Category: Other refugees

Climate marchers anxiety over ‘refugee’ definition continues

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

As the great big ginormous huge climate march gets underway in NYC today, there is an underlying anxiety about what to call those millions of migrants who marchers claim will be displaced as the ice caps melt and oceans rise and gobble up all the land and homes and send the people running for their lives.

Climate refugees coming to a town near you? I love this illustration! It comes from Diplo (http://www.diplomacy.edu/blog/climate-refugees-new-concept-move)

We have followed the controversy on and off over the years (see our climate refugees category), but the gist of it is:  will these new migrant hordes (the Left is predicting) be refugees in the full sense of the word and thus be eligible to be treated on par with refugees fleeing marauding Muslims like ISIS and be “welcomed” into the West (to be taken care of by taxpayers)?

The word “refugee” is a powerful word in the PR world:

To put it bluntly, those who are helping the “humanitarian” refugees (as originally defined by the UN Refugee Convention) are reluctant to let the “climate refugee” agitators dilute the PR message and horn in on their lucrative territory.

And, the climate justice people are loath to get into a battle with their fellow Leftists, thus the wrangling continues.

Here is the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights expounding on the topic:

As you know, NNIRR has been striving to make the connections between climate change, migration and human rights. It is an intersection that is finally beginning to emerge in more popular discussions in the broad climate change movement, although understandings are still uneven and often uninformed. There is even an important question of “definition”, as we note in the attached fact sheet:

There is a growing, unresolved debate on defining “climate migrant” or “climate/environmental refugee“:

~Some argue that there is a need to define a new class of climate refugees who have been forcibly displaced by the effects of climate change and that they be given special protections and status (such as refugee status under the Refugee Convention) and even redress for this injustice.

~Others suggest that defining a special class of climate refugees would create a hierarchy of immigrants, and would split and differentiate climate refugees from economic refugees, who are all affected by the same global economic and political system.

The issue has been emerging for a number of years on the international level, and has become part of the global program of advocacy work that NNIRR and partners are involved in under the broad umbrella of “migrants in crisis.”

Learn more about “climate justice” if you feel like it, here.

14 million refugees in the Middle East: utter disaster

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The brilliant and knowledgeable David P. Goldman writes in PJ Media:

There are always lunatics lurking in the crevices of Muslim politics prepared to proclaim a new Caliphate; there isn’t always a recruiting pool in the form of nearly 14 million displaced people (11 million Syrians, or half the country’s population, and 2.8 million Iraqis, or a tenth of the country’s population)….Many of them will have nothing to go back to. When people have nothing to lose, they fight to the death and inflict horrors on others. That is what civilizational decline looks like in real time.

Goldman has been predicting this kind of disaster in the Middle East for years.  He also writes under the pen name of Spengler after Oswald Spengler, a German historian who is best known for his book, Decline of the West.  Goldman continues:

The Arab states are failed states, except for the few with enough hydrocarbons to subsidize every facet of economic life. Egypt lives on a$15 billion annual subsidy from the Gulf states, and if that persists, will remain stable if not quite prosperous. Syria is a ruin, along with large parts of Iraq. The lives of tens of millions of people were fragile before the fighting broke out (30% of Syrians lived on less than $1.60 a day), and now they are utterly ruined. The hordes of combatants displace more people, and these join the hordes, in a snowball effect. That’s what drove the 30 Years War of 1618-1648, and that’s what’s driving the war in the Levant.

There’s a lot to be said about what we should do about ISIS and the other terrorist groups militarily, and it is being said. Here at RRW I’m wondering whether the State Department thinks 14 million refugees with nothing to go back to, rootless and dispossessed and many filled with a destructive rage beyond our comprehension, are our responsibility, a great pool of potential United States citizens.  I’m wondering if the resettlement agencies see a potential windfall and meat packers see cheap labor without end.  God help us if so. Ann has written extensively about Syrian refugees and the pressures on other countries to take them. I’m sorry, but you can’t place 11 million Syrians and 3 million Iraquis in western countries.

If there were anyone in the government looking after America’s interests, we would recognize that this catastrophe is not something we can fix.  If we’re going to help, we should be looking only to Christians and other selected religious minorities.  I wish we had the will and the strength to find them a piece of land of their own over there, but that’s a fantasy.  Goldman writes:

When I wrote in 2011 that Islam was dying, this was precisely what I forecast. You can’t unscramble this egg. The international organizations, Bill Clinton, George Soros and other people of that ilk will draw up plans, propose funding, hold conferences and publish studies, to no avail. The raw despair of millions of people ripped out of the cocoon of traditional society, bereft of ties of kinship and custom, will feed the meatgrinder. Terrorist organizations that were hitherto less flamboyant (“moderate” is a misdesignation), e.g. the Muslim Brotherhood (and its Palestine branch Hamas) will compete with the Caliphate for the loyalties of enraged young people. The delusion about Muslim democracy that afflicted utopians of both parties is now inoperative. War will end when the pool of prospective fighters has been exhausted.

Senators urge extension of (sham) Temporary Protected Status for Liberians

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Demonstrating once again what a sham Temporary Protected Status is, Senators want Obama to extend temporary refugee status to Liberians who have been here “temporarily” since the late 1980’s!   Seems to me that the civil war in Liberia is over and this “LEGAL” status for those here originally illegally should just end.

There must be one hell-uv-a lot of Liberians in Rhode Island because I saw Senator Jack Reed spearheading this same effort several years ago.  Here he is joined by the usual Senate Open Borders gang.

Senators Jack Reed and Elizabeth Warren, working for the middle class (must be middle class immigrants!).

Check out here what other countries enjoy this “temporary” protection.  Liberia is in the Deferred Enforced Departure category.   Reed’s press release and letter to the White House on Friday are here.

From Political News:

WASHINGTON, DC – In an effort to preserve the status of Liberians living legally in the United States, U.S. Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) led a letter signed by fourteen of his colleagues to President Obama urging an extension of Deferred Enforced Departure (DED). The current DED extension is set to expire on September 30, 2014, which could cause Liberians living here legally on temporary status to be deported.

The usual suspects, but where is his pal Elizabeth Warren?  Come to think of it, why isn’t Warren here?

Senators joining Reed in sending the letter include: Charles Schumer (D-NY), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Chris Coons (D-DE), Robert Menendez (D-NJ), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Ben Cardin (D-MD), Cory Booker (D-NJ), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Al Franken (D-MN), Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY).

[….]

Since 1991, Liberians have relied on short-term provisions of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) or DED from Presidents of both political parties to extend their legal right to remain in the United States. These individuals, many of whom have been in the United States since fleeing Liberia in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, have retained a legal status that allows them to live, work, and pay taxes in the United States.

Reed and the Liberians were expecting that “comprehensive immigration reform” would resolve their problem with its blanket amnesty.

The senators wrote: “the current system of short-term DED renewals leaves Liberians and their families with perennial uncertainty about whether they will be able to remain members of the communities they have come to call home. For this reason, while we urge you to grant a lengthy extension of at least two years and to make this announcement well in advance of the current DED expiration, we continue to call for comprehensive immigration reform that includes an adjustment to permanent resident status for qualifying Liberians and their families.”

The next time you hear one of your friends say:  “Legal immigration is o.k., it is illegal that I object to” remember TPS and pop them one (gently!).  Yes, it is legal (forever).  Once granted a temporary stay in America, they never go home.  Check out that list again—it includes Syrians now.

Buffalo non-profit running out of federal/local $$$ may close its doors

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Not all supposed refugee resettlement agencies are in the orbit of the nine major federal contractors that monopolize refugee placement in America or they wouldn’t be running out of money.

Close-reading of this article tells us that Vive Inc. in Buffalo, NY is taking care of asylum seekers and other migrants who are in legal limbo.  They haven’t been contracted by the feds and therefore they can’t raise enough cash to stay in the black.

This is an important point:  there would be a smaller number of migrants arriving in the US if they had to depend on private charity and/or finding work.  Your tax dollars grease the skids of the migrant flow into the US.

From Buffalo News  (Hat tip: ‘pungentpeppers’):

Vive Inc. Executive Director Angela Jordan-Mosely running out of money. Photo: http://www.buffalonews.com/life-arts/people-talk/people-talk-angela-jordan-mosely-20140330

The refugee resettlement organization Vive Inc. is contacting past and present supporters with an urgent plea for help. If financial support is not forthcoming, the message says, outlook is bleak. “We are facing the harsh reality of closing our doors,” the message states.

An email from Vive Executive Director Angela Jordan-Mosely this week describes the situation at the nonprofit as “desperate.” Vive celebrated 30 years of operation in March, but recent years have seen funding cuts by the county and federal government. The losses are compounded by delays in legal proceedings to get the immigrants Vive serves permanently settled.

“What used to take days now takes months or even years, leaving hundreds of refugees in limbo,” Jorden-Mosely writes.

The result is a significant increase in the length of time individuals and families stay with Vive at its Wyoming Avenue location and a need for the organization to reconsider how it can achieve its mission of helping international refugees build new lives.

Former Amherst Council Member Shelly Schratz, a Vive volunteer, said that the uncertain status makes it hard for the refugees to contribute to their own support.

“Many of these people want to work, but there are matters of transportation and language, and they don’t have a Social Security card yet,” Schratz said. “We have a business (Bing’s restaurant), but you can’t hire someone who isn’t legal yet.”

Schratz said that, in trying to get financial support, Vive may be hampered by misunderstandings about its clients. The refugees it serves arrived in the United States legally, often having received asylum or temporary residency while they work on permanent status in this country or Canada. Most live at Vive while their cases work through the legal system.

Asylum seekers, of course, have gotten into the US through various means—either as illegal aliens who came across our borders by land, sea or air, or came in on a visa of some sort and have over-stayed.  Once granted asylum they can work and all of the welfare goodies other ‘refugees’ get are available to them.   Others that Vive serves are aliens on Temporary Protected Status who are planning on staying no matter what.  These are not ‘refugees’ the US State Department has brought in to the US.

Vive Inc. got its start in illegal Sanctuary Movement

Check out Vive Inc’s history, here.  Originally called Vive La Casa, it sure looks like they got their start in the Sanctuary Movement in the early 1980’s  (at the same time the notorious CASA de Maryland got its start) where Leftwing churches helped illegal Central Americans, including Sandinistas, get into the US and hid them in their “sanctuaries.”   I guess Buffalo’s Casa didn’t get as firmly entrenched with the politicians who dole out the cashola as did CASA de Maryland.

Check out our many posts on multi-culty Buffalo here.

Save Wyoming for refugees from Jupiter!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Because we have to laugh sometimes!

Apparently this is for real, Wyoming is “welcoming” refugees from Jupiter.

http://cityofgreenriver.org/index.aspx?NID=505

 

From Atlas Obscura:

While it might not be as fancy or futuristic as the name would imply, the Greater Green River Intergalactic Spaceport was christened to invite refugees from Jupiter who may have been fleeing a global catastrophe.

Consisting of little more than a dirt landing strip marked by a raggedy windsock, the “spaceport” in the northern part of Green River has been courting alien visitors since the mid-90’s. In 1994, NASA learned that Jupiter was in some danger of being hit by a number of errant fragments of the Shoemaker-Levy 9 Comet. The impacts were of great interest to the scientific community, but since the gas giant has never been thought to harbor intelligent life, the disaster seemed to be mostly academic. However a lack of evidence did not deter the city planners of Green River, Wyoming, who embraced America’s heritage as a refuge for the poor and huddled masses by making ready for any potential Jovian refugees.

Realizing that there would be nowhere for homeless aliens to land, the city officially renamed their small, 5,000 foot landing strip the “Greater Green River Intergalactic Spaceport.” Of course this change was not without opposition by residents who noted the already existing housing shortage and extant issue of terrestrial immigration.

There is a bit more at Atlas Obscura—-the leading guide for wondrous and curious places on earth.

I assume the governor, the Lutherans and the US State Department/ORR will be factoring this information into their refugee plan.