Category: Asylum seekers

Senator Sessions to move to strike HIV provision

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update July 18th:  Senate did vote to lift the ban on immigrants with HIV, see report here at Blue Ridge Forum.

Update July 14th:  Read the latest information on this issue at America’s Survival, Inc. here.   Today is the best day to call Senators with your opinon.

Urgent notice:  The word is that Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) will move to strike a provision in S. 2731 when it reaches the floor as early as tomorrow, Monday, July 14th.   As I reported yesterday, this provision would allow immigrants with HIV/AIDS to enter the US and receive government (read taxpayer) supported medical treatment. 

Critics believe it will serve as a huge magnet to further illegal immigration, and fuel more demands for legal immigration.  Also, foreigners getting into the US and seeking asylum could also presumably then ask for medical care.   I suppose it’s also possible for any HIV positive foreigner entering the US on a tourist visa  to ask for treatment for AIDS.    Refugees can already enter the US with HIV/AIDS.

Senator Sessions was the leader in last summer’s defeat of the McCain/Kennedy Amnesty bill.  It will take 60 votes in the Senate to remove the HIV (come to America one and all for free medical care) provision.

Here they come! Immigration lawyers

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Yesterday’s Washington Post had a lengthy article about how the Immigration law field is booming and law schools are cranking out hordes of young idealistic lawyers, often former immigrants themselves, ready to help not only refugees and asylees but illegal immigrants as well.

A subject that three decades ago was a secondary, technical field delegated to adjunct professors is booming at law schools nationwide. Elective immigration law courses taught by tenured specialists are filling lecture halls, immigration clinics are expanding and student groups devoted to the subject are mushrooming.

The momentum is partly driven by a high-profile, rancorous immigration debate. But it is also the result of an era of mass immigration that has fueled demand from foreigners and businesses seeking help navigating U.S. immigration statutes and has created a generation of law students intimately familiar with the issue, often because they are children of immigrants or immigrants themselves.

Suit filed in Walkersville Ahmadiyya Muslim Mosque case

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This news is not totally unexpected, the property owners and their lawyer had hinted that a lawsuit might be brought against the rural town of Walkersville, MD when it had earlier ruled against a special exemption request that would have allowed a large Muslim complex to be built in the town.   For background see my post of June 10th and then follow links back for the full story.

From the AP today: 

WALKERSVILLE, Md. – Officials of a rural Maryland town illegally discriminated against a Muslim group by barring them from building a mosque and holding annual conventions on land zoned for farming, the property’s owner claimed in a federal lawsuit filed Monday.

The complaint was filed not by the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community USA but by developer David Moxley and his father Robert, who had planned to sell the group 224 acres in Walkersville for about $6 million.

The Silver Spring-based religious group canceled the land purchase earlier this year after the town’s three-member Board of Zoning Appeals voted unanimously to reject their request for a special exception to land-use restrictions.

Officials of the town of 5,600 based their denial largely on open space preservation concerns and fears that the thousands of people attending the group’s annual, three-day Jalsa Salana national convention would overwhelm the community’s roads and emergency services. 

Think about this next section of the article and the implications of the law that is being used in this suit.  This means, I guess, that no town or jurisdiction could say no to a large or otherwise incompatible religious facility when considering its zoning decisions.  

The complaint alleges violations of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment, which guarantees free exercise of religion, and the 14th Amendment, which provides equal protection to all.

It alleges violations of the federal Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, enacted in 2000 to bar land-use regulations that would discriminate against a religious organization.

I spent years working in the property rights movement in this country and it was no secret that the federal government was seeking (spurred on by environmentalists) to control land use at a federal level and take it away from local governments.    But, here you have the tables turned on the environmentalists because local citizens who are concerned about the quality of their environment could have a large and potentially environmentally destructive facility shoved down their throats in the name of religious freedom.

Can you imagine what fun this case could be on a Supreme Court level.  Would liberal environmental groups side with local government (opposing the feds)  against immigrant groups wishing to build large religious facilities on open space?

By the way, I am not a lawyer, nor did I stay in a Holiday Inn Express last night, so the above speculation is just that!

For more go to Citizens for Walkersville here.

South African TB patients riot

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

While I’m on the subject of infectious diseases this morning, here is a frightening story from South Africa thanks to blulitespecial. 

CAPE TOWN, South Africa – Authorities increased security Friday at a tuberculosis hospital where patients with drug-resistant forms of the disease went on a rampage to protest prison-like conditions.

Twenty-two patients were arrested Wednesday, accused of public violence and assault after they pelted staff with stones and vandalized equipment. But the local police station and prison refused to admit them because of fears of the highly infectious disease. Instead, they were returned to the hospital.

The Jose Pearson hospital, near the coastal city of Port Elizabeth, treats about 300 patients. Many have multidrug-resistant TB and the even more dangerous extensively drug-resistant TB, which is very difficult and expensive to treat. Those with drug-resistant strains are supposed to stay in the hospital for six months to two years, living in isolated wards surrounded by barbed wire and security guards.

South African authorities have reluctantly resorted to enforced confinement of patients with drug-resistant TB because of fears that it might otherwise spread through the community. TB is an airborne bacteria and can be spread easily through coughing or sneezing.

The country is gripped by a tuberculosis crisis, which is feeding off the AIDS epidemic and striking the weakened immune system of victims. Nearly 60 percent of South African TB patients have AIDS. The emergence of drug-resistant TB strains — often the result of not sticking to the standard six-month course of treatment — has worsened patients’ chances of survival.

Why am I telling you this, because as the “rainbow nation” implodes (I wonder if that was discussed at the star-studded Mandela birthday bash this week) we are going to be pressured to take refugees newly created by the violence against immigrants in South Africa.

We are already admitting refugees with HIV and TB.  And, I will bet you a buck that the refugees that roam from city to city are not sticking with their six-month long treatment regime and that the volags are not following up on these people.    A Somali refugee died of TB in a Tyson’s plant in Emporia, KS last year.  Bet you didn’t hear that in the news.

Not much news coming out of South Africa

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

You would hardly know that South Africa’s grand experiment in multiculturalism, the “rainbow nation” myth, exploded a month or so ago.   It’s hard to find news to update our readers on the violence that erupted throughout the country—violence against refugees and asylees who local South African blacks claim are taking their jobs and bringing crime with them—that killed scores and caused the creation of makeshift refugee camps.

Here is a small portion of an ‘opinion’ piece from a universtiy professor discussing a report released for World Refugee Day last week.

First, the recent violence is but an extreme sign of how non-nationals are treated as ‘outsiders’ by various elements of South African society, from members of the public, to civil servants, service providers, and government leaders. This report outlines many of the ways non-nationals — refugees, asylum seekers, and other immigrants — are excluded from the services, welfare, and dignity they are guaranteed by South African law and Constitutional commitments.

Second, while South Africa must improve its policing practices and promote tolerance, it must also revisit and fundamentally revise the way it manages migration from the region and further afield. Let us be clear, halting migration is neither possible nor a solution. Are we prepared to follow the United State and Europe in their fruitless, deadly, and hypocritical efforts to halt immigration?

South Africa already deports close to 300 000 people a year. How much further are we willing to go? How can we speak in one breath of promoting tolerance and barricading our borders? Doing so only confirms many South African’s deep suspicion that migrants truly are a mortal threat to South African society. Yes, stop corrupt officials and criminals, but let us not further demonise and criminalise our neighbours.

The gratuitous attack on the United States was laughable especially the hypocrisy charge I’ve highlighted because we aren’t running around calling ourselves the “rainbow nation” and according to all the figures I could find we deport 200,000 illegal immigrants a year.    That figure puts tiny South Africa about 100,000 deportations ahead of us!

Oh, and as for the “deadly” part, professor,  I don’t recall any riots in the US where immigrants were targeted by mobs of citizens and beaten or set on fire.  Last I saw the South African asylee and refugee death toll was around 60.