ACORN wants a cut of the huge international remittance business, valued worldwide at US$444 billion.

So the organized crime syndicate is trying to shake down the financial services companies that handle those international money transfers.

In Canada, the local arm of ACORN is trying to shake down Money Mart and Western Union. ACORN, which used to employ President Obama, is hitting these two companies because it wants them to pay it protection money. The corporate shakedown is just one of the dubious methods ACORN uses to victimize businesses.

ACORN Canada’s new president Kay Bisnath complains the fees banks and other companies charge for money transfers are “exorbitant.” Ostensibly to help poor people, ACORN is demanding that Western Union charge no more than 5 percent for overseas remittances.

Canada’s biggest daily newspaper, the Toronto Star, which is left-wing even by Canadian standards, is helping ACORN’s Canadian affiliate by providing political propaganda disguised as news. (Canada’s taxpayer-funded TV network, CBC, is also doing its bit to promote ACORN.) The Red Star, as some Canadian conservatives half-jokingly call it, is home to America-hating socialist writers such as Thomas Walkom and Linda McQuaig.

The pairing actually makes a lot sense. Both the Star and ACORN are on the far left and both have an impressive record of union-busting.

In the latest in a series of pro-ACORN puff pieces, the Star’s immigration reporter, Nicholas Keung, wrote a feature article that used Rassel Mohammad, a Bangladeshi immigrant to Canada, as a prop.

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People that know him, and know him well, have described him as an “organic genius” and a “diabolical genius”. He’s become a lightning rod and a polarizing figure, and he’s at the center of a national debate. Wade Rathke is the former long time CEO, or Chief Organizer, of ACORN, the Association for Community Organizations for Reform Now. He’s now running Community Organizations International, the former ACORN International. When I emailed Wade Rathke  Friday October 23rd, I was surprised that he agreed to an interview. I was even more surprised that he was familiar with my work. Yet, he was willing to give me some time on the afternoon of the 26th of October. What follows are some of my thoughts following an interview that lasted about an hour.

The campaign that COI is most involved in, or at least featured on their main page, is the campaign to reform global remittance. Global remittance is the process by which ex patriates send money back to family in their home country. For instance, it’s been well documented that Mexico’s main economic source is actually money sent back home from the USA. According to Rathke, this is an industry that topped $300 billion, and far too many of its players practice predatory lending practices. For instance, Rathke has seen fees up to 20% of the amount to be wired. So, if someone were to send $1000 back home, they would be charged $200 to process this transaction. Rathke stressed that such fees were an “outlier” but fees of 5% are about the norm. In his view, this is far too much, and the poor are being taken advantage of by predatory lending practices in this area. Furthermore, with these rates, it also leads to a black market. That’s what’s happening. Often people send money home with all sorts of strangers because they’re promised that it will get there with no charge.

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