Gaza refugee rumor has eternal life

Last January President Obama signed a Presidential Determination about refugees in Gaza. Its purpose was to send $20 million in aid to  Gazans who had suffered in the war with Israel. (Would he ever send aid for the traumatized Israeli children who lived under constant bombardment by rockets from Gaza? Fat chance!) An email has been circulating ever since, saying that this order meant that we were bringing hundreds of thousands of Hamas members into the United States, probably because the funds were directed to “urgent refugee and migration needs.” “Refugees” refers to the people in Gaza, who have been awarded perpetual refugee status, unlike all other refugees around the world. “Migration” is not the same as immigration; it refers to people moving around over there, not coming here.

I’ve been seeing references to this inaccurate email since the directive was signed. The rumor was so widespread that Senator Jon Kyl sponsored an amendment based on it, and had to withdraw the amendment when he realized it was false.

Lately it seems to be reviving; I’ve been seeing more references to it. Today I saw a blog post that simply reproduced the email — or rather, an embellished version of it that added another mistake: that HR 1388 was passed behind our backs (this happened in February and was reported on widely) and that this bill about volunteerism had a stealth measure about bringing Hamas members here. So I thought I’d better deal with this issue again, in case our readers are coming across this nonsense. If you want to see the wrongheaded blog post, here it is, though I hate to give such an incompetent blogger any traffic.

Here is the comment I left there. As of this writing it has not been approved, so let’s see if “Compass” can redeem himself by issuing a correction. Responsible journalists who repeated the rumor have corrected themselves when I informed them of the error.

This post is completely inaccurate. You are conflating two different things. HR 1388 was passed last January and became law in April. It is about volunteerism and has nothing to do with Palestinian refugees. See this.

Obama signed the Presidential Determination about the Palestinians in January. It was a reaction to the Gaza-Israel war and was meant to provide aid IN GAZA. The information is based on an inaccurate email that apparently is still circulating. I have written on the issue extensively on my blog, Refugee Resettlement Watch; here is one post.  Snopes also deals with it accurately here.  The Snopes account also mentions the conflation of HR 1388 with the Presidential Determination.

So, whoever you are, Compass Blog, you have just reproduced an old and inaccurate email with any fact-checking at all. Your supposed link to the Federal Register doesn’t work, so you probably didn’t even click on it yourself, just left it in the email you copied. You give blogging a bad name.

Obama has done many terrible things, and is set to do many more. He is the worst president ever by far, an enemy of America and all we stand for. Perpetuating false rumors does not help the fight against him; it just makes his opponents look silly and ignorant.

I will add that since this memo was signed in January we have not seen any refugees from Gaza come here, in case you need a further fact check. And it wouldn’t make sense anyway. Obama is an enemy of Israel and would want its foes to remain where they are. They can’t fight Israel from our land, whereas in Gaza they can continue to prepare for their final solution. Much of the aid money flowing into Gaza goes right to Hamas, as we reported here.

Update 10/16/09: The offending blog did not post my comment. Contrast that with Phyllis Chesler and Michael Ledeen who made corrections based on the information I sent them. That’s the difference between serious writers and sensationalist bloggers.

170 Bhutanese resettled in New York City

The New York Times reported this week about the new lives of Bhutanese/Nepalese refugees resettling in the Bronx.   These 170 resettled by the International Rescue Committee are a tiny fraction of the 60,000 the US will be taking over 5 years.

All of the newcomers are Bhutanese of Nepalese ethnicity who had migrated to Bhutan or were descended from immigrants. In the early 1990s, Bhutan expelled tens of thousands of Nepali Bhutanese, most of them from poor farming families, accusing them of immigrating illegally. The majority ended up in seven refugee camps in Nepal, where they lived in bamboo-and-thatch huts and were cared for by international aid agencies.

Bhutan refused to take them back and Nepal refused to give them citizenship. In 2007, the United States agreed to resettle at least 60,000 of them. The first arrived in early 2008.

There isn’t much in this article that we haven’t reported before about how they came to be in the US, but I was interested in this report on their living conditions.  Early in the article the reporter describes a sparsely furnished apartment.

The place was furnished with a couple of bureaus, several beds that doubled as couches and little else.

The federally contracted resettlement agencies sign a contract with the US State Department and commit to supply certain furnishings.  It sounds like these folks may have not gotten everything they were supposed to get—a common complaint.

Then this really attracted my attention.  The landlord of this 60-unit building is somehow connected to the International Rescue Committee.  What is the connection?  Does anyone know?  One of those rumors we are always trying to nail down is that some landlords have ‘insider’ connections with resettlement agencies.

Through an elaborate process involving consultation between resettlement agencies, about 170 Bhutanese refugees have been placed in New York. The families at 2515 University Avenue were brought by the International Rescue Committee, an agency that has a longstanding relationship with the landlord.

Whatever the connection, the building is not without its dangers.

Mr. Tamang said that one day his elderly parents, who speak no English, were alone in their apartment when they heard loud knocking. Opening the door, the father was confronted by several young men. Although he understood none of the words the men were using, he gathered from their angry gestures that they were looking for a missing bicycle and were demanding to search the apartment.

Mr. Tamang said his father, small and mild-mannered, stepped aside to allow the group to enter, but the men eventually went away, leaving the father shaken.

“They were trying to get in,” Mr. Tamang recalled, surprise and pain in his voice. “We are very honest people.” Mr. Tamang said he would no longer leave his parents without one of their English-speaking children.

We recently told you about a Bhutanese young man killed by an African American thug in a dangerous Jacksonville neighborhood where he had been resettled, here.    It appears that another refugee in this Bronx building writes a blog and that Florida murder is one of the stories he has posted for his community here and back home.   Check out ‘Journalism in Exile’ here.

Note to new readers:  To understand why there are problems in the camps in Nepal and why a journalist might be missing there, you can go to this previous post of mine and learn about the politics of those (Maoists!) who do not want the Bhutanese to be scattered across the world.

Rumor: Refugees are exempt from taxes….

…..for a certain period of time.   This is from reader ‘bearinggifts’:

There is a persistent rumor out there according to which refugees who start businesses are exempt from taxes for a period of time. the tax-free time is usually stated as 3 years.

Sometimes this rumor has it that they pay no taxes of any type (eg., no income taxes, if employed) for a period of time. I kind of doubt this version of the rumor, but was wondering about the business tax exemption. It really sounds like something the corrupt SBA would do.

‘Bearinggifts,’ I keep hearing the rumor too about refugees not paying federal income tax for 3 years, but if that is true that would be a bombshell piece of information.  I’m guessing it is more likely that their income is so low they fall into that huge segment of the American population that pays no taxes anyway (you know the ones Obama wants to redistribute the wealth to).

I don’t know about the small business angle except that refugees get all sorts of opportunities through micro-loans and special savings accounts (IDAs) to start businesses.

Judy wrote favorably of such loans here.  I would be interested to know in light of the banking crisis how many of those loans have gone into default.  Note also in Judy’s story that a volag is involved in the lending—International Institute of St. Louis.  Is this more of the taxpayer-money racket these volags have gotten into?

I have written less favorably of micro-loans geared to immigrants and refugees here because these loans use special Sharia financing rules.  And, here for several reasons, not the least of which is that this favoritism creates animosity in small communities where American citizens wonder why they can’t get such good deals.

I’m getting off track.  As for the tax question,  ‘bearinggifts,’ I don’t know if those businesses are tax-exempt for a period of time.  Does anyone know?

Rumors is a new category we launched last week to try to find the facts behind many aspects of the Refugee Resettlement Program of the federal government.   Because the program is run so secretively, rumors abound.  And, frankly it is to the program’s detriment.  From the very beginning in Hagerstown, MD I’ve contended that informing the public is critically important.   If the program is a good one it should withstand public scrutiny.

Rumor: Reader says some refugees let off the hook on repaying their airfare loans

Reader TonyLee says that he has heard that fairly well-off refugees who came to the US in the 1980’s and 1990’s did not suffer any consequences for not repaying taxpayer funded airfare “loans,” while today’s really poor refugees are hounded by the volags (supposedly non-profit federal contractors)  for the money.   Here is what he says:

Here’s another rumor. We know the Volags chase down the refugees to recover the interest-free loans made for airfare to the U.S. (must inculcate responsibility, you see).

We know the Volags pocket a whopping 25% of the funds they collect.

I have seen almost comical threatening legal letters sent to people who are illiterate. In these letters they are told their credit will be wrecked, they will be unable to buy a house, etc, etc.

Here is the rumor: those who arrived in the 80’s and 90’s did not pay back their loans and did not suffer any consequences.

Ironically, the Volags today are hounding truly poor and oppressed refugees for their last crumbs while the refugees who arrived in the 80’s and early 90’s who were not really refugees at all – many were basically middle class, educated Soviet Jews, never paid back the air loans. They were told they didn’t have to.

As we mentioned the other day in launching this new category (Rumors!), we do want to get at the truth about many many aspects of the Refugee Resettlement Program that are being kept hidden from the general public.

Can anyone tell us if Mr. Lee’s rumor is true or false?

Rumor: Refugees are getting larger SSI payments than American citizens

We’re launching a new category this morning, obviously titled “Rumors.”   One of the most important reforms the Refugee Resettlement industry must make is to promote transparency (where have I heard that word before?) in how the program operates.    The result of the present obvious strategy of keeping the public in the dark about the program is that “rumors” get a life of their own.   We want to find the facts!

The “rumor” of the day is that the Obama Stimulus plan gives refugees larger Supplemental Security Income (SSI) increases than American citizens are receiving.

True or false?    Would a reader who knows the answer please give us the facts.

Hamas members are NOT flooding into the U.S. from Gaza

Update Feb. 21st:  More on this issue here.

In the last few days Ann and I have seen numerous references to a presidential directive that supposedly opens the floodgates to hundreds of thousands of people from Gaza “migrating” to the United States.  Two of these articles, by usually credible sources, are here and here, and we saw several others. They all refer to a Presidential Directive that reads as follows (from the White House web site):

Monday, February 2nd, 2009 at 4:11 pm

Relief for Gaza

President Obama signed a memorandum today directing more than $20 million for “urgent refugee and migration needs” in Gaza.

You can read the full text of the memorandum below.

---

THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
­
For Immediate Release February 2, 2009
January 27, 2009
Presidential Determination

No. 2009-15

MEMORANDUM FOR THE SECRETARY OF STATE
SUBJECT: Unexpected Urgent Refugee and Migration
Needs Related to Gaza

By the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, including section 2(c)(1) of the Migration and Refugee Assistance Act of 1962 (the “Act”), as amended (22 U.S.C. 2601), I hereby determine, pursuant to section 2(c)(1) of the Act, that it is important to the national interest to furnish assistance under the Act in an amount not to exceed $20.3 million from the United States Emergency Refugee and Migration Assistance Fund for the purpose of meeting unexpected and urgent refugee and migration needs, including by contributions to international, governmental, and nongovernmental organizations and payment of administrative expenses of the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration of the Department of State, related to humanitarian needs of Palestinian refugees and conflict victims in Gaza.

You are authorized and directed to publish this memorandum in the Federal Register.

BARACK OBAMA

It must be the word “migration” in the headline and body of the directive that has set so many people to reporting President Obama’s treachery in planning to flood us with Gazans. That’s not what the directive says, folks. We are sending emergency funds to Gaza, by way of international organizations, and that’s all.

Just to be sure, I talked to an official at the State Department. He said the fund in question, known as ERMA (the U.S. Emergency Refugee and Migration Assistance fund), is run out of the White House. That is, the president has discretion to use it for what he determines are emergencies. It is for providing funds for people in place — that is, where they are in need in other countries, not here.  He pointed out that “migration” is not the same as “immigration.” It means people moving around, that’s all.

Ann posted on this directive on January 30, when it was issued. We both understood at the time that it referred to aid to Gaza civilians in Gaza. In her post Ann was critical of the emergency aid because we are well aware that much of such aid ends up in the hands of Hamas.

George W. Bush also used the ERMA fund. In September 2007 I posted on a $24 million expenditure, quoting from Reuters:

President George W. Bush authorized up to $24 million to meet “unexpected and urgent” needs of refugees from conflicts in Iraq, Lebanon, and Sri Lanka, according to a memorandum released on Monday.

The amount from the United States Emergency Refugee and Migration Assistance Fund was not to exceed $24 million “for the purpose of meeting unexpected and urgent refugee and migration needs,” Bush said in a memorandum to the Secretary of State.The funds were for international, governmental, and nongovernmental organizations, and administrative expenses of the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, the memo said.

It is understandable that the directive would be interpreted as it was. We have learned that we cannot trust anything President Obama says or does. And he has been positively obsequious toward the Muslim world since he took office — no, since well before he took office.

But in this case the interpretation is wrong. And it needs to be corrected. Remember that our side was hurt when we allowed false rumors about Bill Clinton to circulate unimpeded. There are enough true bad actions to pin on Obama; we don’t need this false one.

Here’s a good, factual article on the matter, mostly quoting the State Department press release. Ironically, it comes from TASS, the Russian news agency.

Update Feb. 13th: More on ERMA here.

Update Feb. 18th:  Snopes is now on the case.  I suspect Snopes used this post or an email circulating about it for leads to the facts, since its discussion references the George W. Bush authorization of funds.