Category: Asylum seekers

Somalis on the move out of South Africa—to Europe or the US

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I had two stories last week which I never got around to writing about the Rainbow Nation—that would be South Africa—and Somalis.  You never hear about South Africa much in the mainstream media these days and that is (I think) because it didn’t turn out to be such a multicultural dream—a “rainbow” Nation after all.   Like most of the world’s countries if you aren’t a “native” you aren’t so welcome (it is called ethnic nationalism).  And folks, it isn’t the white South Africans (they are pretty much hiding out) it’s the black South Africans attacking the outsider Somalis and other Africans.

This story then at Times Live caught my eye.  Writer Jonny Steinberg is apparently hanging out with some Somalis in a Mitchell’s Plain, South Africa flop-house as he writes this:

Somalis glued to the news—looking for the next move:

Each room had four or five mattresses strewn across the floor; a traveller, I was told, paid R30 a night to sleep on one, his roommates invariably strangers. Everyone in the establishment – the owner, the people who cleaned the rooms and cooked, as well as the guests – was Somali.

The lodge’s little restaurant was packed, each customer’s attention fixed on the television screen on the wall. Standing with remote control in hand, the proprietor switched from Al Jazeera to Sky to CNN: any channel covering Libya earned the lodge’s attention.

With the attack on Libya and the disarray in that country they see an opening to get to the Mediterranean and Europe.

My interest in the coverage was somewhat abstract. I wanted Gaddafi to go lest he slaughter people I had never met. The conversation among the travellers around me, translated into English courtesy of my Somali companion, was considerably more practical. Were civil war to break out in Libya, someone asked, would Gaddafi’s forces be too busy fighting to worry about border control? Would it be possible to walk right through the country to the Mediterranean and get a boat to Europe? And what if Gaddafi were overthrown, another person asked. It would take a new regime a long time to settle. Now would be a good time to get to Europe through Libya.

I was being educated in a whole new way of watching television. These people, I realised, imbibed large quantities of international news each day of their lives. All corners of the planet were of interest to them. They combined what they learned on television with the hearsay of travellers; with e-mails and Facebook postings from long-lost relatives; with rumours. They were always calculating, as habitually as they ate and drank, the question forever in their minds: where to go next?

Hey, or another option is the US Southern border!

….. My companion had been told that if you walked across the Mexican border into the US, you would be caught and jailed. But the authorities would not deport you to Somalia’s civil war. After a year or two in prison, they would give you American papers, and you could call for your family to join you.

“How do you know this?” I asked. “Stories,” he replied. “Just stories.”

That’s the thing. CNN, Al Jazeera, the word of a passing traveller: these are hardly reliable sources of news. To be homeless is to be a gambler. You gather the information you can, you calculate, but ultimately you take a leap of faith into the unknown.

Our author suggests the news from passing travelers might not be reliable, but guess what, they have the US asylum and family reunification process pegged.

Heck, today if you can say you have family somewhere in the US, you might not even get detention when caught at the border.    Here is what happens:  Somali crosses the border and asks for asylum from those bad old terrorist Al-shabaabers in Somalia, gets US immigration lawyer, maybe detained, maybe not, lawyer (at taxpayer expense) gets the asylum seeker through the legal loopholes, asylum is granted and asylee gets welfare benefits/job training and then is taught how to get his “family” to America.

By the way, according to the most recent annual report from the Office of Refugee Resettlement, 22,852 asylum cases were approved in 2008.  This is a must-read report!

Rumford, ME gets a little colorful diversity

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

According to wikipedia, Rumford, ME had a population of just over 6,000 (in the 2000 census) and averaged 98.67% white.  So,  now thanks to a pair of Sudanese (refugees? asylees?) they have gained some of the vibrancy only diversity can bring to a small boring American town.

From the Sun Journal in Lewiston, ME* (the Somali capital of Maine!), two arrested for trafficking cocaine:

RUMFORD — A man and a woman from Portland were arrested early Saturday on charges of trafficking cocaine.
Michael O. Okot, 25, and Reaksmey C. Tang, 18, both of 155 Anderson St. in Portland, were charged with trafficking in schedule W drugs.

According to an arrest affidavit by Rumford police Cpl. Lawrence T. Winson, the two were arrested during a traffic stop Saturday just after midnight and found to have marijuana, crack cocaine and a digital scale.

[….]

Okot and Tang were transported to the Rumford Police Department without incident and then to the Oxford County jail. Okot’s bail was set at $30,000 cash, while Tang’s was set at $25,000.

*Lewiston is about 40 miles from Rumford.  You can thank the US State Department and Catholic Charities for the diversity they’ve brought to the old mill towns of the Pine Tree State.

Legal immigrants sure can liven up a dull town!

Wasn’t it just last week that federal refugee contractors were testifying before the State Department and pontificating about diversity being beautiful and now to prove it we have this morning  three examples of ‘diversity is beautiful’ from Maine to Louisiana—food stamp fraud diversity in Louisiana, terrorism diversity in NYC, and now drug-dealing diversity in Maine!  Wow! Can you feel the vibrancy?

One of those arrested in NYC terror plot was asylee

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I predict this will be one of many stories from now into the future about Muslims who received asylum being involved in terror plots against the United States.

The refugee industry knows that the number of refugees admitted to the US in coming years will necessarily be diminished, and so the the big push by the Leftists in the open borders movement (including some among the federal refugee contractors) is to encourage the asylum process.   Indeed I have theorized*** on these pages that the volags and NGOs are actually helping people get to our borders and then instructing them to ask for asylum.

From Bloomberg News (Synagogue targeted by Islamic extremists) Hat tip, Ed:

New York police arrested two men who allegedly plotted a terrorist attack on an unidentified, major synagogue in Manhattan, authorities said.

Ahmed Ferhani, 26, a native of Algeria, and Moroccan immigrant Mohamed Mamdouh, 20, both residents of Queens, New York, were arrested in a sting operation last night after allegedly paying an undercover police agent for two Browning semi-automatic pistols, a Smith & Wesson revolver, ammunition and a grenade that they didn’t know was deactivated.

The men were described as “Islamic extremists” by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr., who said at a news conference today that the two suspects “did it for Jihad.”

Ferhani, who was unemployed, said “he was fed up with the way Muslims were being treated around the world,” New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said at the news conference, citing recordings of Ferhani made by the undercover agent. “They’re treating us like dogs,” Ferhani allegedly said.

I wonder does he know about the Israeli dogs?  But, I digress!

The heck with the melting pot—it’s the jihad stupid!

Ferhani would have been a boy of about ten years old when his parents received asylum (all you have to do is arrive here, and claim you are being persecuted back home), so he was clearly radicalized here and obviously didn’t buy into the American dream—two kids, a car, a job and a house—gee I wonder why?

Ferhani came to the U.S. in 1995 from Algeria with two siblings and his parents, who secured asylum, Kelly said. Ferhani, who was granted permanent residency under the asylum claim, has lived in Queens since, Kelly said. He was arrested at least once before and has served time in New York’s jail on Rikers Island, Kelly said.

Mamdouh, a livery service dispatcher, is a U.S. citizen by virtue of his parents’ naturalization.

***When I attended the 30th anniversary celebration of the Refugee Act of 1980 in 2010, it was evident that attendees had shifted some focus over to the afterthought-portion of that Act—the asylum process.   This is from a recent post, here.

In March of 2010, I attended the 30th anniversary celebration of the passage of the Refugee Resettlement Act of 1980.  Here is one post I wrote at the time.   I wondered then about how much of the conference was being devoted to talking about these immigration courts and asylum generally.  Now I realize that they have been at this for some time—expanding the use of the asylum process to get more and more immigrants into the US. A program that was originally expected to allow the odd ballet dancer to defect (according to Doris Meissner mentioned here) has become a major avenue for bringing third worlders into the US—heck, I guess the refugee program at 80,000 or so a year wasn’t doing it fast enough.

Asylum!  Remember that word!

Investigative Project on Terrorism was at Refugee hearing

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Last week the US State Department held its annual hearing to determine the number of refugees to be resettled in FY2012.  I gather it was livelier than usual for several reasons (further news in the near future).  But, now I see that Steve Emerson’s Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) had someone in attendance.

From IPT:

The State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM) held a public meeting on U.S. refugee policy May 12 in Arlington, Va. The Investigative Project on Terrorism attended the meeting (held in conjunction with the departments of Homeland Security and Health and Human Services) after a veteran DHS official privately expressed concern that the United States has no idea whether it is admitting Somali jihadists as “refugees.”

This United States admitted tens of thousands of Somalis into the United States since 2002, the official says. But it is impossible to verify their identity because Somalia has long been a state without a functioning government and it does not keep usable birth records. If only a miniscule percentage of these people turn out to have been involved with al-Shabaab or other extremist groups, the United States may have admitted dozens of potential terrorists, the official says.

The hearing was supposed to chart the government’s course on refugee policy for the coming fiscal year but it did not do so. In fact, there was virtually no testimony at all about al-Shabaab.

IPT raised the question of security:

But the security challenges involved in admitting refugees to the United States were barely mentioned until the final 10 minutes of the public meeting, when the IPT asked what the government was doing to keep jihadists out.

Refugees are carefully vetted and go through many security reviews, said David Robinson, deputy secretary of State for PRM. Barbara Strack, chief of DHS’s Refugee Affairs Division, Refugee Asylum & International Affairs Directorate, made essentially the same point, but said she couldn’t provide any details without compromising intelligence secrets.

That was the extent of the discussion pertaining to refugee policy and terrorism.

IPT has done good work reporting on Somali/Al Shabaab terror concerns, but might want to know a few more facts to fully understand the complete picture.  First,  the number of Somalis entering the US through the refugee program is over 100,000 now, and because of rampant fraud in the family reunification program (mostly from Africa) the State Department closed that portion of the program for two years.

Somalis are also coming across the border illegally, here, but I think the bigger problem will be in the asylum portion of the refugee program that was not a subject of the hearings last week.    See my report here about Somalis (and others from Muslim countries) arriving on our borders and seeking asylum (I believe with the help of NGOs, some of which were in that hearing looking for more federal funding).  The funny thing (if there is something funny) is that some of those Somali asylum seekers claim they are running from Al Shabaab in the Horn of Africa.  But, how is some poor “refugee” getting up to $10.000 to pay his or her traffickers?  That is the question.

In addition to the refugee and asylee programs, the diversity visa lottery is a source for concern when it comes to terrorists getting into the US, indeed it has already happened.

European countries want to close borders, send refugees back

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

In my previous two posts I told you about those refugees—young fellows hungering for a better life—who threw a few of their competitors for that better life into the sea as human sacrifices, here. Then I told you that the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) lectured European leaders telling them to allow those African men—just yearning for freedom—into Europe, here.

Europe to the Leftwing:  NO way Jose’ (or Abdi, Hamid, Mohammed, or whoever you are)

The UK Guardian (hat tip:  Janet) reported yesterday that many leaders were in no mood to hear squishy talk from the likes of UN Socialists like Antonio Gutteres (emphasis mine):

European nations moved to reverse decades of unfettered travel across the continent when a majority of EU governments agreed the need to reinstate national passport controls amid fears of a flood of immigrants fleeing the upheaval in north Africa.

In a serious blow to one of the cornerstones of a united, integrated Europe, EU interior ministers embarked on a radical revision of the passport-free travel regime known as the Schengen system to allow the 26 participating governments to restore border controls.

They also agreed to combat immigration by pressing for “readmission accords” with countries in the Middle East and north Africa to send refugees back to where they came from.

The policy shift was pushed by France and Italy, who have been feuding and panicking in recent weeks over a small [?–ed] influx of refugees from Tunisia. But 15 of the 22 EU states which had signed up to Schengen supported the move, with only four resisting, according to officials and diplomats present.

“Fortress Europe” mood led by Denmark!

The move to curb freedom of travel came as the extreme nationalist right, which is increasingly influencing policy across Europe, chalked up a notable victory in Denmark, which announced it would unilaterally re-erect controls on its borders with Germany and Sweden

The centre-right minority government in Copenhagen capitulated to the fiercely anti-immigrant nationalists of the Danish People’s party to secure parliamentary backing for long-term budget, welfare and retirement policies. “I have worked hard for this,” said Pia Kjaersgaard, the far-right leader.

Despite the ‘fortress Europe’ mood gripping EU leaders, the Danish decision stunned many because it was taken just hours before an emergency EU meeting devoted to immigration and the Schengen regime.

Gaddafi’s ultimate weapon—hordes of African young men descending on Europe

The policy shift has also been triggered by acute nervousness about the impact of the Arab spring. “There are hundreds of thousands on the shores of north Africa. Something extraordinary could happen any day,” said a senior EU diplomat. “If Gaddafi uses this weapon, he can create a lot of problems for Europe.”

The Guardian revealed this week that the Gaddafi regime is allowing thousands of sub-Saharan African migrants on to overcrowded, unseaworthy ships in an apparently calculated attempt to use migration to pressure Nato and the EU countries against backing Libya’s rebels. [ LOL!  Give me a break!  Are we to believe that Antonio Gutteres didn’t know about this when he talked of those young fellows just seeking a brighter future in Europe?—ed]

Read the whole Guardian piece—you will laugh!  The reporter can barely contain himself, his bias against the right just oozes from his pen.