Free Republic

Hundreds of Afghan refugees are staying at a northern Virginia campus as they await relocation to a more permanent destination. After arriving at Dulles International Airport Friday night, refugees spent the night at Northern Virginia Community College in Annandale, news outlets report. A college spokesperson said the refugees will stay at the campus anywhere from a few hours to a few days. Many refugees are destined for Fort McCoy in Wisconsin, Fort Bliss in Texas and Fort Lee in Virginia. The Fairfax County Office of Emergency Management set up more than 500 cots in ballrooms and community rooms. As word...

Maryland Governor Larry Hogan said Sunday that his state will try to accept as many Afghan refugees as it can while the United States evacuates Americans and their Afghan allies from the country. “I was the first governor in America who came forward and said that we wanted to reach out and take more of these special immigrant visas for the people who have been our allies that we have committed to,” said Hogan, a Republican. CBS News’ Take on the nation.

Former President George W. Bush on Monday urged President Joe Biden to “cut the red tape” and allow for the swift evacuation of Afghan refugees following the Taliban’s takeover of the country. Responding to the fall of Afghanistan’s US-backed government, Bush said the Afghans “at the greatest risk are the same ones who have been on the forefront of progress inside their nation.” The costly US-led war in Afghanistan began just shy of 20 years ago after the 9/11 attack while Bush was president. Bush, in his Monday statement, noted Biden has promised to evacuate the Afghans who assisted Americans...

As more Afghan provinces fall into the hands of the Taliban, a debate on migration is underway in the European Union, with Germany and the Netherlands stopping deportations of failed Afghan asylum-seekers, and other countries asking for deportations to continue. Minister of State at Germany’s Foreign Ministry, Niels Annen, told Germany’s Funke Mediengruppe Thursday that it was “naïve” to believe that the advance of the Taliban and the violence in Afghanistan would have no consequences for migration policy “We will feel the effects in Germany as well, even if not in the coming weeks,” Annen said. An EU official on...

For decades, America led the world in humanitarian policies by creating a sanctuary for the oppressed, admitting more refugees annually than all other countries combined. That reputation eroded during Donald Trump’s presidency as he cut the number of refugees allowed in by more than 80%, and Canada replaced the U.S. as No. 1 for resettling people fleeing war and persecution. Trump has arguably changed the immigration system more than any U.S. president, thrilling supporters with an “America first” message and infuriating critics who call his signature domestic issue insular, xenophobic and even racist. The pain from a dismantling of the...

Canada, a nation of not quite 37 million people, wants to add more than 1 million immigrants through 2021. "Thanks in great part to the newcomers we have welcomed throughout our history, Canada has developed into the strong and vibrant country we all enjoy," Ahmed Hussen, minister of immigration, refugees and citizenship, wrote in an annual report to Parliament. "Immigrants and their descendants have made immeasurable contributions to Canada, and our future success depends on continuing to ensure they are welcomed and well-integrated." Hussen, now in his early 40s, fled to Canada from war-torn Somalia when he was 16. A...

British interior minister Sajid Javid has said the fast-growing number of would-be immigrants crossing the English Channel from France in dinghies is a “major incident.” Nearly 70 people have been intercepted in the past three days as they try to reach England by crossing one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes. […] The Member of Parliament for Dover on England’s southeast coast, Charlie Elphicke, has called for more government funding to deal with the arrivals and the Home Office said Javid has asked border officials to look at options for bringing in extra patrol ships. …

Europe must get a handle on immigration to combat a growing threat from rightwing populists, Hillary Clinton has said, calling on the continent’s leaders to send out a stronger signal showing they are “not going to be able to continue provide refuge and support”. In an interview with the Guardian, the former Democratic presidential candidate praised the generosity shown by the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, but suggested immigration was inflaming voters and contributed to the election of Donald Trump and Britain’s vote to leave the EU. “I think Europe needs to get a handle on migration because that is what...

Dozens of migrants clashed with Bosnian police Wednesday while trying to cross from Bosnia into Croatia and enter the European Union. Shouting “pen borders!” the migrants surged through one Bosnian police cordon before being stopped by another outside a border crossing in northwestern Bosnia. Several people appeared to have been hurt amid the skirmishes as the migrants refused to leave and blocked traffic. “We are refugees,” one man from Iran said. “We want to leave this country.” Croatian police said they put up a fence on their side of the border to block the migrants from entering. They said two...

Hundreds of teens identified as Somalis rampaged through the Valley Fair Amusement Park in Shakopee, Minnesota. It was the first night of the ValleyScare activities. Police said, “The number of individuals running throughout the park increased substantially and was difficult to control.” They had to shut the park down early as the numbers of teens in the mob grew to hundreds. People described them fighting, terrorizing children, pushing children, knocking over Halloween props. One victim said the media doesn’t want this out because three Muslims are running for office.

For most of Germany’s postwar history, the conservative CDU/CSU and the Social Democrats (SPD) were the undisputed twin poles of German politics. Known as Volksparteien, literally “popular parties,” these big-tent associations of interests have led every government since 1949. They were the German equivalents of the Republicans and Democrats in the United States or Tories and Labour in the United Kingdom. But their popularity is eroding alarmingly. In the words of venerable German political scientist Herfried Münkler, the Volksparteien look increasingly like “last year’s models.” The most recent Deutschlandtrend survey, published on September 20, put support for the CDU/CSU at...

28-year-old Syrian national Ibrahim Ali, who came to Canada as a refugee, has been accused of murdering a 13-year-old girl in Burnaby, British Colombia, whose body was found last year. The Syrian refugee, who came to Canada through a private sponsorship programme, was arrested last week by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) after a large-scale investigation into the death of the 13-year-old, who was found in Burnaby’s Central Park in July 2017. In court, the 28-year-old was charged with first-degree murder. He required an Arabic interpreter, with proceedings delayed as the court waited for the interpreter to arrive.

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier has declared Germany “is a nation of immigrants and will remain so”, asserting: “There are no half or whole Germans, no biological or ‘new’ Germans”. Speaking at Berlin’s Bellevue Palace, where a small group of people with Turkish heritage had been invited to share their views on immigration, integration, and xenophobia in Europe, the German president strongly denounced “exclusion of and discrimination against people with foreign roots”. “A permanent suspicion of immigrants, no matter how long they have lived in Germany, is not only harmful for the individuals involved but it is a cause of shame...

A row over how to deal with child marriage among immigrants has inflamed political debate ahead of a general election in Sweden, where migration continues to divide public opinion and the far right is riding high in the polls. A tug-of-war between the ruling Social Democrat-Green Party coalition and the opposition over the government’s role in managing or eradicating the practice — which predominantly affects young girls, and in some cases boys, from immigrant backgrounds — is emblematic of a broader struggle to find a balance between efforts to integrate a large number of new immigrants and preserve a Swedish...

BERLIN (AFP) - The three parties in Chancellor Angela Merkel's shaky coalition government on Thursday rallied around a tougher policy on migration and asylum aimed at placating conservative allies. At the end of a month-long dispute, Merkel's three-party coalition agreed to a compromise under which the number of asylum-seekers in the country will be reduced. The parties in power -- Merkel's centre-right CDU, the hardline conservative Bavarian CSU ally and the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) -- agreed on a "reorganisation of asylum policy" in Germany, SPD chief Andrea Nahles said after a summit meeting in Berlin, adding that it was...

Donald Trump took to Twitter on Monday to fire off two tweets about the “tenuous” state of politics in Germany. Not for the first time, he showed his ignorance of developments in German society. Trump waded into the political crisis facing Chancellor Angela Merkel, declaring that the German people were “turning against their leadership” over immigration. “We don’t want what is happening with immigration in Europe to happen with us!” he said in a pair of tweets. “The people of Germany are turning against their leadership as migration is rocking the already tenuous Berlin coalition,” he said, adding that “crime...

Chancellor Angela Merkel said Germany “urgently needed” extra affordable housing and used her weekly video podcast Saturday to reel off a series of steps — outlined last February as her coalition took shape — to get them built before the next federal elections in 2021. Simultaneously Saturday, the board chairman of Germany’s BA Labor Agency, Detlef Scheele, told Stuttgart-based SWR public broadcasting that affordable housing had become the “burning topic of our times.” More and more people were seeking second jobs to supplement their incomes, especially in Germany’s urban hubs, said Scheele Last year alone, Berlin property prices soared 20.5...

No-go zones are growing rapidly in the suburbs of all of France's main cities. Shanty towns built by illegal migrants from Africa and the Middle East have sprung up in parts of Marseilles and Paris in the last few years. Islamization is everywhere. In hundreds of mosques, imams deliver fiery anti-Western speeches. Churches are vandalized. The number of rapes is rapidly increasing. Groups of veiled women roam the streets and insult the "immodest", unveiled, women. Macron's most important project since he was elected has been the creation of new Islamic institutions destined to adapt France to Islam -- not to...

The person who stabbed five people in Paris on Saturday night, killing one, yelled the Arabic phrase "Allahu Akbar," meaning "God is great," during the attack, city prosecutor François Molins told reporters at the scene. Four people were wounded during the Saturday night knife attack in the touristy 2nd arrondissement, or district, of Paris. Two of the victims were gravely wounded and two others were lightly injured, police said The attacker, who French President Emmanuel Macron called a terrorist, is dead, according to police. The media wing of ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement published online. The...

Last year there were 65,000 people whose lack of travel documents prevented them being deported from Germany. Now, though, people who don’t cooperate in obtaining a new passport will be punished. In 2014, John O. (not his real name) received a letter informing him that his application for asylum had been rejected. John O., then 41, is from Nigeria. At that point, he had already been living in Germany for three years. The immigration authority wants to deport John O. — but it can’t, because he has no passport. He says it was stolen. There’s no way of sending someone...