Actually, the Canadian border has become a trap to deport Haitians back to Haiti who would have hidden out for years in the U.S, instead. They came out of hiding, headed north and got caught in a snare. Now we get to buy their tickets back to Haiti and not the American Border Patrol.
Refugee/Migrant Crisis
- Thread starter Tecumsehsbones
- Start date
You get rid of the low skill immigrants and suddenly there is no one to serve your coffee in Tim Horton's or wait on you in the thousnads of other retail outlets in Canada.
Then they can close down. I'm fine with that. I'm a Capitalist, you see. If there aren't enough employees to meet demand it requires employers to increase wages until there are. That might mean they have to increase prices too, which costs customers. But that's okay, an equilibrium will be reached where there's enough employees to provide a service people are willing to pay for. That's the beauty of Capitalism. As for those not willing to pay the additional cost, they'll buy something else somewhere else. The money will still get spent.
I glad you support capitalism as that is the reason Canadian businesses are bringing in so many low skilled workers. It's all about the bottom line. Businesses would rather bring in low cost foreign workers than pay higher wages.
El Salvadorans could be next wave of border crossers into Canada
Stephanie Levitz, THE CANADIAN PRESS
First posted: Friday, August 25, 2017 02:52 PM EDT | Updated: Friday, August 25, 2017 02:59 PM EDT
OTTAWA — Officials in Canada and the U.S. are concerned that the next wave of asylum seekers at the border could be a population far bigger than the Haitians crossing now.
More than 260,000 El Salvadorans are facing deportation from the United States if their temporary protected status there is lifted in March — four times the number of Haitians covered by the program.
A belief among Haitians that their status will end in January has sent thousands fleeing to Canada; they make up the majority of the nearly 7,000 people apprehended crossing at an unofficial border point in Quebec this summer.
Government officials on both sides of the border told The Canadian Press this week that whether El Salvadorans will follow in their footsteps is, for now, a scary unknown, given how much the current influx is already straining resources.
The officials were not authorized to speak publicly, but said they’ve seen no evidence so far of the same social media campaigns, for example, that have been pushing Haitians north with false promises of preferential treatment.
The most current data from the Immigration and Refugee Board shows in the first three months of 2017, 158 El Salvadorans filed claims for asylum here, compared with 244 in all of 2016. The acceptance rate last year was about 70 per cent.
The U.S. has not ended temporary protected status for either Haitians or El Salvadorans, but has signalled it may not be renewed when it expires. There are other nationalities whose protected status also expiring, among them Hondurans. About 86,000 would be affected.
Why officials are looking at El Salvadorans, though, is a partly a numbers game, given the sheer volume of people.
But there’s also history.
Just as Haitians are familiar with the Haitian community that exists in Quebec, so, too, some El Salvadorans are aware of the underground and above ground railroads that were set up in the 1980s when the U.S. wasn’t taking in El Salvadoran refugees but Canada was.
Angela Ventura, who runs an El Salvadoran community association in Windsor, Ont., said she has been fielding a steady stream of inquires from people in the U.S. exploring a move to Canada.
Ventura is El Salvadoran herself and said she’s torn when people fearing for their futures in the U.S. ask her what to do.
“My Canadian training, I’m a paralegal, means I have to tell them that because of our immigration laws, they can’t just show up at the border.”
Ventura was part of a wave of El Salvadorans who came to Canada in the 1980s fleeing civil war. She was sponsored by her sister, but over 10,000 came as refugees over a three-year period.
In 1985, the U.S. was granting asylum to only about three per cent of claims from El Salvador, while Canada’s acceptance rate was 60 per cent, according to research compiled by Julie Young, a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition at McMaster University.
She said when the U.S. administration began rolling out immigration policy changes back in February and at the same time dozens of people a day started showing up at the Canadian border, she began to notice the parallels to the situation 30 years ago.
“There are similarities in the policy context — people who were not being recognized as refugees in the U.S. but felt that they would be in Canada were coming over the border,” she said.
“But the main difference is the Safe Third Country agreement because it changes the way the border works.”
In the 1980s, people were just showing up at official entry points and filing claims. But since the agreement came into force in 2004, they were no longer allowed to do so and that’s what is prompting so many to enter through the illegal border points.
Ventura said that the people are considering coming illegally is a reflection of how much they fear deportation back to El Salvador.
But, unprompted, she pointed to something else — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s tweet in January where he responded to the Trump administration’s immigration ban and said Canada would continue to welcome people fleeing persecution.
“When Mr. Trudeau said we welcome refugees and stuff like that, he didn’t say you have to visit or embassies or consulates, you have to get a visa,” she said.
“He missed that part.”
El Salvadorans could be next wave of border crossers into Canada | Canada | News
Stephanie Levitz, THE CANADIAN PRESS
First posted: Friday, August 25, 2017 02:52 PM EDT | Updated: Friday, August 25, 2017 02:59 PM EDT
OTTAWA — Officials in Canada and the U.S. are concerned that the next wave of asylum seekers at the border could be a population far bigger than the Haitians crossing now.
More than 260,000 El Salvadorans are facing deportation from the United States if their temporary protected status there is lifted in March — four times the number of Haitians covered by the program.
A belief among Haitians that their status will end in January has sent thousands fleeing to Canada; they make up the majority of the nearly 7,000 people apprehended crossing at an unofficial border point in Quebec this summer.
Government officials on both sides of the border told The Canadian Press this week that whether El Salvadorans will follow in their footsteps is, for now, a scary unknown, given how much the current influx is already straining resources.
The officials were not authorized to speak publicly, but said they’ve seen no evidence so far of the same social media campaigns, for example, that have been pushing Haitians north with false promises of preferential treatment.
The most current data from the Immigration and Refugee Board shows in the first three months of 2017, 158 El Salvadorans filed claims for asylum here, compared with 244 in all of 2016. The acceptance rate last year was about 70 per cent.
The U.S. has not ended temporary protected status for either Haitians or El Salvadorans, but has signalled it may not be renewed when it expires. There are other nationalities whose protected status also expiring, among them Hondurans. About 86,000 would be affected.
Why officials are looking at El Salvadorans, though, is a partly a numbers game, given the sheer volume of people.
But there’s also history.
Just as Haitians are familiar with the Haitian community that exists in Quebec, so, too, some El Salvadorans are aware of the underground and above ground railroads that were set up in the 1980s when the U.S. wasn’t taking in El Salvadoran refugees but Canada was.
Angela Ventura, who runs an El Salvadoran community association in Windsor, Ont., said she has been fielding a steady stream of inquires from people in the U.S. exploring a move to Canada.
Ventura is El Salvadoran herself and said she’s torn when people fearing for their futures in the U.S. ask her what to do.
“My Canadian training, I’m a paralegal, means I have to tell them that because of our immigration laws, they can’t just show up at the border.”
Ventura was part of a wave of El Salvadorans who came to Canada in the 1980s fleeing civil war. She was sponsored by her sister, but over 10,000 came as refugees over a three-year period.
In 1985, the U.S. was granting asylum to only about three per cent of claims from El Salvador, while Canada’s acceptance rate was 60 per cent, according to research compiled by Julie Young, a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition at McMaster University.
She said when the U.S. administration began rolling out immigration policy changes back in February and at the same time dozens of people a day started showing up at the Canadian border, she began to notice the parallels to the situation 30 years ago.
“There are similarities in the policy context — people who were not being recognized as refugees in the U.S. but felt that they would be in Canada were coming over the border,” she said.
“But the main difference is the Safe Third Country agreement because it changes the way the border works.”
In the 1980s, people were just showing up at official entry points and filing claims. But since the agreement came into force in 2004, they were no longer allowed to do so and that’s what is prompting so many to enter through the illegal border points.
Ventura said that the people are considering coming illegally is a reflection of how much they fear deportation back to El Salvador.
But, unprompted, she pointed to something else — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s tweet in January where he responded to the Trump administration’s immigration ban and said Canada would continue to welcome people fleeing persecution.
“When Mr. Trudeau said we welcome refugees and stuff like that, he didn’t say you have to visit or embassies or consulates, you have to get a visa,” she said.
“He missed that part.”
El Salvadorans could be next wave of border crossers into Canada | Canada | News
And those workers benefit from it. Do you propose that the law discriminate against people on the basis of nationality?
If we have a problem with foreign nationals working at lower wages, then how about we just apply minimum wage laws to them? How complicated is that? Or are low wages just a front for keeping foreigners out?
Hmmm... you're a capitalist who supports closed borders? Isn't that like a socialist who supports casinos?
Well gee wiz , you think common sense and reason are enough .
Robots , it is all ready happening all around us . Do you avail yourself the use of self check out to save time ? Welcome to the future .
Which is why I have no sympathy for them and do not support the temporary foreign worker program (except for agriculture) or bringing in other low skill immigrants.
I'm a capitalist who supports a reasonable level of immigration from skilled workers. And that's it.
Foreign workers do receive the minimum wage. And you seem to have missed my point about capitalists generally seeking out low coast labour rather than raising wages.
There's a lot of truth in that. There's one ethnicity here in this city who will work 7 days a week at two or three jobs, without bitching. And some of them are very nice people when you get to know them! Actually there's probably 3 or 4 ethnicities like that.
No they don't.
You can find lots of stories of TFWs signing up for less.
That's why they get signed.
And the government enables it.
So you are saying you won't be happy until all Canadians do nothing except work 80 hours per week ?
Thank for chasing down the lowest common denominator.
Learn to f**king read! A person should be allowed to do whatever he/she is happy doing as long as it doesn't interfere with anyone else! Personally I wouldn't want to work 80 hours a week, but if someone else wants to they should hop to it!
Some businesses don't really have much other choice. There's one business in town here we'll call Joe Blow Moving and Storage (that I'm a little bit acquainted with) This outfit is trying to compete with outfits like North American and Atlas Moving. They can't possibly pay the same wages as the big prestige outfits. The only way they can survive in the midst of the big outfits is to provide a similar service for a lower price (or why else would you hire them?) Movers are the type of business you may only use two or three times in a lifetime, so it's not that easy for the little guy to build a reputation.
If asylum-seeking is working, what does failure look like?
By Mark Bonokoski, Postmedia Network
First posted: Saturday, August 26, 2017 07:40 PM EDT | Updated: Saturday, August 26, 2017 10:12 PM EDT
Our prime minister went to great pains this past week, with the best serious-looking face he could muster, to spin us the line that the refugee system is working.
He must be wearing blinkers.
There is a tent city at the Quebec-U.S. border set up by the military. Frost warnings are just around the corner. Then winter gears up.
Upwards of 10,000 queue-jumpers seeking refugee status have already waltzed into Canada via unofficial border points.
Sieves are less porous.
The Big Owe — Montreal’s Olympic Stadium, erected at a huge loss in 1976, hence the nickname — has become a hostel for hundreds of asylum seekers who would not be given the time of day if they had tried to enter Canada at legitimate border entry points.
Nav Canada’s convention centre in Cornwall, Ont., never meant to be a motel let alone a refugee camp, has been seconded to accommodate an overflow of the intentionally displaced.
This is what Justin Trudeau calls “working?”
This is what Transport Minister Marc Garneau calls “under control?”
One tweet by the PM set this entire mess into motion. When U.S. President Donald Trump threw down his vow back in January to ban immigration from six Muslim-dominated countries, Trudeau could not resist tweeting his open-armed progressiveness.
“To those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith,” he tweeted. “Diversity is our strength. #WelcomeToCanada.”
There was no Part II. There was no, “hold on a minute, folks.” There was no “go through proper channels.” There was no “we’ll ship you back to wherever you came from if you’re pulling a fast one.”
No, until this week, he let his original tweet dangle like a carrot.
The latest influx, of course, are Haitians who were allowed temporary sanctuary in the United States until their home country had time to overcome the earthquake that devastated it in 2010.
With no extension coming from the Trump administration, Haitians began arriving here in droves, even if they do not come close to qualifying for Canada’s official definition of refugee.
The Government of Canada’s definition reads as follows. “Refugees,” it says, “are people who have fled their countries because of a well-founded fear of persecution. They are not able to return home. They have seen or experienced many horrors.”
No one can blame the Haitians, of course. Social media, with many of the missives written in Creole, told would-be illegals exactly how to play it.
Canada would not be totally foreign to them.
One of their own, Michaelle Jean, came to Canada as a legitimate refugee during the vicious Francois (Papa Doc) Duvalier regime in which her father was arrested and tortured in the mid-Sixties. She became famous as a Quebec broadcaster, and then even more famous when Prime Minister Paul Martin’s recommendation had her become Canada’s governor general.
But Jean and her family were simply one of thousands to have fled successive Duvalier regimes, and who found a home in Quebec, one of the few jurisdictions in North America that shares their French language.
Fleeing brutality is one thing, however, but arriving illegitimately through a back door to get an economic leg up and taxpayer handouts is quite another.
As Trudeau admitted last week, “I can understand the concerns that Canadians have about whether this (migration) is a shortcut, whether somehow this is uncontrolled immigration.”
He said it wasn’t, and that screening of queue-jumpers would be just as intense as with those who arrived here through proper channels.
In the meantime, however, they keep on coming.
No one has tried to stop them, and no plans are in place to do so.
markbonokoski@gmail.com
If asylum-seeking is working, what does failure look like? | BONOKOSKI | Canada
By Mark Bonokoski, Postmedia Network
First posted: Saturday, August 26, 2017 07:40 PM EDT | Updated: Saturday, August 26, 2017 10:12 PM EDT
Our prime minister went to great pains this past week, with the best serious-looking face he could muster, to spin us the line that the refugee system is working.
He must be wearing blinkers.
There is a tent city at the Quebec-U.S. border set up by the military. Frost warnings are just around the corner. Then winter gears up.
Upwards of 10,000 queue-jumpers seeking refugee status have already waltzed into Canada via unofficial border points.
Sieves are less porous.
The Big Owe — Montreal’s Olympic Stadium, erected at a huge loss in 1976, hence the nickname — has become a hostel for hundreds of asylum seekers who would not be given the time of day if they had tried to enter Canada at legitimate border entry points.
Nav Canada’s convention centre in Cornwall, Ont., never meant to be a motel let alone a refugee camp, has been seconded to accommodate an overflow of the intentionally displaced.
This is what Justin Trudeau calls “working?”
This is what Transport Minister Marc Garneau calls “under control?”
One tweet by the PM set this entire mess into motion. When U.S. President Donald Trump threw down his vow back in January to ban immigration from six Muslim-dominated countries, Trudeau could not resist tweeting his open-armed progressiveness.
“To those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith,” he tweeted. “Diversity is our strength. #WelcomeToCanada.”
There was no Part II. There was no, “hold on a minute, folks.” There was no “go through proper channels.” There was no “we’ll ship you back to wherever you came from if you’re pulling a fast one.”
No, until this week, he let his original tweet dangle like a carrot.
The latest influx, of course, are Haitians who were allowed temporary sanctuary in the United States until their home country had time to overcome the earthquake that devastated it in 2010.
With no extension coming from the Trump administration, Haitians began arriving here in droves, even if they do not come close to qualifying for Canada’s official definition of refugee.
The Government of Canada’s definition reads as follows. “Refugees,” it says, “are people who have fled their countries because of a well-founded fear of persecution. They are not able to return home. They have seen or experienced many horrors.”
No one can blame the Haitians, of course. Social media, with many of the missives written in Creole, told would-be illegals exactly how to play it.
Canada would not be totally foreign to them.
One of their own, Michaelle Jean, came to Canada as a legitimate refugee during the vicious Francois (Papa Doc) Duvalier regime in which her father was arrested and tortured in the mid-Sixties. She became famous as a Quebec broadcaster, and then even more famous when Prime Minister Paul Martin’s recommendation had her become Canada’s governor general.
But Jean and her family were simply one of thousands to have fled successive Duvalier regimes, and who found a home in Quebec, one of the few jurisdictions in North America that shares their French language.
Fleeing brutality is one thing, however, but arriving illegitimately through a back door to get an economic leg up and taxpayer handouts is quite another.
As Trudeau admitted last week, “I can understand the concerns that Canadians have about whether this (migration) is a shortcut, whether somehow this is uncontrolled immigration.”
He said it wasn’t, and that screening of queue-jumpers would be just as intense as with those who arrived here through proper channels.
In the meantime, however, they keep on coming.
No one has tried to stop them, and no plans are in place to do so.
markbonokoski@gmail.com
If asylum-seeking is working, what does failure look like? | BONOKOSKI | Canada
Human trafficking tunnel found in San Diego, 30 people detained
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
First posted: Sunday, August 27, 2017 06:13 PM EDT | Updated: Sunday, August 27, 2017 06:19 PM EDT
SAN DIEGO — Authorities in California say they have found a smuggling tunnel that carried dozens of people across the border from Mexico into the United States.
Border Patrol agents discovered the crude tunnel described as a hole in the ground with a ladder inside it shortly after 1 a.m. Saturday near San Diego’s Otay Mesa border crossing.
The San Diego Union-Tribune says agents saw a group of men and women in the street who ran when the agents approached. Some people tried to get back into the tunnel.
Agents detained 23 Chinese nationals and seven Mexican citizens they believe crossed into the U.S. illegally.
Authorities say the tunnel may be an extension of an incomplete tunnel previously discovered by Mexican authorities.
30 detained at cross-border tunnel in Otay Mesa - The San Diego Union-Tribune
Human trafficking tunnel found in San Diego, 30 people detained | World | News |
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
First posted: Sunday, August 27, 2017 06:13 PM EDT | Updated: Sunday, August 27, 2017 06:19 PM EDT
SAN DIEGO — Authorities in California say they have found a smuggling tunnel that carried dozens of people across the border from Mexico into the United States.
Border Patrol agents discovered the crude tunnel described as a hole in the ground with a ladder inside it shortly after 1 a.m. Saturday near San Diego’s Otay Mesa border crossing.
The San Diego Union-Tribune says agents saw a group of men and women in the street who ran when the agents approached. Some people tried to get back into the tunnel.
Agents detained 23 Chinese nationals and seven Mexican citizens they believe crossed into the U.S. illegally.
Authorities say the tunnel may be an extension of an incomplete tunnel previously discovered by Mexican authorities.
30 detained at cross-border tunnel in Otay Mesa - The San Diego Union-Tribune
Human trafficking tunnel found in San Diego, 30 people detained | World | News |
PQ leader maintains Justin Trudeau responsible for influx of refugees
Patrice Bergeron, THE CANADIAN PRESS
First posted: Wednesday, August 30, 2017 01:16 PM EDT | Updated: Wednesday, August 30, 2017 03:31 PM EDT
SAINT-EUSTACHE, Que. — The leader of the Parti Quebecois doubled down Wednesday on his claim Justin Trudeau’s famous tweet welcoming the world’s persecuted people into Canada is responsible for the influx of asylum seekers into Quebec.
Jean-Francois Lisee said Monday the federal government should pay for the costs of taking care of thousands of would-be refugees he claimed were “invited by (prime minister) Justin Trudeau.”
Lisee reiterated the comments two days later despite criticism from within his own party.
“Anyone who came here to listen to platitudes came to the wrong place,” Lisee told reporters during a caucus retreat north of Montreal.
“Me, I say it like it is; I am authentic and I say what I think.”
Francois Gendron, the dean of the PQ caucus, said he didn’t appreciate the remarks.
“I would have preferred those words not be used,” said Gendron. “But on the subject of asylum seekers, I think it’s a file that has been badly handled (by all levels of government) from A to Z.”
Lisee said the thousands of asylum seekers — mostly Haitians — who have arrived in Quebec from the United States since June are “victims” of what he called the false hopes given to them by the federal government.
He suggested Trudeau's tweet from last January is to blame and that Ottawa should therefore pay the bill.
One day after U.S. President Donald Trump issued an executive order banning citizens from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen from entering the United States, Trudeau took to Twitter.
“To those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith. Diversity is our strength #WelcomeToCanada,” the prime minister wrote on Jan. 28.
Lisee said Quebecers are asking, “Where is the money going to come from?’ And I say, ‘it should come from who invited them.”’
“I maintain that position, absolutely,” Lisee said. “These are real questions. There are those who say we don’t have the right to ask these questions but I am not one for political correctness.”
Former interim PQ leader Louise Harel tweeted Tuesday she was “profoundly disappointed” by Lisee’s choice of words.
PQ leader maintains Justin Trudeau responsible for influx of refugees | Canada |
Patrice Bergeron, THE CANADIAN PRESS
First posted: Wednesday, August 30, 2017 01:16 PM EDT | Updated: Wednesday, August 30, 2017 03:31 PM EDT
SAINT-EUSTACHE, Que. — The leader of the Parti Quebecois doubled down Wednesday on his claim Justin Trudeau’s famous tweet welcoming the world’s persecuted people into Canada is responsible for the influx of asylum seekers into Quebec.
Jean-Francois Lisee said Monday the federal government should pay for the costs of taking care of thousands of would-be refugees he claimed were “invited by (prime minister) Justin Trudeau.”
Lisee reiterated the comments two days later despite criticism from within his own party.
“Anyone who came here to listen to platitudes came to the wrong place,” Lisee told reporters during a caucus retreat north of Montreal.
“Me, I say it like it is; I am authentic and I say what I think.”
Francois Gendron, the dean of the PQ caucus, said he didn’t appreciate the remarks.
“I would have preferred those words not be used,” said Gendron. “But on the subject of asylum seekers, I think it’s a file that has been badly handled (by all levels of government) from A to Z.”
Lisee said the thousands of asylum seekers — mostly Haitians — who have arrived in Quebec from the United States since June are “victims” of what he called the false hopes given to them by the federal government.
He suggested Trudeau's tweet from last January is to blame and that Ottawa should therefore pay the bill.
One day after U.S. President Donald Trump issued an executive order banning citizens from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen from entering the United States, Trudeau took to Twitter.
“To those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith. Diversity is our strength #WelcomeToCanada,” the prime minister wrote on Jan. 28.
Lisee said Quebecers are asking, “Where is the money going to come from?’ And I say, ‘it should come from who invited them.”’
“I maintain that position, absolutely,” Lisee said. “These are real questions. There are those who say we don’t have the right to ask these questions but I am not one for political correctness.”
Former interim PQ leader Louise Harel tweeted Tuesday she was “profoundly disappointed” by Lisee’s choice of words.
PQ leader maintains Justin Trudeau responsible for influx of refugees | Canada |
4th suspect in Italy beach gang rape arrested
Frances D’Emilio, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
First posted: Sunday, September 03, 2017 12:09 PM EDT | Updated: Sunday, September 03, 2017 05:16 PM EDT
ROME — A Congolese asylum-hopeful with permission to stay in Italy for humanitarian reasons was nabbed aboard a train by police early Sunday as the last of a gang of four young males suspected of raping a Polish tourist on a beach, beating her companion unconscious and raping a Peruvian woman barely an hour later in the same Italian resort town of Rimini, authorities said.
The man, identified as Guerlin Butungu, 20, was the only adult among the four suspects under arrest in the brutal case that triggered calls from Poland for the death penalty for the culprits and fueled already growing anti-migrant sentiment in Italy, where hundreds of thousands of asylum-seekers have been given shelter over the last few years after rescue at sea from migrant smugglers’ boats.
Rimini police Chief Maurizio Improta described Butungu’s arrest aboard a train at Rimini station. “The arrest this morning was doubly satisfying because putting the handcuffs on the fourth man were two women” police officers. “This symbolic gesture rendered justice to the victims of the violence,” he said.
Investigators were quoted as saying Butungu hoped to travel through Milan and then on to France to escape capture.
The three other suspects, all minors, were already in police custody Saturday night. Improta said two of them, Moroccan brothers, ages 15 and 17, who were born in Italy, turned themselves in at a police station after authorities released surveillance camera video showing images of the four suspects.
A 16-year-old Nigerian was detained by police in a nearby town Saturday night shortly after the two brothers began to talk to officers. All three minors were being held at a juvenile detention facility. Because they are minors, their names were not released.
Improta said with the arrest of the fourth suspect, “we consider the case closed.”
“All four of them were there that night,” Improta said, referring to the secluded stretch of beach where the Polish couple was assaulted.
The Peruvian woman, raped and beaten in some bushes along the side of a road, identified the suspects for authorities, police said.
Italian media said the Congolese man was taken in 2015 to a migrant centre on Lampedusa island, off Sicily, where many of those rescued at sea are first sheltered. The reports said authorities rejected his asylum bid but granted temporary permission to stay in Italy until 2018 on humanitarian grounds.
Carabinieri paramilitary police commander Marco Filoni in Pesaro, near Rimini, told SkyTG24 TV all three minors were known to local law enforcement. The ANSA news agency said their previous rap sheet included thefts, including of cellphones, but no violence.
Italy’s interior minister, Marco Minniti, thanked investigators for “turning over to justice, in brief time, the presumed culprits of such savage crimes.”
Shortly after the attacks, a Polish deputy justice minister said the attackers deserved the death penalty, which isn’t allowed in EU countries, like Italy and Poland, but later toned down the comments saying he only wanted to emphasize the cruelty of the crimes.
Italy’s welcome for so many asylum-seekers has lately grown thin. Right-wing and other populist politicians, with an eye to 2018 elections, have been whipping up anti-migrant sentiment.
The centre-left government has been struggling to push one of its key aims: a law to grant citizenship to immigrants’ children who are born in Italy and attend several years of Italian schools. The arrest of immigrant children like the Moroccans quickly bolstered opposition to that proposal.
“Is this the people we want to give away citizenship to” with such a law? asked Senate vice-president Roberto Calderoli, from the anti-migrant Northern League party.
4th suspect in Italy beach gang rape arrested | World | News | Toronto Sun
Frances D’Emilio, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
First posted: Sunday, September 03, 2017 12:09 PM EDT | Updated: Sunday, September 03, 2017 05:16 PM EDT
ROME — A Congolese asylum-hopeful with permission to stay in Italy for humanitarian reasons was nabbed aboard a train by police early Sunday as the last of a gang of four young males suspected of raping a Polish tourist on a beach, beating her companion unconscious and raping a Peruvian woman barely an hour later in the same Italian resort town of Rimini, authorities said.
The man, identified as Guerlin Butungu, 20, was the only adult among the four suspects under arrest in the brutal case that triggered calls from Poland for the death penalty for the culprits and fueled already growing anti-migrant sentiment in Italy, where hundreds of thousands of asylum-seekers have been given shelter over the last few years after rescue at sea from migrant smugglers’ boats.
Rimini police Chief Maurizio Improta described Butungu’s arrest aboard a train at Rimini station. “The arrest this morning was doubly satisfying because putting the handcuffs on the fourth man were two women” police officers. “This symbolic gesture rendered justice to the victims of the violence,” he said.
Investigators were quoted as saying Butungu hoped to travel through Milan and then on to France to escape capture.
The three other suspects, all minors, were already in police custody Saturday night. Improta said two of them, Moroccan brothers, ages 15 and 17, who were born in Italy, turned themselves in at a police station after authorities released surveillance camera video showing images of the four suspects.
A 16-year-old Nigerian was detained by police in a nearby town Saturday night shortly after the two brothers began to talk to officers. All three minors were being held at a juvenile detention facility. Because they are minors, their names were not released.
Improta said with the arrest of the fourth suspect, “we consider the case closed.”
“All four of them were there that night,” Improta said, referring to the secluded stretch of beach where the Polish couple was assaulted.
The Peruvian woman, raped and beaten in some bushes along the side of a road, identified the suspects for authorities, police said.
Italian media said the Congolese man was taken in 2015 to a migrant centre on Lampedusa island, off Sicily, where many of those rescued at sea are first sheltered. The reports said authorities rejected his asylum bid but granted temporary permission to stay in Italy until 2018 on humanitarian grounds.
Carabinieri paramilitary police commander Marco Filoni in Pesaro, near Rimini, told SkyTG24 TV all three minors were known to local law enforcement. The ANSA news agency said their previous rap sheet included thefts, including of cellphones, but no violence.
Italy’s interior minister, Marco Minniti, thanked investigators for “turning over to justice, in brief time, the presumed culprits of such savage crimes.”
Shortly after the attacks, a Polish deputy justice minister said the attackers deserved the death penalty, which isn’t allowed in EU countries, like Italy and Poland, but later toned down the comments saying he only wanted to emphasize the cruelty of the crimes.
Italy’s welcome for so many asylum-seekers has lately grown thin. Right-wing and other populist politicians, with an eye to 2018 elections, have been whipping up anti-migrant sentiment.
The centre-left government has been struggling to push one of its key aims: a law to grant citizenship to immigrants’ children who are born in Italy and attend several years of Italian schools. The arrest of immigrant children like the Moroccans quickly bolstered opposition to that proposal.
“Is this the people we want to give away citizenship to” with such a law? asked Senate vice-president Roberto Calderoli, from the anti-migrant Northern League party.
4th suspect in Italy beach gang rape arrested | World | News | Toronto Sun