Category: Asylum seekers

Vancouver: Confirmation that Tamil Tigers were on the MV Sun Sea

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This is an update of the story I first reported here last August.

Seems that investigators in Canada have identified at least 32 Tamil Tigers among the “asylum seekers” who arrived in Canadian waters claiming to be refugees last summer.

From the National Post:

A fog bank cloaked the MV Sun Sea when it entered Canadian waters off Vancouver Island last August carrying 492 Sri Lankan asylum seekers.

Six month later, things are more clear.

Federal investigators have been interviewing those on board and chasing leads in Southeast Asia. The passengers have been telling their stories at refugee hearings and in court.

The evidence is shedding new light on the bold migrant smuggling operation that has cost taxpayers $25-million and led the government to draft a new anti-human smuggling law.

“At this time, the majority have declared that they wish only to live peacefully in Canada with the hope of eventually sponsoring other family members,” reads a Canada Border Services Agency analysis of interviews with the Sun Sea migrants.

But the investigation has also identified 32 so far with suspected ties to the Tamil Tigers rebels, organized crime and war crimes. Also on the ship were “prominent figures” who played “primary roles in the smuggling venture,” the CBSA report says.

Read on, its a very interesting report.

Think this doesn’t effect you in the US, think again, we have actually resettled Tamil “bachelors” to Oakland, CA who managed to get to Australia and we (helpfully) took them off the Aussie’s hands!

Mexican asylum law could slow the flow of asylum seekers on our southern border

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I’m dashing out and don’t have time to write about this, but check out the blog Asylumist on this story.

Recently I mentioned the number of asylum seekers coming halfway around the world (with innumerable stops along the way) who arrive on our border with Mexico and then ask for asylum.  I’ve contended that NGO’s are actually involved in this process.   Well, if Mexico gets its act together on this law, “asylum seekers” will have to ask for asylum in Mexico!   Won’t that put a crimp in the growing field of immigration law in the US.

North Dakota: Somali man held as “person of interest” in murder of Native American family

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Looks like our immigration system failed this poor family—four dead.

From AP at Inforum:

A Somali man with a history of violent crime has been interviewed as “a person of interest” in the deaths of his daughter’s mother and three others and is being held by U.S. immigration officials, authorities said Thursday.

Omar Mohamed Kalmio, 26, is the father of an infant girl found alive last week in the Minot apartment of 19-year-old Sabrina Zephier, who was found dead Friday, Minot Police Chief Jeff Balentine told The Associated Press on Thursday. Sabrina Zephier’s mother, Jolene Zephier, 38; brother, Dillon Zephier, 13; and Jolene Zephier’s boyfriend, Jeremy Longie, 22, were found slain in nearby mobile home less than an hour later.

“We have interviewed (Kalmio), and he is a person of interest,” Balentine said.

Authorities had lost track of the “person of interest” in 2006 and found him again in 2010:

Shawn Neudauer, a spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said Kalmio was arrested Tuesday in Minot for failing to abide by the terms of supervised release stemming from an assault charge. He declined to give details, citing privacy issues.

Minnesota court records show Kalmio was convicted in 2006 of second-degree assault with a dangerous weapon, a felony, and sentenced to one year and one day in prison with credit for 143 days served. Kalmio and a group of other Somali men attacked a man in Minneapolis in January 2006, and Kalmio stabbed him three times in the back with a knife, according to a criminal complaint in the case. The victim also was stabbed in the face and shoulder and suffered a collapsed lung and concussion.

That same year, Kalmio was convicted of theft and ordered to pay a fine. Court records show he lived in the Twin Cities suburb of Eagan when the crimes happened.

Minneapolis police said they have had no contact with Kalmio since 2006.

Kalmio had been ordered to report to immigration officials in Grand Forks last August but failed to do so, Neudauer said.

Ahhhh!  Detained in  2010, he was released from custody thanks to a US Supreme Court decision!

Kalmio, who was being held Thursday in the Grand Forks jail, has been in the custody of immigration agents before. ICE issued a statement saying Kalmio was released from custody in May 2010 as a result of rules stemming from a 2001 U.S. Supreme Court decision.

That decision required a court review before immigrants convicted of certain crimes could be deported, a process that had been automatic before. The decision also said criminals with no country to accept them couldn’t be jailed indefinitely.

Somalia has not had a functioning government since 1991.

ICE officials would not comment on whether they tried and failed to deport Kalmio, citing privacy rules.

Three of four murdered were Native Americans:

The Zephiers were members of South Dakota’s Yankton Sioux Tribe. Officials have said they and Longie died after being shot.

If allegations against Somali former refugee (asylee or illegal alien) Omar Mohamed Kalmio, are proven and since Native Americans are surely a protected class, wonder if this will be a federal hate crime?

For new readers: We have admitted well over 100,000 Somali refugees to the US.   To check out the numbers visit this post, one of our most widely read posts over the last few years.   In FY2010 which ended September 30th the US State Department resettled 4,884 Somalis (here) to towns near you.

Also, after being closed for nearly two years, the US State Department is on the verge of resuming the fraud-ridden family reunification program that admitted as many as 36,000 Somalis fraudulently to the US between 2003 and 2008.  See the latest on new regulations, here.  The State Department is on the verge of re-opening the program and may already have done so.

I wonder do the good people, the migration funders, like those at Unbound Philanthropy really know who they are helping bring to the US?   And, also for new readers, Unbound Philanthropy is funding the distribution of the propaganda film on Shelbyville, TN-–a film that promotes the idea that  if a redneck Bible-belt town has come to welcome its Somali population, shame on you if your town doesn’t.   I guess they will be skipping Minot, North Dakota on their film tour.

One final thought: be sure to read about a Somali Tuulu, Jamestown, ND, here.

Homeland Security tracking Central American smugglers of east Africans

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

…..but why not start investigating right here in the USA!

I just discovered this blog which I plan to visit often (and will put on our blogroll).  It’s called “Asylumist”  and it’s about , what else, the other half of our refugee resettlement program, the asylum program.   People get confused all the time about the fraternal twin programs—both born of the same law and only differing slightly in their appearance, but not in the results.

A “refugee” is determined to be persecuted and is screened abroad and brought here with the  help of the United Nations and the US State Department (you pay the airfare).  An asylum seeker gets to our borders on his or her own steam and then asks for asylum by claiming he or she will be persecuted if returned to their home country.   And, let me say right here, a true asylum seeker is SUPPOSED to ask for asylum in the first country in which they land.  They are not supposed to make six stops before reaching our borders and then asking for asylum.

The number of asylum seekers is increasing by leaps and bounds.  In 1990 we granted asylum to 8,472 claimants and in 2009 that number had risen to 22,119.  For some perspective, the number of refugees admitted in 2009 was around 74,000.  Both groups are then eligible for most forms of public assistance, legal permanent residency (there used to be a cap on this number each year, but no longer) and ultimately citizenship.   But, here is a kicker.  If someone isn’t granted asylum they can just disappear into America—like the now famous Auntie Zeituni (Obama’s Kenyan aunt)—because no one is detained prior to the decision (or after the decision for that matter).  Up until this year asylum seekers were detained after coming across the border.

What do you know!  Homeland Security is concerned about Central American smugglers of Somalis!

From the Asylumist:

Many African asylum seekers enter the United States at the Mexican border. Their journey to the U.S. is long and circuitous. In East Africa (where some of my clients come from), people travel from Ethiopia, Eritrea or Somalia to Kenya. From there, they go to South Africa and Brazil using false passports, and then through South America (sometimes by boat up the Amazon River!), to Central America, and then Mexico and the U.S. Along the route, they are passed from one smuggler to the next. Its big business for the smugglers: I’ve heard the trip costs between $10,000.00 and $15,000.00, and sometimes more.

[….]

Now, if the rumor mill is to be believed, DHS and at least one Latin American government are planning to arrest some additional smugglers in Central America. DHS investigators have been interviewing smuggled aliens in the United States. They have asked the aliens to identify photos of several smugglers based in Central American. While most of the smugglers are from Latin America, at least one is African.

It seems that DHS’s central concern involves the Somalis, who have long been viewed as a potential threat to national security (I’ve blogged about this issue here), and apparently DHS’s interrogation of the smuggled aliens has focused on Somali migrants.

I suggest DHS start by asking some big American NGOs (and immigration lawyers) what they know about the Somalis coming across our border.  It strikes me as a bit far-fetched to assume that some poor Somali with no English language skills should be able to get half way around the world and know to ask for asylum on our Mexican border.   I wrote about my suspicions here earlier this month.

And tell me if this makes sense—poor Somali has $10,000-$15,000 just kicking around to pay for the journey to America in order to get a minimum wage job with a meatpacker.   Who is paying the asylum seeker or the smuggler?

Sweden: Iraqi refugee dilemma exposed through Wikileaks

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Wikileaks documents are bringing  information to the fore on the worldwide refugee situation (I bet there is so much we would love to see) and one such communique gives us some background on the present situation in Sweden where Sweden is deporting Iraqis in the midst of public protests.

This is from Monsters and Critics:  (emphasis mine):

Stockholm – Two Swedish cabinet members raised concerns over the flow of refugees from Iraq in 2007 during talks with US officials, a Swedish daily said Friday, citing leaked US diplomatic cables.

While Sweden was prepared to receive asylum seekers there was need for ‘a return agreement’ with Iraq for refugees whose applications were rejected the ministers said, according to US diplomatic cables leaked by whistle-blower site WikiLeaks and quoted by the daily Svenska Dagbladet.

During a September 2007 visit to Iraq, Foreign Minister Carl Bildt and Tobias Billstrom, minister for migration and asylum policy, met with Iraqi officials and US embassy officials in Baghdad.

According to the US cable, Bildt and Billstrom mentioned concerns that many arrivals after 2003 were ‘more difficult to assimilate.’

Contributing factors were that the asylum seekers were destitute, and often had poor education or lacked language or professional skills.  [Since when did anyone consider those factors in refugee resettlement or in granting asylum!—ed]

Iraq and Sweden in early 2008 agreed on a repatriation agreement stipulating that Iraqis whose applications were rejected should voluntarily be sent back to Iraq. Baghdad would guarantee their security.

Sweden in 2007 expected some 20,000 asylum seekers from Iraq and about three in four applications were likely to be approved, Bildt said according to the US cable.

In 2007 there were some 100,000 Iraqis in Sweden, a country of 9 million.

So Swedish immigration officials thought they had an understanding that the new Iraqi government would protect anyone Sweden rejected.  But, so much for agreements, when pro-migration political activists in Sweden demonstrate against every departing planeload.

From AFP:

STOCKHOLM – Swedish authorities detained about 70 people while breaking up a protest against the deportation of Iraqis near the southwestern city of Gothenburg, police said Tuesday.

The demonstrators had started protesting at the weekend, notably by blocking the entrance to the Swedish Migration Board offices in the Gothenburg suburb Kaallered with parked cars.

“Some 70 people were arrested overnight (Monday) for disturbing the peace and three cars that were obstructing traffic were moved,” the Gothenburg police said in a statement, adding that all those arrested were released at 9:40 am (0840 GMT) after questioning.

A public hearing on the deportation of Iraqis was to be held at the building on Tuesday as many non-governmental organisations called for a halt to expulsions.

Amnesty International has called on Swedish Immigration Minister Tobias Billstroem to “stop all forced expulsions back to Iraq.”

I would really like to see the facts on who is being deported and would protest myself if they are sending Christians back to face the Muslim lions.

Readers, if you are interested in more information on Iraqi refugees, we have posted 484 posts on the subject since 2007.  Here is a link to our archive on the subject.  We have also written a lot about “welcoming” welfare-state Sweden.  Use our search function for Sweden for more.  See especially ‘Sweden joins the club’ about a terrorist attack in Sweden perpetrated by a former refugee.