Acta Non Verba
Ask your average near-bright intellectual and he’ll agree with the statement that President Bush had “made a big deal of” human rights in North Korea. Yet while Bush’s administration has managed to admit about 50 North Korean refugees, Europe has let in 1,400.
Well said. We need to press the new administration not to allow Europe to shame us with that factual statistic – the time has come to encourage mass defections from the present DPRK regime and provide these defectors with safe habor here in the USA, still the greatest democracy that has ever lived.
I supported Pres. Bush but his immigration policies and record is pathetic. Less than 1,000 Iraqis have been allowed into the US while our regime change operations there have displaced more than 2 million including over a half million who have left the country altogether.
I am outraged over the quantity of North Korean and Iraqi refugees allowed in the US. It is a sin. Awful.
The USA has too many refugees/illegals as it is! Let someone else take them for a change!
I agree with KCJ – what makes our country great is the fact that it has a steady influx of immigrants, bringing in new ideas, fresh perspectives and frankly a renewed appreciation for living in one of the greatest democratic societies in the world today. I can’t tell you how many times I have been touched by them and I would encourage people like seosan08 to look beyond the scapegoatism and xenophobia to embrace new immigrants, help them and in turn, allow them to help us understand the world in which we live.
News from the Canadian front: North Koreans are slowly becoming accepted as refugees here in Canada after a somewhat bumpy start. The Canadian Immigration and Refugee Board, which handles asylum requests, were turning down North Korean applications because it was originally determined that North Koreans would be categorically accepted in a third country, ie. South Korea. After a Request for Information where the South Korean embassy in Ottawa denied this determination, it looks like the North Koreans are going to get positive results at the Board. From what we can determine here on the ground, there are about a hundred North Koreans now in Toronto alone – not sure about Vancouver or Montreal.
BTW, speaking of North Koreans, does anyone know what happened to Daily NK? I found it a rather informative site for NK news – is it just me or is the site not loading anymore?
The Daily NK has been working fine for me. http://www.dailynk.com/english. I read it at least every other day. Thanks for the update on the other issues. Could you give any estimate on how many North Koreans are living in Canada?
Correction: http://www.dailynk.com/english/
The url is picky.
Thanks Joshua – but still not working for me, either through Firefox or Internet Explorer, either the Korean or the English sites. Hmmm… weird.
I’d have to tell you that any estimate is very very rough – there are some North Koreans who have simply “disappeared” after arriving in Canada as well. The educated guess is that they’ve moved on to other cities, although the paranoid (and North Koreans are understandably quite paranoid) fear foul play.
We’ve heard the major transit points along the “underground railroad” are Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver – not surprising as they are the three busiest Canadian international airports. Our contact in Vancouver says that there were at least fifty North Koreans in Vancouver as of mid-2008 – for Montreal, we’ve heard there are North Koreans there but never an exact figure. The problem is that our organization (www.hanvoice.org) has made a conscious decision not to get too interested in how the refugees get here (human trafficking laws in Canada are unfortunately humanitarian-blind) and so apart from refugee testimony, we are generally in the dark about this.
And yep, we’re in the process of revamping our website. 😉
I agree that because of the North Korean situation, they should be among the first in line to be allowed to immigrate to the U.S. It is a shame that more haven’t been let in.