Friday, January 19, 2018

Accept Refugees, says the Pope

 the Pope tells Chile to welcome refugees. 

Fine and dandy. And in fact, the article notes that they indeed have allowed in a lot of refugees: From (socialist) Venezuela and also from Haiti, but locals are starting to say "NO"...

Chile has accepted waves of immigrants in recent years, including tens of thousands of Venezuelans fleeing their troubled country and Haitians seeking better lives. The policy has created political controversy. A recent poll by CEP, a think tank in Santiago, indicated that 2 of every 5 Chileans believe the newcomers are the source of rising crime, a thesis that police say has no basis in fact.
Many Chileans favor opening their borders, especially to Venezuelans, an indication of the debt many feel to the country that accepted thousands of Chileans exiled in the 1970s by the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet.
But President-elect Sebastian Pinera, who takes office in March, ran a campaign promising to take a tougher line on immigration than current President Michelle Bachelet.

The UKGuardian has an article on Venezuelan refugees who have fled to Colombia. And again, the rolls are reversed as Colombia is now at peace and the economy is booming, whereas in Venezuela, the government's policies (and low oil prices) have collapsed their economy.

The current wave reverses a previous wave of movement between the two countries: millions of Colombians headed to Venezuela in the 1970s and 80s. At the time, Venezuela was rich with oil dollars and Colombia wracked the civil war and cartel violence. Nowadays, a cratering economy and rampant crime have made daily life untenable for many ordinary Venezuelans.
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A lot of the refugees are the result of corruption: you know the stuff that the old testament prophets tended to be a bit critical about? So
if I am cynical about the Pope, it is because ethics is in the Pope's job description last time I looked, but he prefers to emphasize trendier than thou memes of the world.


"who am I to judge" was a green light to sexual sociopaths of all sexual orientation.. (his remark, contrary to the press meme, was about a repentant pedophile who he let go back to work, not about all gays)... and that is why all those folks in Chile who are demonstrating against his hypocrisy.

 (guess he hasn't noticed the #metoo memes of women who were harmed by sexual predators either).

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