And, if funds are slashed, the numbers to be resettled in your towns and cities will be slashed because as I have told you ad nauseum the resettlement contractors have little money of their own. They need your tax dollars or they wither and die.
“If [Trump] decides to cut the state funds or federal funds for refugees, refugee resettlement will collapse…” (former Church World Service employee)
Here is what Newsweek has to say about the panic (hat tip: Michael). The article begins with Muslim immigrant fears, then this:
Another point of concern to many Muslim families and others is what will happen to the country’s refugee resettlement program during a Trump presidency, considering his repeated Islamophobic statements during the campaign. [At this point, reporter uses the word ‘Islamophobic’, I went back to see if this was supposed to be straight reporting or an opinion piece! It is supposed to be a straight news story!—ed]
[….]
We’re all afraid. Afraid is probably putting it mildly. Most refugee advocates are really terrified of what’s coming,” says Neil Grungras, executive director of the Organization for Refuge, Asylum & Migration (ORAM), a San Francisco-based organization that specializes in helping LGBT refugees. “From a global standpoint, this development could be a real catastrophe.”
He adds: “The world’s resettlement system—if the worst case scenario occurs—will take an extreme blow.”
Readers, pay attention to this next paragraph. Trump has the power to suspend the program, and to cut the funding (pretty much one and the same!).
During his presidential campaign, Trump said he planned to suspend the Syrian refugee program, which is “fairly easy for him to do because this is discretionary,” says Bill Frelick, director of Human Rights Watch’s refugee program, who described himself as “shell-shocked” when he spoke with Newsweek on Wednesday. “In the U.S., there’s not a quota that has to be filled. The U.S. has a budgeted amount of money to do refugee resettlement, but there’s no requirement that the U.S. resettle a single refugee, and there’s no legal obligation to do it.”
[….]
Whether the entire refugee resettlement program will be shut down is difficult to predict, but I think it’s safe to say that from a policy standpoint, a Trump administration will be looking to limit the number of refugees resettled, and if refugee resettlement continues, it will be from countries that are ‘safe,’” says Joel Charny, director of Norwegian Refugee Council USA.
I had no idea that we were paying the UN for their work of picking our refugees, this is useful information:
In addition to resettling large numbers of refugees, the U.S. is also a key financial contributor to a number of refugee resettlement organizations, including the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR). The U.S. gave UNHCR nearly $700 million in the last fiscal year, and more than $1.3 billion in fiscal year 2015. What will happen to those contributions remains unclear; UNHCR did not respond to Newsweek’s request for comment.
[….]
“If [Trump] decide to cut the state funds or federal funds for refugees, refugee resettlement will collapse and we won’t be able to bring in any refugees to this country,” Vidhya Manivannan, a former employee of Church World Service—one of the nine U.S. refugee resettlement agencies—said in an email to Newsweek.
Click here for more.
I was interested to see that only one (former) employee of a resettlement contractor was quoted. Where is the gang? Where is the Refugee Council USA (the lobbying arm of the industry)?
More tomorrow!