OMNI
UNITED STATES,
REFUGEES, ASYLUM NEWSLETTER #5, June 28, 2016
COMPILED BY DICK
BENNETT FOR A CULTURE OF PEACE, JUSTICE, AND ECOLOGY
(#1, August 2, 2014; #2 Nov. 24, 2015;
#3 Dec. 17, 2016; #4 April 7, 2016)
Contents
#4 at end
Contents Refugees
Newsletter #5, June 28, 2016
United
Nations Refugee Data
Welcoming
Refugees
United Nations
UN for Displaced
Women and Children
The Progressive Magazine
US Big Deal:
10,000 [3000] Syrians [and Central Americans]
Resettling
Refugees in Arkansas
Urgent
Need to Protect Refugees Crossing the Mediterranean
By June ’16,
3400 Dead or Missing
Ongoing
Effort to Understand Fear and Hatred of Immigrants and Refugees
The central delusion of Western
civilization
Google Fear of Refugees
OMNI
Climate Change Refugees Newsletter #1
UNITED NATIONS NEWS
6/27/2016
The
United Nations said 65 million people have been displaced by conflicts around
the world, with 41 million considered internally displaced. Refugees will be a
focus of the September meeting of the UN General Assembly.
Full Story:
More Summaries:
Related Summaries
12/18/2015
The
United Nations refugee agency says in a report on the world's forcibly
displaced people in the first half of 2015 that "one in every 122 humans
is today someone who has been forced to flee their homes." The total of
20.2 million refugees worldwide, meanwhile, is the highest since 1992. The UN
today is recognizing International Migrants Day,
about which Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said, "Let us commit to
coherent, comprehensive and human-rights-based responses guided by
international law and standards and a shared resolve to leave no one
behind."
Full Story:
More Summaries:
6/19/2015
In 2014 a
record 59.5 million people were refugees, asylum seekers or displaced due to
conflict, violence or war, says an annual global trends report by the
United Nations refugee agency. That total figure is up 16% from 2013 and 59%
from 2004, says the report, which was released in advance of World Refugee Day
on Saturday.
Full Story:
The Guardian (London), The New York Times (tiered
subscription model), Voice of America, Voice of America
More Summaries:
8/29/2014
More than
3 million Syrians are registered refugees, says the United Nations, with 6.5
million internally displaced. The combined total is nearly one-half of Syria's
population. "The Syrian crisis has become the biggest humanitarian
emergency of our era, yet the world is failing to meet the needs of refugees
and the countries hosting them," says Antonio Guterres, UN High
Commissioner for Refugees.
Full Story:
5/14/2014
Violence and conflict caused a
record 33.3 million people to be internally displaced during 2013, a rise of
4.5 million from 2012, say the United Nations refugee agency and Norwegian
Refugee Council. Most of the increase was due to the ongoing Syrian civil war.
Full Story:
WELCOMING
REFUGEES
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Refugees and displaced
persons: war, hunger, and … - Toole - Cited by 265
The refugee in international law - Goodwin-Gill -
Cited by 1481
Psychological well-being of refugee children - Ajduković - Cited
by 200
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UN FOR DISPLACED WOMEN AND
CHILDREN, Google Search, June 28, 2016
https://www.womensrefugeecommission.o...
Women's
Refugee Commission
The Women's Refugee Commission advocates
vigorously for laws, policies ... the rights of refugee and internally
displaced women, children and young people, ... are currently almost 60 million refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) ...
unstats.un.org/.../Print.aspx?...Refugees...displaced-person...
United
Nations
May 26, 2015 - School attendance for refugee children by sex, age and
level of education. ... Refugee and internally displaced women and girls are less
likely ...
www.unhcr.org/4bbb2a...
United
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
by SH Rimmer - 2010 - Related articles
refugees or IDPs and their relation
to transitional justice. I argue for .... IDP cohorts show a majority of women, children, elderly and people with
disabilities.
www.unhcr.org/.../refug...United
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
Refugee and displaced
women and children. The Economic and Social Council,. Recalling that the majority
of refugees
and displaced persons are women and children...
The
Progressive Welcomes REFUGEES
The
May 2016 number of The Progressive
Magazine foregrounds “Welcoming Refugees” with three articles, the
editorial, and several related items. The
articles are on Obama’s detainees, Syrians in Ohio, and justice for kidnapped
and raped indigenous women in Guatemala (violence in Central America), and the
GOP’s diversity problem. The cover
shows families from around the world walking toward people with open arms.
A Guatemalan court gave kidnapped, raped, enslaved indigenous
Q’eqchi’ women compensation. Lawrence Reichard. "Justice in Guatemala." The Progressive Magazine (May 2016). And two
Army officers were sentenced to prison for WAR CRIMES, another important
first. People are fleeing from Central
America for good reasons.
Dick
Despite
the reasons for fleeing, ICE still deports families.
Who’s
Pounding on the Door?
The Progressive
Foundation , By John Heid
…you only leave
home when home won’t let you stay. no one leaves home unless home chases you fire
under your feet hot blood in your belly it’s not something you ever thought of
doing until the blade burnt threats into your neck...
—Excerpted from
“Home” by Warsan Shire
The sign beside
our front door reads in black and white: “US Border Patrol: Do Not Enter
Without A Lawful Search Warrant.” Who knows how effective it really is? After
all, the majority of house raids are carried out by Immigration Customs
Enforcement (ICE) and most raids happen in the dark of night by its armed,
aggressive agents who jackboot their way into homes forcibly removing mothers
and children alike in handcuffs. The sign presents a minor legal hurdle, if
that. Still, I dusted it off on Christmas morning.
The night
before, the White House had announced that raids to deport Central American
women and children would begin in January. A few days later, Homeland Security
Secretary Jeh Johnson announced: “Our borders are not open to illegal
immigration. If you come here illegally, we will send you back consistent with
our laws and values.” Laws and values? Who’s values and what laws sanction
nighttime raids on families? The policy and strategy of house raids runs
roughshod over the rule of law, let alone ethics. (continued at http://www.nukewatchinfo.org/Quarterly/2016%20Spring/Page%208%20Spring%202016.pdf)
U.S. Struggles With Goal of Admitting 10,000 Syrians [and admitting and
deporting Central Americans]
By JULIE
HIRSCHFELD DAVIS, MAY
30, 2016 [I first read a portion of this
article in the AD-G June 1, 2016.]
Feryal Jabur
and her husband, Nayef Buteh, arrived in November in Detroit with their son,
Arab Buteh, 8. They are among about 2,500 Syrian refugees admitted to the
United States in the past eight months by the Obama administration, which wants
to have 10,000 resettled by October. CreditSalwan Georges for The New York Times
WASHINGTON
— President
Obama invited a Syrian refugee to this year’s State of the Union address, and he has spoken
passionately about embracing refugees as a core American value.
But nearly
eight months into an effort to resettle 10,000 Syrian refugees
in the United States, Mr. Obama’s administration has admitted just over 2,500.
And as his administration prepares for a new round of deportations of Central
Americans, including many women and children pleading for humanitarian
protection, the president is facing intense criticism from allies in Congress
and advocacy groups about his administration’s treatment of migrants.
They say Mr.
Obama’s lofty message about the need to welcome those who come to the United
States seeking protection has not been matched by action. And they warn that
the president, who will host a summit meetingon refugees in September during
the United Nations General Assembly session, risks undercutting his influence
on the issue at a time when American leadership is needed to counteract a
backlash against refugees.
“Given that
we’ve resettled so few refugees and we’re employing a deterrence strategy to
refugees on our Southern border, I wouldn’t think we’d be giving advice to any
other nations about doing better,” said Kevin Appleby, the senior director of
international migration policy at the Center for Migration Studies of New York.
“The world
notices when we talk a good game but then we don’t follow through in our own
backyard,” Mr. Appleby said.
The delay is
frustrating for Mr. Obama, who has made a point of speaking out against
anti-immigrant sentiment both in the United States and abroad, arguing that
Republicans, particularly the party’s presumptive presidential nominee, Donald
J. Trump, are playing on misplaced fears about terrorism.
“We’ve got to
push back against anti-immigrant sentiment in all of its forms, especially by
those who are trying to stoke it just to seek political gain,” Mr. Obama told a
gathering this month of Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders in Washington.
At the White
House, he has instructed his top advisers that they must not fall short of
meeting his goal to admit 10,000 Syrian refugees to the United States by the
fall. But an onerous and complex web of security checks and vetting procedures,
shared among several government agencies, has made the target difficult to
reach.
At the same
time, White House officials concede that the challenging election-year politics
surrounding the issue — 47 House Democrats joined Republicans in November
in voting for legislation to further tighten
the screening process — make it impossible to quickly take in substantially
more Syrians by removing any of the tough vetting procedures.
Mr. Obama “has
been very clear that he expects us to find a way to make this happen consistent
with our security standards,” Amy Pope, a deputy homeland security adviser,
said of reaching the target of 10,000 refugees. “The dynamics within Congress
have certainly made it difficult to lean far forward in terms of refugee
processing, but our obligation is to leave the refugee process in better shape
than we found it.”
[Read the expose of doublethink,
doubletalk, cant, hypocrisy, and fear by Julie Hirschfeld Davis (The New
York Times), "Critics Call President's Syrian Refugee Talk
Hollow," AD-G (June 1, 2016).
The consequence of Obama's and
Congress's multilayered fecklessness (one of many descriptors needed) is their
outrageous failure to embrace the refugees. They should say we can do at least as
well as Canada’s 25,000 and aspire as high as Germany’s 100,000, instead of
that paltry 10,000, as yet not 3000.
–Dick]
Photo
Central
American families in Roma, Tex., in April after crossing into the United States
to seek asylum. CreditJohn Moore/Getty Images
The Central American migrants [read refugees] pouring across the Southern
border pose a different but no less challenging problem. Individuals who enter
the United States illegally do not necessarily qualify as refugees, although a
growing proportion of Central Americans are arriving with claims of asylum,
asserting that they are seeking refuge from violence and mortal threats in
their home countries.
While
administration officials say they are working to address the root causes of the
migration and to set up new programs to extend humanitarian protection to those
who need it, their primary response has been to try to deter Central Americans
from making the dangerous journey to the United States. One method has been to
deport those whose asylum claims have been rejected.
“We have to
control the border, that’s our job, and we have to honor our humanitarian
obligation,” Cecilia Muñoz, the director of Mr. Obama’s Domestic Policy
Council, said in an interview. “The situation in Central America, as terrible
as it is, the legal standard may not be fully up to addressing why people are
leaving.”
Humanitarian
groups have denounced the administration’s approach, arguing that the president
must recognize the Central American migrants as refugees.
“The
administration’s entire foreign policy has been built upon enforcement, not
protection,” said Anna Greene, the director of policy and advocacy, United
States programs, for the International Rescue Committee. “If this
situation was playing out far from our borders, our government would be funding
a humanitarian response and demanding that other countries abide by their
international obligations.”
The criticism
comes as some of Mr. Obama’s allies on Capitol Hill are arguing that he has not
done enough to respond to the Syrian
refugee crisis. Twenty-seven Democrats led by Senator Richard J. Durbin of
Illinois, who was Mr. Obama’s partner in the Senate and maintains close ties
with the president, told him in a letter this month that the administration
“can and should do much more” to accept Syrian refugees.
“The Syrian
situation is the most pressing humanitarian crisis of our time,” Mr. Durbin
said in an interview, “and if we do not respond in a positive and proactive
way, we’re going to have future generations asking, ‘Where were you?’”
The
administration has scrambled to pick up the pace of resettling Syrian refugees,
officials say. The Departments of State and Homeland Security sent a surge of
personnel to Jordan this year to interview about 12,000 refugee applicants
referred by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for
Refugees, and officials have begun processing cases in Beirut,
Lebanon, and Erbil, Iraq. But the numbers remain stubbornly low.
Germany has not said how many refugees it might
accept. In 2015, it registered 447,336 new applicants for asylum, about 25
percent of them Syrians.
A program
begun by the United States in 2014 to allow Central American children with a relative in the country to qualify
as refugees has approved only 300, an administration official said. Secretary
of State John Kerry announced in January that he would create another
initiative to admit as many as 9,000 refugees from El Salvador, Guatemala and
Honduras after processing outside the United States, but the program has not
begun.
Administration
officials argue that Mr. Obama is doing more than most — the United States
admits more refugees over all than any other country and is the largest
contributor to humanitarian relief.
“When you step
back and look at the longer-term picture in terms of the United States’ record
on the U.N. refugee program,” Josh Earnest, Mr. Obama’s press secretary, said
this month, “it’s hard for other countries to criticize.” http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/31/us/politics/as-us-admits-migrants-in-a-trickle-critics-urge-obama-to-pick-up-the-pace.html?_r=0
Resettling Refugees in Arkansas
www.arkansas-catholic.org/.../Canopy-group-will-make-sure-refugees-ar...
Apr 4, 2016 - Clint Schnekloth, stand
with refugee couple Faez Arso and
his wife Ahlam ... The goal is to learn how Canopy can make northwest Arkansas a ...
www.baxterbulletin.com/...refugees-ark.../85192512/
The
Baxter Bulletin
May 31, 2016 - Arkansas took in about 1
out of every 1 million refugees who sought shelter worldwide last year. ... Arkansas sells
home health program for $39M to private firm ..... A local group called Canopy NWA wants to raise
that number despite a ... The group operates in Northwest Arkansas through Catholic
Charities ...
https://refugeeresettlementwatch.wordpress.com/.../catholic-charities-eyei...
May 23, 2016 - Here is news from
the Northwest
Arkansas Democrat
Gazette: Arkansas ... a new group Canopy NWA for the purpose of creating a new refugee ...
https://refugeeresettlementwatch.wordpress.com/2016/05/23/
May 23, 2016 - C .Richard UN/US State
Dept Refugee Admissions Program ... CanopyNWA ... Here is news from
the Northwest
Arkansas Democrat
Gazette:.
URGENT NEED TO SUPPORT REFUGEES TRYING TO CROSS
THE MEDITERRANEAN
“Dead, Missing ’16 Migrants Put at 3,400.” AD-G (June
16, 2016).
More accurately died or missing during the first five months
of 2016. That’s “12 percent above the
2, 780 deaths or disappearances…for the same period in 2015.” For all of 2015, 5,400 died or were reported
missing. Data source: International
Organization for Migration. [The proper
term for fleeing people should be refugees
not migrants. --Dick]
The Ongoing Effort in These
Newsletters to Explain US Fear and Hatred of Immigrants and Refugees
The central delusion of Western
civilization
6-28-16
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11:10 AM (23 hours ago)
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This message was sent
to jbennet@uark.edu by oanderson@libraryofsocialscience.com
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GOOGLE “FEAR OF REFUGEES” for a
wide range of examples and analysis. The Washington Post report on Sweden’s IKEA
attack, for example, reveals how complicated refugee violence
can be, very often not reducible to
labels or stereotypes.
END REFUGEES NEWSLETTER
#2
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