He said scores of the refugees are suffering serious mental health problems after being held in indefinite detention without trial for so long.
(Ian Rintoul, Australian refugee advocate)
When President Trump took office he did not have to honor Obama’s offer to take off of Australia’s hands ‘asylum seekers’ that Australia did not want to bring to its mainland.
But, he did extend the offer and now we see that we have admitted 500 (so far!), mostly young men, that had been living for several years in detention on offshore islands.
This is a completely fraudulent use of the international refugee system that requires that asylum seekers ask for asylum in the first safe country they enter.
It would be like us saying to Australia—hey Aussie’s! how about you take a couple thousand of the caravan migrants we have rushing our southern border. It is laughable! Right?
From Radio New Zealand,
More Manus refugees bound for the United States
Twenty-two Manus Island refugees left Papua New Guinea yesterday to be resettled in the United States.
[….]
He said including about 300 refugees from Nauru, a total of about 500 from Australian offshore detention have so far been resettled in the US, under a deal struck in 2016 to take up to 1250.
Mr Rintoul said the US deal is “glacially slow” with about 1000 people still left on Manus and Nauru without a future after almost six years.
He said scores of the refugees are suffering serious mental health problems after being held in indefinite detention without trial for so long.
More here.
See many, many posts on the Australian “dumb deal” at RRW by clicking here.
You, the American taxpayer are paying for all of this—the cost of resettlement and the cost of mental health treatment!
And, the government (even the Trump Administration) is counting on citizens forgetting about these outrages!
What do you do? Tell the White House again how much this deal stinks and make sure that you use every means possible through social media to keep this issue alive!
Any asylum seeker in Manus that doesn’t plead mental illness will actually be mentally ill.
This is a new mechanism to allow people to get welfare.
This is now my morning “must do”, a contact of the Trump White House to urge he follow through and dump this fraud of a contract perpetrated by the departing Obama. https://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/