Muslims speak out about beheading

Some American Muslims are facing the questions raised by the beheading of Aasiya Hassan by her estranged husband, which we reported on here and here.  The Associated Press reports:

The crime was so brutal, shocking and rife with the worst possible stereotypes about their faith that some U.S. Muslims thought the initial reports were a hoax.

The harsh reality of what happened in an affluent suburb of Buffalo, N.Y. — the beheading of 37-year-old Aasiya Hassan and arrest of her estranged husband in the killing — is another crucible for American Muslims.

It especially shocked people — Muslim and non-Muslim — because the couple was so modern and apparently assimilated. And many have commented on the irony that they founded a TV station to improve the image of Muslims. Here are two statements from Muslims:

“Muslims don’t want to talk about this for good reason,” said Saleemah Abdul-Ghafur, a Muslim author and activist. “There is so much negativity about Muslims, and it sort of perpetuates it. The right wing is going to run with it and misuse it. But we’ve got to shine a light on this issue so we can transform it.”

There is evidence of movement in that direction in the 10 days since the Hassan slaying. In an open letter to American Muslim leaders, Imam Mohamed Hagmagid Ali of Sterling, Va., vice president of the Islamic Society of North America, said “violence against women is real and cannot be ignored.”

He urged that imams and community leaders never second-guess a woman in danger, and said women seeking divorces because of physical abuse should not be viewed as bringing shame to their families.

Ah yes, those vicious right-wingers who notice things like abuse of women among Muslims. Nevertheless, this is progress. Read the whole article for some more reactions.  I’m glad to see some Muslims are talking about it. But the reaction from Muslims seems minimal, given the number of organizations devoted to advancing Islam and protecting Muslims’ rights.  A google search for CAIR and beheading brings only the news that CAIR had given the murderer an award. Will they take it back now? And a search for MSA (Muslim Student Association) and beheading brings up a report on a speech by David Horowitz at Emery University last Wednesday:

He spoke against honor killings among radical Islamists, noting the case of a Muslim television station owner who beheaded his wife in Buffalo, N.Y.

“Why isn’t there condemnation of beheadings? Because it’s in the Qu’ran? Come on!” Horowitz said, raising his hands and his voice.

Horowitz called on the Emory Muslim Students Association to protest the honor killings, adding that if the MSA does so, he will pen a personal letter of praise.

No report on how the MSA responded. But we can guess. They probably consider Horowitz the bad guy for bringing up such an offensive subject, not the Muslim who beheaded his wife.

Update 2/27/09: See my post, Beheader said headless wife can’t reach paradise.

US Census says Somalis are the poorest of the foreign-born in the US population

More in my recent series on ‘having fun with numbers.’

The US Census Bureau released late last week the 2007 demographic numbers collected by the American Community Survey.*   Here are some poverty figures from their press release:

Among people for whom poverty status is determined, about 51 percent of residents born in Somalia are living in poverty. About a quarter of the population born in Iraq, the Dominican Republic, Jordan and Mexico are also living in poverty.

On the low end of the poverty spectrum for the countries of birth, U.S. residents born in the Netherlands and Ireland each have a poverty rate of about 5 percent.

About 13 percent of both natives and the total U.S. population are living in poverty, while about 16 percent of the foreign-born are.

Additionally the Somalis are among the newest comers and have the youngest population.

Meanwhile, among the nation’s foreign-born, Somalis and Kenyans living in the United States are the most likely to be newcomers, and Somalis are among the youngest and poorest.

In fact, we reported earlier that more than half of the Somali Muslim refugees we have resettled in the US have come since 9/11.

You can get information on your community here.  

*  If you scout around at the American Community Survey, you can find even more information on your county.  It took me awhile but I found it.

For readers who like to pore over statistics, see my posts yesterday here and here.

2006 Annual Report to Congress tells you everything you need to know about refugee program

Each year the Office of Refugee Resettlement prepares an Annual Report to Congress about the refugee program for that fiscal year.  The most recent report available is for FY2006.   It is a gold mine of information about the program:  who came, where they went, what grants and programs were available, and much more.

So, just as I said about that report I posted earlier today, this document will give you many hours of informative reading.

A couple of things that caught my eye on a quick skim of the 124 pages was a $1 million grant to the US Conference of Catholic Bishops to do a “marriage education” program.  There was over $7 million awarded that year divided among 45 multicultural groups to “enhance ethnic community organizing”  (see page 34).

And then one of my favorite charts is the one on Welfare Usage on page 75.  For the 5 years prior to 2006 all forms of welfare usage have increased dramatically.   The four categories of usage include any type of cash assistance, Medicaid, Food Stamps and Public Housing.    For Food Stamps, 54.9% of refugees were using food stamps in 2006 while 35.8% were using them in 2001.   You can just imagine what the number must be now!

And with more food stamps available comes more opportunity for Food Stamp Fraud.

Hamas members flooding into U.S.? Maybe even terrorist prisoners! (Or not.)

Since my post of February 11, stating that contrary to some reports, Hamas members are NOT flooding into the U.S. from Gaza, I’ve seen quite a number of articles either repeating the assertion that they are coming here or agreeing with our opinion that this is not what the presidential order is about. Today I came across a long, involved article at the Family Security Matters website:  Determining the Intent of the Presidential Determination, by Frank Salvato. He seems to think there is a good chance the government intends to bring Hamas members here.

I’ll get to the really interesting part of the article in a minute, but I want to set out my criticism first.

Salvato’s argument is too long  and rambling to reproduce here. But one thing he does is reprehensible. He slides from his argument about the president directive into a long discussion about the corruption of UNRWA (the UN agency in charge of the Palestinian “refugees”), and into another discussion about media bias, and back again, implying that anyone who disagrees with him about Hamas operatives coming to the U.S. is ignorant of the corruption in UNRWA and similar to the biased media. The connection is that most of the aid given through the president’s directive goes to UNRWA, and that the media have not done their job reporting accurately on UNRWA and on many other things in the Middle East.

Here is his conclusion. 

Are the ramifications of President Obama’s Presidential Determination 2009-15 clear? No, nothing in the political arena, even in the United States…especially in the United States today, is ever clear. But an honest assessment of all the components related to the Presidential Determination, when considered in unison, present, not only the reality that there exists an opportunity for Hamas operatives to immigrate/re-settle to the West and United States, but the stark reality that the West – and the taxpayers of the United States in particular – are providing financial aid to an organization that supports the efforts of Hamas. To deny these realities and the possibilities that they conjure is to be perilously naïve.

So after all those words, he admits there is no compelling proof that Hamas operatives are settling here, only that it is unclear, but you have to believe they are coming because if you deny it you’re as much of an idiot as those who don’t realize UNRWA is joined at the hip to Hamas.

We’ve written extensively about UNRWA’s connections to Hamas; our search results for “UNRWA” are here. We’re not naive about UNRWA’s support of terrorism. But I’m not convinced the presidential directive was meant to open the floodgates to Hamas. 

But here’s Part Two.

My eye was caught by a name I know being quoted in the article. As Salvat0 describes him:

Howard Linett, a member of the Suicide/Homicide Bomber Tactical Analysis Focus Group of the National Terrorism Preparedness Institute & the Technical Support Working Group of the US Department of Homeland Security, a veteran of the Israeli Defense Forces and a Sergeant-Major and sniper instructor in the Israeli Police Civil Guard, in writing from his home in Jerusalem, Israel….

Howard is an old friend of our family, and as credible and knowledgeable as can be. His first quote is about Hamas’s stealing humanitarian aid, which we know about.  I like his description: “the anti-Robin Hoods, stealing from the poor to give to political supporters.”

But it’s his next quote that took me aback. He connects the possibility of Hamas supporters coming to the U.S. with the current push by the Israeli government to get Hamas to release Israeli prisoner Gilad Shalit through a prisoner swap. The number of terrorists to be released is said to be between 400 and 1,000.

Those same media sources report that Israel is demanding that the terrorists to be exchanged for Gilad Shalit not be allowed to return to either the Gaza Strip or the West Bank. Nor does Israel want to release the terrorists into the custody of some country that will warmly embrace them, anoint them heroes and allow them to return to their terrorist ways.

So what is to be done? Well…

 $20.3 million for ‘Urgent Refugee Relief and Migration Needs related to Gaza’ thrown at the thorny problem might provide for a ‘temporary solution,’ and allow a new American Administration to claim it is administering defibrillation to a moribund peace process.

Not just Hamas operatives, but terrorists from Israeli prisons?  I called up Howard Linett in Jerusalem to ask him if he really thought this is what the presidential directive is about. He told me, “If I didn’t think there was some possibility I wouldn’t have said it.” It would give the Obama administration great credibility to solve the problem of how to get Gilad Shalit released. They could claim credit for re-starting the “peace process.”

But is it likely? “No.”

What’s interesting to me is how easy it is to believe the most far-out things about Obama and his administration. That’s why the story of Obama opening the floodgates to Hamas has circulated so widely. It’s credible. We don’t know his motives at all. His real beliefs have always been hidden, and they remain so. I got an email a couple of weeks ago about Obama’s having changed the oath of the armed services to pledge loyalty to him personally. It was a satire someone had written. But credible to many people, because we have no evidence he wouldn’t do that.

So if you want to say Obama could use the directive to bring in Hamas operatives, well, theoretically he could. Though I don’t know why he’d need to use this particular fund for it; there’s plenty of other government money floating around, and if Obama uses the fund to bring in terrorists, he won’t get credit for sending humanitarian aid to Gaza.  Further, he was apparently taken aback by the strong public reaction to his order to close the terrorist prison at Guantanamo; we don’t want released terrorist prisoners wandering around America, whether al-Qaeda or Hamas, so it wouldn’t be easy to sneak them in without an outcry.

Until I see more solid evidence than I’ve seen so far, I’ll spend my hysteria quota on other things Obama is doing, like causing the economy to collapse around us.

Senator Chuck Schumer to head Senate Immigration subcommittee

I came across this information just now in a publication called  The Pakistani Newspaper.    It’s a statement by Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum welcoming Schumer as the new chairman of the important Senate subcommittee on immigration.   Check out both the Forum and Noorani to see where this organization stands on immigration issues; I think you can already guess.

Washington, DC – On Wednesday, it was reported that Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) would take over as Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Immigration. He replaces Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) in that role. The following is a statement by Ali Noorani, Executive Director of the National Immigration Forum, a non-partisan pro-immigrant advocacy group in Washington.

[.....]

No human could possibly fill the shoes of Senator Ted Kennedy when it comes to his stewardship of the immigration issue across decades of shifting political winds and economic ebbs and flows, but we have high expectations for Senator Schumer nonetheless.

Schumer’s subcommittee includes all the issues that interest us.

The Immigration Subcommittee has a wide portfolio, including oversight of Department of Homeland Security’s immigration-related entities (ICE ,CBP, USCIS), and Department of Justice immigration functions, and the U.S. refugee program.

For those of us working in the grassroots to secure our borders and reform legal immigration programs like the Refugee Resettlement Program, take a look at this list of directors of the National Immigration Forum that is working to bring amnesty to millions of illegal aliens:  US Chamber of Commerce, National Restaurant Assoc, United Food and Commercial Workers Union, American Nursery and Lanscape Assoc. and the list goes on.

Fun with numbers! See the 2007 Yearbook of Immigrant Statistics

If you are interested in who came to the US (legally) and why (for decades) and you love to pore over numbers, this is the place for you to spend many a joy-filled hour—”2007 Yearbook of Immigrant Statistics.”   Published in September 2008 by the Department of Homeland Security, this is a must-have document for anyone interested in immigration generally.

For example, on page 18, I learned that in 2007, 54,942 refugees became legal permanent residents.   81,183 asylees (definition) became legal permanent residents and 42, 127 diversity visa lottery winners hit the jackpot.

To new readers:   We have a ‘Where to find information’ category, those of you new to the refugee resettlement program might wish to visit from time to time.

NC Perdue chicken plant happy to get refugee labor

I don’t know what exactly is going on in North Carolina.   First we heard that there are no jobs for refugees there.   Then earlier this week I saw confirmation that there is competition between the non-profit government contractors (volags) for territory in NC (more later) to bring more refugees.   Then this morning I see that the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) is happily supplying refugee labor to Perdue (and Perdue is looking for workers).

From the Richmond County Daily Journal:

Since 1962, thousands of Burmese people have escaped government-sponsored social, political and religious persecution – including torture and forced labor – by coming to America.

To date, 53 of them have been hired to work at Perdue in Rockingham.

Community leaders got to learn about the culture of the new employees at an informal luncheon at the plant Thursday afternoon.

According to Jim Brown, complex human resources manager at Perdue, the new Burmese hires fill a void because they are very eager to work, and they meet all of the necessary human resource requirements.

So companies like Perdue call the refugee agencies which act as (taxpayer- funded) human resource agencies.  I wonder, are there taxpayer-funded employment agencies helping Americans compete for these jobs?

“We have a 40 percent turnover rate per year, and it is very costly. If you have 1,300 employees, and 40 percent of them leave every year, that’s over 500 new people that you have to train.”

Which is why Perdue called to see what they had to offer at the Raleigh office of the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI), a non-profit that provides services and addresses the needs and rights of persons in forced or voluntary migration worldwide.

“It’s very common for employers to call us, especially when they get new business contracts and need workers quickly,” said Marlene Myers, a North Carolina State Refugee Coordinator with the NC Department of Health and Human Services.

As usual this article is a refugee story puff piece except for the token mention of a little problem.   One attendee at the luncheon asked— what about American workers in this time of extreme unemployment.

Jamie Moss-Godfrey of RE/MAX Realty, who attended the luncheon, said that she expressed concern over recruiting employees from outside the county when the already high national unemployment rate is expected to rise.

She is comforted by someone who tells her, its o.k., these refugees have been here for 7 years already.   Really?

“Then one of the presenters told me that most of these people have been here for seven years and are already part of the current unemployment statistics, and I felt much better after that. the panel was open to all types of questions and concerns.”

Well, that’s funny.  I just went and looked at refugee databases here.   I went back to 2002 (7 years) and only 16 Burmese were resettled in North Carolina that year.  In 2003, the number was 26, 116 came in 2004, 86 in 2005, 57 in 2006 and guess what else I found?   A whopping 544 Burmese were brought to North Carolina in 2007.  I don’t have the numbers for 2008 but I bet that it is even larger.

I do have the number of Burmese brought to the US in 2008 for the whole country—-18,139.   And, as one of the refugee advocates pointed out at lunch:

…..they aren’t “going back” any time soon.

 

For new readers:  USCRI is the federal contractor whose subcontractor, the International Institute of CT, was suspended by the State Department in Waterbury, CT when it didn’t take care of the Burmese refugees it was contracted to care for.

Some interesting information from Dream Act activists

I know this is a bit off topic, but wanted to share it with you anyway.   I came across a blog this morning, United We Dream, in which they give numbers for the Asian illegal aliens in the US.  Most of us following this issue think Hispanic when we think of illegals seeking amnesty.   But, according to this blog 14% of illegal aliens are Asians:

The most recent statistics I found from a March 2006 a report estimated the number of undocumented Asians living in the United States in 2005 was about 1.5 million ” 14 percent of the 10.5 million undocumented immigrants in the United States, and 12 percent of the Asian population. At the time it was estimated that of the 1.5 million 23 percent were Chinese, followed by Filipinos (17%), Indians (14%), and Koreans (11%).

Apparently they mostly got here legally with student visas and such and have overstayed their visas.    Then this interested me, the Vietnamese aren’t so sympathetic because they came legally (as refugees):

….when you talk to Vietnamese and Cambodian immigrants about the issues, there can be less sympathy because they largely came here legally and don’t understand….

If you don’t know about the proposed Dream Act, go here.

Then scouting around at United We Dream, I learned there is a petition campaign underway to have Attorney General (we are all cowards) Holder investigate the flamboyant and successful Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio.  The petition begins:

We, the undersigned, respectfully request that you direct your office to investigate Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Arizona, for gross civil rights violations in the name of immigration enforcement.

I guess this is what they mean by changing the tone.

Obama’s attorney general Holder calls us cowards for not talking about race

In a speech yesterday, newly appointed Attorney General Eric Holder has managed to stir a hornets nest by saying Americans are “cowards” for not talking about race. 

Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards,” said Holder, nation’s first black attorney general.

Race issues continue to be a topic of political discussion, Holder said, but “we, as average Americans, simply do not talk enough with each other about race.”

Mr. Holder, if people aren’t talking about race enough for you, you can blame your politically correct elitist friends for that.   Most  “average Americans” are afraid to open their mouths on the subject because some snotty leftwing goon will tell them they are racist xenophobic hatemongers.

And then, as for your comment that people of various races work together but don’t socialize together, so what!   People spend their free time with people they relate to for myriad reasons.  It has nothing to do with race it has to do with culture, values, lifestyle, and the way one grew up.  Here is what Holder said:

Holder said the workplace is largely integrated but Americans still self-segregate on the weekends and in their private lives.

If you leftwingers in the Obama Administration have a hang-up about race, could you keep your hang-ups to yourself.  You might be surprised that “average Americans” are doing just fine.

And, besides Mr. Holder, didn’t we just elect a black President, aren’t you the first black Attorney General, didn’t you all tell us we were now a post-racial country, so maybe you could find more positive, constructive or useful things to say about the American people.   Or, maybe don’t say anything and do your job.

Tent cities coming to a neighborhood near you?

Jumping from Syracuse, NY to Boise, ID this morning, we have another story of US refugees about to be evicted, this time because they have no jobs and their rent subsidies are about to end.

One Iraqi family, brought to the United States from war-torn Baghdad and resettled in Boise with refugee status, may soon face an eviction notice at their new home.

In two weeks, Walid and Samira Waheed and their three children will reach the end of their six months of rental assistance. They have no savings, and, largely because of the declining job market, they have not found work. They do not have rent money for March.

“I am happy in Boise,” Walid Waheed said. “Please help us.”

Waheed is just the tip of the iceberg. More than 1,000 refugees resettled in Idaho in the last year, most expecting to quickly find jobs and become self-sufficient.

But now, with their welcome benefits running out and no work in sight, refugee families are facing the stark possibility of becoming internally displaced people in the very nation that offered them refuge.

Tent cities!  A Boise community manager is shocked to learn there are no solutions.  Although I feel for her, it wasn’t too long ago I read about how wonderful and welcoming Boise was to refugees and immigrants generally.   I’m not sure I can find it now*, but they even reportedly had city benches painted with “welcoming” messages to immigrants.  So the city shares some blame for not looking ahead.

According to community manager Barbara Seguin Du Haime, another two families have funding through March, but come April, she will have nine refugee families facing eviction.

“I was just amazed to learn that there aren’t solutions out there,” she said. “What happens to Boise? Are we going to have tent cities?”

World Relief says they are short $5000 a month for upcoming rents.

Jones said World Relief is still compiling the numbers, but needs about $5,000 a month to continue paying rent for unemployed refugees.

Tent cities in the US or left to die?   Oh, come on, the choice is not that stark.  Many of the refugees we have written about are not on the verge of death where they were, some like the Iraqi family we told you about yesterday were doing o.k. in Jordan.

Moore, at IRC, said communities across the country that have taken in refugees are all facing the same dilemma: a potential wave of refugees losing their housing.

“It’s a real possibility across the country,” Moore said. “It’s almost a question of playing God. Are you going to bring them here to have a difficult resettlement experience, or are you going to leave them there to die?”

How about going to the top dogs at the IRC and asking them to contribute their six figure salaries (from the US taxpayer) to these poor families you are bringing to Boise and other US cities.   Maybe if that happened the refugee spigot would be turned off for awhile.

*Update:   I found it!  The “Welcome the Stranger” campaign.  Now maybe they can use those benches for seating in the tent cities!