Just a little over three years ago, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau issued a now infamous in-your-face tweet to challenge the newly sworn-in President of the United States.
Now here comes the news about the border closures that all sensible countries are putting in place in an effort to slow the momentum of the virus crisis.
It is a long story, probably not worth reading, by a Canadian professor clearly unhappy with the turn of events. The Open Borders Lefties are generally treading lightly because citizens are in no mood to have their liberties restricted (and health threatened) while migrants have free movement around the world.
Coronavirus: Racism and the long-term impacts of emergency measures in Canada
The dangers to public health during the COVID-19 pandemic are terrifying, so it’s not surprising governments around the world are taking extraordinary measures to curb its spread, including closing borders to non-nationals.
Canada has become one of many countries to either partially or completely close their borders and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has also announced that Canada will no longer consider asylum claims.
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One of many PR events when Trudeau welcomed Syrians to Canada by the thousands.
Canada has won international praise over the last few years for its commitment to refugee resettlement in particular, as evidenced by the arrival of 25,000 Syrian refugees in a few short months.
But Trudeau has announced that due to these “exceptional times,” a new agreement has been signed with the United States that would see asylum-seekers crossing the border on foot returned to the U.S.
This exceptional reaction goes against Canada’s commitments under the 1951 United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and a 1985 Supreme Court ruling that says refugee claimants have a right to a fair hearing (the Singh decision).
Hope all of you are doing well and taking this time to appreciate home and family during this challenging period.
I’ve been monitoring stories from around the world as alarm bells are being rung about a catastrophe (“carnage” seems to be the operative word) that has not yet materialized that refugees housed in crowded camps will be consumed with the virus and that someone (government?) has to do something. Of course, what governments might do is not clear.
I told readers here that NGOs that should be expected to help are concerned with protecting their staff.
As epidemic menaces refugee camps, the Middle East’s most vulnerable face a deepening nightmare
Many paragraphs in we learn this:
Egeland of the Norwegian Refugee Council is ringing alarm bells, but what is any country supposed to do. In his case, Norway is closed as cases rapidly mount there. https://www.lifeinnorway.net/coronavirus-in-norway/
“When the virus hits overcrowded settlements in places like Iran, Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Greece, the consequences will be devastating,” Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, said this week. “There will also be carnage when the virus reaches parts of Syria, Yemen and Venezuela, where hospitals have been demolished and health systems have collapsed.”
Health experts hope that the relatively young average age of the displaced will help keep the death rate low. (In some centers, more than 60 percent are children.) And for now, no camp outbreaks have been reported. In some cases, the camps’ very isolation may be slowing the appearance of the virus within their fences and walls.
Access to Gaza, for example, is tightly controlled by Israel, which has largely sealed the enclave’s crossings to Israel and Egypt. Aid workers there are using the time to prepare for what they view as the virus’s inevitable arrival. [So can we say for a change that Israel is doing something good by sealing borders?—ed]
At NBCon Thursday, the answer is supposedly that governments should be testing in the camps. Heck, governments are having enough trouble testing their own citizens.
Coronavirus could cause ‘carnage’ among the world’s refugees, aid groups say
WASHINGTON — The coronavirus outbreak threatens to inflict “carnage” on refugees around the world who often live in cramped conditions, lack access to clean water and are in countries with failing or stretched medical systems, humanitarian aid groups say.
Muhammad Zaman, a professor of bioengineering at Boston University wants testing in camps. That would be the UN’s job right?
From Syria to Bangladesh to Uganda, the risk posed to people who have fled war and persecution is potentially dire, and only urgent international action can avert a catastrophe, aid organizations told NBC News.
As of Tuesday, only 10 cases had been reported among refugees and displaced persons, and all of those were patients in Germany, according to the U.N. refugee agency.
But in the absence of extensive testing at refugee camps in the Middle East, Africa or Asia, it’s unclear whether the fast-moving virus has already reached them, medical experts and humanitarian workers said.
“We don’t know, and that’s largely because we haven’t done any testing,” said Muhammad Zaman, a professor of bioengineering at Boston University. “We need to know how acute the problem is before we come up with an intervention.”
I see this morning that the flow into the US has stopped for the regular refugee program, but am waiting to see data indicating we have shut off the Iraqi and Afghanistan special visa spigot as well.
Non-profit groups that have encouraged the migration of Africans and Middle Easterners to Europe for a decade or more are now demanding the governments of Greece and France do more to protect migrants as the virus crisis deepens.
Why?
Because as one official at Catholic Charities Caritas said: “[W]e need to protect our volunteers and staff.”
What! So governments need to send in government workers instead of their ‘volunteers!’
Here is the invasion of Europe news from The Guardian:
NGOs raise alarm as coronavirus strips support from EU refugees
Governments across Europe are facing calls to urgently put into place measures to protect refugees and migrants – in particular lone children – as the coronavirus epidemic sees volunteer numbers plungeand many vital support services close.
On Tuesday, groups working with refugees and unaccompanied children in France and Greece implored the authorities in both countries to provide urgent help to refugees and unaccompanied minors, whom they say have been effectively abandoned by the authorities. [Abandoned by authorities? Sounds like abandoned by the NGOs!—ed]
NYC based International Rescue Committee (led by moneybags Miliband) is one group that is demanding Greece and France do more. They said in a statement this week: “The physical health and safety of our staff, our clients, and our communities is the International Rescue Committee’s top priority globally.” “Clients” are refugees. Community does not mean your town, it means their community of migrants and volunteers.
In France, a group of 24 organisations sent a letter to the French government and the mayors of Calais and Grande-Synthe imploring them to provide urgent interventions to refugees and migrants in northern France.
In the letter, the organisations, which include Médecins du Monde and Refugee Rights Europe, say:
“The situation of exiled people is unspeakable: lack of accommodation, cold, humidity, stress, fatigue, crowding together in light tents, daily expulsion from places of life, deplorable sanitary conditions.”
The groups say that, in the absence of any other protection measures, the state should provide accommodation and basic food distribution as well as access to hot water and soap to try to stop the spread of the Covid-19 virus among the migrant community.
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The groups, including the IRC [International Rescue Committee], Human Rights Watch, and the Danish Refugee Council among others, also called for a raft of protective measures including an end to deportations and pressing forward with relocation and family reunion programmes for unaccompanied minors across Europe.
[….]
One charity in northern France told the Guardian they are losing desperately needed volunteers as the epidemic takes hold across the continent.
No kidding! When the s*** hits the fan, the fair-weather do-gooders beg for government help!
Are we just bringing in more people every day who will be unemployed for the foreseeable future, sure looks like it.
Supposedly the UN is stopping the flow of refugees worldwide (the UN controls the spigot), but so far we are still ‘welcoming’ more impoverished people to America even in the last few days.
Here is John Binder at Breitbartreporting on Ingraham’s sensible demand:
Laura Ingraham: Halt All Immigration to U.S. During Coronavirus Crisis
Fox News anchor Laura Ingraham says the United States should halt all immigration during the coronavirus crisis.
Ingraham: Where is the moratorium?
On Wednesday, State Department officials confirmed to Breitbart News that the refugee resettlement program — which has resettled nearly 2,500 refugees in the last six weeks — would be suspended until at least April 7.
Likewise, a State Department official told Reuters that most visa services through the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) agency would be suspended until further notice, though federal immigration officials have yet to clarify which visa programs will continue to bring foreign nationals to the U.S.
Ingraham suggested in a post online that the Trump administration should implement an immigration moratorium while trying to stop the coronavirus outbreak and as millions of Americans are forced to stay home from work. Many of those workers rely on hourly minimum wages and tips.
“All immigration to the US should be halted due to this national emergency — we sure as heck don’t need any foreign workers with millions of Americans on verge of losing their jobs,” Ingraham wrote, along with “#AmericaFirst.”
Editor’s note: As RRW approaches its 13th birthday, there are over 10,000 posts archived here at Refugee Resettlement Watch. Unfortunately, it is just me here with no staff and so it has become virtually impossible to answer all of the basic questions that come into my e-mail inbox or to RRW’s facebook page every day. I don’t want to appear rude—I simply haven’t enough hours in the day.
Please take time tovisit RRW(don’t just read posts in your e-mail) and use the search window in the right hand sidebar and see if you can find the information you need. Also see my series that I wrote in recent months entitledKnowledge is Powerwhich explains some basic principles of how Refugee Resettlement is carried out in the US.
And, lastly, I don’t write that much every day, so if you made a habit of reading my posts here on a daily basis, you would eventually catch on to what is happening because I do link back to previous posts as much as possible. LOL! Thank you for helping me not go crazy!
What the heck! We have been admitting 400-500 a week recently and so it seems we are right on schedule if 182 arrived in the last three days.
***Update March 20***Total since Monday is now 214, presume that is it until April 6th when they expect to resume the movement of third worlders to America. We will keep an eye on it!
When I checked the Refugee Processing Centerthis morning I expected to see the number of new refugee arrivals stalled at 69, not more than doubled!
Of the 182 ‘new Americans’ arriving just this week, 124 are from the DR Congo.
Top ‘welcoming’ states are Texas, Massachusetts, Idaho, Tennessee and Georgia.
According to contractual arrangements with the State Department, workers and volunteers for resettlement ‘charities’ must meet the new arrivals at airports and get them settled in their new apartments and sign them up for myriad welfare and healthcare programs available to them.
Guess those do-gooders will be out and about while the rest of us are told to stay home!
