Told you so! Malta is now an illegal immigration magnet

Ever since the benevolent and brilliant Tea Party Molly (our former Ambassador to Malta) came up with the scheme of turning illegal immigrants arriving on Malta’s shores into legitimate refugees and giving them airline tickets to your town, I’ve warned that the practice would only increase the flow of Somalis and other Africans to the tiny island of Malta.  Sure enough, the EU’s border control agency confirms that today.

Officials from the EU’s border control agency Frontex have warned the Maltese authorities that publicity given to the recent agreements reached with the USA and other countries are being exploited by organised crime in Libya to market Malta as the destination to send asylum seekers and irregular immigrants.

The shocking revelation was reportedly made during a Frontex debriefing meeting held in Caltanisetta in Sicily, where military and governmental officials from EU Member States were given details about the recent Nautilus IV mission held in the Mediterranean during this summer, in a bid to contrast the flow of illegal immigrants.

Senior military sources told MaltaToday that Frontex officials spoke of intelligence that showed how criminals behind the lucrative illegal migration trade were “actually marketing Malta as the right destination to direct migrants,” given that it has now become public that the US is accepting migrants from Malta.

Frontex have reportedly warned the Maltese government that the publicity given to re-settlement agreements for migrants, is being immediately exploited by criminal gangs as the right “marketing tool” just like any travel agent would promote a destination to make more money.

Since the US embassy began its permanent refugee resettlement program in May 2008, over 320 refugees have been resettled to the US. The latest group of refugees were resettled in cities across the United States, including Denver, Atlanta, and Portland.

Just a reminder readers—refugees are supposed to seek asylum in the first country in which they land.  Basically what Molly and our State Department have done is set a precedent with this practice in Malta.  Legitimate refugees don’t get to arrive in a country and expect to be whisked away to the US, until now that is.

We’ve been writing about Malta for a couple of years.  Go here for our archives on the subject.

Saudi war with Yemen continues, Somalis involved somehow

Update December 6th:  Jerry Gordon at New English Review has an update on this story today.  All I can say is I hope the US government just lets these Muslims fight it out among themselves!

This is a story that sure isn’t appearing in any widespread way in the media, but we told you about it here recently.   Saudi Arabia, a hardline Sunni country, is trying to make sure that  none of those riff-raff—Shia Muslims from Yemen—get into Saudi territory.  This is one more news account, but I was interested to see that Somalis (Muslims too) were taken as prisoners.  What is up with that?  Are they refugees caught in the crossfire or are they fighting with the Yeminis? 

Saudi Arabia says it has captured a strategic mountain area near its border with Yemen from Yemeni Shia rebels.

Saudi forces detained about 150 Ethiopians and Somalis as prisoners of war as they cleared the area, Saudi Arabia’s deputy defence minister said.

The Houthi rebels denied that the area, which is known as Jabal al-Dood or Jabal Mudood, had been taken.

They also said they had no connection with the Somalis and Ethiopians who had been taken prisoner.

My point in raising the issue is to further demonstrate the lie that Muslim charity toward refugees is the historical underpinning of the refugee program as the UNHCR told us here.   I won’t be holding my breath waiting for the UNHCR to step in and demand the Saudis not mistreat the poor persecuted Somalis and Ethiopians they have captured.  Readers let me know if you see that news story!

Oh, and one more thing, I guess this means that Saudi Arabia has not bought into the United Nations and Far Leftwing concept of a borderless world.

Comment worth noting: Mr. Parker sure is persistent!

Mr. Ralph Parker is a refugee resettlement volunteer in the Atlanta area who has written to us on several occasions.  Most recently, here, he suggests that we need more “balance”* in our reporting on refugees.  So, with a smile at Mr. Parker’s persistence, below is a Thanksgiving letter from a Bhutanese refugee, a friend of Mr. Parker’s, and a man grateful to be in America and one who will likely succeed.   Mr. Parker thought our readers would enjoy seeing it.

Dear Friends,

It is a THANKSGIVING time and a happy time.

In recent months, many great citizens of this country were involved in helping our Bhutanese people in our transformation process to this new way of life. It is totally different to the way we are brought up and raised.

Take my family, for example. They know manual work, not like high technology work here. We know how to plough the fields using a big bull but not a tractor or the one shown in [children's TV program] Bob the Builder.

We came to this land where human rights and democracy are respected.
After my arrival, I realized that I can wear the clothes of my own choice and can eat the food of my habits. I can speak freely and write freely and can have a lawyer in the court house in one’s defense. What a free world.

My dad used to pay fees for having a radio in my house and that was a source of great entertainment. Few lucky ones used to own this, also. Here everyone has their own TV, computer and wristwatch.

We were never exposed to the greater world… and came from a bamboo hut to a beautiful furnished house where heating and cooling device is under your control. No more running to the muddy rivers. Boy! Clothes can be washed within a few hours.

Yet every evening you go and talk to my friends: they are nervous.
Smoke alarm is beeping. Someone tried to warm a boiled egg in the microwave and there was a big bang. Three people came and robbed our cash, showing a gun. A Bhutanese guy was in a dumpster [to recycle some items], and the pickup truck came. The guy’s friend saw [the situation] yet couldn’t explain in English to the driver that a man was in the dumpster. The driver kept loading the dumpster until, the friend knocked on the door of the truck and pointed to the dumpster. The driver finally understand, and the man’s life was saved.

Cold was the greatest danger for us.
Back in refugee camps, the temperature was always hot. People reached Atlanta with NO warm clothes. Children and older people were the victims, especially. And several HEROS OF MANKIND jumped in and started helping our people. There were child volunteers, young volunteers, old volunteers, female volunteers, male volunteers, and of all colors. No one asked me, What is your race?

There are thousand of such stories and a reality. Now things are getting better. Yet this transformation process definitely will take a long time, and your help and support is always needed.

American citizens are great and now we have to learn this culture too.
I have the pictures of all the volunteers in my memory of my heart. Your love and kindness. Your hard work, time and dedication to improve the living conditions by using your talents is a greatest gift for us. Several projects have began to support us. God, please protect this great people.

Today Tulasi is with his family for Thanksgiving and would like to thank each of you with greatest respect for your support for me, my family and my community.

Wish you a happy Thanksgiving. Namaste [Sanskrit: a friendly greeting, meaning, I bow to you].

— Tulasi, Kumari and Ryan

* On the issue of balance, see my reponse to Mr. Parker, here.  Bottomline is that we feel we are balancing the mushy mainstream media reports on refugee resettlement.  However, I must say we are seeing more reports in the mainstream media in recent months about problems with the resettlement program and pointing to the need for reform.  A case in point is just two days ago when we told you about a Burmese homeless man in Greensboro, NC.

Legal Immigration numbers: NumbersUSA has another great graphic demonstration

Posted at the top of our blog is a link to a NumbersUSA clip about the large number of immigrants coming to the US.  Today, Roy Beck, Founder and CEO of NumbersUSA has posted a fascinating youtube clip in which he demonstrates to the ‘man on the street’ how high (and how they are not in line with our past immigration tradition) our legal immigration numbers are compared to years prior to 1965.  Check it out here.

Just a reminder that higher numbers of immigrants mean less open space, more energy demands, more housing, more pollution, fewer jobs for American low income citizens, more deficit spending for public assistance, more roads, more schools, more crime and the list goes on.

For information on what you can do, go to NumbersUSA, here.

Also related, the Washington Times is reporting this morning that all versions of health care reform working their way through Congress will make health care coverage available to illegal aliens.

Another (Muslim) immigrant food stamp scam, this time near Trenton

This immigrant food stamp scammer was caught before he had ripped off US taxpayers for too much, but I’m posting the story because it contains some additional information on the magnitude of this welfare fraud crime.

Police said the owner, Mohammad Imran Mumtaz, 35, of Middletown, admitted that he knew most of his “customers” cashed their government Access cards to buy heroin and cocaine.

Food stamps can be used to put a turkey on a poor family’s table, to make lunch for a needy child or put breakfast in a child’s belly before school.

They also can be taken to a store and illegally changed into cash, which then can be used to buy street drugs.

That’s what was happening at one Morrisville grocery, police said. Now the owner and former owner of 3 Star Deli Mart at 336 West Bridge St. face hundreds of criminal charges for trafficking in food stamps, fraud and related offenses.

For readers wishing to help authorities identify convenience stores in your community that might be involved in illegal food stamp transactions, there is a pattern.  The store is usually pretty new (or newly re-opened) and in many cases run by an immigrant who is new to town.  They are often located in communities with large immigrant populations (btw, refugee use of food stamps is way up).  This article tells us they are in close proximity to crime areas of the city.  One additional tip-off is that the store shelves are not fully stocked.  Alert your local police and they will most likely set up a sting operation.

Big bucks are involved:

According to a 2007 Government Accountability Office report, about $241 million worth of food stamps were illegally used in 2005. The GAO report recommended targeting stores most likely to traffic in food stamps, promoting state-level enforcement and developing a plan to increase the penalties for dealing in food stamps. The agency also recommended oversight of early operations at newly authorized retailers. One example in the report referred to a store that illegally redeemed almost $650,000 in food stamps in nine months.

The GAO said that while the study showed trafficking had declined in larger stores, it remained more common in small grocery and convenience stores.

Early on, investigators noted the 3 Star Deli Mart fit that description, and that it was a short drive from the open air cocaine, heroin and crack markets of Trenton.

This guy, however, was more generous than some scammers we have written about. He was giving 60 cents on the dollar, usually its only 50 cents!

The informant told police that Mumtaz would run the Access cards used for the food stamps in Pennsylvania as if a purchase was being made and give the cardholder 60 percent of the value, according to court records.

For new readers, this is a side issue that has interested me ever since the same thing happened where we live.  The ‘Mohammad’ in our town is now in prison.  If it interests you, just type ‘food stamp fraud’ into our search function and notice the number and variety of locations where this scam has been busted. 

I’m convinced there are training programs abroad to teach certain immigrant types how to set-up these schemes, and provide them with the seed money to buy the ‘mom & pop’ business.  Here, for example, is the E-2 Treaty Investor program which I sure hope authorities are examining closely.

Swiss vote to ban minarets

The New York Times reports:

GENEVA — In a vote that displayed a widespread anxiety about Islam and undermined the country’s reputation for religious tolerance, the Swiss on Sunday overwhelmingly imposed a national ban on the construction of minarets, the prayer towers of mosques, in a referendum drawn up by the far right and opposed by the government.

It had to be voted on because two political parties proposed adding the ban to the constitution. But the government doesn’t like it.

The Swiss government said it would respect the vote and sought to reassure the Muslim population — mostly immigrants from other parts of Europe, like Kosovo and Turkey — that the minaret ban was “not a rejection of the Muslim community, religion or culture.”

There might have been other motives besides reassuring the Muslim population.

That debate prompted the government to mount a public relations campaign overseas to try to avoid a backlash like the one Denmark faced in Islamic countries after a newspaper published cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad, and to avoid damage to lucrative commercial and banking ties with wealthy Muslims.

Switzerland doesn’t appear to have much of a problem with militant Islam at this point.

Of 150 mosques or prayer rooms in Switzerland, only 4 have minarets, and only 2 more minarets are planned. None conduct the call to prayer. There are about 400,000 Muslims in a population of some 7.5 million people. Close to 90 percent of Muslims in Switzerland are from Kosovo and Turkey, and most do not adhere to the codes of dress and conduct associated with conservative Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia, said Manon Schick, a spokeswoman for Amnesty International in Switzerland.

But the people see what is happening in other European countries. And they don’t want it. The Swiss are probably the most nationalistic country in Europe, in terms of taking action to keep their country Swiss. They were neutral during WWII, and every other war. They have universal military service (for men) and keep their guns at home. This insularity was not good for the Jews. A Google alert link I got last night (which I can’t open) says:

In total, the Swiss deported more than 30000 Jewish refugees, most of whom were subsequently murdered by the Nazis. Those allowed to remain in Switzerland were held in detention camps so as to keep from taking up permanent residence…

But there are lots of foreigners in Switzerland now; but I doubt if that would be the case had the country’s immigration policies been subject to a vote. As the story makes clear, the government does not represent the feelings of the people. It will be interesting to see how this complex story plays out.

Update: Here is a great post from David Pryce-Jones on the National Review website. It’s far more informative than the New York Times article. Some excerpts:

The ban follows quite a bit of contention which started when the king of Saudi Arabia bought a house on the shore of Lake Geneva. Launching a building program without first obtaining the requisite permits, he was obliged to stop and pull down extensions. Geneva already had a mosque, and when the Saudis wanted to build another one, the city fathers replied that permission would be granted only when the Saudis reciprocated by allowing the building of a church in Saudi Arabia.

Would that every government were as brave and forthright as this. And here’s why it became an issue:

In a population of some seven million there are 400,000 Muslims worshipping in about 150 mosques, half a dozen of them with minarets. In the small town of Wangen, in 2005, the imam of a largely Turkish community applied to add a minaret to his mosque. He was allowed to do so, but the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyib Erdogan, a crypto-Islamist, had been unwise enough to issue a blanket defiance to Western countries: “Mosques are our barracks, domes our helmets, minarets our bayonets.” A politician by the name of Christoph Blocher picked up the challenge and made a national issue of it. A lawyer by training, he is a successful industrialist, the founder of the Swiss People’s Party which has a right-wing platform, and he has been a government minister.

Western countries should all take such actions in response to every Islamist challenge.  And here’s Pryce-Jones’s conclusion:

No country in Europe quite knows what to do about the Muslims who have come to live there. What exactly should be conceded to them, and why? These puzzling questions go to the core of national identity. Defying those who claim the right to set the terms of public debate, the Swiss have tried to draw a line. Whether the opinion-making elite of the entire continent will allow them to keep to it is quite another matter. 

 

White House gate crashers connected to radical Palestinian group

I’ve been switching off Fox News whenever they start one of their silly reports on Tareq and Michaele Salahi, the couple who crashed a state dinner the other day.  They’ve been treating it like gossip, with perhaps some questions about security. But now I’m paying attention after reading a post from Gateway Pundit on various connections of  these gatecrashers. First comes a 2005 photo of the couple at an event for the polo cup, with President Obama at the center of the group.  Then comes a link to American Power, which has this to say:

Tareq Salahi, the polo-playing intruder, is a Palestinian nationalist with ties to the American Task Force on Palestine (ATFP) , a pro-Palestine lobby demanding the “right of return” for all Palestinian refugees and their descendants. The “right of return” has long been considered the backdoor to Israel’s destruction. But not only that: ATFP President Ziad Asali is an America-basher who blamed 9/11 on U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Asali was a lead U.S. official to PLO terrorist Yassir Arafat’s funeral in 2004. And in a position paper in 2007, the ATFP called for a power-sharing agreement at the Palestinian Authority, which would have included the State Department’s designated-terrorist group, Hamas.

Gateway Pundit goes on to cite the Canada Free Press saying that the ATFP has removed references to Salahi’s membership from its website. And Discover the Networks says Rashid Khalidi, Middle East Studies professor at Columbia and a militant Palestinian rights activist was vice president of ATFP. Khalidi is an old friend of Barack Obama’s.

So there are two links to President Obama. It looks as if there is more to this than just a case of uninvited guests crashing a White House dinner. My first thought when I read about the links to radical Palestinian rights people was that perhaps they were testing White House security with an eye to something bigger. But the connections with Obama don’t fit in. Very puzzling, and probably very significant.

Note from Ann:  Here is a post I wrote last fall about that 2003 dinner when Rahshid Khalidi was leaving for Columbia University—you know the dinner that was filmed and the Los Angeles Times is still sitting on the film.  We know that Khalidi and Obama knew each other well and we know that the dinner was put on by the Arab American Action Network.  Someone should check with the Los Angeles Times and see if the Salahis “crashed” that dinner too!

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.