Syria’s leading Catholic prelate has voiced misgivings about refugee programs that are helping Christian families from Syria resettle in the West, saying that it is better if they remain in the Middle East.
Melkite Catholic Patriarch Gregory III Laham, who doubles as president of the Syrian bishops’ conference, said that the flight of Syrian refugees threatens to aggravate the overall exodus of Christians from the Middle East. “The danger is that if they leave the Middle East, they will never go back,” he said.
The Melkite Patriarch said that he could readily sympathize with the Christians who choose to leave the region. “Of course, we cannot decide for ourselves what response our people should make,” he acknowledged, adding that “the suffering is great.”
However, Patriarch Gregory suggested that aid programs should concentrate on helping people to remain near their homes. “It is better to help the people within the country or the region, and not invite them to go outside,” he said. “There is more that can be done locally,” he said.
Agreed! But, unfortunately then the US refugee resettlement contractorswho are being paid by the head and doing the UN’s business will be happy to bring more Muslims to America and that includes among them the US Conference of Catholic Bishops!
Addendum: Check out this useful world map of countries where Christians are being persecuted.
UK Foreign Minister William Hague also warned British citizens to NOT go to Syria. Is he worried about British citizens joining the Jihadists?
Yesterday, UK Minister of Foreign Affairs Hague signaled that the United Kingdom would be looking to possibly resettle “vulnerable” Syrian refugees. Whether the general public, which largely does not support more immigration (Syrians this time), will be persuaded I suppose rests on the definition of “vulnerable” and for how long they will be allowed to stay. Will this be permanent resettlement?
William Hague, the minister for foreign affairs, has confirmed the government is working on a plan to accept “particularly vulnerable” refugees from Syria.
The government had been resisting the idea of accepting refugees for months, but the senior Conservative party MP said the government was now actively considering which Syrian people should be allowed to come to Britain. It comes after Prime Minister, David Cameron, signalled a partial retreat over the issue under pressure from a cross-party group of politicians, saying he was now “open-minded” about accepting the injured, particularly children.
Speaking on BBC TV’s Andrew Marr (politics) Show, Hague revealed that plans were under way to bring over some refugees, but stressed the main priority would be providing aid to the region.
“The home secretary (minister for domestic affairs) is working on that, and will have more to say about that in the coming days,” he said. “I think there is a case for particularly helping people who are particularly vulnerable. I think we have to look at it in that way.”
Frankly, I think it’s the Muslims the average British citizen sees as NOT “particularly vulnerable.”
A school district in Minneapolis is trying to figure out how to bring new Somali kids up to speed educationally, how to “jump-start” them.
Somali students in the lunchroom. http://daughternumberthree.blogspot.com/2010_04_01_archive.html
The story at the Star Tribune this past week mentions that there are many more kids arriving from Somalia than in recent years, but no mention of why that is. Somali family reunification from Africa is now up and running again after about a four year hiatus that ended in 2013. It had been closed for years due to the widespread fraud uncovered by the US State Department in 2008.
Going to the DHS’s Annual flow report, see that in 2010 we resettled 4,884 Somalis, 2011—3,161 and 2012—4,911.
Shuttling between classrooms at Anne Sullivan school in Minneapolis, teacher James Kindle noticed that classroom teachers were stretched mightily to serve the wide range of abilities in a school with many immigrants.
A teacher might be showing one group of students how to measure the angles in a triangle, while other students in the same class were just learning that “triangle” is the word for a three-sided polygon.
Kindle did some research, talked to other teachers and together they went to school district officials. The result is a pair of “newcomer classrooms” and a concentrated effort to jump-start the adjustment of Somali students in American schools.
The timing is good for Sullivan and other schools receiving a surge of Somali refugees.
“This is a heroic effort on Sullivan’s part,” said Lynn Harper, a district K-8 multicultural specialist.
The newcomer program is aimed at Somalis, but the concept could be adapted to any immigrant group, she said.
Students new to the country are steered into a classroom with other newcomers, so they can learn things like “triangle” before heading into classes with other students.
The district is ramping up the effort even before knowing results. The school board last month approved an expansion from Sullivan’s two classrooms to eight newcomer classrooms, split between Sullivan and Andersen United school. Together the two schools account for one of every six K-8 students in the district from a Somali-speaking family. The expanded program starts next fall.
The Sullivan experiment comes as the school district sees an influx of students from Somalia. At the start of this year’s classes, 336 refugee students had registered recently enough that they could have been eligible for newcomer classes. That’s a marked increase over previous years.
The influx won’t be ending anytime soon for “welcoming” cities like Minneapolis.
For the numbers of Somalis arriving in the last three decades, visit one of our most-read postshere at RRW. In three years of the Bush Administration the numbers topped ten thousand per year!
***While you are checking those stats for Somalia at WRAPSnet, note that Somalis make up the fourth largest number of refugees resettled in fiscal year 2014. The top three in the first three months of this fiscal year are:
Every day our news alerts are jam-packed with the latest stories on the SYRIAN REFUGEE CRISIS. Here is a little round-up of the latest news.
MP Yvette Cooper, leader of the revolt: Bring in the Syrians!
Great Britain: ‘MP’s revolt over failure to admit Syrian refugees’:
The Coalition is under mounting pressure from Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs to perform a U-turn to allow some Syrian refugees to come to Britain.
Mark Harper, the immigration minister, angered some MPs yesterday by saying the United Nations plan for Western countries to accept 30,000 of the 2.3 million Syrian refugees would have only a “token impact”. [Then the you-know-what hit the fan—ed]
Lebanon: ‘U.N.: Syrian refugee’s murder of son highlights desperation’:
BEIRUT: The case of a Syrian man who was arrested Tuesday for strangling his 8-month-old son because he was crying reflects the desperate plight of refugees, UNICEF’s spokesperson said.
According to security sources refugee Hasan Ayesh strangled his son late Monday in his home in Minyara, in the northern province of Akkar, reportedly because the boy wouldn’t stop crying.
Mind you, it’s all about his status as a refugee, not the possibility that he might be a brute or mentally unstable to begin with. Sheesh!
David Miliband head honcho of the International Rescue Committee told Morning Joe that the international community must “massively scale up” its response. But, surprisingly he never mentioned his organization’s testimony in the Senate recently to resettle 12,000 Syrians here this year. I’m wondering if they have done polling that tells them not to mention bringing them here!
In light of upcoming international peace talks between the opposing sides in Syria’s civil war, former British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said the numbers of refugees resulting from the war has created a “regional crisis” that demands attention.
“This is a regional crisis that demands a big international engagement,” Miliband, who is president and CEO of aid agency International Rescue Committee, told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Tuesday.
The conflict in Syria has resulted in a “scale of brutality … that hasn’t been seen for a very long time,” Miliband said.
As a result, millions of people are taking refuge in neighboring countries. He called for the international response to be “massively scaled up.”
You can watch Morning Joe’s interview, here. Joe doesn’t look too worked up.
Russia: ‘Russia grants asylum to almost 500 Syrian refugees – FMS’:
This is a surprise, I wonder if they are taking mostly Christians since they don’t have a burning desire for more Muslims.
The number of Syrian refugees seeking asylum in Russia is on the rise, head of the Federal Migration Service Moscow department Olga Kirillova said.
“Due to the exacerbation of the sociopolitical situation in Syria, the number of citizens seeking asylum on the territory of Russia has grown significantly,” she said.
More than 1,000 Syrian citizens filed refuge requests with the Federal Migration Service Moscow department in 2013 and 478 were granted temporary asylum, she added.
Bulgaria: ‘Bulgaria Begins Construction of Border Fence with Turkey’:
The construction of the wire fence at the Bulgarian – Turkish border will begin on January 20, Minister of Defense Angel Naydenov announced.
“The site preparatory work and the construction of the facility will start Monday,” Naydenov said, cited by Focus News Agency.
The construction period will stretch over 45-60 days depending on the weather conditions.
Border fences can be built pretty quickly if a country is motivated.
Sweden: ‘Syria crisis: Influx of refugees into Swedish town’:
Some Swedish towns are struggling to cope with an influx of Syrian refugees, after the government there guaranteed asylum to fugitives from the civil war.
The right-wing Swedish Democrat party claims ethnic Swedes are angry at the cost of social benefits and rising pressures on schools, housing and health care.
In the past eight years, the town of Sodertalje has accepted three times more refugees than Sweden’s biggest cities.
It’s not just Australia, Israel, Bulgaria, Italy and the rest of Europe trying desperately to hold back the tide of migrants from the Middle East/Africa and other third world nations, but even in South America there is no peace from largely economic migrants (all calling themselves ‘asylum seekers’) looking for new places to call home.
Homeless “asylum seekers”
From Deutsche Welle (The star of this story is Mohammed from Syria):
Brazil has seen the number of asylum seekers increase nearly tenfold over three years and official agencies are woefully unprepared to deal with the refugees. Few people receive asylum and help for immigrants is sparse.
[….]
In Brazil, political refugees from the Middle East or Africa have been a rare sight over the last few years. The South American country appears far removed from the horrors of war on foreign continents. But that is changing. Between 2010 and 2013, the number of people seeking asylum in Brazil increased nearly tenfold, from 566 to 5,200. Adding to those numbers are thousands of immigrants from Haiti, Senegal, Angola, Liberia, Bolivia, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
“Brazil has to prepare for an increasing crush of immigrants,” said Andres Ramirez, who represents the UN’s refugee agency in Brazil (Acnur). Since 2013, the organization has been operating a small office in Sao Paulo. One of the biggest problems, he told DW, is the lack of emergency shelters. “Many refugees sleep on the streets for days before they get any help,” he said.
Of the 5,200 people applying for asylum in Brazil, just 649 were recognized, according to figures from the country’s Ministry of Justice. The largest group among them, 283, came from Syria, followed by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, with 106, then Columbia and Angola.
The largest group seeking asylum, however, were the 1,814 Bangladeshis. Just one was recognized as a political refugee. Senegal followed with 868 asylum seekers, of whom four were recognized. In other conflict regions, such as Lebanon, Guinea-Bissau and Somalia, acceptance rates stood at below 3 percent.
Such statistics don’t include the 15,000 Haitians in northern Brazil. Roughly 70 per day arrive in Brasilia, a city of just 10,000 in the state of Acre, bordering Peru.
[….]
The unofficial influx has become a political problem. In an extraordinary cry for help, the state government of Acre requested on Wednesday (15.1.2014) that the federal Ministry of Justice allow it to close the border to Peru.
As always, I wonder how the poor and destitute from places like Bangladesh are getting the money to travel half way around the world to Brazil. And, do they all pass through Cuba on the way??? I suppose it’s just a matter of time before they work their way north to the US border!
