Tag: Syrian refugees

Sweden now whining about Syrian refugee burden

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

They want other European countries to step up!

Remember last fall that the big show-offs in Sweden opened their doors to any and all Syrian asylum seekers who could get there (the announcement came when Obama was visiting)!

Now, according to the Wall Street Journal they can’t handle it and like typical liberals are whining that others need to do their share.  Emphasis below is mine.

Last September, Sweden became the only European Union country to offer permanent residence to Syrians fleeing their devastated homeland. Now, strained by its own generosity, it is losing patience with what is calls a lack of solidarity from its European brethren.

Crybaby Tobias Billstrom wants to punish European countries for not pulling their weight!

“Nine member states in the EU today receive 90% of all asylum applications annually but those nine states are starting to, well, become fed up,” Tobias Billström, Sweden’s immigration minister, said in an interview. He’s asking the European Commission to punish countries for failing to pull their weight in receiving asylum seekers in accordance with the bloc’s laws.

[….]

Since Sweden’s announcement, immigration has spiked and is now at its highest levels since the wars in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. This year, the country’s migration experts expect 59,000 people to seek asylum there, with 23,000 of them seen coming from Syria.

Meanwhile, Italian and Greek authorities estimate more than 20,000 Syrians crossed their borders into the EU last year. Of those, a mere 1,100 applied for asylum there, according to European Commission data.

It is a strain on Sweden, especially since there is a housing shortage which pushes the price up for everyone.  I guess the Swedish economic geniuses didn’t see this coming!

For Sweden, the growing influx of asylum seekers strains authorities tasked with providing education, child care and other support. One major challenge is securing housing for asylum seekers as Sweden faces a housing shortage.

LOL!  The ‘refugee star’ of the story paid 16,000 Euros (about $22,000) to people smugglers to get him to Sweden, and he said this:

“What I like about Sweden’s approach is that you get support during the first years.”  [Welfare from day one of course—ed]

Sweden with its open door policy on immigration and its world-renowned social safety net has been our ‘canary in a coal mine’ for years.  Go here for our complete archive.

Saudi-fathered children living in Syrian refugee camps

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

According to this story in Arab News, Saudi men went to Syria in recent years (for what?), fathered children and then abandoned the new wife and child.  Those ‘wives’ and children (who are Saudi nationals) are living in refugee camps.

Kids in Jordanian refugee camp. Which ones are Saudis?
http://www.unmultimedia.org/radio/english/2013/09/nearly-two-million-syrian-children-have-dropped-out-of-school-unicef/

By the way, we have reported many times recently that Saudi Arabia takes no refugees and is in fact busy with un-diversifying (is that a word?) itself, here.  No multiculturalism for S.A.!

Arab News (emphasis is mine):

Local human rights organizations are demanding that government agencies track down the Saudi biological fathers of children born to Syrian women who have since become refugees in Jordan and Turkey in the wake of the Syrian civil war.

These citizens-turned-refugees have no documents to prove that they are Saudi nationals.

“Many Saudis visited Syria before the Syrian revolution and married Syrian women, with whom they had children. These children were abandoned by their fathers and now face uncertain future after the war in Syria,” said Mohammed Al-Turkawi, a member of the Syrian opposition living in Jeddah.

“These families should contact the Saudi embassies in Jordan and Turkey to find solutions.”
“There are no accurate figures on the number of undocumented Saudis living in Syrian refugee camps in Jordan and Turkey,” Al-Turkawi told Arab News. A local newspaper reported that the Saudi Embassy in Amman confirmed that it was taking care of local Saudi refugees.

According to the report, the embassy pays monthly sums to 26 Saudi families in Jordan and ensures that they are sheltered. The report also states that they are looking for their fathers with the cooperation of several Kingdom-based organizations.

Yet many of these men deny ever having been married.

“It is a shame to know that there are Saudis out there who have been abandoned by their fathers and who have no choice but to live with their mothers at these refugee camps,” said Suhaila Zain Al-Abdeen, a female Saudi member of the National Society for Human Rights (NSHR).

This little nugget at the end was interesting.  After all the belly-aching from surrounding countries to which the Syrians have fled, there is an economic bright side (who knew!).

While some view the Syrian refugee crisis as a burden on the country’s infrastructure and scarce natural resources, such as water, many Jordanian commercial and industrial representatives regard the refugee phenomenon as the driving force behind new local economic opportunities.

Brit who heads International Rescue Committee: Let’s send some more Syrians to San Diego

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment
Hillary and David Miliband: Hillary’s big crush!
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/nov/17/hillary-clinton-david-miliband-interview

So, they can be with their kind of people!

David Miliband, former UK foreign secretary and recently installed head of one of the nine major federal refugee contractors told the news media in a visit to San Diego this week that 12,000 Syrians should be admitted to the US in 2014.  (Keep in mind that the UK has recently reluctantly agreed to take a whopping 500!).

From KPBS (be sure to watch the clip!).  Emphasis is mine:

This week, the United Nations officials said Syrians are about to replace Afghans as the world’s largest refugee population.

[…..]

The IRC is working to bring Syrian refugees to the United States.

You have to follow the link in the following excerpt to find out that the IRC is lobbying for 12,000.  Remember they are paid by the head for each “refugee” they place in your city or town, and conveniently they have a resettlement office in San Diego!

He said, the IRC is calling on the U.S. to increase the number of refugees ***allowed to resettle in here, and if that happens, some may wind up in San Diego.

Believe me it won’t be only the women, the orphans or the Christians going to San Diego.  And, if the civil war should end in months or a year, they won’t go home to Syria either—this is permanent resettlement!

“If I hope, when the U.S. government decides to increase that number and allow some Syrians, the most needy cases, the kids who’ve have lost their parents, the women who’ve lost their husbands, this would be an ideal place for them to rebuild their lives,” he said.

He said the small Syrian community and larger Middle Eastern community here could give Syrian refugees some sense of of roots and a bit of stability that can allow them to make a contribution to society.

I’m wondering if those San Diego Somali refugee terrorists recently sent to prison were “clients” of the IRC?

Not a peep in any interview about persecuted Christians in Syria.

***Be sure to read the NPR interview where an IRC representative says 12,000 is their magic number this year, but expresses puzzlement as to why the US might be dragging its feet.  NPR interviewer asks:

Would you be at all concerned that letting in thousands of refugees from this particular civil war will also allow in bad actors?

Even NPR gets it (if the refugee importers pretend not to)!

We have an ever-expanding archive on David Miliband, here.

For more ambitious readers, see this 2010 post and follow the links to a National War College Report by State Department employee David Robinson who explained in 2000 how the International Rescue Committee (IRC) (others!) pressured the State Department (through Al Gore!) into taking more than 10,000 Kosovar refugees who didn’t want to come here and who were later flown back to their home country at taxpayer expense.   The IRC apparently needed the warm bodies to resettle because those bodies came with a per head resettlement payment to the IRC, and I feel sure they were never asked to return the $$$.

Syrians, helped by Mexico, coming across the US border, seek asylum

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Asylum fraud is becoming the immigration crisis of the day and I believe historians will look back at this period as the tipping point—-America governed by soft leaders who allowed our great nation to be dragged into the third world through a complete breakdown of our borders.  Don’t let it happen.  Please speak up and inform your friends and neighbors about what is happening, and tell those jokes in Washington to grow a pair!

Immigration attorney: “In the next six months to a year, you will see even more Syrians crossing into the United States from Mexico.”  Photo: Sandy Huffaker for The Wall Street Journal

Here is the latest asylum (fraud!) news from reporter Miriam Jordan at the Wall Street Journal (emphasis is mine):

In 2012, after being imprisoned and beaten, a Syrian dissident named Mohammad fled to neighboring Lebanon, where he applied for and was denied a U.S. tourist visa. Intent on rebuilding his life with family in California, he flew to Mexico City and then Tijuana. There, he crossed the U.S. border illegally and handed himself over to a customs official, seeking asylum. 

Last month, the U.S. granted him that status. In a year, he will be eligible to apply for permanent U.S. residency.

With the three-year-old Syrian conflict raging on, and U.S. embassies in the Middle East increasingly denying tourist visas, more Syrians are arriving in Mexico on tourist visas and using the country as a gateway to possible U.S. asylum. A Mexican embassy spokesman “had no comment on this matter.”

Some say the phenomenon underscores the need for a more coordinated international response to the Syrian crisis, while others worry it may offer too easy a path to U.S. residence for potential terrorists, given al Qaeda’s rising presence in Syria.

The Department of Homeland Security in fiscal 2013 recorded 118 Syrian “credible-fear” referrals such as Mohammad’s, up from five in fiscal 2010. In these cases, migrants declare fear of harm if returned to their home country and may stay in the U.S. while pursuing asylum.

By the way, I came across this article last night blaming the government shut-down on the backlog of immigration court cases and not on the huge spike in asylum claims as illegal aliens increasingly come across our borders and ask for asylum.

Jordan continued:

At the beginning of the war, it was easier for Syrians to secure U.S. visas. [That explains this Muslim with the eight kids—ed]. Those who entered the U.S. in recent years with visas to study, work or tour also have been increasingly claiming asylum. In fiscal 2013, such applications numbered 1,335, up from 36 in 2010.But as the conflict has flared, the U.S. has denied a higher proportion of Syrian visa requests: 46% in fiscal 2013 compared with 28% three years earlier. Many don’t qualify because they can’t prove they will return home after visiting the U.S. Thus, hundreds of Syrians, including women and children, have begun to show up at the U.S.-Mexico border prepared to seek asylum.

There is more, read it all!

As we previously reported, only a tiny fraction of asylum seekers are detained, the vast majority are released into your towns and cities.

Lawmakers, though, specifically cited a newly uncovered Immigration and Customs Enforcement document that showed thousands of asylum seekers were released while awaiting a decision.

The document, obtained and reviewed by FoxNews.com, showed that in fiscal 2012, just 2,508 of the more than 24,000 asylum seekers were kept in custody.

When we first started writing RRW in 2007, it was all about the refugee resettlement side of the Refugee Act of 1980, but gradually over the years the open borders agitators have been working overtime to build up the asylum side of the law.  I noted the change here in January 2011 (three years ago!!!) when I looked back at the 30th anniversary “celebration” of the Refugee Act I had attended the previous year (where there was much giddy enthusiasm for the asylum process).   How did poor downtrodden Somali teens get halfway around the world and arrive at our Mexican border seeking asylum—who helps them, where did they get the money, I asked.  Who now is helping the Syrians?

UN wants 100,000 Syrians resettled in West in 2015-2016

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

For this year (FY2014) the UNHCR is looking for commitments for 30,000.

So far, the only semi-official number we hear for the US is 2,000 for 2014, here.  Although keep in mind that the refugee resettlement contractors recently testified in the Senate that they wanted 12,000-15,000 in 2014.  The US Conference of Catholic Bishops was pushing for the highest number—15,000!  Remember that the contractors are paid by the head by the US State Department for each refugee they resettle.  And, keep in mind that none of the resettlement contractors have said a word about protecting Syrian Christians as a priority!

UN spokesman McNorton: We expect our goal for 2014 to be met by a “significant number of submissions to the United States” [the UN does not think 2,000 is “significant” enough!—ed]
On Friday, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees set a benchmark for 2015-2016.  From Reuters:

GENEVA, February 21 |(UNHCR) – The UN refugee agency on Friday called upon countries around the world to make multi-annual commitments towards a goal of providing resettlement and other forms of admission for an additional 100,000 Syrian refugees in 2015 and 2016.

UNHCR had earlier called upon states to offer resettlement or other forms of admission to 30,000 of the most vulnerable Syrian refugees by the end of 2014. To date, 20 countries have offered more than 18,800*** places towards this goal. “UNHCR remains confident that the 30,000 goal will be met by the end of the year through a significant number of submissions to the United States,” spokesman Dan McNorton told journalists in Geneva.

UNHCR anticipates that, in the coming years, there will be increasing numbers of vulnerable Syrian refugees who will be in need of resettlement, relocation or other forms of humanitarian admission. “In light of the growing needs of the Syrian refugee population, the goal of 30,000 in 2014 represents only the first benchmark in securing solutions for this group,” said McNorton.

***Note that they are short by just about the same numbers the US resettlement contractors are lobbying for!

To give you some idea of how many other countries are taking, go here for a graph we posted earlier this month (Germany’s death wish!).

Concerned readers should contact your US Senators and Members of Congress to express your views on this next wave of mostly Muslims (chosen by the UN) and proposed for resettlement to your cities and towns.  With Iraq, the open-borders contractors and lobbyists could argue that we caused the problems for Iraqis, not so this time!  Ask your representatives why the Syrian civil war is our problem!