SAN DIEGO: Rising Tide Of Immigrant Children Tug At Heartstrings - But ?

SAN DIEGO (AP) — Americans are wary of granting refugee status to children crossing the U.S. border to flee strife-torn countries in Central America, and most in an Associated Press-GfK poll say the U.S. does not have a moral obligation to accept asylum seekers generally.

The new poll found 53 percent of Americans believe the United States has no moral obligation to offer asylum to people who escape violence or political persecution, while 44 percent believe it has that responsibility.

And more than half, 52 percent, say children who say they are fleeing gang violence in Central America should not be treated as refugees, while 46 percent say they should.

The responses expose a partisan rift, with 70 percent of Republicans saying Central American children should not be treated as refugees compared with 62 percent of Democrats who believe they should. On whether the United States has an obligation to accept people fleeing violence or political persecution, 66 percent of Republicans say it does not and 57 percent of Democrats say it does.

Jerry Benzie, a 27-year-old Republican from Ebensburg, Pennsylvania, 90 miles east of Pittsburgh, was initially sympathetic to the plight of children seeking shelter in the U.S. from violence at home. But his views changed as he grew convinced Central American governments could do more to slow the tide of northbound immigrants, and thought Mexico wasn't doing enough to prevent them from passing through that country on their way to the U.S.

Benzie said he worries the children will strain public schools and other services.

"How do you differentiate between the children who are truly fleeing violence and dangers and those whose parents may just see an opportunity for them in our country and are pushing them to go?" said Benzie, who works in the information technology industry. "It's going to take a toll on our economy because it's going to lead to higher taxes. Our citizens are going to suffer."

To qualify for asylum, applicants must prove they suffered persecution or have a well-founded fear of persecution on grounds of race, religion, nationality, membership in a social group or political opinion. A refugee must demonstrate the same but, unlike an asylum seeker, seeks protection while still outside the United States.

Americans who are closely following news about the wave of unaccompanied children crossing the border illegally in South Texas are less receptive, with only four in ten saying they should qualify as refugees. Among those who say they aren't paying as much attention, roughly half believe they should be treated as refugees.

White House officials said last week they were considering a pilot program to grant refugee status to young people from Honduras. They suggested the plan, which could be expanded to Guatemala and El Salvador, involves screening youths in their home countries.

President Barack Obama played down the idea after meeting in Washington last week with his Central American counterparts, saying it would affect only a small number of people.

The poll was taken as Congress neared its August recess amid wide disagreement over how to address what Obama has called a humanitarian crisis. The Border Patrol detained more than 57,000 unaccompanied children from October through June, the vast majority from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.

Americans with children under 18 are evenly split on whether the children crossing the border should be treated as refugees, with 49 percent taking each side. Those without young children tilt against refugee status, 53 percent to 45 percent.

Paula Stapleton, who is raising boys, ages 9 and 3, in Clinton, Arkansas, supports asylum or refugee status for children, but not for their parents or adults who come alone. She worries that children who are turned back to their home countries will end up in gangs, making the problem worse.

"The United States is a big enough country to take in children and give them a chance," said Stapleton, 33, a political independent. "It can't take everybody, but we can take their children."

Among Hispanics, 66 percent say children crossing the border who claim they are fleeing gang violence should be treated as refugees. Slightly fewer, 54 percent, said they see a moral obligation to accept people fleeing violence or persecution.

Mercedes Brand, a naturalized U.S. citizen in suburban New Jersey who emigrated from Peru 45 years ago, is in the minority among Hispanics. The youngest of her four U.S.-born children is saddled with college debt and she worries that the United States can't take care of its own, let alone newcomers.

"This country is built with immigrants, but those immigrants who came from Europe and all over the world didn't demand all the things that they are demanding now," said Brand, a 60-year-old Democrat who works as a Spanish interpreter for a health care provider. "When my grandchildren are old enough to collect Social Security, there may not be enough money. There may not be enough for me."

The AP-GfK Poll was conducted July 24-28 using KnowledgePanel, GfK's probability-based online panel designed to be representative of the U.S. population. It involved online interviews with 1,044 adults, and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.4 percentage points for all respondents. The margin of sampling error is larger for subgroups.

Respondents were first selected randomly using phone or mail survey methods, and were later interviewed online. People selected for KnowledgePanel who didn't otherwise have access to the Internet were provided with the ability to access the Internet at no cost to them.

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Agiesta reported from Washington.

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Online:

AP-GfK Poll: http://www.ap-gfkpoll.com

Dublin: Irish Politicians Side-Stepping Refugee Crisis In Syria

Éamonn Meehan

Europe has utterly failed to grasp the gravity of the Syrian exodus, and Lebanon is paying the price, says Éamonn Meehan

AMID the analysis of the recent local and European elections, the decline of immigration as an election issue in Ireland has gone unremarked upon.

Until relatively recently, questions about the growing influx of non-Irish workers were causing politicians to shuffle nervously in their boots on the campaign trail. The general election year of 2007 saw approximately 151,000 people migrate into Ireland. The vast majority of these people were EU citizens, while 3,985 were asylum seekers.

Today, it is questions about emigration, not immigration, that Irish politicians try to side-step.

Between 2000 and 2009, an average of 46,000 more people moved to Ireland than left its shores each year. Since 2009, we have seen a complete reversal of this trend, with an average of 30,000 more people leaving than arriving each year. As well as declining numbers of Europeans moving to Ireland, there has also been a sharp fall in the number of people seeking asylum here.

The number of people seeking asylum in Ireland peaked in 2002 at 11,634. Last year, just 946 applications were made.

Globally, however, the pattern of forced human migration shows no such signs of slowing down. As we mark World Refugee Day today, there are approximately 11m refugees around the world, a further million asylum seekers and an estimated 21m people displaced within their own national borders.

In stark contrast to the decline in asylum seekers coming to Ireland, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has noted that recent increases in the global refugee population are at a level not seen since the early 1990s, when conflicts in Rwanda and the former Yugoslav states forced millions of people from their homes.

A major driver behind this increase has been the war in Syria. An estimated 2.5m Syrians have been forced to flee into neighbouring countries, with a further 6.5m displaced within Syria.

A common misconception is that Europe bears the brunt of the global refugee crisis. While the Refugee Convention was designed in the aftermath of the Second World War to deal with the displacement of people within Europe, the vast majority — about 80% — of today’s refugees are hosted and cared for in developing countries.

Of the top 10 refugee-hosting countries, three are in Africa, five are in Asia and just one — Germany — is in the EU. Pakistan and Iran host almost one quarter of the world’s refugees.

When analysed on a per capita basis, the eight countries with the most refugees per capita are all African or Asian. Jordan is home to 47 refugees for every 1,000 inhabitants.

The Syrian war is an example of how the refugee burden can unfairly fall on a handful of states. Lebanon alone is hosting a million Syrians. Contrast this with the 76,373 asylum applications from Syrians across all 28 EU states. Indeed, Lebanon’s Syrian population is roughly two and a half times the total asylum claims made in all 28 EU states last year.

Syria’s nearest neighbours simply cannot cope. When we think of the national debate caused in Ireland by the arrival of 11,634 asylum seekers in 2007, how can we expect Lebanon — a country the size of Munster — to cope with one million Syrians fleeing the horrors of war?

Europe has utterly failed to grasp the seriousness of the Syrian refugee crisis. It is a shameful fact that more than half of all EU countries have failed to accept any refugees from the crisis at all. Such inaction cannot be justified morally when faced with the worst humanitarian crisis of our time.

In February, the Government announced that it would accept 90 Syrians this year. Others, including the UK, France and Austria, will accept 500 each, while Germany has agreed to accept 30,000.

Lebanon, meanwhile, is buckling under the weight of this crisis. Price increases and housing shortages, both a direct consequence of the sudden population explosion, are fuelling social and religious tensions. People in Lebanon warn that the country is at breaking point.

Leaving aside the humanitarian imperative, it is in Europe’s own interest to ensure stability in Lebanon. Ultimately this is best served by securing peace in Syria. In the short term, however, all EU states should ease the burden on Lebanon and the surrounding countries by offering safety and security to Syrian families.

- Éamonn Meehan is the executive director of Trócaire, official overseas development agency of the Catholic Church in Ireland

Brownsville, Texas: "Urgent Humanitarian Situation" Arises As Thousands Of Immigrant Children Seek A Better Life

BROWNSVILLE, Texas (AP) — Children's faces pressed against glass. Hundreds of young boys and girls covered with aluminum-foil-like blankets next to chain link fences topped with barbed wire. The pungent odor that comes with keeping people in close quarters. These were the scenes Wednesday from tours of crowded Border Patrol stations in South Texas and Arizona, where thousands of immigrants are being held before they are transferred to other shelters around the country. (FOLLOW LINK TO ORIGINAL NEWS ITEM).

www.news.yahoo.com/sights-smells-holding-cells-immigrant-kids-224624692.html 

It was the first time the media was given access to the facilities since President Barack Obama called the more than 47,000 unaccompanied children who have entered the country illegally this budget year an "urgent humanitarian situation."

The surge in minors, mostly from Central America, has overwhelmed the U.S. government. It also prompted Texas officials Wednesday night to order a surge in state law enforcement resources to the border in an effort to help stop the influx. Details of that surge are still to come.

The children pose a particular challenge because the law requires that they be transferred from Border Patrol stations like the ones in Texas and Arizona to the Department of Health and Human Services within 72 hours.

From there, they are sent to shelters for several weeks as the government tries to reunite them with family in the U.S. The network of some 100 shelters around the country has been over capacity for months and is now caring for more than 7,600 children.

View gallery

Two young girls watch a World Cup soccer match on a television from their holding area where hundred …

The tours were a shift from previous weeks when the government refused to provide basic details about the location of the facilities. But the tours also came with restrictions, such as no interaction with children and no on-the-record conversations with employees.

Inside the Fort Brown station in Brownsville, dozens of young boys were separated from dozens of young girls, with many lying under blankets on concrete floors. Mothers with children still younger were in another cell.

Happier faces could be found in a side yard outside, where young children colored pictures under a camouflage tent.

A group of about a dozen girls of perhaps 5 or 6 sat under another tent outside the shower trailer, dark hair wet and shiny. Women wearing blue gloves combed each girl's hair. Tables held stacks of clean bluejeans, T-shirts and toiletries.

Deeper into the yard, teen girls kicked a soccer ball and tossed a football with workers from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

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Young boys sleep in a holding cell where hundreds of mostly Central American immigrant children are  …

In Nogales, Arizona, girls playing soccer with two male border agents shrieked when their ball crossed over the chain link fence and away from the small recreational area covered by a white tent. Others playing basketball cheered on their teammates.

Inside, the approximately 1,000 children in the clean, 120,000-square-foot warehouse were silent.

In a roomy area with teenage boys, a large, high-definition TV playing the World Cup went largely ignored. A small group of boys played soccer, but most lay on tiny mattresses and covered themselves with thin, heat-reflective blankets that looked like aluminum foil.

Chain link fences 15 feet tall and topped with barbed wire separated the children by age and gender.

Federal agents said they could not provide an estimate of the number of minors at the facility because the figure is fluid as children transition in and out.

View gallery

Detainees sleep and watch television in a holding cell where hundreds of mostly Central American imm …

Authorities at the Nogales station have struggled to adjust to their new role as temporary caretakers.

For example, it took a few days of children rejecting breakfast burritos before agents learned that Central Americans aren't accustomed to flour tortillas. FEMA renegotiated its contract with a food vendor to begin receiving corn tortillas instead.

The children are fed three times a day and take turns by group to use the 200-seat dining area.

*Galvan reported from Nogales, Arizona.

FOLLOW LINKS BELOW FOR MORE NEWS + PICTURES:
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• Immigrant children held in crowded, concrete cellsAssociated Press
• AP PHOTOS: A look at child immigrant holding cellsAssociated Press
• Arizona official says immigrant kids in good careAssociated Press
• Hundreds more migrant children shipped to Arizona from Texas Reuters
• State sends supplies to site holding migrant kidsAssociated Press

Las Vegas: Two Cops Plus Three Others Die In Shooting Rampage

LAS VEGAS (AP) — Two police officers were having lunch at a strip mall pizza buffet when a man and a woman fatally shot them in a point-blank ambush, then fled to a nearby Wal-Mart where they killed a third person and then themselves in an apparent suicide pact, authorities said. (Go To Link).

www.news.yahoo.com/vegas-ambush-deaths-2police-2-shooters-1-082403366.html

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The attack at a CiCi's Pizza restaurant on Sunday killed Officers Alyn Beck, 41, and Igor Soldo, 31, who are both husbands and fathers. One of the shooters yelled, "This is a revolution!" but a motive remains under investigation, Las Vegas police spokesman Larry Hadfield told The Associated Press.

"It's a tragic day," Sheriff Doug Gillespie said at a news conference Sunday afternoon. "But we still have a community to police, and we still have a community to protect.
We will be out there doing it with our heads held high, but with an emptiness in our hearts."

For added safety, officers who normally work alone will be paired up with another officer for a time, Gillespie said.

The deadly rampage in the aging shopping center about five miles northeast of the Las Vegas Strip took place in a matter of minutes. Police were called at 11:22 am. to the pizzeria, where one of the officers was able to fire back at his assailants. It's unclear whether he hit them, Gillespie said.

Shots were reported five minutes later at a nearby Wal-Mart, where the shooters gunned down a person just inside the front door and exchanged gunfire with police before killing themselves, police said.

The female suspect shot the male suspect before killing herself, Gillespie said. The Wal-Mart victim's identity hasn't been confirmed, and the suspects' names haven't been released.

Both officers were pronounced dead at University Medical Center. Beck had been with the department since 2001 and leaves behind a wife and three children.

Soldo had been with the force since 2006 and is survived by a wife and baby, police said.

He was described as a good father and a "great guy" by his sister-in-law, Colleen Soldo of Beatrice, Nebraska. She said he attended high school in Lincoln, Nebraska, and previously worked as a corrections officer.

Sheree Burns, 48, told the Las Vegas Sun she was eating at the restaurant, seated just behind the two officers when a man came up to one of the officers and shot him in the head.

She said she ducked under her table but peeked up and saw the other officer being shot.

She said the man took an officer's handgun and the two attackers fled.

Pauline Pacheco was shopping at Wal-Mart when she saw the armed man and grabbed her father to escape, KLAS-TV reported.

ARIZONA: Hundreds Of Children Held By Immigration Authorities In Makeshift Prison: *UPDATED

PHOENIX (AP) — Arizona officials say the U.S. government has asked them to rush medical supplies to a makeshift holding center housing hundreds of migrant children who were sent to the state after crossing into the U.S. from Mexico alone.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security started flying immigrants to Arizona from the Rio Grande Valley in Texas last month after the number of immigrants, including more than 48,000 children traveling on their own, overwhelmed the Border Patrol there.

The immigrant children were flown from Texas, released in Arizona and told to report to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement office near their destination within 15 days.

A Homeland Security Department official told The Associated Press that about 700 children were sleeping on plastic cots Friday at the warehouse in Nogales, but that the number of children there was expected to double to around 1,400. The warehouse has a capacity of about 1,500.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because there was no authorization to discuss the matter publicly, said the Nogales holding center opened for children because the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services had nowhere to turn.

"They became so overwhelmed and haven't kept up with planning," the official said.

At the holding center, vendors are being contracted to provide nutritional meals, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, meanwhile, will provide counseling services and recreational activities.

ICE has said the immigrants were mostly families from Central America fleeing extreme poverty and violence.

The Homeland Security official said that about 2,000 mattresses have been ordered, and portable toilets and showers have been brought in.

The station began housing children flown from South Texas last Saturday. There are flights scheduled through mid-June.

Federal authorities plan to use the Nogales facility as a way station, where the children will be vaccinated and checked medically. They will then be sent to facilities being set up in Ventura, California, San Antonio, Texas, and Fort Sill, Oklahoma.

But the Homeland Security official said: "As quickly as we move them out, we get more. We believe this is just a start."

The children being held in Nogales are 17 or younger. The official estimated three of every four were at least 16.

Customs and Border Protection in Arizona "is prepared to and expects to continue processing unaccompanied children from South Texas," said Victor L. Brabble, a spokesman for the agency.

Gov. Jan Brewer in recent days sent an angry letter to PresidentBarack Obama demanding that the federal program of dropping off of families at bus stations in Phoenix stop immediately, calling it dangerous and unconscionable.

The governor said she hadn't received a response to her letter by Friday from Federal Homeland Security Director Jeh Johnson.

"Meanwhile, I reiterate my call on President Obama to secure our southern border and terminate this operation immediately," Brewer said in a statement.

The Arizona Daily Star reported Saturday that Jimena Díaz, consul general of Guatemala in Phoenix, visited the center Friday and said about 250 children are from Guatemala, with the rest coming from El Salvador and Honduras.

Diaz told the newspaper that the children are being kept in separate groups, divided by age and gender. Most are between 15 and 17, Diaz said, with a few much younger. Teenage mothers with their children are also being detained separately, he said.

Nogales Mayor Arturo Garino visited the facility Saturday, but he did not get inside the site where the children were being held. Garino said he did meet with Border Patrol officials. He was told some of the children are as young as 1 year old.

"I have all the faith in the world as mayor and as a citizen of Nogales that our Border Patrol is doing the best and the most kind and humane thing with the children," Garino said.

The town has begun collecting clothing donations for the kids, he said.

Immigration officials can immediately return Mexican immigrants to the border, but they are more challenged in dealing with Central American migrants who illegally cross into the U.S. In recent months, waves of migrants from nations south of Mexico have arrived in Texas.

The Homeland Security official said that legally, only their parents or guardians can take custody if the government makes the children eligible for release.

Officials in Central America and Mexico have noticed a recent increase in women and children crossing the border. Father Heyman Vazquez, the director of a migrant shelter in Huixtla in the southern Mexico state of Chiapas, said he and others advise children that it's too dangerous. Yet, Vazquez is seeing more and more youths heading north.

"I remember a little boy of 9 years old and I asked if he was going to go meet someone and he told me 'No, I'm just going hand myself over because I hear they help kids," Vazquez said.

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(Spagat reported from Tijuana, Mexico. Associated Press writer Alicia A. Caldwell in Washington and Maria Verza in Mexico City contributed to this report.)
*UPDATE

Rick Scuteri

FILE - In this May 29, 2014 file photo, Maria Eva Casco, left, and her son Christian Casco of El Salvador, sit at at the Greyhound bus terminal, Thursday, May 29, 2014 in Phoenix. Central American families arrested in Texas will continue to be flown to Arizona, and hundreds of unaccompanied minors a day are being shipped to a federal detention center in the southern part of the state, Gov. Jan Brewer’s spokesman says. (AP Photo/Rick Scuteri)

PHOENIX: Hundreds of unaccompanied minors who entered the United States illegally through Texas are being shipped to Nogales, Ariz., creating a problem there so serious the federal government is sending relief supplies and asking the state for vaccines, an aide to Gov. Jan Brewer said Friday.

Andrew Wilder, the governor's communications chief, said federal officials told Brewer's office they were moving 432 children into Arizona late Friday, with another 367 expected today and an identical number the following day. And that said Wilder, is apparently just the beginning.

"More unaccompanied minors will continue to Arizona," he said.

Wilder said they are being taken to a detention center in on West La Quinta Road in Nogales for at least preliminary processing. He said state officials were told they would stay there for about three days before being shipped out to detention facilities in San Antonio, Fort Sill, Oklahoma, or Ventura, California.

That center in Nogales was recently opened to handle the large influx after being closed for several years. It has no indoor plumbing.

In the interim, however, Wilder said the sudden influx has created a problem, to the point where federal officials asked the state Department of Health Services to ship federal relief pallets they store in Arizona to Nogales. Those pallets contain everything from hygiene supplies, pillows and blankets to bedpans and medical supplies.

And Laura Oxley, spokeswoman for the state Department of Health Services, said federal officials have also asked Arizona to have vaccines, paid for by the federal government, shipped to Nogales. Oxley said these are for the normal childhood diseases like measles and mumps, with the plan being to vaccinate the children before they are moved elsewhere.

Wilder said this appears to be more than a temporary situation. He said as children leave the Nogales facility they are expected to be replaced by new arrivals, with capacity there at 1,500 at any one time.

He also said the Federal Emergency Management Agency has dispatched Steve DiBlasio, the region's deputy regional director, to Nogales to oversee the situation.

Officials at Immigration and Customs Enforcement referred all questions about what is happening to the children to the Office of Refugee Resettlement, a part of the federal Department of Health and Human Services. A call to that agency's spokesman was not immediately returned.

Wilder also said that it appears ICE will continue shipping busloads of immigrant families to Arizona, essentially releasing them on a promise that they will report to immigration authorities when they reach their final destination. "There are no plans to terminate it,'' he said.

That fact was confirmed by an ICE spokeswoman.

The root cause behind both situations appears to be a sudden influx of immigrants, not so much from Mexico but from deeper in Central America. That is being spurred in part by a coffee fungus that has left many who had been working on those plantations without a job.

There also are reports of increased violence in Honduras which has led to more immigrants from that country.

This shift in country of origin has put a crimp in ICE operations which normally involve simply shipping immigrants, most of whom have come from Mexico, back to the border to their own country.

In essence, the immigrants are being released on their own, with orders to report to an ICE office within 15 days of arriving at their final location.

But Wilder said the problem is the creation of the lack of border enforcement by the Obama administration. And he said it will only get worse as new immigrants figure out they are not immediately being shipped home.

"As word continues to grow throughout other countries that America's borders are open, if you get to our border you will be welcomed, we expect the influx that is already a crisis level ... will continue,'' Wilder said. And he said the Obama administration has made no real effort to secure the border.

"If this administration would put half the effort into securing the border that it has put into this operation of transporting illegal aliens to Arizona, and other states possibly, then this crisis wouldn't exist.''

Brewer sent an angry letter to President Barack Obama on Monday demanding that the program of dropping off families at bus stations in Phoenix and Tucson stop immediately. She called the program dangerous and unconscionable, asked for details and demanded to know why state authorities weren't consulted or even informed.

Brewer's staff spent Friday in a series of calls with officials from the FEMA, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Homeland Security officials.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

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