Category: Asylum seekers

Iranian granted refugee status in US, leaves, looks for asylum in Europe

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

It’s just not like what you envision refugees do.  We have this notion, based on puff-pieces written in the mainstream media, that refugees come to America or are granted asylum, are eternally grateful, work their butts off and settle into American life.  Actually, LOL! readers here at RRW might not have that vision, but the average American does.  So, this little bit in the middle of another story about the Iranian rights activists (the supposed good guys) bopping back and forth to Turkey was informative.

Kouhyar Goodarzi

The article in Euronews is about a blogger, described as a human rights activist, Kouhyar Goodarzi, who is expecting to be granted asylum in the US.

He has been a refugee since the winter, and is waiting for his request for asylum, lodged with the UN High Commission for Refugees, to be accepted.

[….]

Kouhyar intends to rebuild his nest in the United States after his asylum application has been accepted.

And, he plans to keep up his activism from “his nest” in America!

Expelled from university in Tehran where he was studying aeronautics, he wants to continue his studies and, while pursuing his professional activities, keep up his activism.

Not a client of the Asylumist (Jason Dzubow) I hope!

Then there is his friend, Hossein Salmanzadeh, who had already been a refugee in the US, didn’t like it (says he couldn’t find work) who hopped on back to Turkey and is now shopping for asylum in Europe.   This does not pass the smell test!

Hossein Salmanzadeh took the first pictures of his friend Kouhyar Goodarzi upon his arrival in Ankara.

A former photographer for the national Iranian news agency, Fars, Salmanzadeh fled four years ago, after being accused of selling photographs of post-electoral events in 2009 to foreign media.

“The government can punish me, or maybe kill me. Because the government said you are a spy, a Mossad spy, a CIA spy. Because you send pictures to other agencies. Sometimes I get a message ‘you can come back. You will only, have to go to jail for one week, do an interview on TV then you can have a good and enjoyable life’. I can’t do it!”

Salmanzadeh was a refugee once in the United States, but he could not find work. Having returned to Turkey, he hopes to be given asylum in Europe. [So how persecuted was he?—-ed]

Turkey only provides temporary refugee status to non-European asylum seekers, relying on the UNHCR to organise their transit to a third country.

Fishy story all around!

“Rainbow Nation” of South Africa is leading anti-immigrant country in the world

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment
Asylum-seekers of different nationalities queue during a rain storm outside the refugee office in Cape Town. The long queues have led to violent clashes between refugees and the police.  photo: AP

They are having uprisings against refugees and asylum seekers (again!) in the country touted by the likes of Michelle Obama and US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg as a model country for equality and justice.

I’ve been meaning to write about the latest wave of violence for the last few days, but those refugee terrorist stories in the US and the UK have been distracting me.

As you read this latest information on a nearly three-year-old study (why report it now?) on xenophobia in the land of Mandela, remember whatever this country does going forward cannot be blamed on racist white people.  The country is run by the black African National Congress.   That is why every story uses the “xenophobia” charge.  “Racism” doesn’t work when both the persecutors and the persecuted are the same race!

We would like an electrified border fence please!

From the Saturday Star:

Johannesburg – The attitudes of South Africans to migrants may be softening, but research shows that one third of people canvassed still believe refugees should live in camps on the borders, and more than half say they still don’t want want refugees anywhere in the country.

More than a third of people canvassed also still associate migrants with crime, a quarter say they are ready to join forces to stop migrants operating a business in South Africa, and 41 percent are all for mandatory HIV testing of refugees.

While the researchers involved in the 2010 Southern African Migration Programme suggest that growing contact between migrants and South Africans may be having a positive effect on the attitudes of South Africans, they warn of an “unyielding cohort” willing to use violence to address the perceived migrant “threat”.

The article goes on to attempt to convince readers that conditions are improving and people are “softening” toward migrants who want what the South African constitution promises every person, which is everything—peace, security, a home, a job, an education (blah! blah! blah!).    Then this:

But the study warned of an “unyielding cohort”, and said that unless there was a concerted effort to change attitudes, “migrants and refugees will continue to be soft targets of xenophobic discrimination in South Africa”.

The latest research showed that a quarter of respondents were ready to jointly prevent migrants from neighbouring countries from operating a business, and a similar number were also willing to prevent migrants from moving into their neighbourhoods. [Interesting to think about—do poor and middle class black South Africans have a greater desire for self-preservation then Americans, or Brits or Aussies?—ed]

Also, just less than half (41 percent) of black and white respondents believed migrants were carriers of disease. The same number also wanted mandatory HIV testing of refugees, and 18 percent said HIV treatment should not be afforded to refugees.   [BTW, the US permits HIV positive and TB infected refugees to enter the US, and you (taxpayers) are paying for their treatment—ed]

“Globally, South Africa is still the country most opposed to immigration, where nearly 80 percent of citizens either support prohibition on the entry of migrants, or would like to place strict limits on it,” the study said. A quarter of South Africans wanted migrants deported regardless of their skills status, and 63 percent wanted electrified fences on borders.

More than 60 percent of respondents of all races also believed migrants took jobs away from locals.

We have dozens of posts on the “Rainbow Nation” going back several years.  Read all about the post-apartheid  immigration problems in South Africa (and the hypocrisy), here.  This S.A. mess is a prime example of the political Left’s intellectual dishonesty—the inability or unwillingness to recognize the powerful human forces behind ethnic nationalism.

And, one more thing, if you think this doesn’t affect you, it does!  The US (Australia too) is now taking refugees from South Africa and they aren’t the white asylum-seekers.

Afghan refugees: So why can’t the Muslim countries keep them?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment
These Afghan women are at a UN registration center in Pakistan on their way back to Afghanistan. If repatriation continues to fail, they could be on their way to your home town! They would blend right in wouldn’t they! Photo AFP

Here is an overly long article in IRIN (a UN publication) about the growing “crisis” of what to do with millions of Afghan refugees living in Pakistan and Iran (many for decades) where Pakistan and Iran don’t want them.  The UNHCR (UN High Commissioner for Refugees) is trying to figure out what to do with them.  So far, repatriation to the hell-hole that is Afghanistan isn’t going so well.

Below are the opening paragraphs.  I searched for any mention of those dreaded words—third country resettlement—and didn’t see them (this time!).   I did see that whatever happens, it’s going to cost us (the US and other Western countries) a lot of money for what the UN claims is the world’s most protracted refugee problem.   (I wondered, aren’t the so-called Palestinian “refugees” the most protracted problem?)

UN says Islam is the basis for “international refugee law.”  Therefore, Islam is welcoming, right?

Only a few years ago the UNHCR pronounced that the Islamic faith was the historical root of  our modern-day refugee protection programs.  In case you think I’m making that up, this is precisely what was reported in 2009, here.

New York, 23 June (AKI) – The 1,400-year-old Islamic custom of welcoming people fleeing persecution has had more influence on modern international refugee law than any other traditional source, according to a new study sponsored by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

High Commissioner Antonio Guterres said that more than any other historical source, Islamic law and tradition underpin the modern-day legal framework on which UNHCR bases its global activities on behalf of the tens of millions of people forced from their homes around the world.

So HC Guterres, just remind the Muslim governments of Pakistan and Iran of your report and ask why don’t they just keep them and love them?

That will never happen, instead the whole world is expected to give generously to build them villages back in the HOME country.

From IRIN:

DUBAI, 3 May 2012 (IRIN) – As a meeting of representatives of the Afghan, Iranian and Pakistani governments and the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) opened to discuss a new strategy for dealing with the most protracted refugee crisis in the world, NGOs working in Afghanistan raised a number of questions about the new approach.

The so-called Solutions Strategy for Afghan Refugees, to support Voluntary Repatriation, Sustainable Reintegration ad Assistance to Host Countries is an agreement between the three governments on a way forward for the 2.7 million Afghans registered as refugees in Iran and Pakistan; the estimated 2.4-3.4 million unregistered Afghans living in the two countries; and the nearly 6 million Afghans – one quarter of its population – who have returned from exile to very difficult circumstances. (See IRIN’s recent In-Depth look at the realities on the ground).

The two-day meeting in Geneva, which started on 2 May, invited international stakeholders – donors, diplomats, international organizations, aid agencies and others – to endorse the new approach, at a cost of nearly US$2 billion, which seeks to improve conditions in communities of origin in Afghanistan to encourage returns while supporting communities which host Afghan refugees in Iran and Pakistan, and providing Afghans in exile with skills training to help them upon their return to Afghanistan.

Read it all, if you’ve got the time.

You can bet there isn’t going to be a lot of Saudi money in this project when it can be wrung out of the US Treasury instead. Nor will any Muslim country (including Saudi Arabia) “welcome the stranger.”

Everyone needs to be watchful for the day when they all throw up their hands and say the only solution is for the US to wholesale scoop up a hundred thousand or so and bring them to the US using the same argument being used regarding Iraqi refugees—-we broke it, we fix it.

Oops!  A California Congresswoman has already suggested we start with resettling any Afghan woman who wishes to come to America.

The photo is from this article about how Pakistan extended the deadline for the Afghans to get out.

CAIR wants Justice’s Civil Rights Division to investigate Todashev shooting

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This is an update of the strange story out of Florida where the “friend” of Boston Bombing suspect, and a fellow asylee, Ibragim Todashev, was shot during an investigation involving the FBI which was looking into the unsolved murder of three Jewish young men in Boston.  Our original reporting on the phony Chechen political “refugee” is here (two previous posts).

Here is the Washington Post update.  The Council on American Islamic Relations is looking to the notoriously biased Civil Rights Division, that would be CAIR’s friend’s shop (Thomas Perez) to do a separate investigation.  Perez loves the Muslim Brotherhood too!

Can we also have a Justice Department investigation on how Todashev, and others like him! were granted asylum?

This is going to get interesting….

More on Sweden: NYT can’t figure out why the “youths” are so angry

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

After yesterday, one of the best days ever at RRW with over 6,000 visitors (nearly 10,000 in three days) from around the world to our post about Swedes fighting back against the immigrant gangs in Stockholm, here, I thought I should look around to see if the mainstream media was mentioning any of this.

There isn’t much in the American press.  Has anyone seen any mention of Swedish immigrant riots on Fox News?

However, a couple of days ago the New York Times was scratching its proverbial head to try to figure out why the immigrants to the “welcoming” social welfare capital of the world were so “unhappy.”  The article was laughable as it wondered about how “welcoming” Sweden could have gone wrong—must be racism, must be the recent cut in welfare, must be a shortage of jobs, racism of course—but one word was completely missing from the piece (two actually).  The ‘I’ word and ‘M’ word could not be found.  Like “Voldemort” in Harry Potter, “Islam” and “Muslim” are words never to be spoken in stories like this one.

Like the evil character in Harry Potter (He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named) aka Lord Voldemort, Islam Must-Not-Be-Named!

NYT:

STOCKHOLM — Eva Bromster, an elementary school principal, was jolted awake by a telephone call late Thursday night. “Your school is burning,” her boss, the director of the local education department, told her.

Ms. Bromster rushed to the school, in the mostly immigrant district of Tensta, north of Stockholm, and found one room gutted by fire and another filled with ankle-deep water after firefighters had doused the flames. It was the second fire at the school in three days.

In Stockholm and other towns and cities last week, bands made up mostly of young immigrants set buildings and cars ablaze in a spasm of destructive rage rarely seen in a country proud of its normally tranquil, law-abiding ways.

Ms. Bromster went on to speculate for the NYT that those immigrants burning schools must be “unhappy.”

Perhaps readers of the NYT are expected to know their world history and geography and know without being told that if the immigrants are from Somalia, Iraq and Syria, most will be Muslims!

The riots, now subsiding, have produced less damage than the earlier ones in Paris and London, which also involved mostly immigrants. But the unrest has shaken Sweden, which has a reputation for welcoming immigrants and asylum seekers, including those fleeing violence in countries like Iraq, Somalia and Syria, and regularly ranks in surveys as one of the world’s happiest places.

Gee, it can’t all be about poverty, they have a world-famous welfare system in Sweden.  The Left cannot let go of the idea they have pushed for decades that Islamic Jihad is related to poverty.  If not poverty it must be racism.

While the violence was concentrated in relatively poor districts, most of their residents have been shielded from dire poverty by a welfare system that is one of the world’s most expansive, despite recent cutbacks.

[….]

The left, which dominated Swedish politics for decades and devised the cradle-to-grave welfare system, has blamed reduced state benefits and a modest shift toward the privatization of public services for the unrest, pointing to an erosion of the country’s tolerant, egalitarian ethos.

Racism 24/7 in Sweden says Iraqi who has been given much:

Husby, Mr. Khamisi said, “looks nice on the outside, but inside it is not nice.” A first-year law student at Stockholm University who did not join in the rioting, Mr. Khamisi acknowledged that “Sweden has given me opportunities I didn’t have in Iraq,” but “I’m not treated the same as a white guy.”

“I feel discrimination all the time,” he said.   [Maybe there is some connection to years of immigrant crime and Muslim-perpetrated violence in cities such as Malmo?—ed]

What a shock! Sweden’s “anti-immigrant” party gaining strength:

The recent violence has been a boon to the Swedish Democrats, the anti-immigration party. Opinion polls suggest the party is gaining in popularity, partly because of the indignation many Swedes feel about being called racists after accepting so many refugees. Immigrants and the Swedish-born children of immigrants make up about 15 percent of the population, and last year Sweden nearly doubled the number of asylum seekers it took in and became Europe’s primary destination for refugees from Syria.

And, one more thing, the NYT had the audacity to suggest it was older immigrants, no mention of the Swedes, who went out on the streets to try to get the “youths” to go home.

We have seen all this coming for the past five years, see our Sweden archives here.  One story from last fall, still makes me laugh.  The Swedish government purchased a rural mansion in which to house Muslim refugees and they protested against living there saying it was full of ghosts—see Tundra Tabloids for the story on the ungrateful “youths.”

I’m AnnC@refugeewatcher on twitter. Please tweet this and also follow me!