Update! What do you know, Bulgaria is building a fence, check it out here.
As I scoured my alerts this morning I see there are several about Bulgaria struggling to cope with the Syrian refugee flow coming across their border from Turkey. Previously I speculated that the flow out of Turkey toward Bulgaria instead of Greece was due to Greece’s strengthened border security. This article confirms that.
See all of our recent coverage of poor Bulgaria’s predicament, here.
About 100 people are arriving at Bulgaria’s border with Turkey daily, and the numbers are rapidly increasing. In the past, Bulgaria received, on average, 1,000 migrants and asylum seekers per year. This year, more than 6,500 have arrived, leaving officials scrambling to find housing and funds to accommodate them.
Arrivals have increased steadily since August, and at the current rate, the ministry of the interior estimates it will have received 11,000 to 15,000 by year’s end – the vast majority Syrian.
“We see that the government is overwhelmed, and that the reception capacity has been depleted,” said Cheshirkov.
Smugglers who used to lead migrants from Turkey into Greece are increasingly moving them to Bulgaria instead, in part due to the construction of a 10.5km fence at one of the most popular crossing points along the Turkish-Greek border.
Bulgaria, a country of just 7.5 million people, is one of the poorest in the European Union.
“We are just at the beginning of this crisis,” Vasil Marinov, deputy minister of the interior, told IRIN.
Of course no one ever says a word about how Turkey, which is financially and militarily in a better situation, should be stopping them on their side of the border!
Adapting to life in the United States can be a challenge for some refugees. Here a Somali woman in Speedway, Indiana, is shown the proper operation of a hot and cold water faucet. (from the DOS press release)
This is a press release from the US State Department from a couple of days ago. There is nothing much here that we haven’t seen before, but it’s useful to review this information from time to time especially as we have new readers joining us every day.
Here are just a few of the facts the State Department wants you to know (emphasis added is mine):
Washington — The United States welcomed a record number of refugees in fiscal year 2013.
The 69,930 refugees who found safe haven this year in the United States represent the Obama administration’s commitment to creating a refugee admissions program that meets important security screening standards as well as growing humanitarian need. The number of admitted refugees also is closer to the authorized ceiling — 70,000 in 2013 — than in any year since 1980, according to figures provided by the U.S. Department of State.
[….]
The top five nationalities resettled to the United States in 2013 were Iraqi, Burmese, Bhutanese, Somali and Cuban. Upon their arrival in the United States, refugees have been resettled in 186 communities in 49 states. [Wyoming does not participate—ed] Through use of transit centers hosted by the governments of Romania and Slovakia, the United States was able to resettle Iraqi refugees trapped by the war in Syria as well as at-risk Afghan women who were formerly in Iran.
[….]
For fiscal year 2014, President Obama authorized the admission of another 70,000 refugees, representing some 60 nationalities from around the world. The United States expects strong arrivals from Iraq, Burma and Bhutan. Efforts are being made to increase the number of Congolese and Syrian refugees who wish to settle in the United States.
[….]
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates there are approximately 15.4 million refugees in the world. The UNHCR reports that less than 1 percent of all refugees are eventually resettled in third countries. Of these, the United States welcomes over half, more than all other resettlement countries combined.More than 3 million refugees have come to the United States in the last 35 years, according to the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration. The United States is also the single-largest donor to international relief efforts for refugees.
For our complete fact sheet and one of the most highly sought after features at RRW, click here.
This time it is two Somali girls and they went to Syria to join the Jihad.
Product of Norwegian refugee program—hunting in Nairobi!
Stories like this one in the Washington Post (‘Norway’s Somali community rattled by reports of young members joining jihadist groups’) like to put a spin on the story with a title like that one—the “Somali community” is worried! It is a subtle way to send the message that there are only a few bad apples in the bunch, and leaders of the “Somali community” and the mainstream media want to be sure you understand that (even if you only read the headline).
This piece might well have been titled: ‘Norwegian intelligence concerned that 30-40 Norwegians have joined Jihad in Syria; could bring terror-training back to Norway.’
OSLO, Norway — Somali immigrants in Norway fear that violent extremism is taking root in the community after reports of young Somali-Norwegians traveling abroad to join jihadist groups.
One of the gunmen in the Nairobi, Kenya, mall attack that killed 67 people last month has been identified as Hassan Abdi Dhuhulow, a 23-year-old Norwegian citizen who returned to his native Somalia in 2010.
Norway’s Somali community was still coming to terms with that news when it was struck by another startling development: Two teenage sisters — 16 and 19 — had left their family in Norway to join the civil war in Syria.
“It is very shocking,” said Mohamed Husein Gaas, a Somali-born East Africa expert at the Fafo research foundation in Oslo. “No one thought two young girls would travel to a place where they don’t have any connection.”
It’s not clear how exactly the sisters from suburban Oslo, who have not been named, planned to participate in the Syrian war. But they told their family they wanted to take part in jihad, said Bashe Musse, a Somali community leader and local politician in Oslo.
Norwegian newspaper VG said they flew to Turkey and made their way to the Syrian border, without telling their family until they had left Norway.
There’s Turkey again!—is the Erdogan government facilitating the movement of Islamists through Turkey? See Bulgaria here a few days ago.
Then this:
…..the vast majority of Somalis in Norway don’t support violent extremism. About 30,000 people in Norway were either born in Somalia or have Somali parents. The wealthy Nordic country is one of the most popular destinations for Somali immigrants in Europe along with Britain, Sweden and the Netherlands.
The Syria conflict has attracted hundreds of foreign fighters from European countries, many of whom have joined Islamic militant groups. An estimated 30 to 40 people — and possibly more — have left from Norway alone, according to the domestic intelligence service PST. Security officials are concerned that they could pose terror threats once they return home combat-hardened and traumatized by war.
Are we raising Muslim armies?
We’ve often noted that Somalis/other refugees come to the West and we raise the kids (with your tax dollars), grow them into healthy and educated adults who then have no interest in the Western “good life.” Had we left them in their own hellholes in Africa and the Middle East they may well have never survived to become Jihadists!
This is an update of a story we posted here,here, and here in August.
Skipping through the horror stories and dreadful photos to soften you up toward Mexican illegal aliens, here are some of the important bits of the article in the New York Daily News (hat tip: Ed).
We do have a heart—this situation is horrific for those caught in the trap of Mexican drug cartels.
But, the bottomline is that asylum protection was never intended to protect people from crimes that their own government should be protecting them from. Can you imagine how much worse our border would become (yes it could be worse!) if fleeing from drug cartels (or other such criminal activity) became a legitimate reason to grant asylum in the US.
Six paragraphs after the opening horror story we learn (emphasis mine):
According to U.S. Department of Homeland Security figures, more than 23,000 Mexicans sought political asylum in the first nine months of this year, quadruple the number of requests made in 2009. The spiraling number of pleas for entry is driven by the exponential growth of cartel terrorism against everyday villagers and townspeople, say immigrants and human rights groups.
Another horror story then this:
More than 90 percent of Mexican asylum requests are denied by immigration judgeswho must adhere to a strict legal standard in a process that may drag out for months and years. Applicants must show “credible fear” of persecution on the grounds of race, religion, nationality or membership in a social group.
A pitch to fix our “dysfunctional immigration system?” Are we to find a way to bring this group of aliens to the US? To create some new category of protection? Is that what Nunez is saying? Or, has the New York Daily News reporter used Nunez’s words to imply that is what we should conclude?
Peter Nunez
Despite the extremely low percentage of approved asylum petitions, the issue has nonetheless become part of America’s divisive political discord on immigration issues.
“It’s another symptom of the dysfunctional immigration system we have,” said Peter Nunez,a former U.S. Attorney in San Diego and a high-ranking member of the Treasury Department under President George H.W. Bush.
“These people don’t have a legitimate claim,” he told The News. “They’re not being persecuted by their government. They should seek the help of authorities for public safety claims.”
What about claims that the government and law enforcement are corrupted by powerful, billion-dollar cartels?
“That doesn’t qualify them for refugee status,” Nunez said. “It’s not the American government’s role to do what the Mexican government cannot do.”
These reportedly high detention figures need to be investigated (especially as they are being quoted by Soros’s/Norquist’s pal Ali Noorani of the National Immigration Forum. I’m guessing the largest numbers are because the aliens have been determined to be a safety risk or are on their way to deportation.
After requesting asylum, most Mexicans are locked up in federal detention centers, where they wait for a court hearing in the backlogged system.
Some are held because they have criminal backgrounds ranging from misdemeanors to felonies. Others have no one to vouch for them in the U.S., and so remain in custody.
On any given day, there are 31,800 detainees in more than 257 federal centers across the country, held for a variety of immigration issues, according to recent figures from the National Immigration Forum, a Washington-based nonprofit group.
Funny that the NY Daily News doesn’t mention that Nunez is chairman of the board at the Center for Immigration Studies, a leading immigration control group, and is thus on our side of the great divide.
It is maddening (as so many things are these days!)! Why does the American media rarely (here Bloomberg News does write about it) mention that the much ballyhooed RAINBOW NATION of South Africa is experiencing xenophobic violence and a murder rate six times higher than the US?
Somalis in recent violence in Pretoria. Photo: Marc Morris/AP
I do know why, the Left is so invested in the idea of South Africa being run successfully by commie blacks (who would wipe out racism and ethnic nationalism) that it would never allow its media arm to tell the world what a bunch of ‘unwelcoming’ xenophobes they are! The Mandela mythology is so deep, the truth will rarely be told in the West.
And, of course they have to use the word xenophobe instead of racist because this is black on black violence.
Kind of interesting though that it is Somalis getting the brunt of the hatred there.
Here are some excerpts from a longish piece at Bloomberg News. (Emphasis mine)
Let me know if you see this article reprinted in say the Washington Post or New York Times!
Ali Omar Mohamed fled Somalia’s civil war two years ago to seek a better life in South Africa. Now after being robbed at gunpoint and seeing scores of his countrymen murdered in xenophobic violence, he’s ready to leave.
Mohammed, a 21-year-old shopkeeper, is part of a growing tide of immigrants who say they prefer returning to a war zone rather than face the hatred and jealousy they are subject to in South Africa where they’re called “the enemy.”
What a coincidence! Muslims have the money to own the convenience stores there too!
Over the past six months, disputes between Somali shopkeepers and South Africans have deteriorated into looting and burning sprees of dozens of stores in parts of Johannesburg and the coastal city of Port Elizabeth, according to police.
[….]
Somalis and Pakistanis, who’re able to tap their close-knit communities for capital to start businesses, dominate convenience stores known as spaza shops in townships and shantytowns on the outskirts of South Africa’s major cities.
Conspicuous by their distinctive languages and Muslim religion in a mainly Christian country, their business acumen has stoked jealousy among many citizens in South Africa, where one-in-four are unemployed. [Do I see a little Islamophobia creeping in?—ed]
“There are too many foreigners here, they undercut everyone. Every corner, there is a Somali shop,” Magdalene Thabana, 56, said as she sat on a red plastic stool selling bags of scones across the road from Mohamed’s store. “I don’t have enough money to start a shop.”
Murder rate six times higher than the US!
A wave of xenophobic violence led to about 60 deaths, including some Somalis, and as many as 50,000 people being forced to flee their homes and shops in 2008. Since then, Somalis have been the hardest hit by outbreaks of xenophobic violence, police spokeswoman Brigadier Marinda Mills said in a phone interview.
While South Africa’s murder rate has dropped by more than half to 31.1 per 100,000 people since 1995, it remains six times higher than that of the U.S. [And, I’m betting they don’t always do their killing with guns!—South Africa has strict gun control laws according to theWashington Post.—ed]
Guess it’s time to go home to Somalia!
In South Africa, the situation for Somalis is deteriorating.
“Somalis are subjected to a high rate of fatalities and loss of livelihoods,” Munyaneza said in an interview. “This is unprecedented. They’re being attacked with impunity. The Somalis are the ones who are the hardest hit amongst the foreigners.”
As a party to the 1951 Refugee Convention, “asylum seekers” should not be passing through South Africa as a conduit to America. Legitimate asylum seekers/refugees should be asking for asylum there.
We have written a lot about South Africa, click here, for our complete archive.
