Tag: Syrian refugees

Evangelical Lutheran Church in America: all Syrians should have access to resettlement in US

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ECLA) told a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee*** just that earlier this week according to Ekklesia.

They want the US government to find a peaceful diplomatic solution to the Syrian civil war and they say they are sending needed supplies to refugees.  That is all wonderful.  We would expect that of them as a Christian charity.

However, they also told the Senators this:

All vulnerable Syrian refugees should have access to the US resettlement program.

If by “vulnerable” they mean Christians, that is one thing.  But, it never means only the Christians or they would say it!  Thousands (tens of thousands!) of Muslim Syrians are hoping to get the opportunity to move to the US and Western Europe (where we see them breaking in every day!).

Here is the opening of the account at Ekklesia:

Evangelical Lutherans are asking the US government to take additional measures to meet the immediate needs of Syrian refugees.

In an Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) ‘Statement for the Record’ – submitted to a subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee in advance of a 7 January 2014 hearing about the Syrian refugee crisis – Lutherans have said that the “most vulnerable Syrian refugees should be resettled in the United States” and that, in continued partnership with the international community, US diplomatic efforts should be increased to bring about peace in Syria.

Then this (below) doesn’t make any sense to me.  They want to bring refugees to America and elsewhere AND preserve their right to return when peace comes.  Then why not propose this:  have a temporary program where they must all return to Syria when the conflict is over.  But, you know, and I know most will never return.  And, preserving a place for religious minorities is a pipe dream as we see the Middle East increasingly being populated by Muslims (with the tiny Israeli oasis).

According to the statement the ELCA, along with Lutheran partners worldwide, “plan to continue to assist as we are able to serve our neighbour in need. It is our hope that, as the subcommittee continues to deliberate, that the U.S. government will prioritise this significant humanitarian situation and make every reasonable effort to ensure that the most vulnerable Syrian refugees are identified and served in order to alleviate, to some degree, the magnitude of the refugee crisis being experienced by Syria’s neighbours; this while ensuring that resettlement does not diminish [for] Syria’s ethnic and religious communities the opportunity to fully repatriate and flourish once peace comes.”

*** This must be the hearing that inspired Senator Ted Cruz to jump on the bring-them-to-America bandwagon.

By the way, we never did make a category for Syrian refugees (should have!), however, use the tag ‘Syrian refugees’ for our extensive list of posts on the topic.

Even Senator Ted Cruz says to bring in the Syrians! 2015 to be the year!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment
Senator Ted Cruz agrees with Senator Durbin—bring in more Syrians. Maybe he can get open-borders Grover back on his side.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/29/norquist_n_4173289.html

But, he references the Christian Syrians, which demonstrates to me that he (his staff) has no idea how the US State Department’s Refugee Program works.  They will not single out the Christians for protection!

The only way Senator Cruz could redeem his uninformed remark is for him to write specific legislation saying that only Syrian Christians will be admitted to the US—good luck getting that through Congress!

From AP at MyNews3 (hat tip: pungentpeppers):

WASHINGTON (AP) — Democratic and Republican senators say the U.S. should offer a home to more Syrian refugees.

Syria’s civil war is now in its third year. More than two million have fled the Arab country, straining neighboring Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey. Many live under awful conditions.

U.S. aid totals $1.3 billion. But the U.S. has resettled about 100 Syrian refugees since fighting began.

Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin lamented the figure may only rise to a few hundred this year. He criticized overly restrictive U.S. immigration laws for refugees. [The “overly restrictive…laws” ol’ tricky Dick is referring to are the security clearances he would like to see done away with!—ed]

Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, whose father was born in Cuba, also highlighted the crisis, citing the plight of Christian refugees.

U.S. officials cited procedural delays. They said far more refugees could arrive in 2015.

I know we have readers in Texas, you gotta educate Ted!

Watch for it! More Iraqis coming our way?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Still not close to the number of Syrians entering Jordan, but the pace of Iraqis on the run is increasing (again!).

Iraqis have only one place to go—Jordan. Saudi Arabia takes no refugees!

Just when you thought one Muslim civil war was over and we could stop taking their “refugees,” along come the Islamists to fire things up again as we learned this weekend in the news from Iraq.  It reminds me of the game ‘whack-a-mole!’

A BBC story on the resurgence of fighting in Fallujah inserts these paragraphs which doesn’t bode well for the US getting a break from Iraqi refugees—the largest group of refugees we resettled in FY2013—almost 20,000!

BBC:

Meanwhile the conflict appeared to be having an effect on the flow of Iraqi refugees into Jordan.

The UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, said registration had increased fivefold since the beginning of December, though most new refugees came from minority communities in Baghdad.  [Minorities also include Sunni Muslims—ed]

Smaller numbers were coming from Anbar province, where the fighting was taking place, and from the majority Shia community, the UN said.

An average of 415 Iraqi refugees a week are now entering Jordan, compared with 500 Syrians per day, it added.

Saudi Arabia does not allow refugees to come across the border, and if they manage to get in they are deported—even the Muslim ones.

This is our 599th post on Iraqi refugees.

UN: Don’t send asylum seekers back to Bulgaria!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

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.

Here is the story from Fox News:

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 May after 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.

Photo is from this story at Top Conservative News.

 

Polio coming out of Syria with refugees; UN to blame?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment
Syrian refugee kids get polio vaccine in Lebanon
Mohammad Zaatari / AP

Refugees from rebel-held areas most vulnerable.

The New York Times published this opinion piece from medical professionals about the likelihood that unvaccinated Syrians will bring polio with them to neighboring countries.   They place the blame on the UN.

From the NYT (Syria’s raging health crisis):

 Across Syria, coverage went down to 60 percent in 2012, and was as low as 50 percent in the embattled eastern city of Deir al-Zour, a front line between government and rebel forces. The latest W.H.O. figures from 2013 show that the level is now down to 36 percent in largely rebel-held Deir al-Zour Province, although it has remained at 100 percent in government-controlled areas such as the western stronghold of Tartus.

Given these conditions, it was no surprise to medical practitioners that a polio outbreak occurred. The question is why the international community did not prepare better for this eventuality. A disturbing part of the answer is that the United Nations itself has aggravated the situation.

Like other United Nations agencies, the World Health Organization works directly with the Syrian government. The W.H.O.’s Syria office is in the Ministry of Health building in Damascus; many of its staff members are former ministry employees. A recent Reuters report on how the Assad government uses red tape and threats to prevent the provision of aid in opposition areas has raised doubts about the ability of the W.H.O. to act with impartiality.

The W.H.O., working with the Syrian government, excluded Deir al-Zour from a polio vaccination drive that began in December 2012. According to the W.H.O., the province “was not included in the campaign as the majority of its residents have relocated to other areas in the country.” Ten months later, this was the province where polio re-emerged.   [I think the greater likelihood here is that no aid workers wanted to risk their lives with the Islamic militants who don’t want children vaccinated.—ed]

There is no evidence that most of the province’s one million residents had, in fact, migrated. The United Nations World Food Program continued to distribute food there throughout 2012 and 2013 (with occasional interruptions because of worsening security conditions). In December 2012, the agency reached 69,000 people in Deir al-Zour.

Last month, an investigation by the German weekly newsmagazine Der Spiegel charged the W.H.O. with obstructing the testing of polio samples from the Deir al-Zour region. These samples had been presented by an agency working under the aegis of the Syrian National Coalition. It took nearly a month to get the test results — positive for poliomyelitis — and then only from an independent provider in Turkey. By that time, thousands of displaced people had moved within Syria or fled as refugees to neighboring countries, most likely spreading the disease.

There is more, read it all.

The photo is from this story at NBC News from November.  It is worth reading.

Just a reminder, we have a ‘health issues’ category here at RRW with 187 previous posts about refugee health problems.  A couple of recent posts in the category address the growing concern about Syrians with polio.