Why is that?
For the longest time we were able to access statistics for cities at the US State Department contracted site called WRAPS (Worldwide Refugees Admissions Processing System/Refugee Processing Center (RPC)).
Most of the website is NOT available to the public, but at this public page there had been for years a link for ‘arrivals by destination city by nationality.’ I thought I might be imagining that there had been that statistical category, but noticed just now, when visiting another US State Department contracted site, that indeed it exists (but not for you!).
Here is what the Cultural Orientation Resource Center (gee I wonder when they turned the ‘C’ in their logo into a crescent?) says about the WRAPS/RPC stats:
The Refugee Processing Center (RPC), operated by the U.S Department of State, Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM), coordinates the processing and tracking of the movement of refugees from various countries around the world to the U.S. for resettlement under the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program.
Working closely with Resettlement Support Centers, national refugee resettlement agencies, and others, the RPC oversees the use of an interactive computer system called the Worldwide Refugee Admissions Processing System (WRAPS). The RPC uses this data to produce a variety of reports on refugee arrivals per region within a fiscal year, arrivals by state within a fiscal year, arrivals by destination city by nationality, and so on.
To access these reports and more, see the Refugee Processing Center’s Admissions and Arrivals reports page.
What else do they keep from the public? They keep the stats on the number of Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, Hindus etc. that are coming in as refugees, but do not release those to the public either. Only special people can get further into the password-protected site. It is all part of the secrecy that is a hallmark of the program.
See a list of State Department “preferred communities,” here. But, we don’t know how many and what nationalities are being resettled. Is your city one of them?
Don’t forget! Please send a comment to the US State Department by May 29th (one week from today!) on the “size and scope” of refugee admissions for FY 2015!