{"id":3540,"date":"2007-05-11T17:47:47","date_gmt":"2007-05-12T00:47:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2007\/05\/11\/illegals-not-refugees\/"},"modified":"2007-05-11T17:49:03","modified_gmt":"2007-05-12T00:49:03","slug":"illegals-not-refugees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2007\/05\/11\/illegals-not-refugees\/","title":{"rendered":"Illegals, not refugees"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>After two days of misleading the public about the identity of four Albanians arrested on charges of plotting an attack on Ft. Dix, the mainstream media finally found their roots &#8211; but only to try and pull another Sulejman-Talovic-style turnabout and make the Duka brothers &#8220;poor victims&#8221; of&#8230; well, something. Maybe evil Serbs again, even though the Dukas had no contact with Serbia whatsoever. Then again, neither had Talovic.<\/p>\n<p>It turns out the Dukas came from Debar, a small town in western Macedonia, and are actually not Kosovo Albanians. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/worldlatest\/story\/0,,-6621494,00.html\">AP reporter<\/a> Garentina Kraja &#8211; who got her start covering (for) the KLA &#8211; pulled together statements from Kosovo &#8220;prime minister&#8221; Agim Ceku and Dukas&#8217; relatives to make sure the point gets across: Albanians worship America, therefore they could not have possibly been involved in a plot to mean it harm.<\/p>\n<p>Whether they worshiped America or not, the Duka brothers were not Kosovo Albanian refugees, had not been involved with the KLA (except perhaps to give mandatory &#8220;donations&#8221; to its financiers in the 1990s), and had not passed through Ft. Dix in 1999. Agron Abdullahu has &#8211; which means that there are plenty of valid questions about the man who made jokes about his &#8220;Uncle Benny&#8221; despite Uncle Sam&#8217;s support for his cause in the Balkans.<\/p>\n<p>Much like Florin Krasniqi, another famous Albanian &#8220;roofer&#8221; (as well as weapons smuggler and fundraiser), the Dukas came to the U.S. illegally in &#8220;1986 or 1987,&#8221; according to their relatives. How is it possible that they have managed to live and work in New Jersey for <em>twenty years<\/em> without being caught?<\/p>\n<p>No doubt, many who come into this country on the sly wish only to live a life even slightly better than the crushing poverty of their homelands; that doesn&#8217;t somehow excuse them from having to obey the law. But how many of those who sneak into the United States under the cover of darkness mean this country ill?<\/p>\n<p>According to their relatives, the Duka brothers &#8220;had grown long beards and had become more devoted to Islam.&#8221; And these are ethnic Albanians, mind you, who are supposed to be the most pro-American people in the Balkans. If that is not a terrifying thought, I don&#8217;t know what is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After two days of misleading the public about the identity of four Albanians arrested on charges of plotting an attack on Ft. Dix, the mainstream media finally found their roots &#8211; but only to try and pull another Sulejman-Talovic-style turnabout and make the Duka brothers &#8220;poor victims&#8221; of&#8230; well, something. Maybe evil Serbs again, even [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[676],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-3540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-antiwar-movement"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3540"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3540\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3540"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=3540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}