I guess the word “refugee” was getting a bit overused, so now its “statelessness.”
We heard in July that Schwartz was leaving his post, getting out of the Obama Administration while the getting is good?
Here at the Huffington Post Eric Schwartz (Asst. Secretary for Population, Refugees, and Migration in the US State Department) gives us the guilt-trip spiel about the “stateless” problem for which we (US taxpayers) give the UN $700 million a year to try to solve.
Among the most egregious stories are those of the Rohingya, a Muslim minority from Burma’s Northern Rakhine State * who have lived in Burma for centuries, but were excluded from the country’s 1982 citizenship law and continue to suffer persecution, including forced labor, confiscation of property, rape, and other forms of violence. While approximately 750,000 Rohingya remain in Burma, an estimated three million Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh, Thailand, Malaysia, India, Saudi Arabia, and other countries in the region. Although some have been recognized as refugees, many others lack documentation and are at risk of arbitrary arrest and detention, deportation back to Burma, human trafficking, and other abuses. The Obama Administration is working with other donor governments, international and non-governmental organizations, and affected countries in the region to provide assistance to the Rohingya and identify durable [eg. resettlement], humane, and comprehensive solutions for their plight.
Globally, the U.S. government is concerned about statelessness as a human rights and humanitarian issue that impacts prospects for democratization, economic development, and regional stability. U.S. diplomats around the world are working to persuade other governments to amend nationality laws that discriminate against women and minorities and cause statelessness, provide documentation to stateless persons, protect them from abuse, and ensure they have access to basic services. And we are the single largest donor to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the agency mandated to protect stateless people, contributing over $700 million last year.
Happily, the laws of the United States do not contribute to the problem of statelessness; we grant citizenship through birth in the United States, birth abroad to a U.S. parent if statutory requirements are met, and through naturalization.
* For years we resisted resettling the Rohingya to the US because of some connections to Islamic terror groups, but we see they are the poster children for “statelessness” and our gates are open to them now. This is our 100th post (over four years) on the subject of the Rohingya, go here to our Rohingya Reports category for everything you ever want to know on the subject.
It’s kind of a classic case in how Americans are kept in the dark and how the country changes—the mainstream media rarely uses the word Rohingya (how many of you who are not regular readers here have ever heard it?) The public, if they know anything at all knows that we bring in “Burmese” refugees, many of whom are Christians, but mixed in are the Rohingya. And where they are resettled together tensions have been reported (but never in any publications of any note). The Left (including Soros prodigy Eric Schwartz, see here, here, and here ) is gradually building an ever-expanding Muslim population, for what? And, the average American citizen won’t notice it’s going on until……