Month: February 2011

Unrest in Africa has Italy worried

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

…..as boatloads of Tunisians arrive on an Italian island.

From the UK Press Association:

Italy has warned it faces a humanitarian crisis with some 1,600 refugees from Tunisia arriving in its waters over the past two weeks following unrest there.

Interior Minister Roberto Maroni said he has asked the EU to take up the matter at its next meeting, as the political crises in Tunisia and Egypt are affecting Europe’s internal security.

Mr Maroni has said he fears Tunisian terrorists are among those who escaped Tunisian prisons and fled during a month of nationwide anti-government protests that forced dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali to flee on January 14.
“There is the risk of a real and true humanitarian emergency,” Mr Maroni said.

The UN refugee agency said that since January 16, some 1,600 Tunisians had arrived in Italy, mostly on the island of Lampedusa – closer to Africa than the Italian mainland. Half of them arrived in recent days.

If you think this doesn’t affect you in the US, think again! We have already set a precedent of taking illegal aliens that have arrived in recent years on Malta to the US as “refugees.”   The Bush Administration began the practice and the Obama Administration continues.   I’ve written dozens of posts on the subject, most recently here.  Be sure to follow the links back to more on Ambassador Kmiec (a Republican for Obama!).

I sure hope we aren’t going to get Egypt’s refugees, afterall it’s a “free” country now

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update:  New York Times reporting that Iraqi government telling refugees to come on home to Iraq, we are more stable then Egypt now.

When I saw this story yesterday (below) my first thought was, oh no, there will be an excuse for us to take the refugees (100,000!) who have been taken in in recent years by that mean-spirited government in Egypt.

Now, today, I’m happy to report that there should be absolutely no reason for us to take any refugees from Egypt.  The citizens of Egypt have gotten what they demanded (or will shortly when the military gets out of the way)—- a glorious Marxist/Islamist government where everyone will be equal and get all sorts of stuff (from somewhere!) and their borders will be open and diversity will be welcome (and all those who flow in can get stuff too, from somewhere!).

Here is how the story at the Huffington Post about Egypt no longer being a “safe haven” begins:

Ghada El-Khafagy fled Iraq four years ago with her two young children, in a journey that took her to Jordan, back to Baghdad and then finally to Egypt, but after two weeks of an often violent uprising, this second homeland is no longer a refuge.

“Please do not ask me about how I spent the past week. It was really terrible. I spent most of the time crying at home,” the 31-year-old single mother said. “I’m afraid to go out, to see anyone. I don’t know what might happen.”

Her decision to leave underscores the desperate condition of many of the roughly 100,000 refugees and asylum-seekers living in Cairo. Facing shortages of food and fuel, marauding street gangs and tanks in the streets, many have decided to flee.

For years, Egypt has provided a new home for hundreds of thousands of African and Middle Eastern refugees, a safe haven in the middle of a tumultuous region.

Readers alert me to any story you see about the US having to take refugees from Egypt now.  Barack Obama told us today that it was just great what happened in Egypt, that Egypt was free and that it had “inspired us.”

FBI Director admits some Iraqi refugees may be connected to terror groups

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

It surprised some, but it’s no surprise here.

From Fox News:

WASHINGTON — Hundreds of refugees who sought shelter in the United States during the early years of the Iraq war are coming under fresh scrutiny from U.S. government security officials for possible links to Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Iraq.

FBI Director Robert Mueller surprised some terrorism experts Thursday when, in response to a question about threats inside the United States, he said the FBI was closely monitoring Al Qaeda’s Iraq-based offshoot. The group has killed thousands in Iraq but had not been viewed as a threat inside the United States.

Mueller said the possible threat rested with “individuals who may have been resettled here in the United States that have had some association with Al Qaeda in Iraq.”

Lawmakers did not follow up on the remark, but a U.S. intelligence official confirmed that multiple agencies were working to determine whether the group posed a domestic threat. A second U.S. official said the focus was primarily on Iraqis who arrived in the early years of the war. Security screening was not as rigorous then as it became in 2007, when the U.S. significantly increased the pace of resettlement.

Unfortunately, sometimes I think the only way the refugee program will come into the national spotlight is when there is some horrible terror attack and we find its perpetrated by some legal immigrant.  The mainstream media will gasp and wonder how it escaped them.  It escapes them because they are too busy writing puff piece stories about refugees seeing their first snow!

Not really related unless you have been following the kerfuffle surrounding the Conservative Political Action Confab going on in DC as I write this—-about conservative stalwarts and CPAC board members David Keene, Grover Norquist and Suhail Khan being soft on the Muslim Brotherhood (best summary of that controversy is here by Don Feder), but I just came across this post I wrote in 2007 about Keene pushing the Kennedy bill to bring more Iraqis to the US.

Memo to America: Multiculturalism is a failure

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We [Europeans] know, we are ahead of you in France, Germany and the UK and America must now heed the warning—diverse religious groups of immigrants cannot live separately and demand that their host country bend to their (mostly Muslim) demands.

Sarkozy couldn’t have said it more plainly, from AFP:

PARIS (AFP) – French President Nicolas Sarkozy declared Thursday that multiculturalism had failed, joining a growing number of world leaders or ex-leaders who have condemned it.

“My answer is clearly yes, it is a failure,” he said in a television interview when asked about the policy which advocates that host societies welcome and foster distinct cultural and religious immigrant groups.

“Of course we must all respect differences, but we do not want… a society where communities coexist side by side.

“If you come to France, you accept to melt into a single community, which is the national community, and if you do not want to accept that, you cannot be welcome in France,” the right-wing president said.

“The French national community cannot accept a change in its lifestyle, equality between men and women… freedom for little girls to go to school,” he said.

“We have been too concerned about the identity of the person who was arriving and not enough about the identity of the country that was receiving him,” Sarkozy said in the TFI channel show.

Read it all.

Mexican asylum law could slow the flow of asylum seekers on our southern border

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I’m dashing out and don’t have time to write about this, but check out the blog Asylumist on this story.

Recently I mentioned the number of asylum seekers coming halfway around the world (with innumerable stops along the way) who arrive on our border with Mexico and then ask for asylum.  I’ve contended that NGO’s are actually involved in this process.   Well, if Mexico gets its act together on this law, “asylum seekers” will have to ask for asylum in Mexico!   Won’t that put a crimp in the growing field of immigration law in the US.