Posted on 03/28/2007 1:14:18 PM PDT by Bokababe
ST. LOUIS-Thirty- five Bosnian war refugees have filed a lawsuit claiming the U.S. government is unlawfully delaying their applications to become United States citizens.
The Bosnians, who came to the U.S. legally to escape persecution in the former Yugoslavia, have disabilities that range from post-traumatic stress disorder related to the war to various medical conditions, such as a stroke, their lawyers said Tuesday.
About 40,000 Bosnians settled in the St. Louis area in the 1990s, making it one of the major centers for such refugees in the country. They were asked to wait five years before applying for citizenship, said Ann Lever, litigation director for St. Louis-based Legal Services of Eastern Missouri.
Dozens asked for waivers due to disabilities to excuse them from taking the citizenship test in English and were told those waiver requests were approved, she said.
"Every one of them had to submit certification of physical or mental impairments, " Lever said. But then, "Their applications just sat there, and sat there, and sat there."
The officer-in-charge of the St. Louis office of the U.S. Department of Citizenship and Immigration Services, Chester Moyer, said he had not been aware of the lawsuit and could not comment on it.
Lever said 50 Bosnian war refugees filed suit last year over the same issue. Federal officials did not fight that lawsuit, and a special ceremony to naturalize them was held last year.
That successful lawsuit helped to prompt the latest court action.
Fatima Kolic, 74, has lived in the U.S. for more than seven years. She said her federal retirement payments have been cut off because she has not become a citizen.
Kolic, who has diabetes and needs a wheelchair to get around outside of her apartment, said she has been losing sleep over the fact that her citizenship has not been approved.
"I just can say it's very hard to live," she said.
I can't even begin to tell you how much this pi$$es me off.
Wait 'til we get several million Iraqi refugees. They aren't going to be happy campers. Coming soon to your hometown!
With this administration and the last one - you'd be wrong.
Time to elect a President that will instruct his INS (or CBP or whatever)commissioner to tell Muslims....don't bother applying, we don't want you here!!!
Fred....is that you?
Send 'em back.
I think it is about $1,000 a month, plus they get housing assistance and several other benefits.
Are you telling me that you want a president who is not compaaaasionate?
If there are 40,000 in St. Louis alone, how many are there in the US in total? Here in MN we also have thousands of Bosnians (10,000?).
The city wanted them so it could look like people weren't deserting for the outer 'burbs, and to keep census related Fed payments up.
St. Louis may be the next New Orleans.
That is approximately the take home pay my daughter makes working full time in preschool care, a very demanding and exhausting occupation.
She gets no benefits other than appreciation from the kids for whom she cares.
If you would really like to raise your blood pressure to stroke level, check out your local Social Security office. I had to go over there last year to straighten out a problem renewing my VA driver's license -- and I was born in this country -- and I was the only person of the 100 or so who where there who spoke English. It was entirely immigrants, about half wearing Middle East getups, veils, tents, face coverings, ect., very irksome and very scary. There was a sign on the wall with a list of the 27 language options they offer. It is a frigging disgrace.
And I am sure she is paying into Social Security, so she is helping to fund all those SSI parasites.
Why do we need foreign stroke victims to deplete our tax dollars? We don't have enough Americans with strokes straining our health system? We have to import them?
Are they for real?! When did America become a welfare state subsidising foreign nationals who haven't spent a single day working in the U.S.?
Bosnian jihadists settle in St Louis. Somali jihadists settle in St. Paul. They refuse to assimilate and make demands based on Sharia. How is this good for America?
But the FBI dhmimmis already said that attack was "unexplainable".
Like the tens of thousands of Somali vermin in Minnesota, this is yet another wonderful legacy of Bill Clinton. 145,000 future enemies within who will never assimilate. Thank you Bubba.
The "next"? I have relatives in the St. Louis burbs and there is no "white flight" nowdays, the majority of people in St. Louis, City and County are black but the outlying suburbs are strong and growing with beautiful areas and neighborhoods as well as good schools. The St. Louis voting block has long been corrupted by the DemocRATs, remember the mess they created by bussing in people from East St. Louis (located in Illinois by the way) and the history of voter fraud. This situation sounds like another DemocRAT move to hussle more votes from whomever they can. St. Louis has had a long history of fraud and liars being placed in leadership positions but the burbs are, so far, relatively unscathed. Hope it stays that way.
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