Are these Cuban immigrants refugees?

I bet you were under the impression that the era of Cuban refugees streaming to the US had pretty much ended.  A reader sent this article about a Cuban family being resettled in Texas by the International Rescue Committee and commented about this line in the article:

 The family said they sought asylum in the U.S. three years ago for economic reasons.

The legal definition of a refugee is:

REFUGEE - Any person who is outside any country of such person’s nationality or, in the case of a person having no nationality, is outside any country in which such person last habitually resided, and who is unable or unwilling to return to, and is unable or unwilling to avail himself or herself of the protection of, that country because of persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.

So, we don’t just take people, even families like this one who sound like nice people, into the refugee program who are economic migrants as they appear to be.  They need to be persecuted or fear persecution.

What is the big deal?  Well, refugees are entitled to taxpayer subsidized airfare loans, subsidized housing, a case worker provided through the volag and funded by you, food stamps and other forms of welfare.    Other immigrants are on their own.

One bit of information I discovered is that the Cubans don’t even have to be outside of the country to seek asylum, we now process them in Cuba.  See this information.

Utah refugee coordinator speaks the hard truth—too many refugees

The director of Utah Refugee Services spoke to KCPW radio earlier this week about the problems he sees with the large number of refugees being resettled in Utah from cultures that are very differant than refugees of the past.

(KCPW News) Utah’s refugee services are not well-equipped to handle the large number of refugees being resettled in the state, says Gerald Brown of the new State Office of Refugee Services. But he remains confident the problems will be fixed.

The biggest challenge to the system is tracking refugees after their social service benefits end, Brown says. While the number of refugees has declined since the 80s and 90s, they now require more services, Brown says. Twenty years ago, refugees were mostly Russian or Bosnians. While different cultures, they were still based in Western philosophy. Now, many are from Africa, Asia and the Middle East and their cultural differences are greater. Integrating into the social fabric of Utah is more difficult for them, Brown says. But it is vitally important for the community that they do, he says. 

Unfortunately I can’t get the radio program to play, but maybe some of you will be luckier.  I would love to have heard what else he said.

Indeed Utah is having a lot of problems with refugees with certainly the saddest case being the one of the 7-year-old Burmese Karen girl’s rape and murder a few months ago.  She was killed by another refugee in the apartment building in which she lived.   Only now are those refugees venturing forth from their apartments.  See the latest at the Salt Lake City Tribune here.

For more on Utah, use our search function for ‘Utah’.  We have written many posts on the state.

Homeowner exonerated in Kentucky refugee shooting

Here is the latest chapter in the story of the shooting death of a Bosnian teen, from a refugee family resettled in Kentucky.   We reported in April that the 15-year-old was shot while attempting to break into the home of Jeff Maquire.  Maguire shot the boy in the head after being awakened by the sound of breaking glass.  Hat tip: Pogo.

From the Bowling Green Daily News:

A Warren County grand jury decided Wednesday that a Bowling Green man was justified in shooting a 15-year-old boy who was apparently attempting to break into his home.

Eros Berisaj, 15, was fatally shot in the head at about 5:11 p.m. April 3 at 525 Creekwood Court by the homeowner, Jeff McGuire. The case was presented to the grand jury, which issued a “no true bill,” declining to charge McGuire. 

Looks like the teen picked the wrong house (in the wrong state) to rob. 

Kentucky law allows a homeowner to use lethal force to stop someone from committing a burglary, robbery or any other felony utilizing force at his or her home. McGuire also had a permit to carry a concealed weapon in Kentucky. 

The police report had this to say about the teen: 

Berisaj was considered a suspect in several burglaries in the same area where the shooting occurred, according to the report. People interviewed during the investigation also indicated there were at least two other people who could have been with Berisaj when he was shot, according to police records. There had been another burglary at McGuire’s residence several months before the shooting; McGuire had also told neighbors about someone peeking into windows before the burglary.

Other neighbors told police about suspicious activity in their neighborhood in the weeks before the shooting.

The investigation indicates that Berisaj might have been working with someone older who would identify a house to break into, and then Berisaj would actually steal items such as laptop computers and other electronics, according to the investigation.

The witnesses stated that Berisaj would brag about the burglaries in school, according to the report.

During the original 911 call from Maguire he told dispatchers he needed to move out of Bowling Green, presumably a reference to the increased crime in this immigrant “welcoming” city.

In the wake of Clinton’s Bosnian War we resettled over 100,000 Muslim refugees from Bosnia.

Bosnians with AK-47’s: We aren’t in gangs! Just doing a little target practice!

The city that “welcomes” refugees has a few problems it seems.   The Police in Ft. Wayne, IN say they believe Bosnian refugees are forming gangs and selling guns.  Bosnians deny it.  Hat tip to an observant friend.

“You can’t categorize us.”

Haris Latic was mad.

The image of a Bosnian man holding an AK-47 for an April 22 News-Sentinel story about police allegations of a gun-running gang of Bosnian refugees was blurred, but Latic recognized it. It was Adis Latic, his brother.

Adis Latic said the AK-47 was a friend’s and the picture was from a day of recreational target practice at a Huntington gun range. The Latics say they’re law-abiding U.S. citizens, not gang-bangers. “In every race there are bad kids and good kids, but you can’t categorize us as a community,” Adis Latic said.

The Latics acknowledge they can’t vouch for every Bosnian refugee brought to Fort Wayne by Catholic Charities, 669 officially. The now-defunct Balkan Stylz group, which police labeled a gang, was a club for Bosnians who liked to drive muscle cars, said Adis Latic, 23. 

Read on!

To soften the story and appear to make excuses, the reporter for the Ft. Wayne News-Sentinel launches into a lengthy defense of the Bosnians by basically saying they have seen war, so guns and violence are their heritage.  Guess we need to just respect their culture and show our understanding, huh?

By the way, we (primarily under the Clinton Administration) have brought over 100,000 Bosnians to the US.  It is the largest group of refugees from any Muslim country we have resettled so far.

You can learn all about the many problems the city of Fort Wayne is having with its huge refugee population here.

Ms. Conaboy: What is the answer to the good question?

Chelsea Conaboy is a reporter for the Concord Monitor and wrote an article yesterday that begins: 

Augustin Ntabaganyimana sat one sticky afternoon last month with a dozen Bhutanese people newly arrived in Concord from refugee camps in Nepal. He walked them through a cultural orientation, explaining tasks such as how to pay rent, use food stamps and apply for green cards.

One man asked how he would be able to pay $850 for his apartment and support his family if he was making just $1,000 a month.

“That is a very good question,” Ntabaganyimana said, while another man translated. “I had that question when I came here as a refugee myself.”

The reporter then goes into a long story about how former refugee Mr. N. escaped Africa and made a success of himself in America—-working for a volag resettling more refugees—for the remainder of her article. 

I would like to know how Mr. Ntabaganyimana answered the refugee’s question.  How does a refugee pay $850 for rent on a take home pay of $1000 a month and support a family?   That is one of the primary questions citizens in Hagerstown (see September Forum category for everything that happened in my county) asked last summer and fall as people struggled to understand how the economics of refugee resettlement actually works.

I know the answer—it is welfare.   See my post yesterday on Mark Krikorian’s new book.   I don’t know why the federal government and these volags can’t just be straight with the public and say it.  Everyone knows what the truth is, that the taxpayer is picking up the rest of the tab, and the obvious silence on the subject just gets people angrier.

A bucket of cold water on the International Rescue Committee

The International Rescue Committee (IRC) is one of the top ten volags resettling refugees in the US.   Yesterday the Mercury News published the usual puff piece on an IRC fundraising intiative they held recently in San Jose. 

Then here comes Chris Coen of Friends of Refugees with a comment to throw some ice cold water on the warm and fuzzy piece:

Readers should know that the International Rescue Committee (IRC) has been mired for years with chronic problems in its refugee resettlement program in California and throughout the U.S.

At the IRC office in San Jose U.S. State Department inspectors found a refugee family living in a two-bedroom apartment with another family of three. Neither of the parents had received English lessons or job training and neither one of them had submitted a single job application. The family was barely scrapping by, and the father said that he was just waiting for IRC to find him a job and send him to English lessons. The government inspectors also met with two other IRC refugee client families – they reported that they had not received any furniture (basic household furniture is supposedly a “minimum requirement” of IRC’s refugee contracts with the government).

An inspection of the IRC office in San Francisco showed that early refugee employment outcomes to be a low 50% after one year – that is, only 50% of the refugees were employed after one year in the US, even though the US refugee program supposedly stresses early self-sufficiency for the refugees. Case files also contained a form which refugees were required to sign stating that they would accept “any job offered” (refugee resettlement agencies such as IRC receive public funds to refer refugees to jobs that will allow them to become economically self-sufficient, jobs which are sustainable – not simply to take any job offered). Home visits to the IRC San Francisco office’s refugee clients revealed one refugee family that reported that IRC had not given them any furniture. The parents were also not taking any English classes. Yet another refugee client reported that he had been placed in an apartment nearly bereft of furniture (with only a mattress and box springs, a small card table, and one folding metal chair).

The IRC needs to get its house in order.

Lest you think the IRC is a struggling outfit, here is what I wrote about them last October.  I was writing about how the volags create a kind of drumbeat by getting articles published about needy refugees.  Anne Richard (IRC vice president) had written such a piece about Iraqis that prompted my post. 

… Anne Richard is a former employee of the US State Department having worked for Madeleine Albright (the revolving door in action). She makes a salary of between $100,000 and $200,000 (based on the salaries of other VP’s at IRC). But that is ’chump change’ compared to the IRC CEO’s salary. Dr. George Rupp, former Pres. of Columbia University, brings in a cool $357,657 a year salary according to the organization’s 2005 Form 990. Thats more than the Vice President of the United States, the Speaker of the House, or the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court receive (no wonder public service is so unpopular).

The IRC is a $200 million plus a year organization that recieves close to half of its income from you, the taxpayer. Actually it was $88 million from government grants in 2005. The immigration industry is big business and in order to stay in business it needs to find “refugees” to move around the world. 

See my post of June 23rd about a radio program from California and check out the ‘needy’ Iraqi refugees the IRC is bringing to a city near you.

Utah: Too many refugees? Just say, no! Wyoming did!

Utah is feeling the strain with too many refugees for the welfare system to handle. No sympathy here because you could just say, no! Tell the US State Department to tell their NGO contractors to cut the flow until you can get caught up with the needs of your own destitute people before they send you more from all corners of the world.  If you have trouble getting the State Department’s attention, then tell your Congressional delegation to get involved. 

Here is what the Salt Lake Tribune says today:

The dilemma has been raised on the governor’s advisory committee examining refugee services, said Michael Gallegos, director of the Salt Lake County Division of Community Resources and Development. “The question has come up: Can we turn the faucet down a little bit so we can get prepared and deal with issues already in front of us?” he said. “We don’t have the capacity to serve the refugees we have right now.”

Upon arrival, refugees are eligible for food stamps, cash assistance programs, Medicaid and other services, some of which are available for years, some for as little as eight months.

But after receiving initial housing assistance, refugee families join thousands of other Utahns hoping to obtain a federal subsidy that can significantly discount their rent. Many in this new wave of refugees will join more than 4,000 residents already on the Salt Lake City Housing Authority waiting list. They will have to wait at least two years to get a housing discount voucher

Frankly, I don’t get this. What is everyone so afraid of?  Afraid of looking “unwelcoming”?  Maybe someone will call you a racist?  There is nothing wrong with saying, we need a little breather here.  Wyoming does not participate in refugee resettlement and I don’t see that state maligned for the decision. 

Then this last line is really annoying.   

Refugees often feel helpless and alone when faced with a stack of critical documents linking them to food, medical care and other services .
“We’ve had people say, ‘It was better in the camps,’ ” Brown [Utah Refugee Services Director] said. 

We have from the earliest days of writing this blog advocated for the institution of a social and economic impact study of cities and states to help determine if a locale could handle new refugees.  If it was regularly updated better planning would surely result.

We have an extensive archive on Utah here.  Sadly Utah made the news a few months ago as the location where a little Burmese refugee girl was raped and murdered by another refugee in their housing complex.

Chris Coen weighs in on World Relief and Fort Wayne

Earlier this month we reported on a volag “cat fight” going on in Ft. Wayne, IN.  It seems that volag World Relief (Corporation of National Association of Evangelicals) is trying to horn in on Catholic Charities lucrative territory in Ft. Wayne.  

As we have reported many times on this blog, these agencies are paid by the head to resettle refugees and so they are often competitive.   In the case of Ft. Wayne there are huge numbers of Burmese going to that city which has put out the refugee welcome mat.   Those refugees want to bring family members to Ft. Wayne, and refugees in camps in Thailand also request resettlement in Ft. Wayne because they want to live near people like themselves.

This week the Journal Gazette in Ft. Wayne published this letter (scroll down) from Chris Coen of Friends of Refugees: 

Refugee agencies rife with problems

I saw the editorial “Helping refugees”  regarding World Relief’s proposal to open an office in Fort Wayne. I don’t know whether its presence in Fort Wayne will be good for all or not, but my experience with World Relief has not been positive. I am an independent volunteer assisting refugees since 2001. I started a group to monitor the U.S. refugee resettlement program with a small group of volunteers in 2002.

We found refugees who were being neglected and abused by their World Relief agency in 2003-05 north of Tampa, Fla. That refugee program was subsequently shuttered by the Department of State in 2006 because of the neglect of the refugees.

World Relief also seems to have some irregularities in its accounting.

In fairness to World Relief, though, there seem to be quite a few irregularities and neglect of refugees in the U.S Refugee Resettlement Program. There is also extensive documentation of Catholic Charities and the other eight national refugee resettlement agencies neglecting refugees. The State Department has done very little to clean up the problems.

CHRISTOPHER COEN Friends of Refugees Minneapolis

I have on my desk a GAO (General Accounting Office) investigative report on World Relief from 2004.  The report is highly critical of the volag which could not properly account for over $2 million in federal funds.  I don’t know if they have cleaned up the shoddy accounting practices or not.

One interesting little bit in the report was that when refugee numbers declined dramatically in the years immediately following 9/11, World Relief spent more federal dollars than the GAO thought reasonable.  I’m going to bet however that all the volags had a shopping spree during this time because the federal government responded to their plea for funding at the same level as pre-September 11th because the volags complained that they needed to keep offices open and paying staff in anticipation of a return to the higher number of refugees.     Bottomline is that we taxpayers paid for all these non-profits to stay in business even though the refugee numbers were extremely low for a couple of years.

A related matter appeared in the Journal Gazette in mid-June.

The Health Department in Ft. Wayne has been financially strapped due to the huge number of refugees that need vacinations and treatment for HIV and TB.   Buried in another article about outdoor cooking rules is this information:

Waldron [Health Dept. Administrator] said the county commissioners have indicated they will approve $2 million toward relocation of the infectious disease clinic.

With the growing demands in refugee care, the health department needs additional space, and commissioners have asked the department to explore existing clinic sites or other buildings that could be used by the health department. 

But, what can you do?   As I said earlier Ft. Wayne has put out the word that it is a “welcoming” city.

Refugees speak: revealing radio program from San Francisco

If you have about an hour and enough interest listen to this radio program (Your Call) broadcast from San Francisco for World Refugee Day last week.   I found it very informative to hear three refugees, a representative of the International Rescue Committee (IRC) and Livonia (whoop-de-do) Limon of the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, discuss refugee resettlement in America.

Here are a few nuggets from the program and my observations and interpretations of what was said:

*  The hostess (with what I call the NPR woman voice) of the program asked the Iraqis if they were surprised by the invasion and they said ’no’ and one mumbled something about how bad Iraq had become.  They said they were however surprised by the aftermath of the invasion (presumably the chaos with insurgents and Al-Qaeda).

*  The hostess asked these men, who were billed as fluent in English, how hard the “sanctions” were.  When the men didn’t understand what she was asking, she said something to the effect of ‘you know the “economic” sanctions that the US put on Iraq’ and still neither man could answer her.   It struck me as obvious that the “sanctions” had not affected them!

*  When the Bhutanese refugee spoke he talked about his first miserable day in America and how he and another man arrived in the city and no one met them.   They got on the wrong bus, got off in a bad neighborhood, walked around for hours, lost and thirsty, until some kind merchant gave them water.  I’m wondering where were the volag employees who are supposed to meet them.  This refugee praised America and was hardly heard from again during the program.

It gets better:

*  One of the Iraqi single young men told the audience that he was a college-educated civil engineer who had worked for Bechtel in Iraq but decided he needed a change (no mention of threats) and that he went to Dubai and got a job (they need engineers).  He said something that wasn’t completely audible but something like ‘Iraqis aren’t liked in some of those countries’.   What?  Other Middle Eastern Muslim countries are not kind to their fellow Muslims?    So he just was “looking for an opportunity” and applied as a refugee to the US and here he is.

*   Asked by the moderator of the show when did he decide he wanted to come to the US, he said, ‘I always wanted to come to the US, ever since I was 13 years old—I wanted to see the movies and TV.’

I’m listening to this Iraqi engineer and thinking, what is going on?  He didn’t sound like he was having a horrible time living in squalor and fear—he was living in Dubai with an engineer job!  Where are the destitute widows with children we hear about?  The ones supposedly selling their bodies to feed their kids!

*  The second Iraqi ’refugee’ relates his rotten trip to the US, not to be outdone by the Bhutanese fellow.   It was long:  Jordan to Paris, Paris to NYC, NYC to San Franciso and can you believe it a kid cried in the seat behind him from Paris to NYC.   Imagine how miserable that was—flying to freedom (airfare paid by the US taxpayer) and he is annoyed by a crying child!  Life is tough!

*  This second guy had been in Jordan for surgery because he had been caught somehow in a bomb blast.  In Jordan he was helping journalists do something illegal, but it wasn’t clear what he was saying.   A Doctors without Borders employee told him he should apply to go to America as a refugee and so he did, and here he is rooming with the Iraqi engineer.

BTW, the IRC representative said at one point that they were resettling mostly single men in the Bay Area.

*  The host then asks about culture shock, but she asks how they plan to ‘maintain their Iraqi culture’ (this question is not about how they will assimilate to our culture, but how they can resist our rotten culture).

You would never guess in a million years what one of the Iraqis answered about what was so hard for him here.  The dogs!  The many dogs!   He can’t stand the dogs!  The dogs are everywhere you go! [Editor: In Islam dogs are as dirty as feces, urine and dead bodies.]    After the dogs, it’s the sex.   The moderator, wondering what about sex has shocked him and looking for clarification asks in approving tones, does he mean the same-sex marriage recently legalized in California?   No! It was the sex change operations.  What?!  I’m thinking, how many sex change operations could he have been exposed to in three months?  Then I remembered this was San Francisco.   Need I say more.

Here then are two fine examples of so-called Iraqi “refugees” we have been hearing about for years.

 

Volunteers are good for refugees, while volag lets them down

This is a story I missed from earlier in the month.   It’s a touching story from North Carolina about how a couple of women have been a Godsend to Burmese Karen Christian refugees who felt abandoned.   Read the whole story here.

There is a single sentence near the end of the article that caught the eye of one of our readers.

Paw Yeh shared how deserted her family felt when a refugee caseworker dropped them off at their Carrboro apartment with two days of rice and not even so much as a blanket.

Which volag left these poor scared people with some rice and nothing else?    Was it Lutheran Family Services, World Relief, or possibly the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, all paid government contractors operating in North Carolina?

Reforms needed

We see over and over again in differant parts of the country where the volags are actually discouraging citizen volunteer help with refugees while one of the important reforms we have advocated is increased involvement by the public with the care and assimilation of refugees, not less.    Had a church or other group been lined up to greet and care for this family they would never have been “dropped off” to an empty apartment.