Happy New Year to all of my faithful readers (and new ones too)!
RRW celebrated its 10th anniversary this past summer and I can say, without a doubt, that this has been the most monumental year for the refugee industry for the decade I’ve been observing it. And, of course, that is because Donald J. Trump resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
The Trump Administration has been busy making changes to the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program with a very definite America First! orientation and we expect that to continue in the year that began 8 hours ago.
There is much the President can do administratively to begin the process of reforming how we deal with the UN and how refugees are admitted to the US. But….
Just as President Trump is undoing many policies Obama put in place with his phone and his pen, a new President in 3 (or 7) years can undo Trump’s administrative changes, so I will continue to argue that in order to bring about real change in what is an extremely flawed system of admitting third worlders (they aren’t all legitimate refugees) permanently to the US, Congress will have to make changes in the law!
Will they have the guts in 2018 to tackle the USRAP? My guess is no (remember the Republican leadership is driven by the Chamber and its ilk and wants the compliant low wage workers for its donor corporations) unless you continue to demand that they do (and the President pushes it!).
At this point in time, I plan to continue your education about how the Refugee Program impacts your communities and your wallets because, frankly, it is now or never for abolishing (or if you prefer to say reforming) the system.
Top Posts!
Now to the Three Top (most read) Posts of 2017:
This top story just goes to show how much readers want to hear from people who are living with the problems created by a refugee program that ignores the views of citizens who must live with it. Tens of thousands of people read these blog posts:
Comment worth noting from St. Cloud, MN
Aberdeen update: Efforts abound in South Dakota to keep citizens in the dark about refugees
Repost: US Cases of refugees arrested or convicted on terror charges, and other heinous crimes
There were three most important ways readers came to RRW, first through search engines as readers were looking for ‘Refugee Resettlement Watch’ or ‘Ann Corcoran,‘ followed by facebook and then twitter—all three combining to send the most readers my way.
Top countries!
And, here (below in descending order) are the Top Ten Countries from which readers arrived at RRW in 2017.
I had some fun looking over the countries that sent readers to RRW for all time (WordPress only supplied that information a few years ago) and am delighted to report that of 195 countries in the world, only one was not represented. That country was Western Sahara (Africa). All other countries, including small Pacific island countries, had residents who visited RRW.
For 2017 (excluding the US):
Canada
UK
Australia
Germany
South Africa
Turkey
India
Malaysia
Netherlands
France
For new readers!
Visit my mid-December round-up here to learn more about the rules of the road at RRW.
This post, and others like it, is filed in my ‘blogging’ category, here. If you missed it, you might like to see the top ten posts of the last decade which I reported here last week.