And, why is the Trump Administration continuing refugee resettlement started for no other reason (by George Bush and Barack Obama) than to please the UN?
Previous presidents jumped to the UN piper’s tune and said sure, the US will step up to take the Bhutanese and the DR Congolese because the UN asked us to.
These people were not our responsibility, no one could say we caused the problems that resulted in their care by the UN.
We have no strategic interest or reason other than to make the UN happy (and some big employers who want the cheap labor, the Dems who want voters and the contractors who want the payola!).
(By the way, there are other examples of cleaning out camps and of course the largest over the years have been the UN camps in Kenya, but the numbers have dramatically slowed in the last year, not so for the two I’m writing about now. And, of course the UN has no interest in cleaning out the Palestinian camps and sending those people to other Arab countries.)
DR Congo express to America….
The largest ethnic group of refugees coming to the US right now are DR Congolese. In the first 6 months of this fiscal year (’18) we admitted 2,569.
In 2013 the Obama State Department told the UN High Commissioner for Refugees that we would take 50,000 from the DR Congo over five years.
Checking Wrapsnet just now, I see that we have taken 40,899 since that promise was made, however going back to FY10, I see we are now at 49,476.
Will the flow ever stop?
Based on the Bush Bhutanese deal, the answer is likely NO!
Nearly 100,000 Bhutanese scattered across America…
In 2006 we told the UN we would take 60,000 Bhutanese off their hands over five years.
These displaced people are really Nepali people that were kicked out of Bhutan and Nepal wouldn’t take them back.
Other western countries promised to take another 30,000.
Here in 2015 the UN reported on its “success” at that point in time:
A core group of eight countries came together in 2007 to create this opportunity for Bhutanese refugees to begin new lives: Australia (5,554), Canada (6,500), Denmark (874), New Zealand (1002), the Netherlands (327), Norway (566), the United Kingdom (358) and the United States of America (84,819).
Now 10 years after Bush Asst. Secretary of State Ellen Sauerbrey said we would take 60,000, we are at 95,841 (as of today).
In the last 6 months, an additional 1,925 ‘refugees’ of Nepali origin that we call Bhutanese were resettled across the country. I have to laugh because the total number in 2006 was 108,000 and between the US and other countries we have far surpassed that number now, so it begs the question—have more people arrived at the camps looking for resettlement in recent years? (See one of my many posts on fuzzy math!)
Here is where 95,481 have been place in the US in just 10 years!
I don’t believe there is a law that says we must take refugees that the UN wants us to take!
And, thus, I think it is time that the Trump Administration distanced itself from the dictates of the United Nations. In fact, maybe it is time to do more than that! Let’s take the lead in rethinking the entire 1951 UN Refugee Convention.
Surely, if we are going to offer ‘welcome’ to legitimate refugees, we have smart people who would know how to pick the most worthy candidates and not just take in ethnic groups wholesale because the UN tells us we must!
See Nayla Rush writing at the Center for Immigration Studies about the haphazard choices being made (even under Donald Trump!).
See my archive on the Bhutanese by clicking here. The thing that has brought them to the media’s attention over the years is the fact that they have a high suicide rate in America. In fact, for years leading up to 2006, they steadfastly maintained that they did not want to be “scattered to the four winds.”
Contact the White House, tell the President: As your Administration prepares refugee plans for the coming fiscal year, stop asking how high, when the UN says jump! We will pick our own refugees, thank you very much!