Parents arrested in teen abuse case; father was an Iraqi interpreter for US

03/27/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

There are dozens of reports in publications around the world about the case of a missing San Antonio teen, Maarib al-Hishmawi, now found alive and well in the care of an unnamed organization that protected her.
She went into hiding because she didn’t want to go through with an arranged marriage (this is the United States!) and she reported she suffered physical abuse by her parents because of her refusal to essentially be sold to a man she didn’t know for $20,000. (Did I mention that this is the United States!).

Maarib screenshot — Photo from: http://english.alarabiya.net/en/variety/2018/03/26/Iraqi-girl-tortured-with-Hot-Oil-in-US-for-refusing-forced-marriage.html

I read several stories on the case and note that some, including the Washington Post, skirted the subject of just how this family came to live in the US in the first place.
At other reports, including here at the Daily Caller, we learn that Maarib’s father was an interpreter and thus is likely to have been admitted on a Special Immigrant Visa.
Faithful reader know that I have been writing about the huge number of Afghans and Iraqis (with extended families) which have been arriving in the US for the last ten years and the pace has actually been increasing, especially from Afghanistan, during the Trump Administration. (This family obviously arrived during the Obama Admin.)
See my recent posts on SIVs here and here.
Here is the Daily Caller, but if you simply search for ‘Maarib al-Hishmawi’ you will see the story has gone viral.

Authorities arrested a Muslim couple from Iraq March 23 in San Antonio, Texas, for beating and torturing their daughter after she refused a forced marriage.

Sixteen-year-old Maarib Al Hishmawi ran away from Taft High School at the end of January and remained missing until authorities announced they found her as of March 24, according to the San Antonio Express-News. When authorities finally located Maarib, she told them she fled because her parents beat her with broomsticks, poured hot cooking oil on her, and choked her “almost to the point of unconsciousness.” These actions were due to Maarib’s refusal of consent to a forced marriage with an older man.

Iraqi girl parents — Parents arrested last Friday

“This young lady … was subjected to some pretty bad abuse because she didn’t want to be married to this person,” Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar told The Washington Post.

Maarib’s parents, Abdulah Fahmi Al Hishmawi and Hamdiyah Sabah Al Hishmawi, arranged in mid-2017 to marry their daughter to an older man once he agreed to pay the family $20,000, investigators said.

[….]

Abdulah became increasingly agitated during the investigation, blaming a lack of police effort for his daughter’s continued disappearance and even suggested she was kidnapped and taken back to the Middle East. Authorities found Maarib, however, in mid-March in another city. They declined to name the group who sheltered her during that time.

[….]

Abdulah immigrated to the U.S. in 2016 from Iraq with his six children after having worked for the U.S. forces as an interpreter, he said. Maarib’s family held two year visas for the U.S. but did not go into detail about what kind of visas they were, Officials told San Antonio Express-News. [I don’t know what the reference to two years is, perhaps they have to renew it at that time. I’ll see if I can find out.—ed]

More here.
I should mention that SIV families come under the care of the usual gang of US State Department resettlement contractors and are treated as refugees. So, assuming they were resettled in San Antonio, resettlement agencies headquartered there would know them. I guess these parents missed the cultural orientation sessions they were supposedly given.
I expect to see women’s rights activists and the NOW gang out in force condemning arranged marriages!
Find resettlement agencies working where you live by clicking here. They can place refugees within a hundred miles of those offices.

GAO: Huge numbers of Special Immigrant Visa holders not finding work

03/23/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

But a big problem, says the Government Accountability Office , is that neither the US State Department or the Office of Refugee Resettlement in HHS are doing much to track the outcomes of those admitted to the US from Iraq and Afghanistan who supposedly worked for us as interpreters.

I told you here recently that the number admitted to the US from those two violent countries is pushing 70,000 in the last ten years.
As Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) holders they are treated as full-fledged refugees with all the welfare benefits other refugees receive.
We have been told that the resettlement contractors*** are relying on these paying clients to keep federal dollars flowing to their budgets as the refugee flow they hoped for is not materializing.
Some members of Congress must have requested this GAO study because problems are obviously brewing with this portion of our ‘welcome’ to Middle Eastern Muslims. I did not read the whole report, here, but it seems that there are some pretty disillusioned SIVs who thought they would have good jobs and decent housing when they got here.
Here are a few snips from the summary:
Not exactly a bombshell title:

AFGHAN AND IRAQI SPECIAL IMMIGRANTS: More Information on Their Resettlement Outcomes Would Be Beneficial

What GAO Found

Since fiscal year 2011, about [about?—ed] 13,000 Afghan and Iraqi nationals (excluding family members) have resettled in the United States under special immigrant visas (SIV), but limited data on their outcomes are available from the Department of State (State) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). State collects data on SIV holders’ resettlement outcomes once—90 days after they arrive. GAO’s analysis of State’s data from October 2010 through December 2016 showed that the majority of principal SIV holders—those who worked for the U.S. government—were unemployed at 90 days, including those reporting high levels of education and spoken English.

Screenshot (313) — Very high unemployment rate at 90 days. Why is 90 days important? That is when their resettlement contractor is done with them and has moved on to the next batch of paying clients (aka refugees). By 90 days the SIV is expected to be self-sufficient. BTW, don’t you wonder who the 1,760 “interpreters” without “good spoken English” are?

GAO continues…

Stakeholders [must be referring to the resettlement contractors—ed] GAO interviewed reported several resettlement challenges, including capacity issues in handling large numbers of SIV holders, difficulties finding skilled employment, and SIV holders’ high expectations.

Officials from local resettlement agencies in Northern Virginia reported capacity challenges for their agencies and the community due to the large increase of SIV holders. In almost all of GAO’s focus groups with principal SIV holders, participants expressed frustration at the need to take low-skilled jobs because they expected that their education and prior work experience would lead to skilled work. [You can bet they aren’t going to the slaughterhouse jobs where contractors like to place those in their care.—-ed]

State and HHS have taken steps to address some resettlement challenges. For example, in 2017 State placed restrictions on where SIV holders could resettle and HHS announced a new grant to support career development programs for SIV holders, refugees, and others.

In addition, State provides information to prospective SIV holders about resettlement. However, the information is general, and lacks detail on key issues such as housing affordability, employment, and available government assistance. Providing such specifics could lead to more informed decisions by SIV holders on where to resettle and help them more quickly adapt to potential challenges once in the United States. [I don’t think that GAO knows that the SIVs original resettlement location is not chosen by the refugees, but by the State Department in conjunction with contractors*** as they bid for bodies (aka paying clients).—ed]

In light of so many disillusioned and unemployed SIVs, I sure hope that someone is reporting that news to others in the pipeline on their way to America!

Why the discrepancy in the numbers?

I wondered if GAO is downplaying the numbers on purpose…. were they as shocked as we are to find these enormous numbers?
In the summary, GAO talks about 13,000 SIVs since 2011, excluding family members, but in the full report they describe the real numbers we have placed in your towns and cities.
And, rather than saying “over 60,000”, they could have said closer to 70,000! As I reported early this month, using data readily available at the State Department’s Refugee Processing Center (Wrapsnet), we admitted from FY2008-right up to my post on March 8th, the numbers as follows:

Iraq: 18,084

Afghanistan: 49,358

Total to March 8th: 67,442
When I went to the full report they say this (below) on Page 1, but once again use the word “about.” They do clarify one point: “about 20,000” are the people who worked for us or on behalf of us, the remaining, over 40,000! are their family members.

Afghan and Iraqi nationals who were employed by or on behalf of the U.S. government in Afghanistan or Iraq and have experienced ongoing serious threats as a consequence of such employment, or who worked directly with the U.S. Armed Forces or under chief of mission authority as a translator or interpreter, may apply for a special immigrant visa (SIV) to the United States.

Upon securing a visa, the principal SIV holder and his or her eligible dependents may resettle in the United States and are granted lawful permanent resident status upon admission into the United States. Since fiscal year 2008, over 60,000 individuals—about 20,000 principal SIV holders and their families—have been admitted under SIVs and received federal resettlement assistance upon arrival.

SIV holders are authorized to receive resettlement assistance from the Departments of State (State) and Health and Human Services (HHS), as well as federal public benefits, to the same extent and for the same periods of time as refugees.

***These are the nine federal contractors working with the US State Department to place the SIVs and their families. Although GAO seems to have been fixated on how poorly the State Department and ORR are keeping track of the SIVs and their progress toward assimilation, it seems to me that the contractors should come in for more blame if their charges are doing so poorly.
The number in parenthesis is the percentage of the nine VOLAGs’ income paid by you (the taxpayer) to place the refugees, line them up with jobs, and get them signed up for their services! From most recent accounting, here.

Special Immigrant Visas for Afghans help refugee contractors stay afloat

03/08/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I heard recently that the refugee resettlement agencies (the big nine)*** which the State Department contracts to place refugees in your towns and cities were busy resettling ‘interpreters’ from Afghanistan and those federal payments were helping keep them financially afloat.
So…I checked some numbers at Wrapsnet and was amazed by what I saw. Sure enough we are bringing in Afghans at an astounding rate.

From FY08 to FY18 we have admitted 49,358 ‘interpreters’ from Afghanistan and that number does not include their spouses and children. Holy cow!

Were there really nearly 50,000 people doing translation work for us? (And, more to come!)
I know I can hear it now—-shouldn’t we take care of those who helped us in Iraq and Afghanistan (while we were helping their countries!), but really, 50,000 and more! (I think you can also surmise from this flood of supposedly friendlies out of Afghanistan that we are done there, but that is a story for another blog.)

Know that our usual bunch of federal contractors are paid to place those ‘refugees’ as well.

jasim-ramadon — Poster boy for Iraqis who helped Americans! Jasim Ramadon doing 28 years to life for brutal rape. https://townhall.com/columnists/dianawest/2014/01/24/from-us-helpers-in-iraq-to-sex-criminals-in-colorado-n1783901

I early on wrote about the Special Immigrant Visa program for Iraqis that ol’ Ted Kennedy got placed in a Defense Authorization bill in the dark of night in 2006, but have never followed it closely. (Numbers of slots available were low. For comparison, we admitted 18,084 ‘interpreters’ from Iraq during the same time period we have admitted nearly 50,000 Afghans!).
However, I see this morning that Donald Trump, when signing the Defense Authorization bill for FY18, also signed in to law a new Afghan Special Immigrant Visa program which permits the entrance to the US of thousands more Afghans in that category.
Read all about it here, and note that the ‘interpreters’ don’t even have to have been employed directly by the US government! They could have been working for allies and presumably NGOs too!
(I have something else I have to do today, so this is just your intro. to this under-the-radar push for more Middle Easterners to be distributed around the US.)
Here are screenshots of a few pieces of the data at Wrapsnet.

Below is the top of the data sheet on our Afghan admissions.

Circled in red is the column for Special Immigrant Visas compared to the number of regular refugees from that country. On the fourth line down, that is California which is obviously being flooded.

Screenshot (253)_LI
This is the bottom half of the same data chart:

Screenshot (255)_LI — Refugee numbers (column one) are relatively low for Afghanistan, but the SIV numbers (column two) are huge!

See that in Trump’s first (partial) year in office (FY17) we admitted an astounding 16,866 ‘interpreters’ and in this fiscal year (2018) to March 5th we have already admitted 7,017! Again those numbers do not include spouses and children.
To conclude, although the regular refugee numbers are way down as we reported here.

8,583 refugees have been admitted in 5 months.

You can add to that another 7,017 paying SIV clients (and their families!) for the VOLAGs (resettlement contractors) to place in your towns. (There are also ‘interpreters’ still coming in from Iraq, but numbers are much lower now.)
***Here are the nine federal refugee contractors. They have been complaining as their regular paying client numbers (refugees) have declined, but it seems they have some taxpayer supplied funds coming in with this huge push to bring in Afghan ‘interpreters’ and their families.
The original Refugee Act of 1980, that set up this monstrosity, envisioned a public-private partnership that over the years has almost completely morphed in to a federal program.
The number in parenthesis is the percentage of their income paid by you (the taxpayer) to place the refugees and get them signed up for their services (aka welfare)! From most recent accounting, here.

Iraqi interpreters given refugee status, not pure as the driven snow

10/16/2015 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I often hear people say, that although they have problems with the refugee resettlement program, they do think we should be admitting the Iraqi interpreters and others who “helped us in Iraq.” But, guess what, some of them lie.

Here is a case just brought to our attention by Creeping Sharia—former interpreter who was living the ‘good life’ in Texas was found to be connected to ISIS. You can read the whole sorry tale here at Creeping Sharia.
You can read about Special Immigrant Visas here (it was another contribution to America by the now dead Senator Ted Kennedy who added it in the dark of night to a Defense Authorization bill in 2008).
Colorado rape case:
I’m reminded of the Colorado rape case which Diana West so thoroughly discussed here and which I always bring to the attention of listeners when I speak or do skype presentations. This man who “helped” Americans (before brutally raping a Colorado woman) was even featured on the Oprah Winfrey show (see here)!

Ramadon, Hendrex (the Sargent who helped Ramadon get in to the US) and other members of Dragon Company appeared on the Oprah Winfrey show in September 2004. While there, Ramadon met John Travolta, one of his heroes.

Ramadon was ultimately convicted and sentenced (in 2014) to 28 years to life, here for a rape described as one of the most brutal in Colorado history. Lucky taxpayers—you get to pay for his prison term.
In a quick look at our archives I see we posted on an Afghan interpreter admitted to the US as a SIV holder who allegedly ripped off our generous welfare system, here.
My job is to balance the news! For every warm and fuzzy refugee-contributes-to-America story, I’ll find you a Ramadon or an Abood (the TX ISIS lover), or a Hayatullah. The lesson is that we don’t, and can’t, screen them thoroughly.

Afghan SIV applicants say US government dragging its feet on visas

02/10/2014 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Special Immigrant Visa program was Sen. Ted Kennedy’s dark-of-night addition to Defense Authorization bill. Kennedy was also the power behind the Refugee Act of 1980.

The Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) is a program passed by Congress in the the dark of night in 2007 spearheaded by Senator Ted Kennedy, here is a document explaining how those who supposedly helped the US in the Iraq war, and their families, can get into the US where they will reap all the benefits refugees receive (welfare etc.). Here is a description of the Afghan SIV program.

You might want to see our previous post about one Afghan interpreter and his family arrested in New York.

From the Seattle Times (hat tip: ‘pungentpeppers’):

Thousands of Afghans who have served as U.S. military interpreters and who now fear for their lives are waiting in limbo to hear about their applications to move to the U.S. Though Congress authorized 8,750 visas for Afghan interpreters, only 1,982 had been issued through Dec. 10.

Stars of the Seattle Times story say they have already proven their loyalty to America and now want the US to “return the favor.”

For Nazari, who has worked for the U.S. military since 2006, years of waiting have left him confused and demoralized — and at risk of retaliation from insurgents who he says know what he does.

“We’re living in the 21st century,” Nazari said, speaking flawless English while sipping tea at a Kabul guesthouse. “If the State Department wants to find out if I’m a bad guy or a terrorist, just check their computer databases. It should take five minutes, not five years.”

Sardar Khan, 26, who has translated for the U.S. military since 2007, said he has waited nearly two years for a decision on his SIV application. He jokes that he and other applicants have “SIV syndrome” from constantly checking a State Department website for updates on their cases.

“We have already proved our honesty and loyalty to the United States,” Khan said. “All we ask now is for the United States to return the favor.”

Convicted Iraqi refugee terrorists got through old screening system and yet Obama now makes it even easier to get through!

US State Department says they are speeding things up, but are apparently still haunted by those Iraqi refugee terrorists convicted in Kentucky.

Jarrett Blanc, deputy special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, said the State Department improved its processing times last year and has issued more Afghan interpreter visas during the latest fiscal year than in any previous year, a tenfold increase over 2012. In the last three months of the fiscal year that ended Oct. 1, he said, the U.S. Embassy in Kabul issued more interpreter visas than in the previous four years.

The department has also begun an appeals process for interpreters turned down at the embassy level, sped up the visa process for approved applicants and is doing more to spread word about the SIV program.

“We are committed to helping those who — at great personal risk — have helped us,” Blanc said.

Officials are concerned that Afghans with ties to insurgents or terrorists will slip through the vetting process. The 2011 arrests of two Iraqi refugees in Kentucky on terrorism charges slowed the visa process, though neither had been an interpreter. [Of course, now we can expect the vetting process to be relaxed!—ed]

The Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project calls the SIV process “prohibitively complicated, bureaucratic and opaque.” The group, which also assists Afghans, says more than 5,000 Afghan applicants are backlogged. It says only 6,675 of the 25,000 visas authorized for Iraqi interpreters have been issued.

In December, Congress extended the Iraq SIV program through Sept. 30, but failed to extend the Afghan program, which expires Sept. 30.

To readers: The next time you hear someone say I oppose illegal immigration, but legal immigration is a good thing, know that they don’t know what they are talking about!