The Wall Street Journal
06/22/12 Miriam Jordan & Erica E. Phillips
“ Bank Moves Hinder Immigrants: Service That Many Somalis Use to Send Money
Home are Curtailed by Anit-Terrorism Regulations”
Efforts by U.S. banks to avoid violating antiterrorism financing
laws are crimping the ability of Somalis in the U.S. to send money home,
prompting calls for Congress to revisit bank regulations on money transfers.
Somalis in the U.S. use money-transfer merchants, informally
known as "hawalas," to send about $100 million annually to Somalia,
according to the U.S. Treasury Department. The East African country, where
there is no formal banking system, has been without a functioning government
since 1991, when civil war erupted and forced tens of thousands to flee.
In Minnesota, home to 32,000 Somalis, a crisis erupted for
these immigrants when Sunrise Community Banks, a local bank that facilitated
most transfers for three years, stopped doing so last Dec. 30. It acted after
two local Somali-American women were convicted last year of routing money to
al-Shabaab, a Somali terrorist group. The women used hawalas, according to
evidence presented in court.
“The community is concerned that their loved ones back home
will be severely impacted if this problem isn't solved," said Sadik Warfa,
a Somali community leader in Minneapolis.
Concern over money transfers has risen since the Sept. 11,
2001, terrorist attacks. The federal government has tightened banking
regulations to prevent money from the U.S. ending up in the hands of terrorist
groups in the Middle East, Africa and other parts of the world.
Somalis have held several demonstrations in Minneapolis to
demand a solution. Last month, they marched from the Wells Fargo Center to U.S.
Bancorp with signs that blamed the institutions for "starving" their
families. Many Somalis closed their accounts with the banks, according to
community leaders.
"War on terror has nothing to do with this
business," said Imam Hassan Mohamud of the Islamic Da'wah Center in St.
Paul. "The money we send goes to 80-year-old grandpa and grandma."
Common Sense Review
Should I be surprised that once agains another group of
people have come to the US shores and when the govt or industry doesn’t bend to
its will, the answer is to protest.
A population from a country that has had no formal govt or
banking system sends funds home via “Hawalas” (an organization in Africa that
receives the wire and delivers the funds to the families) yet when the concern
the some are funding terrorist groups from American dollars and the system must
shut down, the concern is not for their new countrymen but the irritant of
finding a new way of getting funds to relatives who still live in the country
you left.
The Imam Hassan Mohamud from St. Paul MN, says the war on
Terror has nothing to do with this business yet the aggressive Somali pirates
have proven that this band of people will harm or kill for money, which puts
all new Americans from Somali likely to fund terrorist.
Note to all who come to our shores should understand that
terrorism against America will not be tolerated and to be here this must be
understood…/.
I stumbled across this blog. There are a few spelling errors in the common sense section that make it somewhat confusing, but I think the argument you made was that somali immigrants only care more about how irritating it is to find a new bank than the safety of Americans. Then I think you go on to say that the somali "band of people" (once again its hard to tell who your referencing but I think its all somalians in somalia?) are all pirates, and that somalians in the US are likely to fund somali pirates.
ReplyDeleteNow, although there are a lot of somalians that support the pirates (in fact the UN has said that up to 70 percent of costal communities rely on and support pirates as their main source of protection), i think it may be slightly ignorant of you to say that all somalians are pirates, and all somalian refugees and IDPs in the united states are sending them money. Sending money to relatives in mother countries has been a common practice since the founding of our nation. There is a reason why many european men immigrated here on their own durring the industrial revolution.
This is the same today with many of our new waves of immigrants from the new world. With an increased cost of travel and an increasingly difficult immigration and naturalization process many families have to choose a couple members of the family to go to the "land of opportunity" to make money and send it back. If you live in a failed-state with no functioning economy and no functioning government you can see how it would be advantageous to save up enough money to send at least one family member to a land with better economic opportunity.
As far as supporting the pirates goes, it should be noted that al shabaab was the organization that received money from the two women in Minnesotta, not the somali pirates. Al Shabaab is an armed political movement tied to al-qaeda, not a group of pirates. People donate money to political movements, but not to pirates. It should be noted though that Al Shabaab has recently been using some of the pirate gangs (they are not one entity, but a bunch of different war lords in the area) for kidnappings to raise money, which they are running very low on. Most of the support for the pirates comes from locals who have lost their jobs due to pirate violence and now, along with the fact that they have no police or military to protect them, rely on the pirates to survive. Most people that become refugees or seek asylum in the United States dont do so because they support their local warlords, they do it because their lives are threatened by the local warlords. This is truly an unfortunate situation to find one's self and one's family in.
I know that you have the best interest for America in mind, but a complicated subject like this one can not be solved by half truths, leaps in logic, and lack of adequate research. Your analysis of this article was poorly done and offensive to fellow americans.
Although you right in making sure that Al Shabaab does not receive any money from US citizens or visa holders, you have to make sure you don't tred into neo-McCarthyism by making accusations of terrorism on people you know nothing about. I don't use this word often, and it has lost a lot of its meaning due to over use in situations that do not merit its use, but making a negative generalization about an entire race of people is almost the exact definition of Racism, and although I doubt you yourself are a racist, saying that all somalians are terrorist supporting pirates (and i don't think this is exaggerating your argument) makes it seem like you are. Your argument also makes it look like you have no compassion for the people of somalia, which is a decision that you have the right to hold, but in my opinion would be morally flawed.
Thank you for looking out for the safety of our great country, but please don't dirty our name with factually and logically ignorant arguments and accidentally (i hope) racist claims.