This time it is alleged that traffickers, angry at the passengers, deliberately rammed the ship forcing it to capsize.
The USS San Antonio rescued illegal migrants here in 2013. Note that our men have donned protective clothing. bhttp://www.nbcnews.com/news/other/uss-san-antonio-rescues-migrants-mediterranean-sea-near-malta-f8C11409455
About 500 migrants are feared to have drowned after the boat carrying them from Egypt to Malta was apparently rammed and deliberately sunk by people-traffickers, an intergovernmental group has said.
The news – based on the accounts of two Palestinian survivors – emerged on the same day up to 200 more people were feared dead when another boat heading to Europe capsized off Libya.
[….]
Huge numbers of people are attempting to flee from Africa to Europe, with numbers sharply up this year, in part due to the continued violent chaos in Libya and Syria. More than 100,000 people have been rescued since January, the UNHCR, says.
And, then get this! After the Italian Navy rescues a bunch of illegal migrants, the traffickers slip back and re-take their ship to be used again.
Earlier this year a leading Libyan people smuggler, speaking anonymously to the Guardian, explained how he uses a different tactic to ensure the trafficking boat can be used again.
The man said that once the Italian military was en route to the ship he and his crew would decamp to a small rubber inflatable. Once the migrants are removed they return to the smuggling boat and return in it to Libya. [Italy might at least burn the damn ships!—ed]
I’m at the point of saying, Europe deserves what is happening to it—they are so dumb. If they just escorted some of the migrant boats back to Libya and Egypt thus blockading Europe, this whole business would end in a nanosecond. Of course, look who is talking as we similarly don’t close our US borders!
There are ‘pockets of resistance’ in some European countries which still have a will to live—one of those countries is Bulgaria which recently came under fire from the UN for building a border fence with Turkey so as to keep from being overrun.
Bulgaria attempting to protect itself from invasion from Turkey built additional border fencing this year. Photo Credit: Reuters/Stoyan Nenov
Here is a bit of the latest news. Although most of our readers are from the US, it is important for you to know the trajectory Europe is on.
Residents of the western Bulgarian village of Kovachevtsi have issued a declaration demanding that the immigrants accommodated at the National Children Ecological Complex leave by October 30.
Ventsislav Todorov, Chair of the Kovachevtsi Municipal Council, informed that the declaration would be sent to the President, Prime Minister, the Education Minister, and the Chair of the State Agency for Refugees and the District Governor of Pernik.
“We oppose integration in a situation where Bulgarians are a minority, while Somali and Afghan nationals without refugee status are a majority,” he explained, as cited by the Bulgarian National Radio.
See our Bulgaria archive here, and our ‘invasion of Europe’ series here.
This is an interesting turnabout, it is usually European political leaders like Geert Wilders who have to live with the constant fear (under guard) that some Islamists will kill them. Now, if this story is to be believed, Muslims fear a rising tide of “xenophobia” as Europeans feel under siege and fear the coming shariah law, as Muslim migrants flood into Italy from Africa and the Middle East.
Aicha Mesrar is leaving Italy. Photo: http://www.ilgiornale.it/news/politica/trentino-consigliera-marocchina-pd-lascia-litalia-paese-1049424.html
MOSCOW, September 12 (RIA Novosti) – Aicha Mesrar, an Italian councilor from a small city in northern Italy, has been forced to abandon her post and flee the country, The Independent reported.
Announcing her resignation, Mesrar said that she was proud of her work in the city council, and stressed that her leaving “is not the fault of the people of Rovereto,” but of some isolated elements.
“I cannot always live under escort,” Mesrar said, adding that “I’m not scared for me but for my children.” Mesrar has been under police protection for over two years, after receiving numerous threats in the form of anonymous letters.
Mesrar, 45, was born in Casablanca, Morocco, and moved to Italy in the early 1990s, becoming a councilor of the Democratic Party in the city of Rovereto in the Trentino region in 2010.
Mesrar was described by other local politicians as an active and effective councilor, spearheading several community initiatives, including a local community cooperative. Mesrar was the first woman to wear a veil at city hall.
Rovereto’s mayor, Andrea Miorandi, a friend and political ally of Ms. Mesrar, has also received threats for supporting plans to build a mosque and a Muslim cemetery in the city. He described Mesrar’s work as an “outstanding example of civic commitment.”
Bruno Dorigatti, head of Trentino’s provincial government, noted with sadness that “if [Mesrar] has to give in to intimidation and anonymous threats, it means that Trentino has yet to defeat the dangerous disease of intolerance.”
[….]
The problem of anti-immigrant attitudes and the related rise of nationalist and xenophobic feelings has been a significant problem in Europe for several decades, but has sharpened dramatically in recent years as the result of sharpening economic crises, rising unemployment, and instability in Northern Africa resulting in an influx of African and Asian immigrants.
See our ‘invasion of Europe’ archive byclicking here.
Update: Almost 1,000 additional Somalis admitted to the US in the past month, here. The number for FY2014 is now 8,278.
Almost every day someone asks us—where do I find numbers for this group of refugees admitted to the US, or that group. Let me tell you it isn’t easy!
This morning I was on the hunt for how many Somalis we admitted to the US in fiscal year 2013.
Eskinder Negash (right) Director of ORR and Larry Bartlett (left) Director of Refugee Admissions of the US State Department addressing an audience in “welcoming” Portland, Maine. Maine is a Somali resettlement site. http://www.pressherald.com/2013/01/30/growth-of-refugee-community-attributed-to-welcoming-city_2013-01-30/
We know that for fiscal year 2014, through July 31st (in ten months), we have admitted 7,326. You can always check this site at WRAPSnet.org for the on-going resettlement in a given year.
Update: Here in Statistical Abstracts you can learn about how many refugees/asylees etc. came to your state in FY2013.
The handiest place for all numbers is the Office of Refugee Resettlement’s Annual Reports to Congress, here. However, since they are always behind in producing those, the most recent numbers are not available to us or to Congress. The numbers are in tables at the end of each report.
Another good source is the Annual Flow Reports from the Department of Homeland Security. Here is one for 2012.
You can find some information at the Migration Policy Institute(a pro-immigration ‘think tank’), here.
Then there is the massive data base at Homeland Security’s Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, here.
Where did I finally find the number I was looking for?
I found it in the text of a year-end wrap-upwhich we previously posted by the Director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, Eskinder Negash, who said this on December 20, 2013 (posted here for the benefit of our new readers). Emphasis is mine:
Two thousand thirteen was another busy year for the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR). Despite an extended moratorium on overseas refugee arrivals in October, Fiscal Year 2013 brought fairly steady arrivals each month, across all categories.
The largest group was refugees, with the United States welcoming refugees from 65 countries across the globe this past year. The highest number of overseas arrivals represented a slight switch from those of the past few years, with nearly 19,500 Iraqi refugee admissions and 16,300 Burmese refugees accounting for more than half of all refugee arrivals. They were followed by Bhutanese (9,100), Somali (7,600)and Cuban refugees (4,200), with Iran, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, Eritrea and Ethiopia rounding out rest of the top ten admissions groups in FY2013.
The overall population served by ORR and its partners, however, grew to a projected 143,000 new arrivals in Fiscal Year 2013, including almost 72,000 refugees and Special Immigrant Visa holders, an estimated 46,000 asylees and Cuban/Haitian Entrants and Parolees; more than 500 Victims of Trafficking, and nearly 25,000 Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC).
Negash: The best news! They are voting!
The numbers only tell part of the story: most of the 143,000 people ORR served last year are on a path to U.S. citizenship that began the day they arrived. Former refugees, asylees, and UAC are making positive changes in communities across the country—and will continue to do so throughout their lives—opening businesses, buying homes and raising families, and voting (and running!) in local elections. Three former refugees ran for public office in multi-cultural Clarkston, Georgia this past November—and for the first time in the city’s history, voters elected a refugee to a seat on the City Council.
See also one of our most read posts from the last seven years, ‘How did we get so many Somali refugees…’ I put those numbers together by poring over each annual report that had become available. By the way, keep in mind that most Somalis in the US today came as refugees or are the children of refugees.
As I mentioned the other day, we probably have at least 500 posts here at RRW on the Somali migration to America, and surely a hundred or more on the ‘Somali youths’ we welcomed to our cities who have said, s**** the good life, we are Jihadists. (See ISIS fighters just yesterday, here.)
Important to remember! Almost all Somalis (or their parents) now in the US got here through our LEGAL immigration programs, largely through the US State Department’s Refugee Resettlement initiative (State Dept takes refugees that the UN tells them to take). Smaller numbers are here because they came illegally or over-stayed visas and were granted asylum and others got in and then were afforded the benefits of another legal program—Temporary Protected Status. It is impossible to know how many are here illegally, but we do know Somalis have been apprehended at our southern border (how many others got through?).
World Net Daily reporter Leo Hohmann does a good job of summarizing how we got to this place:
Amina Farah who was eventually convicted and sent to prison refused to stand for the Judge as her terror support trial opened in Minneapolis in 2011. http://www.mprnews.org/story/2011/10/03/al-shabab-trial
Even as President Obama launched air strikes Tuesday against the al-Shabab terrorist group in Somalia, a pipeline for potential new Somali terrorists continues to fester right here in the United States.
It’s called the Refugee Resettlement Program, and it continues unabated under the leadership of the U.S. State Department and with the help of several Christian charities.
Minneapolis, Minnesota, sits at the heart of the controversial program. Known as “Little Mogadishu” to some critics, the city has since 1983 welcomed thousands of Somali refugees, most of whom are practicing Muslims and attend a local mosque or Islamic center.
While the Minneapolis-St. Paul area plays host to the largest Somali refugee population, it’s not the only American city that is taking in refugees from the war-torn African nation. Columbus, Ohio, and San Diego, California, have also served as refugee resettlement hot spots.
The State Department, working with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, chooses the communities largely because they are viewed as welcoming of foreign refugees and also because they have well-developed social welfare programs.
“Catholic Charities, Lutheran Social Services and World Relief, which is an evangelical group, resettled them there because the welfare is so good in Minnesota. That was the main reason,” says Ann Corcoran, an activist who has written hundreds of articles about the Somali resettlement program for Refugee Resettlement Watch. “That’s also the case with Maine. A lot of the Somalis are going there for the same reason.”
The Christian charities have worked quietly behind the scenes, using millions of dollars in federal grants, to resettle the refugees in the chosen cities.
