Category: Europe

Sweden now whining about Syrian refugee burden

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

They want other European countries to step up!

Remember last fall that the big show-offs in Sweden opened their doors to any and all Syrian asylum seekers who could get there (the announcement came when Obama was visiting)!

Now, according to the Wall Street Journal they can’t handle it and like typical liberals are whining that others need to do their share.  Emphasis below is mine.

Last September, Sweden became the only European Union country to offer permanent residence to Syrians fleeing their devastated homeland. Now, strained by its own generosity, it is losing patience with what is calls a lack of solidarity from its European brethren.

Crybaby Tobias Billstrom wants to punish European countries for not pulling their weight!

“Nine member states in the EU today receive 90% of all asylum applications annually but those nine states are starting to, well, become fed up,” Tobias Billström, Sweden’s immigration minister, said in an interview. He’s asking the European Commission to punish countries for failing to pull their weight in receiving asylum seekers in accordance with the bloc’s laws.

[….]

Since Sweden’s announcement, immigration has spiked and is now at its highest levels since the wars in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. This year, the country’s migration experts expect 59,000 people to seek asylum there, with 23,000 of them seen coming from Syria.

Meanwhile, Italian and Greek authorities estimate more than 20,000 Syrians crossed their borders into the EU last year. Of those, a mere 1,100 applied for asylum there, according to European Commission data.

It is a strain on Sweden, especially since there is a housing shortage which pushes the price up for everyone.  I guess the Swedish economic geniuses didn’t see this coming!

For Sweden, the growing influx of asylum seekers strains authorities tasked with providing education, child care and other support. One major challenge is securing housing for asylum seekers as Sweden faces a housing shortage.

LOL!  The ‘refugee star’ of the story paid 16,000 Euros (about $22,000) to people smugglers to get him to Sweden, and he said this:

“What I like about Sweden’s approach is that you get support during the first years.”  [Welfare from day one of course—ed]

Sweden with its open door policy on immigration and its world-renowned social safety net has been our ‘canary in a coal mine’ for years.  Go here for our complete archive.

African invasion of Europe continues, this time from Morocco

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment
Some of the “violent” African migrants who stormed the border fence between Morocco and Spanish Melilla.  http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/asylum-policy-and-treatment-of-refugees-in-the-european-union-a-926939.html

Most illegal African migrants travel by sea to get to Europe, but due to a blip in the political boundary of Spain, they have a way in by land.   And, of course to get this far, Morocco must have let them through their other borders!

Update February 28th:  New York Times is reporting the story too with photos.  Not just Africans, but Syrians in the mix.

From AFP:

MADRID – Some 500 African migrants stormed a triple barbed-wire border fence Monday that divides the Spanish territory of Melilla from Morocco, with about 100 making it over, an official said.

The migrants targeted two different sections of the border and were “very violent” as they used “sticks and threw rocks at Spanish and Moroccan police”, said a spokeswoman for the Spanish government’s representative in Melilla.

About 100 of the roughly 500 migrants involved in the border assault managed to enter Melilla, she added.

The Moroccan interior ministry said at least 27 people had been wounded, including 13 members of its security forces hit by rocks that the migrants hurled at them as they stormed the border fence.

Moroccan police arrested around 100 migrants, including 14 who were taken to hospital in the nearby town of Nador suffering injuries caused by the barbed wire that the Spanish authorities have placed on top of the barrier as a deterrent.

Spanish territory on the coast of North Africa

It was the latest in a series of coordinated assaults by African migrants on the border of Melilla, which along with fellow Spanish territory Ceuta has the European Union’s only land borders with Africa.

Some who make it over the fence are allowed to stay in Spain!

The spike in the arrival of migrants to Melilla in recent weeks has caused the population of an internment centre in the Spanish outpost to swell.

The centre, which has room for 480 people, currently houses more than 1,000 migrants. Military tents have been set up at the centre to accomodate the overflow.

Depending on treaties between Spain and the country of origin of each immigrant, some are repatriated and others are allowed into Spain.

Update from Calais (France): It is not the UK’s problem

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Thanks again to ‘pungentpeppers’ here is an update from the stalemate in Calais where hundreds of Middle Easterners and Africans have congregated for months demanding they be let into the UK.  (See our previous Calais posts here).

Camping in Calais where camps are divided by ethnic groups (by their own choosing!)

In a clear ploy to tug at heartstrings, The Independent begins and ends with sob-stories about the poor men who scratched together thousands of dollars to get this far in order to break into what they call “The House” (the UK).

But the British government again lays out the cold hard truth—in the European Union, legitimate asylum seekers are to ask for asylum in the first safe country in which they land.  For these men was it Italy, Malta, Greece, Bulgaria—any of the border countries?  And, indeed if they were legit, they could ask for asylum in France.

Going one step further, the UK says the condition of French “camps” is France’s problem! Yup!

The French government has asked Britain to consider a renegotiation of the agreement which led to the closure of Sangatte and share more of the financial and policing “burden” caused by the migrants. The French interior minister, Manuel Valls, said last month that the situation in Calais had reached an “impasse”. The response from his British opposite, Home Secretary Theresa May, has been a polite restatement of the status quo.

A Home Office spokeswoman said tonight: “The conditions of any camps in France and the policing of them is the responsibility of the French authorities. If individuals have a genuine need of protection they should claim asylum in the first safe country they reach.”

Indeed, the real passion and anger is among those with the least power and the most to lose.

For two consecutive weeks, the streets of Calais have been the scene of demonstrations by angry migrants waving placards proclaiming “Freedom to move”, “Liberté” and “No border, no nation – stop deportation”

The  list of grievances of the marchers – Afghans, Kurds, Sudanese, Eritreans, Egyptians, Syrians – is long and multifarious, from an unrealistic demand for Britain to open its border to a plea for the “basic dignity” afforded by washing facilities and an end to what they say is harassment by French police.

Read it all.

A reminder: check those “Top Posts” daily!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We’ve had a lot of new readers and more interest lately in Refugee Resettlement issues facing first world countries.   In some cases a story catches fire on facebook and our numbers soar.  If you check the “Top Posts” (right hand sidebar) every day, you can get an idea of what stories are interesting our readers around the world.

Yesterday, the Lewiston, Maine post from last week took off.    And, our fact sheet (US), is a hit every day!

Although the majority of our readers are from the US, we have thousands upon thousands visiting from around the world.  Looking back over the last two years (when wordpress began giving us stats from other countries), these are the top ten countries from which we host visitors to RRW (the order switches around slightly from month to month but the list below is the approximate order) with the UK topping the list:

UK
Australia
Canada
Germany
S. Africa
Thailand
India
Sweden
Netherlands
France

Not far behind France is Malta!

We bring you stories from around the world just so you know that the refugee/asylum issue is plaguing industrialized countries everywhere and your concern here in America, that excessively high numbers of migrants are attempting to get into America, is shared by others who fear for their country, their culture, and the potentially disastrous impact on Western civilization as a result of demographic change.

Some countries are taking action to stem the tide—front and center right now is Australia!

Why are we taking “refugees” from Austria…..

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

…..and Turkey, Sweden, France, Malta, Germany, India, Israel, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Vietnam among others?

We couldn’t possibly be taking the Pakistanis and Afghanis who have been demanding asylum in Austria by camping out in Catholic Churches? Could we? http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/23/us-austria-refugees-idUSBRE90M0Z820130123

Since when do those countries have a war or other disturbance going on that would justify the US taking off their hands THEIR immigrant problems? 

Readers, legitimate refugees/asylum seekers are those who leave their country where they are supposedly persecuted and seek asylum in the first safe country in which they land.   There isn’t supposed to be some pass through opportunity to go to America!

Just now I had a look at WRAPSNET (US State Department) where the statistics are kept about which refugees are coming to the US.  Actually at WRAPS there are only a few data bases available to us, the taxpayers, most are password-protected and only available to the special people working in the refugee industry.

One database tells us from what country refugees have arrived in America in the first 4 months of this fiscal year (FY2014) and I was shocked to see we took 572 REFUGEES from Austria in 4 months, but who the heck are they?  Austria is a prosperous safe country!  Are they illegal aliens who entered Austria and to help them out we said, ‘What the heck, we can take them off your hands?’

The statistics don’t tell us the nationalities of those we took from safe countries!  Also, you should know that WRAPS does track the religions of the refugees, but won’t release that information to you (or me!).

We’ve been telling you for years how all this got started—the Bush Administration bent the rules and the US began resettling illegal aliens from Malta.  I see from the stats we have taken 136 off Malta’s hands in the first 4 months of this year alone.  Why is this in our NATIONAL INTEREST?   See our extensive archive on Malta (note to any real investigative reporters out there, we have done your research for you!).

Although we have only taken a tiny number (why isn’t it zero?) from Sweden, France, Germany, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Vietnam, check out the large number we took-off Turkey’s hands—1,781, South Africa (aka the rainbow nation, the model for the world!)—167 (and you can bet they aren’t persecuted white people), India—138, and the UAE—92.   WTH!

By the way, the big number for Kenya (1,336) probably represents the Somalis we are taking from Dadaab.