Category: Europe

Malmo, Sweden: Somali unemployment rate at 80% says Soros report

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Here is news on one more of George Soros Open Society reports on how Somalis are doing in Europe.  They are doing pretty well in Sweden it seems with 80% unemployed in Malmo and 40% in Stockholm which means they are surviving quite nicely with Sweden’s famed social safety net.

Benny Carlsson Lund University: Somalis value Malmo’s low cost of living! I bet they do! http://www.lusem.lu.se/research/faculty/ekh-bca

From The Local:

 The Open Society Foundation published the report as part of a broader look at the Somali diaspora in Europe. It found that 80 percent of Somalis in Sweden’s third largest city are out of work.

“Somalis are falling into a black hole in Malmö because they can’t get jobs,” report author Benny Carlsson of the Lund School of Economics and Management at Lund University told The Local. “(They don’t get) opportunities to practice Swedish and meet Swedes, and are forced to live in crowded flats.”

The situation fostered, Carlsson said, a “diminished overall sense of self-worth”.

The report said Malmö authorities were not reaching out enough with the Somali community, with new arrivals not getting enough information to help them find work.

One suggestion from the study is to get elderly Swedes to take Somalis under their wing, invite them for dinner.

There is a lot more, read it all.

Our previous reports from Soros are here (Helsinki) and here (Oslo).

I thought I had written about the professor before and sure enough, here, he was in Minnesota bragging about Sweden’s generous welfare programs!

Carlsson also cited Sweden’s social safety net which “lets people live at a decent level even if they don’t work, while the same can’t be said of the United States”.

Why work?

See our extensive archive on Sweden—the canary in a coal mine!  See especially one of our top posts of all time—They are fighting back in Sweden!

New FBI Director worried about Syria as “ungoverned space” and expresses concern about refugees

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

More “worrisome” than Afghanistan!

FBI Director James Comey says intelligence agencies know little about the refugees moving into Europe.

Basically he says we don’t know who these refugees are “moving up into Europe or elsewhere in the Middle East.”  No kidding!

Partway into this Politico piece on Obama’s State of the Union speech and Afghanistan comes this telling section of the article:

The danger from Syria, for example, seems likely to linger for a long time. And it’s exactly the kind of danger that, in the wake of Sept. 11, was deemed by Republicans and Democrats to be unacceptable.

“As long as that conflict is going on, as long as people are learning how to kill other people and meeting really bad people, it’s going to be a big worry,” FBI Director James Comey told reporters recently.

“The conflict in Syria has attracted so many people from so many places, of so many motivations, including Americans, that it is an enormous challenge for all intelligence services, including the FBI, to identify the ones of bad intent,” he said. “To figure out where they’re going, why they’re going and to keep track of them. It’s something we’re spending a lot of time on.”

The new FBI director told reporters at his office that the FBI has a relatively good handle on Americans who’ve traveled back and forth to Syria, or made the attempt, but knows much less about the many others involved with or displaced by the conflict, including refugees moving up into Europe or elsewhere in the Middle East.

People inside the counterterrorism world have compared it to Afghanistan in the 1980s, Comey said, “but in some ways it’s more worrisome.” Syria is easier to reach, more people are involved, and the population is much more diverse, he said.

UK: Pressure on Brits to take Syrian refugees may be succeeding

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment
UK Foreign Minister William Hague also warned British citizens to NOT go to Syria. Is he worried about British citizens joining the Jihadists?

Yesterday, UK Minister of Foreign Affairs Hague signaled that the United Kingdom would be looking to possibly resettle “vulnerable” Syrian refugees.  Whether the general public, which largely does not support more immigration (Syrians this time), will be persuaded I suppose rests on the definition of “vulnerable”  and for how long they will be allowed to stay.  Will this be permanent resettlement?

It should make Britain’s celebrities happy if not the ordinary citizen.

From the Gulf Times:

William Hague, the minister for foreign affairs, has confirmed the government is working on a plan to accept “particularly vulnerable” refugees from Syria.

The government had been resisting the idea of accepting refugees for months, but the senior Conservative party MP said the government was now actively considering which Syrian people should be allowed to come to Britain. It comes after Prime Minister, David Cameron, signalled a partial retreat over the issue under pressure from a cross-party group of politicians, saying he was now “open-minded” about accepting the injured, particularly children.

Speaking on BBC TV’s Andrew Marr (politics) Show, Hague revealed that plans were under way to bring over some refugees, but stressed the main priority would be providing aid to the region.

“The home secretary (minister for domestic affairs) is working on that, and will have more to say about that in the coming days,” he said. “I think there is a case for particularly helping people who are particularly vulnerable. I think we have to look at it in that way.”

Frankly, I think it’s the Muslims the average British citizen sees as NOT “particularly vulnerable.”

UK: Politicians may be moving toward accepting Syrian refugees, but British public still says NO

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment
Syrian asylum seekers block the port of Calais, demand entry into the UK. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/10357103/UK-border-police-to-consider-entry-for-Syrian-refugees-waiting-in-Calais.html

A new poll shows that most Brits want to either “keep the door firmly shut” against Syrian “asylum seekers,” or don’t know, as British politicians are warming to the idea under withering pressure from the humanitarian industrial complex.

From the Mirror:

YouGov asked:

“Some European countries are agreeing to each admit a few hundred of the people in the Syrian refugee camps. Do you think the United Kingdom should or should not also agree to admit a few hundred refugees from Syria to settle here?”

The answer? The British public are a lot less keen than some of our political leaders.

Just 39% of us think we’ve got room for a few hundred displaced Syrians. 47% think we should refuse to admit them, and 14% don’t know. Supporters of Ukip were more inclined to say no – 71% did – and over half of the Tory voters polled also said we should keep the door firmly shut.

Those demonstrators at Calais, France last fall sure didn’t help the cause of Syrian “refugees.”

Someone should do a poll in America!  Should the US take thousands of Syrians this year?  I think the results would be very similar to those found in the UK.

Swiss getting cold feet about taking more Syrians

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We’ve written several posts over the last few years (here) about how Switzerland is trying to save itself from being swamped by needy refugees, many from Muslim countries.   They did however agree to take a small number of Syrians over three years, but those numbers are now getting out of control.     (Be sure to see our previous post about the rich pretending to be refugees at Davos this week.)

Secretary of State John Kerry arrives in Switzerland for so-called ‘Peace talks’ on Syria, then immediately stirred anger.

Interesting timing that this story should be published just as ‘Peace talks’ take place in the country since these decisions were actually made late last year.

From Inter Press Service news:

LUCERNE, Switzerland , Jan 23 2014 (IPS) – Switzerland facilitated family reunification for Syrians in September. So far, more than 1,100 Syrian refugees have benefited from the programme, while thousands are waiting at Swiss embassies in the region, hoping for a similar chance. Surprised by these numbers, Switzerland put an end to the programme.

Several European countries responded to an appeal by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees  (UNHCR) last summer to admit Syrian refugees. Switzerland announced it would accept 500 “especially vulnerable refugees” over three years.

Further, the country that hosts about 2,000 citizens of Syrian origin pledged to open its borders for their relatives. By the end of November, Swiss embassies in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan had granted 1,600 Syrians a three-month entry visa.

At least 1,100 of these have already travelled to Switzerland. A further 5,000 Syrians have applied for appointments at Swiss embassies to file similar visa requests.

Either Swiss authorities were surprised by these numbers, or considered their humanitarian action short-lived. Already in early November, they introduced bureaucratic hurdles: Swiss-based Syrians who had invited their relatives now needed to meet certain financial requirements.

“Looking at the size of an average Syrian family, these requirements constitute a killer criteria,” said Beat Meiner, secretary-general of the Swiss Refugee Council (SFH). “Few of the Swiss-based Syrians have enough money to clear these hurdles.”

I think that is exactly why the Swiss don’t want more refugees—they bring poverty and a need for more social services.  Not to mention the cultural conflicts already happening.

Photo is here.