Where they could face “inhuman or degrading treatment” say the UN bullies.
If you are wondering what this is all about, the European Union has this dumb thing called the ‘Dublin Regulation’ which says if ‘asylum seekers’ trek across some poor border country—like Bulgaria, Greece, or Malta—and seek asylum in some other European country then they can be sent back to the poor border country and apply there. You can see how this might deter the migrants who are asylum shopping, but imagine what it does to the poor border country that couldn’t handle the influx in the first place.
Bulgaria’s rightwing Ataka Party is expected to do well in May EU elections.
BERLIN – The United Nations’ refugee agency is urging European countries to hold off returning asylum seekers to Bulgaria, citing problems with access to basic services and with asylum procedures.
Under the “Dublin procedure,” European Union countries return illegal migrants to the first EU country they entered. Bulgaria is on the bloc’s eastern edge and has seen increasing numbers of asylum seekers in recent months, among them people fleeing Syria’s civil war.
The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees urged other countries Friday to suspend returning migrants to Bulgaria because of risks they could face “inhuman or degrading treatment”; it plans to review the situation in April.
April! More likely Mayafter the EU Parliament elections so they don’t tick-off the rightwing so much that they defeat some of the socialists who now run the EU!
It says Bulgaria has made progress but problems remain with asylum seekers’ access to food and health care, registration delays and risks of arbitrary detention.
You can see that my sympathies are with Bulgaria. For more on Bulgaria’s “refugee crisis,” click here.
What would we do without readers who help us do our work by finding good stories for us? Again, ‘pungentpeppers’ has been busy reading.
Pretty much the same story we’ve been reporting for years except, of course, the pace has increased and the number of foundering boats and passengers seems to be growing exponentially. I guess they didn’t hear about the 300 plus who drowned only a few months ago.
The Italian navy has rescued more than 1,000 migrants in the 24 hours to Friday from boats trying to reach Europe, as an immigration crisis that killed hundreds in the last year showed no signs of easing.
Navy helicopters spotted four overcrowded boats struggling to stay afloat south of Sicily on Thursday and ships were sent to save them, the navy said in a statement.
The 823 men, women and children aboard the four vessels were from countries including Egypt, Pakistan, Iraq and Tunisia.
The navy also rescued 233 migrants from Eritrea, Nigeria, Somalia, Zambia, Mali and Pakistan in a separate operation and took them to a port near Syracuse on Sicily’s eastern coast.
[….]
Over the past two decades, Italy, Greece and the Mediterranean island of Malta have the brunt of the migrant flowsand have urged a coordinated European Union response.
Type ‘Malta’ into our search function and learn about how the Bush Administration, and now the Obama Administration, have helped make Malta a magnet for illegal aliens hoping to get a ticket to America as we have turned hundreds of mostly Somali economic migrants to Malta into legitimate refugees for America.
This story is now a couple of days old, sorry I didn’t get to it yesterday, but Britain’s conservative party leader Nigel Farage has modified his earlier call that the UK should resettle Syrian refugees and says now it should only be the Christians.
And, coincidentally, Syrian Christians are talking to the media and reporting that they are not being resettled.
Members of the general public in the UK and in the US, if they are following this issue at all, are surely saying to themselves: we watch these Muslim vs. Muslim civil wars in the Middle East and in Africa and then we are expected to resettle Muslims to the West—WTH!
Here is Yahoo.Newson Farage’s U-turn (hat tip: Joanne):
Nigel Farage has retreated from his call for the UK government to take Syrian refugees into the UK, saying that only Christians from the country should be allowed in.
The Ukip leader caused a furious backlash from his party members over the weekend after saying that David Cameron had a duty to take in Syrian refugees fleeing for their lives.
The call put him at odds with the coalition government, who are refusing to take any refugees from the country.
However, in a U-turn which will lead to accusations of bigotry, he has now said that only Christians from the country should be admitted.
He told the Jeremy Vine Show that Syrian Muslims could flee to neighbouring countries.
“It’s bad enough for Sunni and Shia. At least there are neighbouring countries that will take them,” he said.
“Where on Earth are the Christians going to go? Christians are now a seriously persecuted minority.”
While Syrian Muslims are breaking into Western countries,* Christians playing by the rules in Jordan say they are not being allowed to apply to go to the West.
Christian Syrian refugees have found temporary shelter in Jordan, but their immigration requests have been rejected by Western countries.
Some of them have spoken to the Associated Press, but want to remain anonymous for safety reasons.
One Syrian refugee said, “Everyone sold whatever they owned in Syria in order to get here, so that we could apply for visas at an embassy. We were all surprised to be rejected on the basis that there was no reason for us to go to Europe.Their reasons were all false – nothing correct in them.”
Another man said that western countries “were supposed to support us, and they were supposed to facilitate our immigration process as Christians, and I’m very sad that they haven’t.”
* Here is one more case where Turkey facilitated the movement of illegal alien Syrians who went to Turkey. The “refugees” where allowed to leave Turkey for Morocco, then on to Guinea-Bissau where corrupt officials allowed them to board a plane to Portugal on false passports. Portugal has now stopped all flights between Guinea-Bissau and their country due to the controversy.
This story published last week in the Pittsburgh-Post Gazettegives us some insight into the asylum process in the US especially as it relates to illegal aliens coming across our Mexican border and declaring themselves gay and persecuted. We see how legal clinics, NGOs and refugee contractors work to get as many granted asylum as they can.
Villanova law professor Michele Pistone has helped 125 aliens receive asylum since 2000.
Also, the article answers one of my questions—-where are all these detainees being housed? Turns out that some police departments rent bed space to the feds.
I still have one big question plaguing me—how do we know someone isn’t pretending to be gay just to get into the US?
A gay man last month became one of the first Russian citizens granted asylum in the United States since their home country adopted a ban against gay “propaganda.”
The man was granted asylum Nov. 20 by a U.S. Immigration Court judge in York, Pa., thanks to the efforts of a team of students working with Villanova University School of Law’s Clinic for Asylum, Refugee and Emigrant Services, or CARES.
He took a “vacation” to Cuba then made his way to the Mexican border! If he was so persecuted, why didn’t he ask for asylum in Cuba. It looks like the Cuban government is in on the scheme though because they clearly let him leave for Mexico (and did not send him back to Russia).
The Russian, whose name was redacted from court documents, took advantage of the visa reciprocity between Russia and Cuba, taking a “vacation” to Cuba. From there he made it to Mexico and then used the compass on his phone to cross the Rio Grande into the United States, where he was picked up by border patrol in June. He immediately sought asylum.
The man ended up in the York County detention facility and the case was referred to CARES, which is directed by law professor Michele Pistone.
Since the mid-1990s, the York County jail has rented out space to the United States to house immigrant detainees. Early on, it became clear the detainees were too far from legal assistance, Ms. Pistone said. So the Pennsylvania Immigration Resource Center was set up right down the road. PIRC offers detainees seminars on their rights and the Russian refugee attended one such seminar and was connected with CARES, Ms. Pistone said.
Being in “jail” can actually speed up the asylum process:
While it may have been a traumatic experience for the Russian refugee, Ms. Pistone said being in jail may have sped up the asylum process. Ms. Pistone said the backlog for a hearing in immigration courts for those not in jail can be two years.
Ms. Pistone’s client, meanwhile, had his hearing less than six months from when he entered the country.
50 more such cases! All gay Russian cases pending in courts?
Ms. Majkut (a law student) worked with Immigration Equality and the Heartland Alliance National Immigrant Justice Center for research on this case. She said those organizations have seen an influx of gay Russians calling with questions about asylum as well as the number of Russians defensively seeking asylum, meaning they are already detained and are facing adversarial proceedings.
Ms. Majkut said those organizations have upwards of 50 cases similar to her client’s that are pending in immigration court.
Now that the Russian gay man has received asylum, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (a federal refugee contractor) has stepped in to get him his “benefits” (welfare goodies)! Coincidentally, when I went to the refugee pow-wow in Lancaster, PA last June I sat in on one session involving HIAS’s leading work with gay “refugees.”
The client has been working with the immigration-focused public interest firm HIAS Pennsylvania to get benefits the government pays to refugees. He has since found an apartment and is looking for work, Ms. Pistone said.
Photo is herealong with Ms Pistone’s bio. Oh geez, I see she went to Malta in 2006. I wonder if she was ‘helpful’ in making Malta a gateway for African refugees to the US because it began about that time? See our entire ‘Malta’ archive by clicking here.
Note: Apprehensions data are from United State Border Patrol, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and represent the number of children apprehended in the United States. Referrals data are from Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and represent the number of apprehended children referred to ORR for detention.
Back in June we attended a refugee pow-wowin Lancaster, PA where an official representing the Office of Refugee Resettlement predicted the number of “unaccompanied minors” would reach 20,000 this year. Sure looks like he had a crystal ball, or knew this latest world-wide trick of separating children/teens from parents and sending them across borders to seek asylum was being pushed hard by open borders activists.
Here is Fox Newson how Obama’s policies toward “Dreamers” is acting like a magnet for the children.
Mentioned here is the fact that many of the asylum-seeking kids (abused by Mom and Dad?) are given over to the care of the Office of Refugee Resettlement. Not mentioned is that ORR in turn pays the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services to care for them until they are 18 and released into America.
The number of children caught crossing the U.S.-Mexico border has surged over the last two years, raising questions about whether the Obama administration’s changing immigration policies are creating a magnet.
Statistics released late last week show 24,668 “unaccompanied alien children” were placed last year in the care of the federal agency that, by law, is responsible for them. That’s nearly double the number from 2012, and nearly quadruple the number in years past.
As is often the case with immigration statistics, it’s unclear what is driving the increase. The surge could be driven in part by better enforcement, and immigration officers doing a better job catching border crossers.
But critics point to other factors. A federal judge in Texas claimed earlier this month that the Department of Homeland Security has been delivering children smuggled across the U.S.-Mexico border to their illegal immigrant parents. In June 2012, the administration decided to give a reprieve to young illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. as children.
Though the latter would not apply to people who just arrived, critics say these policies send a clear message south of the border: The rewards of trying to cross into the U.S. outweigh the risks.
[….]
According to the Office of Refugee Resettlement, most of the minors come from Central America — largely Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.
The stats show a big spike over the past two years. The office recorded an “unprecedented increase” in 2012, with the number jumping from an average of 6,775 to 13,625.
You are paying for their housing through grants to the Lutherans and Catholics:
Most of the children are housed through a network of federally funded care centers. But as the traffic increases, those are becoming over-burdened.
Now, can you imagine what a racket it will become if every kid in the world who is “abused” by his or her parents is eligible for asylum or legal status in some other country!
Some of the children who cross illegally into the U.S. can petition for legal status. According to the Office of Refugee Resettlement, those seeking asylum or who can demonstrate they were abused or abandoned by their parents in their native country can be eligible.
The truth is that very few (none most likely!) are returned to their home country. At 18 (or sooner to “relatives”) they are simply released into America and make up the “Dreamer” population where some legal clinic takes up their case (so you can pay for their college educations too!).
There is more in the Fox News story, it is worth reading the whole thing.
By typing ‘unaccompanied minors’ into our search function, you will find all of our previous coverage of the subject.
The graph is from The Migrationist website. It is not clear to me exactly where are all the thousands of kids who are “apprehended” but not in the care of ORR go—are they all just released to relatives?
