Category: Asylum seekers

Murder trial begins today in Canada; African refugee charged in four murders

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This story is from British Columbia yesterday:

VANCOUVER, B.C. – A man accused of killing his business partner, two of his lovers and his step-daughter will be in court Monday for the start of a trial that could match the marathon proceedings in another serial murder case.

There are expected to be 200 witnesses called during Charles Kembo’s trial and the hearing is expected to last for most of a year.

Kembo is facing four counts of first-degree murder for allegedly killing the three women and his business partner. He was arrested in July 2005 and it’s taken more than four years for the case to come in front of jury.

He is charged with murdering the following:

Kembo is accused of first murdering his wife Margaret Kembo, who vanished sometime between the end of December, 2002 and beginning of January, 2003. 

In November 2003, Kembo’s friend and business partner Ardon Samuel, 38, was also slain.

One year later, the body of Kembo’s 55-year-old girlfriend Sui Yin Ma was found in a slough in Richmond, B.C.

Twenty-one-year-old Rita Yeung, Kembo’s step-daughter, was found dead in July 2005 in Richmond.

We would call Kembo an asylee in the US but apparently in Canada he is considered a “government sponsored convention refugee.”   Just like so many others he was ordered deported but never left.  If the government of Canada had followed through and put him on a plane, perhaps those four would be alive today.

Kembo was known as Charlos Mathews Gwazah when he landed at Pearson International Airport in September 1989 from the landlocked southeast African country of Malawi.

He became a government-sponsored convention refugee, which allows a person to stay in Canada if they have a well-founded fear of persecution based on race, religion, political opinion or nationality.

Refugees selected for resettlement to Canada are financially supported by the government, after often being forced to flee their home country because of extreme hardship.

A Canadian visa officer must decide if the potential sponsored refugee meets the requirements of Canada’s resettlement program.

Immigration and Refugee Board documents showed over the next three years he also made refugee claims under three different names.
 
He was ordered deported in 1994, but as a landed immigrant had a right to appeal the order and did so. He abandoned the appeal in 1996.

Where do I find refugee statistics?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

It occurred to me just now, as I helped a reader find some numbers, that it might be a good idea to repeat where you can get statistics on what refugees came to the US and to what states they were first resettled.  We have written 2,311 posts since we began RRW in July of 2007 and have a category entitled ‘where to find information’ here.   However, it would take some research on your part to find some important data bases.

Here are the statistics on refugees arriving in the US from 1983-2005.

Here are the statistics on individual years from 2000-2008.

This site has the numbers and country of origin (but not destination) for this fiscal year to August 31st.

For those of you looking to find out what religion refugees are, this site, Worldwide Refugee Admissions Processing System (WRAPS), does keep those statistics but you can’t access the site or get the numbers unless perhaps you know some Member of Congress who will get the information for you.  They may initially tell your Congressman that they don’t keep such numbers, but they do.

Here is a report from Homeland Security about refugees and asylees admitted in 2008.

This is a post I wrote on just Somali refugee numbers.  This post is one of the most active we have with many visitors arriving daily even though it is a year old.

For information on all legal immigrants go to this post and follow the links back to the 2007 Yearbook of Immigrant Statistics (it takes a few minutes to load).

If you enjoy numbers these links should give you hours and hours of fun!

Obama: Give illegal aliens amnesty so they can get health care

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Here is a story that you will see everywhere today.  I got it from Drudge.   Ten days ago I predicted this in a post on how illegal aliens would be eligible for health care under the house bill HR3200.   This is what I said on September 8th:

Of course, the Administration is also figuring on getting amnesty through this coming year and all this would be moot—illegals would be magically transformed to legals over night, and a whole new wave of immigrants would be flowing across the border.

This is what Obama said this week:

President Obama said this week that his health care plan won’t cover illegal immigrants, but argued that’s all the more reason to legalize them and ensure they eventually do get coverage.

He also staked out a position that anyone in the country legally should be covered – a major break with the 1996 welfare reform bill, which limited most federal public assistance programs only to citizens and longtime immigrants. 

“Even though I do not believe we can extend coverage to those who are here illegally, I also don’t simply believe we can simply ignore the fact that our immigration system is broken,” Mr. Obama said Wednesday evening in a speech to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute. “That’s why I strongly support making sure folks who are here legally have access to affordable, quality health insurance under this plan, just like everybody else. 

Mr. Obama added, “If anything, this debate underscores the necessity of passing comprehensive immigration reform and resolving the issue of 12 million undocumented people living and working in this country once and for all.”

So, what did I tell you above, Obama just figures the issue of whether health care reform covers illegals or not will be moot once he gets amnesty.

However, my question still remains, what is to stop new illegals and phony asylum seekers from coming across the border the very next day and creating a new wave of immigrants looking to become legal.

For a list of Obama Administration Amnesty supporters go here.

Reform Canadian immigration by taking more refugees the UN picks for them?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Canadian immigration minister, Jason Kenney, says he wants to reform the Canadian refugee program by getting rid of all the “fake” asylum seekers and taking more refugees that the UN wants to move out of camps around the world.   Nice sentiment I suppose but I see some flaws in his thinking.

First, I see nothing mentioned in this story about sealing Canada’s borders which would be the only way to stop the asylum seekers from getting in, once in what does he propose they do with them?   And, secondly, he places a lot of faith in the UN picking refugees for them.  Here is the story.

As part of its efforts to reform Canada’s refugee system, the government wants to bring in more refugees designated by the UN High Commissioner on Refugees, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney says.

This, he argues, would be a much more effective and efficient use of taxpayer dollars, benefitting people who are really facing persecution, instead of the thousands of “fake” applicants who apply within Canada each year.

In recent months, Mr. Kenney has spoken extensively about his desire to reform Canada’s refugee system. He has made it clear that he wants to lower the number of applications made within Canada, which has created a backlog of more than 60,000 applications and costs the government millions of dollars in social assistance while claimants await their hearings.

“My concern is more broadly with how easy it is to abuse Canada’s generosity and for non-refugees to immigrate to Canada through the back door of our asylum system using the long processing times and the…various levels of appeal, to string out a fake asylum claim to several years of residency in Canada and sometimes ultimately to gain permanent residency on humanitarian and compassionate grounds,” Mr. Kenney said in an interview last week. 

The minister says resources aren’t properly spent the way the system works now, and that real refugees in desperate need of assistance are being allowed to languish in limbo as others take advantage of Canada’s system. He wants to see that situation reversed.

Interestingly I didn’t spot this story at its original source but got it from a Muslim Rohingya website, here.  You can bet Mr. Kenney’s proposal makes their day at Rohingyas International.

Canada is accepting thousands of Bhutanese Hindu, Burmese Karen, Burmese Rohingya and Iraqi refugees, all of whom live in refugee camps, said Mr. Kenney.

The Conservative government, over the years, has made a point of highlighting the admittance of such groups into Canada whenever they have occurred, and Mr. Kenney said he would like to increase such intakes.

We have written a lot about Canada and I should have made a category for it but didn’t.  Our search function is a good one, so just type in ‘Canada’ to learn more about refugee issues there.

Muslim Brotherhood member seeking asylum in Australia

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

If asylum is granted to a man who claims he will be persecuted in his home country of Egypt for being a member of the Muslim Brotherhood—considered a terrorist group in many countries including Egypt—one would have to conclude that Australia has reached the beginning of the end.

From Australian Jewish News:

SHADOW Minister for Immigration Sharman Stone has asked immigration officials to reconsider their recommendation that an Egyptian with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood be allowed entry to Australia.

The Refugee Review Tribunal recommended a protection visa for the man – described as an “active supporter” of the radical Islamic group, Muslim Brotherhood – after he successfully argued he would face persecution for his political beliefs if forced to return to Egypt.

The group, which has called for the destruction of Israel, is banned in several countries, including Egypt. Other splinter members of the group include Hamas in Gaza and the Islamic Action Front in Jordan.

The group, however, is not listed as a terrorist organisation by the Australian governent.

Don’t you just see a flood of asylum applicants from radical Islamists wanting to get into Australia if they open this door?

Shadow Immigration Minister Dr Sharman Stone said she has written to Immigration Minister Senator Chris Evans asking for the decision to be overturned.

“This person should be sent home to Egypt,” she said. “Here we have a situation where an individual is using his membership of the Muslim Brotherhood to seek asylum. The tribunal found there was no evidence of him ever having being threatened or harmed in Egypt, yet he is using his membership of the group to claim asylum and hence permanent residency in Australia.”

Jeremy Jones, director of international affairs with the Australia-Israel Jewish Affairs Council, had this to say:

“The Muslim Brotherhood has many different manifestations in many different countries, but overall it’s been banned in many countries for many sound reasons. They’re dedicated to replacing existing regimes with theirs. You would not think that Australia would want to be a haven for people advocating extremist political doctrine which, in this case, is masquerading as a religious doctrine.”

Of course we already have the Muslim Brotherhood active in the US as this 2004 Chicago Tribune investigation tells us.