INVASION USA

HOW MANY CENTRAL AMERICANS DESERVE ASYLUM? ZERO!

Exclusive: Barry Farber draws on history to explain why current system is a 'disgrace'

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s nearly seven years of refuge in the Ecuadoran Embassy in London – during which he avoided facing Swedish officials on allegations of sex crimes and American officials on a charge of conspiring 

(with the former Bradley Manning, now known as Chelsea Manning) 

to steal military secrets – came to a well-publicized end earlier this month when Ecuador revoked his asylum and he was arrested by British police.

While the Swedish charges have been dropped, he still faces extradition to the U.S. But the story of his asylum being revoked has brought great public awareness to the notion of political asylum.

Assange is one of many figures who have sought and been granted asylum in a diplomatic mission and is not even the one who has racked up the longest time as a houseguest in an embassy or consulate.

There have been any number of asylum-seekers, representing a wide spectrum of ethnic and political stripes and persuasions. 

Two others, about whom I happen to know a little something, were Victor Raúl Haya de la Torre of Peru and Cardinal József Mindszenty of Hungary.

Victor Raúl Haya de la Torre (1895-1979) was a Latin American revolutionary, the founder and leader of the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance (APRA), and was that organization’s candidate for president of Peru three times in the 1930s and 1960s. 

Most of his adult life was spent in jail, in exile or in hiding. 

He is said to have embodied the struggle, so characteristic of Latin American politics, between left-wing revolutionary movements and right-wing military authoritarian regimes.

In 1948 his party (then known as the Partido del Pueblo, or Party of the People) was outlawed in Peru, and when a military junta overthrew the government and imposed military rule, Haya de la Torre took asylum in the Colombian Embassy in Lima for five years, until the regime, under heavy international pressure, allowed him to leave Peru and go to Mexico.

He returned to Peru when constitutional government was restored in 1957 and was once again his party’s candidate for the presidency in 1962, except that the army once again seized power and annulled the election. 

A new president was elected in 1963, but another military junta seized control in 1968. 

By 1978 Haya de la Torre’s party had regained dominance, and he was president of the assembly elected to write a new constitution. 

When he died he was scheduled, at the age of 84, to be his party’s presidential candidate in 1980.

Cardinal Mindszenty was the leader of the Catholic Church in Hungary. 

During World War II, he opposed the Hungarian pro-Nazi party and was imprisoned. 

After the war, he opposed Communism and the persecution and oppression it imposed on his country. 

For those efforts, he was tortured and put on trial in 1949 and sentenced to life in prison.

After eight years in prison, he was freed in the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, but his freedom was as short-lived as that revolution. 

When the Soviet Union sent troops to restore Hungary’s Communist government, Cardinal Mindszenty took refuge in the United States Embassy in Budapest, where he was granted political asylum and lived for the next 15 years! 

He was finally allowed to leave the country in 1971 and died in exile in Vienna in 1975.

What’s my point in recounting all of this (aside from the fact that I always like to include a little history lesson in my columns)?

Over the years, governments have carefully deliberated the many appeals for asylum. 

Each case was given careful hearings, and the verdicts were taken very seriously by all parties.

It is precisely all that care that now reveals what’s going on in Washington, a shameful and disgusting disgrace. 

Watch me! 

I can save my nation a fortune before drawing another breath! 

How many of those so-called asylum-seekers from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua and so on have valid claims? 

The answer – zero! 

There’s a world of difference between individuals such as Assange, Haya de la Torre and Cardinal Mindszenty and the vast hordes being allowed to pour across our southern border merely because they desire “a better life” in “El Norte.”

Why “zero”? – 

because of a seldom mentioned fact of geopolitical life that forces the final score to be zero. 

You see, a true appeal for asylum in this case would normally be addressed not to the U.S., but to the safe haven of the country adjacent to the asylum-seeker’s. 

Who would have ever dreamed that such a simple principle of international diplomacy could best be explained by a Donald Duck cartoon well over 50 years old?

Donald’s three little duckling nephews, Huey, Dewey and Louie, were at a friend’s house one rainy Saturday night. 

They called Uncle Donald and said, “Uncle Donald, please let us stay here tonight. 

It’s raining so hard and we don’t want to get drenched!” 

Uncle Donald figured, 

“Well, it’s Saturday night and no school tomorrow. Why not?” 

So he gave permission.

About 20 minutes later, Uncle Donald’s doorbell rang. 

Outside stood his three thoroughly drenched nephews.

“I thought you were going to stay over!” exclaimed an annoyed and confused Uncle Donald. 

“Oh, we are,” said one of the ducklings, 

“but we had to come home and get our pajamas!”

Read more at https://www.wnd.com/2019/04/how-many-central-americans-deserve-asylum-zero/#dW0q3RfMUBrK2SWQ.99