Resettlement industry wants 100,000 Syrians in FY17, 210,000 total refugees and billions more from Congress

Just to recap, Obama’s final ‘determination’ sent to Capitol Hill a week ago calls for a ceiling*** of 110,000 refugees from all over the world for Fiscal year 2017 which begins in 8 days.  He did not indicate how many of those would be Syrians but recently we learned that 20,000-30,000 would likely be Syrian Muslims.

the National Clean Energy Summit 7.0 at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center on September 4, 2014 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Political and economic leaders are attending the summit to discuss a domestic policy agenda to advance alternative energy for the country's future.
Hillary and John Podesta (working for George Soros) started the Center for American Progress and you can bet if she gets in the White House, the two of them will open the floodgates to the third world. http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/printgroupProfile.asp?grpid=6709

Thanks to Richard at Blue Ridge Forum for spotting this story at the Center for American Progress (CAP) where the resettlement contractors and their friends spell out what they really want. 
They want the 110,000 to be a floor and not a ceiling and they want 100,000 Syrian Muslims on top of 110,000 other refugees.
They also drop some astounding numbers about how many billions of dollars they want from the REPUBLICAN Congress.
Here is the story from earlier in the week:

After a slow start in fiscal year 2016—in which, by the end of May, the United States had only resettled one-quarter of its stated commitment of 10,000 Syrian refugees—the administration announced on August 29 that it had hit its target. According to the administration’s report to Congress laying out its 2017 resettlement goals—the “Proposed Refugee Admissions for Fiscal Year 2017”—the administration now believes it will surpass its original goal, bringing in up to 13,000 Syrians by the end of September.

Most importantly, the report to Congress makes clear that the United States will surpass even the commitment made by Secretary of State John Kerry in September 2015 to bring in 100,000 refugees in FY 2017: It raises the target for resettlement in FY 2017 to 110,000 refugees.

[….]

Human Rights First, for example, has called for the administration to admit 100,000 Syrians next year in addition to 100,000 refugees from the rest of the world.

Whatever number of Syrians the administration ultimately decides to admit, it should view the commitment to resettling 110,000 total refugees in FY 2017 as a floor, rather than a ceiling, and should do everything in its power to increase the number of refugees admitted.

They know what we have been trying to say for weeks! Congress has the power to slow the invasion if they want to because the resettlement contractors have virtually no money of their own. 

They need your money to change your towns!

CAP continues:

Funding is critical, and the ball is in Congress’ court

While the Obama administration has stepped up to raise the numbers of refugees to be resettled, Congress has not, to date, provided a corresponding increase in the funds available to ensure that these individuals are able to resettle smoothly, find livelihoods, and become self-sufficient soon after arrival—a key goal of the U.S. refugee program.

The funding Congress appropriated for FY 2016 was based on an estimate of only 75,000 refugees being resettled. When the administration raised its target to 85,000 refugees, Congress did not increase the funding to match. This means that over the past year, the government has had to resettle more refugees with fewer funds. To make matters worse, Congress will most likely only fund the government for the remainder of the calendar year using a continuing resolution—a stopgap, short-term funding bill rather than a full-year appropriation—likely holding the amount of funding for resettlement to FY 2016 levels. This will become all the more difficult to sustain as the number of refugees admitted grows to 110,000.

Take the Office of Refugee Resettlement, or ORR, as an example. This agency helps integrate newly arrived refugees into American life and society, providing financial and medical assistance, social work and case management, and language and job training programs. It also has primary responsibility for the housing and care of unaccompanied children who arrive in the United States. In FY 2016, the ORR received a little less than $1.7 billion to accomplish these tasks. With an increase in the numbers of both refugees being resettled and unaccompanied children arriving, however, ORR’s budget is stretched thin.

The Refugee Council USA (mentioned below) is the lobbying arm of the resettlement industry in Washington.

The administration’s FY 2017 budget, based on the original goal of resettling 100,000 refugees, calls for the ORR to receive about $2.2 billion, while Refugee Council USA—the main umbrella group for organizations working to resettle and protect refugees—has called for the ORR to receive $2.95 billion. Either way, Congress must come together to provide more funding to the agency.

The Continuing Budget Resolution as it now stands has barely half that much and we are urging Congress to cut even more deeply.
Keep calling them and tell them that you know they, the Republican leadership, hold the cards—not Obama!
We have written a lot about the Refugee Council USA and also about the Center for American Progress, so please use our search function if you want to learn more.
***On this ‘ceiling’ issue: for all the time I have been writing this blog, the industry has been working to make sure the ceiling is met. But, it is only a ceiling.  The President can, during the course of the year, go below the ceiling and in some earlier years a president has.  So it strikes me that if Donald Trump is elected, he could very well just (at minimum) go way below the ‘ceiling’ (tell his Secretary of State to slow it down) after he is inaugurated without even initiating a battle (over Obama’s last determination) in the opening months of his administration.

What makes a town desirable for refugee resettlement explains Blacksburg, VA resident

Blacksburg is one of the new refugee seeding sites being considered by the US State State Department.  Recently we learned that there are as many as 47 of them (according to the Reno Gazette-Journal).

melody-warnick
Author Melody Warnick. My questions for Ms. Warnick: How about if you love where you live and want to keep it from becoming something different. Why does keeping it just the way it is, the way one loves it, not as valuable a concept as changing it by changing its people?

Here an expert on loving where you live(!) tells us what she thinks are the features that a town might have that makes that town MOST attractive to the resettlement industry decision makers.
From Quartz (hat tip: Joanne):

In late July, I was one of more than 100 residents of Blacksburg, Virginia, crammed into the local library for the first meeting of the Blacksburg Refugee Partnership. We were there to find out what it would take to bring Syrian refugees to our small town in Virginia.

At first, I’d assumed that our town was too small and isolated to make a good home for refugees. But as a representative from Commonwealth Catholic Charities explained, we had a few things going for us: A university with steady employment opportunities [janitors—ed]. A community of Arabic speakers. And perhaps most importantly, people who really, really wanted to bring Syrian refugees here—not a given in Virginia, considering that the mayor of nearby Roanoke had gone on record saying he didn’t want them. [Poor Roanoke has a long history as a resettlement site, increased crime, social tension, etc., so the mayor is speaking from experience when he said he didn’t want MORE!—ed]

My town’s excitement over the possibility made me curious about the places in the US where refugees are most likely to thrive. During the 2016 fiscal year, the 10,000 Syrian refugees who fled their war-torn homeland for the United States have ended up all over the place—ranging from major cities like Chicago and Houston to more unexpected locations like Clearwater, Florida, and Sheboygan, Wisconsin.

Here is Melody Warnick’s list of the features she thinks a refugee-welcoming town needs (go to the story, here, to see why):

Good public transportation

A culture of volunteerism

A mosque in town

A population that leans Democrat

A church-going tradition [these would be church-goers on the religious left—ed]

An entrepreneurial ecosystem

She quotes David Lubell of Welcoming America by way of explanation:
“If you take the example of Clarkston, Georgia, just outside of Atlanta, which has had a huge growth in its refugee population over the past 15 years, entrepreneurs come and create halal supermarkets.” [Oh yippee, where is PETA?—ed]

Chilly weather

A smaller population

You can read it all by clicking here.
She has forgotten two of the most important elements and those are whether the state  has a generous welfare system and has expanded Medicaid.
And, not to mention the most important element and that is whether there is a hardcore political activist group (or even just one or two people), or a Left-leaning Interfaith group, with a mission to change America by changing its people.
Update: How could I forget—if you have a meat packing plant nearby you go to the top of the list!
We know some of the newly targeted towns and they include:  Missoula, MT, Charleston, WV, Ithaca, NY, Rutland, VT, Northhampton, MA, Fayetteville, AR.  I know I’m missing dozens, so help me identify them all.