Canadian educators challenged by wave of Roma immigrant children

Here is an immigration issue facing Canada that I wanted to bring to your attention.  I find it interesting that educators were caught by surprise.  Is there no way in Canada (or the US for that matter) to alert school systems to expect waves of new immigrants, afterall government agencies must have granted admission to Canada for large numbers of Roma?

They are Europe’s Least Wanted – reviled for their unorthodox ways, hounded by white supremacists. Now the sudden arrival of Roma “gypsies” in Ontario has teachers here grappling to connect with some of the most perplexing students in the world.

With no English, limited education and an often shaky regard for school, the wave of Roma children give fresh urgency to the term “at-risk.” Schools across Toronto and Hamilton, caught largely by surprise, are rushing to educate staff, hire more ESL teachers and find Hungarian and Czech interpreters for everything from report cards to welcome kits.

“We’ve got major problems with this wave of students and we need help – we’ve had more than 100 kids show up this fall and our staff are scrambling,” said Trustee Irene Atkinson at a recent crash course on Roma culture organized by the Toronto District School Board, one of several this fall in Toronto and Hamilton.

See also, Roma in Ireland, here.

Cloward-Piven: Use the poor to bring on the revolution

If you are a regular reader, you know one of the themes we have been writing about is what I call “community destabilization,” we have a whole category for those posts, here.  And, you know we write about the Cloward-Piven strategy as part of that discussion.   Cloward and Piven, while professors at Columbia University (Obama’s alma mater), penned a 1966 treatise in Nation magazine in which they outlined a strategy to bring about a revolution in America. I wrote about it most recently, here.  Simply stated the strategy involved flooding the welfare system with so many impoverished people that the system would collapse and that would pave the way for a new form of government—a government that would redistribute the wealth and provide a guaranteed income for everyone.

Below is another shocking segment from that article.  We are often lectured about what is the moral thing to do about refugees, but let me ask all of you, what is moral about this Far Left strategy?   Remember immigrants and refugees are today’s poor.  As unfashionable as the word is, frankly, I call this strategy to place as many people as possible on the welfare system and use them for promotion of a radical political ideology downright evil.*  (Emphasis below mine)

To generate an expressly political movement, cadres of aggressive organizers would have to come from the civil rights movement and the churches, from militant low-income organizations like those formed by the Industrial Areas Foundation (that is, by Saul Alinsky), and from other groups on the Left. These activists should be quick to see the difference between programs to redress individual grievances and a large-scale social-action campaign for national policy reform.

Movements that depend on involving masses of poor people have generally failed in America. Why would the proposed strategy to engage the poor succeed?

First, this plan promises immediate economic benefits. This is a point of some importance because, whereas America’s poor have not been moved in any number by radical political ideologies, they have sometimes been moved by their economic interests. Since radical movements in America have rarely been able to provide visible economic incentives, they have usually failed to secure mass participation of any kind. The conservative “business unionism” of organized labor is explained by this fact, for membership enlarged only as unionism paid off in material benefits. Union leaders have understood that their strength derives almost entirely from their capacity to provide economic rewards to members. Although leaders have increasingly acted in political spheres, their influence has been directed chiefly to matters of governmental policy affecting the well-being of organized workers. The same point is made by the experience of rent strikes in Northern cities. Their organizers were often motivated by radical ideologies, but tenants have been attracted by the promise that housing improvements would quickly be made if they withheld their rent.

Second, for this strategy to succeed, one need not ask more of most of the poor than that they claim lawful benefits. Thus the plan has the extraordinary capability of yielding mass influence without mass participation, at least as the term “participation” is ordinarily understood. Mass influence in this case stems from the consumption of benefits and does not require that large groups of people be involved in regular organizational roles.  [Of course not, the smart people, the elite radicals, would call all the shots!]

Moreover, this kind of mass influence is cumulative because benefits are continuous. Once eligibility for basic food and rent grants is established, the drain on local resources persists indefinitely. Other movements have failed precisely because they could not produce continuous and cumulative influence.

When you read the Nation article, note that Cloward and Piven were very conscious of the concept of the ‘presumption of good intentions.’  In other words, they knew that this political strategy would go undetected for a very long time because it would be hidden from their average do-gooder minions by the presumption that this was all about aiding the downtrodden.

I must say this ’strategy’ is the only logical explanation for why we are still pouring refugees into the US right now when there is little or no work for them and they are being “warehoused” in decrepit apartment buildings, like those in Bowling Green, KY.  Incidentally, even if refugees have chicken plant jobs they still receive various forms of public assistance because the meatpackers no longer pay a living wage.

I wonder did Cloward and Piven ever anticipate the involvement of big businesses as allies in the revolution?  See this post from August in which I list strange bedfellows on the open borders issue.

* I have to laugh, after I posted this, I see that Ann Coulter also suggested Far Left Liberal strategies were “evil” when she said their motto is:  Speak loudly and carry a small victim!

Israel setting up asylum process for refugees

We’ve posted a couple of stories about refugees from Africa trying to get into Israel, here, here and here.  Africans began heading for Israel after Egypt treated asylum seekers brutally, and Israel is building a border fence to prevent floods of people. A recent article in the Jerusalem Post begins:

For most of Israel’s history, the word refugee has been associated with Jewish communities fleeing persecution or Palestinians stuck for decades in makeshift camps. The few dozen asylum-seekers a year requesting refugee status in Israel were not assessed by the state, but by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), with help from the Joint Distribution Committee.

But in recent years, local and regional events have drawn hundreds of asylum-seekers here every month, flooding the system and underscoring Israel’s need for an independent refugee processing system.

….In July, Israel became one of the last developed countries to launch an asylum claims process – without fanfare and virtually without notice.

There follows an interview with Joel Moss, director of HIAS in Israel, who helped set up the process. I’m not going to go through the whole thing here, but here’s a summary of the numbers:

How many asylum-seekers are in Israel and how have the numbers grown?

There are about 18,000 asylum-seekers in Israel now, mostly from Africa and some from Eastern Europe and the Far East.

Up until around 2003, if there were 100 new asylum-seekers in Israel a year, that was a lot. Now there are often 600-1,000 arriving each month. [These] are large numbers for a country this size and for a country that never dealt with this issue before.

If you do the pro-rata calculation between the population of Israel and the US, it as if the US had seen a rise from 2,000 asylum seekers in 2005 to half a million in 2009. That’s a staggering shift.

Israel needs to get that fence built quickly. It is a tiny country, about the size of New Jersey. It is abiding by UN standards and the Geneva Convention in accepting refugees, and is already getting swamped. Neighboring countries are not so accepting, so there has been and will continue to be more and more pressure on Israel.

Refugee suffering from depression, first to become homeless in NC

Here is a story from Greensboro, NC about a Burmese refugee, resettled in North Carolina in 2007 who has become homeless, possibly the first* of many to come. 

GREENSBORO — In a case that highlights thinning assistance for incoming refugees, a Burmese exile resettled through the United Nations has taken emergency shelter at Greensboro Urban Ministry.

Soe Win, 56, arrived in 2007 to be resettled by Lutheran Family Services. Now destitute and suffering from a breakdown, he arrived in mid-November at the homeless day center on East Bessemer Avenue.

There, volunteer social workers contacted Lutheran Family Services, but no services were available. [ Edit: I guess the social workers don't know that these agencies, bring'em in, and in a few months it's sink or swim for the unfortunate refugee.  I forgot what they call it.  It's kind of like the tough love notion, but it's just some excuse they came up with because they don't have enough money or volunteers to do it right.]

[....]

“It may be the first case like this,” State Refugee Coordinator Marlene Myers said this week, “but it won’t be the last.”

Oh, what’s a few homeless refugees here and there and no jobs, what the heck, we still plan to bring thousands to NC this year!   The Obama Administration announced it will keep the refugee numbers high even if we are in a recession.  By the way, the reason you don’t hear about more Burmese homeless, as we learned in Bowling Green, they just move in with each other—two and three families to an apartment!

Myers was in Greensboro this week to meet with a network of local providers who are expected to help resettle 800 of the state’s anticipated 2,100 new refugee arrivals this year.

Guilford County has led the state in resettling political refugees because four local nonprofit agencies have contracts to do so: Lutheran Family Services, Church World Services, World Relief of High Point and N.C. African Services Coalition. Refugees are resettled within a 50-mile radius of the agencies.   [I've highlighted the agencies just so readers will know who exactly is responsible for the refugees' situations.]

I especially want to remind readers that back in February we learned that Lutheran Family Services was cutting back because refugees were not finding work, but that Church World Service was just picking up where they left off.

And, what a coincidence, no interpreters for the various Burmese language dialects here either.

At the Interactive Resource Center on East Bessemer, where Win showed up earlier this month, social workers contacted Lutheran Family Services to ask for help. Win’s caseworker, Halat Mlo, said Friday that the agency has no Burmese interpreters and that no services were available beyond a client’s initial year.

UNCG social work graduate student Jennifer Clark said LFS gave her the same answer earlier this month when Win showed up at the day center where Clark interns and the staff tried to find help for him.

“I was in desperate need of an interpreter, and I was kind of shocked that this (LFS) was the agency that everybody was referring me to,” Clark said.

“It would be like calling the health department for medication and being told, ‘We don’t do medication.’

Can I believe my eyes?  Someone in the refugee industry is actually saying what the majority of Americans would say if they knew all this was even happening.

With so many North Carolinians out of work, Myers’ assistant, Pat Priest, observed that it might be human nature to question the importance of refugee resettlement.

But, of course we need to bring refugees because that is what defines America, whaaat?

I’m glad this woman is taking the initiative and helping without asking for more government money (well, at least I think she isn’t asking taxpayers), but this notion of refugees defining America is nuts.

In Angela Chavis’ view, however, refugees are what defines the United States. Recognizing the increasing need this winter and the lack of resources and coordination, she has organized a mutual assistance agency, HeavensGate World Services.

Ms. Chavis, is this about you and how you feel, or about this poor Mr. Win?  Is he really better off in a homeless shelter in America than he would be with his own people in the camp in Thailand where he was culturally at ease and cared for by the UN?  One of my many reform suggestions is that the agency that failed to settle a refugee in a job and a comfortable new life should pay the return airfare for any refugee wishing to go HOME!

That reminds me.  A few days ago I came across this little article about Burmese refugees and resettlement in Europe and the US.  Check out the lines I’ve highlighted.  It looks to me that the western countries which have been taking Burmese are getting ready to turn off, or at least slow the flow of Burmese from the camps in Thailand.  So we aren’t taking them all anyway!  Maybe Mr. Win could go back to his family?

The European Union (EU) mission to Bangkok said it is the committed to “taking a new bold and longer-term steps for a better and more sustainable future for the refugees” and stands ready to work with the Thai government on this task.

In a press statement released after their two-day visit to Mae Lae refugee camp on the Thai-Burmese border the EU noted that opportunity for resettlement to the US, Europe and elsewhere will not be available to all refugees.

Endnote:  I wanted to know what was the magnet that drew 4 resettlement agencies to Greensboro, but right off hand I couldn’t find any chicken plant employers.  I did find this article about Greensboro (Guilford County) being a refugee and immigrant mecca for quite some time.  It must be one of those “welcoming” cities.

* Oops! A reader just reminded me there have been other homeless refugees we’ve written about.  Here is one from Shelbyville, TN.

Comment worth noting: Burmese Karen must have Karen language interpreters

This is a comment we received in an e-mail to RRW in response to my post earlier in the week about the conflict on-going in Pittsburgh regarding Burmese Karen refugees and their charge that Catholic Charities hired a Burmese interpreter and not one who understands the Karen dialect.  This is from the Pittsburgh Post Gazette:

The protest was organized by Three Rivers Coalition for Justice, a group with ties to organized labor that helps workers with problems such as evictions. It printed a leaflet claiming that Catholic Charities had assigned the Karens a Burmese translator who did not speak the Karen dialect and who treated them with contempt.

A reader, Madeleine, from the UK wanted us to know the following:

In the 2nd World War, the majority of ethnic groups in Burma fought the Japanese. The Karen (and Karenni, an affiliate ethnic group of the Karen), Kachin and Chin fought for Britain and the Allies. The Americans would know the Kachin better as they were in a different part of Burma. This knowledge of who were really our Allies has been suppressed since the end of the 2nd World War, firstly by P.M. Atlee and then consequent British Governments

The Karen played a vital role in saving many, many lives of British and Allied Soldiers from Japanese Prisoner of War Camps. They did this during the conquest of Burma by the Japanese during the retreat of British and Allied Soldiers. They harried the Japanese coming in through Thailand, giving time for the Allied Soldiers to escape and then guided them out through various paths. During the Japanese occupation, the Karen sent out vital Intelligence to the Armies in India. The Japanese knew they were doing this and they would slaughter and torture the Karen when they could find them, men, women and children. With this Intelligence, the Allies were able to re-take Burma and again the Karen were instrumental in the success of this by harrying the Japanese; they were between the Japanese and Allied lines. I have Attached an article supporting this from ‘Dekho’ – The Journal of the Burma Star Association, U. K.

The British colonial administration headed by Mountbatten betrayed the Karen who had been promised that they would be protected after the War from those who fought for the Japanese and that they would be granted statehood in line with the other groups in Burma. Instead, Mountbatten handed over the first Independent Burma Government to those who fought for the Japanese. The Karen were not heard and in many cases not represented at the so-called ‘Democratic’ process of the British Government.

Almost immediately after Independence, those who fought for the Japanese, now the Burma Government, opened fire on the unarmed Karen, blowing up their Churches, their villages, killing men, women and children.
For the Karen, the 2nd World War has never ended. They are being tortured, using techniques taught by the Japanese to the Burman during the War, burnt alive, raped, tortured; for instance, one accredited report states how the Burman Military Junta (Tatmadaw) came across a Karen family in hiding. They tied up the parents and threw their infant onto the campfire where these poor parents had to watch.

The Karen are being slaughtered because:

1) They were part of the Allies of the British & the Allies in the 2nd World War
2) A large majority of them are Christian – the most devoted Christians I have ever met
3) Their homeland is very rich in minerals particularly substances for nuclear use, rubies and oil.

There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that the use of a Burman translator or interpreter can only be detrimental to the Karen. I say this because I have had first-hand experience. When I was assisting in claims for Asylum for the Karen here in the U. K., it became clear that the Court appointed Burman was, quite frankly, lying, when he interpreted to the Judge from a Karen claimant. At other times he omitted to interpret all that the Karen had said. I immediately set about finding and putting Karen translators and interpreters onto an official government web site. Since then, British authorities have only appointed Karen to translate and interpret for Karen.

Note to the US State Department:  Why not identify the Karen refugees who speak English well and get them out of chicken processing plants and into interpreting jobs.

LA Times: (at least) two views from Little Mogadishu

Another take on this article is here, by Brenda Walker at VDARE.

The Los Angeles Times has an analysis of what might have prompted Somali former refugees to trade their lives in Minneapolis (aka Little Mogadishu) for life in the real war-torn hell-hole, Mogadishu.  I don’t really buy the ‘youths trying to find themselves’ angle or the ‘poverty made them do it’ excuse.   As a matter of fact, other refugees from other nations also live in poverty and they don’t take up arms and dash off to terrorist training camps.  The article doesn’t say much about the patriotism angle we often hear, and barely touches on what I believe is the real reason—they responded to the call of Allah.

In any case, please read this article, it’s more than the usual boilerplate story we have seen on this topic because it gives us some new information, even if for some it may get your blood pressure up! 

Here is how it begins, little Moghadishu—a neighborhood Mark Twain would not recognize!

Reporting from Minneapolis – Barely a block from the Mississippi River sits a neighborhood Mark Twain could not have imagined.

Men with henna-streaked beards and women in full-body hijabs streamed Tuesday past the Maashaa Allah Restaurant, the Alle Aamin Coffee Shop, the Kaah Express Money Wiring stall, the storefront Al-Qaaniteen Mosque and other similar structures.

“When I came here as a refugee in 1995, there were just a few hundred Somalis, and we were very alone,” said Adar Kahin, 48, who was a famous singer back home and now volunteers at a local community center.

“Now everyone is here,” she said cheerfully. “It’s like being back in Mogadishu. That’s what we call it, Little Mogadishu.”

Then here we go with the FBI promoting the ‘poverty made them do it’ excuse.

For the FBI, Little Mogadishu has become the center of an intense investigation into a recruiting network that sent young men to fight in Somalia for a radical Islamist group known as Shabab, or “the Youth.”

Investigators say the poverty, grim gang wars and overpacked public housing towers produced one of the largest militant operations in the United States since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Trying to find their identities, some ‘youths’ applaud the Jihadists who called America the land of the devil and others don’t.

Outside the Brian Coyle Community Center, five young men who emigrated from Somalia as toddlers huddled in black hoodies under a cold, clammy fog that turned the day dull gray. They shared smokes and spoke of those who had joined the jihad, or holy war.

“Some of them felt America is the land of the devil,” said Said Ali, who is 20, rail-thin and jobless. “They were losing their culture, their language and their religion. They’ve got family there. They feel at home.”

If he had the money, he said, he would go to Somalia too.

“My friend went,” he said. “He’s running a hotel. He carries an AK-47. He’s living life good.”

Ali Mohamed, also 20 and unemployed, jumped in. “These guys are blowing up women and kids,” he said. “That ain’t right.”

The difficult search for identity is an old story in this area.

This is new information: the radical cleric who is thought to have influenced Major Nidal Hasan is fingered in this article by none other than our old buddy Omar Jamal.  I wouldn’t put it past Jamal to shift the attention away from the mosque in Minnesota to an Imam in Yemen.

Some members of the group that went to Somalia were said to be followers of Anwar al Awlaki, an American-born firebrand imam who preaches on the Internet in flawless English about the need to fight for Islam.

Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the accused killer of 13 people at Ft. Hood in Texas this month, had exchanged e-mails with Awlaki, who is based in Yemen.

Omar Jamal, director of the Somali Justice Advocacy Center here, said Awlaki’s fierce sermons helped inspire several of the youths who later joined Shabab in Somalia. Awlaki has praised the militia, which U.S. officials say is allied with Al Qaeda.

“They exchanged messages on his blog,” Jamal said. “They prayed for him. They watched his videos. They fell under his spell of influence.”

Finally at the end, a hint about the real reason these youths joined the Jihad—the mosque and the call of Allah.

“All these guys who left, we looked up to,” Bosir said. “When we came here to play basketball, they would go to the mosque. And somehow, they got brainwashed. And now they’re dead.”

Just a reminder to readers, we learned from Zakaria Maruf, one of the  missing (maybe now dead) youths, that they heard the call of Allah.

If only we citizens and people in authority in places like the FBI, would start to focus on the real reason (religion) and not try to analyze this in terms of our view of the world, we might actually avert Islamic radicalization and inevitable terrorist attacks.  These Somalis don’t care about patriotism or material things, two main driving forces in American society, they care about creating an Islamic caliphate across the globe!

For new readers :

The US State Department has admitted over 80,000 Somali refugees to the US in the last 25 years and then last year had to suspend family reunification because widespread immigration fraud was revealed through DNA testing.  That specific program has not yet been reopened, but will be soon.  Nevertheless, thousands of Somalis continue to be resettled as I write this.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving!

Wishing all of our readers a wonderful day with friends and family, and thank God today and every day  that you live in a great country—the United States of America!

We’re not planning to post anything today (unles a major story breaks) but will be back tomorrow with lots of news on refugee issues around the world.

In the meantime, if you aren’t the cook in your house and have extra time, use our search function for refugee and immigrant topics that interest you.  We have written 2557 posts since July 2007, so surely there is information you might have missed!

Climate refugees, elephant in the living room in Copenhagen?

Since there is so much titillating news over the last few day about those leaked (or hacked) e-mails and documents calling into question the whole scientific underpinning of the so-called global warming (aka climate change) “crisis,” I thought this “elephant in the living room” reference was a bit overblown.  I suspect the real discussions will center around, not climate refugees, but, well now, how do we salvage this whole mess!

In any case, here is just a bit from one of the latest alarmist screeds on “climate refugees,” a subject that is not expected to be formally addressed in Copenhagen to the chagrin of these authors.

According to this Australian on-line journal, millions upon millions of “climate refugees,” that I notice are quietly being called “environmental refugees,” are expected to be swarming the planet by by 2050.

Until there is a significant movement calling for recognition of climate refugees – under the UN climate convention or another international governance instrument – the issue will continue to be swept under the carpet. This will not make the problem go away. Estimates of likely displacement continue to grow. Professor Norman Myers, who has been researching the topic for decades, suggests that, without serious action to reduce greenhouse emissions, we could be facing the prospect of perhaps 200 million climate refugees by mid century.

Check out this new verbiage we can all expect to see creeping into the mainstream lexicon.

…..campaigns for climate justice for those most threatened by environmental changes.

Climate justice—don’t you just love it!   And then, note that they have recognized the hole they dug with the “global warming” mumbo-jumbo and they then went to “climate change” and now its just “environmental change” we in wealthy countries are responsible for!

Pittsburgh: Just who exactly is exploiting the refugees?

Update November November 27th:  UK reader tells us why Karen must have proper interpreters, here.

Let’s see, is it an ‘evil’ Catholic Charities, an ‘evil’ business, or the ‘evil’ labor unions?   Or, maybe all three?   I believe that for the first time, I am seeing evidence of a thesis I have been promoting on these pages for a long time.  My theory is that refugees and other immigrants are being used as political pawns by the Far Left to bring about crisis using Alinsky’s (Rules for Radicals) methods with the ultimate goal of changing our form of government (see posts in our Community Destabilization category).

This is the story today in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette that prompted me to look a little further.  We have already discussed some of this controversy in a previous post, here.

Catholic Charities

A group of Burmese refugees protested their treatment by Catholic Charities at the opening of an immigrant center yesterday.  Gosh, don’t you wonder who taught them to protest in this manner and present their demands—the union community organizers of course.

Refugees from Myanmar picketed the opening of a new welcome center for clients of Catholic Charities at its Downtown office yesterday.

Bishop David Zubik of Pittsburgh, who dedicated the Susan Zubik Welcome Center in honor of his late mother, went out to meet the protesters, who spoke little or no English. Counting children, they included more than 30 ethnic Karens, who carried handwritten signs such as, “We demand a professional translator who speaks our language.”

The protest was organized by Three Rivers Coalition for Justice, a group with ties to organized labor that helps workers with problems such as evictions. It printed a leaflet claiming that Catholic Charities had assigned the Karens a Burmese translator who did not speak the Karen dialect and who treated them with contempt.

It claimed that a Karen refugee facing eviction had given $500 to a Catholic Charities caseworker to pay his rent, but eviction notices kept coming. It also said that refugees are placed in low-paying, dangerous jobs.

Bishop Zubik said he tried to invite the protesters in for food. “But they didn’t speak English.”

The core of the problem stems from the allegedly unhappy refugees working at W & K Steel nearby.

Ms. Rauscher said that there are only 20 Karen translators nationwide, and that Catholic Charities investigated reports that their translator was prejudiced against Karens. Those who worked closely with her saw no sign of it, she said. [Ms. Rauscher, there are several Karen  Burmese in Bowling Green, KY who speak English well enough to translate, maybe you could get one of those and free him or her from the misery of chicken plant work.]

But the core of the dispute involves 14 Burmese workers at W&K Steel in Rankin. The Three Rivers Coalition for Justice says they are paid less than other workers, and that they all work in dangerous conditions.

Two W&K employees, one of them Burmese, went on strike in September, and Ironworkers Local 3 is supporting their action. According to the Coalition for Justice, there are 35 employees total. Ed Wilhelm, owner of W&K, did not return phone calls.

Ms. Rauscher said Catholic Charities didn’t place any clients there, but that two got jobs on their own initiative. After the labor complaints, a social worker asked them if their workplace was safe and if they wanted to find new jobs.

“They said they liked their jobs and wanted to stay,” she said.

[.....]

“I’m not sure what’s going on with W&K Steel and the Ironworkers. … But from our perspective, we didn’t see that this employer was exploiting the refugee workers,” she said.

Mr. Rink (Chad Rink, an Ironworkers organizer with Three Rivers Coalition for Justice) said he believes the workers lied to Catholic Charities about work conditions.

“They are afraid for their jobs,” he said.

Then we have the usual old saw that refugees only get $425 when they come to the US.

Ms. Rausher said all refugees struggle to make ends meet, especially when they arrive without western job skills. The government provides a one-time grant of $425 to set them up in an apartment. Most of the money Catholic Charities spends on refugees is from donors, she said.

Well, that’s not exactly accurate Ms. Rausher, most of your funding comes from the taxpayers of the United States.  See Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Pittsburgh’s most recent Form 990 here and note that in a total income of $9,583,772, $5,322,899 is from government grants and $1,138,826 is indirect public support (this is a category I have come to realize is also money from the government somehow, contracts maybe).  So they are mostly government funded and that government funding probably allowed them to open this “welcome” center where the demonstration took place.

We have previously reported that Catholic Charities placed refugees in a Pittsburgh area slum building for the past decade here, so we know there is some veracity to the charges that refugees have been neglected.  In addition to this story, there are reports in the Pittsburgh-Post Gazette that Somali Bantu resettled in the area in 2005 had similar problems.

Big business

I have no clue who is telling the truth about the working conditions at W & K Steel. Readers will need to read all the links I’m providing and try to sort that out.  Frankly, I wondered why a business in this day and age would be so stupid as to pay a legal immigrant worker less than other comparable workers at the plant (as alleged in this story) thus opening themselves up for discrimination charges.  

There has always been a rumor that somehow the “employment service” whoever that was in this case, Catholic Charities or the Jewish agency mentioned, gets a piece from the refugee workers salary, but I can’t believe any of them would be so foolish to set up such an arrangement.

Labor Unions

Sorry, Three Rivers Coalition for Justice, I don’t believe you either.  I think you are ticked off at Catholic Charities over the health care debate and that the US Conference of Catholic Bishops is standing firm on abortion (the only thing they are standing firm on) so you are setting up the Burmese to go after CC as well (although I might agree they need to be gone after)!  Three Rivers is teaching Catholic Charities a lesson, and CC since you have gone to bed with the Far Left I have no sympathy for you.

Exploitation of immigrant workers is the heart and soul of the labor movement in the US!

At a website called “Talking Union” a site for the Democratic Socialists of America, an article entitled, “Indentured Workers Fight Back” confirms, at least to me, that the Burmese refugees may be being exploited by business, and not properly cared for by Catholic Charities, but pro-union socialists use them too to promote their cause— “changing” America.

Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) is the largest socialist organization in the United States, and the U.S. affiliate of the Socialist International. DSA’s members are building progressive movements for social change while establishing an openly socialist presence in American communities and politics.

Here is what they are saying about the Burmese refugees in the Pittsburgh area and this controversy.  Please read this!

Right in the Pittsburgh area a new and surprising strike around related issues is being waged with support from the Ironworkers Local 3. Some 35 workers at an unorganized steel fabrication factory in Rankin, W & K Steel, went on strike against unsafe and dangerous working conditions, and to demand an end to discrimination in wages and other treatment against the 14 workers who are refugees from Burma. The refugees, who have legal status and the right to work in the USA, are placed for employment at W&K by Catholic Charities and the Jewish Family and Children’s Service of Pittsburgh, which take no responsibility for the unsafe and discriminatory conditions under which the refugees are placed. A statement from the striking American workers reads: “We feel as Americans that it is our duty to defend the defenseless and expose the wickedness of the unjust.”

More information on this strike is available from the Three Rivers Coalition for Justice, 2201 Liberty Ave, Ste 4, Pittsburgh Pa 15222, phone 412-849-1271.

 

Such moral solidarity as demonstrated here between American workers and Burmese refugees is the heart and soul of the labor movement in America. If the struggle for the rights of immigrant and indentured workers is becoming considered part of organized labor’s core agenda for workers rights, it is clearly not on the immediate or middle term agenda of the Obama administration. Painful struggles against ferocious resistance by reactionary and nativist elements must be waged. Solidarity for battles like those at Signal and W&K Steel build the heart needed to wage those battles.

In conclusion, refugees are being used all around in my opinion!  The folks at Catholic Charities (and other government contractors) get their salaries paid primarily from the US government and they get to pat themselves on the back for bringing the downtrodden to America while seemingly being cavalier about the living conditions in which they place refugees.   Businesses may take advantage of them.  And, then their supposed friends in the socialist unions like this one, use them to promote their socialist agendas.   Frankly, it stinks!

Parents of Liberian girl raped in Phoenix arrested

The arrest happened over the weekend, but I just saw this story now at Gates of Vienna.  For our previous reports on this horrible case from July, go here.

From CNN on Saturday:

The parents of an 8-year-old Liberian girl who was allegedly sexually assaulted by four boys in July were arrested Friday on child abuse charges, according to Arizona police.

The father, 59, and mother, 47, were arrested Friday in Phoenix on seven counts of child abuse, said police spokesman Sgt. Andy Hill. Police were waiting for them at their home after the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office issued the warrants.

The names of the parents have been withheld by CNN to avoid identifying the daughter, who is an alleged rape victim.

The child abuse investigation was based on documented incidents from the Phoenix Police Department and numerous referrals to Arizona Child Protective Services dating to 2005.

Police said the parents, refugees from the West African nation, used sticks, wires and their fists to hit their young daughter.

Witnesses told CNN affiliate KTVK that the parents left their daughter wandering their apartment complex alone at night, begging for food.

Details of the girl’s assault last summer shocked the nation. She was allegedly lured to a storage shed, pinned down and gang-raped by four boys, none of them older than 14.

The parents said they felt they had been shamed by their child and blamed her for being victimized. As a result, the girl was taken from her home and placed in state custody.

Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf said at the time that the parents’ reaction was wrong and that they needed counseling. 

This is what I said in one of my earlier reports on this case:

Why so many Liberians in the US when that country is pretty stable now?

Apparently we have a category for temporary asylum (for humanitarian purposes!) and we brought thousands of Liberians here years ago.  In February, I reported that many where supposed to be deported to Liberia by March 31st, but a public relations campaign, spearheaded by Senator Jack Reed of one of America’s highest unemployment states, Rhode Island, was waged to keep them here.  Guess he won.  We lost.