Tag: Welcoming America

Big immigrant-run food stamp fraud bust in Cleveland area

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Welcome to Cleveland!   While ‘Welcoming America’ is busy trying to persuade Cleveland that diversity is beautiful and that they need more of it, some of their diversity has figured out how to scam the US taxpayer out of $2 million!

First have a look at the news from La Prensa about how bringing more diversity to Cleveland will improve the economy:

Embracing a more proactive immigrant friendly vision for Cleveland, Global Cleveland partnered with MetroHealth Medical Center and Welcoming America to lay groundwork to transform the city. Nearly 250 guests attended the movie and post discussion at MetroHealth Medical Center on July 16, 2013.

And here we have David Lubell again out hocking that Shelbyville propaganda film!  Lubell’s organization was recently hired by the Office of Refugee Resettlement to sell reluctant cities on the idea of “welcoming” refugees.  La Prensa continues:

‘Welcoming America’ trying to sell Cleveland on increasing immigrant diversity to save itself from the same fate as Detroit!

“We often dismiss people with fear,” said David Lubell, executive director of Welcoming America, which is a critical mistake in the effort to transform the mindset of a community. Welcoming America is a national nonprofit organization working to improve immigrant integration by direct engagement through individual and group efforts to create local initiatives that facilitate cultural understanding and ease transitions.

Lubell said all communities are different; some have less distance to do and working with Global Cleveland and other partners Welcoming America will determine where the city stands to best address its needs. Lubell said there is intense competition brewing amongst cities to become the most immigrant friendly city in the United States and attract global talent.

Global talent!  That is a good way to describe the major (many are Muslim or Middle Eastern) network of bright convenience store food stamp scammers!   Cleveland is about to lose three of its most talented Arabs.

EBT Nation! LOL!  We use this graphic when I can’t find a photo of the perps!

From ABC 5 in Cleveland:

BROOK PARK, Ohio – Three Brook Park men have been indicted for defrauding the food stamp program out of $2 million at four Cleveland stores.

The United States Attorney’s Office of Northern Ohio said brothers Saed and Maher Wahdan, along with the help of Nidal Jaber, accepted food stamps for ineligible items like beer and cigarettes.

All three men have been indicted on counts of conspiracy to commit food stamp fraud, food stamp fraud and unlawful redemption of food stamps.

U.S. Attorney for Northern Ohio Steven Dettelbach said that attempts will be made to recover stolen money.

“The food stamp program has provided nutritious food to thousands of hungry families over the years,” he said. “We will continue to work to recover money stolen from the program and eradicate waste, fraud and abuse of government programs.”

Between January 2008 and March 2012, the three men attempted to commit more than $2 million in food-stamp fraud through four of their businesses that were held under different names to conceal Saed Wahdan’s prior food stamp convictions, authorities said. Those stores were One Stop Beverage, 5105 Franklin Blvd.; Bridge Deli and Beverage, 4700 Bridge Ave.; Franklin Beverage and Deli, 4719 Franklin Blvd., and Scott Food Mart, 951 Linn Drive.

The three men used their businesses to exchange customer food stamps for cash and other unauthorized items. They also bought food stamp cards from customers to use at other grocery locations to get inventory for their stores and for their personal use, according to the indictment.

The indictment seeks to forfeit the businesses run by the Wahdans.

Food stamp fraud is a side interest of mine at RRW.  We have an extensive archive on cases like this one (click here).

As each year passes and our archive grows I still hold out hope that some real investigative reporter will dig into this story—how do all these immigrants acquire these Mom & Pop grocery stores and then go into the food stamp fraud racket?   And, every time I hear the likes of Lubell say immigrants are entrepreneurs and open shops, I can’t help but think of these food stamp scammers.

Tom Negri and ‘Welcoming America’ are planning to “change” Cleveland starting tonight

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Negri, formerly the manager of the Loews Vanderbilt Hotel in Nashville is credited with changing Nashville from the Bible-belt mecca of Country Music into a community that welcomes Muslim diversity and low-skilled immigrant laborers (needed in the hotel industry!).   It amazes me how the media builds a myth around the politically-correct concept that everything is sweetness and light when a city becomes as diverse as Nashville.

Tom Negri, the man behind the growing Muslim population of Nashville. Photo Nashville Scene.

Here is a glowing tribute to Negri’s role in bringing Somalis, Kurds and others to Nashville.  But, here is one thing that isn’t mentioned in the tribute—Negri is opposed to free speech.  In 2009 I was registered to attend a conference about political Islam at the Loews Vanderbilt hotel and just days before the conference, then hotel manager Negri broke the contract with organizers.

He apparently couldn’t abide the idea that people might meet in his hotel with a point of view different from his.  Or, did he bow to pressure from the increasingly powerful Islamists in Nashville?   The conference went on in a pleasant welcoming hotel elsewhere in the city.

Check out our Nashville category (click here) for 52(!) previous posts on Nashville troubles and tensions with its immigrant population.

As we told you just last month, Negri is on the board of the propaganda outfit—Welcoming America.

Tonight ‘Welcoming America’ plans to begin changing Cleveland—bring in the immigrants to save the city!

From the Plain Dealer:

“They’ve been great for our community,” said Tom Negri, a Nashville business leader. “It just took a while for people to realize that.”

The group that helped convince middle Tennessee that new Americans represented progress is about to embrace a new challenge. Welcoming America is bringing its message to Cleveland, a city that has not witnessed an immigrant stream in 50 years.

Its top executives will be in town this week to join discussions and strategy sessions designed to foster a “welcome world” attitude on Ohio’s north coast.

‘Welcome to Shelbyville’—that damn film again!

David Lubell, the founder and executive director of Welcoming America, will address an audience Tuesday night at MetroHealth Medical Center and join a panel discussion that follows the screening of “Welcome to Shelbyville,” a documentary about cultural change in a small Tennessee town.

For new readers, we have traced the development of that propaganda film—‘Welcome to Shelbyville’—from the arrival of the Leftwing-funded filming team in Somali-disrupted Shelbyville, TN five years ago.  This is what I said, here,  in 2008:

Shelbyville BeWare BeCause, they are using your town!   They will gloss over the tensions and problems of the Tyson’s African employees and then show what great work the TIRRC and the Somali Community Center are doing to bring you all together in harmonious unity.  This is a politically motivated campaign.  Your film, your town, will then be used to shame other towns into silence.

Here is our archive of dozens of posts in which that propaganda film is mentioned. If you read nothing else, be sure to read this post on the truth about the film.  My prediction of 2008, that the film would be used to “shame” communities has turned out to be accurate!

Back to Cleveland and community organizers ‘Welcoming America’ getting ready to target Cleveland tonight:

Training sessions on Wednesday could mark the first step toward Cleveland or Cuyahoga County or both joining the growing roster of “welcoming communities.” These are cities and counties that welcome immigrants with official proclamations and then work to assimilate them, making it more likely that immigrants will come to stay.

“It takes time for different sectors of the community to come around to this,” said Lubell, a Philadelphia native recognized nationally as a leader in immigrant welcome efforts. “We’re not in a rush. We want to meet the community where it is and help get them to a new place of greater prosperity.”

Cleveland readers must go out to this event tonight!

Representatives of ethnic communities have been invited to Tuesday’s reception, which begins at 5:30 p.m. in MetroHealth’s Rammelkamp Atrium and is open to the public.

EEEK! “Pockets of resistance” to refugee resettlement have developed; ORR hires ‘Welcoming America’ to head off more

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This is the second part of my report from the Pennsylvania Refugee Conference which I attended earlier this week in Lancaster, PA.  If you haven’t read my earlier report it might be useful to check it out and then come back here for part II.

One of the many things that I found revealing about the conference was that problems with the program to resettle over 100,000 “refugees and asylees” to your towns and cities each year was not discussed (your classic hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil!).  There was no direct discussion about problems with assimilation, tensions in communities, crime problems, cost to local communities, school conflicts, housing shortages for refugees etc. except for one session dedicated to how to silence people who might like to complain—the keynote speaker talked about how ‘Welcoming America’ was working to get YOUR minds right about your new refugee neighbors (and, they received a federal grant from ORR to do it!).

Before Susan Downs-Karkos from ‘Welcoming America’ spoke, we had been alerted by the Office of Refugee Resettlement’s Director of Placement, Mitiku Ashebir that  (gasp!) “three pockets of resistance against new arrivals” had developed.  He assured the gathering it was not widespread and that Pennsylvania, thankfully, was not one of them.   Drum roll please!  Here are the pockets of resistance and Mr. Ashebir’s brief description of the unwelcoming problems:

New Hampshire—some mayors have problems, said Ashebir

David Lubell, founder of ‘Welcoming America,’ doing work for George Soros!

Georgia—budget reductions for some service providers

Tennessee—they want to control arrival numbers!  Imagine that!

But, Welcoming America is on the case!  They want to “transform” communities by “Building a Nation of Neighbors”!

Downs-Karkos described her organization’s job as “promoting understanding and support for refugees.”  The whole concept is that YOU must improve your attitude to your new neighbors, not that the refugees must learn to fit into American society.  We are a Nation of immigrants, they are coming, so get used to it was the basic message.

The refugees and immigrants are the seeds and your community is the soil into which they are being planted is how she described what is happening.  Her group is working on improving the soil.

She said ‘Welcoming America’ was created by David Lubell of TENNESSEE who had successfully launched ‘Welcoming Tennessee’ a few years ago where he mobilized support for refugees in Nashville and Shelbyville and promoted the propaganda film—Welcome to Shelbyville.  If you are a new reader here you might want to visit our many posts where we traced the history of that deceptive film from its origin when a Hard Left documentary film group was funded to visit Shelbyville (where community tensions had developed around a large influx of Somali refugees who had arrived there to work for Tyson Foods)–-it is a classic case study in how to produce propaganda.

“Is everything perfect in Tennessee now?” asked Downs-Karkos.  No, she answered herself, “but it is improving.”  Really?

Follow the money!

Here is a summary from Welcoming America’s website about how the organization got its start (with the help of George Soros).  Our friends in Tennessee will be amazed at the spin about their state! “Changing communities” indeed.  I wonder does David Lubell understand what just happened in Manchester, TN last week?

The history of ‘Welcoming America’:

In 2005 the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition (TIRRC), inspired by the Iowa campaign’s message and approach, started to make plans for a “Welcoming Tennessee Initiative” (WTI). Since launching in 2006, The Welcoming Tennessee Initiative – the model for all subsequent welcoming initiatives – has substantially improved the climate for immigrants within the state. Statewide polling by Middle Tennessee State University has demonstrated an increase in positive opinions towards immigrants, and thousands of Tennessee residents have become active supporters of Tennessee’s increased diversity as a result of the project. In 2009 WTI was awarded the E Pluribus Unum Prize for exceptional immigrant integration initiatives.  [LOL! an award!—ed]

The success of Welcoming Tennessee inspired several additional immigrant support organizations across the country to follow its lead. In July of 2007, seven organizations interested in starting Welcoming campaigns met  to combine efforts and expand Welcoming campaigns past Tennessee. Hosting the meeting was Four Freedoms Fund, a funding collaborative that has played a crucial role in the formation and development of Welcoming America.

Here is what Discover the Networks says about the ‘Four Freedoms Fund’ listed as one of many groups directly supported by George Soros’ Open Society Institute.  Soros, as longtime readers know, is pushing to “change” America by swamping the country with third worlders. He can’t have you fighting the “transformation.” Therefore, “Pockets of resistance” must be stopped now!

Four Freedoms Fund: This organization was designed to serve as a conduit through which large foundations could fund state-based open-borders organizations more flexibly and quickly.

Longtime readers know that Soros has had his proteges installed as Asst. Secretaries of State for Population, Refugees and Migration throughout the Obama Administration.   Type ‘George Soros’ into our search function for more.

A chuckle for Tennesseans—Tom Negri is on the board of ‘Welcoming America’!   You may remember the story from back in 2009:  Negri, who manages the Loews Vanderbilt Hotel in downtown Nashville (hotels need cheap immigrant labor and that’s why so many are behind open borders), broke a contract just days before a conference that I and others (from around the country) had registered to attend saying we might be a danger to their other guests.  Maybe the Muslim protesters would be a danger, but not us!  The conference went on peacefully at another “welcoming” hotel!

Negri’s move was a stupid one because it just confirmed for all of those who knew about it (including thousands of readers of Newsmax) what dirty tricks the open borders advocates and Lefties are willing to use to silence speech they don’t like!

Bottomline is that ‘Welcoming America’ is spreading throughout the US–they are “community organizers” with affiliates in twenty plus states, here.  If you are in one of those states, sign up for the group and begin learning what they are planning for your community.  And, then spread the word!

For new readers:  If you would like to learn more about those pockets of resistance in New Hampshire, Tennessee and Georgia, simply type the state name into our search function and dozens of posts will be available.  Also, note that we have a separate category on Nashville (50 posts!) because it has been such a controversial site for refugee resettlement (by Catholic Charities!) and Islamic activism.