Category: Asylum seekers

The “Rainbow Nation” is being crushed by refugees, asylum seekers, economic migrants, and assorted illegal aliens

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment
Michelle meets Mandela in the “Rainbow Nation” in June 2011. AP Photo/ Debbie Yazbek

I haven’t mentioned the troubles in South Africa for a while.  Yeh, believe it or not, they have more problems in Michelle Obama’s favorite country than an Olympic “bladerunner” star murdering his gorgeous girlfriend.

Their borders are flooded with “asylum seekers” who have heard about their Commie Constitution and Bill of Rights (and believe the promises to be true).

I reported in a post last spring that:  The African National Congress (the party of Mandela) says everyone gets:  a job, food, housing, fairness, peace and security.

Michelle brought her mom, Mrs. Robinson, and the girls to South Africa in 2011 to admire what Nelson Mandela had brought to the formerly apartheid nation (now the supposed model to the world)—fairness and socialism for all, here.

So, guess what!  The ANC is, a year later, looking for a way to stop the flow of migrants who want what has been promised and is considering refugee camps as a possible way to control the border-crossers.    This is the story I came across today, but there is this story I missed from December that comes before today’s news about camps.

Sound familiar?

From Business Day Live (Johannesburg) (emphasis mine):

THE African National Congress (ANC) has once again signalled that it wants to see the country’s immigration policy comprehensively reviewed, citing concerns over the abuse of the asylum-seeking system and competition for jobs between foreigners and local unemployed.

Since 1994 South Africa has adopted one of the most liberal immigration policies in the world. This, together with corruption, and poor border and immigration management, has meant that South Africa has the highest number of asylum seekers in the world and an unknown number of illegal immigrants.

But immigration policy has become ambiguous in recent years, with mixed signals coming from the department and ministry of home affairs over its future direction.

Government officials said this week that, in its national conference resolution on peace and stability adopted last week, the ANC stated that undocumented immigrants posed an economic and security threat. The party further believed that the inward flow of low-skilled labour needed to be balanced with the negative effect on employment.

[…..]

The harder line on immigration was reinforced in the organisational report to the ANC conference last week.

[…..]

“During the last five years there were developments that pointed to the need for a more comprehensive approach to the question of management of foreign nationals entering South Africa,” Mr Mantashe’s report reads.

These included the high number of cases of crime involving foreign nationals and the number of undocumented foreign nationals who have jobs in the leisure, hospitality and agricultural sectors in the face of high unemployment among locals.

Now, here is the story this week about fears that the ANC will establish refugee camps:

REFUGEES and asylum seekers receive substantially less protection from the government than they used to when the asylum system was first established in the 1990s. This is claimed by Lawyers for Human Rights and the African Centre for Migration and Society, in a new report published last week.

The report, which monitors trends over the past two years, says South Africa has experienced a de facto policy shift in its approach to asylum seekers and refugees, although immigration policy has not been officially reviewed.

However, a policy review is imminent, raising fears among human rights groups that the country will tighten immigration at the expense of rights.

Would someone tell Obama (both Obamas) and Grover Norquist (the bullfrog slayer) that a country cannot survive OPEN BORDERS and full rights to stuff—welfare, jobs, housing, food and fairness—as is plainly demonstrated by the RAINBOW NATION!

Sheesh!  The next thing you know they will be wanting a border fence!

For our whole archive on South Africa, go here.

Yes! The Barbarians are at the gate(s) of Europe

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

They are at the Gates of Vienna and they are at the Brandenburg Gate in Germany demanding they be allowed to stay. Some, as this gushy piece in the International Herald Tribune (appropriately titled: Barbarians at the Gate) tells us, are “asylum shoppers” meaning they have been turned down for refugee status in another western country and now are camping on public streets in Germany demanding stuff.

Here is writer Lucian Kim making sure the reader hears the warm and fuzzy side of the nice folks just yearning for a better life!  And, it’s all about how Germans don’t like outsiders, don’t you know!  (emphasis below is mine)

BERLIN — There’s a refugee camp in the center of the German capital filled with people who have fled conflicts around the world. They sleep in tents and eat donated food. Almost all of them are breaking German law just by being here.

For more than four months, about 50 asylum seekers and their supporters have been braving the elements on a square in Berlin’s bohemian Kreuzberg neighborhood. The Occupy-style camp appeared in October after a group of refugees marched from Bavaria to Berlin to protest Germany’s restrictive asylum law. Some even held a hunger strike at the Brandenburg Gate.

Refugees shout slogans during a protest by asylum seekers calling for fairer treatment from authorities, as they pass through Brandenburg Gate in Berlin October 13, 2012. Credit: REUTERS

Their main demand: the abolition of the so-called “Residenzpflicht,” or residence requirement, which limits asylum seekers’ freedom of movement while their applications are pending. Critics contend [pdf] that Germany is the only country in the European Union with such a restriction, and that the regulation’s real purpose is to isolate and intimidate refugees.

When I visited the camp on Monday, laundry hung over unmade beds and worn couches inside one of the tents. Two gas heaters gasped against the cold seeping up through the pallets that raised the floor from the ground. A photographer’s lamp provided the only light.

This is where Waleed Mohamed Adam lives. The soft-spoken 28-year-old said he had fled his home in Darfur in 2007, reaching Europe via Libya. He has lost all contact with his family.

And he has no documents. As Adam put it, “My fingerprints are in the Netherlands.” Because his asylum application there was denied, he can’t get a second hearing in Germany and faces deportation.   [The EU doesn’t allow “shopping” for another country if you’ve been previously denied, so you can bet there is much more to Adam’s story—ed]

Gee, could that be “soft spoken” Waleed Mohamed Adam with his fist raised in that photo from October?

The squatters were given the equivalent of $300 a month to live on, but demanded and got $500 from that  foreigner-hating German government!

Kim continues:

Without any legal status, the refugees aren’t treated much better than criminals. They find themselves in a trap: Dependent on meager state handouts because they are restricted from working or studying, they are under constant suspicion of milking the social welfare system.

This contemptuous treatment was confirmed by Germany’s Constitutional Court in July, when it ruled that the $300 monthly allowance for refugees — which hadn’t been adjusted in 19 years — must be raised to the minimum social benefits granted to Germans, about $500.

[…..]

Germany’s harsh asylum law reveals its lingering discomfort with “ausländer,” or foreigners — even as an aging, shrinking indigenous population is projected to lose its standard of living unless it welcomes immigrants.  [Does Kim actually believe that opening a western country to mass immigration—to colonizers—from the third world will improve the living standards of westerners!—ed]

Kim tells us there is one woman in the camp and she speaks fluent English. I suspect she is the Commie agitator in this group.  This is about flooding the West with needy third-worlders to bring instability and chaos and to ultimately bring down capitalism.  They have advanced pretty far don’t you think!

….. The only woman in the camp, Napuli Paul Langa is a born leader. Although she had to break off her schooling in her native South Sudan, she speaks fluent English. She said she had to flee because of her human rights activism. [If she really cared about human rights she would stay and fight for her own country! How can anyone fall for this propaganda!—ed]

She didn’t expect to have to carry on that struggle in Germany. In November, Langa was one of the refugees’ delegates at a meeting with members of Parliament that turned out to be fruitless.

“This is the fighting place, the political place,” she said of the camp. “We’re staying here. We’re going to protest in the streets until they meet our demands.”

Kim has more, read it all.

They are squatting and demanding all over Europe, here in the Netherlands and then there is poor Greece.  You can bet this is all a coordinated strategy.

Australia again! Immigration the Trojan Horse for Jihadists

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Since we talked about Australia yesterday, and about a new political party which seeks a ban on Muslim immigration to Australia, here, below are a couple of more bits of news from Down Under.

First see Ezra Levant and the Arab Underground  interview with Jonathan Halevi showing clips of Australian “radical Muslims” (Islamists) talking about spreading Islam through immigration.  (Hat tip: The Muslim Issue)

Then, see this report, about how much the taxpayers of Australia are paying to give “refugee” status to the illegal alien Muslims arriving on their shores.

The Australian immigration budget has increased by $1.3 billion over four years, as the government prepares to expand the humanitarian visa program to 20,000 each year.

A Senate estimates hearing on Monday was told the Immigration Department’s budget for humanitarian arrivals will rise by $150 million this year alone, accounting for about $24,000 for each person resettled in Australia under the expanded humanitarian program.

You can bet the Islamists are laughing their heads off at dumb infidels!   They are getting paid to invade!

Time to nag!  Don’t forget—read about Al-Hijra, the Islamic Doctrine of Immigration!

Denmark to send Somali asylum seekers back to Mogadishu!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Declare Somalia safe enough!

Wow!  And, it was only last September that Denmark sent a delegation to Minneapolis to see just how we are so “welcoming” here and how they might emulate us.   Things must be going south fast in Copenhagen!

From The Copenhagen Post:

Immigration officials are contending that the security situation in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, has improved to such an extent that Somali asylum seekers can be sent back.

Immigration Service (Udlændingestyrelsen) made its decision on the basis of a joint Danish-Norwegian delegation that visited Mogadishu in October 2012, and reported that the Somali capital was safe to the point that rejected asylum seekers would not face persecution if sent back.

”The joint fact-finding mission to Somalia gave us new information that indicated that the security has been vastly improved,” Jakob Dam Glynstrup, the head of asylum at Udlændingestyrelsen, said in a press release. ”There is also a new government in place and a rising number of Somalis are returning home.”

Udlændingestyrelsen pointed to Norway, which has already changed its protocol in regards to asylum seekers from Somalia.

But the Danish aid organisation Dansk Flygtningehjælp argued that the delegation’s assessment is incorrect and pointed to an evaluation by the UN asylum organisation, UNHCR, which said that security threats in Mogadishu and the rest of Somalia are still very high.

I don’t know why this is such a big deal.  After all, the new President of Somalia is urging the folks to come on home and help rebuild their country.

No wonder the Danes are having second thoughts about that “welcoming” business:

According to Udlændingestyrelsen, the number of Somalis who were granted asylum in Denmark last year shot up to around 900. That is compared to only 18 in 2011 and 35 in 2010.

Readers, we’ve been talking a lot about asylum lately.  These are asylum seekers meaning they got to Denmark on their own steam.   We have one up on the Danes (they must be haters)—we are actually still putting Somalis on planes around the world and bringing them to us!

Holy-moly!  If this map is correct we have already admitted over 2000 Somalis in the first three months of this fiscal year!  If that trend continues, Obama will be on target to approach Bush’s best Somali-welcoming years of 2004, 2005 and 2006, here.

The Asylumist: A good source for info. on what else? Asylum

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Yesterday I wrote about the “asylum seekers” arriving by the boatload to Australian shores and then had a look at The Asylumist, a website written,with some humor, by an immigration lawyer.  I’d pretty much forgotten about the site (it is on our blogroll), but think I should check it out from time to time because it’s chock-full of information.

Worldwide, migrants are seeking asylum in ever-increasing numbers.

Readers, asylum seekers get to our borders on their own dime (refugees are selected and we fly them here) and often spend thousands and thousands of dollars to pay human traffickers (Some of these are the the OTMs–other than Mexicans–we often hear about from border watchers).  So right off the bat these are not people without resources.  However, if they are granted asylum they too get stuff, just as refugees do—social services, health care, food stamps, Section 8  housing, etc.

Here is my theory on why the number of asylum seekers coming to the US is (dramatically!) on the rise.   The refugee numbers have been stagnating in recent years due largely to much stricter screening for terrorists; the ones coming are increasingly not finding employment;  some refugee contractors and cities are overloaded; and we don’t take “refugees” from countries that are doing well economically or are relatively politically stable.  Plus, I suspect asylum seekers know that if they can just get across our border, that one day Obama will achieve his fondest wish and grant them all amnesty.  [LOL! that could solve some of the immigration court backlog!—ed]

Here is an old post at The Asylumist about the dramatic increase in asylum seekers.  A program once intended to help the occasional Soviet defecting ballet dancer, now dwarfs the refugee program itself.

A new report from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (“UNHCR”) shows that asylum claims in industrialized countries have increased 20% from 2010 to 2011.  The United States continued to receive the most asylum seekers among the countries surveyed: approximately 74,000 asylum seekers in 2011.  This compares to approximately 55,500 asylum seekers for 2010, a 33% increase (among all countries, South Africa received the most asylum seekers).

The increase in asylum seekers to the U.S. is due largely to higher numbers from three countries: China (+20%), Mexico (+94%), and India (+241%).

The U.S. receives more asylum seekers from China than from any other country.  In 2010, we received 12,850 asylum seekers from China.  In 2011, we received 15,450 asylum seekers from China, an increase of 2,600 people or about 20%.  The large numbers are probably due to special provisions in the Immigration and Nationality Act that provide for asylum for victims of forced family planning–these provisions were created specifically to assist people from China, and they certainly seem to have encouraged Chinese nationals to seek asylum here.  Indeed, of the 24,400 Chinese asylum seekers worldwide, the U.S. received about 63% of all cases.  This is a very high number, given our physical distance from China.   If these numbers continue to rise, I wonder whether it will cause us to re-think our decision to grant asylum to victims of forced family planning.

I find it hard to believe that Chinese young men hiding in trucks coming across the border or found in containers on freighters say they are escaping the one-child policy of the Communist Chinese government.  Young man:  ‘I want to come to America so I can have two babies!’  NO way!

Read blogger Jason Dzubow’s other theories.

Who knows why they are coming, but you can be sure American immigration lawyers are ready and waiting to help them explain in politically-correct and legally-acceptable terms why they are “persecuted” and want asylum (besides a job and social services).

What social services you ask?

Once granted asylum these Chinese, Indians, Mexicans, etc. etc. are entitled to welfare.  I kid you not!

In another post, Mr. Dzubow laments the closure of a special hotline for asylees to learn what they are entitled to receive from you, the US taxpayer.

The Hotline is gone and the Office of Refugee Resettlement website is the asylee’s only resource, and according to Dzubow the website stinks.  I think he has a point, I’ve been trying to sort out how the ORR works for over 5 years, can you imagine some Chinese guy who came over in a container figuring it out!

Until recently, if you were granted asylum in the United States,  you could call the National Asylee Information and Referral Line, a toll-free number, where you could speak to someone about benefits potentially available to you (such as food stamps, Pell Grants, medical assistance, etc.). For people granted asylum through the Asylum Offices, the toll-free number was–and still is–listed on the approval notice.

However, as of December 28, 2012, the Info Line is kaput. But have no fear–asylees can still learn about benefits (assuming there are benefits after we fall off the fiscal cliff). Visit the Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Refugee Resettlement, Benefits page on the internet.

Unfortunately, the ORR website is not so easy to use. Admittedly, I am fairly inept with a computer, and so many people might have an easier time with this than me. But it really does seem confusing.

For one thing, the site directs the user to a map of the U.S., where she can click on her state to find organizations that assist with benefits. The organizations that receive ORR grant money are listed, as are state coordinators and directors. The problem is, I cannot tell who to contact to ask questions about benefits. If there is an NGO or ORR employee who helps asylees learn about benefits, this should be made more explicit.

There is a helpful fact sheet available in English and eight other languages, which explains certain benefits, such as the Employment Authorization Document, the Refugee Travel Document, and how asylees can obtain their green cards. But this does not help with medical benefits, food stamps, English language programs, and the like.

Be sure to look at the map.  You will find it interesting too!  Chinese asylee:  What is a Wilson Fish?   American taxpayer: Yeh, what is a Wilson Fish?

Another map worth checking out!  Here is the map at WRAPS showing which countries provided the most ‘refugees’, in the last three months of 2012.  You will see that you can count on two hands the number of ‘refugees’ we resettled from China and India.  Right now the leading sending countries are Iraq, Iran,  Burma, Bhutan/Nepal, Somalia, Cuba and a few others.

For new readers:  We have a whole category entitled “where to find information” and this post will be archived there.