From July 31 to August 31 we admitted 952 Somalis to your towns and cities for a total of 8,278 this year. That moves Somalis up from the 4th highest group of refugees to the third. Ahead of Somalia are Iraq (17,771) and Burma (13,166).
Check out all nationalities for the last 11 months (Fiscal year 2014) byclicking here.
While you are visiting the Refugee Processing Center, be sure to see how many refugees your state received so far this year.
World Net Daily writer Leo Hohmann has posted the third in a series of reports on Somalis in Minnesota in the wake of revelations that young Somalis from the refugee community there have gone to join ISIS in Syria and Iraq (and previously to Somalia to fight with Al-Shabaab). We posted on parts 1 and 2 (here and here).
Changing Minnesota! Political caucus in Minneapolis where Somali men and women sit separately. http://www.startribune.com/politics/statelocal/203321991.html
Here are some snips from the articlewhich I suggest you read in its entirety (Hat tip: Jeannine). Emphasis is mine:
Over the course of two decades, the federal government’s Refugee Resettlement Program has forcibly infused the Minneapolis-St. Paul area of Minnesota with a large dose of Somali culture, and the transition has not always been smooth.
Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., told WND that while many of the Somali transplants have been hard-working citizens, the experiment has been costly for her state. And too many Somalis remain dependent on public assistance.
Culture of dependency!
“And so tens of thousands of Somalis have been lifted out of a completely different situation and dropped into Minnesota,” Bachmann said. “They have been brought here in many cases by Catholic Charities and Lutheran Social Services and made homes here, but the problems of radicalization have come to Minnesota as well.” [Those “charities” are contracted by the US State Department to resettle the refugees.—ed]
While any refugee entering a new country could be expected to need some temporary government aid, Bachmann said problems arise with the culture of dependency that many Somali families have settled into. There have been ongoing issues with radicalization as well, as young Somalis have been targeted by preachers of Islamic jihad, drawing them into foreign terrorist networks such as al-Shabab in Somalia and ISIS in Syria.
Bachmann: Feds should receive permission to drop refugees into communities.
Bachmann, along with local activists in the state, say the federal government should not resettle refugees into communities without full disclosure of the costs to taxpayers. She believes the feds should also receive permission from elected leaders before dropping refugees into communities.
“I do believe localities and states should have a say in whether refugees come to their community. There was no opportunity to weigh in. When people come from areas of destabilization, the destabilization tends to come in with them,” Bachmann told WND.
Blame it on Ted and Joe (and by the way, Delaware gets only a handful of refugees each year, zero so far in 2014, but it received a whopping 6 refugees in FY 2013, see your state in the “statistical abstract”):
The resettlement program gets its authority from the Refugee Act of 1980, sponsored by the late Sen. Ted Kennedy and former Sen. Joe Biden, and is overseen by the U.S. Department of State. The act allows the refugees to become U.S. citizens within five years. Once here, the refugees are allowed to bring in extended family members through the State Department’s Family Reunification program.
Living “in the heart of the beast”:
The charities – Lutheran Social Services, Catholic Charities and World Relief Minnesota – work with money largely provided by federal government grants.
Debra Anderson, a working mother employed in the health-care industry in Minneapolis, said she became concerned two years ago after she bought her house in the northeast quadrant of the city and found out a second mosque was proposed nearby.
“I basically live and work in the heart of the beast, and shortly after I moved in there was a proposal for another mosque in my neighborhood,” said Anderson, who is a member of American Congress for Truth.***
Read on!There is much much more about Anderson and her community, city and state.
Why so many Somalis in Minneapolis? See our post from 2011, here.
Update: Almost 1,000 additional Somalis admitted to the US in the past month, here. The number for FY2014 is now 8,278.
Almost every day someone asks us—where do I find numbers for this group of refugees admitted to the US, or that group. Let me tell you it isn’t easy!
This morning I was on the hunt for how many Somalis we admitted to the US in fiscal year 2013.
Eskinder Negash (right) Director of ORR and Larry Bartlett (left) Director of Refugee Admissions of the US State Department addressing an audience in “welcoming” Portland, Maine. Maine is a Somali resettlement site. http://www.pressherald.com/2013/01/30/growth-of-refugee-community-attributed-to-welcoming-city_2013-01-30/
We know that for fiscal year 2014, through July 31st (in ten months), we have admitted 7,326. You can always check this site at WRAPSnet.org for the on-going resettlement in a given year.
Update: Here in Statistical Abstracts you can learn about how many refugees/asylees etc. came to your state in FY2013.
The handiest place for all numbers is the Office of Refugee Resettlement’s Annual Reports to Congress, here. However, since they are always behind in producing those, the most recent numbers are not available to us or to Congress. The numbers are in tables at the end of each report.
Another good source is the Annual Flow Reports from the Department of Homeland Security. Here is one for 2012.
You can find some information at the Migration Policy Institute(a pro-immigration ‘think tank’), here.
Then there is the massive data base at Homeland Security’s Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, here.
Where did I finally find the number I was looking for?
I found it in the text of a year-end wrap-upwhich we previously posted by the Director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, Eskinder Negash, who said this on December 20, 2013 (posted here for the benefit of our new readers). Emphasis is mine:
Two thousand thirteen was another busy year for the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR). Despite an extended moratorium on overseas refugee arrivals in October, Fiscal Year 2013 brought fairly steady arrivals each month, across all categories.
The largest group was refugees, with the United States welcoming refugees from 65 countries across the globe this past year. The highest number of overseas arrivals represented a slight switch from those of the past few years, with nearly 19,500 Iraqi refugee admissions and 16,300 Burmese refugees accounting for more than half of all refugee arrivals. They were followed by Bhutanese (9,100), Somali (7,600)and Cuban refugees (4,200), with Iran, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, Eritrea and Ethiopia rounding out rest of the top ten admissions groups in FY2013.
The overall population served by ORR and its partners, however, grew to a projected 143,000 new arrivals in Fiscal Year 2013, including almost 72,000 refugees and Special Immigrant Visa holders, an estimated 46,000 asylees and Cuban/Haitian Entrants and Parolees; more than 500 Victims of Trafficking, and nearly 25,000 Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC).
Negash: The best news! They are voting!
The numbers only tell part of the story: most of the 143,000 people ORR served last year are on a path to U.S. citizenship that began the day they arrived. Former refugees, asylees, and UAC are making positive changes in communities across the country—and will continue to do so throughout their lives—opening businesses, buying homes and raising families, and voting (and running!) in local elections. Three former refugees ran for public office in multi-cultural Clarkston, Georgia this past November—and for the first time in the city’s history, voters elected a refugee to a seat on the City Council.
See also one of our most read posts from the last seven years, ‘How did we get so many Somali refugees…’ I put those numbers together by poring over each annual report that had become available. By the way, keep in mind that most Somalis in the US today came as refugees or are the children of refugees.
Just this morning I was working on all those darn numbers and now a few hours later I see that the August 31 data is available at the Refugee Processing Center.
