Cecilia Malmstrom, EU Home Affairs chief is a Swede (of course!). http://www.lgbt-ep.eu/parliamentary-work/barroso-ii-commission-malmstrom/
The headline to this story at The New Zealand Heraldis “Europe shuns Syria refugees,” but I believe mine is better! Don’t they call this burying the lead?
“Pathetically few” nations in Europe have stepped forward to offer a safe haven to desperate Syrian refugees, the European Union’s Home Affairs chief says, raising the risk that many more could die at sea as they instead embark on perilous journeys to seek sanctuary.
Cecilia Malmstrom’s warning came as the EU’s border agency, Frontex, reported a leap in the number of people detected entering Europe illegally this year, with Syrians making up the largest proportion.
Up to half a million people are also believed to be massing in Libya and preparing to cross the Mediterranean, a route which claimed more than 700 lives last year.
Yet despite promises of action from EU leaders, who last October were united in their shock after at least 350 migrants died off the Italian coast, there are few signs that this summer will be different.
Instead, agencies trying to save lives are having to contend with shrinking budgets, a political vacuum in Libya and xenophobic rhetoric from far-right parties which has seeped into government refugee policy. [LOL! I wonder if these leftist reporters have a goal to work one of these words—‘xenophobic,’ ‘racist’ or ‘bigoted’—into every refugee story! Who wrote this biased sentence? Charlotte McDonald-Gibson—ed]
It is always about xenophobia, and never because sensible conservative citizens of European countries know that they simply can’t afford the economic and social problems that come with open borders and a rapidly changing demography!
See more in our ‘invasion of Europe’ series by clicking here.
He says if they don’t, Jordan and Lebanon will collapse.
Truth-be-told, Sweden will collapse if it keeps “welcoming” the world to take advantage of their generous socialist welfare system.
Immigration Minister Tobias Billström allowed himself to be photographed in front of nude statues! What was he thinking? Many of those he is welcoming to Sweden would like to chop his head off for just this infidel atrocity.
See our earlier postwhere Billström whines about how other countries must do their share. I hope the Swedish government is getting hell from its own citizens for its open door immigration policy.
Sweden has said its EU neighbors’ failure to help more refugees could prove disastrous, with Migration Minister Tobias Billström on Tuesday urging European nations to take in more people fleeing for their lives, especially from Syria.
“We have a situation where member states like Sweden, France and Germany are doing more and more of the job,” he told AFP, commenting on new EU asylum figures. The three countries account for more than half of all applications, according to the EU statistics.
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The EU received almost 435,000 applications in 2013, up nearly a third from the previous year, largely due to the conflict in Syria. Germany accounted for half of the increase, while Sweden received more than any country per head of population at 54,000. Sweden also received the largest number of applications from Syria, partly due to a decision in September 2013 to grant automatic residency to all.
We need to bring more Muslim migrants to Europe to save Jordan and Lebanon!
“If all the 28 member states took as many (UN) quota refugees as Sweden does… the EU could offer 100,000 places annually to the UN Refugee Agency,” said Billström, repeating an earlier Swedish demand for a common European resettlement system.
“That would be a real asset to relieve countries like Lebanon and Jordan… who, if we don’t do something about it, may collapse, which would create even larger secondary waves over the EU.”
These Leftwingers like Billström apparently never had a mom who said, ‘you made your bed, sleep in it!’
The African migrants flooding into Israelwant to stay there, but Africans overwhelming Bulgaria are there attempting to get through the tiny country and into more prosperous German, French and British cities. The European Union, however, requires that they register at their first stop in Europe (in this case Bulgaria where the Turkish government must have let them move through Turkey!). The policy thus sets up the very thing that happened here last month.
Standoff between police and African migrants in Sofia.
Most mainstream media accounts want to promote the idea that poor persecuted Syrians are being abused by Bulgaria, but why so little attention to the thousands of Africans getting all the way to Bulgaria? As a reader, I would like to know how they are traveling to that country and where they get the money to do it.
A series of videos surreptitiously filmed from the window of a refugee centre in Bulgaria’s capital Sofia last month shows a standoff between police and dozens of African migrants, who had been kicked out of the centre for staying there without permission. The men chant “racists, racists” at the police before being taken into custody. The scene captures how tensions are now regularly boiling over in a country grappling with a surge in asylum seekers. [Economic migrants!—ed]
[…..]
From 2011 to 2013, asylum requests have multiplied by eight-fold in Bulgaria, with over 7,000 people filing requests in the last year, according to the State Agency for Refugees. About 3,800 of them are accommodated in Bulgaria’s refugee centres; more than three-quarters of these are Syrian nationals. Another 3,700 registered asylum seekers are not accommodated at the centres. The registration process can take months, so there are also an untold number of migrants living in Bulgaria who are not accounted for in these numbers.
In the past few years, immigration both from Syria and from African countries has soared. Many are from regions that have been wracked by conflict, notably the Democratic Republic of Congoand Mali. Diana Daskalova, the founder of the Centre for Legal Aid, a nonprofit that helps migrants with legal issues in Bulgaria, says that about 80 percent of those who come to seek their advice are from African countries: “They have a lot more problems navigating the asylum-seeking process than Syrians, for whom it is more streamlined, and who have an easier time obtaining asylum status.” She says that in the past year, out of all the cases of Africans her organisation has worked on, only one person was granted asylum: “And it was a special case – she was a woman with serious health problems, which was a decisive factor.”
[…..]
Lately, protests at Bulgarian refugee centres have become frequent, both over dire living conditions and the slow pace of the asylum process. In November, Bulgarian police quelled a protest by Algerian migrants at a centre in the town of Lyubimets. That same month, Syrian refugees threatened to go on a hunger strike at a centre in Harmanli, in south-eastern Bulgaria.
The United Nation’s refugee agency recently urged European countries to hold off on returning any asylum seekers to Bulgaria – which they have the right to do if it is the first country they entered in the European Union – citing problems with registration delays as well as access to food and health care.
We hear Turkey has some beautiful refugee camps—-send them there! Add a little diversity! It will bring strength to those camps!
We have been following the plight of poor Bulgaria for months (click here for our complete archive).
Where they could face “inhuman or degrading treatment” say the UN bullies.
If you are wondering what this is all about, the European Union has this dumb thing called the ‘Dublin Regulation’ which says if ‘asylum seekers’ trek across some poor border country—like Bulgaria, Greece, or Malta—and seek asylum in some other European country then they can be sent back to the poor border country and apply there. You can see how this might deter the migrants who are asylum shopping, but imagine what it does to the poor border country that couldn’t handle the influx in the first place.
Bulgaria’s rightwing Ataka Party is expected to do well in May EU elections.
BERLIN – The United Nations’ refugee agency is urging European countries to hold off returning asylum seekers to Bulgaria, citing problems with access to basic services and with asylum procedures.
Under the “Dublin procedure,” European Union countries return illegal migrants to the first EU country they entered. Bulgaria is on the bloc’s eastern edge and has seen increasing numbers of asylum seekers in recent months, among them people fleeing Syria’s civil war.
The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees urged other countries Friday to suspend returning migrants to Bulgaria because of risks they could face “inhuman or degrading treatment”; it plans to review the situation in April.
April! More likely Mayafter the EU Parliament elections so they don’t tick-off the rightwing so much that they defeat some of the socialists who now run the EU!
It says Bulgaria has made progress but problems remain with asylum seekers’ access to food and health care, registration delays and risks of arbitrary detention.
You can see that my sympathies are with Bulgaria. For more on Bulgaria’s “refugee crisis,” click here.
There is more news today about European countries saying ‘no’ to Syrians attempting to get across their borders, and the UNHCR wants a moratorium on the stepped-up border security some countries are putting in place.
UNHCR is greatly concerned over reports of some EU countries placing barriers to entry or forcibly returning asylum-seekers including people who have fled the conflict in Syria. UNHCR is calling, globally as well as in the European Union, for a shift away from border protection to protection of people. If practices to prevent asylum-seekers from accessing territory and procedures are taking place, UNHCR calls on states to cease them immediately. Push-backs and prevention of entry can put asylum-seekers at further risk and expose them to additional trauma.
In BulgariaUNHCR is seeking more information from the authorities on their reported activities at the border to stem the flow of refugees into the country. Media reports say Bulgaria turned back 100 migrants at the border over the weekend and deployed some 1,200 police officers to the border region. Introducing barriers, like fences or other deterrents, may lead people to undertake more dangerous crossings and further place refugees at the mercy of smugglers. [We have written a lot about Bulgaria’s problems here—ed]
UNHCR is also concerned over similar reports of asylum seekers being pushed back from Greece to Turkey.
[….]
In Cyprus, UNHCR has received reports of Syrians arriving irregularly by boat in the northern part of the country and being returned to Turkey following a brief detention.
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UNHCR is calling for a global moratorium on any return of Syrians to neighbouring countries. This would represent a concrete gesture of solidarity with these countries that currently host over 2.2 million Syrian refugees.
Rather than disrupt economically-struggling countries, the UN must build more camps in the Muslim world (hey! how about Saudi Arabia!) for Muslim refugees until the civil war is over! It would be cheaper than permanent resettlement of Syrians all over the world! And, they could stay in their own “culture zones.”
The EU is avoiding dealing with the issue of migration until after elections next spring fearing the wrong moves now would usher in the “right wing” here.
