Iraqis in Nebraska: “there are always bumps”

Here is another of those basic template stories, this time from Nebraska.  (The second Nebraska Iraqi refugee story in two days!)   A nice family is featured.   They can’t go home to Iraq for this reason or that reason.  They couldn’t survive in Jordan and so despite the fact that jobs are scarce and the US government isn’t generous enough,  they’ve come to America and have seen their first snow and know that everything will be great.  Well, truthfully this story has no snow in it, but they often do.

And, as is the usual pattern for these stories, one reads through many column inches before getting to some of the problems.  But, before I get to the bumps, check this out!  We’ve written about this before but it’s been a long while since I’ve seen it in print anywhere.

Divvying up refugees!

Ten non-profit government contractors are making the decision every week in Washington about what city these refugees will be sent to! 

Think about it, these agencies which have no elected officials overseeing them in any way (State Department officials involved are career bureaucrats) are determining the character and economic future for your neighborhood, your town, your city and your state.  Additionally, since they are paid to resettle refugees, each must surely be first and foremost defending its own turf and offices throughout the US.

Once a week in Washington, 10 resettlement agencies under contract with the government, most of them church-affiliated nonprofit groups, meet to divvy up the refugees deemed eligible for entry because of a “well-founded fear of persecution” at home.

It’s a process that Jeff Vandenberg, of Omaha-based Lutheran Family Services of Nebraska, likens to the NFL draft [clever, huh?]. Priority is given to reunifying families — the reason behind many of the arrivals in Nebraska and Iowa — and to placing the newcomers where they’ll find relatives or countrymen nearby, as was the case for al-Kadhim and his family.

The “bumps” for Iraqi refugees are that they expected to enter a life where they would work in the field in which they were trained and have nice housing.  For most, it’s not happening.  And, as we have reported previously, some have returned to the Middle East and the culture they are comfortable with.  Despite the problems and lack of jobs, the Obama Administration is promising that we will resettle another 17,000 plus Iraqis this fiscal year.

Since the 2000 Census, Iraqi natives have pushed their numbers to perhaps 1,100 in Nebraska and 165 in Iowa, estimated David Drozd, a demographer at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.

Problems with the newly arrived Iraqis here have been few, although “there are always bumps,” said Vandenberg. The federal goal — even in the midst of the “Great Recession” — is for resettled refugees to be economically self-sufficient within six months, the point at which their eligibility for government cash assistance generally expires, he said.

After two recent studies criticizing how Iraqi refugees have fared nationwide, the Obama administration vowed to review the resettlement process, a system essentially devised in 1980 to welcome Vietnamese and Cambodians displaced by war. The studies, by Georgetown University Law School and the International Rescue Committee, found that government resettlement funds were too quickly exhausted and job prospects too often scant, among other problems.

“I’m ashamed. I feel like I’m selling a lie,” Greg Wangerin of Interfaith Refugee and Immigration Ministries told the Chicago Tribune recently in an article that chronicled poverty and homelessness among the refugees in Chicago,* home to the second-largest Iraqi community in the United States, after Detroit.

Yes, Mr. Wangerin, you are.

* For  more on the Chicago mess go here.

Former Iraqi refugee is an Army National Guard recruiter in Nebraska

Here is a revealing story about how a former Iraqi interpreter now using his skills in the National Guard in Nebraska struggles to dispel the negative image of Muslims in the military in the wake of the massacre at Ft. Hood.  He seems like a decent and sincere man who is happy to be in America, but one section of this story in the Omaha World Herald was revealing.   In his effort to recruit diversity into the Guard, he comes upon immigrants who obviously hate the country that now harbors them, and the National Guard that keeps them safe.

Many of the people he recruited welcomed him, thrilled to converse with someone who looked like them and wore an American military uniform.

But no map is good enough to keep him from taking wrong turns and slamming into walls.

He left a mosque once when the worshippers made him feel uncomfortable about the way he folded his hands to pray.

He learned that certain people from certain communities in Nebraska — he doesn’t want to say who — consider him an enemy of religion. They’ve hissed at him and called him everything short of an infidel.  [Three guesses who the 'hissers' are in Nebraska!]

“There are strict people,” he said. “You know, people who just know good or bad and that’s all. When you live like that, it is easy to kill. It is easy to say ‘In the name of God’ — bang! — ‘That’s it.’

“But of course it doesn’t work that way.”

Basim refused to stop, kept right on talking that day to the Muslim man convinced that the Nebraska National Guard was the enemy.

Basim told him he wasn’t going to fight his people, he was going to fight people who were hurting his people.

The argument turned into a debate, and the debate morphed into a chat. They parted as friends.

The man did not join the Guard. But maybe, Basim thinks, they changed each other’s minds just a little.   [I sure hope he didn't change Basim's mind a little!]

Just one of many posts at RRW on Somalis in Nebraska for your reading pleasure.

Not all that “welcoming” in Sweden; girls convicted for harrassing refugees

This is an update of a story we reported last May, here.    Seems that the country highly praised for its generosity to immigrants has its refugee conflicts on-going as well.  Swedish girls involved in the “mob” attack on an apartment building housing Iraqi refugees have been convicted of terrorizing refugees.  From The Local:

Two teenage girls have been convicted for their role in terrorizing refugees in Vannas in northern Sweden last May in what was described at the time as a “lynch mob”.

The girls, aged 16 and 17 when the incident took place, were sentenced to juvenile care by the district court in Umea for harassment and vandalism, Sveriges Radio (SR) reports.

The charges stem from a May 9th incident in which a group of 30 to 50 young people shouted and threw stones at an apartment building housing a large number of refugee tenants, predominantly from Iraq.

Authorities decided to evacuate about 40 refugees to avoid potential violence. Within two weeks, nearly half of the refugees had decided to leave the area permanently.

According to the Västerbotten-Kuriren newspaper, the incident stemmed from a dispute involving a group of local youths who confronted a refugee boy about the alleged assault of a local girl.

Tensions from the school yard confrontation escalated over several days, culminating in the assembling of what police described as a “lynch mob” outside the apartment building.

Not a word in the story about any investigation into the origin of the incident—a refugee boy possibly assaulting a local girl.

The famous blogger Fjordman said this at the time of the original incident.

This is the price you pay for destroying the cultural and social fabric of a nation through mass immigration. Similar problems are now rapidly emerging throughout the Western world for roughly the same reasons. The state can no longer uphold law and order and frequently doesn’t even try. The only option left to ordinary citizens is vigilante justice and the formation of armed clans and groups to withstand the attacks of other armed clans and groups. It’s the re-tribalization of society, which is and always has been the logical consequence of Multiculturalism. If you’re a Westerner, it’s coming to a street near you very soon, accompanied by loud cheers from the intelligentsia.

I guess they didn’t get the “diversity is strength” memo.

Search RRW for ‘Sweden’ and you will see lots of posts on the immigration issues affecting this European welfare state.   For whatever reason (I have no clue), this 8 month-old post, “Muslim immigration killing Sweden” still gets many visitors every day here at RRW.

Asst. Secretary for refugees says Iraq needs to do more for refugees

Update November 20th:  Schwartz confirms in Syria that we are taking at least 17,000 Iraqis this fiscal year.  Mr. Schwartz, where will they work?

But, he also says we are planning on taking another 17,000 this fiscal year as well!

From AP:

BAGHDAD — The Iraqi government has taken strides to help refugees displaced by the violence in the country over recent years return home, but still “needs to do a heck of a lot more,” a U.S. official said Saturday.

Eric Schwartz, the assistant secretary of state for refugees, said Baghdad has proposed a 250 percent increase to the budget to assist refugees and plans to appoint a coordinator to help people move back home.

That we are helping to encourage Iraqis go home is good news.   Schwartz is likely very well aware of the many Iraqis who have come to the US over the last year only to find they must live in substandard housing and go without meaningful work—in many cases no work at all.  The Iraqi refugees have a different personality than say the Burmese we have been learning about in Bowling Green, because the Iraqis are willing to complain loudly to the press that they feel neglected.  Some have even returned to the Middle East. See our Iraqi refugee category with 437 posts on the subject!

Nevertheless, Schwartz confirms that we are taking another whopping 17,000 Iraqis in FY2010 which began October 1st.

According to the United Nations, as of January 2009 there were an estimated 2 million Iraqi refugees in neighboring Jordan and Syria, and some 2.6 million people displaced within Iraq.

The U.S. was heavily criticized by those who felt it was taking in too few Iraqi refugees uprooted by the sectarian bloodletting that followed the U.S.-led 2003 invasion and ouster of Saddam Hussein.

But more than 30,000 Iraqis have moved to the U.S. since in the last two years as part of a United Nations resettlement program that started in 2007

Schwartz, who was in Baghdad for meetings with his Iraqi counterparts Saturday, said the U.S. plans to allow some 17,000 Iraqis refugees to settle in the U.S. next year. That number is roughly on par with the number resettled in 2009.

Iraqi boy, wise beyond his years!

We can’t save all the refugees in the world, so let me remind readers of what a wise Iraqi boy told a Tucson paper last year:

It is better to have 10 Iraqi refugees who are satisfied with their lives than having 100 angry ones with no life at all.

Got a refugee problem?  Write to Eric Schwartz, here.

Refugee overload in “Little Baghdad,” El Cajon, CA; summit attempts to find new model

Here is one more story about refugee overload, this time from the San Diego area.  A refugee summit held November 6th sought to find answers about what to do about the flood of refugees arriving and suggestions were made for a new “national model.’

From East County Magazine:

November 12, 2009 (El Cajon) – Impacts of the Iraq War are hitting home in East County, where so many Iraqi refugees have settled that El Cajon’s mayor has dubbed a section of his community “Little Baghdad.” Last year, the U.S. admitted over 60,000 refugees—including 8,500 from Iraq. Since October 2008, San Diego has been taking in 400 refugee families a month. Nearly 85% are from Iraq. Almost 75% of all area refugees have settled in the Grossmont-Cuyamaca Community College District (GCCCD), straining resources beyond capacity in social services, education, and healthcare.

“Social Services predicts that 200 to 300 new families will be entering East County each month for the next two or three years,” Mike Lewis, PhD, assistant superintendent of education for the Grossmont Union High School District said at a November 6 summit at Cuyamaca College titled Spotlight on Refugee Education and Employment. Some have spent weeks or even years in refugee camps. Many don’t speak English and have not been able to receive an education. Many refugees are also physically maimed by war or suffer post-traumatic stress. Often they receive misinformation and find steep barriers to getting the help that they need.

I’m all for a new national model, but I bet the entrenched resettlement agencies aren’t interested in any model that doesn’t involve more taxpayer funding!

Below are a few random comments from participants (there are more, so check out the article).  Come to think of it, I’m not sure this article has any suggestion from anyone actually resettling the refugees as a government contractor.

A former Iraqi immigrant and state legislator said the following sensible thing:

“We have immigrants coming here who have been thrown out of their homes. They are scared to death,” said Deddeh, who formerly taught English under an immersion program in Monterey. He called for immersion programs in English to help new refugees and asylees. “Otherwise we are dancing around the issue. Without English, they cannot get jobs…English, that is the hope, that is the dream, that is the future” for refugee families and their children, he concluded.

This proposal sounds like just more bureaucratic talking when the problem is too many refugees for too few jobs:

The most ambitious vision at the summit, which was attended by over 150 people, came from Sunny Cooke, president of Grossmont College. Noting that the assimilation period for refugees has been shortened by the federal government from two years to eight months since the Iraq War began, she called for creation of a “transformation model of how this country greets and services its refugees.” Under her plan, a coalition of community leaders would examine what other countries do around the world.

Here is the typical leftwing new model, refugees make me feel good so lets get more taxpayer money for them.  Watch out for that word ‘empower’ it always alerts us to more hits on the taxpayer:

A representative from Assemblyman Joel Anderson’s office urged refugees to write to elected officials about “wonderful effects the refugees have had on our communities” to empower politicians to obtain more funding for refugee programs.

Here is someone speaking truth to power, a welfare model is a faulty model!

A Sudanese man who said he spent four years in a refugee camp called local efforts “a faulty model. It’s a welfare model. These are new citizens. They need training—a model to create new citizens.”

Then this suggestion is in our opinion the only real hope of reform, REFUGEES MUST BE SPONSORED!

Janet Casteños said her La Mesa-Sunrise Rotary Club has adopted a refugee family. “It’s a fantastic way to understand the culture,” she said, urging other groups to do the same.

It is also a “fantastic way” for the refugee family to learn our culture (English too) and take the burden off the taxpayer and place it back where it belongs as the role of private charity!

Noor Almaleki dies, victim of honor killing

The Arizona Republic misleadingly headlines the story Woman in Peoria hit-and-run incident dies from injuries. Ann has been following this story here and here. The current Arizona Republic article begins:

A 20-year-old Valley woman has died of injuries sustained in what prosecutors are calling an “honor killing.”

Faleh Hassan Almaleki, 48, of Glendale, is accused of running over his daughter, Noor Almaleki, and another woman in his Jeep Cherokee because he was infuriated with his daughter for becoming “too Westernized.”

Noor Almaleki died Monday of injuries she received during the Oct. 20 attack.

The charges against the father will be upgraded. I wonder if they have the death penalty in Arizona. But maybe he wouldn’t get the maximum penalty. The article explains:

Social experts say honor killings are an accepted practice in Iraqi tribal society, where family members feel they must kill a woman who shames them by not adhering to traditional Muslim or Iraqi values.

Oh well, then, it’s just their culture. And we are multi-cultural.  We wouldn’t want to offend Muslims by putting “honor killing” in the headline, would we?  Or punishing the perpetrator too harshly just for following his cultural rules.

Mark Steyn has a biting commentary at the Corner, including this:

If there were a Matthew Shepard murder every few months, Frank Rich et al would be going bananas about the “climate of hate” in our society, but you can run over your daughter, decapitate your wife, drown three teenage girls and a polygamous spouse, and progressive opinion and the press couldn’t give a hoot. Indeed, as The Atlantic notes, it’s merely an obsession of us right-wing kooks.

Iraqi suspect in Arizona ‘honor killing’ attempt arrested in Atlanta

The Iraqi Muslim immigrant who ten days ago ran over his daughter and a friend in Arizona in what is being described as an ‘honor killing’ attempt was arrested in Atlanta Thursday after being returned from the UK where he had tried to gain entry.  Here is the whole story tonight from News Runner:

An Iraqi immigrant accused of running down his daughter in Arizona with his car because she was becoming ‘too Westernised’ has been arrested in Georgia, authorities say.

Jim Joyner, a spokesman for the US Marshals Service in Atlanta, said on Friday Faleh Almaleki was arrested on Thursday when he arrived at Atlanta’s airport. He had been sent from the United Kingdom after authorities denied him entrance.

Almaleki, 48, awaits extradition to Arizona and will face two counts of aggravated assault, according to Peoria police.

He is accused of striking and then running over his 20-year-old daughter and a family friend with his Jeep on October 20 as the women were walking across a Peoria parking lot.

Noor Almaleki remains hospitalised in serious condition after undergoing spinal surgery. The friend, Amal Khalaf, is in serious but stable condition, according to family members.

Khalaf, 43, is the mother of Noor Almaleki’s boyfriend.

Police said the Almalekis moved to Peoria from Iraq in the mid-1990s.

Family members said Noor Almaleki had been living with her boyfriend and Khalaf, and Faleh Almaleki was upset that his daughter had become too ‘Westernised,’ had failed to live by traditional Muslim values and had disrespected the family.

After the incident, authorities said Almaleki drove his vehicle to Mexico and abandoned it in Nogales, where Mexican officials later located and seized it.

Almaleki made his way to Mexico City, where he boarded a plane to London, but United Kingdom authorities denied him entry into the country.

They contacted US authorities and Almaleki was put on a flight back to Atlanta, where he was arrested upon arrival.

One more example of how diversity strengthens America, right!  It’s my opinion that someone just made this up—that ‘diversity strengthens communities’—and people who are pushing more immigration just keep repeating it until the public thinks its true.  See our diversity link at the top of this page and consider the article entitled, “Bowling with our own.”

We’ve posted on a number of honor killings in the US in recent years, just use our search function to see some of those horrible stories.

UNHCR criticizes UK, Denmark and Sweden for returning Iraqi asylum seekers to Iraq

Not unexpected, from the BBC:

The United Nations refugee agency has criticised European countries for sending asylum seekers back to central Iraq, an area it considers unsafe.

It said people fleeing the region needed international protection because of security concerns and what it called “serious human rights abuses”.

The call from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees came after Britain tried to deport 44 men to Baghdad.

Denmark and Sweden were also cited as having forced Iraqi refugees to return.

Meanwhile Great Britain is in its longest recession on record, here.  Hint to America and the Obama Administration too!  Welfare states can only take care of the world’s immigrants and refugees for so long before the money runs out.

Asylum applications rise: Iraqis, Afghans, Somalis top list

The UNHCR has released the latest figures on asylum applications and no surprise the numbers are up.   Asylees are people who have left their home country, enter another country and file for asylum claiming they would be in danger if returned to their homeland.   In the US asylees receive all the benefits that refugees are given and we have hundreds (thousands?) of Immigration lawyers waiting to take their cases.

GENEVA, October 22 (UNHCR) – Asylum applications in industrialized nations rose by 10 percent in the first half of this year compared to the same period in 2008, according to the UN refugee agency’s provisional statistics released today. A total of 185,000 asylum claims were filed in the opening six months of this year across 38 European countries, the United States, Canada, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and The Republic of Korea.

Iraq remains the top country of origin of the asylum applicants (13,200 claims) for the fourth consecutive year. Afghans (12,000 claims) and Somalis (11,000 claims) are the second and third largest groups as security conditions continue to deteriorate in large parts of their home countries. The other main countries of origin are China, Serbia (including Kosovo), the Russian Federation, Nigeria, Mexico, Zimbabwe, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

As a region, Europe received 75 percent of all asylum applications although the United States remained the single largest recipient with 13 percent of all applications filed in industrialized nations (23,700, UNHCR estimate). France ranks as the second recipient nation with 10 percent of all claims (19,400), followed by Canada (18,700), the United Kingdom (17,700) and Germany, ranked fifth (12,000).

Iraqi man runs down daughter in Arizona, an honor killing attempt?

Update October 30th:  Father arrested in Atlanta, here.

Update October 29th:   Arizona Republic editorial says Muslims must speak out against honor killings.

Sure looks like it!     I wonder if these people are among the hundreds of Iraqis being resettled in Arizona—only their resettlement agency knows for sure!

From Yourwestvalley.com:

Peoria police are searching for a man they say ran down his 20-year-old daughter in a parking lot for becoming “too ‘westernized’ and … not living according to their traditional Iraq values.”

Noor Faleh Almaleki of Surprise was taken to a local hospital with life-threatening injuries, police said. Another woman, Amal Edan Khalaf, 43, of Surprise also was struck and is in the hospital with non-life threatening injuries.

[....]

Detectives from the Peoria Police Violent Crimes Unit, after talking with family and friends, learned Faleh Hassan Almaleki, 48, of Glendale was the driver, and that he is the father of Noor Faleh Almaleki. Those interviewed also told police he was with her as she had become too “westernized” and had made threats toward her.

Again, makes my point that many Muslims have no plans to assimilate in America.