I am so excited!
A major news outlet is actually reporting on those often very tardy (and seemingly boring) annual reports to Congress from the Office of Refugee Resettlement!
Probably for the last few years only a handful of people in the whole country were looking at a report that I doubt anyone in Congress ever looks at. As a matter of fact, I bet most Members of Congress and US Senators don’t even know the Refugee Program exists!
But, a new day has arrived!
Here is Breitbart’s headline:
3 in 4 Refugees On Food Stamps, Many Using Other Forms Of Public Assistance
“A strikingly high percentage of refugees to the United States use some form of public assistance, according to a government report to Congress.
The Office of Refugee Resettlement’s Annual Report to Congress for FY2013 reveals that nearly 3 in 4 refugees were on food stamps.
Additionally, nearly half were on some form of cash assistance and more than a half were on medical assistance. More than 20 percent were on Supplemental Security Income, more than 22 percent were in public housing and nearly 20 percent were on Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF).
The report noted that many households received more than one type of assistance and the data dealt with refugees who arrived in the U.S. between March 1, 2008 to February 28, 2013.
To be sure, assistance use varied among region of origin.
Refugees from Africa and the Middle East were the heaviest users of cash assistance at 61.9 percent and 68.3 percent respectively. Latin American refugees only used cash assistance at a rate of 8.1 percent and South Asia used about 42.7 percent. Data for Europe and the former Soviet Union was not available.
The use of food stamps — or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) — also varied with 88.9 percent of refugees from Africa, 91.4 percent of Middle Eastern refugees, the Middle East, 72.9 percent of South Asia, and 36.7 percent of Latin American refugees using the benefit.
Overall, according to the report just 50 percent of refugee households in the five year window were self-sufficient. [This self-sufficiency claim is shaky as refugees can be on some forms of welfare and still be considered ‘self-sufficient’ for the purposes of this report.—ed]
So, if you are angry, what do you do? Who is the one person that could bring about a serious review of this program?
First have a look at the report sent to Rep. Trey Gowdy’s House Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security.
Here it is—the annual report for FY2013. The Office of Refugee Resettlement is required by law to prepare these reports to Congress within just a few months of the close of the fiscal year. So this report is only a little over a year late.
In the past, as we often reported, they were many years late and Congress never noticed! Here is a post from 2013 where I chronicled the flagrant violation of the law over many years.
When the bill that became the Refugee Act of 1980 (Kennedy, Biden, Carter) was debated in Congress, critics said it would become a pipeline for poverty as more and more welfare recipients entered the US as refugees and asylees. Guess what! They were right!
In keeping with a recent trend here at RRW where we are attempting to identify the major actors in colonizing your towns with impoverished third worlders…..
Let Rep. Trey Gowdy know you want this law reformed or repealed!
Of course there is a Senate Subcommittee responsible for refugees as well, headed by Senator Jeff Sessions, but let’s get this ball rolling in the House. Gowdy probably thinks the refugee resettlement program is some benign political freebie for him, let him know it isn’t!
Here is his office contact information. Note that he has an office in Spartanburg the latest town to be seeded!