Tan Sovichea, head of the refugee office at the Interior Ministry’s immigration department, said Australia was now free “to arrange airplane tickets for the three refugees and fix the exact date for their travel.”

Australia have already contributed $ 45 Million to this to the Cambodian Government and now still digging in Australian tax payers pockets for airfares !!!!!

It is confirmed that 3 more refugees from Australia's Nauru Detention Centre have arrived for resettlement in Cambodia. We can only wish them better luck in their new life than the previous candidates.

Australia Sends Three More Refugees

Three more refugees, whose unsuccessful efforts to reach Australia by boat resulted in detention on the island of Nauru, arrived in Cambodia on Sunday as part of the much maligned refugee deal between Australia and Cambodia.

Tan Sovichea, head of the refugee office at the Interior Ministry’s immigration department confirmed that three men – from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka – had arrived in Cambodia.

He did not know if they had family still on Nauru or if anyone from their home countries wished to move to Cambodia to be with them.
“If any family members want to stay in this country they must apply for immigrant status,” he said...
http://www.khmertimeskh.com/news/31783/ ... -refugees/

Article from The Guardian says that only one out of the three refugees has actually arrived in Cambodia.

Tuesday 8 November 2016 08.39 GMT
A Syrian man quietly arrived in Cambodia on Sunday, becoming just the sixth refugee detained by Australia on Nauru to take up an offer of resettlement in the third-party country since a $40m deal was signed two years ago.

The man is one of three men who last month volunteered for transfer to Cambodia. Ian Rintoul of the Refugee Action Coalition told the Guardian that the Syrian man had initially been told he would be given the chance to be reunited with his family, who are in a Jordanian refugee camp, upon arrival in Cambodia. Rintoul said he had been told this deal might now be off the table.

A second volunteer, believed to be from Afghanistan, had allegedly sought a transfer home. “He found out he was being sent to Cambodia rather than home, or on his way home,” Rintoul said. “We’ve been told that people who want to go home have to go via Cambodia.”

Rintoul said he was trying to determine why the third man, whose nationality has not been confirmed, had decided to remain on Nauru.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/ ... ment-offer

I wonder if we got some monies for this...NOT!

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/aus ... ailsignout


Australia has reached a resettlement deal with the United States for refugees being held in Papua New Guinea and Nauru after attempting to reach Australia by boat, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said on Sunday


cheers


Bertros

The Cambodian reaction, to the news of a refugee resettlement deal with the US, is quite Cambodian...

Cambodian officials said they knew nothing about the new arrangement with the U.S.

News of it took the head of the Interior Ministry’s immigration department, Sok Phal, by surprise.

“To the U.S.A.? I [do] not yet know,” he said. “Australia did not inform us officially.”

Though unaware, he welcomed the news and said it could mean the end to Cambodia’s deal, or memorandum of understanding (MoU), with Australia.

“I think [it’s] good for us…. So maybe the MoU is finished; I say maybe,” he said. “The refugees want to live in a developed country, so if they can go to the U.S. it is good for them.”

General Phal also claimed to know nothing about the $30.2 million that Australia attached to the MoU, and declined to comment on its fate should the U.S. replace Cambodia as the refugees’ new destination. In December, the Australian Embassy in Phnom Penh said that about $3.9 million of that money had been delivered to date.

The immigration department’s refugee bureau chief, Tan Sovichea, and head of administration, Kerm Sarin, also said they knew nothing about Australia’s deal with the U.S.

During their announcement yesterday, Australian officials made no mention of Cambodia. Immigration Minister Peter Dutton laid out three options—none of them involving Cambodia—for the refugees currently on Nauru: the U.S., their home countries or a 20-year visa to stay on Nauru.

https://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/camb ... al-120545/

Trump backs deal with Australia
30 January 2017
US President Donald Trump assured Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull that a deal signed by his predecessor – which would allow the asylum seekers held on Manus and Nauru to settle in the US – would be honored during the first official call between the two leaders yesterday morning.

The two discussed a variety of issues during their 25-minute phone conversation, but Mr. Trump sought to allay fears that the refugee deal would be scrapped after months of uncertainty...

Despite reports in October of three more refugees were slated to come to Cambodia under the deal, Kem Sarin, a spokesman for the general immigration department, declined to comment on the future of Cambodia’s pact with Australia in light of the US government’s stance.

In November, then-US President Barack Obama agreed to bring all of the refugees on both islands to the US pending extensive background checks and interviews. Due to Mr. Trump’s outspoken stance against immigration during his election campaign, many believed the deal would be scrapped once he took office.

But officials from the US State Department have already gone to both Nauru and Manus to interview refugees ahead of their resettlement on orders from Mr. Trump’s administration.

Mr. Trump’s backing of the agreement came as a surprise to many analysts and commentators in the US considering his recent executive order suspending the entry of all refugees to the US for 120 days, banning Syrian refugees indefinitely and stopping the citizens of seven predominantly Muslim countries from entering the US for 90 days.

Many of those being held on Nauru and Manus are from the seven nations on Mr. Trump’s list of now-banned countries, including Iran, Iraq, Syria and Yemen...
http://www.khmertimeskh.com/news/34868/ ... australia/

Donald Trump diplomacy, the Australian PM, and the refugee deal :

Australia struggling to save refugee agreement after Trump's fury at 'dumb deal'
Katharine Murphy in Canberra and Ben Doherty in Sydney
Thursday 2 February 2017

Australia is scrambling to save its agreement to resettle refugees in the US after Donald Trump raged publicly at “a dumb deal” and told the country’s prime minister Malcolm Turnbull in private it was the “worst deal ever”.

The US president took to Twitter late night in Washington to condemn the refugee swap and brand the asylum seekers held in camps on Nauru and Manus Island “illegal immigrants”.

His intervention came after the Washington Post reported that Trump had despaired of the deal when talking to Turnbull on Sunday (Australian time), told him that the conversation was the worst of his phone calls with world leaders that day, and then abruptly brought the 25-minute call to a close.

Trump’s pledge to “study” the agreement sparked immediate concern in Canberra. But Turnbull dug in, saying in radio interviews he had a personal commitment from the president “confirmed several times now by the [US] government”.

“We have a clear commitment from the president,” Turnbull told Melbourne radio station 3AW. “We expect that the commitment will continue.”

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-n ... -dumb-deal


From Washington Post:
“I don’t want these people,” Trump said. He repeatedly misstated the number of refugees called for in the agreement as 2,000 rather than 1,250, and told Turnbull that it was “my intention” to honor the agreement, a phrase designed to leave the U.S. president wiggle room to back out of the deal in the future, according to a senior U.S. official.

Before Trump tweeted about the agreement Wednesday night, the U.S. Embassy in Canberra had assured Australian reporters that the new administration intended to take the refugees.

“President Trump’s decision to honour the refugee agreement has not changed,” an embassy spokesman had told the reporters, according to an official in the Sydney consulate. “This was just reconfirmed to the State Department from the White House and on to this embassy at 1315 Canberra time.”

The time the embassy said it was informed the deal was going ahead was 9:15 p.m. in Washington, one hour and 40 minutes before Trump suggested in a tweet that it might not go ahead.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/na ... 088c3349bb

Australia, Cambodia, refugees ?
No problem says Australia. Great work, keep it up.

Australia praises Cambodia on refugees

An Australian government minister yesterday praised Cambodia for taking in refugees from the island nation of Nauru, according to Foreign Ministry spokesman Chum Sounry.
Mr. Sounry spoke to the media after private talks between Foreign Minister Prak Sokhonn and Australia’s International Development Minister Concetta Fierravanti-Wells.

“Ms. Fierravanti-Wells thanked Cambodia for its highly valued adherence to the Memorandum of Understanding on the settlement of refugees in Cambodia signed in 2014,” Mr. Sounry said.
“In response, Mr. Sokhonn reaffirmed that Cambodia will continue to implement the MoU signed by both governments.”

Since the deal was signed, only six refugees have come to Cambodia,
“Four have returned home and two are still here – one Syrian and a Rohingya from Myanmar,” Mr. Sounry said, adding there are no immediate plans for more refugees to arrive.

Mr. Sounry said Cambodia also thanked Australia for providing development assistance, including help with demining operations.
Ms. Fierravanti-Wells was in Cambodia on an official visit to see first-hand how Australia’s aid program supports economic and social development.

A statement from the Australian minister said she would also announce a new Australian program designed to support vulnerable people in Cambodia.
“Australia will provide up to $25 million over five years to improve the lives of people with disabilities and women and girls who have experienced gender-based violence,” she said.
http://www.khmertimeskh.com/news/36577/ ... -refugees/

Despite the declaration from the Cambodian Foreign Ministry in March that no more refugees were expected, a Syrian man from Nauru discreetly arrived in Cambodia last month.
Nauru refugee quietly arrives
Thu, 25 May 2017
The Australian government has quietly transferred another refugee from Nauru to Cambodia, the Kingdom’s refugee director confirmed this week.

The man, who fled war-torn Syria, was sent from the island detention centre of Nauru to Phnom Penh before Khmer New Year, according to General Tan Sovichea, head of the Interior Ministry’s Refugee Department.

The Syrian man was one of two refugees who had expressed interest in relocating to the Kingdom in recent months. But Sovichea said on Tuesday that the second man had in the end “changed his mind”.
“They volunteered to come to Cambodia, they already were approved to come, but when the date came, they withdrew the application,” he said...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/n ... ly-arrives

31 May 2018
- Australia's unsuccessful refugee resettlement deal with Cambodia is set to wrap up at the end of the year.

The move comes amid concerns about the Southeast Asian country's crumbling democracy, ahead of July elections.

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade confirmed the arrangement struck in 2014 would continue until the end of 2018, during a Senate estimates hearing on Thursday.

Cambodia agreed to resettle refugees from Nauru in exchange for a $40 million aid sweetener, and $15 million was allocated for running costs.
However, only seven people took up the offer and it's believed only three remain.
https://www.news.com.au/national/breaki ... 6aa554dded