Now, here is the news from the Denver Post:

AURORA — The Uzbek refugee facing terrorism charges in Denver was a merchant turned human-rights activist who tried to defend farmers, opposed Uzbekistan’s dictator after a 2005 massacre, endured a detention that left him bloody, saw his sister arrested on a false murder charge, then fled by night to neighboring Kyrgyzstan dressed as a woman.

The plight of Jamshid Muhtorov, 35, looked so bleak that the United Nations and U.S. government rescued him,* along with his wife and two small children. U.S. authorities gave Muhtorov a comfortable new perch in Colorado, where state officials estimate as many as 157 other Uzbeks have been resettled after escaping a human-rights disaster.

But now the same government that rescued Muhtorov is prosecuting him under a law that prohibits “material support” for terrorists.

FBI agents arrested him in Chicago on Jan. 21 while he was en route to Turkey. A federal grand jury indicted him for allegedly providing material support to the Islamic Jihad Union — which the U.S. State Department has designated a foreign terrorist organization — and attempting to provide material support.

It’s a complicated case that raises questions about the fine line between freedom fighter and terrorist.

Read it all!

Not a “fine line” to me—we shouldn’t have to support foreign freedom fighters (homes, jobs, education, and food stamps), let alone terrorists, with our tax dollars through the refugee program.

* As I understand it, we (the State Department or the CIA, or both) were hellbent on getting people like this alleged terrorist out of Europe and to US soil—Why?  I have no idea, but someone knows!

So who is next? — TPS for Yemenis, Egyptians, Libyans, Palestinians and the list goes on!

Just a reminder that Mark Krikorian at the Center for Immigration Studies shrewdly noted in 1999—there is nothing quite so permanent as a temporary refugee!

Here is the news:

On Wednesday, January 25th, United for a Free Syria (UFS), in close coordination with a broad coalition including the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), Syrian Expatriates Organization (SEO), Syrian Emergency Task Force (SETF), Syrian Americans for Democracy (SAD), South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT), Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI), and Refugee Council USA (RCUSA), has formally requested that the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) grant Temporary Protected Status (TPS) under section 244 of the Immigration and Nationality Act, to Syrian nationals presently in the United States. The request was sent directly to DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano.

UFS understands the urgent need to file for TPS and will continue the political lobbying behind this effort at the US Congress and the White House as well as all relevant agencies. The thorough petition has been sent not only to DHS, but also to the Office of the Secretary of State, the National Security Council, and the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service. The petition cites numerous facts regarding the current Syrian regime’s atrocities from numerous international governmental and non-governmental organizations, including Human Rights Watch and the United Nations, among other reliable sources.

Since two of the top refugee contractors (highlighted above) are in on this, I can only assume there is money to be made as visa overstays, illegal aliens, Syrian students, and Syrian tourists are magically transformed overnight into formal “refugees.”   There must be something more tangible in it for the volags besides the joy of enhancing our ethnic diversity.

One final thought.  As the refugee program itself comes under greater scrutiny (the numbers are down under Obama), I think those looking to bring ever greater numbers of immigrants to the US are just searching for more creative ways to get the job done.  TPS is one such legal program.

Here at Local 10 News:

This is the reality experienced today by the ever growing numbers of migrants and refugees throughout the world. Indeed, the United Nations estimates that there are today in the world 11 million refugees – most surviving in desperate circumstances. And, truth be told, many fail to survive at all. Yet, in spite of this profound human suffering, doors are shut in the faces of those looking for a durable solution to their plight in a third country. For example, last year the United States admitted barely 54,000 refugees for resettlement, down from 74,000 the previous year. This is a disturbing trend in light of the enormous need internationally.  [If we brought 150,000 refugees, I have a feeling the good Archbishop would be saying he wanted 250,000.  Whatever the number it wouldn't be too many!---ed]

[....]

Congress has authorized the admissions of up to 75,000 refugees in 2012 fiscal year. Security concerns should not be used as a “smoke screen” to mask bureaucratic inertia which threatens to leave these slots unfilled.

With good will, good management, and sufficient resources, it is possible to expand our admissions with no danger to our security.

“Sufficient resources” of course come through the federal government directly from the taxpayer and to the Catholic Church.

And, as if Florida doesn’t have enough refugees already!  It is in the top 6 refugee receiving states in the US.  Here is a good survey from the Migration Information Source dated August 2011 about recent refugee resettlement.

Just a reminder, we have a category entitled ‘where to find information’ and I’ve posted this story there.

The case is expected to go to trial in March if the court and more than two dozen lawyers for the defendants can get it all together.

From The City Paper:

The federal courthouse in downtown Nashville was abuzz on Friday, Jan. 20. Outside, Occupy Nashville staged a small protest against corporate greed, using theatrics to hammer home their point.

But eight stories above, in courtroom A859, there was no acting.

Somali women, their heads wrapped in colorful cloth, smiled and waved to their family members and friends as 28 handcuffed defendants entered the room. Some of the accused returned the greetings. A federal marshal quickly stepped into the crowd and reminded one of the women in the crowd that she can wave, but can’t communicate with the defendants.

[.....]

The interaction was surprisingly cordial considering the violent, socially deviant nature of the defendants’ alleged crimes. According to the federal indictment, the defendants all played a role in child sex trafficking. They are charged with transporting pre-teens and teens between three states and forcing them to engage in commercial sex acts.

The defendants are all associates or members of gangs like the Somali Mafia, the Somali Outlaws and the Lady Outlaws, according to the government.

“I would call this one of the more significant cases we’ve investigated in recent memory,” said John Morton, director of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, at the time of the indictment in November 2010.

For new readers: We have admitted well over 100,000 Somali refugees to the US.   To check out the numbers visit this post, one of our most widely read posts over the last few years.   In FY2010 which ended September 30th the US State Department resettled 4,884 Somalis (here) to towns near you.   (I know, I need to update my numbers!)

From the Courier Mail (Brisbane):

DODGY* claims involving fake religious beliefs, sham marriages and lies about sexuality are adding to a logjam of cases in immigration and refugee tribunals, costing taxpayers millions of dollars.

Desperate foreign citizens who arrive by plane are launching a barrage of appeals after Immigration officials reject their claims and seek to send them home.

The Refugee Review Tribunal – which handles only plane arrivals – had a 31 per cent jump in appeals last year while the Migration Review Tribunal, which deals with student and partner visas, had a 24 per cent increase.

More than 13,000 appeals to the two tribunals in the one year overwhelmed resources.

Readers, asylum seekers are basically illegal aliens (or visa overstays) who enter a country on their own steam and then ask for asylum.  In the US, once their asylum status has been approved, they get basically the same goodies as a refugee who has been approved and screened abroad and flown here at taxpayer expense.  (Well, they will tell you that the refugees must repay airfare, but you can be sure many impoverished people unable to find work are not going to have their airfare loan at the top of the list).

And, by the way, here is a post I wrote in January 2011 about how it appears that US NGOs may now be helping would-be asylum seekers get into the US.  When the Refugee Act of 1980 was signed into law by Jimmy Carter it was expected that asylum claims would be a tiny number and reserved for the odd ballet dancer seeking asylum from a repressive home country.  Now it is approaching the refugee program itself in the sheer number of claimants.

The US receives the most asylum claims.  Here is a report from the UN for the first half of 2011.  Asylum claims rising rapidly:

By country, the United States had more claims (36,400) than any other industrialized nation, followed by France with (26,100), Germany (20,100), Sweden (12,600) and the United Kingdom (12,200). The Nordic region was the only part of Europe to see a fall in asylum applications. Meanwhile, in north-east Asia applications more than doubled – 1,300 claims were lodged in Japan and South Korea compared to 600 in the first half of 2010.

* “Dodgy”—isn’t that a great word!

From State Impact (NPR):

Idaho residents know well the reversal of fortune the state has seen since the start of the recession.  The state, which not so long ago had the fastest growing economy in the nation, has been hit hard.  In a broadcast story tomorrow, we’ll look at how Idaho’s economic troubles have affected the state’s refugee population, focusing in on a particular family.

First, a little background.  How many refugees are resettled in Idaho each year?  Here are the numbers, according the the Idaho Office for Refugees, which has statewide responsibility for providing assistance and services for refugees.  [visit the article for the numbers]

Beware employment numbers put out by biased resettlement agencies—their future contracts depend on their ability to find work for the refugees they bring to your town.  The real unemployment numbers are  much worse then this article tells us.

Below are the available employment statistics.  In 2005, 95 percent of the Idaho Office for Refugees’ employable caseload found work, a rate IOR Director Jan Reeves calls “the high-end baseline” for the years preceding the recession.  By 2007, the employment rate had dipped. [but refugees kept coming---ed]

[....]

Looking at the top table, it’s easy to see that 2008, 2009 and 2010 stand out for the relatively large numbers of refugees coming to Idaho.  Reeves says those numbers were based on assessments of the state’s capacity [there is no formal assessment of capacity that I am aware of---ed] to resettle refugees.  Why did the numbers go up even as employment opportunities became scarcer?  “The projections come out in advance of the year,” he says, “so the numbers were determined, really, before the full extent of the recession was known.”

Resettlement contractors like the International Rescue Committee in Boise find any sort of job, part-time job, anything! just to say the refugee is employed.  There is no follow-up statistical study available to the public to show how many kept the job for any length of time.

A little known racket for some businesses (something I learned about here in Maryland) is that certain companies get federal subsidies (payroll tax breaks) to hire immigrants.  But those only last so long.  So businesses do what businesses do and let those workers go and get a fresh batch of immigrant workers (with federally subsidized pay) and the beat goes on!

The International Rescue Committee (IRC) reveals in this piece as well that once you get the refugee flow going to a certain city, it is hard to stop because the first refugees bring their extended families. Not reported in this article is that the IRC helps with the paperwork for the family members and gets paid for that too—by you, the taxpayer.

Defending high unemployment among refugees, the IRC spokesman goes on to say that the refugees are here for protection, not necessarily to supply employment.  However, it was explicitly clear when the Refugee Resettlement Act of 1980 passed Congress that the refugees were not to come here to be on welfare—this was not about importing poverty—but that is exactly what is happening now.

Here this same IRC spokesman, Bob Carey, is wailing to Congress to give them more welfare money because refugees can’t find work.

Someone must be making waves in Idaho about refugee resettlement or we wouldn’t be seeing this twisted defense of the program by NPR.

From AFP news:

UITHOORN, Netherlands — A small Dutch city less than 20 kilometres from Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport has become the hub of Europe’s sales of khat, a plant chewed for its stimulant qualities, soon to be banned in the Netherlands.

In a discreet warehouse tucked away in the city of Uithoorn, around a hundred Somalis and Yemenis were haggling over the latest delivery: a tonne of khat.

“The arrival of the delivery varies daily, depending on the flight from Kenya,” said a khat importer of the plant which drug authorities say produces a natural amphetamine when chewed.

The men sit around and chew the stuff, talk politics, and get high in the welfare capitols of Europe (especially as this report points out, in Scandinavia).

Residents of this ‘khat market’ city have had it.

Three khat deliveries a day, weighing about a tonne each, are taken to Uithoorn by truck from Amsterdam-Schiphol airport, 15 kilometres (nine miles) to the northwest. From Uithoorn it is sold to wholesale dealers and then resold throughout Europe.

But 15 of the European Union’s 27 states and Norway have already listed khat as an illegal narcotic and the Netherlands too announced earlier this month it would ban khat.

Local businesses have also complained about the commotion at the “khat market,” one of the reasons for the Dutch decision.

“Some days there may be more than 200 cars in the street,” sighed Uithoorn mayor Dagmar Oudhoorn.

Residents are tired, she said, adding “there is a real fear of crime and traffic problems.”

[.....]

Two-thirds of the khat at Uithoorn were exported illegally from the Netherlands, mainly to Scandinavia, the Somali importer told AFP.

The Somali khat “importer” goes on to wonder why the Dutch are so intolerant, but brushes it off with a promise to find another way to get his khat and make his illicit drug money when the Dutch ban goes into effect.

We’ve written about khat in the US from time to time.  It is here too.  This is our khat archive (Minnesota, Kansas, Virginia, Maryland, Tennessee and more!).

Note to readers:  I’ve been meaning to mention that on the many days lately that I don’t get time to post here, I can always be sure my reader numbers stay up because hundreds of people search every day for posts here on Somalis—Somalis in Minnesota, Somalis in Maine, Somali numbers,  Somalis in Canada, why so many Somalis and so forth.  See what I mean, go to the right hand side bar and look at “Top Posts” to see what old posts everyone is reading.

I don’t know if he is a refugee originally granted asylum in Canada or what, but I do know that I had to laugh when I saw that the word ‘Nigerian’ was eliminated the second time it was mentioned in one mainstream media version of the story.

Here is USA Today on the story (one of the largest bank heists in US history!):

FARGO, N.D. – He was unemployed and receiving welfare, but Adekunle Adetiloye was somehow living lavishly, complete with a Range Rover, extended trips to England and an expensive condominium.

That alone piqued authorities’ interest, but then there were two credit cards tucked away in his wallet that seemed to confirm suspicions that Adetiloye, a Nigerian-born Canadian citizen, was up to something nefarious. The cards each bore different names — Donald Douglas and Vincent Andriole — and helped authorities prosecute a case they describe as one of the largest high-tech bank robberies in U.S. history.  [the 'N-word' is here---ed].

“Characterizing this fraud scheme as massive, if anything, is an understatement,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Nick Chase of North Dakota said in court documents.

Adetiloye, 30, was sentenced Monday to nearly 18 years in prison on fraud charges. He was convicted of mail fraud, but authorities believe he masterminded a scheme to open nearly 600 fraudulent bank accounts and bilk 22 major banks out of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Federal prosecutor Nick Chase said during the sentencing hearing in North Dakota that Adetiloye had an “insatiable hunger for other people’s money.”

Gee, that seems to apply to a lot of people these days—insatiable hunger for other people’s money!

Here is the paragraph at USA Today that I want you to look at:

Defense attorney Richard Henderson had asked for a sentence of fewer than 16 years. Henderson said any prison time for his client is more difficult than it would be for American citizens because he has no family in the United States.

Now, here is the same paragraph as originally written by AP and posted at Canadian Immigration Report where the reporter apparently wanted readers to not miss the fact that he was a Nigerian (not a native Canadian) by mentioning that fact twice.

Defence lawyer Richard Henderson had asked for a sentence of fewer than 16 years. Henderson said any prison time for his client, a native of Nigeria, is more difficult than it would be for American citizens because he has no family in the United States.

The phrase—a native of Nigeria—has been removed from the USA Today story (although it is mentioned once in the story).

And, by the way, why should anyone worry about this crook getting a lesser sentence then an American citizen just because he has no family in the US.  He surely wasn’t thinking about that when he was ruining the financial lives of hundreds of Americans.

With all the unrest in Nigeria (Muslims killing Christians), look for us to open up refugee resettlement from that country next!

If any of our Canadian readers know more about this guy, please comment.  It’s highly likely he wasn’t even a Canadian citizen, and Canada shouldn’t be the bad guy to all the American readers who skim only headlines and never read further.

Endnote:  As I have said many times, someone should write a blog just about fraud schemes by immigrants.  The food stamp fraud is especially egregious and the mainstream media is too squishy to report on it in any thorough way.

From Reuters:

(Reuters) – Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, warning ethnic tensions could tear Russia apart, said on Monday he would toughen migration rules and keep a tight rein on Russia’s regions to prevent it following the Soviet Union into oblivion.

In a newspaper article and an address in southern Russia, Putin used the danger of ethnic discord to call for limits on electoral reforms.

[.....]

Putin, in power since 2000 and favored to win a six-year presidential term in March, described a Soviet-style vision of a country in which the rights of ethnic minorities would be respected but Russian language and culture would dominate.

“The Russian people, the Russian culture is the glue holding together the unique fabric of this civilization,” Putin wrote.

Putin is steering a fine line between Orthodox Christian ethnic Russians, some of whom fear labor migration and higher birth rates among Russia’s Muslims, and ethnic tensions which could challenge his vision of a centralized, united, Russia.

Thousands of nationalists have protested in Moscow over migration and state subsidies to the mostly Muslim North Caucasus, where an Islamist insurgency rooted in the Chechen wars persists.

We have heard it all before.

]]> http://refugeeresettlementwatch.wordpress.com/2012/01/24/rise-of-russian-nationalism-a-challenge-for-putin/feed/ 1 acorcoran http://refugeeresettlementwatch.wordpress.com/2012/01/23/canada-says-no-to-hungarian-criminals-seeking-refugee-status/ http://refugeeresettlementwatch.wordpress.com/2012/01/23/canada-says-no-to-hungarian-criminals-seeking-refugee-status/#comments Mon, 23 Jan 2012 11:57:32 +0000 acorcoran http://refugeeresettlementwatch.wordpress.com/?p=57517 ]]> We don’t often hear of Hungarian Roma people seeking refuge, but they do. And, below is a story out of Ontario, Canada about a couple who scammed the welfare system in Hamilton and will be deported.

From the Hamilton Spectator:

The public needs to be aware of flaws in Canada’s refugee and welfare systems that allowed a group of Hungarian Roma criminals to live in Hamilton and get paid for it, says the lead prosecutor of an ongoing human trafficking case.

“Disgusting, stunning, shocking, I just don’t have the words to describe,” assistant Crown attorney Toni Skarica said in court.

He made the statement during a court appearance for Viktoria Nemes, the 45-year-old wife and mother of accused human traffickers. She pleaded guilty Friday to welfare fraud.

She has been in custody since early December and will be deported this month.

Nemes came to Hamilton, from Hungary, in December 2008 and soon after misled authorities into believing she and her husband had separated and that she was a single mom, court heard.

In total, she and her husband are believed to have defrauded the City of Hamilton out of nearly $50,000.

“We lost $50,000 paying criminals,” Skarica said.

But Nemes’ case is about a much larger issue, he added.

The “bizarre” criminal justice system in Hungary allows a person who has been found guilty of a crime to return home, before returning to jail, he said, adding that this “is almost designed for criminals to flee somewhere else.”

That is just what Nemes did.

There is more, read it all.