Comment worth noting: US State Department, what is going on in Bowling Green?

Update November 18th:  The tangled web that will hinder any investigation of refugee neglect, here.

Update November 17th:  More information on the satellite office of the BGIC that will open Dec. 1 in Owensboro, here.

Update November 14th:  Readers should know that this post is the most visited post for the last few days at RRW.  I don’t know who all is reading it, but I assure you many many people are.  If you didn’t see it yesterday, I posted information on the State Department’s Operational Guidance for Resettlement Agencies, here, and have had several requests for it so far.  This document outlines what is expected of federally contracted agencies when they resettle refugees.

Comments worth noting is a category we set up for comments (usually to older posts)that might be lost to most readers unless we showcased them here.

We just received this shocking information from a friend of a Burmese Karen refugee resettled recently in Bowling Green, KY.  The comment came in response to my post on October 25th about resettlements at Bowling Green, here.    It sounds like a repeat of what happened to the Burmese resettled in Waterbury, CT more than a year ago where some local church people finally were able to get the attention of the US State Department and the negligent resettlement agency was closed there.

US State Department, why does this keep happening?  And, why have you approved another office for this agency in Owensboro, here?

From a reader identified as C. Flores:

Jason [another commnenter at the post], you have to remember these people are refugees. They did not come to Bowling Green by choice! These people need some compassion cas’ they surely aren’t receiving it in Bowling Green!

You need to take action and write Governor Steve Beshear, Congressman Geoff Davis, Senator Mitch McConnell,
Commissioner Brian “Slim” Nash, Major Elaine Walker, Commission Joe Denning, Commissioner Catherin Hamilton, and Commissioner Bruce Wilkerson, US Campaign for Burma, USCRI and many of the Universities in Kentucky… Have the people of Bowling Green to sign and take action. This is coming from your tax $$ and mine!

The International Center (aka Western Kentucky Mutual Assistance Association) needs to be stop!! The filthy living condition they have in BG, they were better off where they came from. I’m totally humiliated that America are doing this to these refugees!!!

This is an email I sent to all of the above November 2, 2009.

“I drove 210 miles down to Bowling Green, Kentucky on Friday, October 30th, from Northern Kentucky to welcome a son of a Karenni/Burmese family I been visiting in the Thailand Refugee Camp outside Mae Hong Son, since 2003.

I stayed in the son’s apartment at Lover’s Lane for 3 days and I was horrified from what I saw and heard from the Karenni refugees in Bowling Green. I didn’t realize there were so many Karenni living in BG. They all had so many questions for me and I didn’t know how to answer any of them. I was totally dumbfounded from what I saw. I never imagined America would do this to these refugees.

The Riviera apartments on 1106 Lovers Lane and the Greenwood Villa Apartments on 1500 Bryant Way, are slum apartments loaded with cockroaches and rodents. They were totally nasty! And these apartments are charging them $500.00 a month after they land a $9.00/hr job at the chicken factory. They are not worthy to even live in. The walls and carpeting in all the apartments I went in, haven’t been cleaned in years by management!!! The owners of the apartments have to be working with the International Center for “PROFIT!!!” They honestly need to be demolished. They are unlivable!!!

On Saturday, I bombed his apartment and took the family out to trick or treat. When we came back, it took the son and I over an hour to clean up the cockroaches. It was totally disgusting!!

I was totally bewildered the whole weekend. I called the Bowling Health Department on Monday, November 2, to report the living conditions the Karenni people are living in. As I write this, I am still baffled; “where are the funds going?” It’s a total disgrace!

These people have only what they brought with them usually one luggage with their whole life in it. They do not have enough winter clothing, eating utensils & dishes, no furniture, basically nothing and winter is around the corner. I had to go out and spend close to $300.00 of my own money to buy the family the necessities and the majority of items I purchased was 2nd hand.

The whole weekend, I kept asking myself, “why would America bring these people over here if they can’t help them?” Knowing the life of a Karreni refugee camp, I feel as they had a better life in the refugee camp than living in Bowling Green, Kentucky! I drove the 3 hours back in disbelief. How can these Karreni people get help! We need to stop bringing refugees in if we cannot help them.

When I arrived home Sunday night, I had to leave my luggage out in my garage and bombed my garage in case I brought home any cockroaches. The apartments are that bad!

I searched in vain regarding the crisis in Bowling Green and this man links (“What’s going on in BG…”) below explains it exactly how life is for these Karenni people. Somebody needs to help them please!!! “

Jason, if I didn’t live 3 hours away, I’d be asking a lot of questions how is your tax $$ being used to help these people! They need help and the are not receiving it in BG!

Ask the people of BG to help them. They desperately need winter clothing. The need rides to the Asian/Thai Supermarket for food. When I walked in the son’s apartment, he had 2 coffee cups, 1 plate and 2 spoons and he has been her for over 3 weeks!! He didn’t have any furniture in his apartment and he has a wife and 2 small children.

Bowling Green needs to be ANGRY at the International Center in BG! I am!! I am driving back the 3 hours one-way again this coming weekend. Why, because no one in BG is helping them! After this family gets all their identifications, I plan on bringing them home with me. I don’t have the $$$ to support them either, though I do have the compassion. I bring them all here in Northern KY if I could.

“acorcoran” Thank you for all the time you have done with these very informative posts. Please let me know how I can help. I don’t know what more I can do besides emailing the ones above. This is all new to me and I honestly don’t know where to begin!! ~C. Flores

To C. Flores, I’ll be in touch with you tomorrow with some suggestions!

Denmark: We will take Burmese refugees, but not Iraqis

I’ve had a pile of stuff on the on-going conflict involving Denmark and the Iraqi refugees they have been deporting, but lacking time, have posted little of it.  So, just accept this simple summary.  Many Iraqis who arrived (presumably illegally and then asked for asylum) in Denmark have been ordered deported.  So, political activists hid them in a church and ultimately authorities entered the church and physically removed them—a riot ensued.  Now, according to this report, Denmark says it will take refugees that the UN designates, but only Burmese, no more Iraqis.

Below is the whole short article from the Copenhagen Post:

Despite announcing just two months ago that Denmark could accept the Iraqi refugees as agreed by the UN, Immigration Minister Birthe Rønn Hornbech has now said they will not be the first choice this year.

Head of the Social Liberal party Margrethe Vestager is demanding an explanation for the u-turn and said she suspected that domestic politics may be responsible. ‘Birthe Rønn doesn’t want to be in a position where she is throwing Iraqis out of the country, while at the same time bringing more in,’ said Vestager to Politiken newspaper.

The minister did not wish to elaborate on the reasons for the change, but told the paper that past experience showed that Burmese refugees were good at integrating into their new country.

Quota refugees are different to asylum seekers in that they are resettled in a country following agreement with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

Denmark has agreed to take approximately 500 of these refugees annually, who are selected under a number of criteria, such as geographical regions, those who are critically ill and need treatment, those who are at risk of being sent back to their original country or those who are currently in danger where they are living.

Note to Danish government:   If it’s Muslims you are concerned about, although many Burmese refugees are Christian,  take into consideration that Burmese Rohingya are Muslims too.

To learn more than you ever wanted to know about Rohingya, visit our category on the topic here (80 posts!). So far, the US has not officially taken any Rohingya, but Canada, Australia, the UK and Ireland have, among others.

Welcoming Sweden a myth according to Christian Iraqis being denied asylum

Update August 12th:  More here from Stockholm News.

This is a story I would like to know more about.  We know that Sweden is having a terrible time with Muslim immigrants, but didn’t know the country was expelling Iraqi Christians.

More than two years after the Swedish Supreme Court of Migration decided there was no “inner armed conflict” in Iraq, and Sweden started the largest expulsion of any nationality that has ever taken place in the country, a Swedish Radio News investigation for SR’s Ekot uncovers the grim truth about the new asylum policies in Sweden. Unique documents, a hidden microphone and a whistle blower reveal a new Swedish asylum policy of which most people are unaware.

Sweden is known to be one of the most generous countries in the world in granting Iraqi asylum seekers refugee status. The government also pushes for all other EU Countries to adopt more generous policies when it comes to accepting particularly vulnerable Iraqi refugees, especially from the camps in the neighbouring countries of Iraq. At the same time SR News can reveal that Sweden at the same time has been returning other vulnerable Iraqis by force to Baghdad.

During three days – starting on the 10th of August – SR News will reveal more evidence of the new Swedish asylum policy.

For four months we have been interviewing 52 Iraqi citizens, all non-Muslim and most of them Christian Assyrians (also known as Chaldeans and Syriacs). These non-muslim minorities make up a large part of the Iraqi refugees in Sweden, maybe as much as 30-50 percent, although there are no official statistics.

Some of the asylum seekers are now forced into hiding to avoid being sent back to Iraq, a country where only half the number of the Christians and other non-Muslims from before 2003 remain. Few non-Muslim Iraqis have been willing to return voluntarily. Many Christians are also afraid of the new tensions between the Kurdish provinces and the Baghdad government, and that a rising conflict between the two will put the large minority of Christians residing in the Nineveh Plains directly on the fault line.

Read on.  There is more.

I would like to know how many Christians and how many Muslim Iraqis we take, but the State Department isn’t talking.

Blogger questions Farooq Kathwari’s business ethics

Just now I came across this blogger and blog Financial Skeptic writing about Ethan Allen furniture and its CEO Farooq Kathwari.  Now, I grant you, I know nothing about financial management, and can’t make any judgement on Kathwari’s action, but it seems this blogger is questioning a recent announcement by Kathwari.

Revenues for Q4 are positioned as pretty good but overall revenues for the year dropped some 31%

Then Farooq Kathwari, Chairman and CEO lets you know that the real earnings results will be coming out Aug 12 which is three weeks in the future. Farooq you need a remedial class in disclosure. Coming out three weeks early and singing sunny sky’s has pretty well signalled to the market what you expect the final results to be. Hopefully now that everyone is warm and fuzzy you will not release a little bit of bad news when the market is no longer looking.

But seriously Farooq there may be a few lawyers who want to talk to you.

Then here is a straight news story about the Ethan Allen announcement.

So why do we care?    Farooq Kathwari is the Kashmiri-born Chairman of the Board of Refugees International and it’s always a good idea to follow the activities of those in the refugee industry.  Don’t the Democratic Alinskyites call that opposition research?  Ha, ha, ha!  I just noticed the name of a former director of RI—George Soros!  That says it all!

Here is my most recent post on Farooq Kathwari in which investigators Rabinowitz and Mayor say that Kathwari is connected to Islamist groups.   In that post I noted that Refugees International was lobbying to help Iraqi Palestinians resettle in the West, but was silent on the much larger number of Christian Iraqis.  But, I can happily report that RI is no longer silent on Christian Iraqis, here.

Refugees International utters the “C” word regarding Iraq

That is “C” as in Christian Iraqi refugees.   I’ve been critical for some time of Refugees International’s near silence on persecuted Iraqi Christians while vociferously arguing for Iraqi Palestinians and other supposedly persecuted Muslims to get into the US. Incidentally who is persecuting Muslims besides other Muslims and why is everyone so chicken to mention that fact?

So, I was happy to see this blog posting by Jake Kurtzer, a lobbyist for RI, speaking up for Christians for once even if he never mentions why the Christians, who have lived in Iraq for centuries, are persecuted.

While America’s attention has shifted to the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan, recent news reports about the targeting of Christian Iraqis have turned a few eyes back towards the violence within Iraq. The targeting of Iraqi Christians portends a return to the attacks on minorities and ethnic strife that led to the massive displacement of civilians from Iraq.

He places resettlement as third in his list of three suggested action items for the Obama Administration.   Keep in mind it was only last November that RI was calling on Obama to resettle 105,500 Iraqis to the US this year!   I guess it’s dawned on them that hauling all these Iraqis here who then can’t find work and run to the newspapers to complain isn’t doing the refugee industry much good.

President Obama can convey this message by urging Al-Maliki to take a few basic steps. First and foremost, the Iraqi government must continue to improve its own response to the displacement crisis. Reports that the Iraqi government plans to close the IDP file at the end of this year indicate a desire on their part to gloss over this humanitarian emergency. This is unacceptable. The Iraqi government, with U.S. support, must continue to improve its legal framework for supporting returnees and must ensure that all returns are voluntary, and conducted with dignity to areas that are safe and suitable for return.

In urging Al-Maliki to take these steps, President Obama should reiterate America’s commitment to meeting the basic needs of Iraq’s displaced, through financial support for humanitarian agencies and through diplomatic engagement with host countries. The announcement of a potential return of an Ambassador to Syria is a welcome and overdue step that RI has been calling for since 2007. This will ensure that the U.S. can engage with the Syrian government on issues relating to the basic needs of Iraqi refugees. Finally, the President can continue to affirm the U.S.’s commitment to resettle those most vulnerable Iraqi’s who will never be able to return home.

So, when Obama pulls our troops out, and if a sectarian blood bath ensues, will it be Obama’s blood bath?

A church group taking care of refugees with real charity

From time to time people ask me if there is any group resettling refugees without getting paid by the US taxpayer for their “charitable” work.   Well, yes, here is one, Christian Freedom International— CFI not only helps refugees in camps in Thailand but puts its prayers, volunteers and private money to work helping refugees resettle and assimilate to a life in America.

SAULT STE. MARIE, MI (Christian Freedom International) — Miraculous. It’s the only word I can think of to describe what’s going on here in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan.

When I say “miraculous,” it’s not what you might think. There hasn’t been an outbreak of sudden, unexplained healings, nor have there been any sightings of angels walking among us here in the Soo.

Instead, the town has been quietly rejuvenated by a group of 14 families—over 50 men, women, and children—who have claimed for themselves a piece of the American dream while making a lasting impact on the small community they’ve learned to call “home.”

What’s so remarkable about these 14 families and the 8 children my wife and I have adopted? They’re Karen refugees from Burma.

Against the greatest of odds, these families have gone from struggling through a bleak existence in Thailand refugee camps to enjoying abundant freedom and opportunities in the United States.

In the recent months since they’ve relocated to Michigan, these refugees have found new homes, friends, and churches, and are happily thriving in ways that they never thought possible.

Volunteers are volunteers, the old fashioned type.  There is no logging “volunteer” hours to be turned into the federal government for cold hard cash from the Match Grant Program.

Local volunteers have been a special blessing to the growing Karen community, as well. Several mentor families are teaching many of the refugees the basics of how to shop, pay bills, and manage their homes, and more than 25 volunteers hold English classes for the refugees three nights a week.

It looks like CFI is rescuing refugees that have been resettled by federal contractors in crime ridden cities.

Volunteer manpower has also been a tremendous help with the motel reconstruction, which is an especially important project that will offer clean, safe housing for new families—many of whom have been living in high crime, inner city neighborhoods since their resettlement in the United States.

Now, can you imagine there are actually groups resettling poor, scared refugees in high crime neighborhoods.  It is almost impossible to believe.  Who could be so cheap and heartless to do such a thing?

A different kind of Iraqi refugee story

With all the stories we’ve put up about unemployed Iraqi refugees,  I thought I’d post one outside of that template. Adam Ashton of the Modesto Bee reports on a group of Iraqi refugee women who are learning hair styling at Modesto’s Dior School of Cosmetology.

Sam Rasho, the school’s owner, lent these students a hand up, waiving $12,000 in tuition for them and 13 other refugees. They must spend eight more months in class before they’ll be ready to seek a license from the state Board of Barbering and Cosmetology.

“People helped me, so I felt it was my duty to help them,” said Rasho, who left Iraq and arrived in Chicago in 1974.

This is typical of how immigrants have traditionally made their way in America – earlier arrivals helping new ones to make a living and to assimilate. So how come this story is so different from those previous ones of Iraqi refugees disillusioned with America? I suspect the answer is here:

Rasho heard about their trouble finding work through a network of Assyrian Christians in Stanislaus County.

That’s all it says about Christians, but it’s clear these are Iraqi Christians, not Muslims. Not something a reporter who values his job would want to emphasize, but probably the crux of the story.

“They are so dedicated,” Bradley said. “They’re going to get jobs because they’re eager to work and they work hard.”

There are plenty of Iraqi Muslims who have been here a long time and have prospered. Perhaps they could help out some of those unemployed Iraqi Muslims refugees by teaching them a useful trade. Perhaps they already are doing that and we just haven’t heard of it, but I doubt it. It makes such a good story that some reporter would have picked it up.

More evidence of a connection between Rohingya and Islamic terrorism

This is a follow-up to a couple of my previous posts (especially this one) in our Rohingya Reports category (72 posts!) and probably only will hold interest for readers who have been diehard followers of the Rohingya issue.   To make a long story short, this ethnic group—Burmese Muslim Rohingya—is agitating with help from their friends in the NGO community to be resettled in the West.  As far as we know, they are not officially in the US (yet!).  I suspect, however, that some have come in with the Karen Christians*.    They have begun to be officially resettled in the UK and Canada.

This is from the Daily Star in Dhaka (the Capital of Bangladesh).  The Daily Star says it is “journalism without fear or favor.”

Jama’atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) had close links with Rohingya Solidarity Organisation (RSO), an insurgent group in the Arakan state of Myanmar, JMB’s explosives expert ‘Boma’ Mizan revealed in interrogations.

Sources close to Rab interrogators said Mizan and some other JMB operatives received training from RSO arms experts in a camp near Myanmar border in 2002.

Now executed JMB chief Shaekh Abdur Rahman sent them for the training. In exchange for the firearms lessons, JMB trained Rohingyas to improvise and set off bombs.

Harkat-ul-Jihad-al Islami (Huji) Bangladesh, another outlawed Islamist outfit, too had strong connections with RSO. 

[.....]

Lately, some individuals claiming to be former Huji men told this correspondent that in the late 80s and 90s many of their fellow operatives took arms training from Rohingya rebels.

[.....] 

Sources said Huji took RSO help also in securing weapons and funds. The Rohingyan group had extensive supplies of arms, and for funds it would count on a number of Muslim-majority countries especially those in the Middle East.

* We have resettled 8,149 Burmese refugees this fiscal year already (that is from Oct. 1, 2008-April 30, 2009).  That number is second only to the number of Iraqis resettled in that time period (9,581).  We have heard from sources that “Burmese Muslims” were getting into Karen Christian camps and getting into the US.

Refugees International Report from Iraq: no mention of Christians

To further make the point I made yesterday in my post about Refugees International’s pro-Muslim (really if you read it carefully, it is pro-Sunni Muslim) bias, here is a recent RI report from Iraq that discusses “vulnerable” groups, but never uses the “C” word.

The last segment entitled “Focus on the Most Vulnerable” gobbles up nearly an entire paragraph on the much smaller number of Iraqi Palestinians that have been displaced then the Christians who are running for their lives from Muslim persecution.  Here is the whole section, if you didn’t know the circumstances you would never know who the other “vulnerable” might be.

As efforts continue to stabilize and rebuild Iraq, special attention needs to be given to the most vulnerable, and durable solutions need to be found. The stateless Palestinians of Iraq remain one of the most vulnerable groups, and are the subjects of discrimination and attacks by many factions. The hundreds who sought shelter in the camps of Al-Tanf and Al-Waleed at the Syrian border with Iraq must be resettled immediately and the criteria applied should be the same as for Iraqis. According to the UN, there are 10,000 to 12,000 left in Iraq. For this population, resettlement to a third country is likely to be the only durable solution.

The U.S. and the international community must also turn their attention to Iraqis who will not be able to return home, whether they are refugees or internally displaced. They may be too vulnerable to return, or have reasons to fear for their safety. Either way, there are currently no plans to address their needs and plan for their future. The U.S. must engage Syria, Jordan and other host countries on finding durable solutions for these particularly vulnerable groups. As for the 39% of internally displaced Iraqis who don’t plan to return home, they will need assistance to either integrate in their new communities or resettle elsewhere. The political implications for the future of Iraq must be carefully considered, while respecting the will of the displaced.

As for resettling the Palestinians, these Iraqi Palestinians have blasted Arab governments for not helping, here, where they called their co-religionists hypocrites.   I have never seen RI or any other NGO put pressure on Arab governments to take in their Muslim kin and I believe it is either their pro-Muslim/anti-West (US is always bad) bias or that RI is flat-out chicken to take on a Muslim government.    The pressure is always on the West to take-in this group of Palestinians who are persecuted by other Muslims because they were friends of Saddam.

Meanwhile in the US, a Chaldean (Christian) group is helping resettled Christian Iraqis weather the economic down-turn by establishing an ‘Adopt-a-Family’ (note how nice it is to see Iraqi women not covered from head to toe) program where private citizens help Iraqi Christians pay their bills thus placing less demand on the American taxpayer to do so.  I wonder if the Chaldean group can apply for the Emergency Housing money from the State Department.  I’m betting they can’t.

Iraq’s VP wants Christians to stay

Iraqi Christians apparently are still being threatened and killed by Muslim extremists in Iraq causing them to continue to seek refuge in surrounding countries according to this article in The Christian Post.

The vice president of Iraq, Adel Abdul Mahdi, urged the country’s Christian population to resist fleeing Iraq and called on the international community to help protect the dwindling minority group from extremists.

Since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, some 250,000 to 500,000 Christians have left the country. Christians, although making up only three percent of Iraq’s population, account for nearly half of the refugees leaving Iraq, according to the U.N. High Commission for Refugees.

“The position of Iraqi Christians is vulnerable and Iraq must not be left alone to face this. It’s a collective task,” said Abdul Mahdi, a Shiite Muslim, at a conference hosted by the French Institute of International Relations in Paris on Wednesday, according to Agence France-Presse.

“Christians are an integral part of Iraq,” he said. “We need to help Iraq and help Christians remain in Iraq.”

Iraq’s Christian population has mostly fled to neighboring countries such as Syria and Jordan, but has also been granted refuge in Western countries including France, Germany, and the United States.

Members of the tiny Christian population are forced to leave their homeland because of daily physical threats to their life. More than 200 Christians [Edit: as Judy pointed out here the numbers seem to be unreliable]  have been killed, dozens of churches bombed, and countless believers have been kidnapped for ransom money since 2003.

And, a reminder, the Christians were living in what is now Iraq long before the Muslim’s arrived.

Iraq is home to one of the oldest Christian communities in the world. Many religious freedom groups have warned that if nothing is done soon the Christian population in Iraq will likely disappear.