“Refugee” camps on the streets of Amsterdam. Will this happen to America one day? Photo: ‘bloggers without borders.’
I’m telling you, it would be cheaper in the end for Holland to just pay each of the failed asylum seekers (and the Iraqi government) to get them out of tents and off the streets in the Netherlands and back to Iraq. Same goes for Malta and the Somalis!
Iraq will not help the government in its efforts to deport Iraq nationals who have failed to become officially recognised as asylum seekers, junior justice minister Fred Teeven told Nos television.
Teeven has just returned from a visit to Iraq, but the country is refusing to accept failed asylum seekers who are being deported against their will, Teeven said. Only Iraqi nationals who volunteer to go back are accepted.
[….]
The group of failed refugees who have been living in tents and former churches in the Netherlands include many Iraqis. They cannot be deported because they don’t have the proper paperwork but are not entitled to official accommodation from the Dutch state.
Teeven’s predecessor Gerd Leers offered Iraq €5m in development aid to accept deportees but Iraq demanded $10,000 per person instead, Nos said.
It will ultimately cost the Netherlands more than $10,000 per person to house and feed the jobless migrants.
By the way, we reported the other daythat Australia was having the same problem with Iranians they wish to deport—Iran doesn’t want them back.
Update July 16th: Catholic Ireland takes ten Somalis from Malta, here. It’s a good thing the EU is stepping up. This is not America’s problem.
You knew this would happen. The government of Malta would not be able to send a message to the thousands waiting in North Africa to board boats and make a run at Italy and Malta. Don’t try it, you will be returned to Africa is message needed now.
This, below from Voice of America, is an update to my post yesterday. If you are a new reader here at RRW we follow Malta’s illegal alien troubles closely (and have for over 5 years) because the US State Department has been bringing some of those African migrants to the US in a perversion of international refugee law.
Jesuit Refugee Services—a leader of the pack?
I feel for Malta and the Maltese people because they are a tiny country overloaded with not just illegal aliens, but apparently a large and noisy group of NGOs sucking off government funds (EU tax payer money too) just as the US refugee contractors do in America. Those Europeans opposing the cultural annihilation of Europe do not have the resources to battle the human rights industrial complex in the media.
LONDON — Malta has been forced to cancel the forced return of dozens of Somali migrants to Libya, after an emergency ruling by the European Court of Human Rights. The EU has criticized the attempted repatriation, but Malta has accused its European partners of a lack of solidarity. It comes after the Pope visited an Italian island earlier this week that’s received thousands of migrants.
[….]
Maltese authorities had intended to send two planes back to Libya carrying 45 Somali migrants who had arrived Tuesday. But the European Court of Human Rights issued a ruling banning the repatriations.
The migrants must be given the chance to apply for asylum, says Katrine Camilleri, a Maltese lawyer from the Jesuit Refugee Service.*
[….]
Authorities say more than 400 migrants have arrived on the island in the past week, including babies, pregnant women and three men with gunshot wounds. Most are Eritrean or Somali.
[….]
Malta has accused the European Union of a lack of solidarity in failing to help with the refugee influx.
The United Nations says around 8,400 refugees have landed in Italy and Malta so far this year – double the number in the same period last year.
The article goes on to gush about the Pope going to Lampedusa here to put a guilt-trip on the world. Update: Maybe Pope should stay home and continue cleaning up child abuse in the Vatican!
Learn more here about the Jesuit Refugee Services which is getting EU funds to give “vulnerable”refugees “psychosocial” support. How about the members of the EU taking some of the needy migrants to their countries and give them their psychosocial support there—in London, Paris and Berlin?
*How many “refugees” has Ms. Katrine Camilleri welcomed to live in her home? Does anyone know?
Click herefor an archive going back more than five years on the Maltese mess—a mess the US helped to make by offering free tickets to America for some of the African illegal migrants.
Be sure to see this story about an Italian diplomat and UN workers being arrested for trafficking Somalis between Libya and Malta—guess the business is back up and running!
The Pope on Lampedusa yesterday. Photo: Tullio M. Puglia/Getty Images
Lampedusa is the Italian island that is usually the first bit of land the mostly Muslim illegal aliens come to when leaving North Africa via boat. Lampedusa and Malta have been plagued for the last few years with the arrival of boat people, some claiming they want asylum—asylum from the turmoil that the US and European countries (including Italy) helped create with their enthusiasm for the Arab Spring and the destabilization of Libya.
Now the Pope unexpectedly arrives on Lampedusa, says Mass and lectures about the “globalization of indifference,” which is fine, of course, as long as he only exhorts individual Christians to PRIVATE giving (opening their homes and wallets) and does not continue to demand Caesar’s money for the church’s charity. And, frankly, that is exactly what is happening at least in America as long time readers of RRW know—the political activities of the Catholic Bishops are being funded by youthrough taxation.
ROME — Pope Francis traveled on Monday to Lampedusa, the tiny Mediterranean island that has become a gateway to Europe for thousands of desperate asylum seekers and migrants, as well as an unknown number of others who have died during the perilous crossing from North Africa.
It was the pope’s first official trip outside Rome, and he used it to draw attention to a continuing humanitarian problem while chiding the world for its indifference.
“These brothers and sisters of ours were trying to leave difficult situations to find a little serenity and peace…..
Serenity and peace! Then why do they riot and clash with police on Lampedusa, here is one instance of many! In that post we quoted a line from The Independent:
Until the recent mass influx of north Africans, Lampedusa was a quiet community that relied on fishing and summer tourism for a living. The endless flow of arrivals and the catastrophic effect this has had on tourism have seen tempers fray.
Gee, not a peep out of the New York Times on the catastrophe for Lampedusa residents.
Not all arrivals are in need of asylum—many are economic migrants not protected by any international law regarding refugees and asylum. ‘Economic migrant’ is just a fancy phrase to describe illegal aliens. The NYT continues:
New arrivals on the island, about 75 miles north of Tunisia, are fed and fingerprinted and then separated into three groups: economic migrants, who could be repatriated after their cases are reviewed, and asylum seekers and minors, who after a few days are sent to detention centers on Italy’s mainland.
And here, when the Mayor of Lampedusa calls this a “humanitarian disaster” I don’t think he is talking only about the boat people. I think he just might mean this is a human tragedy for the Italian people.
While praising volunteer associations, law enforcement officials and residents of the island for the assistance they have provided to the migrants, the pope criticized the “globalization of indifference” that he said was widespread among too many others. We “have forgotten how to cry” for migrants lost at sea and “take care of each other,” the pope said in his homily. [Maybe Pope Francis could take some of the “refugees” back to Vatican City with him—ed]
Officials in Lampedusa said they hoped the pope’s visit would bring attention to what they saw as a humanitarian disaster.
“This island is the setting of one of the most epochal dramas of our time, but it is ignored,” said Giuseppina Nicolini, the mayor of Lampedusa. “The numbers of those lost at sea are those of a war, but a silent war that no one speaks of, except a few blogs that no one reads.”
Who is silent in the “silent war” (the suffering Italians?) because it surely isn’t the mainstream media that is silent on the plight of the migrants, and what “blogs” is he talking about?
For more on Lampedusa, click here for our complete archive.
Unless you’ve been living in a cave this summer, you know that Turkey’s increasingly Islamist supremacist President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, incidentally often identified as Obama’s only real friend among world leaders (here he names five friends), is having serious domestic problems stemming from his people, mostly the young, who do not want Turkey to become a theocracy. LOL! I bet he is watching Egypt very closely!
Obama to Erdogan: I love you! 2011 AP Photo
Now it seems his problems could get worse because he “welcomed” tens of thousands of Syrian refugees to Turkey who are now, to put it mildly, rubbing the locals the wrong way.
Domestic developments in Turkey have turned public focus away from Ankara’s growing problem with Syrian refugees. Caught between its welcoming rhetoric toward predominantly Sunni Syrians fleeing the wrath of Bashar al-Assad, and the realities on the ground in Turkey, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is finding it increasingly difficult to cope with the problem. All the while, he complains about the lack of international support in this regard.
Meanwhile, unease grows in Turkish towns and cities near the Syrian border where large numbers of Alevis sympathetic to Assad live. It seems that the welcome extended to fleeing Syrians by Ankara is wearing thin among locals, who are turning against the refugees, accusing them of disrupting the normal life of the region.
After a lament about how much all of this is costing Turkey, and that the international community isn’t helping much, comes this dynamite bit of news—refugee camps may be resting places for Sunni-fighters traveling back and forth to Syria.
Meanwhile, Kirisci (Kemal Kirisci, from the Brookings Institution in Washington), like other observers — including the ICG — indicates that the Turkish public appears to be increasingly wary of the presence of an ever-growing number of refugees.“There are reports of complaints about property rents rising in towns and cities close to the border areas as well as about wages being pushed down by refugees who take up jobs in the border regions,” Kirisci wrote in his blog post. [Ho hum, refugees take jobs and limited rental properties from locals, what else is new!—ed]
Referring to the issue of local discontent, the ICG indicated in April that several of the camps in Turkey are being used by predominantly Sunni opposition fighters from Syria as off-duty resting places to visit their families, receive medical services and purchase supplies.(Are they picking up American weapons there too?—ed)
“This is exacerbating sensitive ethnic and sectarian balances, particularly in Hatay province, where more than one third of the population is of Arab Alevi descent and directly related to Syria’s Alawites,” said the report. Local discontent with the Syrian refugees is, however, not just restricted to the Alevis.
Then there was the thwarted kidnapping of a child (by Syrians) from a prominent Turkish family:
Anger toward the Syrians peaked after the twin car bomb attacks in the town of Reyhanli, near the Syrian border, on May 11. About 53 people, mostly Sunnis, were killed in the atrocity allegedly perpetrated by pro-Assad operatives in Turkey, who were later arrested and now face trials. There were angry demonstrations in Reyhanli against the refugees after the bombing by nationalist elements, leaving many Syrians in doubt as to whether they are safe in Turkey.
Already faced with difficulties as a result of their burgeoning numbers, Syrian refugees also have to cope with claims that are bound to agitate local Turks. Sefik Cirkin, a deputy for Hatay from the ultra-nationalist and predominantly Sunni National Movement Party (MHP), for example, said in June that some Syrians had been thwarted by the Turkish police as they tried to abduct the child of a prominent Turkish family in the region.
Indicating that Reyhanli and Antakya, the capital of Hatay province, were “sitting on a social bomb,” as some tried to ignite sectarian conflict between local Alevis and Sunnis, Cirkin went on to ask in a loaded fashion, “What would have happened if this child had been abducted?”
Erdogan has problems! (no kidding!), and I hope they become so great (refugees cost a fortune!) that he must stop building the massive Islamic center in Maryland!
The last thing Erdogan needs at a time when he is facing nationwide protests by anti-government elements, that are also angry over his failed Syria policy, is to have an Alevi-Sunni conflict on his hands, a prospect that has never been far from the surface in Turkey. Some would argue that he himself fueled sectarian animosity with his pro-Sunni Syrian policy.
Update July 8th: Immigration policy will be what the next election in Australia will hinge on, here at the Herald Sun:
Asylum seeker policy is set to be a major battleground of the election as both the Government and the Coalition promise tougher action.
Thousands of mostly Muslim boat people have been arriving on Australian shores and roiling the political landscape there for years.
This boat packed with Sri Lankans arrived in Australia in April, and many of those on board were promptly flown back to Sri Lanka. Photo: ABC
Note to readers: forget it if you think you can escape to Australia!*
Looks like they too have lost control of their borders!
This NYT article is from last Wednesday, in advance of a meeting that was planned in Indonesia on the boat people crisis. I don’t know how that turned out.
Mr. [Kevin] Rudd, who last week replaced the struggling Julia Gillard as prime minister amid record low poll numbers for their governing Labor Party, is facing a hotly contested election currently set for September. No issue looms as large over his chances of retaining power as slowing the record number of rickety boats attempting the perilous crossing between the two countries.
Thousands of asylum seekers fly into Indonesia every year, where they pay smugglers to ferry them in often unsafe, overcrowded vessels to Christmas Island, a remote Australian territory in the Indian Ocean that is its nearest point to Indonesia. Iranian and Afghan asylum seekers, together with Sri Lankans who often sail directly to Christmas Island without transiting in Indonesia, make up the majority of such asylum claims.Accidents at sea have killed more than 600 people since late 2009, and finding a long-term solution has eluded successive Australian governments going back more than a decade to John Howard, the conservative former prime minister.
Experts say recent statements from senior Australian ministers and advisers to Mr. Rudd signal a push to get tough on asylum seekers ahead of the elections as a means of insulating the Labor Party against claims that it has lost control of the country’s borders.
By the way, in 2010 we had a report that the US State Department, in a perversion of international refugee law, was taking some of the Sri Lankans who arrived illegally in Australia to Oakland, CA for resettlement. The Malta doctrine!
Not refugees! Economic migrants! (this statement must be making the heathen rage):
Foreign Minister Bob Carr of Australia, speaking by telephone from Brunei late Tuesday, placed regional security concerns and asylum seekers at the top of the agenda for the summit meeting. He repeated his recent claim that nearly all those now seeking asylum in Australia by boat are economic migrants and thus not entitled to refugee status under the U.N. Refugee Convention, to which Australia is a signatory.
And, get this, once a citizen of Iran gets out of Iran, no country can deport them back to Iran! That sure is one way to spread Islamic colonizers throughout the world! (Don’t forget to read about Al Hijra—the Islamic doctrine of immigration!)
He singled out Iran, whichis feeling the bite of U.N. sanctions aimed at getting it to abandon its nuclear program and does not accept the repatriation of its citizens, as a major source of such migrants. He said Australia would be discussing ways to dissuade citizens of that country in particular from attempting the crossing.
About the photo: Here is the story at Radio Australia. By the way, although not Muslims, western countries are concerned that the Sri Lankan migrants are connected to the Tamil Tigers faction which pioneered the use of the suicide belt to make its political point.
*For ambitious readers, we have 100 previous posts on Australia,click here.
