Month: April 2011

Refugee camps are never emptied

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This article from AlertNet (the world’s humanitarian news site) about a refugee camp in Thailand gives readers some idea of how the spigot will never turn off.  People are cared for in camps and become reliant on aid.  With the hope of resettlement in the West, they just keep coming.

From AlertNet:

MAE SOT, Thailand (AlertNet) – The smell of deep fried snacks mingling with sweet tea, the ladies with shopping baskets laden with fresh greens, the men puffing on cigars in teashops with blaring TVs, teenagers milling about stalls with the latest mobile phones and gadgets – it’s a typical market scene in any small town in Southeast Asia.

But this is no town. This is Mae La, a sprawling refugee camp an hour’s drive from the border town of Mae Sot in northwest Thailand.

It is home to over 45,000 people from Myanmar who fled their homeland as a result of the world’s longest running civil war between the national army and indigenous ethnic groups.

The official Thai term for these places – there are nine along the border housing some 142,000 people – is ‘transitional camp’. But Mae La was set up 27 years ago.

Children who were born and grew up here know little beyond the thatch-roofed, wire-fenced existence.

They just keep coming:

With a host of support programmes, food aid and the prospect of possible resettlement, these camps offer a life far better than what most people have in Myanmar, attracting more people to cross the border, observers say.

The market at Mae La may be in full swing three days a week and motorbike taxis are readily available for residents who want to go out, but officially residents are not allowed to leave the camps so employment and livelihood opportunities are limited.

The Thailand Burma Border Consortium (TBBC), an NGO which has been working with refugees from Myanmar for 25 years, says people were initially self-reliant, but have become totally aid-dependent over the years because of the restrictions on their movement.

And we just keep taking them. Burmese refugees consistently top the list of refugees admitted to the US each year.

Here is what I wrote in January in a post about the US Census not accurately counting the Burmese in the US:

According to the most recent annual Report to Congress from the Office of Refugee Resettlement we resettled 16,074 Burmese from 1983-2007 (just the refugee program).  And, let me say AGAIN, the ORR is now nearly 3 years behind in releasing these LEGALLY REQUIRED documents to Congress.  However, we have another source of numbers here.*

1983-2007:      16,074  Burmese arrived in US as refugees

2008:                   18,139

2009:                   18,202

2010:         +        16,693

____________________

69,108

* Readers, in previous years this site kept up with the numbers monthly and yet has failed to post any new numbers since last September.  I can only assume someone doesn’t want the public to see the number of refugees we are admitting this year.

Refugee funding to be reduced, but by how much?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

….and what is Samantha Power up to?

Check out the pro-migration blog MicEvHill from time to time to keep up with what is happening with immigration generally in Washington.  A government shutdown has been averted for now and here is what blogger Michael Hill is reporting as of 10:50 a.m. this morning on the status of funding for refugee and other immigrant programs:

Consequences for Fiscal Year 2011 Immigration and Refugee Spending?

At the very least, the deal that Congress and the White House have reached will require that refugee-related programs sustain an across-the-board cut in fiscal year 2011 of a yet-to-be-revealed percentage below fiscal year 2010 spending levels.  However, the full consequences for immigration-, border security-, and refugee-related spending and policy of the full-year fiscal year 2011 deal were not yet known at the time of this writing.

Insiders who are familiar with the details of the deal indicate that it does not include the deep cuts in refugee resettlement, overseas refugee assistance, and refugee admissions funding that were contained in the House-passed version of H.R. 1, a full-year fiscal year 2011 continuing appropriations measure.  Moreover, insiders indicate that the only significant immigration-related policy rider that was contained in the House-passed version of H.R. 1, a provision that would have barred federal funding for immigrant integration programs, also will not be in the final fiscal year 2011 measure.  Notwithstanding the assertions of insiders, however, no firm word on those matters can be relied upon until the text of the measure that the House and Senate will take up emerges.

Samantha Power!  Now, I am beginning to see why it was so important to place the refugee issue with Power in the White House!

Readers may recall that in January 2010 the Obama Administration doubled the funding for the refugee program (so cutting to before 2010 levels would only take it to the amount it was supposed to be before the Obama money bomb).  This increase in spending came as a result of a stepped up PR campaign by federal contractors and was supposed to be part of an overall (and much needed) reform of the Refugee Resettlement Program.

That reform was being coordinated by Samantha Power’s office in the White House.  But, as far as I know Mrs. Cass Sunstein (aka Power) hasn’t accomplished  much in the way of reform (or they’ve been awfully quiet about it).  I suppose Power/Sunstein has been too busy getting us involved in a “humanitarian” war in Libya.

Unleashing the refugee weapon on Europe!

Uh oh, come to think of it, Ms. Power with her ‘humanitarian interventionism‘ has been busy creating more refugees as we just reported here and here.   Scary thought—what if these Marxists are using refugees as weapons to create chaos  behind a smokescreen of humanitarian concern.   First Europe, next stop Israel?

Gaddafi has no weapons of mass destruction, unless you count the refugees unleashed on Europe

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Ed West writing at the UK Telegraph yesterday suggests that the tens of thousands of refugees being pushed out of North Africa will be Gaddafi’s last laugh on Europe as serious commenters begin to wonder if this is what the Fall of Rome felt like.  Thank champions of chaos, Obama and Ms. Power.

Colonel Gaddafi, having foolishly agreed not to arm himself with chemical, biological or nuclear weapons*, a lesson other dictators may heed, has set upon a more surreal but perhaps more effective weapon against the West – refugees.

[…..]

One of Roger Scruton’s most original arguments against our asylum policy is that it allows brutal dictators to rid themselves of enemies without having to get their hands dirty. But Gaddafi is now using people-dumping as a weapon of war, and a fairly effective one when your enemy has a free media and a conscience.

Italy opened the door to 20,000 Tunisians and France is freaking out!   France’s Marine Le Pen, a tough anti-immigration/pro-western civilization warrior, is running ahead of Sarkozy in polls.

And Gaddafi is now being aided by Italy’s incredibly short-sighted decision to give 20,000 Tunisians an effective amnesty by allowing them free movement in Europe.

[…..]

Most of the Tunisians are heading for France, which has an enormous Tunisian population already, and Italy’s decision, plus the refugees from a war started by Nicolas Sarkozy, will almost certainly influence the 2012 French presidential elections. Marine Le Pen, who is now second in the polls, and ahead of Sarkozy, has made much play of the refugee influx, and has already visited Italy’s refugee island, Lampedusa, for a publicity stunt.

Fall of Europe and America alone!

The Roman Empire comparison may be simplistic, but it’s worth remembering that the empire collapsed not as a result of hostile barbarian invaders, but because of barbarian refugees who wished to become part of the empire.

If the worst comes to the worst then come 2050 we’ll all be claiming asylum in the United States – better start practising your Spanish. [very funny Mr. West!—ed]

Read it all.

France puts checkpoints on Italian border to keep out migrants from North Africa

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

It’s amazing how quickly European Union—we are all one big happy borderless Europe—mumbo jumbo is forgotten when serious threats to a country’s sovereignty arise.

From the Wall Street Journal:

VENTIMIGLIA, Italy—The migration wave unleashed by North African unrest has prompted France to resurrect its border with Italy—a barrier that was supposedly consigned to history’s dustbin with Europe’s unified economy.

A couple of miles from the beach town of Ventimiglia, nestled along the Italian Riviera, French police have restaffed a formerly abandoned checkpoint along the country’s Mediterranean border with Italy.

In the nearby French town of Menton, French police in riot gear board trains crossing into France, grilling passengers while other police forces are monitoring roads and foot trails that lead into French territory from Italy.

Fences sure do make good neighbors.

To read the rest of the story, you will have to log-in at the Wall Street Journal.

In Maryland, black legislators favor immigrants over black Americans

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

That is the contention of writer and Maryland conservative activist Ron Miller in his opinion piece yesterday on the eve of an important vote in the Maryland legislature.  Miller, the author of ‘Sellout: Musings from Uncle Tom’s Porch‘, is commenting on the Maryland legislature’s  controversial vote, likely to come today, on a bill to give in-state college tuition rates to illegal aliens.

From Southern Maryland Online, entitled, ‘Black on Black crime in the General Assembly‘:

Before I go down this path, I want to be crystal clear that House Bill 470, which went to the floor of the House of Delegates Tuesday, and proposes to offer in-state tuition to the children of illegal aliens, will adversely affect all Marylanders.

This bill is fiscally irresponsible given our state budget crisis, and it is a violation of the rule of law. It is an affront to all law-abiding Marylanders and the tens of thousands of legal immigrants who followed the rules to come here.

It will contribute further to making Maryland a sanctuary for illegal aliens, who already cost our state $1.4 billion a year in benefits and services for which they didn’t pay and for which they’re not eligible. They will come here in droves from neighboring states like Virginia, which are much less hospitable to them.

That said, I’ve watched with amazement as the black delegation in the Maryland General Assembly applies the thumbscrews to their own constituents in the name of party loyalty. By showing favor to illegal aliens, these legislators are telling black people, who suffer from an 11.2 percent unemployment rate in our state, compared to 6.2 percent for whites and 8.8 percent for Hispanics, that they don’t matter.

Let me break it down for you. Young blacks make up the lion’s share of the black unemployed in Maryland, and in the nation as a whole. The latest figures show that 45.5 percent of black teens in America are unemployed. Their biggest competition for the low-wage, low-skill jobs for which they qualify? Illegal aliens….

Mr. Miller goes on to use information from the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) in which the Institute admits American citizen blacks are disproportionately hurt by immigrant labor.   Read on.

But, note that in the quote Mr. Miller used from MPI they could not resist a back-handed slap at American black workers:

….employers actually prefer the immigrants, and believe that they have a stronger work ethic and lower rates of turnover out of low-wage jobs.

Just a reminder to readers that although earlier this year the Migration Policy Institute hosted a meeting where a speaker admitted black workers were hurt by immigrant labor, here, they seem to have no qualms about being pro-migration.  Indeed that meeting prompted me to look more deeply into the agenda of the Migration Policy Institute and this is what I found—far Left funding from the likes of George Soros and his network.  They might put on the patina of being a “nonpartisan and independent” policy outfit but they definitely have an open borders agenda.

Miller ends his good piece with this comment:

“Party trumps race.” I hope all you unemployed young blacks in Maryland remember that as she [State Senator Lisa Gladden] and her colleagues are throwing you under a bus loaded with illegal aliens, and then backing over you.