Month: September 2012

Conference seeks to highlight Jewish refugees displaced from Arab lands

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Tired of hearing about those much maligned Palestinians, efforts are underway to educate the world that Arab countries forcibly removed Jewish people who had lived side by side with Arabs for centuries in now largely Muslim countries.  Heck, the ethnic cleansing by Muslim countries is still going on—just look at the Christians being pressured out of Iraq.

From JWeekly:

At Israel’s founding, more than 800,000 Jews lived in the Arab and Muslim world. In the face of mob violence and government-sanctioned tyranny, virtually all of them fled. Many lost their lives.

Once-thriving ancient Jewish communities in Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, Libya, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Tunisia drastically shrunk and, in most cases, disappeared.

In an effort to recognize the plight of those Jews, and to demand compensation for their lost property, the World Jewish Congress will host a conference in Jerusalem next week focused on justice for Jewish refugees from Arab countries.

The Sept. 9-10 event will feature two speakers from the S.F.-based nonprofit JIMENA (Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa

“This is an opportunity for various organizations and Jews working on the subject to learn from each other,” said JIMENA director Sarah Levin, who will join the organization’s co-founder, Libyan-born Gina Waldman, at the conference.

Levin will participate in a workshop about online and student activism on behalf of Jewish refugees. Waldman will share her personal story of escaping Libya in the aftermath of the 1967 Six-Day War.

JIMENA is “one of the only organizations working on this issue,” Levin added. “[The topic] is now getting recognition from the U.S. and Israeli governments. It’s time for a coalition to strategize together.”

Jewish refugee issue to serve as a counterbalance in future peace talks:

“It’s important that the world accept and recognize that most [Jewish refugees] were forcibly exiled and subjected to the worst kind of anti-Semitic assault,” said WJC Secretary-General Dan Diker. “This issue has been largely ignored by Jewish leaders over the past number of years.”

In addition to WJC efforts, the Knesset is slated to vote on a resolution to establish a day commemorating the history of Jews from Arab lands and to found a museum focused on that history. The U.S.-based Justice for Jews from Arab Countries also advocates for refugee rights.

While the campaign for the Jewish refugees ostensibly is aimed at winning recompense for Jews from Arab countries and their descendants — known in Israel as Mizrachim, Hebrew for “those from the East” — it’s also part of a political effort to create a Jewish parallel to Palestinian refugee claims from Israel’s 1948 War of Independence.

Advocates want the Jewish refugee issue to serve as a counterbalance to the Palestinian refugee issue in any future Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, and want recognition and compensation for Jewish refugees to be a part of any final-status deal.

“It restores parity to Arab-Israeli diplomacy,” Diker said. “That narrative has become distorted in advancing the narrative that the Palestinian Arabs are the sole aggrieved party in this conflict.”

Read it all, there is more.

Did you ever notice that Muslim countries—Saudi Arabia and Egypt come to mind—are completely Muslim-dominated and others, Christians and Jews, are not welcome, yet in every other country in the world we are supposed to welcome Muslims and revere diversity.   No one ever asks (demands!) Saudi Arabia to welcome diversity!  Why? What is that sound I hear?

US refugee program attracting Somalis to Malta

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I’ve been reporting this same story for years and making this very point, but now Maltese media is saying the same thing.  In hopes of getting a ticket to the US, more Somalis are coming ashore in Malta.

Here is just the latest story about the SINGLE ADULT MEN on the way to your town at this very moment.

From the Malta Star:

Armed Forces of Malta (AFM) personnel involved in search and rescue operations involving irregular migrants say that while most of the migrants who arrive in Malta usually want to reach Italy, they have noticed a new trend that Somalis are heading for Malta hoping that from here they would be sent to the United States through the US Refugee Settlement Program (USRRP).

[…..]

On Wednesday 12 persons from Somalia and Eritrea all of whom are single adult men granted subsidiary protection in Malta left to start a new life in the United States, under the USRRP.

[…..]

245 migrants have been resettled from Malta to the United States of America since the beginning of 2012. More beneficiaries of international protection are expected to leave to the United States in the coming weeks.

Bush ambassador to Malta, Molly Bordonaro, started the trend in  2008 (or at least that is when we learned of it) and it continues today.  These men are illegal aliens and economic migrants magically transformed into “refugees.”

Expanding the use of asylum to include wife abuse?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

A California Law School is working hard to convince the Dept. of Homeland Security that women who claim domestic violence by their husbands anywhere in the world can be granted asylum by the US.   Although we have sympathy for abused women where their country’s government won’t help them, I doubt few of these cases involve women from Muslim countries where wife beating is permitted by law (see Janet Levy on that point yesterday).  Most other countries have laws to protect women to one degree or another.

Also, I can see how hard it would be for someone to prove to a judge (or for the judge to believe the story!) that their hubby beat them, perhaps years before they undertook a dangerous and expensive journey to get across our borders in order to ask for asylum (by hooking up with an immigration attorney who teaches them how to ask).

Here is the story:

The Center for Gender & Refugee Studies has been instrumental in helping women gain refuge from domestic violence.

This summer, in cases that made national headlines, two women whose legal teams were supported by CGRS won asylum after suffering years of abuse and lack of protection from authorities in their home countries.

Aruna Vallabhaneri lived first with abuse from her husband in Hyderabad, India, and then with the threat of deportation when she fled to the U.S. She initially filed for asylum and was denied in 1998 and ordered deported. But after hearing testimony of the abuse in her arranged marriage, she was granted asylum on the basis of domestic violence in June 2012.  [India doesn’t have laws to protect people against violence?—ed]

[…..]

Under current U.S. law, individuals should be granted asylum if they have suffered persecution or have a well-founded fear of persecution for one of five reasons — political opinion, race, religion, nationality or membership in a particular social group. Domestic abuse claims most often fall under the statutory ground of particular social group, the murkiest and most contested category.

Until recently, the Department of Homeland Security, which both adjudicates some asylum claims and prosecutes others, has not supported domestic violence claims, and regulations promised in 2000 have yet to be issued. In April 2009, the department filed a legal brief in a domestic violence case known as L.R., taking the position that women who are victims of domestic violence may qualify for asylum. Despite this recognition, the brief is not binding on immigration judges, and many Homeland Security attorneys have continued to fight domestic violence cases.

[…..]

Of the 619 domestic violence asylum cases for which the center has provided counsel between 1994 and 2011, 422 women were granted asylum, and 192 were denied.

So, what are they complaining about.  Accepting 2/3rds of the claims and rejecting 1/3 doesn’t sound all that bad of a record.  Do these lawyers expect the judges to approve 100% of the claims?

By the way, once asylum is granted these new “refugees” become eligible for all of the social services refugees get—food stamps, subsidized housing, health care, etc.

Somalis from Denmark tour Minneapolis to see how America does it…

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

…..how we make Somalis feel welcome.

From the Copenhagen Post:

MINNEAPOLIS — A delegation of six young Somali Danes, two Swedes and one Norwegian visited the American city of Minneapolis last week to break bread with their Somali immigrant counterparts and learn how this city has integrated them into civic and economic life. Minneapolis boasts the largest Somali population outside of Africa and became a haven for them when the country broke into civil war in the early 1990s.

The exchange was initiated by the American ambassador to Denmark, Laurie S Fulton,*** in conjunction with the Danish Ministry of Social Affairs and Integration. Fulton said that young Somalis have trouble feeling accepted into Danish society and a recent trip she took to Minnesota inspired her to initiate the programme.

“Danish integration minister Karen Hækkerup hosted a workshop several months ago for Somali Danes; I offered to host a reception that Karen attended and that’s how we talked about trying to get them together,” Fulton said. “One of the many common issues that Denmark and the US share is helping the Somali immigrants that come to our nations become successful citizens. And who in the US is doing the best job at helping the Somalis feel welcome, learn how to become Americans and be happy? It’s Minneapolis.”

Minneapolis’ thriving Cedar-Riverside neighbourhood, on the banks of the Mississippi River, is home to many of the estimated 30,000 Somali Minnesotans and was the ideal setting from which to draw inspiration.

New readers:

Search RRW for “Cedar Riverside” for more information on the neighborhood.  Remember that most of the Somali youths who left the US for jihad training a few years back were raised here.  You could start your education with this post, Why so many Somalis in Minneapolis? which is one of our top posts here almost every day.  And, then there is the ever popular post still after four years–-How did we get so many Somalis?

Just for fun I searched RRW for Somalis Denmark and the list of problems is long—includes immigration fraud/human smuggling, terror arrests, refugee youths joining Al Shabaab, khat chewing and more….

***And don’t miss Laurie Fulton’s bio!   Fulton was a major bundler for Obama and the first wife of former Senator Tom Daschle!  Kind of reminds me of Molly, ambassador to Malta during the Bush years, who figured out how to get more Somalis from Malta to the US.

Sweden expecting 17,000 Syrians to arrive seeking asylum this year and next

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

It looks like those Djiboutians getting into Sweden are going to have some competition as Syrians are arriving in increasing numbers into the welcoming arms of the Swedish welfare system (where the “living is easy!”).   Meanwhile there are still reports, but I’m not sure if it isn’t old news, that Iraqis (mostly Kurds) are being deported from Sweden.

Europe is bracing for the anticipated Syrian tide, from Reuters:

(Reuters) – Ali Jamal travelled thousands of miles on foot, by train and road to flee violence in Syria while Jomaah piled his family into a camper van to smuggle them north to Europe.

They have now reached safety in Sweden, some of the growing thousands of Syrians who are evading the European Union’s frontier controls to escape the turmoil of the past 18 months.

That is raising calls for a more focused European response to a refugee crisis that has seen over 200,000 Syrians flee to Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon and, especially, Turkey. From there, a determined, and usually richer, few press on to the EU borders, mainly into Greece, with most hoping for asylum further north.

Sweden alone, 2,500 km (1,500 miles) from Turkey’s European frontier, is expecting 17,000 Syrians to show up seeking refuge this year and next, reflecting a sharply rising trend across the continent; barely a tenth of that number reached Sweden in the first half of this year – itself a marked increase on 2011.

Don’t you wonder how long the Swedish taxpayer can afford all this?

While the numbers are still small, whether compared to Syria’s population of over 20 million or to the EU’s 500 million, the move to flight has placed strains on all concerned.

Sweden has had to improvise accommodation. In the case of Jamal and Jomaah that is a hostel normally used by tourists near Kopingebro, on the south coast. Many have moved into picturesque red cottages on an island campsite, which opened last week.

Syrians became the third largest group of asylum seekers in Sweden after Somalis and Afghans at 1,855 in the period from January to July, compared to 303 in the same period last year.

Read it all.