"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me.
I lift my lamp beside the golden door."
Emma Lazarus
This poem written in 1883 is on a plaque in the museum located under the Statue of Liberty.
The Dutch way...
Dutch plan to expel refugees passes test
Compiled by Our Staff From Dispatches AP, Reuters
Wednesday, February 18, 2004
26,000 may be forced to leave country within next 3 years
THE HAGUE The lower house of the Dutch Parliament on Tuesday approved a bill calling for the forcible expulsion of 26,000 asylum seekers, many of whom have lived in the country for years.
The bill applies to 26,000 people who arrived in the Netherlands before April 1, 2001. At that time, mostly refugees from the former Yugoslavia, Iraq and Afghanistan dominated the list of those applying for asylum. Under the plan, which was proposed by Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende's government, the asylum seekers would be forced to return to their home countries within the next three years, even if they have been living in the Netherlands for a considerable time.
But about 2,300 people whose cases have been judged especially serious will be allowed to stay in the country and will be granted residency papers. The expulsion plans, which have triggered protests and threats of hunger strikes, still have to be endorsed by Parliament's upper house to become law.
Long renowned for their tolerant and open society, the Dutch have become more hostile toward foreigners in recent years and turned out in droves in May 2002 to vote for the anti-immigration party of Pim Fortuyn, just days after he was shot and killed.
But voters later abandoned it in a fresh election months later after infighting prompted the coalition government to collapse.
The number of people seeking asylum in the Netherlands has fallen sharply since 2000, when 43,560 people applied for refugee status. Data from the Central Bureau of Statistics showed that 18,670 people sought asylum in 2002. The Dutch Refugee Council estimated that the number had fallen to 10,000 in 2003.
The lower house of Parliament rejected a series of motions on Tuesday intended to soften the plans by the center-right government, which a spokesman for Immigration and Integration Minister Rita Verdonk said meant the policy had been approved.
"We have given status to about 2,300 asylum seekers and we have said that others have to leave our country," the spokesman said.
He said they would be given eight weeks to leave the Netherlands voluntarily and then would be taken to special departure centers. From there, they would be given assistance to leave voluntarily or be forcibly repatriated after another eight weeks, he said.
Dutch refugee groups protested outside Parliament in The Hague last week against the expulsions, and several failed asylum seekers have threatened to go on hunger strike, one sewing up his eyes and mouth in protest.
While several countries, including Britain and Denmark, have tightened asylum policies, none have gone as far as mass expulsions.
Human Rights Watch, the New York-based group, criticized the government, saying sending people home to countries like Somalia and Afghanistan could put them at risk. In a report on the proposal, the group said the plan signaled "a serious departure from the Netherlands' historic role as a leader in human rights protection in Europe." (AFP, Reuters)
iht.com
....and the American way:
People of Special Interest
The U.S. government agreed to resettle the Somali Bantu only after efforts by the United Nations to move them to Mozambique failed. The 12,000 Somali Bantu are now the only people categorized by the U.S. government as a "special interest" group, making them automatically eligible for asylum.
In the wake of the September 11 attacks, refugee admissions have slowed to a trickle. Only 27,000 refugees out of a quota of 70,000 arrived in the United States last year. Even fewer are expected this year.
Refugee advocates blame government red tape. U.S. government officials were not even allowed to travel to Dadaab to screen refugees because the camp is considered too dangerous. So the Somali Bantu had to be transported to another Kenyan refugee camp, Kakuma, near Sudan.
When the refugees stepped off the bus at Kakuma, after a three-day journey, some of them cheered, thinking they had arrived in the United States.
They soon found that life in Kakuma was not much better than Dadaab.
"The camp is extremely poor," said Erol Kekic, associate director of immigation and refugee programs with the Church World Service, one of the nine U.S. agencies that are settling the Somali Bantu in the United States. "Teenage girls won't even go to school because they have no clothes to wear."
Coming to America
Hassan Lamungu and his family-his wife, their six children and Hassan's 61-year-old mother, Khadija-were among the first 1,400 Somali Bantu approved to travel to the United States.
Before they could leave Kenya, they had to go through a cultural orientation class, studying the skills needed to get through a typical American day. At one point, the class got stuck in a classroom. No one knew how to open the door, because no one had seen a doorknob before.
Since the Lamungus arrived in Phoenix last month, their days have been filled with cultural eye-openers.
When Hassan first visited the grocery store, he couldn't believe its size and selection. "He just stood there, staring," said Abraham Reech of the Lutheran Social Ministry of the Southwest, who is the case worker assigned to the Lamungu family.
The family was equally amazed at the three-bedroom city center apartment they were given. "They were saying, 'Is this all for us?'" said Reech. "They're used to sleeping nine people in one room."
The first night, all nine family members slept on the living room floor. Since then, they've slowly begun using the bedrooms too.
At one point, Hassan had to take one of his sons, Mohammed, to the doctor. As they sat in the waiting room, a man wearing a Mickey Mouse mask and a tail came out to entertain the children, offering Mohammed a balloon.
Both Hassan and Mohammed were terrified. They thought the man in the Mickey Mouse suit was the Devil and had come to take them away.
The Bantu, who will move to some 50 U.S. cities over the next two years, may be the most challenging group of refugees settled in the last two decades. Unlike most refugees to the United States, the Somali Bantu don't have family already in the country.
Family size poses a problem. The Somali Bantu generally have very large families. In one case, refugee workers found that 26 Bantu families with over 300 people were related. "It would be impossible to put them in the same place," said Kekic. "The kids would overrun the school system."
Learning English will be a struggle, since the majority of Bantu are illiterate. Education was out of reach for most Bantu children, who often worked on their parents' farm instead of attending school.
However, resettlement officials are not necessarily worried about how the refugees will adapt, but how the local communities will react. "The Bantus will work hard, pay taxes, and in some cases take jobs that others will not take," said Kekic. "They will contribute to the rich fabric of our society."
So far, the Lamungus have been catching on quickly. Halima, 16, who speaks the best English in the family, is amazed at the fast pace in the United States. "Everyone is always in a hurry," she said. "We get dizzy."
But she's very excited about school, and already knows what profession she wants. "It is my dream to be a doctor," she said.
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