So, how do you find out and what do you do?
I could use ten of me! There are so many stories popping up everywhere across the country which indicate that a full-court press is well underway to “fast-track” thousands of refugees into towns across America before September 30th. See Syrian surge, here. (99% of the Syrians admitted so far are Sunni Muslims.)
And, unfortunately I am going away for a few days and will be woefully behind in my blogging by early next week. I urge all of you to follow my twitter feed in the right hand side bar here at RRW or at American Resistance 2016! because I hope to keep up somewhat in getting news to you that way. Or, follow me directly on twitter @RefugeeWatcher.
It occurred to me in the last 24 hours, after writing about Ithaca, NY that I should do a summary post about where to find things if you get wind that your town is targeted as a new resettlement site (they are wearing out their welcome in many existing sites!), or, if you are in an existing site and have just figured that out!
The Obama Administration is looking to resettle 85,000 or more refugees this year from around the world and for Obama’s last opportunity to submit a proposal, he is aiming for 100,000 in FY2017.
Knowledge is power!
This is where you can learn more about what is happening to us:
Go here for Obama’s Fiscal Year 2016 Report to Congress (very valuable information in here!)
Go here for my post of last year entitled, “Ten things your town needs to know.“
Go here for a list of the nine major federal resettlement contractors.
Go here to find out if your city is already a major resettlement site, and see who the federal contractors and subcontractors are who are seeding your town or city.
Go here to see the existing resettlement sites on a US map. Remember your town is fair-game if it is within 100 miles of any of these offices.
Go here for a list of the state refugee coordinators. Call yours and ask if new towns are being chosen.
Go here to learn about the R & P Abstracts that must be prepared for each resettlement site by the subcontractor each year. Call the contractor/subcontractor in your city (see list) and ask for the recent ones for your town including the one for FY2016. You will learn from that document how many are coming and what amenities your town is offering. Be prepared to be stone-walled. They want to keep all this secret from taxpaying citizens and will try to tell you to use the Freedom of Information Act to obtain it—that should not be necessary, they just want to make you go away. Tell your city/county elected officials that they must get this document. They probably won’t dare turn down an elected official.
Go here to learn about the required quarterly consultations. Contact your local elected officials and ask if they participate in the consultations. And, no matter what they say, you, the taxpayer, are a “stakeholder.”
Go here to see the most recent Annual Report to Congress from the Office of Refuge Resettlement. It is a treasure-trove of information especially useful to see how high the welfare use of refugees is.
Go here for the most recent “Key Indicators” for refugee resettlement, another great source of information about especially refugee employment (unemployment!) etc.
Go here for the US State Department’s data base on arrivals (you will have to play around with it, but it is worth the time!)
And, last, but not least, search our archives of over 7,000 posts by typing a few key words into our search window!
So, again, if you don’t see many posts in the next few days, know that I’m traveling! But, you have plenty of homework above to keep you busy!