It is only 3, but their arrival tells us that all refugee resettlement to America has not stopped and that the Obama “dumb deal” to take Australia’s rejected asylum seekers who have been held in offshore detention for years is still on-going.
According to BuzzFeedreporter Hannah Ryan the three new arrivals went to Maryland, Tennessee and Pennsylvania.
The US, Struggling Under The Pressure Of The Coronavirus, Is Still Taking Refugees From Australia
Three refugees flew from immigration detention in Australia to start new lives in the United States this week, despite the coronavirus pandemic placing a chokehold on international resettlement.
Coming to a town near you! Trump called it a “dumb deal” but his Administration is carrying it out anyway.
The men, two from Sudan and one from Pakistan, jetted together from Melbourne through Qatar to the US, where they parted ways before reaching their final destinations of Tennessee, Maryland and Pennsylvania. The US took them under the refugee swap deal between the two countries.
The flights went ahead despite a global pause on refugee resettlements announced by the United Nations High Commission on Refugees in mid-March. The US also suspended its refugee program because of the coronavirus on March 19, with the exception of emergency cases.
The ongoing operation of the resettlement program in the US leaves refugees in Australia and its offshore detention camps who have been accepted under the program with an invidious choice: to stay in detention, where many have been for the past seven years, or start a new life in the US as it is ravaged by a deadly pandemic.
Reader Marcus says I never answer his e-mails and tweets. He does have a point and it is something I feel awful about—it is just me here and if I answered every e-mail I receive every day, I would have no time to research and write stories and I would have no life at all.
So for that I continue to apologize and to be honest it is the fact that I can’t answer all of your e-mails that every day makes me want to hang it up after nearly 13 years of continuous posting either here or at‘Frauds and Crooks.’
Here is Marcus (he says I won’t post his comment!). By the way, I screen comments and I am awfully slow at getting to that job too. This is from yesterday.
We need a National Mandate on forced deportations for refugees and illegal aliens.
PS.. to the lady who runs this site, thanks for never answering my tweets and email.
You’re exactly like a politician, you care nothing about the people that support you. [Support? How?—ed]
I know you’ll delete this comment too, liberals like you don’t like criticism.
He is right about twitter. I’ve slacked off on twitter lately. It is all just a competition for who can post the most titillating tidbits aimed at a small segment of America.
As a volunteer writer I could hang around twitter or facebook for a big chunk of the day, tweeting, retweeting, commenting and so forth, or I could research and write posts.
Now, I’ll see what I think would be something that readers might like to hear about (would find useful) and at the same time is something I want to write about (whether I have readers like Marcus or not!).
