Category: Canada

Canadian government trying to NOT give free health care to asylum seekers

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Supposedly new regulations would also have cut off health care to refugees, and the refugee industry went nuts.  So the government backtracked and wants to make it clear that asylum seekers (really aliens who got into Canada illegally or came on a visa of some sort and now claim they will be persecuted if returned to their home country) will not have the benefits of Canada’s SOCIALIZED medicine, but proper refugees will.   Why?  Canada can’t afford to do it!

In the meantime, the US is extending Obamacare to refugees and presumably asylees as well as we reported, here, a couple of days ago.

Here is the story from The Star:

Ottawa has backed down on its health-care cuts for resettled refugees on income support, but other asylum seekers are still not immune from the axe.

The federal government quietly amended information about the changes on its website late Friday, just before the cuts to the Interim Federal Health Program (IFHP) kicked in on the weekend.

As a result, impoverished refugees resettled to Canada through government and private sponsorships can still access hospital services, diagnostic and ambulance services, as well as supplementary health support such as wheelchairs, dental and vision care — equivalent to what is available to low-income Canadians.

Critics who fought staunchly against the cuts said Ottawa’s flip-flop indicates the government’s recognition of vulnerable refugees’ health-care needs.

Alexis Pavlich, a spokesperson for Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, said the minister has “repeatedly” stated that government-sponsored refugees would continue to receive health care.

“The original criteria did not make this intention clear, which is why the language of the policy has been modified,” she said in an email to the Star.

“Our intention was to ensure that those who come to Canada as asylum seekers from abroad do not receive better health-care coverage than Canadians. Our intention was never to have this policy impact government-sponsored refugees.”

However, critics said the last-minute reprieve is not good enough and many are still denied basic health care, including those who come from Ottawa’s yet-to-defined “safe countries” — likely including Mexico, Hungary and Czech Republic — and failed refugee claimants awaiting appeals and deportation.

Imagine that—a “refugee” from Mexico gets all the way to Canada and is denied dental care!  What is this mean old world coming to?

Canada cracking down on refugee criminals

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Note from the editor:  I’ve been sidetracked lately with local issues with little time to post here, so if you are one of the many new readers arriving at RRW this week, I urge you to use our search function to help you find something of interest among our thousands of posts.  You can type in your state, or city, or the ethnic group of refugee you are concerned about among many other topics and begin to learn about the refugee mess going on around the world.  Also note our categories in the lefthand side bar.  We have a category with 93 previous posts on Canada.

Whew! They are getting serious in Canada—it’s deportation for you if you break the law and no appeals allowed.  Well, assuming they get this proposed legislation enacted.

From the Vancouver Sun:

MONTREAL — Immigration Minister Jason Kenney introduced legislation in the House of Commons Wednesday that would tighten conditions for foreigners entering Canada and aimed mainly at “foreign criminals.”

The measure calls for the automatic expulsion of political refugees and both permanent and temporary residents who commit a crime and are sentenced to more than six months prison.

The government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper “is putting a stop to foreign criminals relying on endless appeals in order to delay their removal from Canada during which time they continue to terrorize innocent Canadians,” Kenney told reporters.

[…..]

The proposed change “means that there will be no review of all of the circumstances and how the deportation order might affect children or spouses, family, etc,” immigration attorney Lorne Waldman told CBC News in an e-mail message. “It means deportation regardless of how long the person is in Canada.”

Another Somali Muslim dead in Canada due to gang violence

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Yesterday was Muslim refugee crime day at RRW with three crime story, I hope today isn’t shaping up the same way.

Here is a story from Canada, not new to us, we have written on many occasions about the young Somali men getting blown away when involved in drug and gang violence in Canada.   However, this article from The Globe and Mail is somewhat more interesting than the usual because it describes the structure of Somali gangs.

Imam Said Rageah, who spoke during the hour-long gathering, said that in the past two years he has witnessed about 30 funerals for murdered Somali-Canadians, mostly in Alberta.

Ahmed Hassan died when an assailant drew a gun and fired, killing him and wounding six others; his short life offering a glimpse into a community racked by gang violence. His journey from Toronto to Alberta and back is well-worn by a criminal minority among Somalis who made Canada their home.

Somali gangs are looser and thus harder to dismantle:

Last year, Edmonton police gauged that the number of Somali-Canadians involved in the drug trade totalled about 2,000, countrywide, with a hard core of perhaps 100. And as with almost all types of organized crime, the primary motivator is cash. But in almost every other respect, the Somali drug gangs differ greatly from other ethnically based criminal organizations, police say, and the most striking is in the way they are structured.

The traditional mob model is pyramid-shaped – a hierarchy in which power flows from the top – and law enforcement responded accordingly. Cut off the head, so the thinking went, and the leaderless group will flounder, if only for a while.

But the Somali gangs are looser, much harder to dismantle than more traditional groups. They offer considerable scope for an ambitious, money-driven individual who does not have to “kick the money upstairs” as the loyal Mafia soldier must.

The Somali-dominated gangs also tend to be low profile and highly mobile, often moving as a group from one city to another, chiefly along a circuit that links Toronto, Ottawa, Calgary, Edmonton, Fort McMurray and, to a lesser degree, Vancouver.

A former Mountie, who is now a professor of criminology at Grant MacEwan University in Edmonton, suggests that one of the strengths of the Somali-Canadian criminal element is its national network.

“When the heat gets to be a little too much, boom, they’re gone,” said William Pitt. “They’re highly integrated, the Toronto gang, the Edmonton gang and even the Vancouver gang to a lesser extent.”

If you need a summary of refugee-related crimes, be sure to check our “crimes” category, here.  Some crime posts are about refugees who have been the victims of crimes, but a larger number of stories are about refugee-generated crime.  However, be ready for a lot of reading—there are 940 posts cataloged there!

I wonder if those Kurdish gangs in Nashville are fighting with the Somali gangs yet?

Arab Spring leaves refugees on the Libyan/Egyptian border—US picks up the pieces

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Told you so!   We would join the coalition of European nations which took on Gaddafi (Qadhafi) in Libya and our reward would be—you guessed it!—we get the refugees!

Here is an article that gives you a window into a process on-going as a result of that joyous Arab spring.  Immigrants who want to escape Libya and are not allowed into Egypt are stuck at a border crossing called Sallum where the UN and our Dept. of Homeland Security are sorting through them to see which ones we get to bring to America!

From AllAfrica:

Sallum, Egypt — Andrew Mok, computer open in front of him, faced the Sudanese man across the table in a converted freight container and began the interview.

“Please do not make any false statements because that could have a negative impact on your application,” the 23-year-old from Hong Kong informed the man, who was bidding to be recognized as a refugee. “Everything you tell UNHCR will be strictly confidential,” he added, reassuringly.

Refugee status determination (RSD) is a vital part of UNHCR’s daily protection work and the above scene is replicated every day in UNHCR operations around the world.

But there is a difference at Sallum because those being interviewed are stuck at a busy border crossing, unable or unwilling to go home or back to Libya, and not allowed to go further inside Egypt. There are around 2,000 people left from the 40,000 third country nationals who fled to Sallum to escape last year’s conflict in Libya, most of whom were allowed to transit Egypt.

UN Heavily dependent on the US for resettlement!

While the RSD process is almost over, it will take many more months before all of those referred for resettlement finally get to leave for their new homes. That’s partly because “only six resettlement countries have taken cases from Sallum,” said Heidi Boener. “We are heavily dependent on the United States,” added the resettlement officer.

The article doesn’t make it clear who exactly Miss Heidi works for, but in 2008, here, she worked for International Catholic Migration Commission*.  We learn from this report that she preps the prospective “refugees” on the kinds of questions they will get from Homeland Security…hmmmm!    You know it is very important that they keep their stories straight!

As Mok continued with his questions, Boener stood in a nearby building and addressed about 30 registered refugees from Eritrea, Somalia and Ethiopia who were due to be interviewed over a two-week period by officials from the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS). She took them through the kinds of questions they would face, including queries about their family history and why they cannot return to their country of origin.

Boener said more than 1,400 people had been referred to the US for resettlement and the visiting DHS staff planned to meet a first group of about 250 for a so-called first circuit interview, with plans to return about every three months to talk to a similar number each time. After interviews, and if they are conditionally approved, they will undergo security background checks and medical screening before final approval and authorization to fly to America.

To hear Obama tell it, we were dragged into the Libyan war so that we might help a coalition of nations—France, Britain, Canada and Italy.  So, after paying for the lions share of the war’s cost, the US takes the lions share of “refugees” while Canada, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden take a few.   According to this account, guess who isn’t helping—-the greatest beneficiaries of that Libyan oil—France, Britain, and Italy.

More Africans on the way to your town!

* Just when you think you have seen them all, along comes another NGO living on the US taxpayer’s dime.  Here the International Catholic Migration Commission gets half of its funding from you.  And, it is so funny, you never see the ACLU go after these non-profits on the separation of church and state issue.

Canada: Tamil Tigers on board the MV Sun Sea; Tigers in Oakland?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

So what else did you expect!

I should be writing about yesterday’s State Department meeting where federal contractors made their pitches for more refugees for FY2013 and I will get to that shortly (I hope), but to add a little variety to our stories about bureaucracy in Washington, I’m posting this update of a story I wrote about back in 2010—Sri Lankans loaded on ships and taken to Canada by human smugglers, here.  Canadian immigration officials are sorting through the nearly 500 illegal entrants from this one ship to sort out the terrorist Tigers from legitimate asylum seekers.

By the way, here is a little Tiger trivia:   Tamil Tigers are famous for pioneering the use of the suicide belt.

From the National Post:

Deportation orders have been issued against two more of the 492 Sri Lankan refugee claimants who arrived off the B.C. coast in 2010 aboard the smuggling ship MV Sun Sea.

In separate decisions, the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada ordered the expulsion of both men, ruling one had engaged in people smuggling and the other had been a member of a Tamil rebel group.

The cases bring to 19 the number of Sun Sea migrants who have been issued deportation orders to date. All have been declared inadmissible to Canada due to their involvement in terrorism and crime.

“Canada opens its doors to those who work hard and play by the rules. However, we must crack down on those who seek to take advantage of our generosity, often for financial gain,” Julie Carmichael, spokeswoman for Public Safety Minister Vic Toews, said Tuesday.

Neither of the latest deportees was named in the heavily edited rulings released to the National Post, but one was found to have served in the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam between 2005 and 2006, when he was in his mid-20s.

Read the whole article, there is lots of interesting information about trafficking and what it costs and who is making a fortune from it.  Makes me wonder again who is trafficking Somalis into the US.

Sri Lankans to Oakland!

This reminds me that the US State Department and the International Rescue Committee helped Australia with a little illegal immigration problem of theirs by taking illegal alien Sri Lankans off the Australians hands in 2010 and placing them in Oakland, CA.   Here is the story I wrote nearly two years ago.   And, this is a point I made in my testimony to the State Department—Congress should forbid the use of this program for other foreign policy objectives.

Just a reminder that the International Rescue Committee’s Anne Richard has been confirmed as Obama’s pick to head the State Department refugee program.  Another contractor is now in charge of doling out the federal bucks (your bucks!).  She started her work this week by traveling to Switzerland, Iraq and Jordan.