Category: Other refugees

World Refugee numbers rising, sort of

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

June 20th is World Refugee Day, so you are probably seeing an up tick in the number of news articles about refugees this week.  Here is one from the International Herald Tribune that says numbers of refugees are rising.

Oh, but you could look at it this way, the numbers are down since a high of almost 18 million during Bill Clinton’s Bosnian war.      Holy cow!   I suppose you could then say that the Clinton era Balkan war produced more refugees than the Iraq War—how can that be?

The number of refugees fleeing to other countries to escape conflict and persecution rose in 2007 for the second year as factors from climate change to overly scarce resources threatened to increase the flow, the United Nations refugee agency warned Tuesday.

A total of 11.4 million refugees were under the care of the agency, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, in 2007, including about 400,000 experiencing conflict in their home countries, the agency said. The total for 2006 was 9.9 million.

The total was modest compared with the 17.8 million refugees in 1992 at the time of the Balkan wars, but after a steady drop from 2001 to 2005 it represents a worrying trend, the relief agency said.

“We are now faced with a complex mix of global challenges that could threaten even more forced displacement in the future,” António Guterres, the high commissioner, said in a statement. “They range from multiple new conflict-related emergencies in world hot spots to bad governance, climate-induced environmental degradation that increases competition for scarce resources and extreme price hikes that have hit the poor the hardest and are generating instability in many places.”

The number of people displaced by conflict but remaining in their countries also rose in 2007, to 26 million, the agency said, citing statistics provided by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center, a private organization based in Geneva.

Lest you start feeling good about the refugees coming to the West, the UN wants to dispel any notion you have about doing good.     We western countries are bad, bad, bad because we don’t allow the millions in (to deplete our resources), and now the developing nations are getting stingy too.

The latest statistics contradicted a number of misconceptions about the impact and distribution of refugee patterns, officials said, starting with the notion that Western countries admit most fugitives from conflict.

Instead, 80 percent of refugees remain in developing countries in the immediate vicinity of their own country, the UN agency said.

Pakistan accepted more than 2 million refugees and Syria 1.5 million in 2007. The United States sheltered 281,000, the statistics showed. Only a tiny proportion find resettlement in third countries: about 49,900 people in 2007 and 821,000 in the decade ending in 2007.

Developing countries are increasingly unwilling to shoulder the refugee burden and are imposing stricter criteria for acceptance.

“It’s becoming a more and more inhospitable world for refugees,” said William Spindler, an agency spokesman.

 Someone asked me recently why I thought things were changing and increasingly we see stories other than “puff pieces” about refugees and as I said previously, I think part of the reason is that the guilt trip works less and less frequently these days! 

Bhutanese arriving soon in Everett, WA

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Here is another article about the Bhutanese refugees who have started to arrive in the United States from camps in Nepal.  It’s long but I encourage you to read the whole thing to better understand the situation with the Bhutanese since we are expected to take upwards of 60,000 of them over the next few years.  And, see what I have to say about problems with refugee resettlement.

Here is a segment from the beginning of this article by Krista Kaprolos at the Herald Net:

For about 100,000 people, living in Bhutan was more about basic survival than fairy-tale mountain living. They were driven out of Bhutan in the early 1990s, and ever since, they have been living in refugee camps in Nepal, where they aren’t allowed to work and are stuck at the bottom of an intricate caste system.

Now, more than half of those refugees, known as Lhotsampas, “People of the South,” are preparing to come to the United States. The first wave, a trickle of just a few families, came early this year.

Within weeks, 18 Bhutanese refugees are expected to arrive in Everett.

“Nepal is unable to integrate them,” said Jan Stephens of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, the organization that will resettle the Bhutanese in Everett.

All but one of the 18 Bhutanese scheduled to come to Everett are under 30 years old, Stephens said. It’s likely that they speak English, which is taught in Bhutanese schools, but their heritage is one of rural mountain culture.

“The one potential downside is that it’s not a group of people who have lived in urban environments before,” said Joel Charny of Refugees International, an advocacy group in Washington, D.C. Charny visited the refugee camps in Nepal late last year.

Then, here is my input: 

While some refugee advocates welcome them, others worry that local agencies that contract with the federal government to find housing, jobs and perform other services can’t keep up with the number being resettled here. In many cases, refugees are offered services for a limited number of months, then must fend for themselves.

The process of refugee resettlement, which awards money to local agencies to care for the refugees, is flawed, said Ann Corcoran, author of Refugee Resettlement Watch, a blog that keeps tabs on resettlement trends.

It’s not realistic to expect refugees to become self-sufficient so quickly, she said. Another potential difficulty is if the refugee group rejects American culture. One reason some groups have done well is that they embrace the opportunities America offers.

“The Vietnamese came here and decided to work hard and become Americans,” she said. Others, such as some strict Muslims, are offended by what they find here and become isolated. 

I would rephrase that last line, to read instead of “become isolated” to read “choose to become isolated.” 

And, finally here is a little tidbit of news that is not reassuring:   some of these mostly Hindu and Buddhist refugees are, according to this article, polygamous. 

In most cases, the refugees will have little experience with modern homes, including refrigerators and other kitchen equipment. Polygamy exists among Lhotsampas, but it is not widespread.

Does anyone know if that is true?  Muslims practice polygamy as do some extreme Christian groups, but I guess I’m pretty ignorant about Hindus and Buddhists on that score.

See our previous posts on the Bhutanese here.

 

How Muslim Turkey deals with asylees (illegal aliens)

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I mentiioned this yesterday when I wrote about Africans migrating across the Mediterranean to illegally enter Europe.  Turkey has a rather severe way of deporting illegals:  swim back to where you came from (or to whatever country is on the other side of the river), but get out!

Here is the whole short article from the United Nations News Service:

25 April 2008 – The United Nations refugee agency is seeking clarification from Turkey after 18 refugees were forced to cross a fast-flowing river on the Turkish-Iraqi border, leading to the deaths of four by drowning.

The incident took place on Wednesday at an unpatrolled stretch of the border in Sirnak province in south-eastern Turkey.

According to witnesses interviewed by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the Turkish authorities had earlier attempted to forcibly deport 60 people of various nationalities to Iraq at an official border crossing. The Iraqi border authorities allowed 42 Iraqis to enter the country but refused to admit 18 Iranian and Syrian nationals. Turkish police then took the 18, including five Iranians whose refugee status had been recognized by UNHCR, to an area where a river runs along the border, and forced them to swim across.

Witnesses said that four people, including a refugee from Iran, were swept away by the strong river current and drowned. Their bodies could not be recovered. UNHCR is in contact with the surviving refugees through its office in Erbil in northern Iraq and reports that they are deeply traumatized.

UNHCR had previously asked the Turkish Government not to deport the five Iranian refugees, who had all been detained after attempting to cross into Greece in an irregular manner. The UN refugee agency had said that it did not consider Iraq a safe country of asylum for these refugees.

Notice the hints in this article that the so-called asylum seekers may have been about some questionable business when they entered Europe illegally.

More on Europe’s illegal immigrants: spring migration has begun

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We’ve reported to you on several occasions that when April arrives African migrants who have been staging on the northern coast of Africa attempt to reach Europe by sailing across the Mediterranean Sea.  The migration has begun and with it the deaths of many.

Here is the story out of Rome this week: 

Rome, 7 May (AKI) – A total of 101 illegal immigrants died in the Mediterranean Sea last month as they attempted to reach Europe from North Africa, according to an Italian watchdog.

The Fortress Europe watchdog claims the migrants died in Moroccan, Spanish, Tunisian and Egyptian waters. 

A delay in starting coastal patrols coordinated by the European border agency,Frontex, has also contributed to the surge in illegal immigrants in the Mediterranean this year, Fortress Europe said

Did you know that the European Union had this organization (Frontex) to patrol Europe’s borders?

And, here is the way some Muslim countries handle illegal aliens: 

The watchdog said in Egypt police continued to shoot and kill migrants at the border, while in Turkey, four Iranians drowned when Turkish police threw them in a river.

And all our border agents Ramos and Compean did was shoot a drug smuggler in the butt (who lived to smuggle another day) and they are doing more than 10 years in prison.

Our interest in this stems from the fact that if these illegals reach Malta they are magically transformed to refugee status and flown off to the United States compliments of the American taxpayer.   See our earlier posts on Malta. 

 

Maoist election puts things into sharper perspective regarding Bhutanese refugees

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

As we reported before, the United States has agreed to take 60,000 Bhutanese refugees from camps in Nepal.   The Bhutanese who are of Nepali descent are divided on whether they want to be resettled in the West.  Many are holding out in hopes Bhutan will take them back.  This article adds more clarity while it reports a dramatic shift in policy by the newly elected Nepal government. 

Kathmandu, April 27 (IANS) The historic victory of Nepal’s former Maoist guerrillas in this month’s crucial election and their bid to lead the new government has cast a dark shadow over the process started by the US and other western governments to offer Bhutanese refugees in Nepal new homes abroad.

The Maoists, who fought a 10-year armed battle to overthrow Nepal’s Shah kings, are opposed to the US-led initiative by seven western governments to resettle over 105,000 Bhutanese, who have been languishing in refugee camps in Nepal for almost two decades after being evicted by the royalist government of Bhutan in the 1980s.

‘We oppose the process started (under the Girija Prasad Koirala government of Nepal) to resettle the Bhutanese refugees in third countries,’ said Maoist foreign affairs chief Chandra Prakash Gajurel, who was also one of the winners in the April 10 election.

‘How can Nepal give documents to the Bhutanese to go abroad when they are not Nepali citizens?’ Gajurel told private radio station Ujala FM. ‘Our party will try to ensure they go back to Bhutan.

‘From there, they can go to foreign countries if they want to.’

The Maoist announcement comes even as the International Organisation for Migration and the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Nepal (UNHCR) jointly started flying out Bhutanese refugees from closed camps in eastern Nepal to the US, Australia and New Zealand. 

Then here is a critical statement to help our understanding of why Bhutan definitely does not want them back now.

……15 rounds of negotiations failed to see any thaw in Bhutan’s attitude with the Druk government saying the refugee camps had been infiltrated by Maoists and to allow the refugees back home would be tantamount to ‘importing’ terrorism. 

Then finally comes some real explanation about how we got in the middle of this.  

As the donor governments, which helped to keep the camps in Nepal going, began to grow weary of the deadlock and started cutting aid, the US, also goaded by the fear of a militant movement brewing in the camps, played a major role in persuading the Koirala government last year to allow the refugees to go abroad.

For readers who wish we weren’t mucking around all over the world, this last is revealing.   A “militant movement” might be brewing in camps so we should take them to America where our melting pot will do its magic and militants will be transformed into kitchen workers and meat packers too busy chasing American materialism to be bothered with their Maoist politics.  

This last may in fact be the great myth that volags have about the Islamists too—once in America the melting pot goes to work and poof any wish to bring Shariah law to the world is forgotten.  Not!

See all of our posts on this controversial resettlement here.