As World Refugee Day approaches on June 20th, expect to see more stories like this one about the plight of a growing number of refugees (they are always growing, so nothing new there!) whose movement is blocked not by racist border restrictions, but by the Chinese Virus that has closed borders since late March.
On March 22nd the United Nations, with its branch called the International Organization for Migration that facilitates refugee travel, shut down almost all refugee movement.
Indeed it had to because 150 countries have closed their borders completely or have strict requirements for movement across them.
I had been wondering if the UN is restarting the flow, but apparently not.
The story atStuffis mostly about New Zealand that had just begun in earnest to ‘welcome’ the third world when COVID began its deadly spread.
But, here are a couple of bits that interested me besides learning that the UN continues to be responsible for the moratorium, not Donald Trump as I see most days in the US media.
Scores of refugees in limbo as quota system in holding pattern due to Covid-19
As we approach World Refugee Day on June 20 we have the highest number of refugees worldwide than ever before.
According to the latest UNHCR figures, there are 70.8 million forcibly displaced people, including more than 41 million internally displaced people and 25 million refugees.
Only 1 per cent of those 25 million refugees are resettled. That number is now at zero because of Covid-19.
More than 150 countries have closed their borders or put in border restrictions.
The vast majority of them have no exceptions for people claiming asylum.
They have no exceptions for refugees who need to flee their countries because of persecution, human rights abuses or war to be able to bypass border restrictions connected to Covid-19.
Flow of money is stopping too!
Rarely do we hear about the amount of money that refugees and migrants send HOME from the country where they have migrated to—money lost to the host country’s economy.
Migrant workers would not able to send money home to support their families and communities in their countries. The economic impact on those migrant workers and the decline in their livelihoods is going to have a massive impact on remittances, he adds.
“Latest figures are that remittances will go down $100 billion globally.”
Thanks to reader David for sending this short interview with the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society’s Mark Hetfield.
Longtime readers know that Hetfield has been a leading opponent of any refugee program reform efforts the President has proposed both through political agitation and legal action his federally-funded organization has taken.
I always laugh when I hear their line that goes like this about the millions admitted to the US: “not a single one has committed a lethal act of terror.”
He leaves out the dozens who have tried to commit terror acts and failed or who were caught before they could act and the untold numbers that have murdered or raped someone after being admitted.
Reader Michelle had this to say about the clip:
Maybe not an act of terror but in my own town, a refugee slaughtered 3 young children with a machete. And this is only one town. There are lots more. IF that isn’t terror, what is it? I can’t stand these holier than thou officials. He seems to have forgotten all of those that were caught getting ready to act and lots more that have done worse like rape etc.
For more on HIASsee my extensive archive by clicking here.
Nevermind that it is the United Nations that halted refugee travel due to the Chinese virus crisis.
Refugee contractors are trying to “chart a path forward” as refugee admissions this year are set to be the lowest they have ever been since Senators Ted Kennedy, Joe Biden and the peanut farmer, Jimmy Carter, created the US Refugee Admissions Program that became law in 1980.
But, oh how they love their sob stories featuring poor suffering families seeking to be reunited.
Sob story design and promotion is one of the Leftwing media’s greatest skills!
Sorry, no sympathy from me for a mother who leaves her INFANT daughter in a hellhole refugee camp to come to America with a supposedly sick husband expecting then to have the US government fly her daughter to her at a later date.
A family was set to be reunited after nearly four years apart. Then coronavirus struck.
(CNN) More than three years ago, Deman Aman Abshir, a Somali national, faced an impossible choice: leave behind her newborn daughter to come to the United States or watch as her husband’s health worsened.
She left behind an infant daughter, now three years old, to hop on that plane with a supposedly sick hubby. She had another choice!
Abshir and her husband, fleeing deteriorating conditions in Somalia, worried that any delay in leaving could hinder their chances to resettle in the US and get medical treatment, she said. So they left.
[….]
In 2011, amid an ongoing civil war in the country, Abshir decided to leave Somalia and fled to a refugee camp in Ethiopia.
“Life was hard and there was a lot of struggle,” she said.
Over the years, the health of Abshir’s husband, Mohamed Hussen Ibrahim, who was being treated for a neurologic condition that prevented him from walking and doing other daily activities, started to worsen.
His “neurologic condition” apparently didn’t prevent some daily activities!
And, he sure must have gotten some magical medical treatment in the US (on your dime!) because he got a job, but there is not one word in this story about his diagnosis, treatment or recovery.
In late 2016, more than a year after their case had been approved, the couple was ready to depart to the United States.
“Three different situations happened at the same time: my husband’s situation got worse; we had our newborn; we had the process approved,” Abshir recalled. “It was 2016 so Trump was getting elected, so we knew if we had to delay, the opportunity would never come so we had to choose sacrifice to be with our child or leave for the US with my husband to get better treatment.”
She had another choice: Let her husband go on to America (so you could pay for his medical care) and she could stay in Africa with her INFANT daughter!
Now we are expected to believe she is so emotional over the separation that she can’t work!
Abshir’s four-month-old daughter had not been part of the original case, therefore adding her would delay their departure and postpone obtaining medical treatment for her husband. Abshir called the decision to leave Nimco behind “painful,” recounting the difficulty she had in keeping jobs in the US because she was overwhelmed with emotions.
Plummer is described as the family’s lawyer, but she also happens to be the Executive Director of CRIS a Columbus, Ohio based subcontractor of Church World Service, facts not reported by CNN. https://www.crisohio.org/about-us/
Since then, Plummer has tried to get Nimco’s case approved to reunite with the family. The nearly four-year uphill battle appeared to be reaching a conclusion when the coronavirus pandemic shut down arrivals.
[….]
Abshir, whose husband also lost his job because of the pandemic [“also”? weren’t we just old she couldn’t hold a job due to being emotionally distraught?—ed] has remained hopeful, but extended separations often weigh on families.
[He had a job, wow! He must have recovered from his serious health issue and inability to walk.—ed]
CNN continues….
“I see these cases and it’s joyful when a child reunites with a parent and it’s all wonderful superficially but you can’t get that time back. The child doesn’t know their parents … just the psychological impact to the family for as long as the delay continues,” Plummer said. [Taxpayer-funded counseling ahead?—ed]
All of that is to set the tone for the rest of the article that goes on to bash the Trump Administration.
We do learn that no date has been set to resume refugee resettlement.
Refugee arrivals to the US were suspended as of March 19, with the exception of certain emergency cases, a State Department spokesperson told CNN.
No date has been provided on when admissions will resume.The spokesperson said State “will seek to resume refugee arrivals when it is safe and logistically feasible to do so, subject to any travel restrictions in place at that time.”
It seems like an eternity ago that the Trump Administration, via an Executive Order, sought to give local governments and governors a say in whether their county/state would be open to refugee placement during a small portion of the present fiscal year.
In January a court in Maryland halted the President’s plan when refugee contractors filed a lawsuit challenging the reform effort and subsequently the Justice Department appealed the ruling.
Mark Hetfield, President and CEO of HIAS, here at an anti-Trump rally in NYC in 2017. HIAS sued to stop the President’s Executive order that would have given local governments a voice in resettlement decisions.
Now comes news that 19 states are asserting via an amicus brief that they don’t want local governments (or governors) to have any say and indeed assert that refugee resettlement is the right and responsibility of the federal government.
In effect they are saying that the UN, the US State Department, the Office of Refugee Resettlement, and nine federal contractors know what is best for your county!
This is some of the press releasefrom California Attorney General Xavier Becerra a week ago. The title is a joke because in supporting the resettlement contractors’ lawsuit they are agreeing to have no states rights when it comes to refugee resettlement decisions.
Attorney General Becerra Blasts Federal Overreach, Continues Fight to Protect Refugee and State Rights
California Attorney General Xavier Becerra
SACRAMENTO – California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, and Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh today co-led a coalition of 19 attorneys general in an amicus brief filed in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in support of a lawsuit challenging President Trump’s unlawful executive order on refugee resettlement.
The executive order seeks to upend the existing process by requiring written consent from state and local authorities before being able to place refugees in their jurisdictions.
One of three primary opponents of the President’s efforts to reform the refugee program: Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh
Following a multistate amicus brief at the district court level, the U.S. Department of State was blocked from implementing the executive order while litigation is ongoing.
In this latest amicus following the Trump Administration’s decision to appeal the preliminary injunction issued in HIAS, Inc. v. Trump, the coalition again asserts that the executive order violates the Refugee Act of 1980, undermines family reunification efforts, and disrupts the states’ ability to deliver essential resources that help refugees contribute to the communities that welcome them.
“Our nation is already reeling from an unprecedented economic and public health crisis,” said Attorney General Becerra.“ Now is not the time for the federal government to throw a wrench into a system that helps bring billions of dollars to communities across the country. Standing up for refugees who are lawfully admitted to this country isn’t just right, it’s the smart thing to do. Despite what President Trump might say, refugees are welcome here in California.”
What the heck! The refugee program costs federal and state taxpayers billions of dollars. They are such liars and no one ever calls them on it. The comment about family reunification is a lie too—the order specifically says families can be reunited.
So here are the 19 states that ‘welcome’ any and all refugees that the feds and their contractors want to send them!
In submitting the amicus brief, Attorney General Becerra is joined by the attorneys general of Illinois, Maryland, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington.
We are only a few months away from the November Presidential election and if the Democrat candidate wins, it will be all over on the issue of refugees. Biden has already signaled that he will start with 125,000 a year if he wins the White House.
125,000 divided by 19 = 6,578 for each of the welcoming states and then leave the rest of America alone!
….as migrants, refugees and asylum seekers will be blocked from admission because of fear that they are “diseased.”
This line from near the end of an article published in The Nation yesterday sums up the fear of the international Open Borders movement:
The existential threat of Covid-19 has prompted a swift retreat to the nation-state, at the cost of international human rights, as countries rush to fly their own citizens home while keeping others out.
I’ve snipped some highlights from the article, but it is very well worth your time to read it all!
Could Covid-19 Mean the End of Asylum Law in the United States?
As this type of hand-wringing story is wont to do, it begins with a paragraph about the travails of those stalwart souls who walk for months to our southern border expecting to be let in (so they can disappear into their ethnic enclaves and hide for years). LOL! No it doesn’t say that last part.
(Emphasis below is mine)
For almost all of the people who made this kind of journey but were unlucky enough to complete it in the past two months, their time in this country has lasted less than a few hours before they were summarily—and illegally—deported back into Mexico.
Since March 21, the Trump administration has sent over 20,000 people back across the border, thousands of whom would have otherwise sought refugee protection. In that same time, only two people were allowed to stay to seek asylum.
One of the earliest victims of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States was the country’s refugee system. On March 20, the Trump administration announced a sweeping and unprecedented order: Instead of processing new arrivals for asylum, the Border Patrol was encouraged to deport them as rapidly as possible. The United Nations said the decision was illegal under international law; advocacy groups and elected officials called the new policy a travesty. The administration defended the move, claiming it was only a temporary, 30-day measure to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. But the rapid expulsion policy remains in place, almost two months later. It has not yet been challenged in court.
While the administration has justified the end of asylum on the border as a necessary public health measure, it’s not hard to see the ways in which the pandemic is merely the pretext for the order, not the motivation.
“From its earliest days, one of the Trump administration’s chief objectives has been overturning and circumventing US laws that were designed to protect refugees and people seeking protection, as well as unaccompanied children,” says Eleanor Acer, the senior director of refugee protection for Human Rights First. “It’s now using the pandemic as yet another weapon to try to circumvent US asylum law.”
[….]
Why, despite its clear illegality, has the total asylum ban remained in place?
Scholars of immigration say the administration has capitalized on two things: the current crisis, and over 100 years of anti-immigrant propaganda casting immigrants as diseased.
Now, here is an interesting piece of news—the ACLU in “disarray!” Why? Is it because they are busy defending the civil liberties of rioters, looters and thugs?
The Nation continues….
Organizations that would typically challenge the law, such as the American Civil Liberties Union, are in disarray, as they deal with the shock of multiple emergencies and a pandemic that is impacting their lawyers across the country.
However, even after the intensity of the shutdowns and quarantines wear off, advocates worry that fears of “diseased” outsiders will make Americans—including those who otherwise support the institution of asylum—more willing to give up on refugee law: Foreigners will simply be seen as too dangerous to admit, no matter the circumstances.
[….]
“Crisis produces an instinct to close the border and keep people out,” says Charanya Krishnaswarmi, Amnesty International’s advocacy director for the Americas.
But the Covid-19 pandemic might create long-term damage to refugee law in ways other crises have not: Sickness provides a convenient pretext to mask xenophobia. Even in the best of times, immigrants are seen by those seeking to limit immigration as a threat to “our” culture, “our” economic well-being. Now, the risk of a deadly virus means the outsiders can be presented as an existential threat as well.
[….]
On April 21, the president announced plans to “temporarily suspend immigration into the United States” in a move Democrats have called “xenophobic scapegoating.” Covid-19 has made tangible the parallels the president himself has drawn between migrants and disease, and given such claims a veneer of legitimacy.
Medicalized migration reinforces this connection between immigrant and threat, while simultaneously buttressing the inequalities between citizens and noncitizens. [There are, and should be,”inequalities” between citizens and non-citizens.—ed]
What does this mean for the future of refugee law? Human Rights First’s Acer, like other refugee experts we spoke to, suspects that the new, total asylum ban will last long after the coronavirus pandemic ends. “I expect they will fight to make it last as long as this administration, however long that is,” she says.
[….]
Acer worries that the Chinese virus will give yet another reason for their most-feared world leader and ultimate boogeyman—Viktor Orban!—to keep Hungary’s borders closed in order to save Hungary for Hungarians.
However, even if asylum is reinstated on the southern border (for instance, under a hypothetical Democratic administration), Acer worries that the pandemic-inspired exclusions policy might have already done significant damage to international refugee protections.
“What I’m worried about now is how countries like Hungary and Turkey will be emboldened to further refuse refugees,” she says. The language of public health creates a convenient narrative for anti-immigrant zealots like Hungarian President Viktor Orbán to obscure racist and Islamaphobic rhetoric with the language of medical necessity.
There ismuch more (it was hard to decide which were the best bits to snip!).
It is always worth learning how the opposition thinks and what they fear the most which in this case is that they fear the hardening of borders worldwide while using their humanitarian mumbo-jumbo as a cover for their real goal of erasing borders altogether.
See my Viktor Orban (the world leader I would most like to meet) archive here.
Refugee contractors are trying to “chart a path forward” as refugee admissions this year are set to be the lowest they have ever been since Senators Ted Kennedy, Joe Biden and the peanut farmer, Jimmy Carter, created the US Refugee Admissions Program that became law in 1980.
