You might call it refugee ‘cap wrangling season’ as the players in the refugee resettlement circles in Washington jockey for position for the coming fiscal year.
Everyone is waiting to see what Sec. of State Pompeo will say.
A lot rides on the ceiling, or cap, the President, by law, sets for the coming fiscal year—how many refugees could be admitted and where they might come from. It is a power assigned to the President by then Senator Ted Kennedy and Jimmy Carter as they pushed through, and Carter ultimately signed, the Refugee Act of 1980.
Besides the push from the Leftwing Open Borders gang for more diversity for America, and Dems for more voters, a lot of federal money for nine federal resettlement contractors*** is at stake.
I hope not to be talking about it every day (seeyesterday’s post), but when I saw this Politico story I figured it included a little nugget that you should know about, namely that the President threw out the number 5,000 in last years ‘cap wrangling season.’
The annual negotiating about how many refugees the President should aim to admit to the US in the coming fiscal year, which begins on October 1 of this year, is underway.
But the difference between those machinations for say 2016 when the refugee resettlement contractors***, which are paid by the head to place refugees in your towns and cities, were pushing for 200,000 and upand Obama set the ceiling for his final year at 110,000 and today demonstrate that the President, who ran on reducing the numbers, is keeping his word.
Stephen Miller has been with the President since early in the campaign. I had a laugh just now. When looking for a photo for this post I see that the vast majority of Miller’s media photos show him with a scowling expression on his face.
25,000 is the number being bandied about, but rumors persist that Miller continues to think that a cap of 15,000 would take care of the TRULY persecuted people.
TheNew York Times has a very detailed report. I can’t snip it all, but encourage you to read the whole thing.
Don’t lose sight of one important point:
We have a backlog of 700,000 asylum claims to process. Those are people who got in to the US by some other means (mostly illegal) and claim they should be considered as refugees. If granted refugee status they become eligible for all the welfare goodies a UN-chosen refugee flown to the US gets.
Therefore as the refugee contractors help more and more migrants coming illegally across our borders file asylum claims, they are only making it worse (under this President) for refugees waiting abroad.
As of August 1, the US admitted 18,251 refugees to the country with 48 states sharing the load.
George Bush previously held the record for low admission years following 9/11. https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2018/04/03/trump-on-pace-to-break-bush-record-of-lowest-refugee-resettlement-numbers-since-1980-law-enacted/
There are only two months left in the fiscal year (FY19 begins October first) and at the present rate, the Trump Administration should come in just over 22,000.
Previous low admission years came in the wake of 9/11 when President Bush dramatically slowed the program out of concerns for national security.
Here is a map fromWrapsnet of where the 18,251 have been placed thus far.
Note that Texas is the numero uno ‘welcoming’ state even though the governor officially withdrew the state from the program (shows how futile that was!). Turning the red state blue!
(See my right hand sidebar where I have recorded each month’s number of ‘new Americans’ this fiscal year.)
Wyoming has never had a refugee program and Hawaii (the state that loves diversity) rarely gets any!
From TripAdvisor, a Program to Help Refugees Get to Know the U.S.
In partnership with the International Rescue Committee, the Welcome Homeinitiative will offer tours and activities in New York City and Northern California for recently resettled refugees.
Interesting isn’t it: Trip Advisor has 3.61 million followers on Twitter, but could only generate 9 retweets in 17 hours for this tweet about their great refugee PR campaign. Hmmm! Makes me realize I’m not doing so badly on Twitter after all.
TripAdvisor wants refugees to the United States to explore and get to know their new homeland, and the hospitality company’s yearlong Welcome Home campaign aims to do just that: launched last week, Welcome Home gives recently resettled refugees in New York City and parts of Northern California the opportunity to book a tour or activity of their choice through TripAdvisor Experiences, a category that offers travelers things to do in around 1,900 destinations globally.
The International Rescue Committee, a nongovernmental organization that provides services to displaced people globally, is TripAdvisor’s partner in Welcome Home and is responsible for reaching out to newly resettled refugees to tell them about the initiative.
I’ll be reporting the news below, but I first want to make my key points up front so that you don’t fall for the pity-party news story.
“Some call it charity!” Here is a charitable idea, some of those bringing in fat pay checks, like IRC CEO David Miliband, could send some of their boodle to staff in Kansas!
~The International Rescue Committee is ostensibly a private non-profit group and therefore the US State Department can’t dictate that it must close offices (supposedly they will be closing 3 of 28).
They might not be getting new refugees at the office in GC that was set up only 4 years ago at the heyday of Obama’s presidency, but they surely could pay for some staff and a small office to help those they already dropped off in the town whose major employer is Tyson Foods!
~The IRC is a financial giant as non-profits go. From its 2016 Form 990 we know they had revenue that year of $736 million and that $494 million was provided to them by you—-the US taxpayers!
~Some of their top expenses were salaries ($244 million), grants and other assistance to foreign organizations, foreign governments, and foreign individuals ($296 million) and office expenses ($20 million).
Their headquarters are in Manhattan, New York (not Manhattan, KS). I mention this because I wonder: how much could a small office to aid struggling refugees cost in Garden City, KS? (You will see that the GC Telegram story is all about how refugees will be left in the lurch.)
~Salaries of top staff we have reported previously are here:
The point I am making is that the IRC could very well have kept its Garden City office open even if new refugees (new paying clients) were not being sent there by the State Department. They could have continued to help the refugees they brought in during the first 4 years with other money from their ginormous pot of money.
But, instead, this news will be used as one more bit of media fodder to blast President Donald Trump.
