A reminder as you read this story: “Economic migrants” are not refugees or asylees. Refugees must prove that they are being persecuted, not simply that they want a better life economically and a job (or social services!).
Breitbart posted this UPI story over the weekend, and just now I wanted to check my usual places where I find statistics (and where I’ve told you to find stats) on arrivals, but all I get now is some DOTNETNUKE server telling me I have to download something else to get to the WRAPS website. See what you get when you go to www.wrapsnet.org. Of course it could be me, but I am assuming the State Department is now making it harder for us to see the numbers.
So, that’s one more reason why it’s important for the Office of Refugee Resettlement to do its job—required by law!—to send an annual report to Congress, as I mentioned here yesterday so that the Congress and you—the taxpayer—know how many you are paying for. They have not followed the law for all of Obama’s years in office! and the squishes in Congress don’t demand it!
Here is the Breitbart post on Cuba:
The number of Cubans arriving in the United States without visas has risen sharply in the past year, U.S. officials say.
There has been a surge in Cubans traveling to the United States from other countries — including Spain, Ecuador, Mexico and Canada — the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported. Greater numbers are also traveling by boat to Florida.
[….]
About 20,000 Cubans arrive every year on scheduled flights from Havana with visas. No one keeps an exact count of the others, but refugee groups estimate it is about 10,000 a year.
The Coast Guard detained 1,275 Cubans on boats intercepted before they reached Florida in the 12-month period ending Sept. 30. That was the highest number since 2008.
“The influx of Cubans into the U.S. is increasing,” said Ernesto Cuesta, who runs programs for Haitian and Cuban refugees for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in Miami. The young people we are seeing are desperate. There is no hope in Cuba.” [The Bishops should know since they are a federal contractor paid to take care of them—ed]
The hundreds of comments to the article are more interesting then this confusing story.
One commenter says that contrary to popular wisdom that Cuban-Americans vote largely Republican, not so this time (Romney won Cuban Americans in Florida by a tiny margin, here). Another says that non-citizen Cubans (refugees are not automatically citizens!) are voting in Florida and another, ‘Rushbabe’, (on why they are here and coming in larger numbers) says: Freebies, from our newly re-elected Santa Claus.
To get an idea of how many Cubans are entering the US through the refugee program, you will have to visit the most recent annual report to Congress, here, for 2008 because I can’t get to that WRAPS website I mentioned above. (The Obama Administration owes Congress for 2009, 2010, 2011 and soon 2012). There are only two possibilities for why these have not been completed—incompetence or they are hiding something.
Oh, and by the way, we have a refugee office in Cuba processing “refugees” into the US.
Go to the Appendix Tables, here (scroll down to near the end of the report). On page A-1 (Table I) you can see that we brought over 345,000 Cubans through the refugee program into the US from 1983-2008. That’s about 13,000 on average per year. However, note that in 2008, the number has risen to 23,000 plus (and for the previous five years the numbers were over 20,000 each year).
Again, these are just the “refugee” numbers for Cubans, not numbers for all those who came into the US illegally. As refugees they are eligible for most of the welfare goodies we offer—food stamps, Section 8 housing, medical care, SSI, education and the list goes on!
Now check out Table II and you can see that most went to Florida. But, you should really enjoy checking out who all went to your state!