Editor’s note: I have so much news to post, but internet connection is dropping today. If I disappear, know that I am frustrated about not getting it to you or posting your comments! Or, answering your many e-mails.
Since everyone is talking about the number of Syrians admitted to the US as refugees (see yesterday’s comments by House Homeland Security Committee chairman), I thought it was time to update the numbers.
When I search the data base for Syrians I go back to calendar year 2012 (1/1/2012) so as to include those who might have gotten here right after the recent conflict began in 2011 (thus numbers you see published may vary some depending on when the source began counting).
I reported on May 1 that we had admitted 815 Syrians (92% Muslim) from 1/1/2012 to 5/1/2015.
This time I searched up until May 20th and here are the results:
* 843 Syrian refugees have been sent to your towns and cities.
* 508 of those came since January 1, 2015
* The top ten states receiving Syrians are:
Texas (107)
California (107)
Illinois (91)
Arizona (64)
Pennsylvania (54)
Michigan (34)
North Carolina (34)
New Jersey (31)
Florida (30)
Indiana (29)
* Yesterday Rep. Michael McCaul speculated that not too many US communities would want them right now, however Texas, his home state tops the list. Here are the cities in Texas which ‘welcomed’ Syrians:
Austin (4)
Dallas (31)
Ft. Worth (38)
Houston (34)
*One might assume that we were saving the Christian Syrians, but that isn’t happening. Just as we reported earlier in the month, 92% of those we are bringing in are Muslims. Here is the breakdown:
777 of them identify as one form of Muslim or another (729 are Sunni Muslims)
42 Christians are listed and 1 Catholic, several other religions or no religion are listed (for example, there is 1 Yazidi)
That works out to 92% Muslim!
By the way, if you are saying to yourself, heck, there are more Syrians in my town than this small number, remember that there are other legal avenues for entry. Syrians already in the US were granted Temporary Protected Status (TPS) in 2012 by the Obama Administration and a reader recently shared with me that his US Senator says there are over 11,000 Syrians (who were already in the country when the conflict began) and are thus eligible for TPS.
By the way, it was our usual suspects, the US State Department resettlement contractors who lobbied, along with Arab groups, for the TPS designation.
Those same contractors want us to take 65,000 Syrians by the end of 2016 and the UNHCR has 11,000 picked out for us this year.