EU trying to improve its image on refugee resettlement

Seems the European Union is trying to come up with some refugee scheme that won’t serve as a pull-factor that would only encourage more illegal aliens to try to reach Europe.  Good luck with that!

From the Ottawa Citizen:

BRUSSELS – The EU this week unveils plans to boost and coordinate Europe’s response to the waves of immigrants from Africa and the Middle East, seeking to polish its own international image at the same time.

On Wednesday, the European Commission will get the ball rolling with a recommendation for a “joint EU resettlement programme” under which nations would take in more refugees from poor and war-hit third countries.

This scheme, though voluntary, is aimed at cutting the numbers seeking to reach Europe’s shores aboard rickety boats or via unscrupulous people traffickers.

The EU’s executive arm is also trying to ease the pressure on countries such as Malta, Italy and Spain which are in the frontline of the influx and feel that other member states are not sharing enough of the burden.

Then in October, the commission will publish proposals for harmonizing asylum and family reunion criteria through Europe.

I’ll be watching for that “harmonizing” this fall, won’t you?

Also, according to the story the UNHCR is telling the EU what bad boys and girls they are for only taking 6.7% of the world’s refugees last year.  Funny, I thought we were hearing that wonderful “welcoming” European countries like Sweden were taking the lions share.

The EU wants to improve its humanitarian image.

While the European Union is keen to do its best to help refugee-laden countries plus the immigrants themselves, there is also a feeling that at the moment the bloc has an image problem.

“The current relatively low level of involvement of the EU in the resettlement of refugees impacts negatively on the ambition of the EU to play a prominent role in global humanitarian affairs and hence on the influence of the EU in international fora,” the commission said in the resettlement proposals.

Be sure to use our search function for ‘Malta’ and learn how the US has been adding to the “pull factor” by taking some of Malta’s illegal aliens to the US.

State of Minnesota wants more refugees; agencies will have to work harder

That’s what I take away from the article today at MinnPost.  Apparently most of Minnesota’s refugee resettlement has been through family reunification but that program is still suspended due to the discovery of widespread fraud more than a year ago.  If  Minnesota wants a lot more refugees, and according to this story they do, they need to take so-called “free cases” where refugees come with no support system.  No family connections means the federally contracted resettlement agencies have to work harder!

From the MinnPost today:

For many years, Minnesota’s refugee resettlement efforts have been synonymous with family reunification. Established Somali, east African and Hmong community members have sponsored family members to relocate here. Minnesota hasn’t been getting what are known as “free” cases, refugees who come to the United States on their own without a family member or relative to sponsor them.

That is changing. The State Department put a moratorium on most refugee-family-reunification requests more than a year ago, stemming from a fraud investigation in Africa. The moratorium has significantly slowed the number of refugee referrals to Minnesota. So, for the first time in years, Minnesota will start receiving free cases again. They will include more refugees from Burma and Bhutan, people who will have small support communities.

For readers in new resettlement cities, keep in mind that family reunification is how the refugee numbers will be built up in your locale.  The original families just apply to bring more family members and the resettlement agency gets paid by the feds to process their paperwork.   The first families serve as sponsors for new families and the agency still gets tax dollars and has less responsibility for their care.

Minnesota’s five refugee resettlement programs (see related material, at right) will have to gear up and start recruiting volunteers like they haven’t done in years. Rachele King, director of refuges services for the Minnesota Council of Churches,*said refugees arriving with no local family will need more direct support. They don’t have somebody who has been saving money for them for the past several years. They don’t have anybody who will help them register their kids in school or suggest the best place to buy groceries.

Generally Minnesota gets lots of refugees but this has been a slow year (due to that suspension of the fraudulent family reunification program).

From the 10 years between October 1998 and September 2008, Minnesota received 34,261 refugees, or on average more than 3,400 a year. The top three countries of origin are Somalia (14,363 or 42 percent of the total); Laos (5,228, or 15 percent); and Ethiopia (4,210 or 12 percent).

For the 10 months of the current federal fiscal year, Minnesota has received 719 refugees — on pace for fewer than 900 annually, well below the state average.

Although there is no sign the recession will end any time soon, that’s just fine for Minnesota officials who say—-we will take 2000 this next year!

Chuck Johnson, an assistant commissioner with the Minnesota Department of Human Services (DHS), said Minnesota has proposed accepting 2,000 refugees in the coming fiscal year. Half of those would be free individuals.

* See the Minnesota Council of Churches policy statement on immigration here.

Minnesota inquiry into possible taxpayer funds going to a mosque

Your tax dollars:

Here is the latest on the ongoing funny money business alleged with a Muslim charter school in Minneapolis.  Now there appears to be a mosque connection.  From the Star Tribune thanks to a friend from Tennessee.

State officials are examining whether public money has been improperly used to pay for Islamic mosques on charter school campuses in Blaine and Inver Grove Heights.

Chas Anderson, deputy commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Education, said officials will study Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy’s (TiZA) use of state “lease aid” grants, which were created more than a decade ago to help charter schools rent adequate facilities.

“If it is subsidizing a mosque, in our view, that would be a violation of state and federal law,” Anderson said.

The probe is the latest in a series of church-vs.-state conflicts involving TiZA and several Islamic nonprofit organizations with ties to the charter school.

Anderson said the inquiry was sparked by a lawsuit filed against the school this year by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Minnesota, which claims taxpayer dollars paid to TiZA are unconstitutionally promoting religion.

There is more.

Readers, all of this investigation began with sleuthing from columnist Katherine Kersten.  One woman!  Here is another post I wrote on the subject last month.

In my previous post I said you all should become bloggers.  I assure you there is no end to the fraud and abuse you can uncover with non-profit groups ripping off taxpayers.

Everyone must write a blog! Like this one in Nashville!

Someone just now brought this great blog to my attention—it’s called ACT West Nashville.   ACT is the American Congress for Truth and Nashville is fortunate to have a very active ACT  chapter! 

It reminds me that I haven’t done my harangue recently to tell you all you must write your own blog.  They are simple to set up and you only need to write when you feel like it.  But, they are so important in gathering the FACTS especially since there are very few investigative reporters left these days.   You become the reporter!

Did you see Glenn Beck last Friday?   He told all of us to gather facts, dig through documents, look for connections and expose them without fear!   The mainstream media isn’t going to do it, so we have to! 

Great job ACT West Nashville!

Grand Island, NE: CAIR (with handmaiden EEOC) wins another one

AND!  Surprise (not)!  Another Somali Ethnic Community Based Organization is born! 

We reported extensively last year about the demands of Somali Muslim workers for religious accommodations at the JBS Swift & Co plant in Grand Island.   You can visit our category that includes the controversy at the Swift plant in Greeley as well, here.

The gist of what happened is this, from the Washington Examiner a couple of weeks ago.

Hundreds of Muslim workers walked off the job and picketed in protest last September, saying they wanted time to pray at sunset and break a daylong fast. Plant management responded the next day by adjusting the work schedule to accommodate them. That fueled a counterprotest in which other workers walked off the job, arguing Muslim workers were given preferential treatment. Management then ended the accommodations, which sent Muslim workers back to the picket lines.

The company fired 86 workers for walking off the job. It eventually hired back about a dozen.

“I think a lot of people went in last year sort of flying a little blind,” said JBS spokesman Chandler Keys. “Everyone got their eyes opened.”

They had their eyes further opened this past week when it was learned that the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) gloatingly reported that the federal EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) had ruled that the Muslims were “unlawfully harassed” last year.  Jerry Gordon writing at New English Review has more on the story.

Nevermind that the Somalis in Grande Island harassed and intimidated the mayor of that city last year here.   Everyone knows harassment only goes one way right!  Somalis don’t harass white women, of course not!   See also Mohamed Rage, the community organizer from Omaha, and his ECBO and its involvement with CAIR here.

Enter a new ECBO

Looks like the Somalis of Grand Island don’t need Rage’s agitation services anymore!  They have their own brand new Ethnic Community Based Organization as of June 2nd of this year.   It is called the Nebraska Somali Community Association and they are already weighing in on the CAIR/EEOC/Swift issue here where the reporter quoted as the authority Yasin Ali .

Ali is the 17-year-old  co-founder of the Nebraska Somali Community Association.  See staff and Board of Directors here (see below also*).  No sign of who is paying for this ECBO but when you look over the site you will see they are using all the right verbage to make a case for grants at the Federal Office of Refugee Resettlement to help refugees find “resources” (aka taxpayer supported programs).

More from the Grand Island Independent in June.

Yasin Ali, a 17-year-old senior at Grand Island Senior High School, filed the incorporation paperwork with the Secretary of State’s Office Wednesday in Lincoln. He’s also working on a non-profit filing for the association.

Teenager Ali is helped by another Somali who is looking for work in Grand Island.

Ali will be staffing the office over the summer, but once school starts again in August, he will rely more on assistance from his co-incorporator, Samatar Ali, who is not related to Yasin Ali. Samatar Ali was a doctor in Somali and is currently looking for work in Grand Island.

Now, I thought this was kind of curious, when you go to their papers on file with the Secretary of State of Nebraska someone named Abdullahi Abdulle is listed as agent at 210 N. Piper St. #10, Grand Island, NE 68803 and coincidentally so are Yasin Ali and Samatar Ali at that same address.  We learned previously that Samatar Ali is not related to Yasin.  It must be a busy household at 210 N. Piper St!

Interesting, don’t you think, that Somali ECBOs are popping up wherever there are meatpacking plant controversies.  As I said, who is paying for this one?  We know in Greeley their new Somali “community organizing” outfit is mostly supported by taxpayers, Lutherans and a union.

Learn all about ECBOs at our new category, here.

*I decided to post the staff and board of directors names here too in case we need them in the future.

Staff

Yasin Ali- Founder and President
Guled Ismail- Vice President
Liiban- Community Liasion

Board of Directors

Paul Warshauer (Grande Venues)- Board Chairman
Alisa Grim (GIPS Teacher)- Secretary
Ali Samatar (Former Doctor)- Treasurer
Yasin Ali ( Student)
Guled Ismail ( JBS Swift)
Karen Natchigal (BBBS)
Amanda Levos (GIPS Teacher)

Note to 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

Sierra Club sounds downright gleeful about ‘global warming refugees’

Last night I spent some time in a sort of stream of consciousness exercise that took me from the death of  Ted Kennedy (a wealthy man who liked to take your money and give it to the poor, but wasn’t interested in distributing his money directly to the poor immigrant), to the assasination of his brother by Jordanian immigrant Sirhan Sirhan, to Bill Ayers and Jeff Jones dedicating their Weatherunderground screed to Sirhan Sirhan (among others), to Jeff Jones and the Apollo Alliance funded by the Tides Foundation, to the Apollo Alliance writing the stimulus bill to help redistribute your wealth to their pet projects, to the SEIU and its connections to Apollo and Geroge Soros (who likes to create interlocking groups to fool the public), to supposed environmental organizations like the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC and its heiress president) that sit on the Apollo Alliance board, and the stream goes on.

Eventually I will tell you all those connections and how refugees and immigrants play into the whole tangled web to “change” America—really to bring down America as we know it.

This morning I just want to tell you about how the Sierra Club is in bed with unions and how they justify their open borders position and their union supporting position to members questioning what the heck they are doing.

Here is a link to a column by “Mr. Green” at Sierra magazine.  Note the first question from a reader on June 9 was about the Sierra Club in bed with unions (btw Sierra Club President, Carl Pope sits on the Apollo Alliance Board with the likes of SEIU, which I have previously told you is helping organize Somalis to disrupt work places).

Then in March another reader asks Mr. Green this question:

Hey Mr. Green,

Why does the Sierra Club refuse to take a stand on illegal migration and historically high legal immigration? The sheer number of immigrants is having a negative effect on the environment and the amount of resources consumed, not to mention the social costs. Why is the Club being politically correct when there is a clear relationship between population and environmental balance? –Michael in Ashburn, Virginia

Here is Mr. Green’s answer (non-answer!) where he tries to deflect the members attention by suggesting the member was a bad anti-immigrant person and then goes on to sound like he is actually pleased about the latest fad of the refugee industry—global warming refugees!

While some of my environmentally minded readers dread any reduction in procreation [Edit:  LOL! the Sierra Club is all about telling white people to stop having babies but I can't wait to see them tell African immigrants, like the Somalis, to stop having 6 kids and more], which would also reduce the number of immigrants, others, like you, want to shut the immigrants out. I just hope you’re not in favor of that environmentally destructive boondoggle of a fence they’re building on our border with Mexico.

The simplest answer to your question about the Sierra Club’s immigration policy is that the Club’s members voted overwhelmingly some time ago to remain neutral on this issue. [Edit: It is a very long story about how the Sierra Club took millions of dollars in donations to shut them up on immigration, ant that is why Mr. Green isn't telling this reader the full story.]  Many are convinced that it is more helpful in the long run to work to help change the sinister circumstances that drive so many people to immigrate, including poverty, lack of education, lack of women’s rights, and lack of family-planning options.

A less-known driver of immigration is environmental devastation, which has produced millions of refugees; they now number more than 10 million per year. By the year 2000, there were 25 million such refugees, actually higher than the number of people who had fled for political reasons. Among the environmentally related causes of displacement are floods, landslides, water shortages, and desertification caused by deforestation and overcultivation, not to mention climate change and the more intense devastation caused by the more intense storms brought on by global warming.

While most Americans have gone about their lives since the late 1960’s finding work, buying a home, raising a family and just taking care of life, a cabal of radical Leftists has been quietly putting together a new government structure that aims to wipe out borders, redistribute wealth, take large businesses (willingly it seems) under government control and to be run by a group of Ivy League so-called intellectuals who are really a bunch of  rich elitist snobs.

They’ve created a goliath!  They’ve got the Religious Left,  the mainstream media, environmental groups, open borders groups, powerful unions, businesses like Wal-mart and Microsoft, ethnic advocacy groups and the list goes on—arrayed against the so-called “mob” attending town halls and tea parties.  Have faith, just as David did, the little guy can still win in the end.

Industry news: Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services President to resign Tuesday

Although this is probably not news for most insiders in the refugee resettlement industry, we just learned about it yesterday.    Ralston H. Deffenbaugh Jr who had been President of one of the largest of the monopolistic  Top Ten federal government contracting resettlement agencies since 1991 said back in April, here, that he was resigning with some gobbledegook about the intersection of  ’one’s joy and the world’s need shifting.’   Huh?   Maybe he figured out that his agency has a terrible track record when it comes to caring for refugees it resettles and he wants out.  Who knows?

For whatever reason, it sounds like he is saying it stinks working at LIRS.

Ralston H. Deffenbaugh Jr., president of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIRS) since 1991, will resign from his post Sept. 1. According to an LIRS news release, Deffenbaugh, 57, said the “organization needs new gifts of leadership.”

“As LIRS president I have always understood myself as standing on the able, solid shoulders of all those who have gone before me,” Deffenbaugh said. “I believe that my gifts have been well used in my tenure at LIRS, that the agency has grown to a degree that no one could have imagined 18 years ago, and that it is now time for a new kind of imagination to light the way. I’ve long been influenced by the adage that our calling is the intersection between our joy and the world’s need. For me and for LIRS, that intersection has shifted.”

During his tenure, LIRS and its partners have resettled more than 100,000 refugees, many from Africa (including the “Lost Boys” from Sudan), Burma, and Bhutan. The organization has revived the international system of resettlement and care for unaccompanied refugee children through collaboration with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

Deffenbaugh helped form the Refugee Council USA*, which focuses on refugee protection, and served as its first chairperson from 2000 to 2001. He is the longest-serving head of LIRS since its founding in 1939.

LIRS was one of the five government contracting resettlement agencies in that White House meeting two weeks ago here.   LIRS has obviously joined up with powerful unions (SEIU among them!), big businesses looking to keep wages low, and advocacy groups wanting to wipe out our borders altogether.   Maybe this guy got a conscience. I know wishful thinking!

For more on egregious refugee care cases use our search function for ‘Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services’ and see how many times they have come up in the last couple of years.

*Refugee Council USA is a consortium of refugee industry groups that get together to multiply their power in Washington.  I wrote about them here when they sent a report to Obama asking him to double the number of refugees allowed to resettle in the US for 2010.   Of course at least half of those we are bringing now are unemployed and living on various forms of welfare.   By the way, it won’t be long before we know what the refugee ceiling for FY2010 will be when Obama sends his Presidential determinination letter to Congress.  The new fiscal year begins October 1.

No Kennedy in coming immigration battles

Here is an article, to follow-up my post the other day, from the Christian Science Monitor that I’m posting because first it summarizes Senator Kennedy’s role in the immigration debate in this country for nearly 5 decades, something we all should know, and there are a couple of comments that I particularly agree with.

Here is how the article begins:

The next round of immigration reform promised by President Obama will be the first in more than 50 years that does not involve Sen. Edward Kennedy.

His record on the issue has quite literally changed the face of the nation.

From the 1965 overhaul that ended a system of national quotas to the failed drive launched in 2007 for comprehensive reform, Kennedy has been at the front lines making the case for a more open immigration system.

Read on and check out the comments.

Here is one from Bob I agree with.  We have written many times about how refugees are supported by the taxpayer while big businesses (like the meatpackers) employ them at wages below what they can live on.  Furthermore, I continue to be perplexed about the religious Left, eg Church World Service or the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, working hand in glove with giant corporations to deliver them cheap labor at the expense of poor American blacks and other blue collar workers.

Bob:

Open immigration policies combined with a welfare state results in corporations externalizing their costs to society. Ted Kennedy favored both. Because the costs of maintaining a new mouth to feed, cloth, shelter and education can be pushed on the taxpayer, a corporate business can be ‘profitable’ even though the inputs of their process (when you include the FULL cost of the new immigrant) exceed the value of the output, in other words, economically degenerate.

It’s no coincidence that a country that favors economically degenerate policies is going bankrupt, and has to borow more and more to keep afloat.

Ted Kennedy’s legacy is an elite smuggly patting itself on the back in gated communities like Hyanisport, while the general welfare of the average citizen slips ever toward a 3rd world existence.

Herman King, another commenter, also raises the elitism point.

Why in the world would any decent person mourn the coward of Chappaquiddick, the man who did everything he could to turn this nation into a third world country while he and his rich clan lived safely in gated communities?The fawning over Kennedy turned my stomach.

I’m wondering if it’s safe to turn the TV on yet tonight.

Immigration Daily is at it again!

Those twentysomethings over at Immigration Daily still think their old tactics work—the name calling.  What did Glenn Beck say yesterday, keep bringing out the facts and stand up to them!  Sticks and stones and so forth!

Editorials like this one just make me laugh.  The Open Borders/One Worlders can throw tantrums like this one, but it doesn’t work anymore.  Oh, it might work on a few wussy Members of Congress, but not on the millions of Americans who have had it with the big businesses/unions/and church groups working side by side to destroy our borders and exploit immigrants for their own selfish purposes and hurt regular middle and lower income Americans while they are at it.

Here is some of the rant: 

130 pro-immigration advocates were recently invited to the White House for a meeting with Secretary Napolitano, where President Obama made a surprise, albeit brief, appearance. The anti-immigrationists were not invited.

I told you about this meeting, here, a couple of weeks ago.  Immigration Daily did us a great service by saying that no one concerned with border security was in attendance, that this is the open borders lobby getting ready for the next big push.   It let us see clearly the cabal of unions, big businesses, advocacy groups and churches aligned against average Americans.

I could comment on every line of the rant, but haven’t the time.  Here is one line that really made me laugh:

And here we use the term “cutting edge” pejoratively (we do not suggest that it is politically improper to oppose a President, only that the form of opposition selected by the antis is improper).

Oh my gosh, was this writer living in a bubble for the last eight years and missed the vile attacks on George Bush.  I attended some ’support the troops’ rallies in Washington against the Far Left (the same people working to open our borders) and it was an eye-opener to witness the meanness of the Left and their anarchist friends.  No peace and love from them.

Oh, and here we go, the big bad “R” word.  Now I am rolling on the floor laughing.

The unifying theme behind the anti-immigrationists and the anti-Obamites is the same – racism.

You know, I actually love it when someone calls names—birthers, racists, haters, and the list goes on, you know, xenophobes, islamophobes and so forth.  Keep it up!

High percentage of refugees entering Australia are sick

This is not news to us.  Although it’s been awhile since we have posted on the issue of refugees entering the US with major diseases (see our Health issues category for lots of those stories) I suspect that refugees with communicable diseases like TB and HIV Aids are coming into the US daily.

So, for our Australian readers you might want to check out this story about a new report on the high numbers of sick, mostly Africans, entering Australia.

There is a high prevalence of treatable but asymptomatic diseases in African refugee children arriving to Australia, and few are screened despite having already had contact with primary care, new Australian research suggests.

A study of 240 newly arrived refugee children by Sydney’s Children Hospital at Westmead found a high prevalence of asymptomatic TB, schistosomiasis, malaria and hepatitis B.

Disease prevalence was highest in refugees from Africa, who now comprise three-quarters of Australia’s annual humanitarian resettlement, the study in the Journal of Paediatrics and Child Health (online 20 August) found.

[.....] 

In 2006, 40% of the 12,700 refugees granted resettlement visas in Australia settled in the Sydney metropolitan area, but it is estimated that only one in five access specialised refugee health services.

Note that the concern is not about how many are sick and possibly should be turned away, its just how many are not identified before entering the country.