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!).

Overloaded Buffalo, NY running out of housing for refugees; bring in prefabs?

09/08/2016 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update September 9th: Be sure to see Daniel Greenfield at Frontpage magazine on ‘The Invasion of Buffalo’ here.
So what else is new. We told you here just the other day that Missoula, MT, which is getting its first refugees, can’t even find housing for the first arrivals.
Obama’s resettlement contractors are plowing ahead nevertheless trying to hit the 85,000 mark for this fiscal year (see here). I wonder does the US State Department give them a pass on their contracts which require providing a properly-sized house or apartment so they can get those bodies in here before the bell tolls midnight on Sept. 30th?
And, what makes them think they will have housing for 200,000 next year when they can’t find it for 85,000 this year? (If your town is gleefully building low income housing, be ready for refugees!)
Buffalo has been a long-established refugee site but gee, not enough affordable housing so now some are suggesting bringing in prefabricated housing—can you say refugee camp!
From WIVB Buffalo:

BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB)- The number of refugees coming to Buffalo continues to grow. In 2016, more than 1,000 refugees have been resettled in the Queen City, according to city officials.

screenshot-8 — With 20,000 refugees (most are on food stamps) in the city of Buffalo, it is no surprise that food stamp fraud has developed as a subsidiary industry and is rampant as we saw in this recent story. These women are angry that their Muslim husband and father was arrested for allegedly scamming you out of $2 million. Diversity is so beautiful! https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2016/09/02/buffalony-another-food-stamp-fraud-bust-flipping-the-bird-to-america/

The growth has rejuvenated the West Side but now resettlement agencies are struggling to find housing.

“If I had 10 more multi family income properties in this neighborhood, I’d fill every one of them,” said Michael Maywalt, owner of Maywalt Realty. “The demand is very, very strong for additional refugee families to come and be with folks from their own countries.”

[….]

“In this neighborhood there’s a high concentration of Iraqi families, Burma, Nepal and more recently from Afghanistan and Syria,” said Maywalt.

He said his company is starting to look outside of Blackrock to expand, as they work to accommodate the growing number of refugees coming to Buffalo.

City officials told News 4 there are now about 20,000 refugees living in the city.

“We need more good quality housing stock and it’s not necessarily available for an affordable price in the locations that we’re looking,” said Denise Beehag, Director of Refugee Resettlement for International Institute. [This is another USCRI subcontractor—Lavinia Limon—ed]

The US State Department allots $2025 per head (per refugee) and here we see that USCRI keeps as much as $1100 of it for their office overhead and staff salaries. (The contractors get other money from HHS.)

Beehag said after administrative costs are taken out only about $925- $1,125 is actually available for them to use towards rent, the security deposit, furniture, clothing and other necessities.

[….]

Ozay [a local college professor] says there could be an opportunity for developers to work with resettlement agencies to apply for state or preservation grants to help create affordable housing.

Another idea they came up with was bringing in prefabricated houses.

“There’s actually a larger sort of affordable housing need in the city and we thought this could be a tool to facilitate this need as well,” said Ozay.

Continue here.
For our complete archive on Buffalo, click here. I recommend some local reporters use this archive for a more complete picture of what has happened with Buffalo over the years.

Is there no resistance to new refugee office in Ithaca, NY?

08/21/2016 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

It sure doesn’t sound like it.

Mayor Myrick of Ithaca — Mayor Svante Myrick says he will do anything in his power to relocate Syrian Muslim refugees to Ithaca, NY. http://ithacavoice.com/2015/11/mayor-myrick-pledges-to-help-syrian-refugees-relocate-to-ithaca/

Due to a shortage of time, I am going to urge all of you, especially in new ‘pockets of resistance,’ to read this thorough article (albeit biased in favor of refugees going to Ithaca) because it has a lot of useful information about the process of setting up a new resettlement site (this one is a Catholic Charities site).
Here is one little bit of the Ithaca Voice article that answers a question many of you have had:

After arrival in Ithaca, working-age family members are required to be self-sufficient within six months. Within a year they will apply for Green Card status. According to Spear, Catholic Charities will receive $2,025 per person. This is broken down as $900 per refugee arrival for administration and $1,125 per refugee for “client direct” assistance. This money comes from the State Department (PRM) as part of the “Reception and Placement Program” that covers the first 90 days’ costs of resettling each refugee.

Other funds are organized by federal offices such as the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the Administration of Children and Families (ACF), and Refugee and Entrant Assistant funds via the Office of Refugee Resettlement.

The refugees “immediately qualify for public assistance and we are the ones that will help them with the application process,” says Chaffee. “They are going to be working and contributing to our tax base within six months. Many refugees become home owners within five or six years.”

Read it all, there is so much I would like to say about it!
First self-sufficiency is a joke. Refugees are considered self-sufficient even if they are still on certain forms of welfare including housing assistance and food stamps. In fact, if they go off all welfare the ‘Work Opportunity Tax Credit’ would not be available to prospective employers (and as we have said repeatedly, the driving force for the refugee resettlement program is not humanitarianism, but to provide cheap, federally subsidized, labor to certain industries!).
The original State Department tranche of money includes in this case $900 per refugee head for Catholic Charities income, however, Catholic Charities receives other grants from other federal agencies to supplement their phony Christian charity. This per head payment gets higher and higher every year! And, since there is a per head payment, there is no incentive to slow the flow in subsequent years if the town gets overloaded.
“Public assistance” is the nice way of saying WELFARE. Yes, they get welfare right away (including SSI for the elderly and disabled refugees) and Catholic Charities job (the federal contractor here) is to get them signed up ASAP.
And finally, even if refugees get menial jobs, they will not be taxpaying members of the community because their income will be so low that they won’t have to file.
I would really like to know the percentage of refugees who buy homes that quickly (even with a special government savings program just for refugees to buy homes!). Some groups of refugees even enter the country with enough money to purchase property which begs the question—are they the poor downtrodden people we are led to believe they are?

Buffalo, NY: Something fishy in Somali tale of woe

04/17/2016 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

It is not surprising that as the New York primary approaches this week, that left-leaning media will find stories about how Republicans Trump and Cruz are ‘Islamophobes’ and how Muslims are gravitating to Sanders and Clinton. However, you would think a reporter could find a more credible sob story than that of Aden Ali.
Here is what Aden Ali told a reporter for the Buffalo News:

Aden Ali of Buffalo has a lot riding on the outcome of the presidential election. The Somali immigrant has a wife and two children in Kenya, awaiting clearance to join him here.

US-map-Somali refugees — Buffalo has received the third highest number of Somalis in the last year after Minneapolis, MN and Columbus, OH. http://mobile.wnd.com/2016/03/somali-refugee-influx-continues-unabated/

But Donald Trump says he wants to block Muslim refugees from entering the United States, and Ali, who is Muslim, worries about the possibility if Trump is elected president.

“If he wins the presidency, how are my wife and kids going to come to this country?” said Ali, who works as a machine operator at a local chocolate maker.

[….]

Ali arrived in the United States as a refugee 15 years ago and is now a naturalized citizen and eligible to vote.

The story of Mrs. Ali and the children back in Kenya is suspicious!

So, we are expected to believe that Ali left a wife 15 years ago and still can’t get her in to the US, as he is now a US citizen to boot? And, the “children” would have to be grown men/women in these 15 years.
Are we expected to believe that our US Refugee Admissions Program left a wife and children behind and admitted this single man—15 years ago—while the US State Department has admitted over 87,000 other Somalis in those 15 years? What, no room for Mrs. Ali and the little ones?
Or, is this a case where Ali traveled SAFELY back to East Africa and ‘found’ a wife in subsequent years? It is happening that, supposedly persecuted and in danger, ‘refugees’ travel back to their home country to find wives which of course begs the question—in how much danger were they in the first place?
And, there is one more possibility—maybe there is no Mrs. Ali in Kenya!
Do these left-leaning reporters ever bother to ask more questions when they find those they make the poster-immigrants for their stories?
Remember readers, it is all about the heart wrenching ‘stories’ for this breed of reporter—facts be damned!
For more on targeted Buffalo, click here.

Catholic Charities targeting Ithaca, NY for new refugee resettlement office

04/07/2016 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I suspect this is going on all across America now as Obama has put the pedal to the metal to get his 10,000 Syrian Sunni Muslims resettled on top of the 75,000 (more than in recent years) other refugees from around the world. The existing 180-190 contractor offices are probably all struggling to find housing for the huge flood expected by September 30th.

newyork_map — Refugees are already being placed in all of these cities, but they need fresh “welcoming” territory!

This article at Ithaca.com makes it all sound so nice, so welcoming, so easy.
What a joke that they will get these impoverished people on their feet in three months and it won’t cost local taxpayers a dime! Oh yeh! What about the kids in schools, what about health care, what about housing for poor and disabled Americans—this is all FREE! Who knew!
For all of you near Ithaca, please read my post from earlier in the week about what is happening in those other cities in New York state that are overloaded!
(Come to think of it, maybe the Catholic Church in Ithaca has an unused church that they can sell for a mosque!).
Calling Donald Trump! They are pouring the Middle Eastern and African refugees into New York in a big way— before you can get to the White House!
From Ithaca.com:

Catholic Charities of Tompkins and Tioga counties is applying to become a refugee resettlement agency.

That designation means the not-for-profit will get federal funding to help prescreened refugees from wartorn countries start their new lives in America. [Remember, we just learned that instead of 18-24 months of screening we are now down to 3 months for Syrians!—ed]

ithacabuilding — http://www.catholiccharitiestt.org/

Sue Chafee and Laurie Konwinski of Catholic Charities appeared before Common Council on Wednesday night to explain the program, which proposes to resettle up to 50 people during the 2017 fiscal year – beginning on October 1, 2016. [They will not stop at 50!!!—ed]

“We have a lot of say in who we’re going to select,” Chafee said. [No, she doesn’t. She doesn’t select!—ed] “There is an option to bring single people, but it’s easier to house families in Ithaca because you can pool the money going to each member of the family and cover rent for four or five months.” [If you are wondering what she means by pooling money, it is because they are paid by the head for each refugee, so a family of six or eight brings in a lot more money than a single refugee. And CC gets to pocket some of it.—ed]

The countries of origin which Catholic Charities expects to focus on locally include Syria, as well as the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Bhutan, along with anyone en queue from communities already well established in the Ithaca area, like the Burmese.

Who might be available in the area as translators is an important consideration, Konwinski said. For example, since Syracuse has large Sudanese and Somali communities, refugees from those countries tend to go to where their home folks already are.

Officially, federal monies would be for three months of services provided by Catholic Charities to new Americans. [And, what are the odds that they will be supporting themselves in 3 months—zero!—ed]

Here is the contact information for the Ithaca Common Council if you are concerned about this proposal.
And, see our ‘Ten things your town needs to know’ by clicking here.
You should all be on your toes wherever you live watching for stories like this one! If you hope to have any say in what they are doing, you must get into the fray now!

You have every right to question what Washington has planned for your city or town!

One more thing….I saw news that there is a push on to get refugees seeded in White Plains, NY, but haven’t had a chance to write about it.