And, as we reported earlier, the US will be taking 50,000 (actually the resettlement is already underway).
1,811 (from DR Congo) have arrived so far this fiscal year. Check out the numbers herefor all nationalities arriving in 2013. Somalis are approaching the 5,000 mark as of June 30th.
New Congolese refugees waiting for space at new UN transit center. UNHCR photo
BUNDIBUGYO, Uganda, July 18 (UNHCR) – More than 14,000 Congolese refugees have moved voluntarily to a transit centre in western Uganda’s Bundibugyo district but tension is rising between locals and thousands of people still camped in a school closer to the border with Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
The transit centre was opened last Sunday by the government and its partners, including UNHCR, to help cope with an influx last week of almost 70,000 Congolese refugees fleeing fighting across the border in North Kivu province between the Allied Democratic Forces, a Ugandan rebel group, and the DRC armed forces. The centre is 30 kms from the border.
UNHCR staff in Bundibugyo said that 14,372 people had registered at the centre by early Thursday afternoon. They included at least 60 unaccompanied minors, mostly male…
Tensions building in the local community.
A bigger group of 20,000 to 30,000 peopleremain camped in and around Butogo Primary School located near the border. Many of these people wish to remain close to the border so that it will be easy to check on their homes and crops during daylight hours, but their presence has started causing tensions with the local community.
So, the “rebel” group—Allied Democratic Forces (“puritanical” Muslims, but the UN can’t say the word)—are on the move, and we will get the refugees to add to our unemployed and needy people in your city. I’ll bet you this project ends up involving a lot more than the proposed 50,000.
Update July 17th: 7,500 Germans have been killed by aliens since the Berlin Wall came down—hmmm! Guess it’s xenophobic to mention that. See TheMuslim Issue for the news.
Of course they are—how else does one explain that the German people are getting anxious about the extreme numbers of asylum seekers pouring into Germany when jobs are scarce and they fear crime from the mostly Muslim migrants coming in from war zones.
Charming “refugees” demand that Germany take them in! At Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate in 2012.
Here is a story from Deutsche Welle explaining that residents of Berlin and also of former East Germany have had enough. (LOL! How many times in this story is the word ‘xenophobe’ used?)
Residents of Berlin are fighting a new home for asylum seekers with xenophobic rhetoric, while refugees in Munich are staging hunger strikes. Both sides of the asylum debate are becoming more vocal in their protests.
Some residents in Hellersdorf, a district in Berlin, have been increasingly worried of late: about home and property values, about peace on their streets, and about the well-being of their children.
They don’t want asylum seekers to end up living in their neighborhood, and their arguments against a new residence for asylum seekers are becoming increasingly xenophobic.A few weeks ago, residents of another Berlin neighborhood collected signatures against establishing emergency accommodation for refugees. Such buildings are desperately needed, because the number of refugees in need of help in the German capital has increased since last year and now stands at around 6,000.
A study says that a quarter of Germans (20 million) harbor deep dark secret xenophobia:
It is well known that in Germany, asylum policy is a touchy subject and xenophobia is on the rise. According to a study conducted in 2012, more than a quarter of Germany’s 80 million people harbor xenophobic tendencies.
Maybe they just have concerns for the economic well-being of their families:
He [Social scientist who conducted the study] said more than half of Germans in the former East Germany wish that foreigners would get sent home, because jobs are hard to come by there.
Asylum seekers are getting more aggressive (Gee, maybe that is why the xenophobics are so upset):
But it’s not just the Germans whose resentment about the country’s asylum policies is growing. The other side is also developing a harsher tone. Refugees are raising public awareness about limitations on their personal freedoms, and protest initiatives are becoming bolder.
There are just too many invaders demanding a piece of the German pie!
Mesovic believes the explanation for the tense situation is clear: Germany has underestimated the number of asylum seekers.
“Plans were made for a very low number of asylum seekers on the basis of historic data,” he said. “These were accurate as of four years ago. Back then, there were about 30,000 to 40,000 asylum seekers per year. But this year it could climb to 90,000.”
Then this morning there is a story from All Africa reporting that Egypt is turning back Syrian refugees, but funny thing is that there is not a word about Egyptians being xenopobes!
The United Nations refugee agency said today it is concerned about reports of a number of flights carrying Syrians being turned back from airports in Egypt, and reiterated its call on all Governments to admit and protect Syrians who have fled the conflict in their country.
According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the Syrian nationals that were turned back were returned to where their flights originated, including Damascus and Latakia.
This follows a decision on 8 July imposing new visa requirements, under which Syrian nationals are required to apply for a visa and security clearance prior to their travel to Egypt. UNHCR noted that the Egyptian Embassy in Damascus does not currently have the capacity to issue visas.
The Egyptians are traditionally hospitable (not so those German xenophobes):
“I appeal to the Egyptian authorities, as I have to all other Governments in the world, to admit and protect all Syrians seeking refuge in their country,” High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres said.
“I fully understand the challenges faced by Egypt at the present moment. But the traditional hospitality of the Egyptian people should not be denied to Syrians trying to fleethe most devastating and dangerous conflict in the world today,” he added.
I guess you can tell I get annoyed by the double standard when a largely “unwelcome” Muslim country is treated with kid-gloves while largely Christian and Western countries are filled with a bunch of haters if they don’t want their country to collapse.
A day at the beach in Mogadishu! Finally showing some gumption, Somalis have returned to take their country back from the Islamic terrorists—al-Shabaab. UN Photo
UN: A moment of hope for Somalia!
In light of our recent stories from Malta, why should Malta have to put up with Somalis arriving by the boatload from Libya?
They need to go home to Somalia and fight to keep their own country and re-build it! Not go on welfare in Europe and America!
And, why is the US still resettling thousands of Somalis to America this year alone? (4,921 as of May 31st) It is insanity straight up!
Nairobi – Tens of thousands of Somali refugees have returned home as security in their homeland has improved, the United Nations said on Wednesday, saying it would support a further 60 000 refugees who are ready to go back.
[….]
At least 20 000 Somalis have returned from neighbouring countries this year, the UN refugee agency UNHCR said, although it warned that some returns may be temporary. The UNHCR has also helped more than 16 000 internally displaced Somalis get home this year.
[….]
“This is a moment of hope for Somalia,” UNHCR head Antonio Guterres said.
So how about my suggestion, here, to Malta and the EU, buy them plane tickets and give them some seed money and fly them to Mogadishu! Or, would that make too much sense? LOL! Can you just see the NGOs squawking over that idea!
US readers, you must tell your elected officials to tell the US State Department to turn off the Somali spigot!
This is one of many enduring legacies Obama’s excellent adventure in Libya has left us. Actually I should say Obama and his Humanitarian Vulcans—Clinton, Rice and Power—left us! Tens of thousands of refugees were created when we helped oust Qaddafi. Many were workers who had gone to Libya to work in the oilfields. So much for Samantha Power’s “responsibility to protect!”
In truth, perhaps it was the Al-Qaeda rebels she and the girls were protecting. Just think what a danger Samantha Power will be if confirmed as Obama’s UN Ambassador!
Samantha Power’s refugees at Choucha camp on the Libyan-Tunisian border at the heyday of US involvement in the Libyan conflict. Photo: Renaud Philippe.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees was eager to close this camp, but the remaining refugees are demanding resettlement to third countries—that means the US, Canada, or Australia, because those three are really resettling the bulk of the world’s refugees
TRIPOLI — Some 650 refugees have refused to leave the Choucha refugee camp at the Tunisian-Libyan border, which officially closed Sunday.
The United Nations refugee agency UNHCR announced the closure of the camp in March but many refugees have stayed on, despite water and electricity supplies being cut off. A Chadian resident, Mussa Ibrahim, confirmed that the camp is still open and continuing to house around 650 residents.
“The camp may be closed theoretically,” he said: “UNHCR said they closed it for administrative reasons, but they did it for media hype.”
He also told the Libya Herald that basic services have been reduced over the last week. The water, he said, was stopped, forcing refugees to fetch water from neighboring areas in Ben Guerdane.
Ibrahim said that the camp’s residents, especially asylum seekers who have had their applications rejected, are waiting for a satisfactory solution.
The Tunisian government’s earlier decision to integrate remaining camp residents into Tunisian society, or return them to Libya, was rejected by some refugees, who asked UNHCR to reconsider their demand to be resettled in Western countries.These individuals are apparently mainly from sub-Saharan Africa, Palestine and Iraq. The Tunisian Ministry of Social Affairs, said Ibrahim, has started taking fingerprints from refugees, on a voluntary basis, in a move to grant some six-month residence permits. “This would also give us free movement in Tunisia,” Ibrahim explained, adding: “Until then, we cannot leave the camp.” However, his permit, which he needs to support his family, has not yet materialized.
By the way, we have been resettling refugees from the Libyan upheaval with the theory that we broke it, we fix it. Now we are moving on to doing the same thing in Syria! At my most cynical moments, I think the goal of all of our involvements in the Middle East is the creation of more refugees.
There appears to be a new push on to pressure the Bhutanese government to take back some of the people of Nepalese origin that they booted out of the country more than two decades ago.
In its infinite wisdom, the UNHCR with the blessing of the US (and the resettlement contractors hankering for a new batch of clients), which took the largest number of Bhutanese/Nepalese refugees over the last five years, dispersed the camp populations living in Nepal to the “four winds.” It seems a little late for a renewed effort to pressure world governments to in turn pressure Bhutan, but some 10,000 or so refugees who refused resettlement, have renewed their clamor to “go home.”
Here is a short piece, hat tip Ralph. And, below is a link to a New York Timesopinion piece from Friday on the same topic.
DAMAK, June 29: The Bhutanese refugees residing in different camps in eastern Nepal have asked the Nepal government to keep their repatriation mission open.
Some 10,000 refugees have expressed their willingness to return to their home in Bhutan.
Forced into resettlement by donor agencies. Who could that be I wonder?
In the memo, the Committee has claimed that different donor agencies have forced the Bhutanese refugees for third country resettlement.
*****
Journalist and filmmaker Vidhyapati Mishra
Read also, ‘Bhutan is no Shangri-La'(but we want to go back anyway!) written by Vidhyapati Mishra at the New York Times.
Mishra describes how his family lived in Bhutan for several generations but had to leave everything behind when the government of Bhutan decided two decades ago to expel the people of Nepalese origin.
Frankly, to this day, I don’t know why it became the responsibility of the US to wholesale remove these peoplefrom that part of the world and get them meatpacking jobs scattered across America (or worse a job at 7-Eleven in St. Louis). If we had to get involved could we not have used our enormous economic pressure on these two countries—Bhutan and Nepal—to work this out among themselves!
Here is some of what Mr. Mishra says (obviously still holding out hope that they can go back to Bhutan) Hat tip: Joanne:
We were among the 90,000 Bhutanese refugees who flooded shelters in eastern Nepal at that time. The population grew to more than 115,000, as people kept trickling in and children were born. My parents, a brother and I have called these shelters our home for 21 years.
The original seven refugee camps have shrunk to two, but almost 36,000 people continue to live in misery here. More than 80,000 have been resettled in other countries; 68,000, including my wife, most of my siblings and extended family, have moved to the United States. I expect to be able to join them very soon.
Helping us, though, is not the same as helping our cause: every refugee who is resettled eases the pressure on the Bhutanese government to take responsibility for, and eventually welcome back, the population it displaced.
Bhutan became a constitutional monarchy in 2008, two years after King Jigme Singye Wangchuck abdicated the throne to his eldest son. To live up to its promises of democracy and its reputation as a purveyor of happiness, the government must extend full civil rights — including citizenship and the right to vote — to all of the Lhotshampa still in its borders. It also must allow those Lhotshampa it expelled to return.
Instead, Bhutan has steadfastly ignored our demands; multiple rounds of talks between Bhutan and Nepal over the status of the Lhotshampa have yielded little progress.
The international community can no longer turn a blind eye to this calamity. The United Nations must insist that Bhutan, a member state, honor its convention on refugees, including respecting our right to return.
Other countries bear responsibility, too.
The UN still needs to explain why they have a double standard. How can the Palestinians still demand a right to return (after six decades), but the Bhutanese were scattered around the world after only two.
