Those two countries are Syria and Somalia*** as the Obama Administration works overtime to pour as many refugees in to the US as they can before Donald Trump takes office on January 20th.
The numbers we have been reporting in recent weeks go way beyond anything we have seen in the last nearly ten years of writing this blog.
Questions are also beginning to arise about whether the refugee agencies (the non-profit resettlement contractors) can properly care for them due to those high numbers of arrivals. We have reports of refugees placed in hotels, delays in medical screening, and refugees without winter clothing, all are violations of US State Department regulations for contractors.
I promised some maps for someone, which sent me to Wrapsnet.org this morning.
These are maps (screenshots) for the placement and numbers of Syrians and Somalis for the last 15 months. That would include all of FY2016 and the first three months of FY2017 which ended on December 31, 2016. (The fiscal year for the placement of refugees runs from Oct. 1 of one year to Sept. 30th of the next year.)
Obama said at the beginning of FY16 that his State Department would admit 10,000 Syrians (98% Muslim) to the US that year. We are now (in the last 15 months) up to 16,153!
Virtually all Somali refugees are Muslims. You should know we pick them up all over the world and place them in your towns and cities. So Donald Trump’s administration needs to be careful and not say we will halt refugees coming from Somalia (for example), because few if any come from Somalia directly. (We do expect Trump to halt them!)
And, if you missed it yesterday, many questions remain about one Somali admitted to the US in 2016 who was free to wander the streets of Aberdeen, SD and attempt to sexually assault a special-needs woman there. See our post yesterday, here.
***Thousands more Iraqi, Afghan, and Burmese Muslims have entered as well during these same 15 months, but we chose to focus only on Syria and Somalia for this report.
