Actor says Canada “welcoming” and asks for refugee status

Speaking of Canada (see previous post), it appears that actor Randy Quaid and his wife Evi have skipped bail in California and hopped up to Canada and are now asking for asylum!  They say they are being persecuted by actor murderers!

From AP:

Actor Randy Quaid and his wife told Canada’s immigration board Friday they are seeking refuge in Canada because they are being persecuted in the United States, after they were arrested on U.S. warrants related to vandalism charges.

The pair were arrested on Thursday afternoon in a shopping area of an affluent Vancouver neighborhood.

The Quaids are wanted in Santa Barbara, where they missed a court hearing Monday on felony vandalism charges.

Other actors “murdered” so therefore we need refugee status in Canada—huh!

Evi Quaid begged a Canadian immigration adjudicator not to force them to return, saying on Friday that eight friends, such as actors David Carradine and Heath Ledger, have been “murdered” under mysterious circumstances and she’s worried something will happen to her husband next.

“We feel our lives are in danger,” she said.

Canada is “welcoming,” right!

“I love Canada,” Randy Quaid told the adjudicator.

“It’s been a very welcoming nation to me.

Quaid’s even got that refugee lingo down pat!

 Update October 26th:  One Canadians opinion, here.

Canada to increase number of Iraqi refugees in coming year

The interesting bit in this article to me is the reference to Canada’s Private Sponsorship of Refugees Program.  In other words, private groups and individuals take care of the new refugees and not the government.   I’ve said on many occasions that that is how our program should be run as well.   And, don’t let anyone tell you that groups like Catholic Charities, World Relief and the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society are doing just that here—they aren’t!  Our program was originally set up as a Public-Private Partnership but increasingly American so-called charities rely on taxpayer funding to do their “charitable” work!

From Marketwire:

OTTAWA, ONTARIO–(Marketwire – Oct. 23, 2010) Canada will extend its measures for Iraqi refugees for at least two additional years, Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism Minister Jason Kenney announced today. As a result of today’s announcement, Canada will resettle an additional 8,600 refugees.

In 2009, in response to ongoing conditions in Iraq and requests from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Canada more than doubled the number of resettled refugees it would welcome through its mission in Damascus, where most Iraqi refugees apply. Canada committed to resettling approximately 2,500 refugees a year under its private sponsorship program between 2009 and 2011. In 2010, Canada also increased the number of refugees from Damascus it plans to resettle through the UN program as government-assisted refugees, from 1,400 to 1,800 per year.

More refugees sponsored privately in Canada than are government assisted.

In total, through the PSR Program, Canada has welcomed more than 200,000 refugees from all over the world, over and above the number of refugees resettled through the government assisted program.

Meanwhile, the Obama Administration is welcoming another 80,000 GOVERNMENT ASSISTED refugees to the US this coming year, here.

Terry Rusch retires after 30 years at the US State Department

There is one person who could write a book and tell us how the US Refugee Resettlement Program has gone awry and that person is Terry Rusch.  I had seen the news about this last week (or the week before) but really don’t know what to say about it.   So, I’ll let you see what Chris Coen at Friends of Refugees, who has spent years and years trying to get the State Department’s Office of Population Refugees and Migration to pay attention to mounting problems with the program, says about her departure.

Will she write that book?  I doubt it, but it would be a welcome opportunity for her to make some effort to fix a program I believe has gone very wrong —-for the refugees and for the communities in which they are placed.

Cool map: Where were Burmese resettled in US

I just came across this very informative “Visualization” of which states Burmese refugees were resettled to in 2009.   This is the sort of information that used to be readily available when the Office of Refugee Resettlement sent it’s annual reports to Congress in a timely manner as required by law (note here how far behind they are as of this writing—only up to 2007!)

Check out the map for 2009 and note the top three Burmese resettlement states for 2009 were Texas (3,086), New York (1,696) and Indiana (1147).    Since 2009, as I reported yesterday, resettlements have been slowed to Indiana because the various welfare support systems are not able to cope with a continued high number of refugee resettlements.

In 2009 we resettled a total of 18,202 Burmese nationwide mostly from camps in Thailand.  Disregard the obvious typo on the data here.

By the way, a couple of our commenters suggested here that concerned citizens should write to their Congressman and Senators and ask them to get on ORR’s case.  Tell them to get up-to-date on legally required Annual Reports!