Month: June 2008

Campaign underway to bring North Korean refugees to the US

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

So far we have only brought a few North Korean refugees here, but the push is on.   I don’t have anything definitive, but it’s just like the Rohingya situation, one starts to hear the faint drumbeats that the US MUST save another beleaguered group. 

This is from something called MyDD (direct democracy) which I confess is a political blog I had never heard of:

This is a terrible situation [Editor: aren’t they all?]. Surely, the United States has it in our hearts to provide some kind of help to North Koreans living as refugees in China.

North Korea pays China a bounty of around $300 for each North Korean caught and returned to North Korea. Returned escapees will typically be prosecuted, then imprisoned, or, if it is their third attempt, summarily executed, for the crime of betraying the fatherland by leaving.

Surely the US could match that $300 [Editor: can you see it now, a bidding war with North Korea to benefit the Chinese] and provide a new start for North Korean refugees somewhere in the US, where they would be happy to get a new start. Many have led terrible lives and they are also discriminated against in South Korea.

And then this:

They need a safe place they can go and live in peace.

Why the heck should the South Koreans discriminate against their cultural kin.  South Korea is a peaceful prosperous country and if they are a friend of ours, we should tell them to take in their own people! 

Besides, a reader tells me (but I haven’t researched it yet) that there is a shortage of marriageable men for South Korean women and that they are importing Thais for husbands (oh brother!).

Burmese conflicted about coming to the US

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Here is an article from the San Francisco Chronicle about the large number of Burmese refugees entering the US.  You may have noticed them in your city or town already.  Since 2006, according to this article, we have resettled 32,000 Burmese refugees (mostly Christian with some Muslims slipped in) and expect another 18,000 this year.

We’ve written many times about the Burmese but since we have so many new readers I thought this article had some useful information about the Patriot Act and the what is known as the ‘material support for terrorism provision’ and how it can be waived. 

Thanks to a new U.S. policy, Nid Paw hopes to become one of 18,000 Burmese refugees allowed to settle in the United States in 2008. Before the change in law, the Patriot Act had barred refugee status for those who had provided “material support” to organizations on the State Department terrorist list. Because many Burmese refugees had lived in regions where ethnic armies have fought for independence against government troops for decades, they were typically denied entry simply for giving food, water or housing to guerrilla fighters – even if under duress.

In 2006, the Department of Homeland Security recognized that Burmese refugees were unlikely to be terrorists and waived the material support clause, opening the door to an estimated 140,000 Burmese refugees living in nine camps along the Thailand-Burma border.

But the change also makes Nid Paw and other refugees uncertain about the lives they will leave behind and the problems they will face with a different culture, language and educational system, and an economy that is likely to offer no better than a minimum-wage job.

Besides the information on terrorism and the situation in Burma, it was interesting to see that the Burmese really hope to return to a democratic Burma someday.   Chances are slim because most refugees in America won’t make much more than minimum wage, so the cost alone would be prohibitive.

Nid Paw is unsure how she will arrange travel documents to return to Thailand. Refugees must wait five years before applying for green cards, and even then many lack the funds to return.

Using our search function for ‘Burmese refugees’ here is the archive for previous posts on this group.

Free speech and Steyn win one in Canada

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We’ve discussed on several previous occasions that author Mark Steyn and Macleans magazine were recently dragged before the so-called Candadian Human Rights Commission to answer charges that Steyn and the magazine voiced extremist views when Macleans published an article by Steyn based on his best selling book, America Alone.

Now comes word that Steyn and Mcleans have won.

The Canadian Human Rights Commission has dismissed a complaint by a Muslim organization against Maclean’s, ruling that the views expressed in one of the magazine’s articles were not “of an extreme nature.”

The Canadian Islamic Congress had alleged that the article written by Mark Steyn entitled “The Future Belongs to Islam” and posted on the magazine’s website in October 2006 discriminated and spread hatred against Muslims.

The article, an excerpt of a book authored by Steyn, talks about Islam being a threat to North American institutions and values. It used statistics to show higher birth rates plus immigration mean Muslims will outnumber followers of other religions in Western Europe.

Steyn begins his announcement of the decision on his website on June 27th:

On Thursday, the Canadian “Human Rights” Commission (very quietly) dismissed the Canadian Islamic Congress complaint against Maclean’s re America Alone – and without even giving the Socks the consolation of an Ontario-style drive-by verdict.

So what is a ‘sock’?   That is short for ‘sock puppet’ which is the term used widely to describe the Muslims who filed charges against Steyn.  See the blog, Free Mark Steyn, for a photo of a sock puppet here.  You gotta laugh!

Read Mark Steyn’s America Alone.   Judy and I have included it at the top of our list of recommended books here.

Note to all those who wish to silence us in North America—we aren’t European or British!

 

Michael Savage being himself on refugees

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Here is something I missed previously,  radio talk show host Michael Savage commenting on remarks by First Lady Laura Bush for World Refugee Day.    I don’t know what Laura Bush said, I didn’t even pay attention at the time or look it up now because I knew it would be some politically correct mumbo jumbo.    Here is Savage: 

And moreover, let me tell you something. I am an immigrant son, but when my grandfather came here, he could read and write. And he had a business that he opened with his money — the first monies he got, he opened his own business. He knew how to use toilet paper; he had used a toothbrush. We’re getting refugees now who have never used a telephone, a toothbrush, or toilet paper. You’re telling me they’re going to assimilate? They will never assimilate. They come here and they bring their destitute ways to this country, and they never assimilate. And then their children become gang-bangers. It is a disaster. Did you hear what I just said? A disaster. And Laura Bush is talking about political refugees as though it’s 1955. It’s pretty amazing to me that she is as out of touch as her husband is. 

I wonder if Mr. Savage has seen an advance copy of Mark Krikorian’s latest book, The New Case Against Immigration, due out this week.   Krikorian, in more genteel terms says the same thing—this isn’t 1955, or 1924—things have changed.

The “lottery”: Somali refugees in Africa stream to camps in hopes of going West

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Here is an article from The National (a UAE newspaper?) this past week that explains why the flow of Somalis to camps will continue as long as there is hope that the US will scoop them up and bring them to a town near you.

UN officials are trying to deal with overcrowded camps along the Somali border.   One option is to move them a thousand miles to camps originally set up for Sudanese but increasingly empty because the Sudanese are going home. 

One option the United Nations is considering is moving Somali refugees across Kenya to camps originally set up for Sudanese refugees.

The Kakuma camp on Kenya’s north-western border holds 130,000 refugees from Sudan’s 22-year civil war. But since a peace deal was signed in 2005, most of the Sudanese refugees have returned home. Last year, 66,000 Sudanese were repatriated from Kakuma and the United Nations expects a further 50,000 to return this year.

As the camps near the Somali border continue to fill – 4,000 refugees are estimated to flee across the border every month – officials would like to move some of them to Kakuma.

OK, that sounds like a good plan, but the article goes on to give excuses why that would be difficult.  So, they send some here.

Since Somalia is still too dangerous to send refugees back home, UN officials have been trying to resettle them in other countries. But this is a slow process as refugees from Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries compete for the limited number of refugee resettlement spots that western countries make available.

About 3,000 refugees were resettled from Dadaab last year, mostly to the United States. This is still less than the amount arriving in the camps each month. Yet refugees hold out hope that they will be among the lucky ones to start a new life in the West.

“The refugees call it the lottery,” said Francesca Bonelli, a community services officer with the United Nations. “It is completely life changing if they get resettled. It is the big dream.”

As long as the UN and the US send any Somalis to the US, the spigot will remain open and the flow continue as Somalis play the lottery.   Put out the word that “refugees” will be sent a thousand miles to another camp across Africa and I bet they will stop arriving at the rate of 4000 a month.