It is indirect of course, but the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)*** is choosing the refugees for America and then the US State Department and the Office of Refugee Resettlement (HHS) along with the contractors decide in which cities they will be placed.
It sure looks like Cincinnati is one city they have deemed “welcoming.”
This is your usual longish article starring a struggling but grateful refugee, nothing new there. However, it has a few nuggets of information that you might find useful. It seems that Kentucky Refugee Ministries, the same contractor that was ripped-off the other day by a Muslim client, plays a role in resettling refugees in the greater Cincinnati area.
The article also confirms the role of the UN and that refugees get welfare goodies as a special class of immigrant (which we know), but it is interesting to me that the subject is being discussed more openly now than 7 years ago when we first started reporting on the program.
From Soapbox Cincinnati:
Greater Cincinnati is home to as many as 25,000 refugees. They come from such countries as Bhutan, Burundi, Congo, Ethiopia, Somalia, Burma, Vietnam, Russia and Iraq, but all [not all!–ed] experienced severe persecution in their homelands that forced them to flee. They also share the struggle to create fresh lives, overcome the language barrier, learn a new culture and integrate into American society.
Lots of column inches are devoted to telling readers about the ‘star’ of the story, then this:
Once a refugee is selected for resettlement by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), their case is piped down through several organizational tiers before finally reaching a settlement destination. In the U.S., they arrive with an I-94 form, a unique status among all classes of immigrants. Refugees receive a social security card upon entry to the U.S. and are eligible for social services, food assistance, Medicaid coverage and most services that citizens qualify for. They can apply for a green card within a year, and are eligible for citizenship after five years of residence.
Kentucky Refugee Ministries resettled the ‘star’ of this story. Unfortunately, the average American reader will assume from this next paragraph that the Kentucky group is helping out of the goodness of its Christian heart—not that they are being paid out of the federal treasury to do their ‘charitable’ work:
For Thang, ties to his wife and her family were enough to move him through the pipeline directly to Louisville. Kentucky Refugee Ministries (KRM) handles resettlement cases for that region, and is responsible for acclimating refugees once they arrive, providing airport pickup, housing, medical examinations, job assistance, cultural integration and language courses.
People ask me all the time if it is true that the UN picks our refugees, yes it is true (for most of the refugees)!
One caveat, however, is what I mentioned in my “Moratorium” testimony (#7). And, that is, when the US State Department uses the program for some extracurricular activity, like airlifting trouble-making Uzbeks here, or giving Russia a little helping hand by taking the Meskhetian Turks off their hands, or when Clinton/Gore airlifted those Kosovars here. And, surely there are others we have never heard of!
***The present UNHCR is Portuguese socialist Antonio Gutteres.