Day: December 11, 2008

Asylum seekers helped fuel Greek riots this week

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Still another update Dec. 13th:   Gates of Vienna posts further analysis of the riots here today.

Update Dec. 13th:  Here is a response to yesterday’s update article—largely in agreement and very intersting.

Update Dec. 12th:   Thanks to an analysis written by a Greek, I am now returning to my earlier hypothesis.  It is not simply the s0-called anarchist students, but involves Muslim immigrants.  I have been thinking about this alliance ever since I saw the anarchists (Marxists) marching in DC alongside the Muslim American Society.  From the postcript to this article.   Thanks to Baron Bodissey at Gates of Vienna for this additional information

Quite a few Greek “radical groups” have adopted Arabic “Noms de Guerre”, promote illegal immigration of Muslims into Europe and call in for the destruction of Western civilazation. They are part of an almost global network that acts as a “Soft power” element of the hard one as envisaged by Al Qaeda. Once more, it has to be stressed that rogue elements of Western security forces protect them and they have to be dealt with as soon as possible.

Update later:  My apologies for a misleading orginal title to this post.  I said the riots were started by asylum seekers when in fact asylum seekers didn’t join the riots until a few day later here.

Update minutes later:   Riots spreading in Europe, see Gates of Vienna here.

You could hardly miss the news this week that Athens was experiencing horrific rioting, the mainstream media told us it was started by anarchists (you know sort of like our leftwing radicals), and now more information is coming out.

According to the BBC, riots by anarchists were fueled by further rioting of political refugees being refused applications for asylum.   The film linked here is a must see.

Greek police have clashed with hundreds of migrants waiting to submit asylum applications in Athens.

It is the latest example of tensions in the Greek capital – which community leaders say is at risk of becoming a racial battleground.

This year, Greece has attracted a record 80,000 illegal immigrants, but has been criticised by Europe for failing to help asylum seekers.

Thanks to Patrick Cleburne at VDARE for reporting this story here.

You can find our earlier report on the Athens street slaughter (mentioned in the BBC clip) here.

Camp of Saints anyone?

“We’re broke!” Don’t come to America!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I never thought I would see the day anyone would have the nerve to call for a moratorium on refugee resettlement.   Here is a lengthy article from The Olympian in Washington State describing how difficult it is for refugees to find work and get by in America.  It begins:

The country is in a recession, jobs are hard to come by, and cash-strapped states are looking for all kinds of ways to cut back.

In the midst of that, more than 60,000 of the world’s most vulnerable people arrived on the nation’s doorstep between September 2007 and September 2008 – poor and in need – fleeing political upheaval in their home countries.

Some of the most recent arrived with few or no job skills, having lived years and sometimes decades in refugee camps. Few speak English; some, in fact, are illiterate even in their native tongues.

In Washington state, where 2,247 refugees settled, they are competing for work with a growing number of jobless Americans who have a strong home-court advantage.

With rents rising in the region, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for agencies to find them affordable places to live. And as the state looks for programs to cut, there’s concern they could lose critical services, such as help with English or finding work.

Refugees urge others not to come:

In the meantime, some refugees are trying to temper the expectations of friends and family in the camps, in line to reach the U.S. over the next few years.

May Wah, a Burmese refugee who arrived here in July with her husband, tells them: “If you don’t speak English, don’t come.”

But they don’t want to hear it. So they respond, “You are already in America. … What does it matter?”

Traditionally, even the staunchest immigration critics have tended to accept the country’s long humanitarian practice of taking in refugees from trouble spots around the globe – from people fleeing war and political persecution to victims of ethnic cleansing and, recently, Iraqis who have helped the U.S. military.

The United States leads all other countries in the resettlement of these refugees, with up to 80,000 to be allowed in through next September.

But now, given the current state of the economy, some are starting to suggest a moratorium on refugee resettlements until conditions here improve.

“We’re broke. Millions of Americans are losing their homes,” said Leon Donahue of Washingtonians for Immigration Reform. “We don’t have jobs for our own people,” let alone the immigrants who have arrived in the past few years.

“Under these conditions,” Donahue said, “I can’t imagine they’ll be any better off here.”

Read on and hear how refugees are very scared about not finding work, or losing the little bit they have now.

We have written many posts recently on jobless Iraqi refugees  and although this article doesn’t discuss Iraqi refugees per se, we can assume it has few jobs for Iraqis either, so Washington becomes state number 13 in our parade of  states with few jobs for refugees.

The first 12:   Arizona, Maryland, New Hampshire,Virginia, New York, Michigan, Ohio, Georgia, Idaho, Connecticut, New Mexico, and California.

UN meets in Geneva for Refugee Pow-wow

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

An “international dialogue” opened this week in Geneva, Switzerland where the UN High Commissioner for Refugees had some profound things to say about the plight of refugees.

GENEVA, December 10 (UNHCR) – The UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres on Wednesday opened a two-day international dialogue aimed at seeking solutions for millions of people caught up in the limbo of so-called “protracted refugee situations” in which they spend years in exile with no end in sight.

[….]

Guterres told some 300 representatives of more than 50 governments and governmental and non-governmental organizations in Geneva’s Palais des Nations that the world must do more to resolve the seemingly endless plight of nearly 6 million refugees who have spent years, and sometimes decades, in exile. Worldwide, UNHCR counts at least 30 such long-term refugee situations that have lasted five years or more, excluding Palestinians.

Check out the Palais des Nations here.   Can’t you just see the 300, many in native garb with wine glasses in manicured hand before a sumptuous meal discussing ‘what to do,’ ‘what to do.’

Describing the problem as one of “enormous proportions,” Guterres said many long-term refugees are effectively trapped. They cannot go home because their countries of origin are at war or are affected by serious human rights violations. Only a relatively small proportion have a chance of being resettled in third countries, and in many cases their first asylum country will not allow them to fully integrate or become citizens…

There is nothing new here, nothing profound.  I am sorry to say, there are no large governmental answers, only little personal answers.

To each of you losing sleep, find your own way to help someone, either close to home or abroad.

Changing the subject (a little),  did you see Bill Ayers on with Chris Matthews last night?   As he moaned about the terrible suffering of the Vietnamese people, supposedly at our hands in the late ’60’s, I wondered what he ever personally did to help anyone in Vietnam.  I also wondered if he has seen the poverty in present-day Communist Vietnam—the Communist country he helped create.

More immigrants=more housing starts

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

If you are thinking about boosting the economy this is a good thing.  If you care about open space and the environment this is a bad thing.  I told you I am behind in my posting, so here is  mention of a report in Immigration Daily about a background paper written for Congress from a few weeks ago.

The Congressional Budget Office recently released a “Background Paper on The Outlook for Housing Starts, 2009-2012” which shows the positive impact of immigrants on the real estate sector of the economy. The report says “Over the past 25 years, the annual change in the number of households due to population growth has trended neither upward nor downward, as a rise in net immigration has offset a decline in the natural increase of the adult population.” In other words, without the immigration inflow that we have seen in the past quarter century, the state of real estate values in the US right now would be even gloomier than it is. The report goes on to say “Higher immigration than expected would boost household formation, adding to housing starts, whereas lower immigration would reduce the number of starts.” Congress should seriously consider increasing immigration in light of the recent sharp decline in real estate values across the country.

But, wait, didn’t giving mortgages to people who couldn’t afford them bring about much of our economic meltdown.  Is this report suggesting we do more of that?

You might go back and review this post about the “ecological footprint” each immigrant leaves and re-watch the Numbers USA film .

Just as our population is stablizing these Budget office guys are suggesting we need more people so builders can keep making money.   Did you ever wonder what would happen if the Environmental titans  went up against the Immigration titans?   Well, it won’t happen anytime soon because the major environmental groups in the US are afraid of the issue because they take so much of their funding from the same Leftist foundations and individuals as the Open Borders people do.   Immigration is a verboten issue at the Sierra Club, the Environmental Defense Fund, the Audubon Society etc. etc.