I’m going to keep asking until we see the two annual reports that the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) in the Department of Health and Human Services was by law supposed to send to Congress. As you can see they are only up to 2007 (here) as of today. I asked the same question, here, last month.
We began FY2011 on October 1st with a Presidential Determination letter to admit another 80,000 refugees this year, so by my calculation they owe Congress the report for 2008 and 2009. The importance of the annual report is that it tells members of Congress and the public what refugees were resettled and to which states. It tells us employment rates. It tells us what resettlement agencies are doing good jobs in finding employment and which aren’t. It tells us what the welfare useage is and relates that to previous years and so on.
So as we continue high rates of refugee resettlement through the great recession years we have no official picture of how those refugees are doing.
Write to your Congressman and US Senators and ask where the 2008 and 2009 annual reports are!