"But there's actually a bunch of things you can do, even from here. We need not feel powerless," says Thalia Kehoe Rowden writing in The Spinoff.

"Here are some concrete actions you can take today to add your voice of outrage and pledge what aid you can to these children who are being tortured by a despot who likes to think of himself as the ‘leader of the free world".

Here are some of her suggestions

• Donate money to those who are helping directly
• Help your American friends and family to exert their influence
• Call on our government to protest
• Protest to the US ambassador here in Aotearoa
• Add your voice to international human rights protests
• Channel your outrage and energy closer to home

A New Zealand presence

A New Zealand priest, Father Tony O'Connor, is working in a parish in Brownsville Texas which is right on the border between the United States and Mexico,

He says there are so many good Christian people on both sides, but more on the Mexican side, "who out of their own pockets are feeding and caring for these people as best they can."

The "migrants who have nothing but empty tummies and sweaty, snotty clothes, rely solely on these self-sacrificing compassionate activists who daily clothe the naked, feed the hungry and give solace to downtrodden dehumanized brothers and sisters from the south".

• Click here to read his Blog.
• Click here to follow him on Facebook
• Click here to send a message to Tony

Make a Donation

If you would like to make a donation please send it to:

The Marist Messenger
78 Hobson St
Wellington 6011

Mark the donation: For the Children on the border

All money would go directly to the support of the migrant children. Donors would be informed about how the money was used.

Source

• thespinoff.co.nz
• Image: breitbart.com

Mr Morrison said about 30 children who remained on Nauru would be left there unless they needed medical attention in Australia or they were resettled in the United States. Continue reading

New Zealand first made the offer in 2013, but the coalition government has not accepted it arguing that the refugees would be able to use New Zealand as a back door to Australia.

But after a recent byelection, the Coalition is likely to become a minority government, and it now says it would accept the New Zealand offer if opposition MPs support its Bill to ban all refugees held offshore from ever returning to Australia.

The Labour Party (ALP) and the Greens have opposed the Bill since it was introduced in 2016.

Both parties now say they will support the legislation under certain conditions.

They are demanding that all children and their families are removed from offshore detention camps.

And they say a travel ban should apply only to the cohort sent to New Zealand, and not everyone who had arrived by boat to Australia since July 2013.

Last week, the New Zealand foreign minister, Winston Peters, said such a ban would create a second class of New Zealand citizenship.

But on Wednesday, the New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern said the offer would still stand if the refugees were banned from Australia by Australian law.

The Refugee Action Coalition in Australia is calling on all Labour, Green and Independent politicians to completely reject the Coalition's lifetime ban bill.

They say there is every reason to believe that a resolution to Parliament to accept the New Zealand resettlement offer, immediately and without conditions, would be passed with the support of dissident Liberal MPs.

Source

• radionz.co.nz
• radionz.co.nz
• refugeeaction.org.au
• Image: worldvision.org.nz

Coach Ekkapol Chantawong and two of the boys, Pornchai Kamluang and Adul Sam-on, will be receiving legal assistance in the nationality verification process.

However, on Friday the provincial governor, Prachon Pratsakun, denied any favouritism in considering citizenship for the three.

14-year-old Adul Sam-on, at age 6, escaped a territory in Myanmar known for guerrilla warfare, opium cultivation and methamphetamine trafficking.

His parents slipped him into Thailand in the hope that proper schooling would provide him with a better life than that of his illiterate, impoverished family.

Adul lives in a Christian church home with 20 other refugees, most of whom were sent to Thailand by their parents so they could go to school.

Proficient in English, Thai, Burmese, Mandarin and Wa, Adul politely communicated to the British divers his squad's greatest needs: food and clarity on just how long they had stayed alive.

When a teammate piped up in broken English, "eat, eat, eat," Adul said he had already covered that point.

"The citizenship application process requires authentication. There's a clear rule regarding birthright citizenship, if their parents are Thai citizens or not," Pratsakun said.

"I have to look through the details. It has to be processed according to the regulations.

"There are lots of people along the border who are asking for Thai citizenship at the moment," he added.

There are currently around 500,000 stateless persons in Thailand.

Some people have to wait for more than 10 years to get Thai nationality.

The process takes a long time because there is insufficient staff at the local administration organisation to handle the very large number of applications.

Source

• channelnewsasia.com
• nytimes.com
• khaosodenglish.com
• washingtonpost.com
• straitstimes.com
• Image: myprivacy.persgroep.net

According to data prepared by the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), from October 2017 to April 2018 more than 700 children were taken from adults claiming to be their parents.

This includes more than 100 children under the age of 4.

The ORR is a division of the Department of Health and Human Services that takes custody of children removed from migrant parents.

Brownsville is a Texas town on the Mexico-United State border. This is the town in which New Zealand priest Fr. Tony O'Connor works. He has recently contributed some opinion pieces to CathNewsNZ Asia and Pacific.

Brownsville has become the centre of media attention in recent weeks.

Beginning late April, the magistrates' courts there suddenly turned into "zero tolerance" factories for criminalising migrants.

It used to be rare to charge migrants seeking asylum with crimes. If they did so, they were put into detention with their children while they pursued their claims.

Or they were released with supervision — along with their children.

The best interests of the children were considered paramount, and those interests included keeping families together.

But now, not only are parents finding themselves charged in federal courts with the crime of "illegal entry," the government is breaking up families, sending children to detention centres or to foster homes.

The children can often end up hundreds of kilometres away from their mothers and fathers.

One of the few places immigrants can gather peacefully and without danger is churches.

Many of those churches are Catholic.

Still, in some ways, the US bishops are stuck in the middle.

Many of their white parishioners voted for Trump and his anti-immigrant platform, while Pope Francis has stood for the opposite when it comes to immigration issues.

While they stand together, bishops retain their individuality.

They differ on strategies, approaches and how much of a priority they put on the issue of immigration.

Source

• theintercept.com
• Image: theintercept.com

Nichols, who is the president of the Bishops' Conference of England and Wales has asked the British government to review its decision to limit the number of unaccompanied child refugees it accepts from Europe.

To neglect these unaccompanied children is to leave them extremely vulnerable to human trafficking with all its terrible consequences," Nichols added. Read more