Tag: San Diego

San Diego Somalis thinking about going “home” to Somalia!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment
Obama meets with Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud at the White House in January.

A few weeks ago we reported that the new Somali President (Hassan Sheikh Mohamud) had come to the US, stopped in with Obama and later Hillary Clinton before going on to Minneapolis where he exhorted his fellow Somalis of the “diaspora” to come on back to Africa.

Now, here is a story that Somalis in the City Heights section of San Diego, where there is (incidentally) a Somali terror-funding trial going on, are contemplating a return.  And, not only that, but they have been back and forth already.

So this is my fundamental question, if Somalis are traveling safely back and forth to Mogadishu, why are we still bringing in Somalis by the thousands to the US?

Here are the stats for this fiscal year (2013) that began on October 1, 2012.  In those four months, we have brought in 2,260 “refugees” from Somalia at a time when the country is considered safe enough for American Somalis to fly back and forth.  By the way, in all of Fiscal Year 2011 (when Al-shabaab was at its height) we brought 3,161 Somalis (all year!), so if we continue the pace of the previous 4 months of this fiscal year (when Somalia is safer) we will bring over 6,000!  Does that make any sense?

We will pay “church” contractors to resettle them, feed and house them, and educate the kids through college (disrupt communities!).

Wouldn’t it be cheaper to leave them in Africa and help them get Somalia functioning?

Also, remember that countries like Denmark are contemplating refusing Somali asylum seekers because they say Somalia is no longer a complete hell hole, here.

Here is the story from KPBS in San Diego:

The United States officially recognized the Somali government last month for the first time since 1991, alerting Somali refugees in City Heights and throughout the world their homeland is making a comeback.

Somalia has been called “the world’s most failed state,” enduring deadly famines and more than two decades of civil war with al Shabaab militants linked to al Qaeda.

The nation is rebuilding under a newly elected president, who recently urged refugees at a speech in Minnesota, home to the nation’s largest population of Somali refugees, to return to Somalia to help.

But will Somalis who have spent more than 20 years away – some even beginning life outside of their family’s homeland – make the move to Africa?

“The conversation, it’s already among the community,” said Mohamed Ahmed, a 23-year-old Somali living in City Heights. “People have already been back. People are planning to go back. And some people are a bit skeptical about going back and they’re not really comfortable about the situation back home.”

Ahmed left Somalia with his family when he was two months old and came to the U.S. at age of 4. He’s about to graduate from San Diego State University, alongside other East Africans who arrived in America in the 1990s.

He says the timing for a revived Somali state couldn’t be better. Many members of the Somali diaspora are poised to graduate from American and European universities, if they haven’t already.

Ahmed said Somalis who grew up in Europe are returning to work in their native country – at a rate of about 1,000 per month, according to some reports. Flights in and out of Mogadishu have multiplied. Rent has climbed. Last year, young Somali professionals hosted a TEDxMogadishu talk.

Nah!  Not so fast!  Few will go “home.”

Abdi Mohamoud, executive director of Horn of Africa, a San Diego nonprofit that provides support for local East African refugees, said Ahmed’s drive is common among children of refugees.

“With the tragedy of having so many refugees flee from Somalia, the advantage has become that many of those refugees went to other developed countries and many of them were able to get very high-quality educations,” Mohamoud said. “They’re very eager to try to improve the devastation that their parents have fled.”

But Mohamoud said he’s not convinced many young Somalis will actually make the move to Africa.

Mohamoud went on to say that he predicted 95% would stay in the US.

Remittances!  Another word for the “redistribution” of wealth!

The KPBS report also notes this extra cost to the US economy—the same one we reported here regarding El Salvador!

And Somalia’s economy has a long way to go. Currently, remittances from Somali families in City Heights and throughout the world account for about half the nation’s gross domestic product.

Fresh “refugee” produced food is not cheap food

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

…for the taxpayer.

Your tax dollars at work!

I’ve written about this topic before (here is just one post), but since we have new readers all the time, they might not know that their tax dollars are funding “community” gardens as part of the “sustainable” agricultural movement in the US.

I don’t think there is anyone who doesn’t like the idea of small producers having community markets in which to sell the fruits (and vegetables) of their labors.    And, before critics pounce, I know darn well that big agri-business is funded with tax dollars and I don’t like that either!   I simply wish to help you be more informed.

For your education then, know that the Office of Refugee Resettlement is awarding grants for community gardening projects and they have (with the help of the International Rescue Committee) figured out how to make it possible for food stamps and other welfare sources of funding to be used at community markets.

Here is the article from East County Magazine (CA) that got my attention (emphasis mine):

January 30, 2013 (El Cajon*) – Last week, Troy McKinney, Fresh Fund coordinator from the International Rescue committee (IRC), participated in an exclusive interview with East County Magazine. He gave more details of the future farmers’ market that will be set up on the Prescott Promenade in downtown El Cajon each Thursday starting March 21.

Like the IRC’s farmer’s market started four years ago in City Heights, the El Cajon farmer’s market will help both local refugees and the broader community.

The market has been getting encouragement and support from the City of El Cajon as well as local merchants enthused about bringing more people into the area, McKinney said. “This will be great asset to the downtown area.”

“We noticed the great benefits to the community,” McKinney said.  The Fresh Fund program provides incentivizes low-income families to shop at the market (i.e. those with SNAP- Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as FoodStamps, WIC (Women Infants Children), or SSI (Supplemental Security Income)). When participants come and spend $15 at the farmer’s market, they can then receive an extra $15. A percentage of stall fees at the farmer’s market will go back into the ‘Fresh Fund’ to incentivize more people to participate and shop there.

Say what?  If they spend $15 of their food stamp benefits, they receive $15 (in cash?).  Isn’t that trafficking in food stamps?  And, who is giving them the extra $15?

Anyone can come to the market. The food “is all San Diego grown; we want to keep it as local as possible. There may be some farmers that aren’t East County, but are San Diego grown.”

At the IRC, the food security department works with refugees in farmer training programs, such as aquaponics classes.  Some of these IRC clients will be selling their foods at the farmers’ market, generating much-needed revenues for the refugees and their families.

“We’re still in the process of community backyard growers to sell. It’s great for the youth and community to get healthy, fresh food,” McKinney said. “We want the market to be very inclusive from certified organic to backyard growers.” You can even get a hot meal there too.”

There are many health benefits to the market, including “access to the highest quality of fruits and vegetables you can buy from San Diego,” said McKinney, adding, “There will be more energy growing downtown. This is directly supporting our farmers and local economy. They can hire more people. We can grow our economy from the ground up.”

This is how the IRC describes its Fresh Fund program, here.

Fresh Fund is a farmers’ market incentive program that leverages the purchasing power of SNAP and WIC dollars to support local farmers and increase access to healthy, fresh foods to under-served communities.

Residents enrolled in CalFresh/SNAP (the food stamp program), Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), or Supplemental Security Income (SSI/Disability) may sign up for Fresh Fund at participating farmers’ markets that are EBT-accessible.

See their webpage and the offer of $15 if shoppers use their welfare benefits at the market.    I have to say, after writing about food stamp trafficking for five years now, I see enormous potential for fraud at these largely unregulated local “farmer’s” markets.

The Founding Fathers should be rolling in their graves to see the government using taxpayer money to help out-compete the local Mom and Pop small farmer who isn’t on the dole.

Before I get to the IRC’s litany of fabulous results for their Fresh Funds, be sure to have a look at the Office of Refugee Resettlement Agricultural Refugee Partnership GRANT program that lists all the federal GRANT MONEY available to federal refugee contractors (like the IRC) to set up garden projects so that refugees can grow the food that is sold in these taxpayer-subsidized markets.  The growing and the selling are both subsidized with your tax dollars (federal, state and local).

So what do we get out of this—the redistribution of your money in one big circle?

We pay the refugee growers who then sell their produce to those with food stamps and the welfare users get extra money from you as an incentive to use their food stamps.

Here is what the IRC says are the benefits of Fresh Funds (welfare benefits used at farmers’ markets in Cali):

Program outcomes have been staggering—particularly at the City Heights Farmers’ Market—when compared to farmers’ markets on the national stage. The following national statistics are taken from the Agricultural Marketing Service 2006 Farmers’ Market Vendor Survey.

~Annual income for the CHFM was more than double the national average for farmers’ markets. (National average $243,000; CHFM $522,291).
~SNAP sales at the CHFM are more than 20 times the national average (National $279/mo.; CHFM $6,092/mo).
~The race/ethnicity of farmers’ market vendors at the national level is 89% white and 11% non-white; farmers at CHFM are 3% white and 97% non-white. [and why is this an important stat?–ed]

These numbers are particularly poignant when reflected upon individual vendors.  Average farm vendor revenue at the CHFM was $47,000 in 2011.  Fewer than 6% of vendors at the national level gross between $25K and $100K annually.  Further, the top selling farmer at the CHFM grossed more than $122K in 2011.  Fewer than 1% of farmers’ market vendors nationally gross over $100,000 per year.  The same farm also created 8 new jobs as a result of their market sales, pointing to the broad impacts such programs can have on individual businesses and the broader economy.

Just for fun, have a look at the IRC’s most recent Form 990, here.  They are a $431 million a year operation and taxpayers give them $247 million of that (p. 9).  They say they are trying to raise private funds for the Fresh Fund,  but they are definitely in a strong position to help their people (refugees) out-compete a non-subsidized small farmer if their ‘private’ (foundation?) dollars don’t materialize.

* El Cajon, where this story originates, is a refugee-overloaded city.  Here is our archive of posts on the troubles they have.

All eyes on the Imam as Somali terror funding trial gets underway in San Diego

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update on the trial (February 20th) here.

From UT San Diego (emphasis mine):

SAN DIEGO — Scores of recorded phone calls show that four Somali immigrants conspired in 2008 to raise money and send it to their homeland to assist the terrorist group al-Shabaab, a federal prosecutor said at the opening Wednesday of a terrorism trial in San Diego.

But defense lawyers for the four men countered that those phone calls, as well as other evidence, has been misconstrued and taken out of context by prosecutors, and that the funds sent were for humanitarian — not terrorist — purposes.

The trial, expected to last three weeks, covers events from January to August 2008, when about $8,500 of cash was sent from San Diego to Somalia. The four defendants are charged with conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists and to a foreign terrorist organization — in this instance, the Somali-based group al-Shabaab. They are also charged with money laundering.

The U.S. government designated Al-Shabaab a terrorist organization in 2008. Its members have been connected to bombings, assassinations, and attacks on civilians, officials with various governments in the unstable country, and peacekeeping forces. It’s also been linked to al-Qaeda.

The defendants come from widely different backgrounds. Basally Saeed Moalin was a cabdriver in San Diego before his arrest in 2010. Assistant U.S. Attorney Caroline Han told jurors he was the main connection with the fighters in Somalia and orchestrated the fundraising in San Diego.

Mohamed Mohamed Mohamud was the popular imam of the al-Ansar mosque in City Heights, in the heart of the San Diego’s immigrant Somali community. Issa Doreh worked at the Shidaal Express, a hawala, or money-transfer business. The fourth defendant, Ahmed Nasir Taalil Mohamud, was a cabdriver in Anaheim who met Moalin when both drove taxis in St. Louis.

The prosecution has been closely followed by San Diego’s Somali immigrants. At every hearing in the run-up to the trial, dozens of supporters from the Somali community have filled the courtroom of U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Miller.

In a rare move Wednesday, the court opened an adjacent courtroom for the overflow crowd, piping in an audio feed of the proceedings…

[…..]

“People are following it a lot and are very interested in what is going to happen,” said Hussein Nuur, director of economic development for the Horn of Africa community group in City Heights.

Nuur said much of the talk focuses on Mohamud, the imam and spiritual leader for the mosque. Skepticism of the government’s case runs high, he said.

Type ‘San Diego’ into our search function for more on the activities of San Diego’s large Somali immigrant community.

For new readers we have resettled more than 100,000 Somali refugees to cities large and small in the US over the last 25 years.  See one of the most widely read posts here at RRW.  In three years since 9/11 ( Bush years 2004, 2005, 2006) the number of Somalis arriving topped 10,000 per year.  Those refugees then began bringing in the family (chain migration!) until 2008 when shock of shocks! the State Department discovered that as many as 30,000 Somalis had lied about their kinship and weren’t related at all.  The State Department then closed the “family reunification” program for Somalis.  It has recently been re-opened for new and legit family members, but they have no intention of finding and deporting the liars.   However, we learned recently that we are deporting criminal Somalis—airlifts to Mogadishu anyone!

Terror funding trial beginning for San Diego Somalis

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

No sooner do I tell you about the touchy-feely politically correct novel about Somalis in Maine, then I see the news that yet another terrorist funding trial is opening in San Diego.  Four men, including a mosque leader, are charged with sending money to the Al-Qaeda franchise in the Horn of Africa—-al Shabaab.

Just last month, here, we learned that a San Diego Somali woman got 8 years in the slammer for the same thing.  Taxpayers get to pay for their resettlement and then their prison terms.

Coincidentally, I  learned tonight that lucky San Diego was the first US resettlement city for Somalis in the early 1990’s.  (I’ll tell you about that tomorrow).

Somalis are busy standing trial—we reported on the Somali Christmas tree bomber case here a few days ago!

This is the latest news, emphasis mine, from UT San Diego.  (hat tip: Shariah Finance Watch)

SAN DIEGO — The San Diego trial of four Somali men charged with sending money and support to the terrorist group al-Shabaab is scheduled to begin in federal court this month.

A federal grand jury indicted the men in 2010 on charges of conspiracy, providing material support to terrorists, providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization and money laundering.

They have all pleaded not guilty. The men are accused of funneling about $8,000 raised in San Diego’s Somali immigrant community to al-Shabaab fighters in 2008.

At a hearing last week before U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Miller on pretrial motions, the four defendants sat quietly in the jury box. A group of supporters filled the seats in the courtroom’s gallery — men sitting on one side and women on the other.

The defendants are Basaaly Saeed Moalin, a cabdriver; Mohamed Mohamed Mohamud, the imam of a City Heights mosque; Issa Doreh, former president of a nonprofit group aiding the Somali community; and Ahmed Nasir Taalil Mohamud of Anaheim.

Who are these lawyers?  Inquiring minds would like to know!

Interest in the case is high within the immigrant community in San Diego and nationally. The men are being represented by lawyers from around the country who were recruited by a legal foundation that since 2001 has raised money to represent Muslims accused of crimes in federal and state courts.

There is more, read it all.  And, this is funny, lawyers for the defendants want to keep mention of al-Qaeda out of the trial so as not to remind jurors that violence and death are associated with Jihadists.

For new readers we have resettled more than 100,000 Somali refugees to cities large and small in the US over the last 25 years.  See one of the most widely read posts here at RRW.  In three years since 9/11 ( Bush years 2004, 2005, 2006) the number of Somalis arriving topped 10,000 per year.  Those refugees then began bringing in the family (chain migration!) until 2008 when shock of shocks! the State Department discovered that as many as 30,000 Somalis had lied about their kinship and weren’t related at all.  The State Department then closed the “family reunification” program for Somalis.  It has recently been re-opened for new and legit family members, but they have no intention of finding and deporting the liars.

San Diego: Somali woman sentenced to 8 years for helping terror group

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

And, that is not all!  She is laughingly predicting another (and more deadly) 9/11 to happen to the country that took her in as a poor and suffering refugee.

I saw several accounts of this short story (even one in the Washington Post), but no publication except the LA Times (blog!) kept that little nugget of news in its story.

Here it is:

A 25-year-old Somali woman living in San Diego was sentenced Tuesday to eight years in prison after pleading guilty to sending money to a suspected terrorist group in her native country.

Nima Yusuf admitted in San Diego federal court that she sent $1,450 to men in Somalia who were fighting on behalf of al-Shabaab, considered a terrorist group by the U.S. government. She also admitted trying to recruit a local man to go to Somalia to fight for al-Shabaab.

According to FBI wiretaps, Yusuf was pleased when told in a phone call by another Somali that al-
Shabaab had killed Burundian peacekeeping troops. She allegedly responded: “Oh my God! God is great! Wonderful! I swear to God, you told me something to be happy about.”

In another conversation, Yusuf laughingly said she hoped another terrorist strike like the Sept. 11 attack occurs in America: “Oh! It will be happening again. Trust me, more this time it will be double, triple their deaths.”

I guess a good education, a job, free health care, food stamps, two kids and a house weren’t what she was looking for from “welcoming” America.