I haven’t seen much news lately about the “dumb deal” that Obama made to admit over a thousand asylum seekers that Australia had been holding for years in offshore detention camps, until this story from Saturday.
Of course, even as President Trump described the deal as a “dumb” one, he went along with it supposedly with extreme vetting determining who we would admit and who we would reject.
This story from theBrisbane Times is mostly about how one Rohingya escaped the detention camp and ultimately made it to Canada where he was granted asylum.
There is a bit at the end updating readers on where the number being sent to your US towns and cities stands today.
‘Never heard of anything like this’: Advocates stunned by Manus escape
Toronto, Canada: Refugee advocates have described a Rohingya asylum seeker’s escape from Australia’s offshore processing centre on Manus Island, and successful resettlement in Canada, as unprecedented and extraordinary.
Jaivet Ealom, 27, has spoken publicly for the first time about his high-risk and secretive journey to freedom in a series of interviews with The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age in Canada.
[….]
Political activist who used social media to pressure the Australian government, Iranian Behrouz Boochani, has permission to come to America as a refugee.
The department said 699 refugees have been resettled in America under the deal with the US government while another 26 have been resettled in other countries.
In November, Iranian asylum seeker Behrouz Boochani, author of the award-winning No Friend But the Mountains, travelled from PNG to New Zealand for a literary festival and overstayed his visa.
He said he had been offered resettlement in the US but was also open to resettlement in a third country.
Meet the Aussie Expats Fighting to Give Asylum Seekers A Fair Go
When entrepreneur and former fashion designer Fleur Wood heard that 1250 asylum seekers from Australia’s off-shore detention centres were being resettled in the US, she was struck with empathy.
It was 2016 and the men, women and children who had spent years languishing on Nauru and Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island would now be transferred to a country on the other side of the world as part of a deal between the Australian government and the Obama administration. After so much uncertainty and despair, this was their chance to start over – but not without enormous challenges.
[….]
Wood began building a network of Australians living in the US who were keen to help out, and in 2018 she co-founded the not-for-profit Ads-Up (Aussie Diaspora Steps Up) with fellow Australian Ben Winsor.
Their aim was to do what the Australian government would not: provide a social network and financial assistance to help refugees begin their lives in a new country.
[….]
For volunteers, connecting with refugees provides a chance to make amends in some small way for Australia’s inhumane treatment of asylum seekers. Says Wood, “Regardless of where you stand on the immigration issue, or whether you think these people should be allowed into Australia, you can’t deny the incredible human rights violations that they have suffered.”
The Australian government doesn’t provide regular information about Nauru and Manus Island, but according to the Refugee Council of Australia, 632 people have been resettled in the US.
[….]
Last June, Minister for Home Affairs Peter Dutton said the target of resettling 1250 refugees wouldn’t be met, hindering the Coalition’s goal of closing down the detention centres. US President Donald Trump was also famously scathing of the deal.
But Trump went along with the deal for over 600 detainees (so far) that Australia would not allow on its own soil. 600 plus is just as “dumb” as 1,250 in my view.
The practice of taking another (safe) country’s rejects is outside the normal accepted international resettlement procedure and should never have been encouraged.
You are all aware now that the President is about to make a determination for how many refugees from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East will be admitted to the US in FY2020 which begins in less than three weeks.
There had been talk the President could put the number at zero!
And, you also might have seen the news that the President had a win in the Supreme Court that could limit the number of asylum seekers coming into the country illegally and then requesting asylum which means asking for refugee status. (There is a backlog of hundreds of thousands yet to be processed!)
Yesterday we learned that USCIS Acting Director.Ken Cuccinelli linked the two and suggested that potentially fewer asylum seekers would allow for more third worlders from elsewhere to gain admission.
Oh joy! More “humanitarian space” said Cuccinelli!
But, heck, we won’t know for weeks or months if the Supreme Court decision will move the needle at all, but the refugees could be arriving beginning in 18 days.
This is nuts!
I sure hope someone in the White House has already swatted down the asinine idea!
Cuccinelli: Supreme Court ruling may boost refugee admissions
Acting U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Ken Cuccinelli suggested Thursday that contemplated reductions in refugee admissions might be scaled back following a Supreme Court asylum ruling Wednesday evening.
In a major victory for President Donald Trump, the high court gave his administration permission Wednesday to implement a sweeping ban on asylum seekers who pass through another country en route to the U.S. The third-country asylum ban is expected to choke off claims by Central Americans and other migrants who transit through Mexico.
With a reduction in asylum cases, Cuccinelli suggested, resources might be redirected to processing refugee claims.Asylum applies to migrants who seek refuge at the border or inside the U.S.; refugee status is sought by applicants from their home countries.
Speaking to several reporters after an event hosted by Axios, Cuccinelli said the court’s ruling could become a factor in discussions over where to set the coming year’s refugee ceiling. Trump cut refugee levels down to the 30,000 in the current fiscal year, a steep decrease over the 110,000 proposed by former President Barack Obama*** before he left office. Trump administration officials have considered slashing admissions again in fiscal year 2020 — possibly even reducing levels to zero.
“It hasn’t necessarily been connected yet, but last night’s Supreme Court decision does affect the humanitarian space,” Cuccinelli said Thursday morning.
***I am so sick of the mediareporting that Obama set the ceiling at 110,000 in his final year in office (in late 2016!) as a way of comparing his numbers in the most favorable light in contrast to Trump’s.
Obama never set a ceiling anywhere near that high in his previous 7 years and only came near that ceiling (aka cap) in a few of those years!
I am so sick of the lazy lying media! Note the ceiling numbers for the last ten years. They cherry-picked the one year that Obama dared to set the ceiling higher than normal in order to show the President’s numbers in the worst light. See the actual admissions column too!
The decision must be made in the next few days, but definitely by the end of September. You must contact the White Houseand let the President know how you are feeling about all of this.
Are we going to simply get more Africans and Middle Easterners when the Central American flow might be curtailed?
How about keeping the “humanitarian space” limited across the board for awhile!
Invasion of Europe news…
German officials are looking at replicating the facility in Bavaria throughout the country so that asylum seekers are pretty much contained in one fenced facility while they wait for a decision about whether they will be deported or not.
In Bavaria, one model “reception center” is home to more than 1,300 asylum-seekers. Directors say the barbed-wire enclosure and lack of privacy are for “safety” and efficiency. One resident says “it’s a wasted life.”
Is this what the future of asylum management will look like in Germany?
On the outskirts of the romantic UNESCO World Heritage city of Bamberg in Bavaria, one passes through an unforgiving security checkpoint manned by tough guards to enter into a facility lined with barbed wire. This was once a US army base, complete with cinema, supermarket and disco.
Since July 2016 the long, light-colored barracks have served as refugee housing. The streets are named after types of trees. During my visit in December, a thin man in a track suit stood at a roundabout and waved: “I tell you the truth!” he yelled to me. There are guards everywhere. Welcome to the Upper Franconia Reception Center.
[….]
The way the government sees things, the Upper Franconia Reception Center provides refugees with everything they need.They can even receive text notifications about the status of their asylum applications, which they submit at the facility, on their cellphones.
[….]
The Federal Administrative Court has an office here, as does the region’s immigration agency. The welfare agency is in Block E. This is all “state of the art” in Krug’s eyes: “If the government decides to put refugees into centralized accommodations, then our facility is definitely a good model.”
That is exactly the plan advocated by Horst Seehofer, the interior minister in the new federal government and a member of Bavaria’s conservative Christian Social Union (CSU). He has presented plans to open “anchor centers” to house asylum applicants from their arrival in Germany until their requests are granted or they are deported.
And the first one may well be built in Bavaria. The centers that Seehofer proposes are intended to provide efficiency, as well as maximum control over the people who come to Germany hoping to find more sustainable living conditions.
Seehofer has for years presented a hard line on immigration and frequently come into conflict with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
[….]
Whether the Bamberg model will be replicated elsewhere remains to be seen.
There is much moreand definitely worth reading.
If the German government put out word throughout Africa and the Middle East that all migrants flooding in to Germany would be housed in large facilities it would surely act as a deterrent to many others trying to get to ‘welcoming’ Europe.
And, hey, couldn’t the US run more detention centers—a kind of one stop shop until asylum decisions are made. Expensive? Probably, but better than just releasing so many to their supposed relatives and expecting them to show up for their asylum court date.
My ‘Invasion of Europe’ archive is here. And, I’ve written a great deal about dear Deutschland, here.
Reuters is reporting that oopsy! violent crime on the rise in Germany due to refugees. But check out the interesting twist! (Hat tip: Mary):
BERLIN (Reuters) – Young male refugees in Germany got the blame on Wednesday for most of a two-year increase in violent crime, adding fuel to the country’s political debate over migrants.
These good Germans welcomed all, didn’t they?
Violent crime rose by about 10 percent in 2015 and 2016, a study showed. It attributed more than 90 percent of that to young male refugees.
Too funny! They are quick to report it isn’t the Syrians, it is all of those from “other places” who came in along with the good Syrians.
It noted, however, that migrants settling from war-torn countries such as Syria were much less likely to commit violent crimes that those from other places who were unlikely to be given asylum.
Migration will be a key issue in forthcoming coalition talks between Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives and the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD). The arrival of more than a million migrants since mid-2015 hurt both parties in last September’s election.
The government-sponsored study showed a jump in violent crime committed by male migrants aged 14 to 30.
It’s that North African riffraff who are the culprits:
Around 17 percent of violent crimes in Lower Saxony that were attributed to refugees, for example, were suspected of being committed by North African asylum seekers who made up less than 1 percent of the state’s registered refugee population. North African asylum seekers have relatively slim chances of obtaining legal status in Germany.
Instead of proposals to close the borders and get rid of the troublemakers, the reader is left with this idea…. If they have a hope of staying and reuniting with family they will behave themselves!
Well gosh then, let’s make it all easier for them, give them hope of staying and presto! they will not commit violent acts. Can’t you xenophobes see that!
The whole article is here.
For my complete archive on the ‘Invasion of Europe’ go here.
You might want to read my post on asylum here last week. Asylum seekers differ from the refugees we normally talk about because they get to a country like Germany (or the US, or Canada) and ask for asylum claiming they will be persecuted if returned home. The refugees we write most about here are selected abroad and we fly them in.
So the next time you hear that Germany is welcoming refugees in greater numbers than the US, remember these hordes who arrived in Europe with a goal of getting to Germany over the last two years are migrants seeking asylum. Now we are learning that, yikes! Germany has 450,000 who failed to prove their asylum claims and will now be deported.
Gee, wouldn’t it have been a better idea to close their borders in the first place!
They are not going to love her so much when she starts filling up those planes and flying hundreds of thousands out of dear Deutschland. Poster and story here: http://panteres.com/2015/08/28/angela-merkel-syrians-praise-chancellor-for-receiving-refugees/
From the Daily Mail(a department in Berlin will be created to organize the mass deportations!):
Merkel offers cash handouts worth millions of pounds for migrants to return home in an embarrassing U-turn
Angela Merkel will offer cash handouts worth millions of pounds for migrants to leave Germany in an effort to silence criticism of her ‘open-door’ border policy.
In a highly-embarrassing U-turn over the ill-fated plan, which saw 1.2million migrants flock to the country, Mrs Merkel has now vowed to send many of them home.
The German chancellor agreed a package of measures to speed up the deportation process for an estimated 450,000 migrants who have been rejected asylum.
The controversial plan, which marks a significant toughening of previous proposals, includes a £76million scheme that will offer migrants cash incentives to leave Germany voluntarily.
Many will see the move as a desperate attempt for Miss Merkel to claw back support ahead of her challenging re-election bid in September.
Criticism of her decision to leave Germany’s borders open and welcome all refugees during Europe’s migration crisis in 2015 has led to a surge in support for anti-immigrant parties.
[….]
The proposed crackdown, which has been criticised by human rights groups, will also include the creation of a department in Berlin to co-ordinate mass deportations.
Continue reading here.
The Trump message for Leftwing politicians worldwide: not a winning strategy to promote the replacement of your own people with migrants.
Our entire ‘Invasion of Europe’ archive is here (extends back many years).
