Message from Ann

Thanks to all of you who have been faithfully following RRW for three years!  I can hardly believe that tomorrow it will be three years and over 3000 posts since we started this blog.   This is not a goodbye, I’m just taking a little break.   I’ll be posting something from time to time and Judy will too I’m sure, but right now I want to focus on an election.  November is critically important for our future and frankly the outcome in November might be more important in helping to reform immigration policy and specifically the refugee program than me yakking about it on these pages.

Please continue to send me interesting news, and I will post from time to time, but I am going to use my “spare” time in the next few months to campaign for a candidate whose positions I strongly support.

Update: I should have mentioned that if you are arriving here for the first time, please check our categories and use our search function because we have written so much over three years that I am certain you will find something useful and informative.

Fox News’ Murdoch joins big companies, rich mayors, to push for Amnesty

I missed this story last week, but got it today thanks to Richard Falknor at Blue Ridge Forum who sent me this post at Debbie Schlussel from a few days ago.

Now why do you think billionaires and these multinational companies want amnesty for illegal aliens?  To be nice to the downtrodden of the world?  To add to our diversity because its good for us?  Or, because they want cheap labor flooding the job market?   You decide.

Here is the depressing story:

NEW YORK — Chief executives of several major corporations, including Hewlett-Packard, Boeing, Disney and News Corp., are joining Mayor Michael Bloomberg to form a coalition advocating for immigration reform – including a path to legal status for all undocumented immigrants now in the United States.

The group includes several other big-city mayors and calls itself the Partnership for a New American Economy. It seeks to reframe immigration reform as the solution to repairing and stimulating the economy.

Bloomberg and Rupert Murdoch, chairman and CEO of News Corp., appeared together Thursday on Fox News to discuss the effort.

“We’re just going to keep the pressure on the congressmen,” Murdoch said. “I think we can show to the public the benefits of having migrants and the jobs that go with them.”

Bloomberg added, “Somebody has to lead and explain to the country why this is in our interest.”

Whose interest Mayor?  The rich people?

If you are a Far Left Open Borders advocate, how do you sleep at night knowing that you are on the same side as the billionaires exploiting immigrant labor and hurting the average American worker?

I notice we have ImmigrationWorksUSA’s Tamar Jacoby weighing in favorably here as well.  We told you about them here when they were working with other so-called conservatives like Grover Norquist (Americans for Tax Reform) to craft a legislative strategy.

ImmigrationWorks USA, a national federation of businesses that support immigration, welcomed Bloomberg’s group to the effort. Tamar Jacoby, the organization’s president and CEO, said the coalition’s main contribution would likely be the extra attention and power it can bring to the debate.

“I don’t know that they’re going to be in the trenches everyday organizing grass roots, following the policy process,” Jacoby said. “It’s more a 30,000-foot approach – these big names adding their muscle to the push to get this on the table.”

Bloomberg spokesman Jason Post said no money has been spent on the effort yet, and he could not say whether the group will be a standard nonprofit, a political action committee or a group known as a 501(c)4 nonprofit, which can operate outside the more strict limits governing political action committees.

The business leaders in the coalition employ more than 650,000 people and make more than $220 billion in annual sales, combined.

I guess its going to be an uphill battle for Tea Party types and the average patriotic American worker.  We have to oppose Obama, Far Left Open Borders Advocates, Democrats who want more voters, Fox News, Billionaires, Multinational corporations, that’s all!

By the way, this is all just further proof of my theory that the Refugee Resettlement program is a bogus humanitarian effort—it’s just all about labor (cheap labor!).

More on meatpackers changing the face of Kansas and ECBOs in their wake

This is yet another story about meatpackers and immigrant labor and how those big companies are changing Garden City, Kansas and other small cities in Southwest Kansas.   There is a lot in this article, so I encourage all of you to read it.

Also, here is a story from 2009 that tells us that whites are now in the minority in Finney County, KS.

The Garden City Telegram reporter (Shajia Ahmed) has built this glowing frontpage story around the new Somali Community Center of Southwest Kansas described as follows in the opening paragraphs of the article:

Large images of Somali men and women in their brightly-colored garb and camels walking on dust-red ground, and a painting of the Kaaba, the holy Meccan edifice where Muslims across the world turn their heads in prayer five times a day, hang on the charcoal-colored walls inside the community center. Next to the photographs, an American flag lies juxtaposed to a light blue banner with a single white star in the center.

Beside both flags, a neon green poster with words carefully stenciled in marker, reads “Finney County: Many cultures, One community.” For $850 a month, members of the Somali community in Garden City have pooled together their funds to open a new community development center on North John Street, next to the local Department of Motor Vehicles.

It’s been awhile since I’ve written about Ethnic Community Based Organizations (ECBOs) often largely funded by taxpayer money at the local, state and even federal level (here is a recent federal grant list).   I call them mini-ACORNS and we have a whole category on the subject.  Basically, they are ‘community organizers’ and provide help for their specific ethnic group to find public benefits (like welfare).  Then when a political issue arises they act as the spokesmen and demand their rights for their group.  That is what the Somali Community of Southwest Kansas is—it is an ECBO.

By the way, Somalis love these ECBOs.  Here is a directory of some in the US, but new ones, like this one in our story, haven’t made the directory yet.

Back to the article.  I always wonder when someone says the local refugees/immigrants pooled their money to set up what amounts to a major business—a non-profit organization.  I’ve had experience setting up non-profits and it takes a lot of work and wherewithal.  So, I decided to start my research with the Kansas Secretary of State Office to see when this new ECBO was incorporated.

It was formed on March 27th of this year.  Its registered agent is something called US Corporation Agents, Inc. located at 4701 College Blvd, Suite 110, Leawood, KS 66211 which is also the address for the ‘community center.’  O.k. so who are they?   Well it turns out they were only incorporated in Kansas on January the 26th of this year but were originally formed in Nevada.   As for business type, they are listed as ‘Foreign for profit.’ So what is up with that?  Did the money for the Somali Community Center of Southwest Kansas really come from a bunch of poor immigrants pooling their pennies?  Or, did the seed money come from some foreign entity?

Generally here is how it goes:  ECBO formed with seed money from where?  Once established they tap into taxpayer money from all levels of government by getting grants for such things as English lessons, and other programs meant to ostensibly help them assimilate.*

Unfortunately the organization is so new we won’t figure out where their funding is coming from until they file a Form 990 next year and even with that the IRS has now changed the forms so its even harder to figure out how much taxpayer money goes into these “non-profit” organizations.  Local people are going to have to keep a real close eye on this “community center” and try to track its funding sources.

For new readers, more Somalis are on the way:

The US State Department has admitted over 80,000 Somali refugees to the US (this linked post continues to be one of the most widely read posts we have ever written) in the last 25 years and then in 2008 had to suspend family reunification because widespread immigration fraud was revealed through DNA testing.  That specific program has not yet been reopened (that we know of), but will be soon.

Nevertheless, thousands of Somali Muslims continue to be resettled by the State Department as I write this. We recently learned that we will be taking 6000 Somalis this year from one camp in Uganda and as many as 11,000-13,000 total from around the world.

Through the Refugee Resettlement program alone 2657 legal Somalis have already arrived in this fiscal year (2010) as of May 31st with an unknown number arriving through other legal programs and  illegally across both our borders.

* Be sure also to read this Comment Worth Noting from a Somali woman who refers to the Somali influx as an “invasion” and says they have no plans to assimilate.

Somalis disturbingly call their immigration to certain countries or cities as “invasions” and they call cities with no or little Somali populations as “Tuulas” or “villages”….

Are Garden City and Dodge City, KS  in the Tuula stage?  Or beyond?

Did NGOs wreck Somalia?

Yes, is the gist of the argument in the Daily Nation over the weekend.   This is not the first time we have heard this theory relating to Somalia and indeed much of Africa.  A young man who grew up in my town told me about his experience in Africa with the Peace Corps and said that the first question they got from the people upon arrival was, what did you bring us?

Rasna Warah in the Daily Nation:

Somalia celebrates 50 years of independence this week, but many people are wondering whether there is anything worth celebrating.

For more than two decades, the country has had no functioning government, and even today, the recently-elected Somali Transitional Government is barely able to carry out its functions effectively, thanks to militia who control many parts of the country.

Relief agencies estimate that nearly 1.4 million Somalis have been displaced since the 1990s, and that nearly half the country’s population — more than 3 million people — is still in need of relief aid and assistance.

But this is the story of the Somalia that we all know. The less known story is that of a country that was systematically destroyed by international NGOs, UN agencies and donors who undermined the local economy by flooding Somalia with aid, especially since the fall of Siad Barre in 1991.

No one tells this story better than Michael Maren, a former Peace Corps volunteer, who in his 1997 book, The Road to Hell, explains how the aid industry in Somalia became “a self-serving system “that thrived on the chaos in the country’’.

His main argument is that the aid industry undermined development in Somalia by stifling the local economy through relief supplies that killed industries, and which were routinely stolen by warlords, merchants and government officials.

Here is my, sure to be labeled racist, question.  In light of recent scams like the one in Maine where Somali former refugees were found guilty of ripping off medicaid, what came first:  a long-standing culture of corruption or is it a relatively new learned behavior from their experience with NGOs in Africa over a few decades?

Obama may push amnesty this year; holds (another) strategy session

An already hot summer could get even hotter, if the Associated Press story from yesterday is correct.  If Obama wants to push Tea Partiers and others to the boiling point, this will do it.

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama is enlisting activists and labor leaders in a push for comprehensive immigration legislation that will showcase Republican opposition and include a speech by the president.

The strategy was discussed during a meeting Monday by a range of prominent labor leaders and activist groups. Participants said Obama reiterated his support for immigration legislation but noted the political realities that have stalled it in Congress.

Latino leaders say they will work in coming months to pressure Republicans to give way and support an immigration bill — and make opponents pay at the ballot box if they don’t.

“We’re going to make absolutely crystal clear who’s at fault here,” said Eliseo Medina, a leader of the Service Employees International Union.

Prospects for passage of comprehensive immigration legislation look bleak this election year, and even many Democrats are wary of wading into the hot-button issue. But Obama, who pledged as a candidate to make immigration reform a top priority during his first year in office, faces pressure from the Hispanic community to act — or at least to try.

Read it all.

Of course you gotta wonder how much of this is Obama pandering to his base and stringing them along until November. Remember its been almost a year since that August White House strategy session where Obama was stringing along a whole bunch of pro-OPEN BORDERS businesses, unions, churches, refugee contractors and so forth, here.

Israel’s real refugees

There are refugees who want to live in Israel, and there are “refugees” who want to destroy Israel. An article in the Jerusalem Post last week dealt with the first category. The Post reports:

Disagreement on terminology and lack of accurate entry registration makes determining the exact number of refugees in Israel difficult, but according to a recent Knesset Research Department report on the matter, in the beginning of May, there were 24,399 infiltrators and asylum-seekers in Israel. [The Knesset is Israel's parliament.]

Of them, 18,959 cannot be expelled from the country, as they hail from Eritrea (13,310) and Sudan (5,649), where they may face harm if they return. The remaining ones, mostly asylum-seekers or economic migrants from central Africa, await status determination and will either be recognized as refugees or be subject to expulsion.

The report also indicates that the number of people crossing over the Egyptian border has been consistently growing. In January 866 people crossed over. In February, 904 and in March and April the numbers were 1,158 and 1,258 respectively.

So Israel, whose enemies are engaged in a worldwide campaign to brand it an apartheid nation, has refugee laws much like other civilized nations’. Those who deserve real asylum because they are in real danger in their home countries receive it by law. The UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees representative in Israel, William Tall, commented:

“In the last couple of years, Israel has begun experiencing flows, similar to those in southern Europe, of mixed migration. Depending who you talk to, determines how you call them,” he said.

“Some people in the government call them infiltrators, some people call them economic migrants, some call them asylum-seekers, refugees and some say they infiltrated to do harm to Israel,” said Tall. “What’s happening is that Israel is groping for tools in how to address the issue and how to stem the flow.

“When a person comes into the country, they can become an asylum-seeker and they go through a process to determine whether they have a valid asylum claim. If they do, they become a refugee,” said Tall.

He explained that over the last year, Israel has taken over the responsibility for conducting the Refugee Status Determination (RSD) process, a job that was previously done by the UNHCR. This, said Tall, has generated mixed results.

“They are quite serious in how they approach it, but the biggest drawback in how the government is approaching RSD is that there is no legal framework in place. There are no published procedural guidelines on their work,” said Tall.

Unlike most UN officials, Tall is treating Israel realistically, not as spawn of the devil. He seems to understand, furthermore, that Israel doesn’t have laws that cover these refugees because kind of migration is new to the country. He went on:

“A lot of ideas are coming up, but what’s needed is some sort of comprehensive legal framework, which is missing,” said Tall. “The rate of the people coming here is a big concern to the government and I fully appreciate that concern. Israel has a lot of different issues and challenges on its plate. It doesn’t need the added one of huge mixed migration coming from Africa.”

“Our major objective in Israel now is to ensure that the asylum process here develops with integrity, that the structures are in place and that they operate according to the 1951 Convention on the Status of Refugees. We also advocate that a refugee law will be put in place, which will ensure the integrity of the system,” said Tall.

Such a law has been promoted by the Prime Minister’s Office, but nothing has been passed yet, the article says. It goes on to discuss the protests of Israeli refugee aid and human rights organizations who think the proposed law is draconian.

What a normal country Israel is, despite the way it is depicted. It has a refugee problem, the government is trying to deal with it, there are groups operating within the democratic process to argue about the proposed law. The UN representative is sympathetic to the problem of the influx of refugees.

New Zeal blog: More Cloward and Piven evidence

We’ve been writing at RRW about the Cloward-Piven Strategy—a Far Left plan hatched in the 1960′s to bring down city (or state) governments by overwhelming welfare systems thereby forcing a greater federal role in the redistribution of wealth and ultimately a change in our form of government (or at least that is the plan).  Famed New Zealand blogger Trevor Loudon (Judy and I met him in Washington here) has unearthed additional documentation of the strategy and posted it today at New Zeal.

My theory is that as  more Americans moved into the middle class (or were becoming more conservative) we were running out of poor people willing to demonstrate and demand goodies from public welfare — enter the immigrant pawns.

Loudon now presents more evidence of the strategy (he must live in musty libraries!):

Many commentators on the U.S. left have tried to minimize the significance and importance of the Cloward-Piven Strategy, made famous by writer James Simpson* and TV personality Glenn Beck.

According to Simpson and Beck, Columbia University sociologists, husband and wife team Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, devised a strategy in the early 1960s, to crash the U.S. economy and bring on socialist revolution by deliberately overloading state welfare rolls to the point of bankruptcy.

Many on the left regard this hypotheses as gross exaggeration at best, deliberate misrepresentation at worst.

Cloward and Piven outlined their strategy at the Second Annual Socialist Scholars Conference , held September 9-11, 1966 at the Hotel Commodore, New York, in a panel entitled; “Poverty and Powerlessness Organizing the Poor: Can it Be Done?”

Read it all at New Zeal!

*  We recently hosted Jim Simpson at our local Tea Party!

More on OTMs coming across our southern border

OTMs are Other than Mexicans.  Here is an article with a clever title ‘US–Mexican border is Terrorists’ Moving Sidewalk.’

From ReporterNews.com:

NEW YORK, N.Y. — While Americans march against Arizona’s new restrictions on unlawful immigration, hundreds of illegal aliens from countries awash in Muslim terrorists tiptoe across the U.S.—Mexican frontier.

According to the federal Enforcement Integrated Database, 125 individuals were apprehended along the border from fiscal year 2009 through April 20, 2010. These deportable aliens included two Syrians, seven Sudanese, and 17 Iranians, all nationals from the three Islamic countries that the U.S. government officially classifies as state sponsors of terrorism.

Federal authorities also track “special interest countries” from which terrorism could be directed against America. Over the aforementioned period, 99 of those nations’ citizens also were nabbed on the border. They were: two Afghans, five Algerians, 13 Iraqis, 10 Lebanese, 22 Nigerians, 28 Pakistanis, two Saudis, 14 Somalis, and three Yemenis. During FY 2007 and FY 2008, federal officials caught 319 people from these same countries traversing America’s southwest border.

Likely these illegal aliens blend into Muslim communities in your city.  Read on, there is more.

Refugees needed for meatpacking and more—food service, janitorial service etc. etc.

We’ve written innumerable posts on these pages about the big meatpackers needing cheap LEGAL immigrant labor.  As a matter of fact, I believe they and other big companies are the drivers behind the refugee resettlement program.  Big businesses know how to work the political and federal government systems to supply their needs—Jonah Goldberg writing in Liberal Fascism calls this “corporatism.”

Wages will stay relatively low when there is a large pool of employable people willing and able to do the job—a simple fact of business economics.  In the case of refugees, wages can remain low because some of the other needs of the new immigrant are met through various forms of  public welfare.

Well, they have to work somewhere you are saying!  Yes, they do.  I don’t disagree!  I also suppose there are many American citizens desperate these days to work at Cargill, Swift & Co., Tysons, or Aramark.  I’m not addressing that question here.  What drives me crazy is to see do-gooders think and act like the refugee program is all about warm cuddly humanitarianism.

The fact of the matter is that pouring immigrants into the US to benefit big business fits very nicely into this public relations framework that the political Left has well-established.   Whether it’s historic “preservationists” supposedly saving a site and cashing in on its tourist potential with hotels and convention centers nearby, or “environmentalists” being sucked into the global warming corporatism where the big players are going to make a bundle selling carbon credits, or big companies lobbying for amnesty for illegal aliens trying to look like humanitarians when it’s the bottomline they have their eye on—that is the well established strategy.  Do-gooders keep falling for it and can be counted on to call critics (like us) racists (or whatever fits their demonizing goal) thus shilling for the big money bags behind the strategy.

My point is, just be truthful.  In the case of refugees, the State Department (the Obama Administration now and the Bush people previously) just tell the truth, just admit there is a big business element driving the refugee program and the Open Borders movement as well. (In addition to adding voters to the Democratic voter rolls.  I could never figure out why the Republicans don’t see that.)

So what got me off on this latest tirade?   Two articles last week mentioned that refugees are working for Aramark (see also Aramark at wikipedia, here).  I didn’t even know what Aramark was, but have since learned that they are a giant company that runs such things as food services at your kid’s college cafeteria, or even whole public school cafeterias.  They also supply cleaning services for airports, hotels and even hotels in National Parks!*   They need a constant supply of cheap labor.   They are working with the volags (federal refugee contractors). They are also involved with Michelle Obama’s campaign against obesity.  Because there is so much, I’m going to make a whole category just for Aramark here at RRW and follow their involvement in the refugee program.

Here are the two articles that first caught my eye:

This one, from Deseret News, tells us about Aramark employing refugees in Utah.

Roughly 1,000 new refugees arrive in Utah each year after fleeing wars and persecution, and the biggest issue now is finding enough jobs, says Emily Smoot, refugee job developer with Catholic Community Service.

Smoot is encouraged by the successes of refugees she has placed in jobs recently — including 26 with Aramark Corp. at Lake Powell Resort.

The second one is about the Bhutanese in Cincinnati :

The family is happy in Greater Cincinnati. Khadka Neopane works in the laundry at Aramark.

I bet you are saying again, so what, they have to work, they apparently don’t mind the work—that is not my problem.  My issue again is that I want an admission that the refugee program is not simply an issue of helping the world’s downtrodden.  It helps the Far Left achieve their political goals and it helps big business.

Below are links I’m saving for future reference.   Let me be clear, I am not saying Aramark is a good or bad company for taking advantage of immigrant labor.  I only want to make the point to humanitarians that the refugee program is not all about doing good for the immigrants and refugees, it is doing good for the corporate bottomline and for professional politicians willing to help their corporate friends.

Aramark angers Union in Detroit, here.

Aramark hammered by SEIU, here.

Aramark CEO holds wedding reception at Ellis Island, here.

Aramark found guilty of discrimination by EEOC, here.

Aramark gets “diversity” award, here.

Aramark targeted, here.   Apparently they oppose card check!

*  I’m digressing, but I know a good bit about the National Parks because I had to fight to keep my farm from being taken by the National Park Service a long time ago.  Did you know that the same strategy was and still is employed in connection with the Park Service.   Preservation types (do gooders) push for expansion of old parks or the creation of new ones while their big money friends build hotels and convention centers nearby.  It is actually a brilliant scheme.  The public (taxpayer) pays for the care of the attraction (the park) and the big money friends of the preservationists (sometimes the preservationists themselves!) cash in nearby.   It is sold to the public as an issue of “saving” some important environmental or historic asset, but financially benefits certain people and allows the federal or state government to take over more land.   Do you see the core strategy and how it’s just the same with the refugee program?

Canadian proposal to fix “broken” system—add more refugees

Because the system is “broken” Canadian refugee program reformers plan to add more refugees to Canada’s refugee quota.  I don’t know what it is with this word “broken.”    Some public relations firm must have tested the word in the English speaking world and determined it was a good one to get people to move on so-called reforms.  Funny thing is that the PR in the US says our program is “broken” too.

In my mind, the refugee system might be broken in both the US and Canada, but it is something that could be fixed by simply not overloading countries with poor people who will not find work right now.  In addition to ferreting out corruption that is!

This story is from earlier in the week so maybe it’s already happened, but check it out here anyway.

As part of the package of reforms for Canada’s asylum system, known as the Balanced Refugee Reform Act, the Government of Canada proposes to increase the number of refugees resettled from overseas as well as the support we provide to help them settle in Canada. Only by fixing the broken in-Canada system can we effectively increase the generosity of our overseas system.

If the legislation receives Royal Assent, Canada would increase the resettlement target by 2,500. This increase would bring the total number of refugees resettled by Canada to as many as 14,500 a year. This increase will mean Canada would be resettling more refugees per capita than any other country in the world.

Read it all.