The UK Mirror has an incredibly detailed story today about how human trafficking gangs are moving Syrians into Europe and making millions doing it. No surprise! Turkey is one of their transit points and the leader of the gang profiled here is a Palestinian.
The amount of money these “refugees” have in their personal bank accounts again raises questions for me about who these people really are and I’ve become a cynic about the beatings, rapes, and imprisonment stories the “asylum seekers” tell.
Here is how the Mirror storybegins, but you must read the whole report, they have done a lot of work on this. Emphasis is mine:
A people-trafficking gang raking in millions of pounds by bringing hundreds of Syrian refugees into the UK is today exposed by the Sunday Mirror.
The gang in Istanbul, Turkey, told our undercover investigators that for £34,000 they would smuggle three men here from Syria using false passports and minders. [One British pound is equal to $1.62 US dollars at the moment.—ed]
We had earlier met a Syrian woman who used her life savings to pay the gang to help her flee after being tortured in her home country.
The teacher, who we are calling Ishtar to protect her identity, is now living in southern England.
She told how traffickers got her from Turkey to Britain after handing her a false passport.
She was flown to Austrian capital Vienna, driven to Sweden, then caught a BA flight to the UK.
The gang’s activities raise serious concerns that terrorist organisations such as al-Qaeda could use similar tactics to sneak jihadists into Europe.
We were alerted to the criminal organisation by an anonymous phone call to our London offices.
Our investigator was warned: “This trade is making millions for Turkish gangs.
“They have fixers around Europe and in the UK flying people across Europe. They have people working in airports who look the other way.
“They are taking Syrians to Italy, Holland and the Scandinavian countries, but Britain is the most expensive. On landing, the Syrian asks for asylum.
Read it all! The graphic is further explained. Imagine having a ticket in Istanbul for Lebanon, but airport personnel allow the Syrian to get on a plane to Austria instead!
Our ever-expanding archive on Syrian refugees is here.
This is an update of a story we posted here,here, and here in August.
Skipping through the horror stories and dreadful photos to soften you up toward Mexican illegal aliens, here are some of the important bits of the article in the New York Daily News (hat tip: Ed).
We do have a heart—this situation is horrific for those caught in the trap of Mexican drug cartels.
But, the bottomline is that asylum protection was never intended to protect people from crimes that their own government should be protecting them from. Can you imagine how much worse our border would become (yes it could be worse!) if fleeing from drug cartels (or other such criminal activity) became a legitimate reason to grant asylum in the US.
Six paragraphs after the opening horror story we learn (emphasis mine):
According to U.S. Department of Homeland Security figures, more than 23,000 Mexicans sought political asylum in the first nine months of this year, quadruple the number of requests made in 2009. The spiraling number of pleas for entry is driven by the exponential growth of cartel terrorism against everyday villagers and townspeople, say immigrants and human rights groups.
Another horror story then this:
More than 90 percent of Mexican asylum requests are denied by immigration judgeswho must adhere to a strict legal standard in a process that may drag out for months and years. Applicants must show “credible fear” of persecution on the grounds of race, religion, nationality or membership in a social group.
A pitch to fix our “dysfunctional immigration system?” Are we to find a way to bring this group of aliens to the US? To create some new category of protection? Is that what Nunez is saying? Or, has the New York Daily News reporter used Nunez’s words to imply that is what we should conclude?
Peter Nunez
Despite the extremely low percentage of approved asylum petitions, the issue has nonetheless become part of America’s divisive political discord on immigration issues.
“It’s another symptom of the dysfunctional immigration system we have,” said Peter Nunez,a former U.S. Attorney in San Diego and a high-ranking member of the Treasury Department under President George H.W. Bush.
“These people don’t have a legitimate claim,” he told The News. “They’re not being persecuted by their government. They should seek the help of authorities for public safety claims.”
What about claims that the government and law enforcement are corrupted by powerful, billion-dollar cartels?
“That doesn’t qualify them for refugee status,” Nunez said. “It’s not the American government’s role to do what the Mexican government cannot do.”
These reportedly high detention figures need to be investigated (especially as they are being quoted by Soros’s/Norquist’s pal Ali Noorani of the National Immigration Forum. I’m guessing the largest numbers are because the aliens have been determined to be a safety risk or are on their way to deportation.
After requesting asylum, most Mexicans are locked up in federal detention centers, where they wait for a court hearing in the backlogged system.
Some are held because they have criminal backgrounds ranging from misdemeanors to felonies. Others have no one to vouch for them in the U.S., and so remain in custody.
On any given day, there are 31,800 detainees in more than 257 federal centers across the country, held for a variety of immigration issues, according to recent figures from the National Immigration Forum, a Washington-based nonprofit group.
Funny that the NY Daily News doesn’t mention that Nunez is chairman of the board at the Center for Immigration Studies, a leading immigration control group, and is thus on our side of the great divide.
Reader Dave alerted us to a post at the ever-vigilantLimits to Growth blog to update our on-going reporting on the African boat people invasion of Europe. Be sure to watch the disturbing ‘youtube’ clip that you will never see on American news (maybe not on German news either!).
See our recent posts on Lampedusa here, especially see Cannibalism on the way to a free meal in Italy. See map of migrant routes to Europe, here.
In Germany, there’s a group of refugee demanders with a website called Lampedusa in Hamburg. The front page photo shows a banner reading, “We did not survive the NATO war in Libya to die on the streets of Hamburg,” which is kind of a double-down statement of Screw the West for ousting the dictator and now give us free stuff in Germany.
Hundreds of refugees and activists of the “Lampedusa in Hamburg” group took the streets of Hamburg on Wednesday to protests against the alleged unlawful treatment of migrants by the Hamburg Senate.
Protesters marched from the main station to the city hall and back in a 2-hour demonstration to also show their support to the victims of the recent shipwrecks occurred off the Italian island of Lampedusa.
Clashes erupted Tuesday night in Hamburg after around 500 protesters demonstrating in front of the squatted theatre “Roten Flora” reportedly threw stones and bottles to police, who used pepper spray and batons on protesters.
So, this is where we are after Obama’s three witches (including ‘responsibility to protect’ Samantha Power) helped bring down Gaddafi. He might have been a crazy dictator, but the invasion of African boat people out of Libya is now completely out of control and the consequences for Europe will be hard (impossible?) to reverse. Call it Gaddafi’s revenge!
This is a very handy graphic published by the BBC (we like maps at RRW!). For new readers we have written extensively on the invasion of Europe by Middle Easterners and Africans for years, but this year has seen the greatest increase in the numbers trying to get to Italy as the number one destination. From there they hope to move on through Europe. For a chuckle, see yesterday’s poston cannibalism on the way to the land of free meals.
I see there is no major migration route to the Vatican in Rome, maybe we should spread a rumor that the Pope is “welcoming” the stranger!
Isn’t it great how the US and certain European countries destabilized Libya and made it the go-to place for illegal migrants wanting to get to Europe!
Scene Of Cannibalism For The Raft Of The Medusa by Theodore Gericault
They were only at sea for three days but, what the heck, rather than starve (hardly possible in three days is it?), one of the aliens took a chunk from a dead man. That is perhaps the most dramatic moment of this fascinating tale from a Somali migrant desperate to cross the Mediterranean and find a new life in the land of milk and honey—Italy!
The story is here at Vice.com and below are some excerpts. You decide if the storyteller is for real (but maybe first revisit, Greenfield on the Hyena Cure!) (Emphasis is mine)
On Tahrib!
Hassan Ali is a 23-year-old Somali who survived gun battles and poverty in his youth in his native country before deciding in 2009 to embark on Tahrib, the perilous journey from Africa to the Italian island of Lampedusa.Thousands of Somalis make this trip every year, and this month it made headlines after a boat caught fire and capsized on October 3, killing over 300 would-be immigrants. Eight days later, a different vessel capsized in an accident that claimed at least 34 lives. Here, Hassan speaks about his troubled life before the trip and the horrors he experienced en route to Europe.
The cannibalism didn’t start until our second boat journey, from Libya to Lampedusa. We had already been traveling for ten days; people were dying and there was no food. I actually saw one guy cutting a piece of flesh from another man’s body.
Our Ali wanted to be an astronaut, but that wasn’t (understandably) possible in his home town in Somalia where squabbling clans were bringing AK-47s to mosques and shooting at ten-year-olds racing home. So, our young and desperate adventurer, upon reaching the age of 19, found enough friends and relatives to front him $800 to go on Tahrib (described as attempting to get to Europe, but one definition I saw was that it translated to ‘smuggling’—being smuggled or doing the smuggling wasn’t clear).
Mom thought he was crazy! That is what all Moms say!
I first heard about Tahrib on the radio when I was 19. There were people in Europe talking about their new lives and how they’d traveled there from Somalia by boat. It sounded like a good idea. After a while I told my parents I planned to leave. They were shocked. “Are you mad?” my mother said. “You’re a young boy, what has gotten into you?” I told them how I thought Tahrib was my only way forward, that I could only find a better life in Europe. They thought I was joking. When I called them from the first boat months later, they were terrified.
First boat was bad, but no cannibalism yet!
Our first trip was from Beled Hawo to Bosaso, a port city on the northern shore of Somalia. It wasn’t the worst journey, but we had hardly any food and the people who drove us there were being very cruel, shouting at us and hitting people occasionally. I was only a kid [editors note: Somalis are “kids” for a long time, I noticed that when they were leaving Minneapolis to join al-Shabaab, kids, just kids!] —I missed my hometown already and everyone seemed so sad even though they were heading off for this exciting new life.
Captured by Libyan armed men who extracted $300 from Mom and Dad for Ali’s release and then on to the merry Tahrib again!
All I wanted was to be back in Beled Hawo with my parents. I didn’t care if I ever made it to Europe. Even if, miraculously, we survived the journey, how would the Europeans treat us? Would I get a visa? Would I be thrown in jail? I was terrified.
The trip across the Mediterranean was the worst part—people were dropping dead and others needed a little protein with their bread and biscuits.
It took another ten days to find a boat from Libya to Lampedusa. Then the real horror began. There was only bread and biscuits on board and the heat was unbearable. People were dropping dead and the captain did nothing. People started eating each other: it was like something from a scary movie right in front of my eyes. That leg of the journey took three days. It felt like years.
Ali, the would-be astronaut, knows who to blame for all of this horror—politicians who don’t help Somalia! Of course that is the moral of the story after all! Ali continues:
Everyone knows that politicians in Europe and Africa are doing nowhere near enough to address the dangers of Tahrib. Otherwise all those people would not have died near Lampedusa this month. No one is addressing the real issues—the violence, the poverty—that led me away from Somalia.[Here is an idea—-how about if Somalis get their own house in order!—ed]
Postscript! Italy let me rebuild my life—-back in Somalia! WTH!
People tell me Lampedusa is beautiful. I have no idea. I can barely remember any of the landscape I saw: everything was so terrifying. But, Alhamdulillah [praise to God], I made it there alive and, amazingly, got an Italian visa after three months of being held at a camp. Some people I traveled with waited years and others never got one. I love Italy, though. I lived there for three years and made a small living working in various jobs. I may never be an astronaut but Italy let me rebuild a life that was destroyed. I’m back in Somalia now—not in Beled Hawo but another city. I hope I get to visit Italy again some day.
