Springfield, MA Somali says resettlement agencies don’t follow through

08/27/2013 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This is a complaint that is at the root of how RRW got started in the first place. Friends and I noticed that refugees brought to Hagerstown in Western Maryland were being placed in sub-standard housing in crime-ridden neighborhoods and one local teacher said that other teachers felt compelled to find them coats for cold weather and sufficient bedding.

Calls to the resettlement agency went unanswered and consequently one sick refugee woman sent a child (who did not speak English) out to knock on doors to find help (that really blew up the situation). Word spreads fast in a small community prompting the inevitable questions: Why are they here? Who brought them? And, why isn’t that group taking proper care of them?

Coincidentally, just the other day I came across this report from Thomas Allen writing at the Social Contract about some of what happened in Hagerstown that led up to the closure of the resettlement program in my county seat in 2007 (in the wake of a public meeting!).

Ibrahim, translator Bedel Omar and Mayor Domenic Sarno at press conference Monday. Photo: David Roback / The Republican

Here is the latest from Springfield, MA where Mayor Domenic Sarno has called for a moratorium on further resettlement and plans a community meeting for tomorrow night. From WGGB/ABC40 (hat tip: Joanne):

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (WGGB) — Springfield mayor Domenic Sarno finds an ally in his fight to reform the refugee program.

The ally is a refugee himself.

Abdulahi Ibrahim came to Springfield from Somalia.

He says Lutheran Services helped him settle here.

But speaking through an interpreter from the East Africa Cultural Center,*** Ibrahim says there was a number of areas where he felt isolated after he got here.

One in coming to a climate he’s never seen,”We have seen a new climate, cold, snow, which we have not seen in our lives,” says Ibrahim.

Ibrahim says he even felt alone when it was time to daily chores like shopping,”We don’t know where to shop, what to shop, we don’t know the language, what we are going to buy,” says Ibrahim.

Mayor Sarno says Ibrahim came to him, thanking the mayor for bringing up many of these same issues when the mayor said he was calling for a moratorium on refugees coming into the city,”We asked them about cold weather months, whether coats are provided , they’re saying no education, transportation, social followup, health followup, they’re not there,” says Sarno.

The mayor says there needs to be accountability from the social service agencies who are bringing refugees to Springfield,”It really highlights what my people have brought to me of their non-followup,” says Sarno.

The refugee problems that have come up will be brought forward on Wednesday when Mayor Sarno meets with social service agencies.

The mayor reiterates his decision to call for a moratorium on refugees coming into the city in Springfield.

Be sure to watch the news clip.

The Somali man is an older man. He surely gets SSI and other welfare help, and probably has no prospect of working. Indeed remember that Massachusetts is one of the top states in the Nation where welfare pays better than working for a minimum wage. The Wall Street Journal, reporting on a study from CATO last week, says that in Massachusetts’ welfare for a family is worth $42,515 per family (a figure which does not include the cost of educating the kids).

Editor’s note: Just as I’m writing this post I see there is a much more detailed report at The Republican about Sarno’s surprise press conference here. Ibrahim does have a wife and FIVE children, so he would be getting a boatload of goodies from the taxpayer.

The answer is NOT more taxpayer money for refugees and their resettlement contractors.

The logical answer to the resettlement agencies—mostly the Lutherans and Jews in Springfield—is to not bring more refugees to a town than they can do a quality job caring for. But, here is the catch, they are paid by the head (through the US State Department and then with more grants from the Dept. of Health and Human Services) to resettle refugees. So if they bring fewer numbers, their income drops. The original refugee law from 1980 envisioned that the non-profits would put in substantial funding themselves, but that isn’t happening.

If you are planning to attend the meeting in Springfield tomorrow evening, please have a look at our fact sheet for some help in coming up with questions!

Photo of Bedel Omar at the website of the East Africa Cultural Center. Same man?

The ECBO!

***Good luck finding out much about the East Africa Cultural Center in Springfield. This is about all I see (click here). This 2011 article says Bedel Omar was running something called the Somali Development Center which must have been transformed into the East Africa Cultural Center.

We’ve seen a lot of these ECBOs (Ethnic Community Based Organizations) which started as Somali-community organizing outfits broaden their mission and I’m guessing someone told them if they want to get federal $$$ to run their organization it needs to be broader than just for Somalis.

Here are the federal grants from ORR to ECBOs for 2012 (if you don’t believe me that our tax dollars are going to essentially encourage, not assimilation, but further ethnic division in resettlement cities.)

I haven’t written much about ECBOs lately, new readers can visit our entire category on the topic by clicking here. Basically they are mini-ACORNS helping their people get the “services” they are entitled to and then the organization serves as a conduit for political activity, voter registration etc.

Pennsylvania: Somali baby feared murdered by man allegedly on terror watch list

08/09/2013 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Diversity is beautiful alert!

‘Paki’ arrested in the disappearance of Somali baby in bucolic Pennsylvania where the likes of Church World Service is changing America.

Here is another Somali in Pennsylvania story (see Erie earlier today) this time one with an apparently sad ending. A Pakistani man is under arrest for kidnapping his Somali girl friend’s baby. Authorities near York, PA are searching for the 7-month-old, but are not hopeful of finding him alive.

Here is how the article in the Philadelphia Inquirer begins, but please read the whole sorry tale. (Hat tip: pungentpeppers)

A PAKISTANI NATIVE who a source said is on the FBI’s terrorist-watch list kidnapped his girlfriend’s baby from an Upper Darby home Sunday and may have killed the 7-month-old and buried his lifeless body along a rural roadside in York, police said.

Ummad Rushdi, 30, has been charged with kidnapping and related offenses after he was arrested early yesterday at his home in York. The baby, Hamza Ali, was last seen alive Saturday night and hasn’t been found, said Upper Darby Police Superintendent Michael Chitwood.

“Our hope is that the child is alive, but the reality of the investigation thus far . . . is that the baby is probably dead,” Chitwood said.

The baby’s mother, Zainab Gaal, 20, who was born in Somalia and raised in Yemen, began dating Rushdi just three or four weeks ago, police said. Gaal and her son were already living with Rushdi and his brother at their home in York, police said. Authorities didn’t immediately know when Gaal came to the United States, and did not know the whereabouts or identity of her child’s father.

For more information on the Somali woman, the police and reporters should check with the US State Department and the Refugee Resettlement contractors operating in Pennsylvania. Off the top of my head, the major contractors in PA include Church World Service, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (yes, they resettle Muslims too), US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, and the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service. One of them will surely know where to reach this woman’s baby’s father or her extended family. Almost all Somalis in the US came in through Refugee Resettlement or the chain migration related to it.

****update**** We hear that the young mother is from Lewiston, Maine. So, check with Catholic Charities (primary refugee contractor bringing Somalis to Maine) up there to see if they will help find her family.

Last week, the three adults and baby Hamza traveled to Upper Darby to stay with Rushdi’s parents at their well-kept stone rowhouse on Chestnut Street near Powell Lane, police said.

Several days before the kidnapping, Rushdi allegedly hurt the baby’s shoulder, Chitwood said. Gaal wanted to take Hamza to the hospital because she feared his shoulder may have been broken, but Rushdi and his parents wanted to “self-medicate” the boy, Chitwood said.

On Sunday morning, Gaal and Rushdi’s family awoke to find Rushdi and Hamza missing, police said. Rushdi’s brother began to relay calls between Rushdi and Gaal, saying that the baby was fine and that Rushdi would return him to Upper Darby, Chitwood said.

Read on for the rest of what the police think may have happened…..

For new readers, Pennsylvania is the 11th state in the list of states receiving the largest number of refugees with 14,365 having been sent there by the US State Department between 2007 and 2013. See where your state ranks by clicking here.

Erie, PA: Neighbors clean up yard for Somali refugee

08/09/2013 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Somali immigrant Faduma Abdulkadir Salah, 26, talks with neighbor George Buntz, Jr. Salah said she’s lived there for two years.
CHRISTOPHER MILLETTE//ERIE TIMES-NEWS

Americans are so nice.

But, here is what I want to know: This 26-year-old woman with an 11-month-old child has lived in the rental property for two years—WHERE IS HER HUSBAND? And, when you watch the film, who is that old unsmiling goat in the background? Isn’t it standard procedure that when one rents a house, one takes care of the yard?

It’s all the landlord’s fault!

The story is here at the Erie Times-News.

We’ve written about problems in “preferred community” Erie, PA before. Back in 2008 there was some question about mismanagement of funds at the primary resettlement contractor there. Here is another post on the strange doings at the International Institute office in Erie.

Erie was (and probably still is) one of the top ten small cities in the US with refugee overload problems, here.

Islamic terror recruitment in Minneapolis not over yet?

08/08/2013 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I posted yesterday about a new book on Somalia whose author contends the following, according to a reviewer at the Star Tribune:

Islamic terrorists using twitter to encourage refugees to find the “path to paradise!”

When I saw that I thought to myself: I think it’s over, it’s been pretty quiet on the Islamic terror recruitment front. I guess I was wrong because later in the day I came across this story about Al-Shabaab using twitter to recruit among the refugee population in Minnesota.

From CBS Minnesota:

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) – An international terror group is once again targeting young Somali men and women in the Twin Cities.

This time the group is using social media to get them to travel to Somalia to fight.

A propaganda arm of Al-Shabaab has been tweeting information about a video that will be released featuring the true stories of Minnesota Somalis who died fighting.

Two years ago, more than 20 men from Minneapolis left for Somali. According to community leader Abdirizak Bihi, the Somali community knew this new recruiting effort was coming.

They’ve seen this tactic before, Al-Shabaab praising the Minnesota teens who left to fight jihad, calling them martyrs, in order to get others to follow in their footsteps.

The “path to paradise” is how Al-Shabaab is trying to sell war to young people here in the Twin Cities.

[….]

The tweets glorify those who fight by saying, “True to the covenant some have sacrificed their blood for the sake of Allah and attained Martyrdom while others are still on the battlefield. They were like their peers deeply immersed into the Western society before Allah opened their eyes and instilled in them the spirit of Jihad.”

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. Large numbers went to Minneapolis, and now they are spreading out throughout the state. 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.

The first few years of our coverage of the Somali youths returning to Somalia for Jihad training is here (began in 2008). Thank those Minnesota Lutherans (Catholics and Evangelicals too) for bringing us the joys of multiculturalism!

Here is the latest shocker! Just when Somalia has a new government and is encouraging Somalis to return home, the US is on target to make 2013 rival those Bush years by bringing in thousands of Somali “refugees.” So far this year, as of July 31st, the US State Department has brought to your towns and cities 6,185 !!! Somalis. Check out all the numbers in FY 2013 by going here, then click on Refugee Admission Reports as of July 31.

The world’s most dangerous place is Somalia

08/07/2013 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

That is the conclusion of author James Fergusson in a new book aptly titled ‘The World’s most dangerous place.’

Interesting to us is this review by Steve Weinberg at The Star Tribune in which Weinberg draws attention to Fergusson’s research in the United States, in Little Mogadishu/Minneapolis. Emphasis below is mine.

Weinberg:

When James Fergusson, a journalist based in Edinburgh, Scotland, decided to write a book about a chaotic African nation, he initially had no clue that his research would require a visit to Minneapolis.

It turns out that one of the largest populations of Somalis outside their national borders is in the Twin Cities. Some of those residents are almost surely linked to violent organizations overseas and thus might constitute a terrorist threat, according to Fergusson. He was drawn to Minneapolis in large part by the presence of Omer Abdi Mohamed, a resident who had pleaded guilty to a U.S. government charge of conspiring to recruit warriors for possible illegal activities within and outside North America.

Beyond Omer’s case, Fergusson wondered why the Twin Cities had become the destination of between 75,000 to 100,000 Somalis, especially given the frigid weather — frigid, at least, compared with the parched heat in the Horn of Africa.

Enter those Lutherans again! Weinberg continues:

Here is part of the answer, in a fascinating paragraph written by Fergusson: Lutherans whose ancestors arrived from Scandinavia to settle Minnesota run social service agencies efficiently and generously. [With taxpayer money!—ed] “A number of voluntary Somali migrants, mostly professionals with ambitions to study or to set up businesses, had been drawn to the Twin Cities even before the [Somali] civil war by the abundance of jobs and social housing on offer, at a time when the local economy was conspicuously booming. Word soon spread of the good life in Minnesota, making the state the destination of choice when the main refugee exodus began in the early 1990s.” When Fergusson visited Minneapolis, he identified “the de facto parliament of the Somali community” as a Starbucks coffee shop just off Riverside Avenue.

While in the Twin Cities, Fergusson concluded that the large refugee population consists mostly of hardworking Somalis. But he demonstrates that the recruitment of suicide bombers has occurred in the Twin Cities, and that various gangs of Somali refugees have shattered the peace of the Twin Cities from time to time.

I do hope Fergusson went beyond the notion that Somalis ‘found their way to Minneapolis.’ We have extensively chronicled how Minneapolis and increasingly elsewhere in Minnesota has been targeted for refugee resettlement by the US State Department and resettlement contractors like the US Conference of Catholic Bishops/Catholic Charities and the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services/Lutheran Social Services which are PAID to resettle them in “welcoming” cities (not so welcoming cities too!).

Here is a 2011 post we wrote explaining in some detail how the contractors brought the Somalis to Minneapolis, most didn’t find their way there! Perhaps now they do, but when there is no serious and sustained squawking by the community as it reaches overload, the contractors just keep pouring in the refugees. This 2011 post is daily one of our most-read posts here at RRW.