Category: Asylum seekers

Canadian government trying to NOT give free health care to asylum seekers

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Supposedly new regulations would also have cut off health care to refugees, and the refugee industry went nuts.  So the government backtracked and wants to make it clear that asylum seekers (really aliens who got into Canada illegally or came on a visa of some sort and now claim they will be persecuted if returned to their home country) will not have the benefits of Canada’s SOCIALIZED medicine, but proper refugees will.   Why?  Canada can’t afford to do it!

In the meantime, the US is extending Obamacare to refugees and presumably asylees as well as we reported, here, a couple of days ago.

Here is the story from The Star:

Ottawa has backed down on its health-care cuts for resettled refugees on income support, but other asylum seekers are still not immune from the axe.

The federal government quietly amended information about the changes on its website late Friday, just before the cuts to the Interim Federal Health Program (IFHP) kicked in on the weekend.

As a result, impoverished refugees resettled to Canada through government and private sponsorships can still access hospital services, diagnostic and ambulance services, as well as supplementary health support such as wheelchairs, dental and vision care — equivalent to what is available to low-income Canadians.

Critics who fought staunchly against the cuts said Ottawa’s flip-flop indicates the government’s recognition of vulnerable refugees’ health-care needs.

Alexis Pavlich, a spokesperson for Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, said the minister has “repeatedly” stated that government-sponsored refugees would continue to receive health care.

“The original criteria did not make this intention clear, which is why the language of the policy has been modified,” she said in an email to the Star.

“Our intention was to ensure that those who come to Canada as asylum seekers from abroad do not receive better health-care coverage than Canadians. Our intention was never to have this policy impact government-sponsored refugees.”

However, critics said the last-minute reprieve is not good enough and many are still denied basic health care, including those who come from Ottawa’s yet-to-defined “safe countries” — likely including Mexico, Hungary and Czech Republic — and failed refugee claimants awaiting appeals and deportation.

Imagine that—a “refugee” from Mexico gets all the way to Canada and is denied dental care!  What is this mean old world coming to?

Iraq refuses to repatriate failed Iraqi asylum seekers from the UK

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

They were refused asylum in the UK, the UK wants to take them back to Iraq, Iraq says no way.

Here is the story in the Daily Mail:

The Iraqi parliament has blocked the repatriation of thousands of asylum seekers who have lost the right to remain in Britain.

It has banned the forced return from Europe of tens of thousands of Iraqis and threatened to fine airlines that deliver deportees.

Failed asylum seekers have already been turned back at the border, said the refugee support group that pushed for the change.

The UK has failed to return any rejected Iraqi asylum seekers since March 2011, mainly because of legal problems over their arrival at Baghdad airport and the breakdown of security within Iraq.

[….]

Between 2007 and 2009 over 38,000 Iraqis accounted for 17 per cent of all asylum applications in the EU, making it the largest country of origin for refugees.

The only explanation I can come up with about why Iraq doesn’t want them back is that they are probably criminals.   We all know Iraq is just fine now—right?—Obama told us so when he withdrew our troops.

Be sure to read the comments to the Daily Mail story, they are more interesting than the article itself.

As we approach our 5th anniversary at RRW, we have 527 previous posts on Iraqi refugees in our special category, here.

NJ Senator Lautenberg once again pushes the definition of refugee/asylee

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Refugees and asylum seekers are to leave the country where they have been personally persecuted and seek asylum in the first safe country in which they arrive, but gradually over time whole classes of people are scooped up as refugees before even leaving their homes.

This is a case for which we have some sympathy (Christians escaping Muslim persecution) but it indeed pushes the envelope and expands the refugee program for whole groups of people—something Sen. Lautenberg has become famous for.

Here is the story from the Associated Press yesterday:

NEWARK, N.J. — A group of Indonesian Christians facing deportation from the United States are hopeful that federal legislation introduced Monday will allow them the chance to reopen their bids for U.S. asylum.

The bill from U.S. Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey aims to help a group of Indonesian immigrants who claim to have fled religious persecution by anti-Christian extremists [Muslims–ed] in the majority Muslim nation.

“These Indonesian families sought refuge in our country to keep their families safe from harm and religious persecution,” Lautenberg said. “America has a long history of protecting refugees from persecution and this legislation gives these families a chance to legally seek asylum and to continue contributing to our country.”

The U.S. government allowed hundreds of Indonesian Christians to come to America on tourist visas — most of them between 1996 and 2003 — at a time when more than 1,000 churches were destroyed by anti-Christian extremists [Muslims–ed] during the aftermath of the fall of the regime of longtime dictator Suharto. They settled in communities in New Jersey, New York, New Hampshire and elsewhere. Many of them worked and raised families in the U.S., including several who have American-born children.

In the aftermath of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, however, immigrant men between the ages of 16 and 65 who had entered the U.S. on temporary visas from predominantly Muslim countries were required to register with the U.S. government or be classified as terrorist fugitives.

Many who registered did not expect to face deportation back to Indonesia, but found themselves in legal limbo as they had surpassed the time limit for applying for U.S. asylum on religious persecution grounds.

Lautenberg’s bill, and companion House legislation co-sponsored by Democratic U.S. Reps. Carolyn Maloney of New York and Frank Pallone Jr. of New Jersey, would not grant them amnesty, but allow them to re-apply for asylum.  [At least this isn’t blanket amnesty!—ed]

Read Thomas Allen at VDARE

An earlier law that has come to be known as the Lautenberg Amendment of 1989 was roundly criticized by Thomas Allen at VDARE in 2002 because it sought (still does!) to give refugee status to anyone from a whole class of people because of their religious affiliation (or what they claim is their religion)—they no longer had to prove they were being personally persecuted, just that they belong to a certain group which greatly expands the law.

The next thing you know the Lautenberg Amendment will be used to bring Rohingya Muslims to the US directly from Burma!

Readers, the Refugee Resettlement Act of 1980 has never been reviewed (reauthorized) by Congress, but it’s about time for a full blown Congressional review of the Act rather than to continue with these ad hoc additions to the program.  It needs to be reconsidered and reformed now.   Besides piecemeal and stealthy changes like Lautenberg’s bills, let’s review whether what we are doing with Malta (and possibly other countries) fits the refugee definition of old.

For new readers, just search for ‘Malta’ here at RRW to see that we are taking Malta’s illegal aliens from Africa off their hands and converting them into refugees for resettlement to the US.  True refugees should be granted or denied asylum in Malta—it is the European Unions problem not ours!

LGBT rights groups say Obama Administration not doing enough to get gays into US as refugees

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Not just gays, but lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transsexuals….

One of the hottest controversies on-going right now in the refugee business is the issue of saving LGBT people from persecution around the world by bringing them to the US as refugees.    Indeed the subject was brought up at the May 1 State Department scoping meeting on refugee goals for fy2013.  The subject was the centerpiece of the testimony that day by Duncan Breen of Human Rights First (oops, I see it’s LGBTI, I is for intersex).

Here is a lengthy story in the Advocate summarizing the situation and calling for the Obama Administration to not just use words but do something fast for LGBT people who are mostly being persecuted in Islamic countries.   LOL!  They didn’t say ‘Islamic’ countries, in fact they never use the words “Islam” or “Muslims” to describe the abusers of gay people.

Advocate:

Nearly six months ago, the White House unveiled a global blueprint for promoting and protecting the rights of LGBT individuals, countless numbers of whom live in countries where they are imprisoned, blackmailed, and in places like Iraq, sometimes crushed to death with cement blocks.

The State Department’s 2011 Human Rights Report, released last week, provides a grim, if incomplete, catalog of such atrocities.

[…..]

Combating such physical and political violence is central to American foreign policy, as President Obama articulated in a December 6 memorandum and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton addressed in her seminal “gay rights are human rights” speech at the Palais des Nations in Geneva that same day. The presidential memo reflected both the growing consciousness on the issue and the concrete work already being done by the Obama administration. It also laid out ambitious objectives for one of the global LGBT rights movement’s most vexing problems: how to aid those seeking to escape violence and persecution in virulently antigay climates.

“In order to improve protection for LGBT refugees and asylum seekers at all stages of displacement, the Departments of State and Homeland Security shall enhance their ongoing efforts to ensure that LGBT refugees and asylum seekers have equal access to protection and assistance, particularly in countries of first asylum,” President Obama wrote, further instructing that federal agencies must have “the ability to identify and expedite resettlement of highly vulnerable persons with urgent protection needs.” Homeland Security, the State Department, the Defense Department, and other agencies engaged abroad have a deadline of next week to report on what progress has been made regarding the initiatives outlined in the memo.

But the goal of identifying and ultimately resettling at-risk LGBT individuals in the United States is constrained by a complex bureaucratic process. Security and medical checks involve multiple agencies and often delay processing, which can take a year or much longer — particularly in regions such as East Africa and the Middle East, where the problem of antigay violence is, ironically, most acute.

Why the word “ironically?”  Does the writer not understand that it is the fundamentalist Islamic culture in those regions of the world that is so virulently anti-gay?

Meeting next week to discuss a system for identifying and expediting the process.  I’m wondering how they can determine if someone in those cultures, where lying is a way of life, can sort out who is, and who isn’t telling the truth about their sexual orientation and whether they are being persecuted because of it.   I wonder too, if American Muslim groups (CAIR etc) are quietly opposed to bringing more LGBT people to the US?

Next week refugee groups are meeting with State Department officials to discuss expedited resettlement (a State Department spokeswoman declined to confirm the meeting, though she explained, “We frequently meet with our partners in the resettlement community and welcome the exchange of views on how we can improve our systems and processes”). For the administration to achieve its promises to LGBT refugees in harm’s way, a formalized system that is both transparent and concrete is desperately needed, advocates said.

Read it all.

The Migration Policy Institute has an article about the history of asylum claims based on sexual orientation that is worth reading.

African “asylum shoppers” attempt to lie their way into Ireland

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I like that—instead of asylum seekers, let’s use the phrase asylum shoppers!

A new UK system to track rejected asylum seekers as they “shop” around with different names and even different nationalities attempting to get into Ireland  has revealed some surprising (to some!) statistics.   But, of course those Somalis coming across our US borders and asking for asylum are all legit, right?

From the Irish Independent (Oh, boy, watch for it! The Irish Immigrant Council will be on the paper’s case again! See what happened in 2008, here.):

TWO-THIRDS of failed asylum seekers investigated so far this year under a new agreement with the UK were found to be involved in identity swapping, the Irish Independent has learnt.

Cross-checks carried out by gardai using British fingerprint records revealed that about 1,300 out of 2,000 failed asylum seekers investigated were known to Britain’s Border Agency under a different name.

Of those looked at, about a third had given a different nationality to the UK authorities.

The scale of the identity swapping scam was uncovered under a data sharing plan, which is a key feature of a common travel area agreement signed by Ireland and Britain last Christmas.

The aim of the data sharing is to unearth previously undisclosed UK immigration histories that could help the Irish authorities in processing the cases of failed asylum seekers, a senior official told the Irish Independent last night.

He said this information was vital in helping to determine whether a deportation order should be issued against an applicant.

Of the 2,000 asylum seekers investigated, cross-checks found 600 had already been identified by UK agencies either as asylum shoppers with previous applications to the UK or as previous British visa seekers.

In the majority of fingerprint matches, those claiming asylum in Ireland had already been granted UK visas.

The official added that more than 80 people who had claimed asylum here as Somalis had previously been granted a UK visa using a Tanzanian identity.

Tip of the iceberg! 

“This is only the tip of the iceberg”, the official predicted last night….

Yup!

Update:  Identity problem keeps supposed Somali woman from marrying in Ireland, here.  LOL! Looks like some of these people need the services of the reality show along with Barack Obama—Who do you think you are?