A friend e-mailed last night to alert me to the controversy she had been hearing about through another friend living in the outraged community—California, PA.
Coincidentally, although I didn’t see it, I believe Tucker Carlson did a story on the town and its enraged citizens last night as well.
It seems that rather than hold in detention migrants who got to the US illegally and have apparently asked for political asylum, the federal government is placing large numbers in unsuspecting communities. Although I have no proof, I will bet a buck that the placement of wannabe ‘refugees’ is being facilitated with our usual gang of refugee contractors.
I looked around for news on the “gypsy” controversy and found many stories including this one at The Blaze:
Residents in California, Pennsylvania, a small borough of the Pittsburgh metropolitan area, have said they are outraged after the federal government moved 40 Romanian “gypsies” into the town of 7,000 as part of the government’s Alternative to Detention program.
On Thursday, more than 150 residents attended a community meeting about the immigrants, who residents say have failed to assimilate to American customs and norms. The residents cited trash in yards, disruptions in town markets, children and men defecating in public streets, and immigrants cutting off the heads of chickens in public areas, according to a report by WTAE-TV. None of the immigrants, who are undocumented, have been charged with any other serious criminal offenses. [I’ve found over the years that there is nothing that infuriates a community more than public crapping!—ed]
[….]
The Romanian immigrants ended up in the California borough as part of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Alternative to Detention program, which allows immigrants to live in U.S. communities instead of being detained while they await a final decision about their immigration status.
[….]
About 600 residents have signed a petition demanding the gypsies change their living habits. [Assimilation issue again!—ed]
More here.
Although the word ‘asylum’ is not mentioned, surely these Roma people are waiting for a decision from an asylum court about whether they will be granted refugee status.
For new readers there are two normal channels for getting that most desired immigration status we can bestow on anyone (because doors are opened, the migrant gets a caseworker and refugees are eligible for most forms of welfare)—refugee status!
The normal channel is the one we write about most often—that is where we fly refugees in (most chosen by the UN) and place them with a refugee contractor. The other channel is for a migrant to get to the US on his/her own steam (most often illegally) and then ask for political asylum. If granted asylum, the migrant is just as much a refugee as the ones we fly in. The Tsarnaev (Boston Bombers) were in a family granted asylum and were therefore REFUGEES.
We approve asylum for about 25,000 each year (see here) and that is in addition to the numbers we are always talking about as part of the President’s annual determination (50,194 as of today for FY17).
Those hundreds of thousands of mostly economic migrants from Africa and the Middle East working their way to Europe are going to ask for asylum there (they are NOT refugees, yet)—European countries could turn them down if they had the guts.
I spent a few minutes looking around for other information on the illegal movement of Roma and found this very informative AP story from 2012 about Roma crossing the Mexican border on their way to Canada. So, it appears we have apprehended this group in California, PA before they could get to our northern border.