Somalis say Australia not taking African refugees

06/19/2013 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

To add to Australia’s already deep troubles over thousands of Muslim asylum seekers arriving in boats, now Somalis are saying they have to go illegally to Australia because they aren’t being considered for refugee status there due to their skin color.

If you are a regular reader here you know Australia is in turmoil over the asylum issue. But, one thing that Australia and Canada have in common that we don’t have in the US is that the conflicts and public debate over refugee/asylum issues are out in the open in the mainstream media. When is the last time you heard any public debate on how many refugees we should be taking and from where in the likes of the Washington Post or the New York Times, or even Fox News?

Come to think of it, that story in the LA Times about the US taking Syrians may be one of the most forthright articles I’ve seen in the US press which normally stays mum when there is opposition to resettlement.

Here are two mentions of the latest headache for the Australian government. Somalis say they are going illegally to Australia because Australia won’t let Africans in through the front door.

From Radio Australia:

Somali refugees waiting in Indonesia, say they’re being forced to take dangerous boat voyages because Australia is refusing to resettle Africans.

The refugees say they have been told by the United Nations refugee agency, in Jakarta, that there’s no point applying to be resettled in Australia.

They wonder whether they’re being rejected automatically from Australia’s humanitarian program because of their skin colour.

Then here is The Australian (you will have to sign-in for the whole story):

PEOPLE-SMUGGLERS in Kenya and Somalia are telling Somalis seeking asylum they can easily get them to Australia through Malaysia and Indonesia. Australian Somali Association president Abdullahi Farah said he had been expecting an influx of Somalis arriving by boat as the message of an Australian option grew.

It comes as a woman was found dead on an asylum-seeker boat carrying about 60 Africans and people from the Middle East after it was stopped by HMAS Warramunga east-northeast of Christmas Island on Saturday.

Meanwhile little Collie in Western Australia was not consulted before being informed that asylum seeking families would soon come to live there. But, they say they will be “welcoming” to the “seed” community nonetheless. (The seed reference comes from Welcoming America, here, where refugees are seeds and your community is the soil in which they grow!).

Collie Mail:

LOCAL community leaders have expressed disappointment at a lack of consultation surrounding the relocation of asylum seekers to Collie.

The Collie Mail last week reported that nine families seeking asylum would be relocated to Collie later this month.

Collie Shire president Wayne Sanford said council found out about the plan through the press.

“There was no briefing to councillors before the decision to consider Collie was made,” he said.

Cr Sanford said he was disappointed the Department of Immigration did not consult with the local government body from a planning perspective.

“Collie is a very inclusive and welcoming community and I am sure the community will welcome these people and make sure they are provided with a safe and positive environment and support where and when needed,” he said.

So, for all readers who imagine you can escape to Australia, forget it!

Somali killing in St. Louis: Move along, nothing to see says Omar Jamal

06/17/2013 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Last week a former Somali refugee, owner of a home health care business, killed three of his employees and himself in a multi-culty neighborhood because he was mentally distraught over a divorce we are told by the ‘Somali Jesse Jackson’ Omar Jamal. The divorce happened years earlier in Texas and the shooter, Ahmed Dirir, had since remarried, but Jamal expects us to believe this was all about a nutty guy in need of mental health treatment. No sense looking any further.

Omar Jamal representing the new Somali government at the United Nations

Gee where have we heard that before?

Remember when the Canadian Somali died in Denver just before the Democrat National Convention in 2008. You don’t remember? of course not! The media was very quickly silenced when Jamal came on the scene. The Canadian Somali died in a hotel room near the convention venue with enough cyanide to kill scores of people. After talking to family in Canada, guess who told the media the dead man was just a nut in need of mental health services?

And, the media moved on!

Movin’ on up Somali style!

We were first introduced to Jamal in 2007 when he insisted a Somali man caught on a surveillance camera raping a woman was innocent. We learned not long afterward that Jamal was convicted of immigration fraud in Tennessee (original court link has since been removed) in 2003 but never deported (we didn’t deport to Somalia at that time, we do now). Since then Jamal has been involved in the Somali missing youths case in Minneapolis (he was there when our FBI brought back to America the bits of the first American Somali suicide bomber for a proper burial).

He was there when the youthful Somali pirate was brought to NYC to stand trial. Jamal was talking with the family and the media then too.

Remember the Somali Christmas tree bomber—yup! Jamal was there pronouncing him just a gullible kid who was innocent.

And, he put in his two-cents worth when the Somali sex trafficking trial was getting underway in Tennessee.

Just type ‘Omar Jamal’ into our search function for more such news opportunities Jamal has found over the years.

Now Jamal is with the Somali mission at the United Nations, but he is still busy diverting the media from further investigation into questionable and criminal activities of Somalis.

Here is the story in which the AP reporter appears to have swallowed Jamal’s just-a-man-distraught-over-divorce story.

The St. Louis businessman who killed three employees before turning the gun on himself was a Somali immigrant, described by friends as an intelligent man who was quick to reach out to other new-arriving Somalis, but who had lingering anger years after the divorce from his first wife. [Men angry with former wives usually kill the wife, not his innocent employees.—ed]

Police say 59-year-old Ahmed Dirir walked into his business, AK Home Health Care LLC, on Thursday afternoon, got into a brief argument, and then shot his three employees. Killed were 44-year-old Khadra Muse of Olivette, Mo., 29-year-old Seaeed Abdulla of St. Louis, and 54-year-old Bernice Solomon-Redd of East St. Louis, Ill.

Dirir, Muse and Abdulla were all from Somalia, said Omar Jamal of the Somali mission to the U.N. Jamal, who often gets involved in issues of high interest involving Somalis in the U.S., said he spoke with several friends and relatives of Dirir and the victims, including the wives of Dirir and Abdulla.

The home health agency was headquartered in a small business incubator building in a former movie theater on Cherokee Street, a revitalizing mixed-race neighborhood about five miles south of downtown St. Louis.

Jamal: If only he had the mental health treatment he needed!

Police haven’t disclosed a motive, but Jamal said the relatives and friends of Dirir he spoke with described a marked change in his demeanor after he and his wife divorced in Texas years earlier. It wasn’t clear when the divorce was finalized, though friends said Dirir had remarried.

“It is sad he didn’t get attention that could have prevented all of this from happening,” Jamal said.

It’s sad that we have admitted so many insane refugees into the US too!

It just occurred to me, maybe US authorities gave Jamal a pass and let him stay in the US in exchange for his role in reporting to the authorities and stopping prying eyes (reporters) every time some fellow Somali got in trouble.

Columbus, Ohio Somalis are going home to Somalia to rebuild their country….

06/13/2013 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

…..while we continue to bring more in to the US.

It’s only 54 leaving, so far, but its a step in the right direction. Here is the story from NPR News:

Work ahead in the homeland! Mogadishu was destroyed by Al-Shabaab Islamists. 2012 photo from Wodu Media

Thousands of Somalis came to Columbus during the past 20 years to escape civil war. Columbus soon had the second largest Somali community in the United States. The immigrants set up businesses, enrolled in schools and made new lives for themselves.

But now some are returning home. A small group of Somalis are going back with hopes of rebuilding the devastated African nation.

[…..]

Before the war, Mogadishu was a city of two and half million people with glistening beaches on the east Coast of Africa. Twenty two years of civil war has destroyed many of the city’s buildings and left others pock-marked by bullets. The beaches are polluted and have been used as launch points for Somali pirates.

Despite the trouble, 34-year-old Ahmed Adan moved back to Mogadishu from Columbus in January. He works with the new government. During a telephone conversation from Mogadishu he says while sporadic fighting still occurs, the time of civil war is over. On most days, he says, “life goes normal.”

“There is a lot of people coming back and I have been actually actively talking to people in Columbus, in Minnesota and other parts of the United States to people that I know,” Adan says.

Adan says he returned to Somalia because he wants to help his homeland out of a crisis. He says Mogadishu is changing from something that was almost a “ghost town” to someplace that is actually livable.

[…..]

The head of the Somali Community Association on Cleveland Avenue says 54 people from Columbus have returned to Mogadishu. At the Franklin County Council on Aging, caseworker Loodar Dafur, sees a slight drop in demand recently for elderly services among Somalis.

[…..]

Basra Mohamed is a Somali language radio host for a community station in Columbus. Her weekly programs are heard not only here but in other U.S. cities with large Somali populations. She says the pull toward Somalia is felt wherever refugees have fled.

“Not just Columbus, but people are going from Minneapolis, going from Portland, Maine, going from all the other, not just one place, even in Europe, people are going back to Somalia.” We lost a lot, we lost so much and going back means gaining some normality and getting sense of normality and finding yourself, I think,” Says Mohamed.

What’s wrong with this picture?

So tell me why the US State Department has admitted 4,921 Somalis to the US in the first 8 months of this fiscal year! American tax payers are paying a “church” contractor to resettle those “refugees” in your town and we will pay for food, housing, medical care and education for the kids while earlier “refugees” return to their homeland!

It would be cheaper and less disruptive (remember the housing riot in Columbus in December?) to give the supposed new batch of “refugees” a stipend and send them to Mogadishu!

Packing up and going home to Somalia!

06/07/2013 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Going home to hopefully rebuild Somalia!

Already 80,000 have left camps in Kenya and are returning to Somalia. So would someone tell the US State Department that they can stop the pipeline to America now!

From Capital News (hat tip: Joanne):

NAIROBI, Kenya, Jun 6 – Kenya and Somalia have signed an agreement for the voluntary repatriation of about half a million Somali refugees living in Kenya.

The First Secretary at the Embassy of Somalia in Nairobi, Ali Mohammed Sheikh, said that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees would facilitate the homecoming of thousands who had fled war and hunger in their country.

He however asked for international solidarity saying it was an enormous task. “This is a procedure and you know before taking people back to their place there are other humanitarian factors to consider,” he expressed. “The enormous task requires international solidarity and burden sharing.”

Sheikh revealed that the latest count at the Dadaab refugee camp – the world’s largest – showed a reduction of 80,000 refugees who had gone back to Somalia.

As of May 31st we have resettled just short of 5,000 Somalis to America this fiscal year! Why?

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.

Since 5,000 Somalis have arrived in this fiscal year already, that means (number wise) we are well on our way to rival the Bush years mentioned above.

Minneapolis council race reveals anti-gay tensions in Somali refugee ‘community’

06/04/2013 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

From Minneapolis Public Radio:

MINNEAPOLIS — The political awakening of Minnesota’s Somali community poses a conundrum for the DFL party. While Somali-Americans overwhelmingly vote Democratic, many appear to disagree with the party when it comes to gay rights.

That tension was on display Sunday, as the party considered a dispute between a Somali city council candidate and the openly gay incumbent he’s running against.

At the meeting, the party’s Constitution, Bylaws and Rules Committee upheld the party’s endorsement of Abdi Warsame, who’s running for a seat on the Minneapolis City Council.

That seat is currently held by Robert Lilligren, who’s been on the council nearly a dozen years. But Lilligren lost the DFL endorsement this year to Warsame after hundreds of Somali-Americans turned out at precinct caucuses in April, and came back to the party’s convention, giving Warsame overwhelming support. [We told you about the convention here.—-ed]

[….]

All 13 City Council wards in Minneapolis were redrawn last year as part of the post-census redistricting, and Lilligren’s ward changed substantially. Somali activists, led by Warsame, lobbied to have the borders moved so that as many East African voters as possible could be concentrated there.