Somali Migration to Maine: it’s the welfare magnet, stupid

Yesterday I brought to readers’ attention that now that the Somali population in Lewiston, ME is large and well-established, the demands for accomodation of Muslim religious practices has begun, see CAIR threatens, here.  Among those who study Islamic supremacism around the world, this is known as the Stealth Jihad (see our entire category here)—changing a country from within to bring about Islamic dominance.

In my post I attributed a role to Catholic Charities in bringing the first Somalis to Maine, and after a little research I found that assertion was accurate.  However, the majority of the thousands of Somalis now continuing to upset Lewiston are secondary migrants resettled by Catholic Charities and other federally contracted agencies in Georgia.    Here is the best summary I’ve found so far about how Lewiston got to the point it’s at now with CAIR breathing down the necks of school adminstrators.  I’ve only taken a bit of this very long and thorough 2002 article, so please read the whole thing.

LEWISTON — Every week, another four or five Somali families arrive in this workaday city on the Androscoggin River.

They are refugees from the clan-wracked ruins of their homeland on the Horn of Africa, from years of waiting in camps in Kenya. And they are migrants from their place of first resettlement in America, more often than not trekking 1,000 miles from the heat and multihued humanity of metropolitan Atlanta to this sparse, wintry, whitest of all states.

They are nomads, their ancient instincts honed to a 21st century edge. Pioneers in a new world, they discovered Lewiston and claimed a bit of it for themselves.

“It’s like finding a small island in the middle of the Pacific,” says Mohammed Abdi, who last year moved here from Decatur, Ga., and was quickly hired as the liaison between the city’s schools and the burgeoning Somali community. “We put it on the map.”

They were originally resettled with American blacks and that wasn’t going so well, an issue we have discussed at RRW on previous occasions.

In their exodus, they say they are looking for peace and quiet, cheaper housing, a more benevolent welfare system, better schools and a place to raise their children — families of seven or more are common —with fewer perils and temptations. That they are leaving a metro area renowned as an African-American mecca to resettle in Maine, home to fewer than 7,000 blacks in 2000, is less a matter of irony than intent, given the prickly state of their relations with African-Americans and a desire to protect their children from assimilating too quickly.

Scouts sent out!   But, I will bet you anything they had some hints from their friends at Catholic Charities which was already resettling Somalis in Portland, ME.

Fed up with life in Atlanta —he was robbed twice — Abdiaziz Ali said members of the Somali community there researched other places on the Internet, comparing crime rates, the cost of housing, test scores. Then they sent scouts to a handful of cities — Kansas City, Mo., Nashville, Tenn., San Diego, Houston and El Paso in Texas, and Portland and Lewiston in Maine.

Maine was preferred, and Portland was full.

It is cold but the welfare is oh so good!   Note when you read the article that some of the men stayed back in Georgia to continue to work while the wives and kids went to Maine for the welfare.

Indeed, in moving from Georgia to Maine, Somalis are trading one of the nation’s least generous welfare systems for one of its most generous.

Lewiston provides general assistance to anyone in need, splitting the cost with the state. Such relief was unavailable in Clarkston. In Georgia, there is a four-year time limit for receiving Temporary Assistance to Needy Families. In Maine it’s five, but even that can be extended. About a quarter of Lewiston’s Somali families receive that form of welfare, according to the state. And in Maine, a state-funded program assists single parents while they attend college.

There is a waiting list for public housing in Lewiston, but not nearly as long as back in Georgia. About a third of the more than 90 apartments at Hillview, Lewiston’s largest public housing project, have Somali tenants, and about 35 more Somali families have received Section 8 vouchers, which subsidize the rent on private apartments.

[...]

Fulfilling that expectation [that people work] is complicated because so many of the Somali families are single mothers and children, the fathers dead, missing, still in Africa or still in Atlanta.

“The men don’t like it here — it’s too cold or too quiet or too behind,” says Fatuma Hussein, whose own husband still drives a taxi in Atlanta, making frequent visits to her and their three young children.

The role of  Catholic Charities

There were no Somalis in Lewiston prior to the colonization that began after 9/11.  Note in the article that Somalis are quoted as saying Portland was “full.”   That would be full of primarily Somalis and Sudanese resettled in Maine by Catholic Charities, the only refugee resettlement contractor in the state for 30 years.   That makes it easy for us to check the numbers Catholic Charities brought.    Not nearly the tens of thousands resettled in other states, but from 1983-2005, Catholic Charities resettled 498 Somalis and 607 Sudanese (I mention the Sudanese because we have heard lots about problems with the “Sudanese community” of Portland recently).  You will see later that the number 498 is inaccurate because in just 3 individual years during that time period, reported in annual reports to Congress, below, the number exceeds 498.

To this day, Catholic Charities is resettling new Somalis in Maine.   The stats aren’t out for 2009 but in 2007 the number of Somalis resettled was 118 and in 2008 it was 60 (that drop may be because of the discovery by the State Department of the fraud in the family reunification program).

I don’t believe the Somali scouts found Lewiston all on their own—-I think there is a really good chance that earlier resettled Maine Somalis and Catholic Charities (CC) in Atlanta tipped-off the scouts to the lucrative welfare in Lewiston.  So, I checked the Office of Refugee Resettlement annual reports to Congress for the years 1997, 1998, and 1999 to see how many Somalis CC had brought to Maine in the years preceding the migration.  Sure enough, in 1997, CC resettled 228 Somalis to Maine, in 1998 the number was 168 and in 1999, 277.  What are the chances that a few of those Somalis were “related” to Atlanta Somalis and told them to ‘come on up, the public assistance is great!’

Piven must be so proud!

Note to readers in Maine: I have many more discoveries I want to share with you in another post, things that  need further research, but this is getting too long!

To all readers:  If you want to learn more about the Lewiston multicultural experiment, search RRW for ‘Lewiston,’ we have written a lot on the topic.

For new readers:

The US State Department has admitted over 80,000 Somali refugees to the US in the last 25 years and then last year had to suspend family reunification because widespread immigration fraud was revealed through DNA testing.  That specific program has not yet been reopened, but will be soon.  Nevertheless, thousands of Somalis continue to be resettled as I write this.

CAIR threatens Lewiston, Maine School District

November 22nd:  For more background on the Somali migration to Lewiston and the role of Catholic Charities, go here.

Here we go!  Lewiston, the city that has struggled for years ever since federal government contractors, such as Catholic Charities, chose it as a site for refugee resettlement [correction: I am alerted by a reader that Catholic Charities didn't choose Lewiston, see comments] and after a secondary migration of mostly Somali refugees picked this city in “welcoming” Maine, the joys of multiculturalism have come home to roost.  And, darn, just when town fathers thought citizens were finally getting the memo that diversity is strength something like this happens.

The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) the subject of an important new book entitled, “Muslim Mafia:Inside the Secret Underworld That’s Conspiring to Islamize America,” has the audacity to threaten to bring action against a school district that supposedly denied a Muslim girl the right to pray during school.  Here is the story from the Sun Journal today.  Hat tip: Mars

LEWISTON — A national Muslim civil rights organization has filed a formal request with the Lewiston School Department to allow a middle school student to pray on school property. The group also wants Lewiston to modify existing policy and provide “constitutionally protected religious accommodation,” such as a designated prayer room.

The group has also requested the school department institute diversity training for school staff, and to ensure the middle-schooler won’t face retaliation because of her request to pray at the Lewiston Middle School.

According to the Washington, D.C.,-based Council on American-Islamic Relations, seventh-grader Nasra Aden had been routinely “praying discreetly during her free time or lunch break in a corner of a school hallway.” But, on Tuesday, CAIR asserts a teacher told Aden “never to pray on school property” after Aden was seen preparing to kneel in prayer in a corner of one of the hallways.

After Aden told her mother, Jamad Warsame, what happened, Warsame spoke with school Principal Maureen Lachappelle and asked the school to accommodate her daughter’s desire to pray. According to CAIR, Warsame’s request was rebuffed and she has been “forced to pick up her daughter every day and take her to a nearby park to pray.”

Lachappelle said Aden is not being forced to leave school to pray, but that the district accommodated her mother’s request for her to leave the campus this past week for prayer.

Lewiston Superintendent Leon Levesque, who learned of CAIR’s written accusations hours after a press release had already been published on various Web sites, said, “Students are free to pray quietly during class if they choose as long as it’s not disruptive,” because “prayer is constitutionally protected in schools.”

“A stunning scenario of lack of multicultural competency” —they have learned the lingo!

In a written statement, Ismail Warsame called school officials’ alleged actions in responding to Aden’s effort to pray “a stunning scenario of lack of multicultural competency” and “clear violation of our constitutional rights to free religious expression.”

Warsame also accused Lachappelle of hanging up on him as he was asking whether the school department would accommodate the family’s request to accommodate the specific religious needs of certain students. Lachappelle acknowledged she did end a phone conversation with Warsame abruptly because “he wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

According to Lachappelle, after an involved conversation about the school’s position on allowing silent prayer, she said she told Warsame that “this is what the ruling is. We’re disagreeing, and I’m following district policy. I feel we need to end this conversation.”

Readers should know that we have had reports from many cities about the fact that some Muslim men do not respect female school teachers and administrators, so that may explain what happened in this phone conversation.

Ibraham Hooper threatens:  Do what we say, or else!

CAIR National Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper said Friday that if the Lewiston School Department did not address its four requests to allow prayer, modify school policy, institute training and protect Aden from retaliation, “we wouldn’t really have much choice but to take the case further” because “the student has the legal right and the constitutional right to pray in school in a manner that is not disruptive to the learning environment.”

I wonder what Lewiston Mayor, Larry Gilbert, thinks now?   This sort of coincidence has happened before.  I had something to post earlier in the week about the Mayor of Lewiston and didn’t get to it, and then sure enough something like this story comes along and the two pieces fit nicely together. 

On the Mayor’s website just a couple of days ago appeared a report of a meeting where the City Council had a briefing about refugees and the resettlement programs in Maine.  It is there that we learned this:

Catholic Charities Maine (CCME) has been the only refugee resettlement agency in Maine during the past 30 years.

Read the glowing account of how great the refugee resettlement program is and then note this conclusion by the mayor.

I hope that sharing this information will assist in allaying the many misconceptions and fears that somehow permeate our community.

As I have mentioned in previous columns, it is only through communication with those who may appear to be different from us, that when we engage in conversation, we find that we have far more similarities than differences. Our skin color may be different, our language may be different and our customs may be different. What we do find is that we seek the same things, quality of life, family life, employment, religion, education, music, arts, etc. We find that we truly are one-humanity. Assimilation may take a bit of time, but it will happen just like it has with all of our forefathers who have made us this richest country in the world, a country of immigrants.

If we truly believe that we are all God’s children, then we must therefore believe that we are all brothers and sisters created in His image.

Tell that to the Islamic supremacists at CAIR!

We have covered Lewiston Somali problems extensively, use our search function and you will see what I mean!

For new readers:

The US State Department has admitted over 80,000 Somali refugees to the US in the last 25 years and then last year had to suspend family reunification because widespread immigration fraud was revealed through DNA testing.  That specific program has not yet been reopened, but will be soon.  Nevertheless, thousands of Somalis continue to be resettled as I write this.

Another indictment in Minneapolis Somali Jihad case

I said yesterday that I had a couple (turns out to have been 5!) of those hot Somali stories and this is one I didn’t get to.  The sixth indictment has been handed down in the FBI investigation into the Somali (former refugee) missing youth case.  Hat tip: ever-watchful in Tennessee.

From the Minneapolis Star Tribune, a paper that keeps on top of this story:

A 24-year-old local Somali man has been indicted in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis on charges of conspiring to provide support to terrorists.

Omer Abdi Mohamed, an unemployed employment counselor and father of a 2-month-old boy, was indicted on charges of conspiracy to “kill, kidnap, maim or injure” people in foreign countries, according to an indictment filed Tuesday but made public Thursday.

Mohamed, of Minneapolis, is the sixth Somali man with local ties to be charged in connection with a two-year-old federal counterterrorism investigation aimed at finding out who recruited as many as 20 area men of Somali descent to return to their homeland and train and fight with the terrorist group, Al-Shabaab. The probe is considered to be one of the most sweeping international counterterrorism investigations since Sept. 11, 2001.  [Reminder: the FBI missed Major Nidal Hasan]

[....]

According to the indictment, others connected to the conspiracy include: Salah Osman Ahmed, Kamal Said Hassan, Ahmed Ali Omar, Abdifatah Isse and Khalid Mohamud Abshir — all of whom left the United States in December 2007 with a final destination of Somalia. Ahmed, Hassan and Isse all have pleaded guilty to the same charges Mohamed faces.

How and where were they radicalized?  It all just keeps coming back to the mosque they had in common—-Abubakar as-Saddique Islamic Center.

Officials at the mosque have repeatedly denied any role in recruiting or enabling the men to return to Somalia. Just last week, two mosque officials were cleared to fly after their names had appeared on a federal “no fly” list last year. According to an attorney for one of the men, the move cleared them of any involvement in the Somali men’s disappearance.

Why did they go?  

The woman [who knows the men well and helped the FBI in the investigation] said she doesn’t know for certain why all the men left for Somalia, but said she believes it’s rooted in a combination of patriotic feelings toward the Somali homeland and religious fervor.

I’m guessing 10% patriotism and 90% religious fervor.  This is an important point of discussion as I learned when I went to the Senate Homeland Security hearings on this terror-training investigation.  The Senators and those in the intelligence community testifying were eager to dismiss the return to Africa by men who had been given a good life through our refugee resettlement program, if it was patriotism that motivated them.  They skirted the religious fervor angle in what I’ll call the Major Nidal Hasan syndrome.

A judge released this latest indicted man on bond.

Mohamed appeared Thursday before U.S. Magistrate Judge Franklin Noel, who agreed to release him on a $25,000 signature bond after Wold argued that his client was not a risk to flee. As of Thursday night, he was preparing to be released, pending the installation of an electronic home monitoring system.

Let’s see, so 6 have died and 6 have been indicted. Then an alleged ringleader was arrested in the Netherlands.  The FBI has been saying 20 left the US for Somalia.  If you count the ringleader that makes 13 accounted for, leaving only 7 who knows where.   Wanta bet there were more than 20 from the US?

For new readers:

The US State Department has admitted over 80,000 Somali refugees to the US in the last 25 years and then last year had to suspend family reunification because widespread immigration fraud was revealed through DNA testing.  That specific program has not yet been reopened, but will be soon.  Nevertheless, thousands of Somalis continue to be resettled as I write this.

State Department close to reopening previously fraud-ridden program

Here is a story I am ashamed to say I missed two weeks ago!   According to Matthew Lee of AP, yes, apparently the same Mr. Lee who reported on the last day of every month in the waning months of the Bush Administration that that awful Mr. Bush didn’t let in to the US enough poor Iraqis, here, tells us the State Department will soon re-open the controversial family reunification program.   

And, he reports that nothing will likely be done about the estimated 36,000 Africans (mostly Somalis) who may have gotten into the US by lying.  We admitted over 80,000 Somalis over 25 years.

Although no final decisions have been made, the State Department said it “was close to the end” of a review that had been delayed by the change in administrations. “Now that policy-level people responsible for this issue are in place, we expect to reopen the program with revised procedures in the near future,” an official said.

The suspended pilot program, known as Priority 3, allows foreign — almost all of them African — family members of legal U.S. residents to join relatives here.

With little fanfare [Edit: little fanfare!  It was because they wanted to keep it quiet, the WSJ had it, where were you?] , the program was halted in March 2008 after DNA testing on applicants in Africa found that up to 87 percent of their familial claims were fraudulent.

The experimental program was conducted in late 2007 and early 2008 on about 3,000 people mostly from Somalia, Ethiopia and Liberia who claimed blood relationships with each other and wanted to be reunited with a family member who had been resettled as a refugee in the U.S.

DNA testing was not done on the alleged relatives in the United States. The State Department said it targeted Africans abroad only for genetic testing because they make up 95 percent of applicants to the program. The testing started, officials said, only after suspicions of fraud arose in applications originating among refugees in Kenya.

“We were … only able to confirm all claimed biological relationships in fewer than 20 percent of cases,” the State Department said in a fact sheet. “In the remaining cases, at least one negative result was identified or the individuals refused to be tested.”

Ho hum, fearing the ire of civil rights groups nothing will be done about the possibly 36,000 illegal aliens.

As the U.S. review winds down, questions were raised about what to do with the estimated 36,000 African refugees who arrived in the United States under the resettlement between 2003 and its suspension.   [Edit:  I don't get why they are only going back to 2003 for this number, we have been resettling Somalis and other Africans long before that, I bet it's more than 36,000 questionable refugees.]

The Homeland Security Department has jurisdiction to determine if any of those applications were fraudulent but department officials said Thursday they had no plans to check those already in the United States. Such a move would likely draw opposition from civil rights groups.

Gosh, maybe some of those are involved in the Kansas City, MO murder, or the recent Somali murder in Fort Morgan, CO, or the Boys in the Hood we heard about just two days ago,  or Somali gangs in Minneapolis and Seatttle, or the mosque arson we reported this morning, or maybe some of the Somali missing youths—one of whom was arrested just today for attending terrorist training in Somalia.   Nah, it couldn’t be, and besides it’s not worth riling up the diversity-is-strength gang !

Shades of Major Nidal Hasan, wouldn’t you say?

Columbus: Mosque fire exposes Somali infighting

I’m starting to feel like I should rename this blog ‘Somali Watch’ because just when I thought I had a window of time to write the much needed post about that boring “Targeted Assistance” program I’m procrastinating  about, comes two hot Somali stories in the US and another in Finland.  And, oh geez, I forgot to tell you about the Somali missing youths from Canada!

Here is Patrick Poole, an expert on radical Islam from Ohio, writing on the intrigues surrounding a battle between a moderate Somali mosque and an Al-Shabaab-terror-supporting mosque in Columbus, Ohio.  Hat tip:  Jerry Gordon.

Poole begins:

In the early morning of October 19, a fire ravaged through the property surrounding Masjid Salama, a growing Columbus, Ohio, mosque frequented primarily by members of the local Somali community. Several Somali-owned businesses surrounding the mosque were heavily damaged, but the mosque itself was not touched. However, because of the surrounding damage, the mosque itself has not been cleared for reopening.

As reported by the Columbus Dispatch, fire investigators immediately determined that arson was to blame for the blaze.

But rather than blaming the arson on unknown anti-Muslim individuals engaged in a religious hate crime, many inside the Columbus Somali community are fixing their suspicions on leaders of another local Somali mosque, Masjid Ibn Taymiya. This mosque is dominated by supporters of the al-Shabaab terrorist group, and members have made repeated attempts to take over the rapidly growing Salama congregation through an unsuccessful campaign of legal and physical intimidation.

Following the blaze, I met with two leaders of Masjid Salama, who described the ongoing efforts by the leaders of Ibn Taymiya to take over their burgeoning year-and-a-half-old congregation. On November 12, the Salama leaders had to obtain a temporary restraining order to prevent the bulldozing of their rented facility by a leader of the Ibn Taymiya mosque, Mohamed Hassan, who, they say, is the ringleader of the campaign.

Read the whole article.  Poole wraps up with this:

While arson investigators continue to look into the fire that has temporarily displaced Masjid Salama, the leaders are waiting to see whether local officials and the media in Ohio — who have thus far ignored the larger controversy surrounding the fire — will finally recognize the larger battle between Muslim moderates and extremists happening in the Columbus Somali community.

And waiting to see exactly who the politicians and media will side with in this struggle.

Minneapolis, MN, Columbus, OH, Seattle, WA, San Diego, CA, Nashville, TN, Boston, MA and even little Lewiston, ME  (see the Mayor of Lewiston just this week talking up the joys of multiculturalism) are “welcoming” cities for Somali refugees and residents can expect similar warm and fuzzy diversity-is-strength experiences in the near future.   You can thank the US State Department and its Ten federal refugee contractors for this opportunity.

For new readers:

The US State Department has admitted over 80,000 Somali refugees to the US in the last 25 years and then last year had to suspend family reunification because widespread immigration fraud was revealed through DNA testing.  That specific program has not yet been reopened, but thousands of Somalis continue to be resettled as I write this.

BBC: FBI probe biggest plot since 9/11

That’s the BBC’s title for a report yesterday about the on-going investigation into the Somali (former refugee) missing youths case that we began following last November, here.

My immediate thought on reading the title was that the FBI completely MISSED the biggest terrorist attack since 9/11—the massacre at Ft. Hood!

I don’t really see anything new in this dramatic telling but what follows are some sections I want to comment about.  This is how the article begins:

Newsbeat has been given exclusive access to one of the biggest anti-terrorist operations in America since the 9/11 attacks.

The FBI is worried a group linked to al-Qaeda is training up a new generation of terrorists.

They’re thought to be targeting young Somali immigrants, radicalising them to carry out attacks on their home country and possibly the US in the future.

It is not clear why they gave up their good life in America?  Sure it is, Allah told them to do it and we have that directly from one of the now-dead “youths.”  And, by the way, there are 6 dead now (that we know of).

It’s not clear why teenagers like these are giving up their comfortable lives in America and returning to their war torn homeland.

But over the past three years, authorities believe 20 young Somali men have gone back to fight in the bitter civil war, which is reported to have claimed hundreds of thousands of lives.

None of them have come back and three are thought to be dead.

None of them came back?  That is wrong too.  At least two who returned have been indicted and plead guilty, here.  Update:  Today, November 20th, we learn there are 6 arrested or indicted.

I can’t emphasize enough how important it is for the future of our country for people to grasp the concept that Islamic fundamentalists don’t care about nice stuff and nice lives.   What the Koran (and their Imam!) tells them to do trumps everything.   When I said in my post earlier this morning  that we had made a grievous error in admitting so many Somalis to the US, that is what I mean.

Where on earth did the BBC reporter get this number—35,000?

According to census figures there are 35,000 Somalis living in America but the figure is almost certainly a massive underestimate as many live in the country illegally.

Some of them came to the US as refugees looking for a safer place to settle and raise families.  [Edit:  Some did and some didn't come for a safe place; some came to change America and promote Shariah law.]

We have resettled over 80,000 Somali refugees in the last 25 years.  That number does not include all the Somalis who have illegally crossed our borders or who successfully applied for asylum.  Somalis also have large families and although I have never seen official figures the number is estimated to be well over a quarter of a million now.   Thankfully the US State Department, having uncovered widespread immigration fraud among Somalis and some other Africans, suspended the family reunification program well over a year ago, but it is expected to re-open soon.

The FBI is likely shaking in its boots over the big question, will more of the trained Somali jihadists return to the US?

The FBI were reluctant to spell out the threat, but they do believe something sinister is happening in the local Somali community.

They’re calling it their biggest terror investigation since 9/11.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed in the civil war in Somalia
They’re not just concerned about those who may be travelling from America to Somalia either.

They’re also worried about who may come back, war hardened and perhaps prepared to plot attacks on American soil.

EK Wilson, one of the special agents investigating the case, says they have to consider all possibilities.

You can bet they are being radicalized in the US, where else?

Agents won’t say if mosques or religious leaders are involved but they do think victims are being radicalised in America before being trained as fighters in Somalia.

(Somali refugee) Boys in the Hood

This is pretty outrageous, check out the film that Youtube removed, here, at City Pages.   A bunch of Somali thug teens rough up bikers and little kids in Minneapolis.   Police are now investigating, and you gotta laugh, these brilliant fellows put their names prominently on the film.

The YouTube video of a group of punks roaming Twin Cities streets as they tackle pedestrians, knock down bike riders, shove little kids around and threaten bystanders — for kicks — is now being investigated by police after a public outcry.

And even though YouTube pulled the video, we have a copy of it (see below), thanks to some outraged members of the bike community archived it before YouTube made it unavailable.

The video was originally posted on the mabdi001 channel on YouTube. In it, a group of kids described by the clip’s author as Somalis each look into the camera as their names are superimposed on the screen. Before each attack, one of them looks into the lens and says, “watch this,” before attacking someone.

“There is great concern. You can’t watch the video and not feel a sense of outrage, that what you’re seeing in the video is actually occurring, and there’s no reason to believe it’s not,” St. Paul police spokesman Paul Schnell told MPR.

Just think, these are the children of some of the 80,000 Somali refugees the US State Department has resettled in the US in the last 25 years.  I guess they didn’t get the message about how nice we have been to them and how grateful they ought to be in return.   Some of their big brothers are likely among the others from the ‘hood’ who have gone back to Somalia to learn to be Jihadists, here.

Revelations about HIAS at the Center for Immigration Studies

The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society is one of the top ten federal refugee resettlement contractors, which we have mentioned from time to time on these pages.*  In 2009 they received over $13 million of your tax dollars.   I didn’t see it last week, but the Center for Immigration Studies has a lengthy analysis by Stephen Steinlight (Heisting HIAS …..) of the transformation of HIAS from an organization concerned about the plight of Jewish refugees to one now deeply enmeshed in the Open Borders political movement.  Frankly, virtually all of the resettlement agencies spend time and energy (hopefully not your tax dollars!) lobbying on Amnesty for illegal aliens, something I addressed here just two days ago.

The article also addresses an issue we have wondered about here as well.  How can Jews support and help Muslim “refugees” reach the US and Israel when we know that Jews are right at the top of the list of infidel targets of Islamic fundamentalists?  Do they honestly believe that the Muslims will say, gee these are nice Jews?

Read the whole article, but what follows are a couple of sections that interest me.

In this first section, the author reports that HIAS has apparently purposefully interchanged the words “refugees” and “immigrants” so as to confuse its supporters.

One can remain loyal to HIAS’s historical mission is by supporting a humane – and security-sensitive – refugee policy. That loyalty to the historical mission would not be compromised if one simultaneously opposed massive increases in immigration or illegal immigration – which have nothing to do with HIAS’s historical raison d’être. A principal reason many American Jews can’t see the distinction is the Jewish Establishment, with HIAS out in front, has sought to erase it in order to advance its political agenda. Engendering sympathy for refugees is far easier than for illegal economic migrants who are neither escaping oppression nor seeking to assimilate to an idealized America. Conflating the two groups is willful misrepresentation but good politics, especially in a community with a large quotient of incorrigible bleeding-hearts.

Then here, why must HIAS be involved in resettling Muslim Somalis?

Since HIAS is not only devoting its energies to promoting illegal immigration but is also now in the global refugee business, Aronoff might give more serious attention to the refugees he is aiding. If he did – taking the wild leap of faith that American or Jewish interests occasionally cross his mind – he’d surely reconsider the wisdom of bringing more Somali Muslims to the U.S., a group from a hothouse of Islamic extremism that has already spawned numerous domestic jihadists. The specter of an historic Jewish organization furthering the Islamization of America – increasing the presence in the United States of a group that hates Jews above all else – is so counterintuitive and, frankly, weird, it beggars the imagination.

And then this, Muslims to Israel!

The seeds planted by the politically correct moral stupidity of the “Save Darfur Coalition” have blossomed into a significant national security problem for Israel. Because of the influence of politically connected, wealthy liberal American Jews, the government of Israel was persuaded to give permanent refugee status to some 3,500 Darfuri Muslims – or those who claimed to be Darfuri Muslims, in any case.

* Here is a litany of complaints about HIAS.  And, here is a post earlier this year about how HIAS head honcho did not get a pay cut when finances were tight— he fired staff instead.  Note here they were among the lobbying groups invited to the White House in August to get marching orders on the Amnesty legislation.

From homeless in Rochester to Somali jihad financier

Update November 16th:  More insight on this story from Jerry Gordon at New English Review, here.

Today comes news that the Somali arrested in the Netherlands this week and believed to be the recruiter and financier of the twenty-plus American Somali former refugees who returned to the Horn of Africa for Jihad training lived penniless in Rochester, MN.  Really?

The arrest in the Netherlands of a Somali man with a Rochester connection is “heart-breaking” for local Somalis, said a local Somali community leader.

“It gives a bad image to our community,” said Abdifattah Abdinur of Rochester. “As American Somalis, we don’t condone any kind of violence or extremism, whether it’s here or in our country or back home. It’s heartbreaking to hear about these kinds of people.”

The Somali man arrested in the Netherlands, Mohamud Said Omar, 43, is accused of financing Islamic terrorists. One of his brothers, Mohamed Osman, 51, lives in Rochester.

Another brother, Abdullahi Said Omar of Minneapolis, said Mohamud Said Omar was so poor he couldn’t afford to bring his new wife from Somalia to the U.S.

Mohamed Osman said Mohamud Said Omar worked low-paying jobs to make ends meet and didn’t have enough money to send to terrorists.

“He was homeless, he didn’t even have a place to stay,” said Mohamed Osman. Both brothers said they feel Omar is innocent.

Investigators claim he bankrolled the purchase of weapons and recruited the youths.  Guess he had a stash of cash from somewhere. 

Mohamud Said Omar was arrested Sunday at an asylum seeker’s center near Amsterdam and is being held at the request of American authorities.

The arrest is related to the FBI’s investigation into the disappearance of up to 20 young Somali men who left the Twin Cities over the last two years for Somalia, presumed to have joined the terror group al-Shabaab.

Dutch prosecutors said U.S. investigators suspect him of bankrolling the purchase of weapons for Islamic militants and helping other Somalis travel to Somalia in 2007 and 2008.

I wrote about Rochester, MN a few weeks ago and predicted I would be hearing more from this “welcoming” city, here, and sure enough!  Oh, by the way,  I wonder if that nice lady promoting refugees for Catholic Charities in Rochester resettled this Somali “family?”

Note to new readers:

The US State Department has admitted over 80,000 Somali refugees to the US in the last 25 years and then last year had to suspend family reunification because widespread immigration fraud was revealed through DNA testing.  That specific program has not yet been reopened, but thousands of Somalis continue to be resettled as I write this.

French President: France is in danger of losing its soul

President Nicolas Sarkozy, speaking yesterday at a briefing that was supposed to be centered on farm subsidies launched into a defense of France’s historical and cultural core and said that because of multiculturalism’s support of radical Islam France was in danger of losing its soul.  Hat tip:  Jerry Gordon.

Ken Timmerman writing at Newsmax reports Sarkozy’s speech and gives us encouragement that the Sarkozy government is fighting back and hopefully so will we!  And to my friend in Australia, so can you!

Recalling the worst moments of the Nazi occupation during World War II, Sarkozy said the French discovered that they had a national soul only when they were about to lose it.

[.....]

Sarkozy suggested that France could be on the verge of losing its soul because of a multiculturalism that tolerates radical Islamic fundamentalism.

Immigrants refuse to become French.

Sarkozy warned that many of his fellow citizens have lost touch with the values that gave rise to the republic through a blind embrace of secular culture. No one should confuse the separation of church and state as the denial of religion or religiosity, Sarkozy insisted.

“There is not a single free thinker, Freemason, or atheist who doesn’t feel the tug of a Christian heritage that has left so many deep furrows in the French mind-set,” he said.

At the heart of the identity crisis plaguing today’s France is a significant immigrant population that refuses to become French, and a multicultural left that has allowed them to live isolated in ghettoes for decades, where many have fallen prey to Muslim preachers of hate.

If only we had a Sarkozy!

“France does not demand that you give up your history or your culture,” Sarkozy said. “But France demands of those who would link their fates to hers to also share her history and her culture. France is not hodgepodge of communities or individuals. . . Becoming French means accepting a form of civilization, values, and customs.”

Sarkozy’s definition of those values left no ambiguity from which direction he felt the danger was coming: “France is a country where women are free. France is a country where church is separate from state, and where the beliefs of each person are respected.

“But France is also a country where there is no room for the burka, and where there is no room for the subjugation of women under any circumstance or pretext.”

Read on!

See my previous post on Sarkozy’s bravery here.