Day: March 25, 2009

More “refugees” arrive in the US from Malta

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

If you are wondering how someone is a refugee from Malta, they really aren’t.  The “refugees” are actually people who arrived in Malta as illegal aliens and then thanks to former US ambassador “tea party Molly,” get to come to the US as refugees.   It is a policy that I believe is resulting in the huge problems Malta is having with boatloads of Africans arriving on its shores—get to Malta and then to mainland Europe or you might really hit the jackpot and get to the US.

This is a family that I think is destined for heartbreak in America.  Their hopes are so high and they are going to MICHIGAN, normally a fine state but with one of the highest unemployment rates in the country!  By the way, what happened to the State Department plan to pull out of Michigan?  And, judging by the photo it looks like they have a pretty nice place in Malta; who knows what sort of place they will live in in Michigan where they were scheduled to arrive yesterday (or today).

Nine years after refugee Brima Kabba landed in Malta he is finally getting the “better future” he was searching for when he escaped the maiming civil war in his homeland, Sierra Leone.

Before most people would have woken up this morning, Mr Kabba, his wife and their three children will be at the airport waiting to travel to Michigan, under the US resettlement programme.

There they will finally be able to live without having to worry about what will happen next since, once they get to the US, they will receive citizenship within five years.

“I don’t know exactly what will happen once we’re there,” the 38-year-old father says with beaming eyes. “But my main plan is to give my children what I didn’t get when I was young.

Read the rest of the story here.  Some enterprising reporter should follow their story over the next year to see how they do.

For our coverage of the immigration mess in Malta, see our archives here.  We have been posting on Malta since July 2007.

See the latest on immigrant riots in Malta just this week here.

UN Report: Asylum seekers increase, but overall number still only half of what it was in 2001

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This news account in the International Herald Tribune of a report by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reminded me that we don’t write often enough about asylum.   Asylees are people who claim persecution of some sort (political, religious, etc) but have usually already arrived on a country’s doorstep.  Simply being an economic migrant doesn’t count.

Once granted asylum, at least in the US, the person is given the same perks that a refugee receives—a caseworker, food stamps, cash help, job counseling and so forth.

The UNHCR says the number of asylum seekers worldwide has risen in the last year, but is still only half of what it was in 2001.

PARIS: Turmoil in Afghanistan and Somalia swelled the ranks of asylum-seekers last year, driving refugee numbers higher for a second consecutive year after they dropped to a two-decade low in 2006, the United Nations refugee agency said Tuesday.

Iraqis remained the single largest population of people seeking protection in industrialized countries, but their numbers fell 10 percent in 2008 from the previous year, the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said.

Overall, the United States remained the chief destination for refugees from all countries, receiving 13 percent of total applications.

In all, about 383,000 people made new asylum requests in 51 countries in 2008, according to the U.N. agency. That was 12 percent more than the 341,000 who sought protection the previous year, and more than the 307,000 who sought assistance in 2006, when numbers fell to a 20-year low.

Still, the 2008 figures were well below level of 2001, when 623,000 people lodged new asylum claims, the U.N. agency said in a report on asylum trends in industrialized countries in 2008.

You can get the full report here.  See also the 2007 Yearbook of Immigrant Statistics for more fun with numbers, here.     We actually have more asylees entering the US than refugees and those asylees had the where-with-all to get here and are not screened in advance by Homeland Security as are refugees.

And for those who think Sweden is so kind, so diverse, so humane, so much better than the US, take note.  Looks like they may be full-up.

Sweden tightened its rules last year, resulting in a drop of two-thirds in the number of Iraqis who requested protection there.

See “Muslim immigration killing Sweden” here.