Category: Asylum seekers

Another Asylum attorney gets busted

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I told you about a recent case in Maryland where immigration lawyer, Patrick Tzeuton from Cameroon, was convicted of immigration fraud when he fabricated documents for clients seeking asylum in the US.  

Thanks to a reader here is another case, from Seattle, with a different twist.  This asylum attorney (I am assuming he is/was an attorney although the article does not say) was advising clients to pretend they were gay and of course persecuted to receive approval for asylum.

SEATTLE – A man accused of advising straight immigrants to claim homosexuality – and potential persecution in their home countries – when they applied for asylum has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit immigration fraud.

Steven Mahoney entered his plea Tuesday in federal court in Seattle.

The U.S. attorney’s office says the 41-year-old Mahoney ran Mahoney and Associates in Kent, and held himself out as an expert in immigration affairs. They say he made money by advising immigrants on how to stay in the U.S. Between late 1998 and mid 2007, Mahoney admits he filed as many as 99 false immigration documents and was paid between $1,000 and $4,000 for each.

Asylees are people who have gotten into the US and claim they were in some way persecuted and would be in danger if they returned to their home country—you know, like Obama’s Aunt Zeituni.   However, once granted asylum they are treated just like refugees and receive the same benefits that refugees receive.

Last summer I told you about how it was harder to use the gay/lesbian persecution angle to legally stay in the US if you were Mexican here.   The reason is that being gay is becoming acceptable in Mexico and other countries south of the border.    But, here is what I wondered at the time:

I’m wondering how the government and these asylum lawyers know if the immigrant claiming asylum is telling the truth.   Couldn’t an illegal immigrant coming across the border just say he is gay? Surely no one checks behind closed doors.

I guess this Seattle story confirms that is exactly what they are doing, and I doubt this is an isolated case.

By the way, one commenter to the story asked if all the clients will now be deported for lying.  Guesses?

Washington Post’s muddled editorial on Uighurs

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This is a prime example of why I no longer subscribe to the Washington Post after two decades of doing so.   Yesterday’s editorial, “Justice for Uighurs, Chinese Muslim detaineees should be welcomed into the United States,”  is muddled and demonstrates that Leftwing do-gooders still drive the WaPo.   As I read the editorial, I wished the Uighurs, all 17 of them, could be relocated to the author’s street.

If you don’t know the facts about the Uighurs, please read our many previous posts here.

The Post begins:

FOR THE PAST seven years, 17 men have been held at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detainees who the U.S. government acknowledges should never have been there. They are not enemies of the United States or its allies and have not engaged in violence against U.S. or other interests. Yet these men — ethnic Chinese Muslims known as Uighurs — continue to be prisoners of years-old mistakes, ancient hostilities and modern-day diplomatic failures.

The Washington Post fails to tell readers that these poor misunderstood men didn’t just drop from the sky into the custody of the US, they were captured in Afghanistan.  Were they there on a little vacation from the troubled Chinsese region where they are wanted for terrorism?

China wants them back, so Obama will be inviting official Chinese anger to be rained down on us just at a time when he and Miss Hillary are begging the Chinese to further bail us out of our financial woes.  But, of course, the Washington Post denies the harmless Uighurs are part of an Islamic separatist movment in China.

The United States cannot return the men to China for fear that they will be mistreated or even tortured; the Chinese government considers them part of a terrorist group and has itself detained or abused Uighurs even when there was no evidence that they engaged in violence. The Bush administration tried for years to find the Uighurs a home in a third country, but to no avail; the Chinese government has threatened to retaliate politically against any nation that offers the Uighurs a haven.

The editorial hammers home the point over and over again (count the number of times!) that they are innocent.  Read the entire editorial.

In the meantime, 17 innocent men will continue to be confined on an island naval base ringed by barbed wire.

Washington Post, make up your mind!  Are they innocent or not?  Check this out, after repeatedly telling us they were innocent, here is how they cover their ass in case they don’t turn out to be such nice fellows afterall.

We have previously urged the administration to accept one or two of the detainees as a show of good faith and in an effort to spur ambivalent allies to take in the others. But the time has come for the United States to accept full responsibility for wrongly holding the Uighurs and to act boldly to rectify this miscarriage of justice. President Obama should grant asylum to all of the Uighur detainees, subject to confirmation that they have not engaged in any acts of violence.

What!!!!  You just spent I don’t know how many words telling us they are harmless!

As I said, I wonder if they could be resettled in the editor’s “welcoming” neighborhood.

More Muslim asylum seekers caught attempting to reach Australia

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Looks like Australia’s more lenient policy toward asylum has opened a floodgate of Afghan and Iraqi refugees attempting to reach ‘welcoming’ Australia.  This group was caught in Indonesia.  From the Herald Sun:

ANOTHER 68 Afghan asylum seekers poised to head to Australia have been arrested by Indonesian authorities and are being questioned tonight.

Read the whole story and learn more about Australia’s recent refugee problems in our category on the subject, here.

Update:  Just came across another story of an Iraqi family who may be trying to reach Australia.   See how it’s done, here.

Boat explosian kills Afghan asylum seekers in Australia

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We told you a week ago that changes in Australian asylum policy (toward more leniency) are encouraging Afghan and Iraqi asylum seekers (probably others from the Middle East as well) to risk dangerous waters around Australia in an attempt to reach Australia by boat.   A controversy is now swirling around the most recent incursion which resulted in the explosion of one such trafficking vessel and the subsequent death of  three and possibly more Afghan aliens.

From the Australian today:

A NAVY officer has described the “horrific” scene where at least three people died after an explosion threw 47 suspected asylum seekers and two crew into northern Australian waters.

Lieutenant Commander Barry Learoyd said all 49 people aboard the asylum seekers’ boat had been thrown into the ocean.

“The scenes were pretty horrific,” he said.

[….]

The asylum seekers identified themselves as being from Afghanistan.

More Iraqi asylum seekers arriving in Australia

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The word has gotten out that the Rudd Administration has made it easier for refugees arriving by boat to be granted asylum in Australia, so now, not surprisingly, the numbers are on the rise.  From the Jakarta Post:

A boatload of suspected Iraqi asylum seekers skirted border patrols and landed Wednesday on a remote Australian island, officials said, becoming the third group of people to reach the country’s territorial waters in a month.

The opposition Liberal Party says the increase in boat arrivals is a result of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s relaxation of the country’s refugee policy last July.

When I first saw this story, I though how on earth were Iraqis getting to Australia on boats, but we learn that they first fly to Indonesia.

Australia has long been a destination for people from poor, often war-ravaged countries hoping to start a new life. Most of the asylum seekers in recent years have come from Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq. They typically fly to Indonesia before continuing to Australia aboard cramped, barely seaworthy boats.

Indefinite detention on remote islands by the Howard government  previously kept the numbers of asylum seekers low.

The number of boats had dwindled after the previous government imposed unlimited detention for illegal immigrants and made it difficult to get refugee visas. But since Rudd’s government relaxed some of those policies last July, 11 boats carrying more than 340 people have entered Australian waters, three of them in the last month.

[….]

Rudd’s government has limited detention to 12 months and gives accepted refugees permanent visas instead of the three-year visas provided by the previous Liberal government.

The article doesn’t mention if these are Muslim Iraqis or Christians.