Lutheran Family Services definitely closed in Greensboro, NC

I am so behind the eightball.  I have stories piled up that I haven’t posted on and others, like this one, that I’m seeing two weeks late.   We previously told you about the mess in Greensboro, NC with refugee overload in a three-part series (start here and follow links back).  Also, see this story about the plug being pulled on LFS.

Lutheran Family Services two weeks ago made the following announcement reported in the News-Record:

GREENSBORO — In a final blow to the city’s oldest refugee resettlement agency, Lutheran Family Services of the Carolinas will shut down the legal office that for 20 years helped reunite parents, children and spouses torn apart by civil war and ethnic cleansing.

In an announcement shared Monday with local clergy and refugee sponsors, the agency’s executive director called the move, effective Sept. 30, “exclusively a financial decision.”

LFS, which has operated in the Triad since 1979, halted its refugee arrivals to the Triad in February, citing economic conditions. That move came after a spate of problems with serving clients.

Greensboro—little Ellis Island!

In the 1990s, LFS played the lead role in turning the city into what observers likened to a “little Ellis Island.”

But a combination of staff turnover, scarce resources and a grim employment outlook for newcomers resulted in turmoil at the agency.

Its refugee clients are being moved to other resettlement agencies in the Triad. When that is complete, LFS refugee work here will cease and will be limited to Raleigh and Columbia, S.C.

Can’t “shoulder the gap.”   What that means is that the agency is not contributing its share of the public-private partnership that the original Refugee Act of 1980 foresaw. 

“Unfortunately,” the Rev. Laura Benson, the agency’s Raleigh-based director wrote in a memo circulated Monday, “LFS can no longer shoulder the gap between the federal contract and modest client fee income collected and the actual cost of this specialized work.”

The answer for this money part of LFS’s problem (believe me they had other problems as we saw in the three-part series) is that they (and other refugee contractors) want more taxpayer dollars for the refugee program—they want the easy way out.  The hard way out of the problem is to do more to raise private dollars (heck, ask Obama, he made $5 million last year and just two days ago said some people make too much money, maybe he can chip in some of his own excess stash!).   Or, cut the number of refugees arriving in the US.

Former Congressman calls for moratorium on all immigration

Well someone had to say it!  It’s no surprise it is the guy with guts from Virginia—former Congressman Virgil Goode writing at Frontpage magazine today in a column entitled, “The Real Immigration Solution.”   I must admit I’ve been a big fan of Goodes ever since he bravely stared down the political correctness police and wimps at the Washington Post in 2006 when he linked immigration to Islamic terrorism (which he does in this article as well).  

The Far Left targeted him in the 2008 Obama-sweep and a pipsqueak, Tom Perriello, took his place in Congress.  Perriello is now a target of the Tea Party (that 5th Congressional District in Virginia is a hot bed of Tea Party activists) and he will likely end up a one-termer.

From Virgil Goode at Frontpage:

In the wake of Arizona’s SB 1070, illegal immigration is at the forefront of national discussion for the first time since the defeat of amnesty in 2007. Arizona’s law, which makes illegal presence a state crime, has rallied supporters of immigration enforcement. The open borders lobby is pretending that the sky is falling and using the law to demand that the federal government grant an amnesty.

Lost in this debate is any discussion of lowering legal immigration levels. In fact, many opponents of amnesty argue that while we need to stop illegal immigration, we should increase legal immigration.

Amnesty backers cannot deny that the 1986 amnesty failed to stop illegal immigration, so they now blame the problem on the fact that we did not increase legal immigration enough after the Act. They argue we can prevent future illegal immigration by simply increasing legal immigration alongside an amnesty. Luis Gutierrez’s amnesty bill includes a special visa to “prevent unauthorized migration” by simply increasing legal immigration from the country where illegal immigrants come from.

Most Americans do not know just how many legal immigrants we let in each year. The Department of Homeland Security just issued their statistics for new legal permanent immigrants in 2009. Last year, we issued 1,130,818 green cards, the fourth highest year since 1914. From 2000-2009, we issued over 10 million green cards, the highest decade of American history. Currently, there are 38 million immigrants, 24 million of whom are in the workforce. This does not include temporary workers. DHS did not release the 2009 figures yet, but they issued 912,735 temporary employment authorizations in 2008.

Most of these immigrants are low skilled and from the Third World. Less than 10% of new green card holders are from Europe. People of extraordinary ability, investors, and immigrants with advanced degrees made up less than 8% of the new immigrants.

Faced with these numbers, how can anyone argue with a straight face that we don’t admit enough immigrants?

Now!  He says it—the ‘m-word! ‘ MORATORIUM!

Individual legal immigrants are not to blame for these problems. They came here in search of a better life and played by the rules. The real culprits are the politicians who put cheap labor ahead of the interests of the American people. With 25 million out of work, it’s time to put the American citizens first by issuing a moratorium on legal immigration.

Read it all and pass it along!

Center for Immigration Studies summary of Arizona law

The Arizona law to curb illegal immigration has caused a stir to say the least.  Today the Center for Immigration Studies has a good summary of what it does and does not do.  Check it out here.

Comment worth noting: maybe we found one of the 270 missing Somalis

Back in February we told you that ICE was looking for 270 illegal Somalis who have reportedly disappeared into the US.  Today we got this comment to that post from a reader calling himself “Money.”   Normally we don’t post comments with foul language but I thought this comment was telling.

U knw we are muslim we supports each other who said that somalis are poor ? If somalis are poor cn’t live 20yrs witout covernment cn’t do busness over this s*** world ‘, somalis are richiest people on this world ‘ f*** u america , they kill us and they kill us mind , there isn’t terrorists in thiz world , america are terrorists , who made terrorists? and who supportz terrorists? america access money to terrorists ‘ u knw alshabal in somalia , where did they get money ? America access money to shabab ‘the fact is that , we are n’t blind , we have eyes , and we will kill you someday in ur home yeah , we got experience last 20yrs ,and we knew ever road to come your home , f*** u america , don’t think that somalis will ends , america will ends before somali , f*** u america im going to kill ur home someday  f*** u f*** u ,

Charming huh!

Arizona Law said to rile up Hispanics for May Day march

May Day is Saturday and according to Reuters the regularly scheduled Marxist May Day events will be larger than normal thanks to Arizona’s stand on illegal immigration.

From Reuters:

Protest organizers said on Wednesday outrage over the Arizona law — which seeks to drive illegal immigrants out of the state bordering Mexico — has galvanized Latinos and would translate into a higher turnout for May Day rallies in more than 70 U.S. cities.  [Check organizers here, I don't see 70 cities, are they exagerating again?---ed]

“The marches and demonstrations are going to be far more massive than they otherwise would have been,” said Juan Jose Gutierrez, a Los Angeles rally organizer who runs an immigration assistance company.

The backlash began on Friday after Arizona Governor Jan Brewer signed into law a measure that requires state and local police to determine a person’s immigration status if there is “reasonable suspicion” they are undocumented. Critics say it is unconstitutional and opens the door to racial profiling.

Republican backers of the law say it is needed to curb crime in the desert state, which is a key corridor for drug and migrant smugglers from Mexico.

A Rasmussen Reports poll on Wednesday found that almost two-thirds — 64 percent — of voters in the state favored the measure.

The crowds on the streets, from Los Angeles to New York, could be the biggest since 2006, when hundreds of thousands of marchers urged former President George W. Bush to overhaul of federal immigration laws. He tried, but failed in Congress.

For a history of May Day—it ain’t all about flowers and Maypoles!—see here and here.

I’ll be looking for evidence that federal refugee contractors are involved in bringing out marchers as they did recently in Washington, DC here.   You can be sure that Cardinal Mahoney is whipping up the Bishops!

I’ll bet you a buck there is violence by some of those demonstrating on May Day.   I wonder will Obama order out the riot police as he did yesterday in Quincy, IL  against old lady Tea Partiers (go here to Gateway Pundit for a good laugh at Obama).

DeKalb County, GA has special school for immigrant children

We’ve heard many times at RRW about the problems faced by school districts with large refugee populations where American parents complain that their children are held back in the classroom by large numbers of students who speak little or no English. (Here is one such story from Vermont just last month.)  But not every community can afford an International Student Center where all the foreign immigrant students attend a school just to get them up to speed to enter a traditional classroom.

For all those communities with growing refugee and immigrant populations, you might start to think about budgeting for this type of separate system or request that the State Department and resettlement contractors slow the flow to your town.

In DeKalb County they are cutting the school budget except not for the International Student Center.  Hat tip: Ralph

From AJC News:

Earlier this month, the school board approved a tentative budget with $115 million in cuts, including 430 layoffs, staff furloughs and program cuts.

But the International Student Center is not among those cuts, district spokesman Dale Davis said.

Board members and administrators say it’s too valuable to the students and to the county, which is one of the nation’s most diverse school districts.

Board member Eugene Walker, who represents the district the Center is in, said that the county could never consider cutting the program.

“It helps the youngster get ready for the traditional classroom,” he said. “DeKalb is an international county and we need tools to prepare them for success in the system and the world. It’s an essential.”

11,000 students in the district speak no English!

“We have no teachers who speak Burundi, but that doesn’t mean we can’t teach them. We have picture dictionaries, visuals and videos,” said Sandra Nunez, director of DeKalb’s English Language Learners Program, which oversees 11,000 students who speak a language other than English. That’s more than 11 percent of the district’s enrollment.

About 2,200 of those students have been declared refugees by the federal government, according to Davis. DeKalb educates 85 percent of the refugees who come to Georgia, officials said.

While all school systems work with foreign language students, DeKalb’s International Student Center takes children who not only don’t speak English, but those who have no formal education.

[....]

The Center, which houses children from ages 7 to 20, has students from 168 different countries speaking 142 different languages and dialects. The greatest numbers are from Mexico, followed by Burma, Nepal, India and Iraq.

[.....]

The students at the Center are still required to pass the CRCTS *– in English – in the same grades as the American students.

Go to DeKalb County, Georgia for schools, public transportation and affordable housing.  But, does it have jobs?

In 2008, 2,325 refugees settled in Georgia, according to the federal Office of Refugee and Resettlement. Sixty-six percent of those refuges came from Bhutan, Burma and Iraq.

Many of them chose DeKalb, which offers the International Student Center, affordable housing and public transportation, Mixon said. “It definitely is the most diverse school system in the Southeast.”

Readers should know that unless refugees are joining family members they don’t get to choose where they will be resettled in the US.  That decision is made in some mysterious method by the federal resettlement contractors who divide up the so-called free-cases among themselves.  The federal government gets involved in the decision only (it seems!) when the media starts picking up on complaints from refugees and citizens of a community about a refugee overload.  I’ve called it the squawk factor—if citizens squawk too loudly (or refugees squawk) over some egregious situation that arises and it starts making the news, the State Department will step in and close down the resettlement for awhile.  It is really very poor managment on their part.

*In other news: While reading the above article I saw a side-bar story about possible high levels of cheating in Atlanta area schools on statewide CRCTS tests, here.

Ethiopian shooter at Knoxville hospital, kills woman and wounds other strangers then kills himself

Here is another story that the politically correct mainstream media missed right along with the white nationalist lawyer murdered by a black man in Mississippi last week.  Thanks to a reader who just sent it our way.

An Ethiopian, presumably a former refugee (we take a large number of Ethiopians), opened fire at a hospital in Knoxville a week ago killing one woman and injuring two others.  Then he killed himself.  Apparently his mission at the hospital was to find a surgeon he claimed implanted a chip in him in order to track his whereabouts.  

You have to wade to the bottom of the article to find out his whole name, Abdo Ibssa Mohammed.  He must be a Muslim, so is that why this story hasn’t made the news in any big way?

From Scripps News:

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. – Abdo Ibssa believed a doctor had implanted a tracking chip in his body and was beset with legal and financial woes when police say he killed a woman, wounded two others and then killed himself Monday at Parkwest Medical Center.

Ibssa, who would have turned 39 Tuesday, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Ethiopia, used a stolen .357-caliber magnum pistol to shoot the women and then himself about 4:34 p.m. Monday, Knoxville Police Chief Sterling P. Owen IV said Tuesday. [based on the dateline on this story this would be the 19th and 20th of April--ed]

Ibssa was suffering psychological problems and had been committed by his family to a mental health facility in February, Owen said. Police have yet to determine what facility treated him or when he was released.

CIA manual on tracking and deception found in his car.

Owen said Ibssa apparently went to Parkwest on Monday looking for a surgeon who had performed an appendectomy on him in 2001. Owen said a half-page, handwritten note police found in his apartment after the shooting led police to determine that Ibssa believed the surgeon had implanted a computer chip in his body during the procedure. Inside Ibssa’s maroon 1996 Nissan Maxima investigators found a book entitled “The Official CIA Manual of Tracking and Deception.”

“The suspect believed he was being tracked as a result of that chip,” Owen said.

For new readers:  One of the top ten federal refugee contractors is the Ethiopian Community Development Council (ECDC) if some enterprising reporter wanted to look into this story more carefully.  They probably have some information on the guy.  But, that is unlikely to happen because the whole case will just be dismissed as some crazy nut job who has gone off the deep end.

Al Qaeda is looking into disguising terrorists as refugees to get into Israel

I have scarcely any time to post these days, but I wanted to bring this article from Haaretz to your attention:

The Yemen-based arm of Al-Qaida is examining the possibility of infiltrating terrorists into Israel disguised as Somali refugees crossing the border from Egypt or even as new immigrants from Ethiopia.

Shi’ite rebels yesterday sent another letter to Haaretz, the latest of several, in which they quote from a letter sent by Al-Qaida to members of a Salafist group in the Gaza Strip that is opposed to Hamas.

(Italics are because the icon for indenting has disappeared and I don’t have time to figure it out. That’s a quote from the newspaper. My comment follows.)

Israel has traditionally had a humane policy toward refugees, lax even until recently. Trust Islamic terrorists to find a way to take advantage of it.

Reform recommendation: Make big companies help support refugee labor force

Just now I was thinking about the mess in meatpacking city St. Cloud, MN and other meatpacking towns where issues with an overload of immigrants has been a problem—Garden City, KS, Greeley, CO, Shelbyville, TN, Grand Island, NE, Amarillo, TX, Ft. Morgan, CO come to mind right off the top of my head.

Why not have a federal law (or maybe states could do it) requiring large employers of legal refugee labor pay for some of the cost now borne by the public, afterall those industries benefit with reduced labor costs when hiring immigrants?

I envision any company hiring say more than 10 low-wage immigrants (from any legal program) must at minimum offer mandatory English language classes as part of the work day.  They should offer classes in assimilating to America in addition to helping the local community foot the bill for other public programs such as housing support, food stamps, school costs, emergency personel/police, and medical care. 

As it stands, the companies inundate cities with immigrant workers who are paid less now at meatpacking work (probably other industries too) then American workers were paid twenty years ago to do the same job.  The difference is that the taxpayer now picks up the cost of living for such low-wage employees through public assistance (welfare!).  And, just think, it might level the playing field for American workers.

11 Somali pirates brought to Virginia to stand trial for piracy

I don’t often get into the Somali piracy issue, but this story is concerning.  For firing on Navy vessels, shouldn’t these guys be treated as military combatants.  Why are they in civilian courts in Virginia?  Think about it, we are going to pay for their trials, then their incarceration for life (if they get life in prison) and what if they don’t, say they are released in a few years, where do they go then—will they seek asylum here?  We don’t send asylum seekers back to ‘war-torn’ Somalia!

The Washington Post:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Eleven suspected pirates from Somalia have been brought to the United States to face piracy and other charges for attacks on two U.S. Navy ships off the coast of Africa, the Justice Department said on Friday.

It said the suspects were scheduled to appear on Friday in federal court in Norfolk, Virginia. The 11 men had been held on U.S. ships for weeks off Somalia’s coast as U.S. officials decided what to do with them. [You can bet Holder's gang in the Justice Dept. was saying, s..., we can't send them to Gitmo]

Five defendants were captured after the March 31 attack in which the Navy frigate, the USS Nicholas, exchanged fire with a suspected pirate vessel in the Indian Ocean west of the Seychelles, sinking a skiff and confiscating its mother ship.

Two of the accused pirates opened fire at night on what they believed to be a merchant ship, but it actually was the Navy vessel, according to U.S. court documents filed in the case.

In the other incident, six defendants were charged with the April 10 attack on another Navy vessel, the USS Ashland, in the Gulf of Aden. They allegedly opened fire on the vessel with small arms from their boat.

In addition to piracy, the criminal charges included attacks to plunder a vessel, assault with a dangerous weapon, and use of a firearm during a crime of violence.

If convicted of piracy, the suspects face a mandatory sentence of life in prison, a Justice Department spokesman said.

Thomas Jefferson knew what to do with Muslim pirates on the African coast and he didn’t bring them to Virginia to stand trial in a civilian court.

For more information, see this post from April of last year about how quasi-American Omar Jamal of Minneapolis (now of the UN!) dashed off to NYC to defend the only other pirate brought to the US.  Look for more of the same sort of publicity hounds as this story develops.

Update:  Andrew McCarthy weighs in on piracy here.