I don’t know when they published it, but it now appears that the Office of Refugee Resettlement is trying to catch up on those legally required annual reports.

At one point, ORR was behind for three years making the reports virtually useless for anyone examining the program (if only Congress would examine this program!).

By law, the reports to Congress are to be filed by the end of January of the following fiscal year.  So, that would mean that the report for FY 2013 should have already been made available by having been filed in January or February of this year.  (See our post about the fact that the reports were always on time until the Clinton years when Lavinia Limon was in charge of ORR, here).

Last night when I wanted to check out how many Somalis we have admitted in recent years, I came across the Annual Report for 2012 submitted by ORR Director, Eskinder Negash.   We had mentioned the availability of FY2011, here in March.

I don’t know the exact publication dates of any of the reports after the Limon years because they are not dated as far as I can tell.  By not publishing a date, no one knows exactly when it went to Congress.

These reports are a treasure-trove of information, and by the way, for all of you doing research on the ‘Unaccompanied Alien Children’ problem, there is a lot in there.   In fiscal year 2012, the ORR was already panicking over the huge jump in illegal alien children coming under their care.

Click here for the report!

One of the first things I check is welfare usage by refugees (page 106) and get this —it is definitely up.  Food stamp usage has gone from 49% of refugees using food stamps in 2007 to 73% for 2012.  The refugee group using food stamps at the highest rate (89%) were Middle Easterners.

So, check it out!  There are hours of reading fun for you this Labor Day weekend!