Burmese refugee workers strike, claim discrimination and turn to AFL-CIO

I can’t resist saying, I told you so.   Here we have a case from Pennsylvania where recently resettled Burmese refugees have walked off the job with other American workers claiming wage discrimination and unsafe working conditions. 

Don’t get me wrong, I am not disputing their claim, I suspect they do have miserable jobs and miserable living conditions, but who placed them in that situation—some do-gooder far left refugee resettlement agency/employment service in conjunction with the Obama State Department—NOT some evil conservative right-winger!

The article doesn’t tell us who resettled them, but like so many articles of this sort, the reader is left to assume they magically came to be in the vicinity of Pittsburgh on their own!      Here is a list of resettlement agencies in Pennsylvania, one of them brought the Burmese to this place of employment.

This is the story from the AFL-CIO News (what else!):

Aung Oo fled his native Burma with his family to escape the brutality, ethnic violence and repression of that country’s military dictatorship.

After being allowed to legally migrate to the United States under the refugee resettlement program, he faces another kind of oppression―working for an employer that pays him half what he should make and that forces him and his co-workers, both native and foreign, to work in unsafe conditions.

So on Sept. 8, Aung Oo and a U.S.-born employee, Tim Hand, went on strike against W&K Steel on behalf of all the other 35 workers in the plant, located in Rankin, Pa., just outside Pittsburgh. They are still on strike.

[...]

Several W&K workers described their experiences to AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and spoke to a group of international labor leaders at the AFL-CIO Convention in Pittsburgh. The workers also will testify Nov. 13 at a National Workers’ Rights Hearing sponsored by the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance (APALA). The hearing will be at the AFL-CIO headquarters in Washington, D.C.

Talking with Trumka, one refugee told how he and his family of five live in a small two-bedroom apartment supplied by the company. He works an average of 50 hours a week and grosses approximately $25,000 annually, with overtime. Other workers say they are expected to run large presses and shears that cut steel beams, but have no guards to protect against severing fingers and hands.

The American-born workers at W&K don’t fare much better. They say they must endure unsafe working conditions, with workloads increasing and time to safely perform the tasks decreasing. They also say the company’s health plan is unaffordable and the pay is low.

Hand said he is on strike because the way workers, native and foreign, are treated is dangerous.

“… only to find themselves working in unjust conditions here!”   Who lined up the job for them?  Some refugee resettlement agency with the State Department’s help did!  And, they won’t be forced back to Burma—-it is maddening to see this type of distortion.  We don’t send refugees back when they don’t have jobs!  Heck, we hardly send them back if they have committed major crimes.

The Burmese refugees came to the United States to escape oppression, only to find themselves working in unjust conditions here, says Chad Rankin, an organizer with the Ironworkers and a member of the Three Rivers Coalition for Justice, which is assisting the workers.

“The refugees feared challenging the unsafe working environment, shoddy housing and substandard wages because they are afraid they will lose their jobs and be forced back to Burma,” Rankin says.

We are exploited!

Aung Oo says he is on strike because America is supposed to be a land of opportunity and equality.

I stood up and went on strike not only for myself but for all the refugee workers in the shop because our community is suffering. I know that we are exploited.

This is a strategy!  It has Alinsky (Rules for Radicals) written all over it!

I know for most of you its hard to comprehend, but I swear this is a strategy!   Far Left Wing progressives (or whatever you want to call them), bring in poor refugees and place them in horrible working conditions, then in a kind of ‘double-teaming’ the Far Left unions  (like the AFL-CIO and SEIU) ‘organize’ them, sign them up as members, and complain that evil capitalists are exploiting them!

Note to AFL-CIO:  In that upcoming hearing I hope you are honest and identify how these Burmese ‘came to be’ in that place of employment in the first place!  Name the resettlement agency!

Bhutanese refugee critically injured attempting to cross busy road

Here is the story from Seattle: 

SEATTLE – A refugee from Bhutan is recovering at Harborview Medical Center after she was critically injured in a hit-and-run accident.

Local relief agencies say they see at least a few accidents a year involving refugees who may not understand the rules of the road.

They’ve come to this country to start over. That means learning a new culture, a new language, and finding a job. But the hardest part for many of these refugees may just be crossing the street.

[.....]

Sadly these kinds of accidents involving refugees are becoming more common.

Why didn’t she know the “rules of the road?”  Hummm?  There are no cars in the camps where she lived for 17 years!   Shouldn’t the federally contracted resettlement agencies be teaching them how to stay safe.   It appears her resettlement agency is World Relief—”the humanitarian assistance arm of the National Association of Evangelicals.”   You know the NAE is the Christian progressive group that is lobbying for amnesty for illegals.  We mentioned them here recently.

Then get this, she was headed to work in the dark at 5 a.m.

It was 5 a.m. Narmada had just left for work. She was crossing the five-lane road heading toward the bus stop when she was hit.

[....]

Narmada works at a fish processing plant that pays minimum wage but no health benefits.

Bhutanese refugees are having a tough time.  First we learned about the poor young Bhutanese guy also resettled by World Relief who was murdered by a thug in Jacksonville here.  Then there was the little girl killed by being run over in Atlanta, here.  There was also a young Bhutanese woman robbed at gunpoint in another rotten neighborhood, here. And then note the intimidation of other Bhutanese refugees in the Bronx, here.

Yemeni Jewish refugees brought to U.S. in secret mission

Here’s a different kind of refugee story. The U.S. State Department has resettled about 60 Yemini Jews here since August, Miriam Jordan reports in the Wall Street Journal. The story begins:

MONSEY, N.Y. — In his new suburban American home, Shaker Yakub, a Yemeni Jew, folded a large scarf in half, wrapped it around his head and tucked in his spiraling side curls. “This is how I passed for a Muslim,” said the 59-year-old father of seven, improvising a turban that hid his black skullcap.

The ploy enabled Mr. Yakub and half a dozen members of his family to slip undetected out of their native town of Raida, Yemen, and travel to the capital 50 miles to the south. There, they met U.S. State Department officials conducting a clandestine operation to bring some of Yemen’s last remaining Jews to America to escape rising anti-Semitic violence in his country.

In all, about 60 Yemeni Jews have resettled in the U.S. since July; officials say another 100 could still come. There were an estimated 350 in Yemen before the operation began. Some of the remainder may go to Israel and some will stay behind, most in a government enclave.

An unusual story, to say the least. The Yemeni government is protecting the Jews; the persecution is from local Muslims.  The U.S. government initiated the action for geopolitical reasons.

The State Department took something of a risk in removing the Yemenis to the U.S., as it might be criticized for favoritism at a time when refugees elsewhere are clamoring for haven. The U.S. calculated the operation would serve both a humanitarian and a geopolitical purpose. In addition to rescuing a group threatened because of its religion, Washington was seeking to prevent an international embarrassment for an embattled Arab ally.

The Yemeni Jews may be the oldest Jewish community in the Arab world.

Jews are believed to have reached what is now Yemen more than 2,500 years ago as traders for King Solomon. They survived — and at times thrived — over centuries of change, including the spread of Islam across the Arabian Peninsula.

Most Yemeni Jews went to Israel years ago. Israel airlifted 49,000 to their country in 1949 and 1950, leaving only about 2,000. And that raises the question: Why didn’t these people go to Israel, which is experienced at bringing in relatively primitive groups like this, and teaching them to thrive in a modern culture? It might be because the action was initiated by Yemeni Jews in New York.

New York had a community of about 2,000 Yemeni Jews. Yair Yaish, who heads the Yemenite Jewish Federation of America, says he was barraged with “desperate calls from the community here saying we have to do something to get our families out.”

The U.S. Ambassador to Yemen urged Yemeni ministers to facilitate the departure. After initial reluctance — the government preferred to give the Jews safe haven in the capital city — Yemen agreed to issue exit permits and passports.

“It was the embassy’s view, and the Department concurred, that because of their vulnerability, we should consider them for resettlement,” says a spokeswoman for the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration.

Unlike most refugees, these Yemenis have had money raised to help them.

Jewish Federations of North America raised $750,000 to help the effort. Orthodox groups also pledged to pitch in. The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society was tasked with their resettlement.

Maybe there’s a clue here:

In the U.S., the Yemeni refugees are being settled in Monsey, a suburban enclave of ultraorthodox Jews, lined with strip malls that sell black coats and wide-rimmed hats worn by Hasidic men.

The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society’s network established a Monsey office, where case managers arrange housing and disburse food stamps, cash and other refugee benefits to the Yemeni arrivals. Many of the adults, caseworkers say, aren’t yet capable of budgeting, following a schedule or sitting still in a structured classroom to learn English.

It doesn’t sound as if the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society initiated this, so it’s not for the money they receive from the government. Some ultraorthodox Jews (most? I don’t know) are not Zionists: they don’t believe in the State of Israel. Perhaps they were trying to get the Yemenis here to live in their community instead of going to Israel. This story doesn’t compute, and I’d like to find out more about it. Still, one thing about the article is quite routine: the way it ends, which is pretty much the standard kind of ending for refugee stories:

On a recent morning, Mr. Suleiman, a 36-year-old father of three, retrieved an alarm clock that he received with his furnished apartment.

“I still don’t know how to use this,” he said. “The children have been playing with it.”

Hat tip: Janet Levy.

What the heck! Tamils landing in Vancouver, BC

Update October 24th:  One of the 76 has been identified as a member of the Tamil Tigers, here.

Update October 20th:  Excellent opinion piece about what this is going to cost Canada with more information about problems with Tamil immigrants in the past.

I have avoided getting into the whole Sri Lankan Tamil refugee issue, maybe just out of laziness—too weary perhaps to learn a whole new set of issues involving a new group of refugees that I wouldn’t be surprised end up in the US at some point.  It seems we can’t resist collecting more ethnic groups (see Rohingya are here).  Diversity is beautiful and all that!  Right?

But over the weekend a boatload of  illegal aliens, believed to be Tamils, have landed in Vancouver, BC so I feel compelled to no longer avoid the issue.   Before you read further, look at this map of Asia and note that Sri Lanka is on the east coast of India!  Why the heck, if they are just “asylum seekers,” did they need to come that far—there are a few places between Sri Lanka and Canada they could have landed!  And, these boats filled with all men are pretty fishy if you ask me.

From the Daily Mirror:

VANCOUVER, B.C. — Dozens of people, suspected to be Sri Lankans, who were aboard a mystery ship that was seized off Canada’s West Coast and towed into Victoria over the weekend were loaded onto buses on Sunday and ferried to the Vancouver-area for further screening.

The 76 males were found when the RCMP boarded a vessel displaying the name Ocean Lady on Friday near Port Renfrew and took control of the ship.

The Canada Border Services Agency and the RCMP have revealed little else about the group, their origin or how they ended up on a ship sailing towards Canada.

The seizure has prompted speculation the case may involve human smuggling and potential refugee claims, possibly by Tamils fleeing Sri Lanka, but border agency officials confirmed none of that.

“The individuals have been transported to . . . a corrections facility in Vancouver, where the CBSA will continue to examine their admissibility to Canada,” Rob Johnston of the Canada Border Services Agency said in a brief statement Sunday.

“We are acting quickly to meet the immediate personal and health needs of these individuals, and we are processing them in an efficient manner and in accordance with Canadian law.”

On Friday afternoon, a naval vessel approached the Ocean Lady and armed RCMP officers boarded it and took control.

A challenge to the Canadian immigration system indeed!

Perrin, a former adviser to the federal immigration minister, said it’s important that whatever happens, the fate of the group from the Ocean Lady be determined quickly rather than languish in Canada’s slow-moving immigration and refugee system.

“If our immigration and refugee system does not work to quickly offer support to legitimate refugees and deny that protection where the claims are bogus, then it’s not going to help anyone,” said Perrin.

“This case will undoubtedly test Canada’s refugee process yet again, and I expect it will be additional pressure to the federal government.”

Who are the Tamils?

Tamil Tigers are considered one of the most organized, brutal and ruthless terrorist groups in the world.    That is according to Time magazine here.   I am not saying these illegal immigrants are Tamil Tigers, it’s just that when you do a little searching around the internet that is one of the first pieces of information one discovers about the decades long effort to create a Tamil state in Sri Lanka. 

Tamils invented suicide belts and child suicide bombers—great huh!

The Tigers were defeated in May of this year by the Sri Lankan military, thus creating this exodus of Tamils.

Here is more information on the Tamils at wikipedia and a CBC article from May that sheds some light on why Canada might have been an attraction for these boatmen.

A Human Rights Watch report released in March 2006 said the Tamil Tigers were using threats and intimidation tactics to extort money from Sri Lankans living in Canada. Fundraisers, often working in pairs, knocked on the doors of Tamil families to solicit donations.

The fundraisers were quoted as saying they were “collecting for the final war against the Sri Lankan government.” The donation drive targeted Tamil families in Toronto, home to one of the largest Tamil populations outside Sri Lanka.

“Tamils unable to pay say they have been told by LTTE fundraisers to borrow the money, make a contribution on their credit card or even re-mortgage their home,” Human Rights Watch said in a news release.

In April of 2006, the Canadian government added the LTTE to its official list of terrorist organizations for its use of suicide bombers and child soldiers in the conflict. The designation made it a crime to fundraise for the group.

Why we are white refugees

That’s the name for a relatively new coalition (new to me anyway!) of South African whites and their friends and supporters who have responded to two of my posts in the last week.  Those posts, here and here, are about two recent cases of white South Africans seeking asylum in Canada and Ireland respectively claiming persecution in the majority black “rainbow nation.”

By the way, I have written on several occasions in the last year or so about the violent crime mostly generated by South African blacks against immigrants of any color.   These folks at Why we support Huntley’s White Refugee Status want me to understand that the persecution is not just against ‘foreigners’ but also against the longstanding white population of South Africa.

I’m linking this blog and encouraging readers to visit it from time to time to understand a phenomenon that we may see on the rise in coming years, maybe even in European countries first (after South Africa), racism by blacks against whites.   I find it incredible (laughable even) to contemplate what will happen if more and more cases of whites seeking asylum come before Leftwing judges in places like the US.   By the way, note this blog tells of a case already (about 5 years ago) of a white South African family being granted asylum in the US.

Imagine how people like Black Marxist Kamau Karl Franklin would respond if whole groups were setting themselves up to battle blacks with claims that blacks were using “racial profiling” against a white minority.

Iranian Railroad for Queer Refugees

Update:  Be sure to read the comments from Johnny Simpson, the author of the story on the IRQR, and see his comment I have highlighted here.

Homosexuals are persecuted in Muslim countries and I find it annoying that whenever someone writes about gay refugees and asylees wishing to come to the West, the connection to the intolerance of Islam is never made.

An interview with Arsham Parsi published in The Digital Journal.

Arsham Parsi, a gay Iranian activist, fled Iran for his life in 2005. He settled in Canada in 2006 and founded IRQR [Iranian Railroad for Queer Refugees], an NGO that helps LGBTs flee Iran or fight their deportation back to certain death.

In early 2005, Arsham Parsi was engaged in perhaps the most hazardous profession in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Then a 24-year-old native of Shiraz, Iran’s sixth-largest city, Mr. Parsi was working secretly in the city of his birth as a gay activist promoting LGBT rights in the Islamic Republic.

Mr. Parsi says in the interview:

IRQR is working on about 250 Iranian queer asylum cases worldwide at the moment.

[....] 

Though IRQR has no paid staff, we have a great success rate. More than 70% of IRQR’s refugee clients have gained asylum status or are in the middle of the resettlement process. IRQR is currently the only progressive Iranian NGO working on behalf of the Iranian LGBT population around the world.

“Fake refugees!” Immigration fraud charges in Thai refugee camps, some claim UN workers involved

We are resettling tens of thousands of Burmese refugees presently housed in UN run camps in Thailand.  Resettlement agencies in the US are quick to tell us that most are Karen or Chin Christians who fought in the democracy movement in Myanmar (aka Burma), but here is a story that confirms rumors we have been hearing.  Some refugees resettled in the US and elsewhere in the West are not who they claim to be.  One rumor I’ve heard from someone personally knowledgeable about the camps is that Muslims are mixing in with the Christians and moving to the head of the line.

This article apparently first published in the Irrawaddy earlier this month and republished in The Sail, tells us that rampant immigration fraud is occurring in camps.  Although the story does not mention Muslims (or Rohingya), it does tell us there are claims that UNHCR workers are involved in the fraud.

MAE SOT — Since 2005, when resettlement began, a network of brokers has evolved to assist individuals from Burma who wish to enter the refugee camps and resettle in a third country.

The black market business has helped many to escape Burma— but not always the people who fit the criteria and need resettlement the most.

Residents at the three main camps around Mae Sot, who are waiting for resettlement, blame the influx of “fake applicants” for the long delays they endure. Many claim that the “pseudo-refugees” leave the camps first, deferring the resettlement of real applicants

“I see many fake refugees coming into the camp. They pay the brokers and the camp authorities. Then they get resettled first,” said Bo Bo, a resident at Nu Po camp.

He explained how he came to the camp in a large group from Mon State where their land was stolen by Burmese government forces. As farmers, they had been stripped of their entire livelihood. So, with nothing left, they fled to the border.

“We have to wait longer because the brokers help the fake refugees into the camp and they leave first. It’s not fair on us, We remain in the camp with nothing while they continue to run their businesses, often returning to Myawaddy and Rangoon,” he said.

Is “substitution” occurring?  Do UN workers particpate in the fraud?

It has been alleged that the camp authorities are working in cahoots with the brokers and have become immersed in the corruption and fraud that has sprung up around the resettlement process. Residents claim that brokers pay the palat for their clients’ entrance to the camp, allowing people with no valid refugee claim to enter.

[....]

The issue of identity theft has been accepted by resettlement agencies, but people continue to speculate who and what has allowed this problem to occur.

“Substitution is a major problem,” explained a former UNHCR worker who wished to remain anonymous. “No one is sure who is behind it, but it’s very possible that some UNHCR staff members are involved—they have power in the camps and oversee what goes on.

“It’s hard to tackle because everyone is too scared to complain. People in the camps don’t know if they are complaining to the actual people who are involved in the corruption and are worried that everyone will find out,” she said.

[....]

The refugee and migrant worker communities in and around Mae Sot have long accused UNHCR staff of being involved in the broker network. There’s no evidence to prove it, but many say they know people who have paid staff to arrange resettlement.

Some time ago we had a comment from a refugee resettlement agency employee who said he/she had expressed surprise to learn that among the Burmese refugees his agency was resettling, some did not speak either the Karen or the Chin language and he asked his supervisors who they were.  He said the response he got was something along the lines of ‘don’t ask!’

Utah refugee murderer

And, I continue to wonder about the case in Utah (almost a year and a half ago, here) where a Burmese refugee brutally murdered a little Burmese Karen girl in his apartment complex.  I don’t know what happened with the case, but at the time someone reported to me that the murderer was known to the people in the building as someone who came to their camp and got to the head of the line for resettlement.

170 Bhutanese resettled in New York City

The New York Times reported this week about the new lives of Bhutanese/Nepalese refugees resettling in the Bronx.   These 170 resettled by the International Rescue Committee are a tiny fraction of the 60,000 the US will be taking over 5 years.

All of the newcomers are Bhutanese of Nepalese ethnicity who had migrated to Bhutan or were descended from immigrants. In the early 1990s, Bhutan expelled tens of thousands of Nepali Bhutanese, most of them from poor farming families, accusing them of immigrating illegally. The majority ended up in seven refugee camps in Nepal, where they lived in bamboo-and-thatch huts and were cared for by international aid agencies.

Bhutan refused to take them back and Nepal refused to give them citizenship. In 2007, the United States agreed to resettle at least 60,000 of them. The first arrived in early 2008.

There isn’t much in this article that we haven’t reported before about how they came to be in the US, but I was interested in this report on their living conditions.  Early in the article the reporter describes a sparsely furnished apartment.

The place was furnished with a couple of bureaus, several beds that doubled as couches and little else.

The federally contracted resettlement agencies sign a contract with the US State Department and commit to supply certain furnishings.  It sounds like these folks may have not gotten everything they were supposed to get—a common complaint.

Then this really attracted my attention.  The landlord of this 60-unit building is somehow connected to the International Rescue Committee.  What is the connection?  Does anyone know?  One of those rumors we are always trying to nail down is that some landlords have ‘insider’ connections with resettlement agencies.

Through an elaborate process involving consultation between resettlement agencies, about 170 Bhutanese refugees have been placed in New York. The families at 2515 University Avenue were brought by the International Rescue Committee, an agency that has a longstanding relationship with the landlord.

Whatever the connection, the building is not without its dangers.

Mr. Tamang said that one day his elderly parents, who speak no English, were alone in their apartment when they heard loud knocking. Opening the door, the father was confronted by several young men. Although he understood none of the words the men were using, he gathered from their angry gestures that they were looking for a missing bicycle and were demanding to search the apartment.

Mr. Tamang said his father, small and mild-mannered, stepped aside to allow the group to enter, but the men eventually went away, leaving the father shaken.

“They were trying to get in,” Mr. Tamang recalled, surprise and pain in his voice. “We are very honest people.” Mr. Tamang said he would no longer leave his parents without one of their English-speaking children.

We recently told you about a Bhutanese young man killed by an African American thug in a dangerous Jacksonville neighborhood where he had been resettled, here.    It appears that another refugee in this Bronx building writes a blog and that Florida murder is one of the stories he has posted for his community here and back home.   Check out ‘Journalism in Exile’ here.

Note to new readers:  To understand why there are problems in the camps in Nepal and why a journalist might be missing there, you can go to this previous post of mine and learn about the politics of those (Maoists!) who do not want the Bhutanese to be scattered across the world.

UN releases budget: plenty for all, especially Palestinian “refugees”

A column by George Russell, executive editor of Fox News, gives a detailed account of the UN budget and explains all the accounting tricks that make it so difficult to know what the UN actually spends. The headline says the budget is $13.9 billion, but the first paragraph says it is $4.9 billion. It takes most of the article to explain all the additions and tricks that get the total from the lower figure to the higher. Let’s just say that UN bureaucrats are experienced and skilled at presenting one thing to the public and another to each other.

Even the $13.9 figure is low:

“It’s easier to work your way through the U.S. budget — which is immensely bigger — than through the U.N. budget,” observes Brett Shaefer, a U.N. expert at the conservative Heritage Foundation, who has just edited a new book on U.N. reform entitled ConUNdrum: The Limits of the United Nations and the Search for Alternatives. “What you see is the U.N. doing a bit of sleight of hand.”

Nor does the sleight of hand end there. Even the $13.9 billion number does not include the cost of some of the U.N.’s biggest and most sprawling organizations, which submit their own budgets to separate panels of U.N. member states, even as their programs increasingly intertwine and overlap.

Here’s the relevant section on refugees:

Among other things, a substantial portion of the extra-budgetary increase, Ban’s report notes, has gone to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees — $282.2 million — and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNWRA) — $186.9 million.

(As it happens, Ban’s initial budget report for 2008-2009 said very similar things, noting that big increases from hikes in extra-budgetary resources went to UNHCR — $423.3 million — and UNWRA — 122.9 million.)

That is simply obscene. There are more than 12 million refugees worldwide. The number of so-called refugees in Gaza and the West Bank number well under 2 million. And the vast majority of these have nothing in common with real refugees. They live in houses in cities and towns in defined territories governed by their own elected governments. Yet the Palestinian’s refugee agency gets two-thirds of what the real refugee agency gets. And the Palestinians get lots and lots of aid from governments as well.

The United States gave $900 million for Palestinian aid in 2009. As far as I can tell (Ann will correct me if I’m wrong), our government spent about  ”$809 million for basic life-sustaining support and protection of refugees, conflict victims, and internally displaced persons overseas,” and about the same for refugee resettlement in the U.S.  These numbers are almost as slippery as the UN ones — you can’t really find all the spending, either abroad or at home, because it’s often split among different agencies and budget line items. The point is that the Palestinians receive enormous amounts of aid. And as we’ve reported, much of the aid goes right to Hamas, a terrorist group and America’s declared enemy. 

If the UN and the U.S. shifted their money from the Palestinians to real refugees, many more people would have better lives. See more about UNRWA here, and in other articles in our “Israel and refugees” category.

Addendum, September 19: I want to add a link to a great post by David Horowitz on his great new blog, Newsreal.  It’s called The UN Is a Morally Disgusting Institution and a Global Menace.

EU trying to improve its image on refugee resettlement

Seems the European Union is trying to come up with some refugee scheme that won’t serve as a pull-factor that would only encourage more illegal aliens to try to reach Europe.  Good luck with that!

From the Ottawa Citizen:

BRUSSELS – The EU this week unveils plans to boost and coordinate Europe’s response to the waves of immigrants from Africa and the Middle East, seeking to polish its own international image at the same time.

On Wednesday, the European Commission will get the ball rolling with a recommendation for a “joint EU resettlement programme” under which nations would take in more refugees from poor and war-hit third countries.

This scheme, though voluntary, is aimed at cutting the numbers seeking to reach Europe’s shores aboard rickety boats or via unscrupulous people traffickers.

The EU’s executive arm is also trying to ease the pressure on countries such as Malta, Italy and Spain which are in the frontline of the influx and feel that other member states are not sharing enough of the burden.

Then in October, the commission will publish proposals for harmonizing asylum and family reunion criteria through Europe.

I’ll be watching for that “harmonizing” this fall, won’t you?

Also, according to the story the UNHCR is telling the EU what bad boys and girls they are for only taking 6.7% of the world’s refugees last year.  Funny, I thought we were hearing that wonderful “welcoming” European countries like Sweden were taking the lions share.

The EU wants to improve its humanitarian image.

While the European Union is keen to do its best to help refugee-laden countries plus the immigrants themselves, there is also a feeling that at the moment the bloc has an image problem.

“The current relatively low level of involvement of the EU in the resettlement of refugees impacts negatively on the ambition of the EU to play a prominent role in global humanitarian affairs and hence on the influence of the EU in international fora,” the commission said in the resettlement proposals.

Be sure to use our search function for ‘Malta’ and learn how the US has been adding to the “pull factor” by taking some of Malta’s illegal aliens to the US.