Thousands of Iraqis granted asylum in Sweden

12/11/2009 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

And, Swedes aren’t too happy about it if the commenters to this article are representative of the Swedish population as a whole. Hat tip: Baron at Gates of Vienna and Richard at Blue Ridge Forum.

Here is the story from The Local ( a Swedish publication):

Sweden granted protection to 8,700 asylum seekers in 2008, with Iraqis accounting for almost half the total, according to new figures from EU statistics office Eurostat.

Just four EU countries took in more asylum seekers than Sweden: France (11 500), Germany (10,700), the United Kingdom (10,200), and Italy (9,700).

[….]

Some 16,600 Iraqis won the right to settle in the 27-nation bloc in 2008, the Eurostat agency said. At 22 percent, that was far and away the biggest group among 76,300 people considered at risk if they returned to their countries.

Somalia furnished the next largest number, 9,500, followed by 7,400 Russians, 5,000 Afghans and 4,600 people from Eritrea in the Horn of Africa.

I don’t know if Sweden has a separate refugee resettlement program as we have. So the numbers may not be comparable, but in our refugee program we brought in 18,833 Iraqis in the last fiscal year (as compared to the whole of Europe with 16,600). I don’t know how many other Iraqis entered the US on their own and then asked for asylum. (Oops! Which reminds me I need to post on the latest from the US Open Borders crowd who don’t want asylees placed in detention until their cases are decided.)

See some previous posts on Muslim immigration to Sweden here and here (this one, Muslim Immigration Killing Sweden, continues to be one of our most visited posts at RRW. Why? I don’t know! Maybe it’s the catchy title!)

Keeping an eye on the numbers!

12/11/2009 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I just went to this handy resource, The Cultural Orientation Resource Center,to check on the final tally of Iraqi refugees who came to the US in FY2009 which ended on September 30th. The number is 18,833. But they have FY2010 already being tallied. FY2010 began on October 1, 2009. If you will recall the Obama Administration set the ceiling for this fiscal year at a whopping 80,000!

Go here and check out the numbers for the first month of the fiscal year. Wow! Burma tops the list with 1,421, then Bhutan (Nepal) 1,223 and Iraq 803. And, it looks like we are on a roll with letting in more Somalis with 400 in the first month alone!

We have no jobs! See new study from Center for Immigration Studies yesterday, here. (site off-line at the moment but it should be back up later)

A reader updates us on Bhutanese refugee numbers—22,600 to US so far

12/11/2009 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I just received this link with the latest statistics on the Bhutanese (ethnic Nepali people) refugees arriving in the US. It is from a press briefing of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) which is an ‘overseas processing entity’ that prepares refugees for their departures to resettlement countries. (Note that IOM received over $300 million tax dollars in FY09, here.)

Bhutanese Refugee Resettlement Passes 25,000 – IOM has now helped more than 25,000 Bhutanese refugees to resettle in third countries from camps in eastern Nepal.

The Bhutanese refugee resettlement programme, which is in close collaboration with UNHCR and the Nepalese government, began in November 2007.

Some 22,060 refugees have left for the US, 1,006 for Australia, 892 for Canada, 316 for Norway, 305 for Denmark, 299 for New Zealand, 122 for the Netherlands.

They represent nearly a quarter of the over 100,000 Bhutanese refugees of Nepali origin who fled to seven camps in the Jhapa and Morang districts of Nepal in the early 1990s following Bhutan’s decision to expel them and revoke their citizenship.

Subsequent negotiations to allow them to return to Bhutan failed and in September 2007 the Nepalese government signed a Memorandum of Understanding with IOM to carry out resettlement activities in Damak, the Nepali town closest to the camps.

IOM works with the resettlement countries and UNHCR to facilitate refugee departures. It processes cases for resettlement countries, conducts health assessments and cultural orientation courses based on the requirements of each resettlement country, and organizes all transportation from the refugee camps to final destinations.

IOM organizes some 1,500 refugee departures every month by charter flight from eastern Nepal to Kathmandu. It then takes the refugees from Kathmandu to their final destinations on commercial flights.

Over 86,000 Bhutanese refugees currently remain in the seven camps.

For background, readers may wish to return to this post about how former Republican gubernatorial candidate Ellen Sauerbrey, while head of the State Department’s Office of Population, Refugees and Migration, committed us to 60,000. Then here is a post about how the IOM office was bombed by presumably Maoists who don’t want the camp residents scattered to the four corners of the globe (and note they say the “refugees” will be doing menial labor in western countries), here is a post just a couple of days ago about how special “security villages” have been established in camps to protect those getting ready to depart for third country resettlement, and then here is the most recent post I wrote on Bhutanese out of work in Manchester, NH.

It is still a mystery to me, why it was the US’s business to bring people of Nepali origin from Nepal. Why not just have helped Nepal absorb its own people back into its society? Or, why didn’t we work with the government of tiny Bhutan and “encourage” them to take some of them (not the Maoists) back to Bhutan. And, why do Leftists here in the US think its o.k. to muck around in the politics of this region of the world and condemn us for mucking around in Iraq and Afghanistan?

One final comment, the three top nationalities being resettled in the US right now are the Bhutanese (Nepali), Burmese, and Iraqis.

For more information, just use our search function for the key word “Bhutanese” and note that we have written dozens and dozens of posts on this group of refugees.

Sarkozy: We must talk about Islam and the preservation of French culture

12/11/2009 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Here is a follow-up on a post I wrote a month ago about French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s campaign to preserve France’s historical Christian heritage and unique culture as large numbers of immigrants fail to assimilate. Although this writer in the Australian tries to put a negative spin on the plan, it strikes me as an eminently sensible one. If people don’t talk about the problem, cowering in fear of being labeled racists for example, then bitterness (or worse!) will surely follow.

NO one can accuse Nicolas Sarkozy of mincing his words over Islam, minarets and national identity. We thought he had retreated after his national debate on French identity began degenerating into a forum for immigrant-bashing. Today, he is back on the parapet, warning Muslims to keep a modest profile or face the failure of moderate Islam in France.

[….]

“Christians, Jews, Muslims, all believers regardless of their faith, must refrain from ostentation and provocation and . . . practise their religion in humble discretion,” wrote Sarkozy/Guaino.

Addressing himself to Muslims, he reassured them that he would fight to protect them from discrimination. “But I also want to tell them that anything that could appear as a challenge” to France’s Christian heritage and republican values would “doom to failure” moderate Islam in France.

Sarkozy’s point was that Muslims must integrate into French society, embracing the Republic’s values and traditions. It is legitimate to examine the malaise in Europe, he said, mentioning globalisation as well as Islam. “This dull threat that so many people in our old European nations feel, rightly or wrongly, hanging over their national identity, we have to talk about it together lest repressing this feeling ends up feeding a terrible bitterness.”

Incidentally, this applies to all immigration issues, when the Left especially tries to shut people up with charges of racism and bigotry then bitterness follows. I don’t see it in this article, but have seen a few articles lately that say (wishfully, I think) that somehow Muslims are integrating better into the US than in Europe. We will see when our numbers of Muslims reach the same percentage as they are in Europe. We’ll know if, as in France, rioting unemployed Muslim immigrants begin burning cars by the thousands. We need to talk now.