But, contrary to what you might think, it isn’t New York City they are going to. Resettlement contractors operating in the state are placing them in Albany, Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse and Utica along with a whole host of smaller cities throughout the state.
On these pages over the years we’ve told you about problems and especially made note of the UN designated ‘Town that Loves Refugees‘ (Utica) having serious problems now with schools overloaded with educationally needy children, here. It does not take a genius to figure out that there is a huge cost associated with educating children who do not speak English and may not even know how to pick up a pencil!
School funding will be one of the first impacts on overloaded cities (other examples Amarillo, TX, Manchester, NH and Wichita, KS).
About a decade ago, Utica had been made the centerpiece of a national propaganda campaign. I call it shaming. The message, as I see it, goes like this: Hey look, here is a welcoming city, what’s wrong with your xenophobic, racist, unwelcoming attitude in ____ (fill in the blank) city.
In Albany in 2009, a New York blogger told us about big problems with the resettlement contractor there. All of our posts on Albany are here.
As I looked through our extensive archive on Buffalo, I see stories about overload and refugee/immigrant crime that results when multiculturalism fails.
Cultural clashes ending in violence dominates our files on the city of Rochester as well. See here.
In Syracuse where the mayor (laboring under the illusion that importing poverty will revive the city) is welcoming Syrian Muslim refugees as a Catholic Church has become a mosque. Our Syracuse archive is here.
And then as we have already mentioned there is Utica, here.
So let’s have a look at the numbers going to the state of New York right now because, despite problems, the spigot is wide open in New York state….
To see the contractors and the cities they are operating in, go here, to the handy list of about 180 cities in America where federal resettlement contractors have set up shop. It looks like seven of the nine federal refugee contractors have carved up the territory in New York state.
(Remember, refugees can be resettled within a hundred miles of the contractor’s office, so you are not off the hook if you don’t live in one of the five primary resettlement cities in New York!)
I didn’t go back to the data ***prior to the George W. Bush presidency, but found that if you thought the numbers of refugees coming to NY had jumped since Bush, you are right.
During Bush’s term in office, NY saw the arrival of 19,620 refugees, but that number jumped dramatically during the Obama presidency (which still has the remainder of this year to complete). Since January 2009, NY ‘welcomed’ 28,807 needy refugees (no wonder housing is short, crime is up, and schools are overcrowded!). That is an increase of over 9,000 from Bush years to Obama years.
During the Bush years, the refugees went to those same cities (mentioned above) plus many more small cities. Large populations of refugees included those from Burma, Somalia, Liberia, Ukraine and Russia.
Since Obama took office here are some of the top ethnic groups going to New York state (in addition to smaller numbers of dozens of others):
Burma (9,489)
Bhutan (6,648)
DR Congo (1,280)
Iraq (3,468)
Somalia (3,638)
Despite the welcoming banner in the photo above, New York state has received 67 Syrians (99% Muslim) to date (since the beginning of the conflict). Most went to Buffalo and Syracuse.
As far as I know, no ‘pockets of resistance’ have formed in New York. Please correct me if I’m wrong. There is an effort being made in the New York state Senate to monitor refugees, go here for the story we haven’t covered here (yet).
And, check this out! States with the most mosques correlate with top refugee resettlement states!
New York state Presidential primary is on April 19th—vote!
***This is data for only refugees and does not include all of the other “humanitarian arrivals” you, as taxpayers, are caring for each year.