Refugees Are Not Welcome Here

State-controlled refugee protection in Canada has gone through paradoxical developments in recent decades. While refugee rights have expanded, access to these rights has tightened. Previously unrecognized groups – such as women experiencing gender-based violence and LGBT populations – are now considered legitimate refugees. Yet, the implementation of stringent administrative measures has made it harder for refugees to secure protection. Refugees Are (Not) Welcome Here draws on archival and media sources, interviews, and organizational data to examine how refugee claims are administered within a complex and contradictory regime that maintains significant legal and bureaucratic silos. Azar Masoumi explains why state-controlled refugee protection persists despite its many failures, not only in Canada but globally. This rigorous study deftly argues that the paradoxical interplay between refugee law and claim-processing bureaucracies is symptomatic of a larger illogic: reliance on the exclusivist mechanisms of the nation-state to ensure the universal application of rights. Ultimately, this book illuminates just how this paradox has turned refugee protection into an unfulfilled promise.

A Finalist for the 2019 Kirkus Prize in Nonfiction "Nayeri combines her own experience with those of refugees she meets as an adult, telling their stories with tenderness and reverence.” —The New York Times Book Review "Nayeri weaves her empowering personal story with those of the ‘feared swarms’ . . . Her family’s escape from Isfahan to Oklahoma, which involved waiting in Dubai and Italy, is wildly fascinating . . . Using energetic prose, Nayeri is an excellent conduit for these heart–rending stories, eschewing judgment and employing care in threading the stories in with her own . . . This is a memoir laced with stimulus and plenty of heart at a time when the latter has grown elusive.” —Star–Tribune (Minneapolis) Aged eight, Dina Nayeri fled Iran along with her mother and brother and lived in the crumbling shell of an Italian hotel–turned–refugee camp. Eventually she was granted asylum in America. She settled in Oklahoma, then made her way to Princeton University. In this book, Nayeri weaves together her own vivid story with the stories of other refugees and asylum seekers in recent years, bringing us inside their daily lives and taking us through the different stages of their journeys, from escape to asylum to resettlement. In these pages, a couple fall in love over the phone, and women gather to prepare the noodles that remind them of home. A closeted queer man tries to make his case truthfully as he seeks asylum, and a translator attempts to help new arrivals present their stories to officials. Nayeri confronts notions like “the swarm,” and, on the other hand, “good” immigrants. She calls attention to the harmful way in which Western governments privilege certain dangers over others. With surprising and provocative questions, The Ungrateful Refugee challenges us to rethink how we talk about the refugee crisis. “A writer who confronts issues that are key to the refugee experience.” —Viet Thanh Nguyen, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Sympathizer and The Refugees

Follow the money, find the truth. That’s Michelle Malkin’s journalistic mantra, and in her stunning new book, Open Borders Inc., she puts it to work with a shocking, comprehensive exposé of who’s behind our immigration crisis. In the name of compassion—but driven by financial profit—globalist elites, Silicon Valley, and the radical Left are conspiring to undo the rule of law, subvert our homeland security, shut down free speech, and make gobs of money off the backs of illegal aliens, refugees, and low-wage guest workers. Politicians want cheap votes or cheap labor. Church leaders want pew-fillers and collection plate donors. Social justice militants, working with corporate America, want to silence free speech they deem “hateful,” while raking in tens of millions of dollars promoting mass, uncontrolled immigration both legal and illegal. Malkin names names—from Pope Francis to George Clooney, from George Soros to the Koch brothers, from Jack Dorsey to Tim Cook and Mark Zuckerberg. Enlightening as it is infuriating, Open Borders Inc. reveals the powerful forces working to erase America.

In the context of both the financial crisis and the crisis of European migration politics, the notion of solidarity has gained renewed prominence and - as this book argues - its practice has become increasingly contentious. Intersecting crises have sharpened social and political polarization and have contracted simultaneously the space for migrant and minority rights as well as the rights around political dissent. Building upon social movement and migration studies, this book maps the two sides of ‘contentious solidarity’: a shrinking civic space and its contestation by civil society. The book thereby unfolds the variety of repressive means (physical, legal, administrative and discursive) employed by governmental and non-governmental bodies against migrant solidarity, but also looks at how civil society organizations react to these restrictions through at times moderation and at times increasing contention. The diagnosis of ‘contentious solidarity’ is located within two broader trends affecting the relationship between the state and civil society in a neoliberal context in general and since the financial crisis in particular. Bridging studies on social movement studies and civil society organizations, this volume contributes to recent reflections on repression of social movements as well as of a hybridization of civil society organizations. Given its broad scope and the utmost timeliness of the issues it addresses, the volume will be of interest to a broad academic and non-academic audience.

"Heartbreaking images of children in distress have propelled some of the most urgent calls for action on immigration crises. While we might feel a personal impulse to help the vulnerable, this often extends to state asylum policies. In Forever 17, sociologist Ulrike Bialas follows young African and Central Asian migrants in Germany as they navigate an immigration system engineered to protect minors. Without official paperwork or even knowledge of their exact age, migrants must decide how to present their complicated life stories to government officials. Age in particular often has an outsized effect on their cases. A migrant under 18 can't be deported, for instance, but might be placed in a youth home with strict curfew laws that are especially infantilizing as peers at home begin to start families. An 18-year-old adult will have permission to work, but not opportunities to go to school. And a 15-year-old mother will be separated from her child. No matter their age or "choice" of age, migrants face psychological burdens as well as practical barriers. But the psychological and practical burdens don't exclusively affect migrants. Bialas also spends time with the social workers and doctors charged with determining a migrant's age and national origins. Though Germany's infamous bureaucracy is constructed to issue clear statements about refugees, the truth is often more complicated. Social workers and doctors grapple with the difficult implications of their decisions. Ultimately, Bialas shows, policies surrounding asylum seekers and other immigrants fall dramatically short of their humanitarian ideals. Even those policies designed to help the most vulnerable can lead to outcomes that drastically limit the possibilities for migrants in real need of asylum and impede them from leading fulfilling lives"--

In February 1962, three years into Fidel Castro's rule of their Cuban homeland, the González family—an auto mechanic, his wife, and two young children—landed in Miami with a few personal possessions and two bottles of Cuban rum. As his parents struggled to find work, eleven-year-old Gerardo struggled to fit in at school, where a teacher intimidated him and school authorities placed him on a vocational track. Inspired by a close friend, Gerardo decided to go to college. He not only graduated but, with hard work and determination, placed himself on a path through higher education that brought him to a deanship at the Indiana University School of Education. In this deeply moving memoir, González recounts his remarkable personal and professional journey. The memoir begins with Gerardo's childhood in Cuba and recounts the family's emigration to the United States and struggles to find work and assimilate, and González's upward track through higher education. It demonstrates the transformative power that access to education can have on one person's life. Gerardo's journey came full circle when he returned to Cuba fifty years after he left, no longer the scared, disheartened refugee but rather proud, educated, and determined to speak out against those who wished to silence others. It includes treasured photographs and documents from González's life in Cuba and the US. His is the story of one immigrant attaining the American Dream, told at a time when the fate of millions of refugees throughout the world, and Hispanics in the United States, especially his fellow Cubans, has never been more uncertain.