Tag: asylum seekers

UK: Asylum seekers put enormous strain on British town

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Invasion of Europe series continued….

From the Express (hat tip: pungentpeppers).  Emphasis is mine:

We hear a lot about London’s migrant problems, but Middlesbrough is 240 miles north of London

New figures revealed Middlesbrough has topped England’s asylum seeker league with the town becoming the first in the country to breach Government accommodation guidelines.

The amount of cheap housing in the Teesside town means it has become a magnet for penniless arrivals seeking sanctuary in the UK.

The Government insists no local authority area should need to house more than one asylum seeker per 200 of population.  [Interesting, I don’t think we have anything comparable—a ratio for a community of how many refugees/asylum seekers per Americans could be accommodated in the community—ed]

But a Middlesbrough Council report has revealed almost 1,000 asylum seekers are currently being housed in the town, which has a population estimated at 138,400 – putting it almost one-and-a-half times the Government limit.

Asylum seekers are generally housed at taxpayers’ expense homes while the Home Office decides whether to grant them asylum.

The process can take up to a year and a total of 982 asylum seekers are currently housed in paid-for accommodation in Middlesbrough.

In the report to be discussed by the Labour-run authority next week, Richard Horniman, economic development manager at Middlesbrough Council says the town has seen a rise in the number of asylum seekers through Government-funded regional contracts.

He said it was down to “lower value housing” offered in parts of the borough – which make it cheaper to house people.

The report highlights Gresham and Stockton districts as receiving the largest influx.

Yesterday locals told of the dramatic strain this has put on local services.

[….]

But Justice First, a Stockton-based charity that supports refugees and asylum seekers and helps them to build new lives in the UK, said current conditions for asylum seekers were tough… [Is Justice First a government contractor?—ed]

Please read on here and see what the British citizens are saying about housing, schools, healthcare for them when competing with the asylum seekers.  They feel they have lost their town.

German guards allegedly abused asylum-seekers in refugee center

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The UNHCR must be hopping mad that their favored country for asylum these days—Germany—has produced some down right unwelcoming behavior toward the mostly Muslim asylum-seekers attempting to stay in Germany.

Let’s just say Germany has been the ‘fair-haired’ country as far as the UN is concerned, especially as it has promised to take in up to 20,000 Syrians over two years.

Now this!

Frankly, I think this is not an isolated incident involving a few rogue guards, but one which indicates (symptomatic of) the underlying anger of the average German citizen to being overrun by mostly Middle Easterners and Africans.

Merkel spokesman Steffen Seibert: Achtung!!! We are a humane country! Get it! Humane I say. And, we are trying ever-so-hard to prove it!

From AFP via Relief Web earlier this week:

BERLIN, September 29, 2014 (AFP) – German police Monday started an investigation into six private security guards at a refugee centre accused of assaulting and humiliating asylum seekers in ways that drew comparisons to abuse against Guantanamo Bay prisoners.  [What the heck are they talking about—at GB the prisoners are treated with great care.—ed]

Police also questioned hundreds of refugees after disturbing photo and video footage emerged at the weekend, including an image showing a security guard pinning a handcuffed Algerian man to the floor with his boot on the man’s neck.

Police said they launched their investigation after a journalist passed on to them cellphone video footage that showed security guards forcing an elderly man to lie on a mattress covered in vomit while threatening to beat him.

North Rhine-Westphalia state Interior Minister Ralf Jaeger pledged to pursue “with utmost determination” the case in the refugee centre in Burbach, about 100 kilometres (60 miles) southeast of Cologne, vowing to ensure “that this never happens again”.

[….]

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman said that if investigations confirm that “refugees were abused and humiliated, then these would be repulsive acts”.

“We are a humane country. In Germany, the dignity of man is respected… and that must be true in asylum centres and refugee camps,” said Steffen Seibert.

 See all of our posts on Germany by clicking here.  And, visit our archive on the ‘invasion of Europe’ here.

Gates of Vienna!

And, check out this post at Gates of Vienna a couple of weeks ago for the reader comments that have come in since then on the topic of Muslim immigration to Europe.  GoV asked readers to report in from Europe and they have.

Australia’s refugee deal with Cambodia infuriates ‘human rights’ industry activists

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I meant to write this post last week as the deal was coming to fruition and the human rights gangsters/no borders activists were screaming their heads off, but didn’t get to it and now I see that the deal has been sealed.

Immigration Minister Scott Morrison working to save Australia from the No-borders movement.

Australia is planning to allow some ‘asylum seekers’ who broke into Australia illegally to choose to be resettled in Cambodia.

The Abbott government’s immigration minister Scott Morrison got into hot water some months ago by asking (or stating) this very important point:

Why do we assume that asylum seekers have a right to resettlement in a first-world country?

That is a really good point, if they are seeking freedom from persecution, what is wrong with Cambodia?  Or, are they all really just economic migrants masquerading as persecuted people.

Here is the news from Friday at Yahoo News:

Australia’s refugee resettlement deal with Cambodia is a long-term arrangement that will start small but build over time, Immigration Minister Scott Morrison said.

The deal, announced on Friday and many months in the making, has been condemned by the United Nations’ refugee agency and human rights advocates.

Speaking to the ABC’s AM program, Mr Morrison said four or five refugees will be resettled in Cambodia in the early stages, but only time will tell how many refugees will make the move.

“And it’ll be based on the success of the program over time. And of course it’s a voluntary program,” he said.

He said it was a long-term agreement and Cambodia would determine how many refugees it would accept.

And, here is the story I was going to post last week from  The Australian ( Charities call Cambodia refugee resettlement deal immoral):

Mr Morrison, who has lobbied for developing nations to share a higher burden of the world’s refugees, said the arrangement with Cambodia would be “an ongoing, developing relationship” to build the country’s capacity to offer protection to refugees.

Former Family Court chief justice Alastair Nicholson, speaking on behalf of a coalition of charities, described the proposal as “inappropriate, immoral and likely illegal”.

“It is inappropriate because Cambodia has no capacity within its social sector to take an influx of refugees. Immoral because these vulnerable people are Australia’s responsibility, and while we await the detail, it appears illegal in contravening Australia’s humanitarian and refugee obligations to vulnerable children and families,” Mr Nicholson said.

[….]

 Mr Nicholson’s comments were endorsed by a coalition of charities including UNICEF Australia, Save the Children, Plan International Australia, World Vision, Amnesty International, Refugee Council of Australia, International Detention Coalition and Children’s Rights International.

The proof of progress is in the statistics! 

The Australian government’s hard line position against open borders (against an asylum-seeker free-for-all) has put Australia in the category of only a few advanced countries whose “asylum seeker” numbers have actually gone down.  See the recently released UN report we told you about here.  It can be done, but most Western governments, including the US, have apparently no will to live.

Can you just imagine how ticked-off UNHCR Antonio Guterres must be at Australia!  He likely fears that some other countries might grow a spine!

New UNHCR report on asylum: US is second most desirable nation in the world for asylum seekers

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees has released his ‘mid-year’ report and it’s no surprise asylum claims are up world-wide.

For clarification, asylum seekers are people who get into another country on their own and then apply for asylum in hopes of being declared legitimate refugees a designation which brings with it access to social services and usually puts them on track for citizenship in their new country.   The Tsarnaev family had been granted asylum and thus were called political refugees.  The no-borders agitators are trying to make the case that the ‘Unaccompanied alien children’ fit this category as well.

A few countries have temporary asylum.  In the US if you are granted asylum you are in!

UNHCR Antonio Guterres, former President of the Socialist International, said that the US has pledged “open-ended” numbers for Syrian refugee resettlement! https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2014/06/30/unhcr-says-us-has-pledged-open-ended-resettlement-numbers-for-syrians/

The other track for potential refugees is to be selected by the UN abroad and then to be assigned to a resettlement country—most are assigned to the US!

From the Malta Independent:

A UNHCR report released today shows that the number of people seeking refugee status in industrialized countries continued to climb in the first half of 2014, driven by the wars in Syria and Iraq as well as conflict and instability in Afghanistan, Eritrea and elsewhere.

[….]

We are clearly into an era of growing conflict,” said UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres. “The global humanitarian system is already in great difficulty. The international community needs to prepare their populations for the reality that in the absence of solutions to conflict more and more people are going to need refuge and care in the coming months and years. Unfortunately, it is not clear that the resources and the access to asylum will be available to help them.”

Despite the net overall increase in new claims shown in the report, more than two thirds of these were in just six countries – Germany, the United States, France, Sweden, Turkey and Italy.

Central Europe, in particular Hungary and Poland, as well as Australia saw declines in the numbers of people asking to be accepted as refugees.   [The Abbott government is clearly having success in pushing back the illegal alien boats!—ed]

Go here for the whole report.  The UN is happy to help you replace your population!

Maine election-year battle over welfare for asylum seekers on-going

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We have reported on the problem in Maine for months (years!).  The gist of it is that Maine has had a wonderland of welfare for immigrants (that is what brought the first Somalis to Lewiston years ago) and now the LePage Administration is trying to cut back social services to asylum seekers.  (The federal government does not give welfare to asylum seekers until they have become legitimate legal refugees.)

Apparently the word got out throughout Africa and elsewhere—get to Maine and you can get social services while you wait for your asylum application to be processed.  So they came.

For new readers, asylum seekers get into the US on their own (visa overstays etc.) and then apply for asylum (claiming to be persecuted at home).  If granted asylum they become “refugees” in the full sense of the word and get federal taxpayer goodies and help from a federal resettlement contractor.   But, thanks to the border crashers an already over full asylum court can’t get to cases for years.

Here is a bit of the story at CentralMaine.com, but you should read the whole thing (of course it starts out with a sympathetic ‘star’ of the story, Journalism 101?).  They are all “vulnerable” you know! (but aren’t there Americans who are vulnerable as well?).

Once vulnerable in their homelands, Maine’s asylum seekers, in growing numbers, are left waiting – for permission to work, for their status to change and, now, to see if looming welfare reforms will make them vulnerable all over again.

[….]

Thousands of people from war-torn or politically troubled nations in sub-Saharan Africa have arrived in Maine in recent years on their own with visas that allow them to visit, work or study on a temporary basis, only to seek asylum so they can stay permanently. Asylum applicants wait in a fuzzy legal status in which they are considered to be undocumented but protected from deportation. And at the same time they are prohibited by federal law from working for at least six months – and sometimes much longer.

Meanwhile, the wait for asylum can take years, with a nationwide backlog of applications that is expected to grow because of the surge of unaccompanied minors crossing the southern U.S. border in recent months.

Read it all.

Moral of the story—if your state gives generous welfare benefits to asylum seekers, they will come.

See our entire Maine archive, here.  Or narrow your search and put ‘Lewiston Maine’ or ‘Portland Maine’ into our search window.