Category: Asylum seekers

Immigration Service business owner to do time in the slammer

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

A woman in Clearwater, Florida whose business was to help immigrants get documented so they could work in the US has been found guilty of preparing phony claims for asylum—274 of them!   Hat tip: Susan

From Tampa Bay Online:

TAMPA – Barbara Branks said she was only trying to help immigrants.

The owner of La Gringa Professional Immigration Services said she fabricated documents and asylum petitions because her clients needed her.

“As God is my witness, at no time did I intentionally seek to defraud this government,” Branks, 58, tearfully told a federal judge today. “My focus was on the client. … It was never for financial gain. It was just my passion to help.”

Branks was sentenced to four years and nine months in federal prison for conspiring to make false statements in documents required by immigration authorities.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Eduardo Toro-Font told U.S. District Judge Virginia M. Hernandez Covington that Branks acted out of greed, and that her crime injured the integrity of the immigration system, harming those who follow the rules.

Toro-Font said Branks filed 274 fraudulent asylum petitions.

As a result, immigration officials and attorneys will be forced to spend time reviewing every document from clients of Branks’ Clearwater business, he said. Even those with legitimate asylum claims may be forced to return to their home countries to face persecution because Branks helped them take fraudulent shortcuts.

What does asylum mean? That’s a question a reader asked recently.  Here is a good definition from this article:

To qualify for asylum, an immigrant must prove he has been persecuted or has a well-founded fear of persecution in his home country based on race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion. He must prove that either his home country was the persecutor or is unable to control the persecutor.

Asylum seekers are generally here in the US already, having gotten in under some other program (like a student visa) or illegally and then apply to stay.  That is what Aunt Zeituni is trying to prove now—that she would be persecuted if she returns to Kenya.  Refugees are brought to the US by the State Department.

This Florida case reminded me of a Maryland case we reported a year ago, here.

Last night I told you about more immigrant food stamp scams, here.  The poor American taxpayer is getting it from every direction!

Malta citizen: send them all to Sweden!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We’ve been following the sad tale from Malta since we first began RRW in 2007.  The tiny island nation is taking the brunt of the illegal immigrant flow out of countries such as Libya.    Here is the latest update.  Apparently the EU border agency, Frontex, is to be beefed up but it continues to be squishy on the issue of returning illegal aliens to their country of departure.  Citizens of Malta are fed up as many of the comments attest:

From Charles Sammut:

With liberals like Cecilia Malmström* calling the shots, Malta is doomed to be part of the African Union in 5 years’ time.

What about our human rights? Or are we not human any more and the right to live peacefully in our country amongst our kith and kin and decide our future for ourselves has been devolved to the eurobrats in Brussels. Do we have to wait until there is serious civil unrest to wake up? By which time it will be too late.

*Cecilia Malmström is the Home Commissioner of the EU and obviously is Swedish.

And here is commenter Louise Vella:

Malta’s security and social cohesion should not be left in the hands of Swedes who do not care about Malta. The Maltese, especially the common people of Malta, are the best judges of what is best for Malta. Nobody has consulted them to see if they want an unending influx of African boat people settling in Malta as illegal immigrants with the excuse that they are refugees. We know the story and we know that asylum applicants have a long history of telling untruths to increase the likelihood of their acceptance. See the reports of the Refugee Commissioner and of the Refugees Appeals Board.

If the Swedes want to turn their country into an African colony it’s up to them. They can take all of Africa’s 1 000 million inhabitants, especially as they have enough space for them in Sweden. But they should not try to off-load them on to Malta.

As we reported many times, Sweden is already busy destroying itself with its immigration policy, see this post just a few days ago.

The Malta Magnet

The US State Department has exacerbated Malta’s problems by providing a carrot for illegal immigrants to try to reach Malta—they might be magically transformed into “refugees” and moved to a town near you.  You can thank Bush Administration Ambassador Tea Party Molly (that is not tea party as in the new political movement in the US) and now the Obama Ambassador to Malta, Republican traitor, Douglas Kmiec, here.

Refugee Council of Australia: we want more refugees!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Here is a report from the Sydney Morning Herald today (tomorrow for us in the US) where the Refugee Council of Australia (RCOA) is insisting that Australia take more refugees.   Presently Australia takes around 11,000 but RCOA wants the numbers upped to 20,000.

This RCOA is a consortium of NGO’s that have a financial interest in resettling refugees probably very similar to our Refugee Council USA where all the non-profit quasi-government agencies get together on letterheads (trying to look more muscular) and press releases (like the one the Sydney Morning Herald is writing from)  and produce reports advocating for more refugees to be brought to their respective countries—all to keep their member agencies in work.

Shock!  Horrors! Australian refugee intake lowest in 35 years!

The number of asylum seekers that make up the nation’s migration intake has fallen to its lowest level in 35 years, prompting calls for Australia to take a greater role in refugee resettlement.

The Refugee Council of Australia (RCOA) says Australia’s Refugee and Humanitarian Program has dropped to 6.6 per cent of the nation’s total migration program despite a rise in the number of people seeking resettlement around the globe.

In its annual submission to the federal government, the Refugee Council calls for a five-year expansion of the offshore component of the Refugee and Humanitarian Program.

The council wants the refugee component boosted to 20,000 places per annum, beginning with 1000 additional resettlement places in 2010-11 for highly vulnerable refugees in Asia.

Just a reminder, the Obama Administration is aiming to resettle 80,000 refugees in the US during this year of the Great Recession.

For more on refugee problems in Australia, visit our  Australia category with 47 posts on the joys of multiculturalism down under.

Decision on deporting Obama’s Aunt put off until March

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We told you the other day that Aunt Zeituni was due back in court in Boston on Thursday for a hearing on whether she should be deported to her native Kenya.  She had previously been ordered to leave the country and disobeyed an earlier judges order and stayed.   She was ‘outed’ just before Obama was elected to the Presidency in November of 2008.

From the Boston Herald:

From the designer sunglasses to the security entourage in gray suits and ear pieces, it was evident yesterday the towering, 6-feet-plus-tall Zeituni Polly Onyango is no garden-variety illegal alien.

The Kenyan aunt of President Obama – who arrived at U.S. Immigration Court in a wheelchair, but glided out on foot to the tapping beat of a cane – testified for 2 hours before Judge Leonard I. Shapiro in support of her second bid to be granted political asylum and continue living in Boston public housing.

“This is America. Justice will be done,” Margaret Wong, Onyango’s Cleveland, Ohio, attorney, told reporters. Wong refused to stipulate on what grounds Onyango seeks shelter from being sent packing back to East Africa.

Shapiro – whose 2004 deportation order the 57-year-old half-sister of Obama’s late father defied – is expected to render his decision on or before May 25. Closing arguments are due in writing by March 15.

Rush Limbaugh has had a field day criticizing Obama for neglecting his impoverished relatives  (especially George who lives in a hut) around the world, so he should get a kick out of this.  Obama has not even spoken to his aunt since before he was elected.  Imagine that!   If he is worried about public opinion I think he does more harm to himself by not at least talking to her and heck he should have invited her to Thanksgiving at the White House. 

The Boston Herald reports that Obama doesn’t even speak to his Auntie!

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said the president is not kicking in cash to help cover Onyango’s legal fees and has not spoken to her since learning of her immigration status days before his November 2008 election.

Fate of Obama’s Aunt Zeituni to be decided by Judge on Thursday

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Supposedly to avoid a “three-ring circus,” the deportation hearing will be closed to the public.  From the Boston Herald today:

The illegal alien aunt of President Obama could learn this week whether she can put down roots in Boston – or start packing her bags for a one-way trip back to Kenya.

And, save for U.S. Immigration Court Judge Leonard I. Shapiro, she’ll know before anyone else. Zeituni Polly Onyango has persuaded Shapiro to bar the public from her removal proceeding Thursday morning at the John F. Kennedy Federal Building, though it’s unclear why.

“I assume (Shapiro) thought it would be a three-ring circus. She’s the aunt of the president of the United States – the most famous man in the world,” said Mike Rogers, spokesman for the Ohio law firm defending Onyango, 57, against the Department of Homeland Security.

Then it is this last paragraph that seems to have generated the most anger among the commenters (there were 125 when last I looked).  Most want to know how she has managed to get government housing all the years she lived here illegally.

Onyango, a computer programmer, has been in the country illegally since 2004, when Shapiro ordered her to leave. Recent attempts to reach her at the South Boston housing development where she’s been living since a December 2008 stay of her deportation have been unsuccessful.

I skimmed the comments looking for anyone in support of Onyango and didn’t see any in my quick look.  However, I did see this one that made me laugh:

She will remain in the country because she knows where Obama was really born.

If you are new to the Aunt Zeituni saga, use our search function for her name, we have posted on the issue ever since it came up just before the Presidential election in November 2008.