{"id":33473,"date":"2018-05-22T15:47:07","date_gmt":"2018-05-22T19:47:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=33473"},"modified":"2018-05-22T15:47:07","modified_gmt":"2018-05-22T19:47:07","slug":"a-resettlement-program-gone-awry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=33473","title":{"rendered":"A Resettlement Program Gone Awry"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday Scott Johnson (one of the regular writers at Power Line Blog) posted an article at The City Journal<\/a> website. The article was related to some recent events involving large amounts of cash flowing from Minnesota to Somalia.<\/p>\n

The article reports:<\/p>\n

When it was noted that the carry-on bags of multiple airline passengers traveling from Minneapolis to Somalia contained millions of dollars in cash, on a regular basis, law enforcement was naturally curious to know where the money came from and where it was going. It soon emerged<\/a> that millions of taxpayer dollars, and possibly much more, had been stolen through a massive scam of Minnesota\u2019s social-services sector, specifically through fraudulent daycare claims. To make matters worse, the money appears to have wound up in areas of Somalia controlled by al-Shabab, the Islamic jihadist group responsible for numerous terrorist outrages.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The article goes on to explain that beginning in the 1990’s, the State Department began sending refugees from the Somalia civil war to be resettled in Minnesota. Minnesota now has the largest population of Somalis outside of Somalia.<\/p>\n

The article reports:<\/p>\n

As the Washington Times<\/em> noted in 2015, in Minnesota, these refugees \u201ccan take advantage of some of America\u2019s most generous welfare and charity programs.\u201d Professor Ahmed Samatar of Macalester College in St. Paul observed, \u201cMinnesota is exceptional in so many ways but it\u2019s the closest thing in the United States to a true social democratic state.\u201d A high-trust, traditionally homogenous community with a deep civil society marked by thrift, industriousness, and openness, Minnesota seemed like the ideal place to locate an indigent Somali population now estimated at 100,000.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Fast forward to 2015 when the House Homeland Security Committee task force on combating terrorist and foreign-fighter travel discovered that Minnesota led the nation in contributing foreign fighters to ISIS. It gets worse. The refugees masterminded a very lucrative daycare fraud scheme that sent millions of taxpayer dollars to terrorists in Somalia.<\/p>\n

The article cites one such example:<\/p>\n

The case of Fozia Ali, recently sworn in as a member of the park board of an upscale Twin Cities suburb, is illustrative. Ali\u2019s daycare center in south Minneapolis was suspected of billing the government for more than $1 million of bogus child-care services. According to Special Agent Craig Lisher, the FBI \u201cfound records that she was collecting a significant amount of money for a much larger number of children than were actually attending the center.\u201d Ali\u2019s case also had an international component. \u201cWe are aware that some of the funds went overseas, what she was cashing out, money from the business,\u201d Lisher noted. He declined to specify the purpose to which the funds were put.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ali used a phone app to register charges to the Minnesota state government while she stayed at an $800-per-night hotel in Nairobi. She pleaded guilty in March to charges of wire fraud and is serving time in federal prison. But the scam goes well beyond Ali. Though the total loss to the state\u2019s $248 million daycare program remains to be determined, we have a serious case of deceit, obviously. But the real damage, harder to measure, is likely to be to the high-trust values of Minnesota, where newcomers can dupe the natives so easily.<\/strong><\/p>\n

These are not the sort of refugees we need.<\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday Scott Johnson (one of the regular writers at Power Line Blog) posted an article at The City Journal website. The article was related to some recent events involving large amounts of cash flowing from Minnesota to Somalia. The article … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[893,2039,4506,3816,9589,768,8203,5276,892,894,2861,607,1484],"class_list":["post-33473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-al-shabab","tag-city-journal","tag-fraud","tag-homeland-security","tag-house-homeland-security-committee","tag-minnesota","tag-power-line-blog","tag-scott-johnson","tag-somali","tag-somalia","tag-state-department","tag-washington-times","tag-welfare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33473"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33473\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33474,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33473\/revisions\/33474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}