It is only 3, but their arrival tells us that all refugee resettlement to America has not stopped and that the Obama “dumb deal” to take Australia’s rejected asylum seekers who have been held in offshore detention for years is still on-going.
According to BuzzFeedreporter Hannah Ryan the three new arrivals went to Maryland, Tennessee and Pennsylvania.
The US, Struggling Under The Pressure Of The Coronavirus, Is Still Taking Refugees From Australia
Three refugees flew from immigration detention in Australia to start new lives in the United States this week, despite the coronavirus pandemic placing a chokehold on international resettlement.
Coming to a town near you! Trump called it a “dumb deal” but his Administration is carrying it out anyway.
The men, two from Sudan and one from Pakistan, jetted together from Melbourne through Qatar to the US, where they parted ways before reaching their final destinations of Tennessee, Maryland and Pennsylvania. The US took them under the refugee swap deal between the two countries.
The flights went ahead despite a global pause on refugee resettlements announced by the United Nations High Commission on Refugees in mid-March. The US also suspended its refugee program because of the coronavirus on March 19, with the exception of emergency cases.
The ongoing operation of the resettlement program in the US leaves refugees in Australia and its offshore detention camps who have been accepted under the program with an invidious choice: to stay in detention, where many have been for the past seven years, or start a new life in the US as it is ravaged by a deadly pandemic.
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.
It is so clear to anyone with a brain, that the only way to stop the ‘Invasion of Europe’ from North Africa is to stop the boats before they even launch from Libya and other ports in North Africa.
Where is America’s Tony Abbott?
The UNHCR could then care for the so-called asylum seekers in camps in Africa.
But, the European Union is saying NO WAY! So, I guess they will all go down as the European ship sinks!
The European Union will not be adopting Australia’s migration methods despite Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s claim that some Europeans are seeking policy advice.
The EU’s executive Commission says Canberra does not respect the international standard on protecting refugees of “non-refoulement,” which is a U.N. principle prohibiting expulsion to a country where they could face violence or prison.
Commission migration spokeswoman Natasha Bertaud said Monday that the EU “applies the principle of non-refoulement — we have no intention of changing this — so of course the Australian model can never be a model for us.”
Australia’s migration model was widely cited in debate at the European Parliament last week, as the EU struggles to cope with thousands of migrants seeking to enter Europe via Libya.
See our ‘Invasion of Europe‘ series here, and check out how Australia is saving migrants’ lives (and discouraging more illegal migration) by turning boats back to the countries from which they launched (Australia category, here).
