Malta says no more!

Malta’s Prime Minister, Lawrence Gonzi, told the European Union that little Malta has done more than its share of giving refuge to those fleeing Africa.

By the way, haven’t we been told that Egypt is free now and Libya soon will be?  So, why are they leaving now?

From the Times of Malta:

Malta has no intention of hosting any of the Eritreans, Somalis and Ethiopians who fled Libya to the borders with Egypt and Tunisia, according to Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi.

“At this stage, I think we are already carrying a much bigger burden than we can handle in terms of refugees and asylum seekers and so we won’t be making any offers,” he said, reacting to the European Commission’s initiative to ask member states to resettle hundreds of the displaced Africans.

“We need the EU to take some of our refugees and not the other way round,” Dr Gonzi said when asked about Malta’s position on the Commission’s initiative.

Good for you, Dr. Gonzi!

And, ho hum, the Jesuits aren’t happy.

For new readers, I’ve been following the situation in Malta with Africans arriving there illegally for several years because I find it troublesome that two US Ambassadors to Malta (one in the Bush Administration and now one in the Obama Administration) have been magically transforming illegal aliens arriving in Malta into legitimate refugees who are then sent to America.   The policy turned Malta into a magnet for human smuggling—just get to Malta and get a ticket to the US!

Type ‘Malta’ into our search function and see dozens of posts over the years on the precedent set by these two ambassadors.

Somali smuggling, what did asylum lawyers know and when did they know it?

This is a story, hat tip: Paul, from the Investigative Project on Terrorism about a Somali who will soon be sentenced for illegally smuggling Somalis, who may have terrorist connections, into the US.

From the Investigative Project:

A lucrative and active human smuggling ring brought an undetermined number of potential Somali jihadists into the United States through Brazil, federal prosecutors say in court papers.

Those prosecutors are asking a federal judge in San Antonio to give the maximum sentence to a Somali man who pleaded guilty in November to two counts of making false statements on a 2008 asylum application. Ahmed Muhammed Dhakane failed to report his connections to Al-Ittihad Al-Islami (AIAI) and al-Barakat, both specially designated terrorist organizations.

When he is sentenced April 28, prosecutors want U.S. District Judge Xavier Rodriguez to factor in a series of related and disturbing actions spelled out in this memorandum, including the human smuggling of potential terrorists. They intend to call several law enforcement witnesses and three people Dhakane smuggled into the country.

The smuggling was run through Brazil, aided by bribes paid to immigration authorities there, from June 2006 through March 2008. Dhakane instructed those he smuggled on how to make false asylum claims.

The sentencing memo was first reported by Patrick Poole.

[…..]

Dhakane smuggled in people he knew were violent jihadists “with the full knowledge that if the decision was made by the [terrorist group], for which he was associated with in the past, to commit terrorist acts in the United States, these jihadists would commit violent acts in and against the United States,” they [prosecutors] added.

Read it all, Dhakane may also be charged in a rape case.

Gosh, it was just yesterday we reported that asylum lawyers were putting their heads together on how to flood the system with asylum claims from Mexico, here.

And then, here, back in January, I speculated that some of the Somalis making their way across the world are somehow in contact with asylum lawyers or non-profit agencies awaiting their arrival on the southern border.   I wonder did this case involve any advance planning with Mr.Dhakane from this side of the border? That is what I would like to know!

Catholic leaders trying to get refugees out of Libya and to Canada

This is a lengthy report from a Catholic publication about the condition of the refugee population in Tripoli.  Some refugees were already approved to be resettled in Canada before what Catholic leaders say was a rash decision by the US and allies to begin bombing Ghadafi.   Here is one interesting bit in this article that caught my eye.   Just like Human Rights First, here, the Canadian Council for Refugees wants an expedited process to get African refugees to Canada.

From The Tidings:

The Canadian Council for Refugees asked the Canadian government to work with other governments and international organizations to promote the evacuation and protection of all affected refugees. In addition, the council urged the government to include refugees with a pending application to Canada in the measures to evacuate Canadian citizens and to fast-track refugee and immigration applications to Canada from refugees affected by the Libyan crisis.

As I read the lengthy report, I was fearful I would read that we had to get American troops on the ground to escort the refugees to the border.  Thankfully I saw no mention of any such proposal. 

Plan to overload the asylum system at southern border

The Center for Immigration Studies noted in a recent posting by David North that open borders groups and immigration lawyers are teaming up to increase the number of asylum seekers coming across the Mexican border.  We have written before, here, about Somalis coming across the border with the help of NGOs and lawyers, but this plan involves Mexicans who would be presumably seeking asylum from the crime (persecution?) in their home country.   Hat tip: Paul

At the moment the cloud at the southern border is no larger than a man’s hand, but it has prospects for seriously complicating the nation’s immigration control programs.

Observers have long known that if there were a massive number of asylum applications by Mexican nationals, legal and illegal, the entire immigration apparatus would be seriously challenged, if not totally swamped.

At the moment the approval rate for Mexicans applying for asylum, despite the ferocious gang activity on the other side of the border, is only a little over 2 percent, but it is not the approval rate that worries but the application rate. Should that soar we would be in big trouble.

And it might. Jason Dzubow, a skilled asylum lawyer here in Washington, has written in both the Asylumist and Immigration Daily that some Mexican asylum seekers and their advocates “have formed a coalition to support each other in their cases.”

He writes that “immigration attorneys and immigrant-rights groups in … El Paso said that they have formed a coalition aimed at providing greater support for asylum seekers facing a hurdle-ridden application process.”

[….]

If these organizers are at all successful, it could put a serious strain on the system, even if the approval rate stays as low as it is, and the relentless violence on the other side of the border can only work to increase both applications and approvals.

Putting a strain on the system (any government system) seems to be what the far Left is all about these days.  They all must be getting their training in the Cloward-Piven strategy on the war of the ‘have-nots’ against the ‘haves.’

We learned this week that the Hispanic population in the US has reached 50 million, so what is the end-game for Jason Dzubow and his buddies?  Overload America with an impoverished population that couldn’t govern itself in the countries they came from?  Then what?

Egyptian who converted to Christianity can’t get into the US

Here is one guy who does deserve a visa to get into the US.  He converted from Islam to Christianity years ago and thought when the recent Egyptian “revolution” occurred he would be free to escape the Muslim “prison” he and his daughter had lived in for years.

He got out of Egypt but only as far as Syria.  Now the US (where his wife lives!) won’t let him in.  All the while, and every day, the US admits Muslim refugees from all over the world, but we don’t let this Christian refugee in—it is maddening!

From Compass Direct News:

CAIRO, Egypt, March 21 (CDN) — When the plane carrying Maher El-Gohary and his daughter, Dina Mo’otahssem, took off from Cairo International Airport last month, they both wept with joy. After spending two-and-a-half years in hiding for leaving Islam to become Christians, they were elated by their newfound freedom.

They also felt secure that once they arrived in Syria, they would quickly obtain visas to the United States and start a new life. That hope soon proved unfounded.

After spending more than a week and a half unable to obtain a visa to the United States or to any country in Europe, they realized they may have traded in the reality of being prisoners in their own country for being refugees in another. And as El-Gohary watches the weeks pass and his resources dwindle, he said the stress is almost unbearable.

Read it all.