It is only 3, but their arrival tells us that all refugee resettlement to America has not stopped and that the Obama “dumb deal” to take Australia’s rejected asylum seekers who have been held in offshore detention for years is still on-going.
According to BuzzFeedreporter Hannah Ryan the three new arrivals went to Maryland, Tennessee and Pennsylvania.
The US, Struggling Under The Pressure Of The Coronavirus, Is Still Taking Refugees From Australia
Three refugees flew from immigration detention in Australia to start new lives in the United States this week, despite the coronavirus pandemic placing a chokehold on international resettlement.
Coming to a town near you! Trump called it a “dumb deal” but his Administration is carrying it out anyway.
The men, two from Sudan and one from Pakistan, jetted together from Melbourne through Qatar to the US, where they parted ways before reaching their final destinations of Tennessee, Maryland and Pennsylvania. The US took them under the refugee swap deal between the two countries.
The flights went ahead despite a global pause on refugee resettlements announced by the United Nations High Commission on Refugees in mid-March. The US also suspended its refugee program because of the coronavirus on March 19, with the exception of emergency cases.
The ongoing operation of the resettlement program in the US leaves refugees in Australia and its offshore detention camps who have been accepted under the program with an invidious choice: to stay in detention, where many have been for the past seven years, or start a new life in the US as it is ravaged by a deadly pandemic.
Reader Marcus says I never answer his e-mails and tweets. He does have a point and it is something I feel awful about—it is just me here and if I answered every e-mail I receive every day, I would have no time to research and write stories and I would have no life at all.
So for that I continue to apologize and to be honest it is the fact that I can’t answer all of your e-mails that every day makes me want to hang it up after nearly 13 years of continuous posting either here or at‘Frauds and Crooks.’
Here is Marcus (he says I won’t post his comment!). By the way, I screen comments and I am awfully slow at getting to that job too. This is from yesterday.
We need a National Mandate on forced deportations for refugees and illegal aliens.
PS.. to the lady who runs this site, thanks for never answering my tweets and email.
You’re exactly like a politician, you care nothing about the people that support you. [Support? How?—ed]
I know you’ll delete this comment too, liberals like you don’t like criticism.
He is right about twitter. I’ve slacked off on twitter lately. It is all just a competition for who can post the most titillating tidbits aimed at a small segment of America.
As a volunteer writer I could hang around twitter or facebook for a big chunk of the day, tweeting, retweeting, commenting and so forth, or I could research and write posts.
Now, I’ll see what I think would be something that readers might like to hear about (would find useful) and at the same time is something I want to write about (whether I have readers like Marcus or not!).
This is one more story on how refugees are being harmed by the Chinese virus supposedly disproportionately to us white folks (that is the implicit suggestion anyway!).
When I saw this opinion piece, it reminded me to check the refugee camp virus crisis news. There is no new news—the media is poised to report that COVID-19 is running through refugee camps like wildfire. So far it isn’t, but, the warnings of pending doom are rampant. (And, we better damn well do something about it!)
Herein this Op-Ed from San Diego we are told there is no data on refugees who have Coronavirus, however the good doctors know that refugees there are being hit at a greater rate then who? Other migrants? Illegal aliens? African Americans? White people?
No, they really don’t know because on one thing opined, I agree—-there is no good data on refugees, on their health before arrival and the cost of their medical care here, their income, their rates of employment, the cost of educating the kids, their crime rates and the list goes on.
Yes, if you are willing to wait years for theAnnual Report to Congressthat the Office of Refugee Resettlementis supposed to be preparing (even during the Trump Administration ORR is dragging its feet) you might get some data.
However, much of the data there is based on phone interviews with refugees willing to be quizzed about their welfare use by a stranger on the phone, or based on inflated employment data from the contractors—great methods for getting at the truth.
Your local welfare agencies are not cataloging welfare use by immigration category, heck, I doubt they even pay any attention to broad categories like illegal status vs. legal refugee status when handing out government goodies.
How many times over the years have readers asked me—how much is all this refugee resettlement costing US taxpayers? You can’t even find out how many refugee kids are in your local school system, or how many refugees are using local health services! And, you know who is happy to keep it that way—the nine refugee contractors that monopolize all resettlement in America.
I do agree with the opinion writers on one thing!
“A national debate on the way we collect data on refugees is urgently needed.”
Commentary: Refugees must not be left behind in the U.S response to the coronavirus pandemic
Reopen the country or not? The answer may be complicated, but is surely “no” if we fail to control the novel coronavirus pandemic in certain communities.
Refugees are one community that is being hit particularly hard by the coronavirus, yet data is not telling their story, threatening their survival once again.
San Diego refugees, photo accompanying the Op-Ed
[….]
Generations of refugees have been essential contributors to the economy, diversity and prosperity of San Diego.
More than 100,000 refugees have been resettled since the end of the Vietnam War, making it the second largest refugee resettlement city in the U.S. and home to half of California’s refugees.
The majority of refugees are clustered in El Cajon and City Heights, two of the top seven areas in San Diego with the highest numbers of confirmed COVID-19 cases.
Numerous studies have demonstrated that refugees, although healthier than the general population when they first arrive, suffer “loneliness and social Isolation” resettlement as their health deteriorates over time. Researchers refer to this phenomenon as “intergenerational trauma,” which is passed on to children and persists over time. The pandemic is risking further alienation and social isolation of these communities.
So they were healthier BEFORE arriving in America? Then why not leave them where they were?
For example, despite the pandemic, many refugees are reluctant to access public assistance programs, including healthcare, because of the “public charge” rule, which is a White House policy that bars citizenship to immigrants and refugees who take advantage of public assistance programs.
Refugees are specifically exempt from the public charge rule! Facts please!
A report by the Migration Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., indicates that almost half of all refugees living in the U.S. have annual incomes that are less than half the federal poverty level, and that the majority work in the service industry. This could be as rideshare drivers or emergency responders or for other businesses deemed “essential” that make staying at home impossible.
When Ted Kennedy and his sidekick, Joe Biden, pushed through the Refugee Act of 1980, they promised the program was not importing poverty. Ho hum! I guess they lied.
In U.S. health systems, we rarely collect data on country of birth or refugee class. Population-based data is limited to data collected by the county health departments when the refugees first arrive in the U.S. and undergo health screening. In San Diego, mapping cases by ZIP code may be the only way to tell how the refugee community is being affected by the pandemic.
Observations of high rates of hospital admissions of Arab refugees with coronavirus was noticed by Arab American doctors…
Okay, so some Arab docs say they see a lot of Arabs with COVID? What are we supposed to do about that?
A national debate on the way we collect data on refugees is urgently needed.
It is almost impossible to get an accurate estimate of the number of refugees in the population carrying COVID-19….
But the authors are sure it is disproportionate and therefore unfair!
If it is so awful in America for refugees, it begs the question—maybe they should have been left in their own country or a safe one nearby?
When President Trump arrived in the Oval Office I had a lot of hope that the new Administration would begin to turn off the funding for the nine federal resettlement agencies that have been for decades monopolizing all refugee placement in the US.
But, alas, even as refugee numbers have plummeted, the contractors are still sucking down millions of federal dollars each month, in most cases on par with what they were getting during the Obama years.
And, as they complain that they have had to close offices and fire staff they are still doing well (Ha! By doing good?) and will be well-positioned to ramp-up as soon as the Dems regain the White House (whenever that is!).
Presidential candidate Joe Biden has already signaled he wants over 100,000 refugees admitted each year (a figure Obama never achieved).
Of course, it isn’t all on Trump, Congress is a major player and there is no will there to slow or reform the refugee program. Oh, some do want to ‘reform’— by expanding it!
For the umpteenth time, the flawed structure of the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program has not been reformed one significant bit in the last 3 years.
What are these ‘charities’ doing with all this money?
Using data atUSASpending.gov ,*** I’ve gathered in one place the federal payout to the nine federal refugee grantees/contractors which, as I said, have monopolized all refugee resettlement in America for decades.
When looking at the screenshots below, for relative comparison of the size of the ‘non-profits,’ that number in the left hand corner is useful. It is what they received in the last twelve months from the US Treasury—the US taxpayer.
Know that FY2008 was Bush’s last year and that FY2016 was Obama’s last year in office.
Church World Service
That $45 million is what they received in the last 12 months from you, involuntarily via the US Treasury.2008 was a Bush year. And for FY2020 remember we are only 7 months into the fiscal year which ends on September 30th.
Ethiopian Community Development Council
Don’t ask me why they show no federal funding for those previous years, they have been around for a long time.
Episcopal Migration Ministries
(This one is tricky because they have another name!)
HIAS (aka Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society)
Notice that HIAS has had its best year in over a decade during the Trump Administration.
International Rescue Committee
There were additional transactions for the IRC under different duns numbers.They are down a little under Trump, but they are up more than double what they were getting under Bush!
U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants
Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops
(By the way, in addition to the monies here mostly for the refugee program, the Bishops received a whopping $400 million for Catholic Relief Services.)
The Bishops have taken a significant drop in funding since their top Obama year.
World Relief Corporation
So what are the contractors whining about, they are all still better off now than they were ten years ago. And, they are positioned well to expand when the Dems retake the White House.
*** USASpending.gov is a relatively new undertaking of the US government that creates transparency for all of us and it was created in the Obama Administration.
