New York Times and Iran helping fan the flames in Burma

I’ll wager at this very moment the Islamist sympathizers in the US State Department (and Samantha Power in the White House where she worked her magic on Libya) are working overtime to figure out how to save the poor Rohingya Muslims from those bad racist Buddhists in Burma.

They are probably working on some insane airlift idea just to prove to the Muslim world that Americans are good people!

I simply have no more time this morning to write one more loooong story on Burma and the on-going public relations campaign by so-called human rights activists who are pushing only one theme out of Burma/Myanmar and that is the story that the Rohingya are VICTIMS.   It is maddening to open my Rohingya alerts every day and to have watched over the last five years how this story has been spun and spun and spun.  What a bunch of sheep!

To make my point, I recommend these stories from my alerts today—The New York Times re-posting from the International Herald Tribune, here.  Or, this one from the UK Independent (benighted minority indeed!).  And, for a good laugh, Iran calls it genocide!

You know what has them all fuming and furious?  The fact that the Burmese government, encouraged by Buddhist monks, had the audacity to say NO to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation here which wanted to set up shop in their Buddhist country!

Note to volunteers in the refugee resettlement business, be on the lookout for more Muslims from Burma arriving in your towns (they may not be labelled as Rohingya), but if you have already resettled hundreds of Christians or Buddhists from Burma you will notice the animosity toward the new arrivals—long simmering tension is not going to melt in America!

One more thing!  (gee, now I am getting long after all).  Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese human rights activist refusing the politically correct Muslims-are-victims meme and now being chastised because she hasn’t jumped when the Islamists and their sympathizers say “jump,” had it right recently at Harvard (from that NYT article):

During a forum at Harvard’s Kennedy School last month, according to a story on Global Post, a student from Thailand asked Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi to “explain why you have been so reluctant” to comment about the oppression of the Rohingya.

“The mood in the room suddenly shifted,” the article said. “Suu Kyi’s tone and expression changed. With an edge in her voice, she answered: ‘You must not forget that there have been human rights violations on both sides of the communal divide. It’s not a matter of condemning one community or the other. I condemn all human rights violations.’ ”

Texas immigration attorney working to expand definition of “asylum” to include “narco refugees”

He wants those escaping Mexican drug wars to be granted asylum in the US!  Imagine that!  We should grant asylum to everyone trying to escape crime anywhere in the world!

First, a reader asked me the other day to post the definition of “refugee” and so we can keep this straight, here also is the definition of “asylum” from the USCIS (emphasis mine):

Refugee status or asylum may be granted to people who have been persecuted or fear they will be persecuted on account of race, religion, nationality, and/or membership in a particular social group or political opinion. [I don’t see listed here people who are afraid of crime in their home country.—ed]

Refugees

Refugee status is a form of protection that may be granted to people who meet the definition of refugee and who are of special humanitarian concern to the United States. Refugees are generally people outside of their country who are unable or unwilling to return home because they fear serious harm. For a legal definition of refugee, see section 101(a)(42) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).

You may seek a referral for refugee status only from outside of the United States. For more information about refugees, see the  “Refugees” section.

Asylum

Asylum status is a form of protection available to people who:

~Meet the definition of refugee (above)
~Are already in the United States
~Are seeking admission at a port of entry

You may apply for asylum in the United States regardless of your country of origin or your current immigration status. For more information about asylum status, see the “Asylum” section.   [We don’t take refugees from all countries in the world, but an asylum seeker is not constrained by that requirement and he or she can have entered the US illegally—ed]

By the way, asylum seekers don’t get the welfare that refugees get immediately, but do get the taxpayer-funded goodies once granted asylum.

Here is the story from Texas at the Los Angeles Times:

EL PASO — One of his clients, a Mexican waitress and widowed mother of three, says she played dead under a pile of bodies to survive a massacre in Ciudad Juarez led by men she recognized as federal police.

Another client says Chihuahua state police hacked off his feet after he refused to pay them bribes.

They came to El Paso seeking Carlos Spector, 58, a burly, hard-charging immigration attorney who has developed a strange specialty in this Texas border city. His clients, instead of crossing into the United States illegally and hiding out, are seeking asylum.

To the dismay of conservative critics in the U.S. who call asylum seekers “narco refugees” and some officials in Mexico who call them “traitors,” Spector has been trying to broaden the definition of asylum, a status granted to those fleeing persecution in their home countries. He calls them “exiles.”

Compared with those fleeing other countries, relatively few Mexicans have been granted asylum. Still, the number of applications has risen rapidly and reflects, Spector says, the collapse of order in parts of Mexico.

Number of asylum cases and approved cases are up!

As cartel violence increased in Mexico, so did requests for asylum. Such requests can basically be made in two ways, and the method often reflects the resources and circumstances of the applicant.

Some applicants seek asylum “affirmatively,” meaning they already have entered the United States, sometimes with a border crossing card, and then approach U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Last fiscal year, 4,042 Mexicans sought asylum this way, more than triple the number of applications five years earlier. During the same period, the agency approval rate increased slightly — to 9% from 7%.

People may also seek asylum “defensively.” A defensive claim is made when a person seeks asylum at a port of entry — such as a bridge or airport — or if the person is picked up for entering the country illegally and faces proceedings in immigration court. In the last fiscal year, 6,133 Mexicans sought asylum defensively, up from 4,510 the year before, according to U.S. Justice Department figures.

Experts say this method is more adversarial because the asylum seeker is often fighting in immigration court hoping to avoid deportation.

In fiscal years 2007 through 2011, U.S. immigration courts received 21,104 defensive asylum claims from Mexicans. During the same time period, 2% of such Mexican asylum applications were granted. By contrast, out of all U.S. asylum applicants during the same period, about 24% were granted.

Among the top 25 nationalities granted asylum, Chinese often top the list. Last fiscal year, Mexicans ranked 23rd — the first time they made the list in five years.

Are these lawyers and NGOs actively helping people get across the border and then providing them with legal counsel?

I think so!

In March 2010, I attended the 30th Anniversary “celebration” of the Refugee Resettlement Act of 1980 in Washington DC and came away with one strong impression—as the refugee program itself was coming under more scrutiny, the NGO federal contractors were pinning more hope on the asylum portion of the law to get larger numbers of needy people (Democrat voters) into the US more quickly.    Here is one post I wrote in early 2011 in which I recommend a Congressional investigation of the asylum racket.   Of course, none is forthcoming!

For new readers:  we have an entire category entitled “asylum seekers” with 309 previous posts.  You might want to visit that archive to see some other recent posts on the topic (like the story yesterday about illegal alien asylum seekers pretending to be Rohingya Muslims to gain access to western countries).

Egypt confiscated documents that prove previous Jewish ownership of land and businesses

This is the latest news to come out of the efforts of Israel’s campaign to prove to the world that it’s not just the Palestinians who were refugees in the Middle East, that thousands and thousands of Jews were expelled from their homes by Muslims and lost property as they too became refugees.

It seems that the glorious Arab Spring resulted in the confiscation by the government of documents proving ownership by Jews of assets in Egypt.

From The Times of Israel (hat tip:  Legal Insurrection):

Egyptian authorities confiscated some 1.7 million documents reportedly proving Jewish ownership of land and assets in Cairo. The documents were reportedly about to be shipped out of the country to Israel, in what the Egyptian daily Al-Ahram is calling “the most dangerous case of security breach in history.”

The documents were found in 13 large cases, ready to be transported to Jordan and from there to Israel, Egyptian media reported Sunday.

Elaph, a Saudi-owned news site, reported that Egyptian police received notice that the packages were being held at a shipping company in the Nasser City district of Cairo. Upon arriving at the scene, police found over 1.7 million documents dating back to the 19th century, dealing with Jewish ownership of assets in Cairo. The documents, according to the security source speaking to the Saudi site, weighed over two tons.

Preliminary investigations have revealed that the documents were supposed to be used in an Israeli lawsuit involving Jewish property lost in Egypt’s 1952 revolution, the site reported. According to Elaph, Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi is personally following the case, which it said affects Egypt’s national security.

The documents were reportedly stolen on December 16, 2011, from a Cairo research institution, the Institut d’Égypte, during public riots that erupted following president Hosni Mubarak’s ouster.

Motive for Minneapolis Somali terror recruitment: create Islamic holy warriors

Way back in March of 2009, I went to a Senate Homeland Security hearing in Washington to hear testimony before Senators Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins about the investigation into the Somali Al-Shabab recruitment on-going in Minneapolis (then and now!).

Federal investigators told the Senators, to their obvious relief, that this was all about nationalism (fighting Ethiopians!) on the part of the Somali jihad recruits and that Al-Qaeda was not involved.  Now we know that both of those assessments were wrong, but at the time I wondered how the feds could have been so misguided because even to casual observers it was apparent that they were on the wrong track (but why? political correctness run amok?).

Here is a story from last week (yet another story) about the terrorist recruitment trial that just wrapped up in Minnesota.  This is what the FBI now says:

Most of the young men who left Minnesota to become holy warriors hadn’t seen Somalia since they were toddlers, when their families fled at the outset of the 1991 civil war. For that reason, investigators believe that the young men needed indoctrination to get them to go, and help to get there.

“We know now that we were dealing with an organized effort,” Wilson said. “To leave the relative comforts of a place like this, you’ve got to have some external influence, absolutely.” [Readers, in my view, this is one of the most egregious errors we make in trying to assess danger involving Islamists—they aren’t like us!  Those following Mohammad’s teaching (Koran and Hadiths) don’t need comfort and the good things in life.—ed]

[….]

At first, these recruiters appealed to the men’s sense of nationalism, calling on them to help rout Ethiopian soldiers — a traditional enemy — from Somalia. But Wilson said the long-term goal was to radicalize the men as Islamist holy warriors with an agenda of spreading their extremist views across the Horn of Africa. 

I hope someone went back to Lieberman and Collins and made sure they now understand that!

It is not over! More Minneapolis Somali former refugees joining Al-Shabab!

Minnesota Public Radio reports that at least two more ‘youths’ left this summer to join the Jihadists.  Don’t you just love it, you, with your tax dollars, raised them, fed them, housed them and educated them so that now they can be strong and healthy Islamic warriors!

ST. PAUL, Minn. — Four years after federal authorities in the Twin Cities began investigating homegrown recruitment for the terrorist group al-Shabab, at least two additional men slipped away to Somalia as recently as July.

Federal authorities believe the Minneapolis men joined the group and are still in the East African nation.

The FBI’s confirmation this week that a terrorist conduit continues to flow from Minnesota to Somalia perplexes members of Minnesota’s Somali community, who have watched with dismay as young men have disappeared.

It’s ALWAYS been about religion and not nationalism (FBI now re-writing the story line):

So religion appears to be al-Shabab’s predominant battle cry. Al-Shabab’s end game has always been to to radicalize its troops through its extreme interpretation of Islam, Wilson said.

For new readers:  We have resettled another 14,757 Somalis into the US during Fiscal years 2008 through 2011 (Obama years!)   Check out the numbers yourself here at the Cultural Orientation Resource Center data base.  In 2008, the US State Department suspended family reunification for Somalis (and some others from Africa) when they discovered widespread fraud—gee, they weren’t family they were bringing over after all!   Estimates are that as many as 36,000 Somalis may have entered the US fraudulently from 2003-2008, here. (Bush years!)

Oh, and family reunification is now up and running for Somalis!

Some asylum seekers in Europe pretend to be Rohingya

Here is a new twist in the asylum racket.

Since Rohingya Muslims from Burma/Bangladesh are being promoted as the most persecuted people on the planet (a claim we have challenged here for years), some illegal immigrants are claiming they are Rohingya Muslims in Europe and in Canada in hopes of getting the much-coveted refugee status.

From WeeklyBlitz.net:

Following publication of the report titled ‘Fake Rohingyas entering Western countries’ in Blitz, we have been receiving specific information from various sources from a number of Western countries, where Bangladeshi nationals have already sought political asylum pretending to be Ronhigyas born in Arakan. According to our sources, only during 2011-2012, a few thousand fake Rohingyas already sought political asylum only in the European nations, while a significant number of so-called Rohingyas are also reportedly seeking asylum in Canada.

That is the important news.  Most of the remainder of the story is pro-Rohingya propaganda being promoted by the ‘humanitarian’ lobby.

For new readers, this is the 124th post in our Rohingya Reports category.