Category Archives: Illegal Immigration
Obama to Evict Thousands, Julian and Hillary?
Obama administration considering evictions of thousands from low-income housing
WashingtonTimes:The Department of Housing and Urban development announced Tuesday that it would consider evicting tens of thousands of public housing residents who earn too much money to qualify for public housing.
The announcement comes in response to a July audit from the department’s Office of Inspector General that revealed over 25,000 families had an income that exceeded the maximum level to qualify for government-assisted housing. At least one tenant had roughly nearly $1 million in assets.
Now the department will reexamine tenant’s public housing needs in an effort to root out “over-income” tenants occupying low-income housing that is desperately needed by poorer families.
“Some of those families significantly exceeded the income limits,” HUD wrote in the Federal Register, warning that “scarce public resources must be provided to those most in need of affordable housing.”
Currently, federal law does not prohibit over-income families from continuing to live in low-income housing as long as they met the income requirements when they moved in.
Now HUD is grappling with whether to evict over-income tenants and how long to give them to find new homes.
“An increase in income is a good and welcomed event for families, and when a family’s income steadily rises, it may be an indication that the family is on its way to self-sufficiency,” HUD wrote.
“Any changes that would require the termination of tenancy for over-income families should be enacted with caution so as not to impede a family’s progress,” the agency continued.
The department will seek comment from the public on what to do about over-income families over the next 30 days.
The House is expected to vote Tuesday on an Amendment proposed by Rep. Vern Buchanan, Florida Republican, to tighten income asset verification requirements for public housing applicants.
“It is outrageous that taxpayers are footing the bill for millionaires’ housing,” Mr. Buchanan said in a statement. “This type of abuse hurts truly needy families and erodes faith in government. Holding HUD to the same standards used for other federal benefits will provide much-needed oversight on taxpayer funds and help create consistency across the vast array of assistance programs.”
*** HUD is corrupt and the Secretary of HUD, Julian Castro is just as corrupt. But as a sidebar, he is earnestly jockeying for sharing the presidential ticket with Hillary Clinton.
HUD Secretary Julian Castro attends Maine fundraiser for Clinton
He headlines the private event at the law offices of Preti Flaherty in Portland.
Julian Castro, the U.S. Housing and Urban Development secretary and a rising star in the Democratic Party, was in Portland Monday morning for a private fundraiser for presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
The event at the law offices of Preti Flaherty in downtown Portland included U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree and longtime Maine lobbyist and attorney Tony Buxton.
According to an invitation provided by Hillary for America, Castro’s visit was billed as “coffee and conversation.” It was closed to the public and to the media.
Castro arrived at the fundraiser with Pingree and his twin brother, U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas. After the event, Julian Castro said the crowd was enthusiastic and looking forward to seeing Clinton win the nomination.
When asked if he would accept if Clinton wins the nomination and asks him to run for vice president, he would say only that he is focused on his work with HUD and campaigning for Clinton.
“Both Joaquin and I are happy to help her out,” he said.
Julian Castro, the former mayor of San Antonio, was tabbed by President Obama in 2014 to serve as secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. His ethnic background – Mexican American – makes him a powerful surrogate for Clinton, who will likely need strong support from Hispanic voters, both in the Democratic primaries and in the general election, if she becomes the nominee.
During an interview Monday morning on the “Ken & Mike” show on WGAN, the Castro brothers said they have long supported Clinton, whom they described as a tenacious and strong leader.
When asked by the radio hosts if he would accept an invitation to be Clinton’s running mate if she wins the nomination, Julian Castro said he feels “it’s not going to happen.”
“That’s flattering, but I doubt that,” he said. “I fully expect a year from now to be back in Texas.”
So you voters for Hillary, here is some more facts, Julian is a radical, a Marxist.
Mayor Julian Castro of San Antonio, who will be giving the keynote address tonight, is, according to some, the next Obama. But while Obama’s radicalism may have escaped the notice of the DNC in 2004, Castro’s views are bit more transparent.
Indeed, he, along with his twin, Joaquin, currently running for Congress, learned their politics on their mother’s knee and in the streets of San Antonio. Their mother, Rosie helped found a radical, anti-white, socialist Chicano party called La Raza Unida (literally “The Race United”) that sought to create a separate country–Aztlan–in the Southwest.
Today she helps manage her sons’ political careers, after a storied career of her own as a community activist and a stint as San Antonio Housing Authority ombudsman.
Far from denouncing his mother’s controversial politics, Castro sees them as his inspiration. As a student at Stanford Castro penned an essay for Writing for Change: A Community Reader (1994) in which he praised his mother’s accomplishments and cited them as an inspiration for his own future political involvement.
“[My mother] sees political activism as an opportunity to change people’s lives for the better. Perhaps that is because of her outspoken nature or because Chicanos in the early 1970s (and, of course, for many years before) had no other option. To make themselves heard Chicanos needed the opportunity that the political system provided. In any event, my mother’s fervor for activism affected the first years of my life, as it touches it today.
Castro wrote fondly of those early days and basked in the slogans of the day. “‘Viva La Raza!’ ‘Black and Brown United!’ ‘Accept me for who I am–Chicano.’ These and many other powerful slogans rang in my ears like war cries.” These war cries, Castro believes, advanced the interests of their political community. He sees her rabble-rousing as the cause for Latino successes, not the individual successes of those hard-working men and women who persevered despite some wrinkles in the American meritocracy.
[My mother] insisted that things were changing because of political activism, participation in the system. Maria del Rosario Castro has never held a political office. Her name is seldom mentioned in a San Antonio newspaper. However, today, years later, I read the newspapers, and I see that more Valdezes are sitting on school boards, that a greater number of Garcias are now doctors, lawyers, engineers, and, of course, teachers. And I look around me and see a few other brown faces in the crowd at [Stanford]. I also see in me a product of my mother’s diligence and her friends’ hard work. Twenty years ago I would not have been here…. My opportunities are not the gift of the majority; they are the result of a lifetime of struggle and commitment by adetermined minority. My mother is one of these persons. And each year I realize more and more how much easier my life has been made by the toil of past generations. I wonder what form my service will take, since I am expected by those who know my mother to continue the family tradition. [Emphasis Castro’s]
Major Gang Arrests in Boston, Immigrant MS-13
Gangs like the MS13 and Barrio 18 in El Salvador are rigid about enforcing the boundaries of their territory. This has dramatic repercussions for both the bus drivers who drive and the students who walk across these borders.
“This street is the limit — look. The frontline of the war is right here. Here there are gunshots every so often. Down there are MS13. Up there are Barrio 18 Revolucionarios. It is an L. And we are in the middle.”
So says a middle-aged man. He is the extortion negotiator for a bus and minibus route. That is his job. In a country where even Coca Cola or Tigo pay extortion, in El Salvador there are architects, street vendors, shoemakers, teachers, and extortion negotiators. The country’s reality creates jobs. More details here.
Dozens said to be linked to El Salvador gang indicted in Boston area
Dozens of Boston-area residents linked to the Central American-based MS-13 street gang were being rounded up by law enforcement authorities on Friday after their indictments on racketeering conspiracy charges related to murders and other crimes, federal prosecutors said.
The indictment of 56 members, leaders and associates of “one of the largest criminal organizations in the United States” alleges that several of the accused played a role in the murders of at least five people since 2014 in Chelsea, Massachusetts, and East Boston, as well as at least 14 attempted murders.
In Massachusetts, MS-13 is largely composed of immigrants and descendants of immigrants from El Salvador, recruited through intimidation in local high schools in towns with heavy concentrations of residents with ties to Central America, prosecutors said.
“Violence is a central tenet of MS-13, as evidenced by its core motto – ‘mata, viola, control,’ translated as, ‘kill, rape, control,'” the U.S. attorney’s office for the District of Massachusetts said in a statement.
The indictment also accuses Massachusetts-based members of MS-13, also known as “La Mara Salvatrucha,” of selling narcotics and committing robberies to raise money to send to leaders of the gang jailed in El Salvador.
It was not immediately clear how many of the 56 people indicted were under arrest on Friday afternoon. The statement said that 15 of the accused were already in custody on federal, state or immigration charges.
A representative of the U.S. attorney’s office could not be reached immediately for comment.
The racketeering conspiracy charge – under the federal law known as RICO – alone carries a maximum prison sentence of 20 years, or even life if the underlying criminal activity carries the maximum penalty of life imprisonment, prosecutors said.
***
There is more to the story and here are some other chilling facts:
CIS.org: Since the recent surge in Central American immigrants crossing the southern border illegally, many have had questions about the Central American community in the United States. News accounts indicate that, in recent months, some 290,000 illegal immigrants (primarily from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador) have been settled, or will soon be settled, by the federal government.1 Listed below are some basic socio-demographic statistics for immigrants in the United States from these countries.
The figures below are for both legal and illegal immigrants from the public-use files of the 2012 American Community Survey, collected by the Census Bureau:
- Population Totals: In 2012 there were 2.7 million immigrants from El Salvador (1.3 million), Guatemala (880,000), and Honduras (536,000) in the United States. Combined, the immigrant population from these three countries has grown 234 percent since 1990.
- The Top-10 States of Settlement: California, Texas, New York, Florida, Maryland, Virginia, New Jersey, Massachusetts, North Carolina, and Georgia.
- Illegal Immigrants: Department of Homeland Security estimates indicate that about 60 percent of immigrants from these three countries (1.6 million) are in the United States illegally.2
- Language: Of immigrants from El Salvador, 70 percent report they speak English less than very well; for immigrants from Guatemala, it is 72 percent; and for immigrants from Honduras, it is 69 percent.
- Home-ownership: Of households headed by Salvadoran immigrants, 41 percent are owner-occupied, as are 28 percent of Guatemalan households, and 29 percent of Honduran immigrant households. The corresponding figure for natives is 66 percent.
The figures below are for both legal and illegal immigrants from the public-use files of the March 2013 Current Population Survey, collected by the Census Bureau:
- Educational Attainment: 54 percent of Guatemalan immigrants (ages 25 to 65) have not graduated high school. The figure for Salvadorans is 53 percent, and for Hondurans, 44 percent. The corresponding figure for native-born Americans is 7 percent.
- Welfare Use: 57 percent of households headed by immigrants from El Salvador use at least one major welfare program, as do 54 percent of Honduran households, and 49 percent of Guatemalan immigrant households. Among native households it is 24 percent.3
- Poverty: 65 percent of Honduran immigrants and their young children (under 18) live in or near poverty (under 200 percent of the poverty threshold). For Guatemalan and Salvadoran immigrants and their children, it is 61 percent. The corresponding figure for natives and their children is 31 percent.4
- Health Insurance: 47 percent of Guatemalan immigrants and their young children (under 18) do not have health insurance. The figure for both Salvadoran and Honduran immigrants and their young children is 41 percent. The corresponding figure for natives and their children is 13 percent.5
- Share Working: 77 percent of immigrants from El Salvador (ages 25 to 54) have a job, as do 74 percent of Guatemalan immigrants and 73 percent of Honduran immigrants. The corresponding figure for natives is 76 percent.
By the Numbers: Muslim Opinions and Demographics
By the Numbers is an honest and open discussion about Muslim opinions and demographics. Narrated by Raheel Raza, president of Muslims Facing Tomorrow, this short film is about the acceptance that radical Islam is a bigger problem than most politically correct governments and individuals are ready to admit. Is ISIS, the Islamic State, trying to penetrate the U.S. with the refugee influx? Are Muslims radicalized on U.S. soil? Are organizations such as CAIR, who purport to represent American Muslims accepting and liberal or radicalized with links to terror organizations?
The full document supporting the NUMBERS is found here.
• The main source of the numbers we used was the poll conducted by the Pew
Research center titled The World’s Muslims: Religion, Politics and Society. It is the
single largest and most reliable survey on Muslim attitudes around the world.
• The Pew Research Center did not survey the whole of the Muslim world. Muslims in
countries including Saudi Arabia, Iran, India and China were not surveyed.
According to their own numbers, Pew numerically surveyed only 67 percent of the
Muslim world. 1 Therefore, when we were computing averages and the like, we did
not use the number for the total Muslim population of the world (1.6 billion), but
rather the total population of the countries surveyed.
Brazil, What the Heck, Has Most Dangerous Cities
The 50 most violent cities in the world are revealed, with 21 of them in Brazil… but Venezuela’s capital Caracas is named the most deadly
- Latin America is home to 41 of the 50 most dangerous cities in the world
- Caracas in Venezuela is now the most violent, according to homicide rate
- Took the top spot from San Pedro Sula, in Honduras, now in second place
- Drug trafficking, gang wars, political instability and corruption are blamed
- U.S. cities St Louis, Baltimore, Detroit and New Orleans are also named
DailyMail: The 50 most dangerous cities in the world have been named and shamed, and an astonishing 21 of them are in Brazil.
Latin America features highly in the ranking, released by Mexico’s Citizens’ Council for Public Security and Criminal Justice, as it is home to some 41 of the cities listed.
Drug trafficking, gang wars, political instability, corruption and poverty are to blame for the high homicide rates across the region, which has just 8 per cent of the world’s population, according to UN data.
But the list doesn’t just include Latin America, with U.S. cities St Louis, Baltimore, Detroit and New Orleans also featuring.
Venezuela’s capital city Caracas has taken the top spot for the ranking – which is based on the number of homicides per 100,000 inhabitants of the city in 2015, and doesn’t take war zones into account.
Just this month, Venezuelan first lady Cilia Flores insisted that two of her nephews have been kidnapped by the U.S. authorities, after they were indicted on drug trafficking charges. Franqui Flores de Freitas, 30, and Efrain Campo Flores, 29, sparked a public scandal when they were arrested in Haiti in November in an operation involving the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
Caracas snatched the Number One place from San Pedro Sula, in Honduras, which had been in first place for the past four years. Venezuela’s increasingly volatile political and economic situation has been blamed for the spike in violent crime.
The notoriously dangerous city of San Pedro Sula dropped to second place, after slashing its homicide rate from 171.20 to 111.03.
Honduras hit headlines last month after the violent killing of Rangers football star Arnold Peralta at the hands of gangsters.
He was gunned down in broad daylight while sitting in his car at a shopping mall in La Ceiba.
Journalist Sonia Nazari told the U.S. Congress last year how ‘people are found hacked apart, heads cut off, skinned alive’, and described hijackers who thought little of slaughtering a bus full of people if they didn’t hand over their money quick enough.
El Salvador’s San Salvador, Acapulco in Mexico and Maturin in Venezuela make up the rest of the top five.
Although the list is almost entirely made up of cities in Latin America, it also features Cape Town, in South Africa, in ninth place; St Louis, in Missouri, in 15th; Baltimore, Maryland, in 19th; Detroit, Michigan, in 28th; New Orleans, in Louisiana, in 32nd; Kingston in Jamaica in 33rd; Durban, South Africa, in 41st; Nelson Mandela Bay, in South Africa, in 42nd; and Johannesburg, South Africa, in 47th.
‘We make this ranking with the political objective of calling attention to the violence in the cities, particularly in Latin America, so that their governments are under pressure to improve their obligation to protect their citizens, to guarantee their right to public security,’ said Citizens’ Council in the report.
Mexico is home to the most number of cities which dropped off the list this year, with five cities no longer featuring. The cities of Chihuahua, Cuernavaca, Juarez, Nuevo Laredo and Torreon are no longer included on the list, thanks to significant decreases in their homicide rates.
Meanwhile, Palmira in Colombia saw the most dramatic increase, rising from 32nd place in last year’s list to eighth. Its homicide rate almost doubled in 2015, rising from 37.66 to 70.88.
The ranking only takes into account cities with a population of more than 300,000, and doesn’t include deaths in combat zones or cities with unavailable data – this explains why some cities that would be expected on the list don’t feature.
***
THE 50 MOST DANGEROUS CITIES IN THE WORLD – BY HOMICIDES PER 100,000 INHABITANTS IN 2015
1. Caracas, Venezuela – 119.87
2. San Pedro Sula, Honduras – 111.03
3. San Salvador, El Salvador – 108.54
4. Acapulco, Mexico – 104.73
5. Maturin, Venezuela – 86.45
6. Distrito Central, Honduras – 73.51
7. Valencia, Venezuela – 72.31
8. Palmira, Colombia – 70.88
9. Cape Town, South Africa – 65.53
10. Cali, Colombia – 64.27
11. Cuidad Guayana, Venezuela – 62.33
12. Fortaleza, Brazil – 60.77
13. Natal, Brazil – 60.66
14. Salvador, Brazil – 60.63
15. St Louis, Missouri, U.S. – 59.23
16. Joao Pessoa, Brazil – 58.40
17. Culiacan, Mexico – 56.09
18. Maceio, Brazil – 55.63
19. Baltimore, Maryland, U.S. – 54.98
20. Barquisimeto, Venezuela – 54.96
21. Sao Luis, Brazil – 53.05
22. Cuiaba, Brazil – 48.52
23. Manaus, Brazil – 47.87
24. Cumana, Venezuela – 47.77
25. Guatemala City, Guatemala – 47.17
26. Belem, Brazil – 45.83
27. Feira de Santana, Brazil – 45.5
28. Detroit, Michigan, U.S. – 43.89
29. Goiania, Brazil – 43.38
30. Teresina, Brazil – 42.64
31. Vitoria, Brazil – 41.99
32. New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S. – 41.44
33. Kingston, Jamaica – 41.14
34. Gran Barcelona, Venezuela – 40.08
35. Tijuana, Mexico – 39.09
36. Vitoria da Conquista, Brazil – 38.46
37. Recife, Brazil – 38.12
38. Aracaju. Brazil – 37.7
39. Campos dos Goytacazes, Brazil – 36.16
40. Campina Grande, Brazil – 36.04
41. Durban, South Africa – 35.93
42. Nelson Mandela Bay, South Africa – 35.85
43. Porto Alegre, Brazil – 34.73
44. Curitiba, Brazil – 34.71
45. Pereira, Colombia – 32.58
46. Victoria, Mexico – 30.50
47. Johannesburg, South Africa – 30.31
48. Macapa, Brazil – 30.25
49. Maracaibo, Venezuela – 28.85
50. Obregon, Mexico – 28.29