This one was launched from Egypt. Note in my previous post, about the other sinking on Friday, that the graphic we found doesn’t even show launches from Egypt. And, this story, with a death toll of a meager twelve illegal aliens (compared to the two recent sinkings) wouldn’t be post-worthy except for the mention of who the migrants are (or at least the living ones that have been interviewed).
Twelve people died when a boat carrying illegal migrants and Syrian refugees sank off Egypt’s northern coast on Friday, security and medical sources said. [And, if one is Syrian apparently one is not also an illegal migrant—ed]
“The Egyptian coast guards saved 72 Palestinians, 40 Syrians and four Egyptians,” one security source said. The circumstances of the accident and the nationalities of the deceased were not yet known.
Palestinians!
We are accustomed to hearing about the Africans and more recently the Syrians trying to get into Europe, but Palestinians! Are these asylum seekers or invaders?
What can you expect when a country is larded over with one program after another to help the so-called downtrodden? In the US, we too have increasingly developed and expanded programs for the destitute—I’m thinking specifically of food stamps and medicare/medicaid (Obamacare!)—where some sharp ‘entrepreneur’ has figured out, or will figure out, how to game the system.
Remember those NHS dancing nurses in the opening ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics? Was it one colossal advertisement to the world—come on over for your free healthcare!
Here are two stories from the UK over the last week that tell us how ‘out of control’ things are there. The second story reports on attempts by Parliament to rein-in “health tourism” by immigrants who are arriving illegally to get benefits from Britain’s great attraction—its National Health Service.
From the UK Telegraph (“Gang flew in benefit tourists!”):
An immigrant gang flew in scores of ‘benefit tourists’ to Britain, setting them up with houses and jobs, so they could steal hundreds of thousands of their tax credits.
A family of immigrants posed as interpreters to fly benefit tourists over to Britain so they could steal their tax credits, cheating HMRC out of £500,000.
The group flew in people from Eastern Europe and set them up in a house and low-paid job in exchange for their tax credits, which they pocketed.
Sisters Iveta and Magdalena Ferkova, 32 and 33, along with their aunt Alena Lackova, 39, and her husband Jan Lacko, 29, organised National Insurance numbers and housing to complete the scam over two years.
They managed to steal £500,000 in tax credits from HMRC, posing as interpreters for the workers they flew over when doing interviews in banks and at job centres.
All four were found guilty of conspiracy to commit fraud by making false representations.
LONDON, UK (Catholic Online) – If you are a foreigner visiting England, be prepared to show proof of citizenship before being given a NHS number, the item you need to receive free health services in the country.
A bill designed to cut down on health tourists and illegal immigration has been presented to Parliament as part of a package designed to crack down on people who are residing in the country illegally.
According to the bill, doctors will first have to check the immigration status of a patient who does not have a NHS number before they are authorized to provide treatment. Naturally, the proposal has doctors, among others upset. Doctors resent that they could be forced to participate in immigration enforcement.
Others say that healthcare should be provided no matter what. Defenders of the bill say that emergency care is still ensured.
England has become a destination for health tourists, foreigners who travel to the country to have procedures done for various reasons. These health tourists then receive the benefits of the national healthcare system but without having to pay any of the costs. To break down this practice, Parliament would pass a law that would ensure they must pay to access the system.
Update October 11th: Refugees breed ill will on Lampedusa, here.
Update October 9th: German interior minister—the solution is NOT to allow more in, here.
This is a story you could hardly have missed over the last few days when more than a hundred of mostly African illegal aliens drowned trying to reach the island of Lampedusa in Italy. It was even reported in my small hometown paper, but I would be remiss in not noting it here since we have written so much over the last five plus years about the boat people trying to get from Africa to Italy or Malta.
Emergency workers among bodies
In fact, at least some of the Syrians now blocking the port of Calais in France say they made the journey across the Mediterranean, landed in Italy and simply traveled northward in Europe unmolested by immigration authorities.
With 111 bodies recovered from the waters off the Italian island of Lampedusa after a boat carrying 500 African migrants capsized, search and rescue teams had to abandon their efforts amid poor weather conditions.
The scale of the tragedy was evident when a ferry delivered 140 more coffins to the little island as preparations were made for mass funerals at five different sites in Agrigento on the Sicilian mainland. More than 350 people are now feared dead.
Coast Guard captain Floriana Segreto, said: “In total among the living and the dead when have accounted for 266 people. But our work is not finished.” Emergency services said that half of those confirmed dead so far were women.
The disaster occurred early on Thursday morning when a 20m boat carrying migrants mainly from Eritrea, Somalia and Ghana got into difficulty less than a mile from the shore of Lampedusa.Someone on board set light to a piece of fabric to attract the attention of nearby ships, but the flames spread, forcing the desperate refugees into the sea.
Vito Fiorino, a Lampedusa resident, said he was the first to come across dozens of migrants scattered in the Mediterranean Sea while he was on an early morning fishing expedition. He told the Associated Press that some of the survivors told him they had been fighting to stay alive for three hours and did not have the strength to grab the life-ring he threw to them. “It was a scene from a film, something you hope never to see in life,” he said.
Photo is from this story at the London Evening Standard, where we hear this:
….the independent UN investigator on the human rights of migrants said the boat wreck highlighted the dangers of harsh measures against people seeking a better life in another country.
I guess what this means is—we can’t beat the criminals so just open the borders world-wide and let them all in!
This is basically an update of the story we posted here earlier this month about the new waves of illegal aliens coming across our border who have their asylum jargon down pat thanks to some good coaching.
Aliens to America: We have a “credible fear” of persecution by the Mexican drug cartels, so therefore we are entitled to be let into the US.
Rep. Jason Chaffetz asked soon-to-be gone Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano for further documentation on this latest immigration fraud.
House Republicans are demanding information from the Department of Homeland Security about immigrants who win access to the U.S. by falsely claiming they are asylum seekers afraid to return to their home countries.
In a letter sent Monday to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, a copy of which was obtained by the Washington Examiner, Rep. Jason Chaffetz, a top Republican on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, questioned whether illegal immigrants were being instructed on how to beat the immigration system by falsely claim they are in the U.S. to seek political asylum.
Immigrants are allegedly learning to claim they face a “credible fear” of persecution at home so that U.S. officials can not immediately expel them. Thousands of such cases have been reported along the U.S.-Mexico border, New York City and other parts of the U.S.
Homeland Security is expected to receive nearly 29,000 asylum requests this year from immigrants arriving from Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras and elsewhere, a House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee revealed in July. That’s a 434 percent increase in such requests over the past five years, said Chaffetz, R-Utah, who chairs that subcommittee.
This is my favorite line in the whole report:
Chaffetz asked Napolitano to provide the number of asylum cases being investigated for fraud as well as the number of lawyers successfully prosecuted for aiding asylum fraud.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., also asked for information on asylum from last week, saying he was concerned that “credible fear” is being “exploited” by illegal immigrants to gain entry into the U.S.
According to reports, many of the asylum seekers are not detained and do not show up at later court hearings regarding their asylum requests.
Note to the Congressman: If you or someone on your staff is reading this, you should contact ‘The Asylumist’ where blogger and immigration lawyer, Jason Dzubow, who, although a supporter of asylum, also has written critically of the legal crooks (the shady lawyers) plying their trade and helping would-be asylum-seekers make up their tall tales. Here he is writing about the subject of this post. His contact information is on his blog.
Families enjoying the last days of summer in Southern Italy must be wondering how that glorious Arab Spring worked out for them! Photo: UK Telegraph
Imagine this scene as beachgoers on the Italian mainland watched as a boatload of mostly Egyptians landed in front of them and the would-be asylum-seekers scampered ashore and into the hills.
Amazing that it’s been 40 years since French writer Jean Raspail envisioned the invasion of Europe by the Third World in his dark novel The Camp of the Saints. How did he know?
From her deckchair on a beach in southern Italy, Gina Bova watched with interest as the small, rickety fishing boat was pushed by the waves closer to the shore. It was a windy Saturday afternoon in August, and the beach was packed with holidaying families, picnicking on tubs of home made pasta and fresh figs.
26-year-old “human rights activist” from Rome says if you have a problem with this you are just “racist.”
But suddenly, as the boat hit the shallow sandbank, the passengers sprung overboard and made a dash to the shore, with police in hot pursuit.
“But there were lots more migrants than police,” said Mrs Bova, 63. “The police grabbed a few of them, but most ran up the beach and off into the hills. There wasn’t a lot anyone could do.”
Her feeling of inevitability is one shared by the Italian authorities – and their counterparts across Europe.
Around 1,000 migrants crossing the Mediterranean from North Africa have landed in Italy in the last week alone, and the waves of migrants show no sign of decreasing.
