This White Refugee story is an old one, in the USA, from 2004, about an elderly white couple who were denied Asylum, because the Judges did not conclude that the couple's fears of crime and lack of employment opportunities, based upon their race, amounted to persecution.
Do white South Africans perceive themselves to be victims of [persecution] because of their race (white South African)?
Is there clear and convincing proof of the South African Government & security force's inability or unwillingness to protect Afrikaner White South Africans?
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South Africans lose 'persecution' court appeal
Friday, April 23, 2004
By Sam Skolnik, Seattle Post-Intelligencer Reporter
Carol and Michael Gormley came to the United States in 1999 in large part to be close to their daughter and grandchildren on Bainbridge Island.
But they also were fleeing rising crime and economic upheaval in their native country. As whites in post-apartheid South Africa, they claimed they increasingly felt the sting of racial and economic persecution.
The Gormleys -- ensconced in comfortable, low-key lives here as grandparents and "courtesy checkers" at the Bainbridge Island Safeway -- have been fighting hard for asylum in the United States. But a federal appeals court yesterday made it clear they are fighting an uphill battle.
A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that although the couple's fears of racial and economic discrimination may be well-founded, they "do not amount to persecution."
The couple, from Durban, an Indian Ocean port city in the South African province of KwaZulu-Natal, entered the United States on a five-month tourist visa June 4, 1999. Michael had worked as a scaffolding contract supervisor; Carol was a cargo coordinator for the state railway. Both are 55.
Before the visa expired, the couple filed an asylum request.
They claimed that they had both lost jobs -- and couldn't find other work -- because of laws passed to assist the country's black population, which had been devastated by decades of apartheid. But dealing with the fallout of those laws, which proponents call affirmative action, amounted to race-based persecution, they said.
The couple also claimed they had been victimized by waves of "violent, rampant crime" sweeping their country -- largely aimed at whites -- several times.
Michael Gormley said he had been mugged twice by groups of black men in the year before they left the country, and almost a third time.
The immigration judge who heard the case rejected the Gormleys' claims that they would be unable to find work if they returned to South Africa, or that Michael was attacked because he was white.
The appellate judges agreed.
"The Gormleys have established only that they fear (1) future racial discrimination with adverse economic consequences, and (2) potential criminal attacks from random black assailants," Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw wrote on behalf of the panel. "These fears, while perhaps well-founded, do not amount to persecution."
But Michael Gormley, who has suffered three heart attacks and regularly sees a cardiologist, strongly disagrees. When they left, he said, it was for good.
"We'd made up our minds that it was just not viable to live in South Africa any longer," he said.
Gormley said the couple's many black friends in South Africa "sympathized with our plight." And he said he understood theirs -- that they were eager to stay, in part because they had new opportunities to look forward to under the new system.
The couple's immigration attorney, Carol Edward, said they might appeal to a full panel of the federal appeals court, or perhaps to the U.S. Supreme Court. "We're not going to stop," she said.
Since apartheid, the system of white-minority rule that excluded blacks, ended 10 years ago, South Africa has continued to be plagued by crime and high unemployment rates.
According to the 2003 CIA World Factbook, "(D)aunting economic problems remain from the apartheid era, especially poverty and lack of economic empowerment among the disadvantaged groups."
Blair O'Connor, the Justice Department attorney from Washington, D.C., who argued the appeals case, declined comment yesterday. A department spokesman could not be reached.
But according to Alan Moore, a consul with the South African Consulate General in Los Angeles, "We have legal and constitutional protections against any such persecutions" like those alleged by the Gormleys.
"Affirmative action is a part of the South African situation, but it doesn't mean that they will be persecuted," Moore said.
Those assurances aren't good enough for many Bainbridge Islanders who have lined up to support the couple.
Sue Wilmot, who has worked with the Gormleys for four years at Safeway, said she and other volunteers have collected 1,200 signatures on a petition demanding that the government reverse itself and allow them to stay.
"They are very well-loved Bainbridge Islanders right now, and we're not sending them back," Wilmot said. "No way."
Source: Seattle Post Intelligencer
White SA pair denied US asylum
2004-04-23 07:20
San Francisco - Being white is not grounds for a couple from South Africa to gain asylum in the United States, a federal appeals court ruled on Thursday.
The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed an asylum application from a white couple who claimed they lost the jobs they held under apartheid and fear they won't be able to find work if deported from the United States. The husband also claimed he would be subjected to criminal activity if deported because he is a white.
The unanimous decision came as South Africa prepares for its 10-year anniversary on Tuesday from the fall of a white-ruled government under apartheid. The governing African National Congress scored its biggest election victory on April 14, securing about 70% of the parliamentary vote.
The San Francisco-based appeals court said the couple, Michael and Edith Gormley of Bainbridge Island, Washington, failed to establish they have been or will be persecuted if returned to South Africa.
Reverse discrimination
"Substantial evidence supports the conclusion that the Gormleys suffered, at most, what may be perceived as reverse discrimination which resulted in some adverse economic consequences," Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw wrote for the panel. She was joined by Judge William Candby and Ronald Gould.
The couple claimed they lost their long-time jobs - he was a construction supervisor and she was a government employee - because of South Africa's Employment Equity Act of 1998, which was designed to ameliorate past discrimination and give jobs to blacks. They said they were denied new employment because of their race.
The couple legally entered the United States in 1999 as visitors and sought asylum.
Three men stole cellphone
The husband said he feared being victimised by criminals if returned. He said three black men stole his cellphone in 1998 and later six black men wielding knives stole his watch and phone.
The appeals court said such criminal activity does not rise to the level of persecution and the granting of asylum. "Robberies of this sort are an all too common by-product of civil unrest and economic turmoil," Wardlaw wrote. The judge added that the husband was unable to prove to US immigration officials that he was criminally victimised on account of his race.
The couple work at a local market packing groceries and were not immediately available for comment. A community fund-raising effort for the couple generated at least $13 000 for legal expenses. - AP
Source: News 24
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