Venezuelans are not refugees, but you will be told they are!

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.
 

Venezualans into Brazil
Venezuelans pour into Brazil.  Photo: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/brazil-declares-state-of-emergency-on-venezuela-border-over-migrant-influx-52fnsb7wg

 
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:
 
venezuelans to US
 
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!

Costa Rica: Are US taxpayers supporting HIAS office?

“What we’re doing here is unprecedented in the current system.”

(Kathya Araya)

 

HIAS dropped the word Hebrew from its name a few years back.

The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, one of nine federal refugee contracting agencies (largely funded by you), has a new office in Costa Rica (opened in February of this year!).
Normally I wouldn’t have noticed this item on their website but because Costa Rica is somehow part of that Australian “dumb deal” it piqued my interest.
Here and here are news items on HIAS’s website about the new office.
And, here is one of several posts of mine on the Australia deal where we will take up to 1,250 illegal alien boat people (mostly from Muslim countries) that Australia is holding in detention centers, and ‘refugees’ in Costa Rica will be shipped to Australia in exchange.
I’ll ask again, what do we get in this deal because illegal migrants and asylum seekers in Costa Rica are not our problem—or are they now that HIAS is there processing people?
Most of those in Costa Rica are economic migrants and others (some running from crime) who are really not persecuted people legitimately in need of refugee protection.
It sure looks to me like our US Department of State is getting out of control!
Is HIAS paying for this “legal” office with private charitable donations? Or, is this ‘program’ one more little gift the Obama Administration left for you—the US taxpayer! And, if Costa Rica’s immigration issues are of concern to the US government, why do we need middlemen NGOs there who are not accountable to taxpaying voters?
Here is my archive on the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society.
Since Trump/Tillerson have not yet chosen anyone to rein-in the bureaucrats at the DOS, I’m starting to wonder if the contractors, like HIAS, are running the show there!

Uruguay: Syrian refugees have (already) worn out their welcome

They complain that the government isn’t giving them enough stuff and they want to move on to more ‘welcoming’ countries.

We’ve reported on trouble in Uruguay previously here.
Now this!

merhi-alshebli-r
Merhi Alshebli brought his family of 15 children to Uruguay, but now wants out. He doused himself with gasoline in protest (never lit the match however). Photo: http://concordiadirecto.com/el-refugiado-sirio-merhi-alshebli-protesta-porque-el-campo-que-le-cedieron-en-salto-es-de-arena-y-no-es-un-area-cultivable.html

From the Associated Press (at ABC NEWS):

When Uruguay announced last year that it would be taking in five families fleeing Syria’s devastating civil war, residents of this small town pulled together and lobbied to host one.

Then in November, locals welcomed a newly arrived Merhi Alshebli, his wife and their 15 children with food and seeds to plant vegetables. People in Juan Lacaze, a coastal city of fishermen and paper factory workers in southwestern Uruguay, wanted to do their part to help a country where more than 200,000 have been killed in the fighting.

But after months of the Syrians’ complaints about their living conditions and demands to be sent to another country, many Uruguayans in this town and elsewhere have come to see the refugees more as rude, ungrateful guests. This month the 51-year-old Alshebli shocked locals by dousing himself in gasoline in protest, furthering Uruguayans’ indignation and sense that this South American nation’s humanitarian gesture has gone off the rails.

There is much more!  Read the whole shocking story.  LOL! Perhaps the most shocking part is that the mainstream media is reporting on the ungrateful Syrians!
Uruguay is re-thinking its previous promise to resettle more Syrians.
What happens in America when thousands and thousands of mostly Muslim Syrians get here and the resettlement contractors and the taxpayers get overwhelmed?

Former Gitmo prisoners we sent to Uruguay as refugees demanding that the US give them money

This was one more case of the Obama Administration re-writing (perverting!) refugee law when they declared that Guantanamo Bay prisoners were really “refugees” to be resettled by the South American country of Uruguay.  We told you about the outrage here in December (see who in the Obama Administration made the call).

Now, the bloom is off the rose for Uruguay (the ‘refugees’ do not want to work) and the former prisoners expect you, the American taxpayer, to help them out financially.

From AP via USA Today (emphasis is mine):

MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay (AP) — Four freed Guantanamo Bay detainees protested in front of the U.S. Embassy on Friday night, saying they were angry about being asked to leave a Uruguayan hotel that had been housing them and demanding Washington help them financially.

Former Gitmo prisoners (aka ‘refugees’) pray outside US Embassy in Montevideo.

Adel bin Muhammad El Ouerghi said he had been asked to leave the Metro hotel, a budget inn where he and some of the other five former detainees periodically stayed.

The four Syrians, one Tunisian and one Palestinian have been housed in a four-bedroom house in Uruguay’s capital since the government took them in after their release in December. But “we are too many to stay in the house,” said El Ouerghi, who spent much of the last few months at the hotel.

As a humanitarian gesture, the men were invited to resettle in this poor South American country of 3.3 million people by President Jose Mujica, who has since left office.

They allegedly had ties to al-Qaida and spent 12 years in the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. But they were never charged, and the U.S. released them because officials decided they were no longer a threat.

El Ouerghi said the men wanted to speak with the U.S. ambassador to Uruguay. He said the United States should help the men financially, an argument he and a few of the other former detainees have made repeatedly.

Citizens of Uruguay are disgusted!

While the men’s arrival to Uruguay was greeted by fanfare, the smiles and posing for pictures quickly turned to complaints and controversy. By their own admission, they have struggled to adjust, and on several occasions have complained about not getting enough help from Uruguay’s government.

In early February, a controversy erupted when people in Uruguay learned that the men had been offered jobs but did not take them.

More here.

Endnote:  Uruguay got a lot of publicity last year when the government said it would take in Syrian refugees, but it appears they got the first batch and said no more Muslim men!

Paraguay: Iraqis and Syrians using fake Israeli passports caught entering the country

Because refugee problems are now cropping up in South America we have recently added a category for that continent, see previous stories hereHere is one post from February with a map of the routes being taken through South America and then to Europe.

This news is not new, we have learned that fake passports are the way many, especially Syrians these days, are illegally entering other countries.  Paraguay is worried that Israeli interests in their country could be attacked.

Here is the latest from Ynet News:

The Paraguay Police has arrested 11 Arab travelers since early March, most of whom citizens of Syria and Iraq, who were using forged Israeli passports to enter the country.

Syrians are traveling to Paraguay in order to get into Europe!

Paraguay’s Ambassador to Israel, Max Haber Neumann, updated the Israeli Foreign Ministry about the arrests.

Paraguay wants to expel the arrested travelers, but is having difficulties doing so as some of them are minors.

Customs officers in Paraguay were instructed to be more vigilant after similar cases of Israeli passport forgery were discovered in Spain, Uruguay, Ecuador and Colombia in February and in light of Israel Foreign Ministry warnings that terrorist groups might attempt to attack Israeli and Jewish targets in South America.

There were at least two attempts to attack Israel’s Embassy in Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay, in recent months. In one of the cases, in early January, a small explosion was heard outside the Embassy. A bomb squad was called to the scene to neutralize the explosive device.

Paraguay Ambassador Haber Neumann said that it was his understanding the 11 arrested travelers were refugees from the Middle East who arrived in Latin America as a stop on their way to Spain or other destinations in the European Union.

In September of last year, two Iranians were arrested in Kenya on their way to Brussels with fake Israeli passports.

According to this story, Israeli passports are easy to fake, guess that means Israel better do something about that!