paying for it all!

For new readers, our Maine archive is here.

Guest comment: Hannity interview explains why refugee flow so dangerous to us

07/30/2016 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Editor: From time to time I post guest columns from readers. Although a few days late, this is a very welcome piece. I heard the interview live driving through South Dakota the other day and thought—you must all hear this! Thanks to reader Julia for being on the same wavelength and sending me her comments. (Emphasis is mine)

Rich Higgins and Raheem Kassam Warn Against the Inflow of Refugees

Sean Hannity questioned Rich Higgins and Raheem Kassam on his radio show about “why President Obama is insisting 10,000 ‘refugees’ from the Middle East [be] brought immediately to America, and why Democratic nominee Hilary[sic] Clinton advocates increasing numbers by ‘500 per cent'” in light of the non-stop killing, raping, and groping by refugees and migrants in France, Germany, and Belgium and when Obama’s advisers say that terrorists may infiltrate the refugee population.
Higgins is a former official with the Department of Defense’s Combating Terrorism Technical Support Office & Irregular Warfare Support Program. Kassam is Editor-in-Chief at the Breitbart London bureau.

Carlos-the-Jackal_2030938c — Behind bars in France, Marxist, Carlos-the-Jackel married his French lawyer in a Muslim ceremony. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/8835627/Carlos-the-Jackal-laments-not-raising-his-children.html

As to Hannity’s question, Higgins answered, “I think that they’re so keen to have them coming in here because their Muslim Brotherhood advisers are telling them that is best for the West.”
Kassam added that “powerful liberal open borders activists such as George Soros” were responsible as well. His message to them: “it’s very hard to fight for social justice if you’re dead.”

“‘And the most galling element of it,’ [Kassam] continued, ‘is that we have the BBC, and the New York Times, and Sky News (editor note – Rupert Murdoch), and all of these other guys who are basically saying: ‘well, a backpack killed these people, a machete killed them.’ No. These are Syrian migrants who have faked being refugees. Some of them have been turned down in terms of asylum status, and they happen to have bombmaking knowledge and explosives at the same time?”

Higgins emphasized that the “outcome of this enemy isn’t just the killing, it is the political [expansion] of the shariah law, of Islamic law, in the west and we see our media compliant with Islamic law already – they won’t tell us the truth about it.” Higgins continued his warning:

“[and] to build on [Kassam’s] comments on the Socialist-Islamist nexus, in 2003, Carlos the Jackal, the Terrorist, in his book Revolutionary Islam said that only a coalition of Marxists and Islamists can destroy the United States and what we see happening right now is that de facto alliance – both in the tactical sense – in the neighborhoods where these NGOs are working with these refugee groups – they’re not actually refugees, they’re immigrants or Muhajirun is the more appropriate technical term for them and this is all part of the Hijra . . . Hijra is a term from Islam . . . this is a Hijra – it is an act of moving here – they call it the process of settlement – they are not coming to immigrate and to actually become Americans or to subscribe to the Constitution – they’re coming here as a process of settlement.”

When the Obama administration says ISIS is on the run because it may have lost some “occupied territory” or lost “some leaders to drone strikes”, read what “Carlos the Jackal” surmised below and realize that ISIS is adaptive and “the only destination to which [it is] on the run is the next step in [its] strategy or the next attack . . . and [w]e have to stop falling into the ‘lone wolf’ trap, the insistence that if [ISIS] leaders aren’t texting instructions to [its] operatives, an attack somehow has less strategic importance or is not directly connected to [its] . . . plan.”

“Carlos the Jackal”

“Carlos the Jackal” a/k/a Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, is “a Venezuelan now serving a life sentence for murder in France,” He “saw that only revolutionary Islam could recruit the large numbers of killers and martyrs necessary to destroy the United States.”

“Carlos had also concluded that the United States could not be destroyed by any military rival. What was needed was a campaign of terror . . . [and] that terrorism is ‘the cleanest and most efficient form of warfare.’ By killing civilians, he argue[d], the terrorist saps the morale of the enemy and forces its leadership to submit to the demands of the revolution or surrender.”

“. . . [Carlos] dwell[ed] on the necessity for all Muslim men to grow beards and all Muslim women to wear the “revolutionary” head-cover (the hijab) invented in Lebanon in the 1970s. He sa[id] that beards and the hijab can be used as tools of terror, to dishearten the Americans by reminding them that “their enemy Islam” is in their midst.” See. See also.

Editor: So the question we (who understand this) have is this: They are telling us that they are coming for us, so why don’t more people believe them?
For more guest comments and op-eds, click here, and see our category called ‘comments worth noting.’

Germany: Afghan 'unaccompanied minor' attacks travelers with axe

07/19/2016 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Invasion of Europe news….
One of the tens of thousands of Muslim migrants Germany ‘welcomed’ in recent months and years went on a hacking and slashing attack on a German train injuring many yesterday. Fortunately no one was killed but three are in serious condition the UK Telegraph reports. The Telegraph also reports that ISIL is claiming that he worked (past tense since the police killed him) for them.

Welcome to Germany sign — Can you imagine what laughs the Islamists get when they see signs like this with hearts and happy faces!

The Islamic State said they were infiltrating the refugee stream, so why don’t we believe them?
And, btw, there are no guns in this story to blame because Germany severely limits gun ownership. The next best thing—knives and axes!

Islamic State has claimed an Afghan teenager who attacked passengers on a train in Germany with an axe on Monday night as one of its ‘fighters’.

Earlier on Tuesday, the interior minister said a hand-drawn Isil flag was found in the room of the 17-year-old, whose attack left three seriously injured.

Police shot dead the suspect as he attempted to flee the scene. The assault in Wurzburg was the latest suspected terror attack to shock Europe following the atrocity in Nice last Thursday.

Isil’s online Amaq news agency released a statement claiming the attack.

“The perpetrator of the stabbing attack in Germany was one of the fighters of the Islamic State and carried out the operation in answer to the calls to target the countries of the coalition fighting the Islamic State,” the statement said.

“It is quite probable that this was an Islamist attack,” said a ministry spokesman on Monday, adding that the attacker had apparently shouted “Allahu akbar” (God is greatest) as he stabbed people.

The attacker was said to have been carrying “weapons for slashing and cutting”, according to German media reports, including an axe.

[….]

Joachim Herrmann, the interior minister of Bavaria state, said the assailant had arrived as an unaccompanied minor in Germany and had lived at first in a shelter and then more recently with a foster family in nearby Ochsenfurt.

More here.
So how many German families have the next slasher and hacker living in their spare bedrooms?
For our archive on ‘Invasion of Europe’ posts go here.
Note: I’m traveling all day today but hopefully I will soon be able to give you some short reports about what I am learning.

It is the numbers stupid! Debate (again) in wake of Nice Islamic terror attack

07/16/2016 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

It is no surprise that the Election 2016 debate about refugees should have begun in earnest again after the slaughter in Nice.
But, as everyone focuses on security screening, I want to repeat again that this is about numbers. The Tunisian killer would not have been stopped by security screening. He was just one of tens of thousands of Muslims living in France because France never said NO! to more Muslim immigration.
The bottomline is that there is a threshold that is crossed once the Muslim population reaches a certain point where Islamists become emboldened and energized. France is there, so are many other European countries. We don’t want to get there, but it is coming fast. The election of Hillary Clinton will assure that America will cross that threshold too!
Be sure to watch this youtube video about the Nice terror attack! (hat tip: Dick)

From Fox News—-Hillary wants 65,000 Syrians admitted to the US and we previously reported that the resettlement contractors want 100,000.

The terror attack Thursday in Nice, France, that left at least 84 people dead has reignited the refugee debate in the 2016 presidential race, with Donald Trump blasting Hillary Clinton’s calls to let in thousands more and saying, “we’d better get awfully tough.”

The terrorist behind the attack, Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, was not a refugee but a French resident originally from Tunisia. The attack nevertheless has rekindled concerns that accepting more refugees from Islamic State-occupied Syria raises the risk for the U.S.

The Obama administration has pledged to accept 10,000 refugees from Syria by the end of September. The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that 5,211 refugees had been brought in by the end of June and the U.S. is on track to meet the administration’s target.

Clinton, though, back in September called for increasing that number to 65,000 – a 550 percent increase from the administration’s current target.

“I would like to see us move from what is a good start with 10,000 to 65,000 and begin immediately to put into place the mechanisms for vetting the people that we would take in,” she told CBS News.

Continue here.