#Refugee status

[girlactionfigure]

jewbelong

The ultimate victimhood.

[eretzyisrael]

by Seth Mandel

From the Times of Israel: “Without coordination with Israel, it will be almost impossible for UNRWA to work in Gaza or the West Bank, since Jerusalem would no longer be issuing entrance permits to those territories or allowing coordination with the IDF. Israel also currently controls access to Gaza from Egypt, with Israeli forces deployed along the border between them.”

The proper response from UNRWA would be: Thank you. For an agency funded by hundreds of millions of dollars of U.S. taxpayer money alone, and which does nothing but perpetuate the conflict so it can continue collecting other people’s hard-earned money and spending it on terrorists, any punishment shy of closure and the prosecution of its directors is a gift.

The UN, of course, is furious. But honestly, who cares? For posterity, here’s the crux of the world body’s complaint: “The vote by the Israeli Parliament (Knesset) against UNRWA this evening is unprecedented and sets a dangerous precedent. It opposes the UN Charter and violates the State of Israel’s obligations under international law.”

An unprecedented precedent-setter! The legislation, we’re told, “will deprive over 650,000 girls and boys there from education.” An education from literal Hamas political leaders? Or accused hostage-takers? Anyway, the “education” provided by UNRWA schools teaches children to venerate terrorists and to hate Jews, which is really no education at all.

Finally, UNRWA says, “Putting an end to UNRWA and its services will not strip the Palestinians from their refugee status. That status is protected by another UN General Assembly resolution until a fair and lasting solution is found to the plight of the Palestinians.”

About that “refugee status.” Palestinian refugees, according to the agency’s own definition, are “persons whose normal place of residence was Palestine during the period 1 June 1946 to 15 May 1948, and who lost both home and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 conflict.”

UNRWA then sneaks in that the descendants of refugees are “eligible” for refugee benefits as well. The common claim that there are millions of Palestinian refugees from 1948 is very obviously false. There were perhaps as many as 750,000 refugees. Palestinians are the only refugee class with their own UN agency. It is no coincidence at all that that agency has inflated the number of refugees even though its own definition of a refugee makes that number impossible.

According to Jonathan Schanzer, COMMENTARY contributing editor and vice president at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, members of Congress have been trying for years to pass legislation that would apply the actual definition of a “refugee” to Palestinians. A 2012 amendment would have required “the secretary of state to report to Congress on how many Palestinians serviced by UNRWA are true refugees from wars past — those who could prove that they were personally displaced. That number is believed to be closer to 30,000 people. This new tally would then become the focus of America’s assistance to UNRWA for refugee issues.”

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

Bulletin/Novus: Nine out of ten foreign-born people have holidayed in their country of birth

By: Alex Alma

[ Note: Auto-translated from Swedish ]

A new survey from Novus shows that over 85 percent of foreign-born people have at some point traveled back to their country of birth for a holiday. Among those who came to Sweden as refugees, the proportion who have holidayed in their old home country is 79 percent.

Holidaying in the country you fled from has become a topic of discussion in European countries in recent years. Bulletin has commissioned Novus to investigate how foreign-born people view repatriation, their children's growing conditions and holidaying in their country of birth. The sample consists of 1050 foreign-born people and the survey was conducted between 18 and 24 August.

The survey shows that only two percent of foreign-born people plan to return to their country of birth in the future, while 16 percent answer maybe. 76 percent believe that they intend to stay, among those who have come to Sweden from a non-European country, the proportion is 81 percent. 53 percent of foreign-born people believe that Sweden is a better country for their children to grow up in compared to their home country, while 9 percent believe that Sweden is worse than their home country. 33 percent answer neither.

Holidays in the country of birth

In the Bulletin/Novus survey, 85 percent of foreign-born people have visited their home country as a holiday destination at some point. Among those who came as family immigrants, 92 percent have traveled back to their country of birth to holiday at least once, while the figure is 79 percent among those who came as refugees. The group of foreign-born people with the highest proportion have never holidayed in their country of birth are the adopted, where 41 per cent have not visited the country of birth since they came to Sweden.

Novus points out that it is in the nature of things that those who participate in their surveys are reasonably well integrated in Sweden, since they answer questions in Swedish. The political conditions in their countries of origin may therefore have changed as time has passed.

But 79 percent is still a very high figure considering that we are talking about those who have come to Sweden and claimed that they are refugees.

In Norway, Aftenposten reported in 2018 that 24 percent of immigrants from Somalia, 40 percent of immigrants from Afghanistan, 55 percent of immigrants from Iran and 71 percent of immigrants from Iraq regularly traveled to their home country. According to Aftenposten, the data had been produced by Norway's statistical authority SSB. A difference with Bulletins/Novus is that the Norwegian figures are the proportion of immigrants who regularly holiday in their home country, while the Swedish figures report those who have travelled at least once.

Most countries allow people who have become citizens to return to their home country on vacation. At the same time, the fact that so many who originally came as refugees are returning indicates that the need for protection no longer applies, or perhaps never was so great.

The regulations for asylum seekers who have not been granted citizenship differ depending on the country. In Sweden, there are no restrictions for refugees who have been granted a permanent residence permit to travel back to their home country. However, refugee status can be revoked if it turns out that the person no longer needs international protection from their home country, and in cases where asylum seekers have been found to provide incorrect information about their need for protection. Other countries have stricter regulations. Switzerland, for example, does not allow asylum seekers to travel back to their home country to see relatives or vacation, except in very special circumstances. If this happens, the foreign-born person loses the right to continue to have a residence permit in Switzerland, according to UNHCR.

In Germany, too, asylum seekers' holiday trips to their home country became a political issue, as holiday trips were considered incompatible with the claim that one is fleeing for one's life and seeking protection in Germany due to danger in the home country. In a statement in 2019, Germany's then Interior Minister Horst Seehofer warned refugees that they would be investigated and stripped of their residence permits when traveling to their home country.

"If someone, a Syrian refugee, regularly vacations in Syria, he cannot honestly claim to be persecuted in Syria," he said, adding "we would have to strip him of his refugee status."

According to DW, for example, in 2016, investigations led to 66 refugees from Iraq and Syria being stripped of their residence permits, and were no longer considered to be in need of protection because they had gone on trips to their home country.

Angela Merkel has also criticized refugees' holiday trips to their home country, and said that it could be interpreted as meaning that the need for protection should be reassessed.

CORRECTION: The article previously stated that Sweden does not have restrictions for those who have been granted asylum to return to their country of origin. The Swedish Migration Agency has pointed out: "That statement is directly incorrect, refugee status can be revoked if it turns out that the person no longer needs international protection from their home country or if they have provided incorrect information about such a need." The text has been corrected.

==

Legal immigration and legitimate asylum/refugee protection are all good things.

But western societies are being taken for a ride by people who are exploiting their empathy. When you claim to be fleeing a toxic ideology but then have no problem wandering back, we're justified in assuming you're not on the side that you claimed to be or that benefits us.

Revoke status and deport.

[allthecanadianpolitics]

Rajvinder Kaur and her husband Randhir Singh are spending what could be their last few weeks in Canada, fighting their imminent deportation back to India.

Their demand for refugee status was rejected despite claims they are the victims of political violence in their native Punjab region in northern India.

"We've been through a nightmare in India, including the arrest and torture of my husband," explains Kaur, a former village chief in a region where ethnic tensions between Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs are common.

Kaur says he was arrested and tortured by internal security police on suspicions he offered shelter to radicalized Sikhs seeking independence in the disputed region that straddles the Indian and Pakistani border.

Full article

Tagging: @politicsofcanada

[usadvlottery]

Embark on a compassionate journey into the heart of the USA Visa Program, where Asylum and Refugee Status serve as beacons of hope for those escaping persecution. Explore the humanitarian facets and legal intricacies of these protective pathways, providing a lifeline to individuals seeking sanctuary on American soil. Uncover the stories of resilience, the rigorous application processes, and the commitment of the United States to offer refuge to those fleeing adversity. Join us in grasping the profound impact of Asylum and Refugee Status, reflecting America's dedication to compassion, justice, and the promise of a fresh start for those in need.

[thecolorsfucked]

canada: we should let in trans refugees from the US!

also canada: *immediately strikes deal w US authorizing them to turn away any asylum seekers either pleases* not the coloreds tho

[lusmaenia]

As my friend said today, "we'll have to send a suggestion to Oxford Dictionary because there is no word in the English language to describe how fucked we are"

[princehendir]

I mean yeah I guess you could infer, based on other chantries depicted in dragon age, that the Kirkwall chantry was hosting women and orphans and refugees and giving charity to the poor. If the game itself didn't look directly into the camera in the first twenty minutes and go "hey this chantry isn't like the other chantries. It has a giant fucking golden statue in the middle of it"

[proudzionist]

[uw-wb]

[lem0nademouth]

so i thought the “Palestinian refugee status extends to descendants of refugees” was a bad faith misinterpretation of refugee policies by people with anti-Arab motivations. i was wrong! that’s literally the policy. more specifically it applies to the patrilineal line. so here’s a completely hypothetical but still technically completely possible scenario according to the UN’s policy on Palestinian refugee status.

Palestinian man obtains refugee status in the US in 1946. Marries Mizrahi Jewish woman, herself a refugee of the Farhud (couldn’t find info on whether she’d be granted refugee status though), they have a son in 1947. Son is Jewish by default, but for the sake of argument let’s say he’s also raised Jewish. Son marries Jewish woman, they have a son in the 1970s and make aliyah. That son marries a Jewish woman and they have a son in the 1990s. That son marries a Jewish woman and they have a son in the 2010s. That son - who is four generations removed from his most recent Palestinian ancestor - is eligible to receive refugee status. He is, in the eyes of Israeli right of return and the strictest beliefs on membership to the tribe, a Jew, born and raised in Israel, and because his paternal great grandfather was a Palestinian refugee, HE is considered a Palestinian refugee.

this particular scenario is entirely made up. it is made to show flaws in this policy. Palestinian suffering is real and it matters — we do not need to artificially inflate statistics in order for that to be true.

[apostate-in-an-alcove]

What gets me about Westerners, is that they'll whine and cry all day long about immigrants and refugees from "third world countries" meanwhile people from those countries wouldn't have to come to the West if the West hadn't exploited, bombed and otherwise destabilized their country.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Liz Skalka at HuffPost:

SPRINGFIELD, Ohio — Joe and Cheryl Backus have plenty of concerns over the influx of immigrants to this central Ohio city. “They’re giving up on our homeless here,” Joe Backus, a retired 80-year-old, said from a loveseat in his living room, referring to the general strain population growth is having on certain sectors of the local government. “They’re ignoring them.” But the spotlight Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio’s own junior U.S. Sen. JD Vance, have put on Springfield and its estimated 60,000 residents hasn’t helped matters — whipping up tensions here to a potentially dangerous degree after the former president baselessly suggested to a live debate audience of 67 million people last week that foreigners here were eating cats and dogs. It’s quickly upended life, leading to bomb threats and general threats of violence that closed schools and government offices.

“I think here in this town, we’re going to have a — well, you wouldn’t call it a civil war — but an uprising,” said Joe Backus, a Democrat who’s in the minority of this red county that went twice for Trump. “Because I think people are going to get tired.” From a recliner across the room, Cheryl Backus, 67, recoiled at the idea of people associating Springfield with the consumption of pets. “Eating the cats and dogs? No, no, no, no, no. We don’t need — no.” The GOP ticket has made this blue-collar city a Midwestern front in the party’s immigration wars, stoking fears about a reign of terror that includes reckless driving and pet-snatching — all as Republicans continue to blame Democrats for a glut of asylum seekers and illegal crossings at the southern border in an election year when Republicans tanked their own border security bill to help Trump.

At the center of it all are people like Steven Pierre, a 32-year-old who emigrated to Springfield from Haiti at age 12. Now he’s a married father of four and works for Amazon. He has a dog, Baba. “It’s sad, because I gotta hear this, and my kids gotta ask questions about it,” said Pierre, who was building a chicken coop in the back of a pristine white home as Baba looked on. “And it’s like, what do I tell them?” “They’re not here to bother anybody,” Pierre said of the Haitians. “They’re here for a goal and to get on with their life. We’re just regular people. We want to be left alone.” Vance, who grew up an hour south of Springfield in a challenged town he popularized in his memoir, acknowledged last week there was no basis for the viral pet smears. But Vance still told his followers to keep sharing the cat memes these rumors helped spawn.

The vice presidential nominee took it a step further Sunday, suggesting he spread the hoax for the greater good of the country. “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do,” he said on CNN. Trump also vowed to begin his planned mass deportation of immigrants in Springfield, where the Haitian population is mostly here legally, and claimed to know nothing about the bomb threats he helped stoke. “I don’t know what happened with the bomb threats. I know that it’s been taken over by illegal migrants, and that’s a terrible thing that happened,” Trump said Saturday. The rhetoric is beginning to grate on members of even their own party.

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, who has a prickly relationship with Trump, went on TV this weekend to decry the drama surrounding Springfield as “unfortunate” and the pet rumors as “garbage.” He praised Springfield’s population of “hard-working” Haitians, who are able to work legally under a special immigration status afforded to immigrants from countries suffering from civil unrest or natural disasters. Springfield’s own GOP mayor, Rob Rue, said he was tired and angry, and wouldn’t reveal whether he’d vote for Trump in November. All the attention has turned Springfield into a tinderbox. Right-leaning content creators are prowling the streets, hunting down evidence of pet-eating for a $5,000 bounty. Elementary and middle schools were closed or evacuated for two consecutive days last week due to threats. City Hall also closed due to security concerns, as several city commissioners found themselves targeted with threats.

[...] After decades of economic decline from factory off-shoring, the legal influx of Haitian immigrants seeking blue-collar work at factories and warehouses in Springfield struck a raw nerve in a community with a significant number of boarded-up buildings and homes, and longtime residents struggling to make ends meet. An estimated 20,000 Haitians have flocked to Springfield since the pandemic, stressing the city’s housing infrastructure, schools and hospitals. “The people who have lived here pay taxes and support Springfield all their life. They cannot get help, because it’s all about [the Haitians],” said Carol Lawson, 65, who lives a block over from Pierre. Lawson, who said she does not work and collects disability, repeated an oft-cited complaint about the Haitians: That they drive nicer cars than everyone else and appear to be the beneficiaries of generous government support — even though Temporary Protected Status, while it affords a pathway to getting a Social Security card and eventual citizenship, does not automatically confer public benefits like food stamps.

Over the last week or so, the residents of Springfield, Ohio have been unwillingly thrusted into the spotlight thanks to JD Vance, Donald Trump, and the right-wing media’s amplification of the false and racist insinuation that Haitian migrants are eating pets.

Tensions have risen in the town as a result of the debunked and unsubstantiated rumor.

[sistersorrow]

4chan's /lgbt/ board is an actual hellpit and the closest thing to a cognitohazard that mankind has conceived of, but one thing it has over a bunch of other online trans spaces I'm in is that I can generally talk about my problems without people defaulting to treating me as delusional