Category: Asylum seekers

Is Obama paying off Palau to take Uighurs?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update June 13th:  People in mostly Christian Palau are pretty unhappy with the, now 13 Uighurs, coming to Palau.  AP has the report here.  The other 4 have already gone to Bermuda.

Apparently getting desperate and trying to find a “home” for 17 Chinese Muslims held at Guantanamo Bay, the Obama administration first tried Europe and Canada to no avail.  They have finally settled on the tiny Pacific Island country of Palau which has agreed to take them— temporarily—whatever that means.   Hat tip:  Blulitespecial

But is Palau getting a little extra sweetner for its lemonade?  From Fox News:

The South Pacific island nation of Palau has agreed to “temporarily resettle” the 17 Uighurs, or Chinese Muslims, currently being held at Guantanamo Bay, an official with the Palau government told FOX News.

“Palau’s accommodation to accept the temporary resettlement of these detainees is a humanitarian gesture intended to held them be freed from any further unnecessary incarceration and to restart their lives anew in as normal a fashion as possible,” according to a press release provided to FOX News by the official.

Two U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to the Associated Press, said the U.S. was prepared to give Palau up to $200 million in development, budget support and other assistance in return for accepting the Uighurs and as part of a mutual defense and cooperation treaty that is due to be renegotiated this year.

The issue of what to do with Chinese Islamic radicals that China wants returned has been plaguing the Obama Justice Department for some time.  Afterall, China wants a chance to torture its own Islamic separatist terrorists.

We have been following this issue since it began because one option was to treat them as asylees and release them to a neighborhood near you.  Needless to say, no one wants them in their back yard.

One controversial option considered was to release the Uighurs into the United States. In fact, a federal court ordered the U.S. government to do just that, but an appeals court blocked the move, ruling that the federal court lacked the necessary authority.

The US resettlement option was pretty much killed by the Uighurs themselves when they had a few choice words about America and a question for our dear leader.

Last week, during a press tour of their detention camp, some of the Uighurs approached the fence around the facility and — with phrases written on an art pad — compared the U.S. government to that of China and Nazi Germany. One Uighur asked in English, “Obama is a Communist or a Democrat?”

Read more about how sweet-natured the Uighurs sound and what they think of the United States in Judy’s post of last week, here.

Then, believe it or not, a lawyer for the Uighurs says, ‘well maybe they don’t want to go to Palau!’  Let’s see Gitmo, China, or Palau?

Sabin Willett, a lawyer for six of the Uighurs, said he has been left in the dark about the U.S. government’s plans for the Uighurs. If Palau has in fact agreed to take them, he said, “the real question is whether the Uighurs will want to go.”

Hey, here’s a thought, maybe Obama could hand them over to the Chinese government in exchange for a favor from China—afterall, we desperately need China to cut us some slack on Obama’s national debt.  

I also would like to know who is going to guarantee they stay put in Palau?

In letter to EU, UNHCR slaps Italy for returning illegals to Africa

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We’ve reported ad nauseam (see posts on Malta) about the problems countries along the Mediterranean are having with boatloads of African illegal aliens coming ashore.  You might want to read the dark novel ‘The Camp of the Saints’ one day to understand how prescient the author, Jean Raspail, was back in the 1970’s.  Although a tad bit less dramatic then Raspail’s depiction of boatloads of third worlders arriving on European shores, today’s immigrant tide will have the same ultimate effect.

One country, Italy, is fighting back.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) this week whacked Italy for returning illegal aliens to Libya sending a warning message to other EU countries to respect “refugee rights.”

2 June – The top United Nations refugee official has called on the European Union (EU) to ensure that migration control measures do not undermine fundamental rights of asylum-seekers and refugees.

High Commissioner António Guterres expressed concerns about the situation of people intercepted at sea in the Mediterranean and the responses of governments to this, including those of Italy, in a letter addressed to the Czech EU Presidency ahead of a meeting of the group’s Justice and Home Affairs Ministers later this week.

The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) voiced its concern last month after Italy sent over 200 people it rescued off Maltese waters back to Libya before properly assessing their possible protection needs.

Italy,  if you value your country, continue to resist!

Netherlands to crackdown on asylum seekers, especially Somalis

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I guess they have finally said, enough is enough, and this member state of the European Union is taking matters into its own hands.  Hurrah for the Dutch!

From Crossroads magazine:

Foreign nationals who come to the Netherlands with the intention to abuse the asylum procedures will also be dealt with outside the European Union. Experts from the Netherlands and the Ukraine have agreed to cooperate in identifying foreign nationals, in investigating travel routes, and in taking measures to combat human smuggling and human trafficking. Dutch State Secretary for Justice Albayrak made agreements about this with the Ukraine during the EU Migration Conference in Prague, which conference included the participation of countries to the east and southeast of the European Union.

Research has revealed, for instance, that Somali asylum seekers, currently the largest group of asylum seekers desiring admittance to the European Union, are being smuggled into the Netherlands through the Ukraine. About half the Somalis state to have received help during the journey, whether or not against payment. Afghans and Pakistanis are also entering the European Union through the eastern borders of the European Union.

Maybe Geert Wilders “speech” is breaking through to the political powers in the Netherlands afterall.

Greece “can’t cope” with illegal aliens seeking asylum

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

From the Washington Times, my favorite paper, yesterday:

PATRAS, Greece — Every day since he arrived in Greece two years ago, Mohamadi al-Raza has woken up in this port city wishing he could make it across the Mediterranean to Italy.

The 24-year-old Afghan refugee, who said he fled his country “because of the wars, the mafias and the Taliban,” has lived for months inside a makeshift refugee encampment – a five-minute walk from the barbed-wire gates of the port.

Like thousands of other Afghan refugees, Mr. al-Raza is stuck on the threshold of Western Europe, because he landed first in Greece. Rules in the European Union won’t let him go any farther.

As part of his daily routine, Mr. al-Raza tries to creep into one of the trucks that leave the port on ferriesfive times a day for the Italian coast and comes back at night after another failed attempt. “It’s like a regular job,” he said.

Smugglers bring them to Greece on the frontier of Europe from all over Africa, the Middle East and South Asia.

Mr. al-Raza is one of about 1,300 Afghans in the encampment. Local nongovernmental organizations say most paid about $13,300 to smugglers to reach Patras, passing through Pakistan, Iran, Turkey and the Greek islands of the Aegean Sea.

According to the Patras coast guard, the Afghans are among 4,000 illegal immigrants waiting for a chance to sneak out of Greece. The others come from elsewhere in South Asia, Iraq and Somalia.

One of many pitfalls of being in the European Union is that illegal aliens must be processed in the first European country in which they land.    That is why besides Greece, the island of Malta which we have reported on extensively has had such a difficult time with thousands arriving illegally on its shores.  (Use our search function to learn more about Malta.)

Under EU rules, the first country an immigrant reaches is supposed to deal with asylum requests. However, Greece, which claims it has become the most targeted entry point into the European Union, is hardly ever the refugees’ preferred destination. Most would rather live in Germany, France, Britain or Sweden.

The local people have had enough.

At first, people were helpful with the migrants,” said Kristos Karapiperis, an official with the Greek Red Cross. But in 2006, the settlement reached an unprecedented size and people started to get afraid, he said.

“People actually began to see the camp,” which prompted protests amid the local population, he said, especially among truck drivers and employees of the ferry companies who resent the delays and the financial losses from illegal immigration.

“It’s creating a huge societal and economic problem,” said Konstantinos Bitsios, the general secretary of the Greek Interior Ministry. “I’m not ashamed to say we cannot cope with it,” he said, referring to the rise in asylum seekers and other illegal immigrants.

One thing Greece could do is get out of the European Union and set its OWN laws to protect its OWN country, but it won’t.

Previously we told you about immigrant violence in Greece here and here.

Andrew McCarthy says “NO” to AG Holder, mentions Uighers

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Today Andrew McCarthy who spent more than two decades at the Department of Justice and became an expert on terrorism, told Attorney General Eric Holder that he will not help them with Obama’s planned strategy to release Guantanamo Bay prisoners by year’s end.   Writing at National Review Online today, McCarthy says:

I did something today that I’ve never done before. The Department of Justice, which I proudly served for a quarter century as an assistant U.S. attorney and a deputy U.S. marshal, asked me for help, and I declined. Actually, what I declined to do was attend a meeting. My hope is that the dissent I am registering — to the administration’s disastrous policies of releasing trained terrorists and threatening prosecution against government lawyers — will help the department and the Obama administration, even if they don’t want to hear it.

At the start of his term, President Obama directed Attorney General Eric Holder to head up the President’s Detention Policy Task Force to study detention, trial, and other issues relating to alien enemy combatants — though that venerable law-of-war term has been purged in favor of “individuals captured or apprehended in connection with armed conflicts and counterterrorism operations.” The attorney general has assigned lawyers in the department’s Counterterrorism Division to organize the effort. Those lawyers invited me, among other former and current prosecutors experienced in terrorism and national-security matters, to attend a roundtable session next week, to sort through the vexing legal challenges of modern international terrorism.

Read on.

McCarthy makes two important points.  He asks, if he is on the Task Force and makes legal recommendations that are not favorable to the Administration, might he then be in legal jeopardy just as those Bush Administration lawyers may now be over their recommendations on interrogation tactics following 9/11.   

Is it the Delphi Technique?

And, then he points out that Obama has already declared that the Gitmo Detainees will be moved or freed later this year anyway, so why be on a Task Force and be nothing more than a rubber stamp for Obama and Holder.   This is a tried and true strategy of ‘Progressives’,  I know because I have seen it first hand, up close and personal.  The powers that be have already made their decision, but to give it the patina of a bipartisan and comprehensive strategy, they get a variety of people to sit on a task force then lead the task force to a predetermined conclusion.  Everyone walks away thinking they had a hand in the decision.  The strategy was probably developed within the framework of the Dephi Techinque, more details on it here.  Remember Obama has already used the strategy in a couple of meetings.  Good for you, Mr. McCarthy for getting it, and saying, “no!”

Below are excerpts from McCarthy’s letter to Holder today.

Released Gitmo Prisoners have returned to Jihad:

There are differences in these various proposals. But their proponents, and adherents to both the military and civilian justice approaches, have all agreed on at least one thing: Foreign terrorists trained to execute mass-murder attacks cannot simply be released while the war ensues and Americans are still being targeted. We have already released too many jihadists who, as night follows day, have resumed plotting to kill Americans. Indeed, according to recent reports, a released Guantanamo detainee is now leading Taliban combat operations in Afghanistan, where President Obama has just sent additional American forces.

The decision has already been made.  I say let Obama now take ownership.

The Obama campaign smeared Guantanamo Bay as a human rights blight. Consistent with that hyperbolic rhetoric, the President began his administration by promising to close the detention camp within a year. The President did this even though he and you (a) agree Gitmo is a top-flight prison facility, (b) acknowledge that our nation is still at war, and (c) concede that many Gitmo detainees are extremely dangerous terrorists who cannot be tried under civilian court rules. Patently, the commitment to close Guantanamo Bay within a year was made without a plan for what to do with these detainees who cannot be tried. Consequently, the Detention Policy Task Force is not an effort to arrive at the best policy. It is an effort to justify a bad policy that has already been adopted: to wit, the Obama administration policy to release trained terrorists outright if that’s what it takes to close Gitmo by January.

The Uighers are coming to your neighborhood.  What do you think the chances are that they will settle down to life in an American suburb:  mowing the grass, washing the car, walking the dog?  Oh, silly me, leave the dog out.

Obviously, I am powerless to stop the administration from releasing top al Qaeda operatives who planned mass-murder attacks against American cities—like Binyam Mohammed (the accomplice of “Dirty Bomber” Jose Padilla) whom the administration recently transferred to Britain, where he is now at liberty and living on public assistance. I am similarly powerless to stop the administration from admitting into the United States such alien jihadists as the 17 remaining Uighur detainees. According to National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair, the Uighurs will apparently live freely, on American taxpayer assistance, despite the facts that they are affiliated with a terrorist organization and have received terrorist paramilitary training. Under federal immigration law (the 2005 REAL ID Act), those facts render them excludable from the United States. The Uighurs’ impending release is thus a remarkable development given the Obama administration’s propensity to deride its predecessor’s purported insensitivity to the rule of law.

If released here, the Chinese Muslims will be given the same rights and privileges as refugees and asylees.    One of the Top Ten volags will get the contract to resettle them, and I bet there will even be competition among the NGO’s for the honor of getting these famous terrorists as “clients.”    They will get a federally subsidized apartment, a case worker to help them find a job, food stamps, health screening, and English lessons among other things.

But beware, don’t let them get a look at any women with bare arms, Michelle included.

All of our posts on the Gitmo guys are here.