Category: Asylum seekers

Atlanta refugee agency getting ready for Haitians

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We have written previously that Atlanta is overloaded with refugees, but according to this article more could be on the way—-asylum seekers, children and parolees from Haiti.

Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport and Atlanta could be a destination for tens of thousands of American being evacuated from the devastated island, and several agencies say it could also be a destination for Haitian children.

The Georgia Department of Human Services is looking for French- or Creole-speaking families to host Haitian children.*

The Atlanta chapter of the nonprofit International Rescue Committee, which works with immigrants, is rallying their French- or Creole-speaking volunteers and their legal staff. Executive Director Ellen Beattie said the organization will help Haitians who are here legally to apply for extensions to their U.S. stays. The federal government has given the go-ahead to the extension program.

“We have been alerted by our state refugee coordinator that Hartsfield will be a significant point of entry for [Americans] who may be repatriated as well as Haitians seeking parole and asylum and protection,” Beattie said.

* On this issue of the children.  I know the mainstream media is getting all warm and fuzzy about such actions as Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell’s the other day when he held up other planes at the one functional airport in Haiti while he picked up two planeloads of “orphans” to take to PA ( I am assuming at PA taxpayer expense).   I saw a quick newsclip (I will see if I can find it) of Haiti’s President warning that you (Americans) just can’t pick up kids on Haitian streets to take to the US for adoption.  They might still have parents and other relatives who want them.

Incidentally, on this Rendell rescue adventure, someone told me yesterday that all of the children taken to Pennsylvania did not have adoptive parents waiting and were going into the foster care system.  If anyone sees that reported somewhere please post it as a comment, or e-mail me at Ann@vigilantfreedom.com and send a link.

More information here:  For a definition of Parole, go here.   For a good review of Asylum, go here (a pdf document).  Note that when reviewing that document, according to figures in 2008, Haiti already was the third highest sender of asylum seekers entering the US behind China at #1 and Columbia at #2.

Jamal is leaving for the UN; replacement chosen for MN Somali Justice Advocacy Center

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

It is confirmed, the Somali ‘Jesse Jackson,’ Omar Jamal, is leaving Minneapolis to take a position at the United Nations.  This is one of those American (Somali “refugee”) rags to riches stories—you know—someone originally convicted of immigration fraud for getting into the US illegally and in a few short years he is representing Somalia at the UN. (Makes you wonder what citizenship he holds, doesn’t it?)

The Minneapolis Star Tribune has announced his replacement.

A Minneapolis social studies teacher who once served as a chief of staff to a Somali president has been appointed director of the Somali Justice Advocacy Center in St. Paul.

Dahir Mirreh Jibreel, 56, replaces Omar Jamal, who has taken a job with the Permanent Mission of the Somali Republic to the United Nations in New York City.

Jibreel will begin work immediately.

The Somali Justice Advocacy Center is a non-profit organization whose primary role is to advocate for the local Somali community “on a variety of issues,” Jibreel said.

He takes over as Minneapolis police continue to investigate last week’s triple homicide, in which two of the victims were Somalis and the two suspects arrested over the weekend are believed to be Somalis.

An estimated 50,000 to 75,000 Somalis live in the Twin Cities area, making it home to the largest concentration of Somali immigrants in the U.S.

“We will start our own mission and our own program and our own goals for the organization and we will start fresh,” Jibreel said.

Readers who wish to peruse all of our coverage of Jamal’s career need only type ‘Omar Jamal’ into our search function for your reading pleasure.  Jamal has been  involved in talking to reporters on so many issues I can’t name them all.  He dashed off to NYC to defend the Somali pirate, he was right there in Denver talking to the authorities about the Canadian Somali who was found dead in a hotel room with enough cyanide to kill hundreds just before the Democratic National Convention in 2008.  Not a terrorist, just a nut, Jamal told the FBI.  And, and he was right in the middle of the Somali missing youth case (gone to Jihad every one) from the beginning.

Funny thing is, I don’t find any record of The Somali Justice Advocacy Center being anything more than a one-man operation.  Granted it is filed with the State of Minnesota as a non-profit, here.  Looks like $35 and a simple form will get you filed.  But, Guidestar lists the address as Jamal’s and has no supporting documents—no IRS Letter of Determination, no Form 990’s.  So what is up with that?  Who funded Jamal? Who is funding the  new guy?  Does anyone know?

Bottomline, come up with a group name, file with the state and then tell reporters , law enforcement, etc. that you represent your community.  It is as simple as that!

I wonder if the new guy is planning on applying for an Ethnic Community Based Organization grant from the ORR?   Those federal grants are not available to anyone who has been convicted of a crime!

Israel’s African refugees keep coming

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We’re still getting hits on a story I posted a year ago, Asylum seekers head for Israel, so I thought I’d post this update I came across, How refugees cope in Israel, by blogger Michael Horesh. It’s a short summary of the situation of the refugees who come across the Egyptian border after traveling from farther south in Africa. Here’s some of it:

In the past decade, the country has absorbed 17,500 refugees from Sudan, Darfur and Eritrea. According to UN stats and quoted in the hebrew newspaper “Yediot”:-

  • 1,500 are minors
  • 7,500 are from Eritrea and 6,500 from Sudan
  • Around 16,000 are Muslims

Many quite simply walked to Egypt, entered Sinai, and then reached Israel across the porous desert border with Egypt. And the numbers continue to grow every month.

Horesh points out that the governments of the refugees’ countries are hostile towards Israel. Yet the refugees deliberately head for Israel, because they know they will be treated decently there. (Egypt, by contrast, has shot would-be refugees trying to cross the border.)

I will add my comment that people who know little about Israel usually have no idea how tiny the country is: it’s 12,877 square miles, smaller than New Jersey. Here’s a map showing Israel compared to neighboring countries. And even this map overstates Israel’s size because it includes Gaza and the West Bank. It’s fairly densely populated, with about 7.5 million people. Yet Israel is taking in thousands of refugees, mostly Muslims. How many Muslim countries do you think have taken in Jewish refugees?

Somalis coming in through our wide open back door

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Arrggghhhh!   Check out this story at the Los Angeles Times today.  It seems that Somalis aren’t waiting to get into the US as refugees but are sneaking across our borders and flying into our airports and asking for asylum.

LANCASTER, Calif. (AP) — The asylum seeker from Somalia hung his head as an immigration judge grilled him about his treacherous journey [is this description of a treacherous journey supposed to make him sound sympathetic!] from the Horn of Africa. By air, sea and land he finally made it to Mexico, and then a taxi delivered him into the arms of U.S. border agents at San Diego.

Islamic militants had killed his brother, Mohamed Ahmed Kheire testified, and majority clan members had beaten his sister. He had to flee Mogadishu to live.

The voice of the judge, beamed by videoconference from Seattle, crackled loudly over a speaker in the mostly empty courtroom near the detention yard in the desert north of Los Angeles. He wanted to know why Kheire had no family testimony to corroborate his asylum claim.

Kheire, 31, said he didn’t have e-mail in detention, and didn’t think to ask while writing to family on his perilous trek.

It seemed like the end of Kheire’s dream as he waited for the judge’s ruling. He clasped his hands, his plastic jail bracelet dangling from his wrist, and looked up at the ceiling, murmuring words of prayer.

Kheire is one of hundreds of desperate Somalis in the last two years to have staked everything on a wild asylum gamble by following immigration routes to the United States traditionally traveled by Latinos.

With the suspension of a U.S. refugee program and stepped-up security in the Gulf of Aden and along Mediterranean smuggling routes, more overseas migrants from Somalia are pursuing asylum through what one expert calls the “back door.”

Arrggghhhh!  Only family reunification is suspended due to the widespread fraud discovered through DNA testing in 2008.*  We are still admitting thousands of Somalis every year to the US.   Mr. Hatfield of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society has been helping them resettle in the US—he knows the truth!   We admitted 670 Somalis into the US in the refugee program in the first two months of FY2010 alone.

The U.S. has closed most of the doors for Somalis to come in through the refugee program so they’ve found alternative ways to get in,” said Mark Hetfield, senior vice president for policy and programs at the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. “This is their new route.”

About 1,500 people from around the world showed up in U.S. airports and on the borders seeking asylum during the 2009 fiscal year, according to statistics from U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Somalis were the biggest group to make the journey, with most arriving in San Diego. More than 240 Somalis arrived during that period — more than twice the number from the year before.

Arrggghhh!   When the refugee program is not robust!!!  What the heck, we are bringing more refugees to the US now (when there are no jobs) than we did in any year since 9/11.

Immigration experts say such circuitous paths are routes of last resort.

“I always call it the back door,” said Bob Montgomery, director of the San Diego office for the International Rescue Committee.

“When the refugee program is not robust, we see more people trying to come through the asylum system,” he said.

Most Somalis have reached the United States — there are some 87,000 here — through U.S.-sponsored refugee resettlement programs. But the State Department in 2008 suspended a family reunification program for refugees over fraud concerns. The number of Somalis admitted by refugee programs dwindled to about 4,000 last year.

Arrggghhh!  And, what the heck is this—87,000 Somalis in the US.  We have hundreds of thousands of Somalis in the US because we admitted nearly that many over 25 years through the refugee program.*  Those Somali families have been having on average of 6 kids per family for two decades!

Read the rest of the story, but be prepared to be outraged!

*For new readers :

The US State Department has admitted over 80,000 Somali refugees to the US in the last 25 years and then last year had to suspend family reunification because widespread immigration fraud was revealed through DNA testing.  That specific program has not yet been reopened (that we know of), but will be soon.  Nevertheless, thousands of Somali Muslims continue to be resettled as I write this.

Thai government sending thousands of Hmong back to Laos

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Cambodia just sent Uighurs back to China and an uncertain fate and now so does Thailand send asylum seekers back to Laos.  Whether it’s for political or economic reasons, bottomline is that being generous to refugees is not a driving force in many nations around the globe these days.

From the New York Times:

BANGKOK — Armed with riot shields and batons, Thai military officers began early on Monday to forcibly return 4,000 Hmong asylum seekers to Laos in a lingering echo of the Vietnam War. 

A government spokesman, Panitan Wattanayagorn, said in a telephone interview that the repatriation had started and would be completed within days.

Members of a mountain tribe that aided the United States in its secret war in Laos, the asylum seekers have said they fear retribution by the Laotian government, which continues to battle a ragged insurgency of several hundred Hmong fighters.

Thailand moved ahead with the repatriation despite complaints from the United States, the United Nations, and human rights and aid groups. It was doing so although it has determined that some asylum seekers were eligible for refugee status, human rights groups said.

“This forced repatriation would place the refugees in serious danger of persecution at the hands of the Lao authorities, who to this day have not forgiven the Hmong for being dedicated allies of the United States during the Vietnam War,” Joel R. Charny, acting president of Refugees International, an advocacy group in Washington, said in a statement.

There is a lot more, read on.