We are half way through fiscal year 2014 (it began on October 1, 2013).
By the way, “recruitment” is the word being used by opponents of Gov. Matt Meads idea to resettle refugees in Wyoming, and I like it. The word “resettlement” is getting stale and I’ve noticed the refugee industry using it less and less as well. They seem to be favoring the word “placement” instead.
President Barack Obama set a cap of 70,000 refugees to be placed in your cities and towns for this fiscal year in his annual determination letter of Oct. 2, 2013.
In accordance with section 207 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (the “Act”) (8 U.S.C. 1157), as amended, and after appropriate consultations with the Congress, I hereby make the following determinations and authorize the following actions:
The admission of up to 70,000 refugees to the United States during fiscal year (FY) 2014 is justified by humanitarian concerns or is otherwise in the national interest; provided that this number shall be understood as including persons admitted to the United States during FY 2014 with Federal refugee resettlement assistance under the Amerasian immigrant admissions program, as provided below.
The 70,000 cap does not include asylum seekers/asylees which number in the tens of thousands, those receiving temporary protected status (TPS), and diversity visa lottery winners (another 50,000!).
Note that there is a 2,000 unallocated reserve which is where some get the number of Syrians that we might admit. Many Syrians are getting into the US by other means and signing up for TPS or asking for asylum, but we have not begun, nor has the President announced, how many Syrians we are going to take. I read that as something must be going on behind the scenes for the flood gates not to have been opened yet.
So, six months in, where are we?
Check out this database at WRAPS.net. In an effort to keep you in the dark, the feds have removed some data bases that previously were available to the public. One missing set of data that I found especially useful was the one with ‘arrivals by city and country’ (where you could see which ethnic groups were being resettled in your city). At least they still have the ‘arrivals by state and country’ so you can see how many you are getting in your state and from where they are coming.
For my purposes right now, I’m looking at ‘map arrivals by nationality.’ For the first six months of the year the US State Department admitted 32,810 refugees. This is the order for the top countries, smaller numbers come from dozens of other countries. Iraqis top the list as they did last year.
Iraq: 9,394
Burma: 6,781
Bhutan: 4,424
Somalia: 3,708
Cuba: 2,154
Iran: 1,470
Dem. Rep. Congo: 1,381
Sudan: 861
Eritrea: 842
Afghanistan: 382
A couple of other countries of interest are Colombia (204) and we admitted 90 Palestinians.
Where are the Syrians?
26 Syrians have been admitted so far this year. The US is under enormous media pressure generated by the ‘human rights industry’ to admit Syrians, so again, there must be some serious squabbling going on behind the scenes in the the State Department and the Dept. of Homeland Security for this number to be so small at this point in the year. Maybe there are members of Congress flexing some muscle (for a change!)?
By the way, Brenda Walker writing at VDARE has an excellent report earlier this week on the media push for Syrian ‘refugee’ admission to the US.
Walker begins:
The top newspaper in our capital city, the Washington Post, is mouthpiecing a Refugee Industry campaign to convince Congress to welcome thousands of Syrians fleeing their civil war. But you can bet they won’t be resettled in Georgetown.