Declare Somalia safe enough!
Wow! And, it was only last September that Denmark sent a delegation to Minneapolis to see just how we are so “welcoming” here and how they might emulate us. Things must be going south fast in Copenhagen!
From The Copenhagen Post:
Immigration officials are contending that the security situation in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, has improved to such an extent that Somali asylum seekers can be sent back.
Immigration Service (Udlændingestyrelsen) made its decision on the basis of a joint Danish-Norwegian delegation that visited Mogadishu in October 2012, and reported that the Somali capital was safe to the point that rejected asylum seekers would not face persecution if sent back.
”The joint fact-finding mission to Somalia gave us new information that indicated that the security has been vastly improved,” Jakob Dam Glynstrup, the head of asylum at Udlændingestyrelsen, said in a press release. ”There is also a new government in place and a rising number of Somalis are returning home.”
Udlændingestyrelsen pointed to Norway, which has already changed its protocol in regards to asylum seekers from Somalia.
But the Danish aid organisation Dansk Flygtningehjælp argued that the delegation’s assessment is incorrect and pointed to an evaluation by the UN asylum organisation, UNHCR, which said that security threats in Mogadishu and the rest of Somalia are still very high.
I don’t know why this is such a big deal. After all, the new President of Somalia is urging the folks to come on home and help rebuild their country.
No wonder the Danes are having second thoughts about that “welcoming” business:
According to Udlændingestyrelsen, the number of Somalis who were granted asylum in Denmark last year shot up to around 900. That is compared to only 18 in 2011 and 35 in 2010.
Readers, we’ve been talking a lot about asylum lately. These are asylum seekers meaning they got to Denmark on their own steam. We have one up on the Danes (they must be haters)—we are actually still putting Somalis on planes around the world and bringing them to us!
Holy-moly! If this map is correct we have already admitted over 2000 Somalis in the first three months of this fiscal year! If that trend continues, Obama will be on target to approach Bush’s best Somali-welcoming years of 2004, 2005 and 2006, here.