Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees and Migration, Anne C. Richard, is traveling and making some news on the Syrian refugee resettlement plan.
But, there is nothing much new here. Nevertheless readers, especially new readers, need to know that this is a very very low number compared to what the Obama State Department wanted for this year and you can bet there is much gnashing of teeth going on in the contractor community which wanted 12,000-15,000 THIS year.
The main reason the Syrians are not yet on the way big time is that the FBI can’t get them screened for security.
Do not forget that the contractors have recently begun lobbying to raise the ceiling for all refugees arriving in the US from 70,000 set by Obama last September to possibly 100,000.
From Channel News Asia:
BEIRUT: The United States has admitted 648***refugees from Syria’s civil war and expects to allow in several thousand more, a U.S. official said on Thursday.
The 648 had been selected from 11,000 cases referred to the United States by the United Nations refugee agency, said Assistant Secretary of State Anne Richard. [By the way, by creating this backlog of referred cases the UN puts pressure on the US to get moving!—ed]
[….]
Richard said it took the United States one or two years to process each refugee case, with checks that included security and medical assessments as well as analysis of whether individuals were at risk of persecution or death.
“I think that the numbers will go up, I know we are expecting to bring 1,000-2,000 to the U.S. by the end of September and several thousand next year,” she said.
Look at this next line! They are blaming the slowdown on the Republicans when it is Obama’s own FBI that is the hold-up (thankfully!):
The Republican-led House Committee on Homeland Security has criticised the programme, saying the United States lacks the resources to fully investigate the backgrounds of refugees from Syria, where Islamic State militants and other hardline groups are active.
Richard said it was clearly not the intention of the programme to allow in militants.
“The people that we seek to bring are those who have severe medical conditions, widows and orphans,” she said. “These are very vulnerable cases and these are the ones that we are particularly focused on.” [These are very expensive refugees—ed]
So, to which states have the Syrians been distributed so far?
We checked the State Department data bases beginning in early 2012 to the first of April and here is what we learned:
***The number is actually 682 (as of 4/1/2015).
617 are Muslims and 65 are from other religions. The vast majority are Sunni Muslims. That makes the Muslim refugees 90% of the flow which is what we have been predicting because the UN is picking our refugees! I expect that percentage to hold into the future.
Here is where they went (top five states in red):
Arizona (33)
Arkansas (1)
California (87)
Colorado (8)
Connecticut (3)
Florida (30)
Georgia (19)
Idaho (13)
Illinois (70)
Indiana (25)
Kansas (5)
Kentucky (5)
Maine (1)
Maryland (26)
Massachusetts (28)
Missouri (6)
Nevada (7)
New Hampshire (3)
New Jersey (31)
New Mexico (6)
New York (8)
North Carolina (34)
Ohio (15)
Oregon (1)
Pennsylvania (42)
Tennessee (17)
Texas (86)
Utah (12)
Virginia (16)
Washington (22)
West Virginia (1)
Wisconsin (1)
Click here for what is now a massive archive on ‘Syrian refugees.’
Endnote: I can’t impress upon readers enough that this Syrian Muslim pipeline has to be slowed. And, in fact, there is absolutely no justification for the huge flows of Iraqi and Somali Muslims to the US either!