I knew it! The Refugee Resettlement Industry is going to soon agitate to bring refugees from South Africa to the US. It is one thing if the International Rescue Committee works in a country, but it usually follows that they press for refugees to be resettled in the US.
In that same interview in which Rupp says they are working with the Presidential campaigns to get more money in the next Administration, Rupp says they are headed to South Africa. This is in response to a question about how do they decide what countries to focus on:
We have emergency response teams, so [in] any conflict-generated emergency we will almost certainly be present because that’s what we do. We don’t ordinarily do natural disasters. By and large our specialty is conflict-generated emergencies. We always have a handful of countries. We’re probably going to go into South Africa to work with Zimbabwean refugees. There are huge numbers of Zimbabweans; the country is in free fall.
It is not clear from this if he is saying Zimbabwee is in free fall or South Africa, but from what we’ve seen in our reporting on South Africa, I would say South Africa qualifies for the “free fall” category too!
As the Rainbow Nation implodes, Somalis in South Africa are pushing for resettlement in the West. See our category on Africa.