I don’t know how many times I have to say it, but people on the move because they need work and food (or their climate is changing some), or fear crime in their own countries are not legitimate refugees requiring resettlement.
By the internationally understood definition, a legitimate refugee must be able to show a credible fear of persecution—that they will be persecuted in their home country due to their race, religion, political persuasion and so forth.
The No Borders Left has for decades been trying to blur the definition suggesting that everyone moving for any reason is a refugee when the vast majority around the world are economic migrants.
Because the socialist government, in the once-rich Venezuela, has so ruined the country that people are starving is not a reason for refugee resettlement protection, nevertheless, watch for demands for resettlement as the crisis deepens.
Here Bloomberg headlines a story earlier this month with this choice of words:
Venezuelans, Go Home: Xenophobia Haunts Refugees
The story focuses on how Panamanians don’t want (poor and hungry) Venezuelans flooding in. Besides the word ‘refugees,’ you will be hearing that word Xenophobia more often too—-like in South Africa when the black South Africans are violent against their fellow black Africans. LOL! They can’t call it racism.
Xenophobia is the cool word, but what it really means is that humans are tribal, and horror-of-horrors no one wants to admit that!
Here are a few snips from the Bloomberg story with that headline:
Hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans fleeing economic collapse are crowding into cities and makeshift camps in Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador and throughout the region, the largest mass emigration in modern Latin American history. The resulting friction mirrors that in nations from the U.S., where immigration pervades the national debate, to Germany, where war refugees have upended politics, to Italy, where an anti-migrant party made stunning gains Sunday.
In Panama, the sympathy that greeted early arrivals from Venezuela, many wealthy professionals, is giving way to fear and resentment of the poor and desperate. It is evinced by outbreaks of nationalistic insults, harassment and even violence.
[….]
Venezuela’s slump since socialist autocrat President Nicolas Maduro took office in 2013 is the deepest in the Americas in recent history. Oil output, the economy’s mainstay, has plunged as the state producer runs out of money — and as Maduro imprisons its officials and replaces them with military men. Hyperinflation has made the currency worthless, and malnutrition is now endemic.
Almost 2 million Venezuelans are living outside the country.
Here is where they are:
Much more here.
I haven’t been following the Venezuelan issue and wondered if there was a push for Temporary Protected Status for those in the US, and sure enough there was such a push last summer (even Senator Marco Rubio was pushing it), but I can only assume the Trump Admin is not entertaining it.
I have a little-used category on South America. This post will be archived there and I expect more news will be coming from that region of the world as time goes on.
Since Brazil is being overrun by Venezuelans will they be so eager to take in more Syrians?
Endnote: I wonder if the SPLC hate list creators will create a new hate category (in addition to racists and Islamophobes) for xenophobes? For example, do you remember a few weeks ago when Somalis were fighting with African Americans (tribalism!) in a Minneapolis high school? Did the SPLC refer to the Somalis as xenophobes? What a dilemma for the SPLC—two of their favorite protected groups hate on each other!
