Day: April 13, 2013

New Zealand an asylum magnet now; Amnesty International takes opportunity to tighten screws

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment
Sri Lankan young male migrants aboard boat flying the flag of New Zealand: Let us in! Photo / Perth Sunday Times

The news from New Zealand this week is that a boatload of illegal aliens was found off the coast of Australia and its Sri Lankan “asylum seekers” on board held up a sign saying they wanted to go to New Zealand.  Now the new controversial agreement between the two countries will be tested (see our February post).

The Refugee Council of New Zealand says the policy will make New Zealand a magnet.  Kinda like Malta (or America for that matter) is a magnet (when a country doesn’t immediately send them back, it becomes a magnet).    Here is the story from The New Zealand Herald:

The arrival in Australia of a fishing boat, overcrowded with suspected asylum seekers appearing to have been headed for New Zealand, is the result of a deal formed between the two countries, says a refugee expert.

New Zealand has become “a magnet” for asylum seekers since an agreement was formed between the two countries earlier this year, said Refugee Council of New Zealand spokesman Gary Poole, who was critical of the agreement.

The boat believed to have travelled from Sri Lanka with 66 passengers holding a sign saying “We want to go to New Zealand” was spotted off the coast of Geraldton, about 400km north of Perth in Western Australia yesterday.

In February, Prime Minister John Key and his Australian counterpart Julia Gillard announced a deal in which New Zealand would accept 150 Australian-approved refugees each year.

It was at no extra cost to New Zealand, because the 150 will come out of New Zealand’s existing annual 750 refugee quota and would give access to Australian intelligence and other resources to disrupt and intercept people-smuggling, Mr Key said at the time.

However, Mr Poole said the arrival of the boat in Australia reflected Mr Key’s “bad decision” to enter the agreement, which he said was attracting more asylum seekers to this part of the world. [This Poole fellow sounds pretty sensible for someone in the refugee business—ed]

“This is precisely what we predicted. Unfortunately what our Government has done is they’ve actually fed into the whole problem in Australia.”

No boat has ever made it to New Zealand and it was unlikely to because of “treacherous” conditions in the Tasman Sea.

“But what it’s done, it’s now acting as a magnet, the particular policy, because he’s now accepting 150 out of their camps. We’ve become part of Australia’s problem,” said Mr Poole.

New Zealand only takes 750 “refugees” a year, and has said that 150 they will take from Australia is included in the 750.  Did you notice that the Rohingya in my previous post have their sites set on New Zealand?  The word spreads fast among the asylum-seeker enablers and coaches (the NGOs!).

Frankly, there is no end to this—once a Western country becomes “welcoming” the word is out and one day the illegal migrants trying to escape the hell-holes of their own countries (often Muslim ones!) will sink Western civilization.

Amnesty International New Zealand, taking advantage of the situation with the boatload of migrants from Sri Lanka, says New Zealand must take more!

Up until now New Zealand has capped its generosity at 750 refugees, but that won’t last for long because we also see this week that Amnesty International is tightening the screws on them.

Here is the report from News 3 New Zealand.  LOL!  How do you like that barbed wire photo to illustrate the story? Let the bullying for more refugees begin:

Amnesty International says New Zealand needs to up the number of asylum seekers it takes in each year, following the arrival of a boatload of Sri Lankans in Western Australia.

[….]

New Zealand’s annual refugee quota is 750, which from next year includes up to 150 who arrive in Australia by boat. Mr Bayldon (Amnesty New Zealand) says this is “tiny” compared to Australia’s 20,000, and New Zealand should be taking in more.

For new readers:  We don’t have a category on New Zealand (yet), but you can find a catalog of Australia’s problems with illegal immigration, here, in our Australia category (95 posts).

Rohingya Muslims: Australia’s next big problem (and our’s too!)

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

They say they are trying to get to Australia, the US or Canada, even New Zealand—where they believe they will be “welcomed.”   (Sounds like they have already learned the refugee industry lingo!)

Tell me, when you read this story, does this ring true—how does a poor and downtrodden 26-year-old man (who has been on the run for 11 years already) “scrape together $12,000” to hire a people smuggler?   Something is fishy here—who is paying the advance guard?  Could it be the Saudi Arabia-based OIC? (See yesterday’s post).  

Buddhist monks stand up to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation last October. Want to keep it out of Burma! Reuters photo

Here is the story from The Australian:

TWO years ago the Indonesian office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees had fewer than 50 Rohingya asylum-seekers on its books. Today there are more than 800, and nearly all are trying to get to Australia.

“Some of my friends have gone to Australia already and after two or three years they get citizenship,” Feazel Ali tells The Australian. “Finally they can live in peace.”

Ali left Myanmar in 1994 and lived in Malaysia for 13 years before he, his wife and five children took a boat to Sumatra two months ago, hoping somehow to get a passage to Australia.

“Australians have pity for refugees, but actually anywhere that wants to accept us, I wouldn’t mind,” he says.

“I want to work. I want my children to have a high school education.”

Like many other asylum-seekers, he clings to the illusion that Australians would welcome his family, if only they knew his people’s plight. The reality is, as refugee officials say privately, no government wants the Rohingya, who are commonly described as among the most persecuted people in the world.   [The media doesn’t tell you that it isn’t because they are poor, it’s because they have a history of violence and connections to Islamic terror groups, aside from the fact that many believe they are simply illegal aliens who went Burma from Bangladesh initially.—ed]

Most of the dark-skinned Shia Muslim asylum-seekers who have reached Indonesiaare in immigration detention at Belawan, North Sumatra, or under UNHCR care in the community in nearby Medan.

Elsewhere in Indonesia they barely attracted notice until March 5, when men in the Belawan centre turned on 11 Burmese Buddhist fishermen and murdered eight of them.

The victims had been arrested for fishing illegally off Aceh last July and were vastly outnumbered by more than 100 Rohingyas.  [This is not helping the Rohingya image being crafted by the NGOs!—ed]

Festering camps:

Refused citizenship in their western Burma homeland, Rohingyas have long posed a huge refugee challenge to Bangladesh and Thailand, where more than 400,000 people live in festering border camps.

[…..]

At least 130 Rohingyas have been detained in the past eight days trying to get to Australia – 95 of them in two boats that were also carrying Bangladeshis, Iranians and Iraqis.

Refugee officials say almost all the Rohingyas interviewed in Indonesia are trying to get to Australia, though most would be happy with a visa for Canada, the US or New Zealand – other countries they believe would be welcoming.

Mark my words!  Rohingya will be the next Somalis coming to a town near you!

For more, visit our Rohingya Reports category where we have been archiving stories on the growing Rohingya problem for the last five years.  We have 140 previous posts on the festering issue and the media campaign to soften-up the West to “welcome” Rohingya.