So what else did you expect!
I should be writing about yesterday’s State Department meeting where federal contractors made their pitches for more refugees for FY2013 and I will get to that shortly (I hope), but to add a little variety to our stories about bureaucracy in Washington, I’m posting this update of a story I wrote about back in 2010—Sri Lankans loaded on ships and taken to Canada by human smugglers, here. Canadian immigration officials are sorting through the nearly 500 illegal entrants from this one ship to sort out the terrorist Tigers from legitimate asylum seekers.
By the way, here is a little Tiger trivia: Tamil Tigers are famous for pioneering the use of the suicide belt.
From the National Post:
Deportation orders have been issued against two more of the 492 Sri Lankan refugee claimants who arrived off the B.C. coast in 2010 aboard the smuggling ship MV Sun Sea.
In separate decisions, the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada ordered the expulsion of both men, ruling one had engaged in people smuggling and the other had been a member of a Tamil rebel group.
The cases bring to 19 the number of Sun Sea migrants who have been issued deportation orders to date. All have been declared inadmissible to Canada due to their involvement in terrorism and crime.
“Canada opens its doors to those who work hard and play by the rules. However, we must crack down on those who seek to take advantage of our generosity, often for financial gain,” Julie Carmichael, spokeswoman for Public Safety Minister Vic Toews, said Tuesday.
Neither of the latest deportees was named in the heavily edited rulings released to the National Post, but one was found to have served in the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam between 2005 and 2006, when he was in his mid-20s.
Read the whole article, there is lots of interesting information about trafficking and what it costs and who is making a fortune from it. Makes me wonder again who is trafficking Somalis into the US.
Sri Lankans to Oakland!
This reminds me that the US State Department and the International Rescue Committee helped Australia with a little illegal immigration problem of theirs by taking illegal alien Sri Lankans off the Australians hands in 2010 and placing them in Oakland, CA. Here is the story I wrote nearly two years ago. And, this is a point I made in my testimony to the State Department—Congress should forbid the use of this program for other foreign policy objectives.
Just a reminder that the International Rescue Committee’s Anne Richard has been confirmed as Obama’s pick to head the State Department refugee program. Another contractor is now in charge of doling out the federal bucks (your bucks!). She started her work this week by traveling to Switzerland, Iraq and Jordan.