For all of you in ‘welcoming’ towns, do not believe the numbers you are being told! Because the feds are short of locations and they are on a tear to bring in as many refugees as they can (at least up until Trump takes office or their federal money runs out) your state is likely to get more refugees than they initially ‘promised.’
This news from Inforum in Fargo, ND makes it even more clear that Donald Trump must slow the flow in to the country across the board as soon as he is inaugurated.
FARGO — More refugees were resettled here in the last fiscal year than Lutheran Social Services North Dakota had expected, the agency reported Thursday, Dec. 8.
A total of 558 refugees came to the state by way of LSS in fiscal year 2016, which is 22 percent more than the agency was told to expect by agencies farther up the pipeline. The bulk of the refugees were settled in Fargo-Moorhead: 372 in Fargo, eight in West Fargo and 22 in Moorhead.
Some local government officials have expressed concern over the large number of the newcomers, fearing they would be a strain on resources.
Cass County Commissioner Mary Scherling, who attended the meeting, said Thursday she just wants to be sure local governments can help give refugees a good start in America. She and Commission Chairman Chad Peterson said they’d like LSS to add Minot as a fourth resettlement site in North Dakota. Refugees are now settled in Fargo, Grand Forks and Bismarck.
LSS officials said Thursday they, too, are concerned about their resources, but saying “no” is not easy.
Readers, please pay attention to this next paragraph. Once your town is set up as a resettlement site, not only will the numbers continue to grow, but others of the same ethnic group as your primary refugees will come to live there too. Our use of the word ‘seeding’ about this program is not an exaggeration.
That’s because some of the funding the agency gets for resettling refugees is based on the number it agrees settle in North Dakota, said Saurav Dahal, an LSS refugee coordinator. It has a much harder time with funding if those refugees move here on their own after resettling in other states.
Whining about funding! LSS could end up out on a limb with not enough funding because federal ORR funds are drying up (or more accurately being diverted to the Unaccompanied Alien Children crisis) and so is private charitable giving (in fact there was never much private charity to begin with!).
Here is my question: if most refugees are “self-sufficient” in a matter of months, as we are constantly told, then why do they need more “services” paid for by taxpayer “resources?”
For each primary refugee that LSS resettles, the U.S. State Department provides enough funding to give them three months of assistance, Dahal said. That funding is not available for secondary refugees.
For assistance beyond three months, LSS relies on funding from the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement and charitable organizations; its aim is to cover as many as eight months. But funding from ORR is not directly tied to the number of refugees resettled, and funding from charities are not assured from year to year.
Dykshoorn and Dahal said the latter two sources of funding aren’t keeping up with the numbers.
Continue reading here.
See our complete archive on North Dakota here (this is one of the states I visited on my fact-finding tour last summer). ND has had some spectacular criminal cases involving refugees. Don’t miss this: Somali sentenced to life in prison for killing native American family. And the Somali who went on a knife attack in St. Cloud, MN last September was originally resettled in North Dakota.
North Dakotans who think you are getting too many refugees must continue to put pressure on your governor, your state legislature, your local elected officials, but do not forget to pound Senator John Hoeven who sits on the all powerful Senate Appropriations Committee which could dry up resettlement dollars for North Dakota if he had a will to do it! See here.
I see an important part of my job going forward is to educate you and me on the Appropriations process in Washington. Funding is policy!