A Syrian family's journey to a new life in Germany thanks to an innovative relocation programme.

[pampango]

The phone call came out of the blue one day last summer, recalls Naser Alameen. The Syrian was on his way home when a voice asked: "Do you want to be relocated?"

For two years, the 52-year-old man and his family had been living between the highway and the sea on a farm south of Beirut, Lebanon. After they were forced to flee their war-torn village near Idlib in Syria, a Lebanese farmer gave them shelter in a small, one room stone shack in the middle of his banana plantation.

The Alameens were among 20,000 people selected to take part in a resettlement programme for Syrian refugees in Germany, a joint initiative between the United Nations and the German government. The European country was the first to allow certain Syrians registered in Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Turkey, and Egypt to move there without a protracted asylum application procedure. About half of all those selected have successfully arrived in the Federal Republic of Germany, where they have a chance to integrate and build a new life.

Upon arrival, they are granted temporary residence for two years. They get work permits and receive social grants and free healthcare. Relocated Syrians get free German integration classes to learn the language and culture.


The Alameens were resettled in Germany thanks to a special government programme for refugees

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2015/08/syrian-family-journey-life-germany-150823113233692.html

Good for the German government. Of course more needs to be done for the millions of refugees displaced from Syria and Iraq but this program is a good thing.

This will piss of the rightwingers who have been protesting at refugee camps. I hope the Alameens' family was not affected by the refugee center that was recently destroyed by right wing arsonists.

Far-right protesters boo Merkel during refugee visit
German chancellor jeered by protesters as she urges citizens to stand up against hatred during visit to refugee shelter.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/08/protesters-boo-merkel-refugee-visit-150826131116497.html

[oberliner]

1. How are they selected?

And do folks think this is a good idea?

[pampango]

2. There is some information on the selection process at the link.

"We target the most vulnerable of the registered refugees," Audrey Bernard, from the UNHCR office in Beirut, told Al Jazeera.

Every day, Bernard and her team screen a database of 1.2 million names and choose potential cases matching situations provided by countries willing to take in refugees.

Thomas Langwald from the German Office for Migration and Refugees explained the programme, which costs the state about $14m, specifically targets families that "cannot return to Syria" and would have difficulty settling in the country they first fled to.

Every candidate has to undergo numerous interviews, collective and individual, as well as medical check-ups. Every file is thoroughly vetted by both United Nations and German authorities. "We have to make sure the people have no criminal record or ties to terrorist organisations," explained Langwald.

Yes. The alternative is to force families back into war zones or leave them in refugee camps forever in poor neighboring countries like Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey.

[oberliner]

4. It seems pretty vague

A database of over a million names and only a few thousand are chosen. I wonder how they determine who is the most vulnerable and what other factors come into play.

[leveymg]

5. Look online for USCIS Form I-589, Application for Asylum. UNHCR uses the same questions to

determine refugees most at risk of persecution.

This I know because I've prepared hundreds of cases for people from 33 countries.

[oberliner]

7. Thanks - I will check it out

Appreciate the information.

[dembotoz]

3. While we witness the humanitarian crisis in the Mediterranean Sea. Ponder how our GOP would react

Border thugs in speedboats running down the refugee craft
Cline Bundy on shore with his machine gun???
Maybe trump would build a minefeild

[pampango]

6. The RW government in Hungary has built a Trump-style wall on the Serbian border to stop refugees.

I suspect that a European "Trump" would build and/or mobilize a large part of the navy to stop refugee boats along with building more walls everywhere that refugees could enter by land.

The Irony of Hungary's Border Wall

Hungary's preparations to build a 13-foot-tall fence along the Serbian border are part of a trend. Such barriers have multiplied, not dwindled, since the end of the Cold War, but their purpose is the opposite of what it was when the Berlin Wall still stood: They are meant to keep poor people out.

The tearing down of the Berlin Wall in 1989 is considered the official end of the Cold War, but it was the Hungarians who first breached the Iron Curtain. In May of that year, they started tearing down the 150-mile wall that separated their country from Austria. So it seems ironic that Hungary should now want to build a new border barrier. Nor would it be the first former Eastern bloc country to do so: Bulgaria is restoring the wall that once separated it from capitalist Turkey.

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-06-18/the-irony-of-hungary-s-border-wall

Another irony of the Hungarian wall against refugees is that anti-immigration forces in the UK and elsewhere in Europe view Hungarians (and Romanians, Bulgarians and Poles) as the "poor people" that they need to protect themselves from.

The RW'ers in Hungary probably don't see the irony that while they are building a wall to keep out "THEM", Hungarians are considered the "THEM" against whom other Europeans think they have to protect themselves.