Your tax dollars:
In a memorandum to the Secretary of State, President Bush yesterday asked that internally displaced Georgians receive American aid:
I hereby determine, pursuant to section 2(c)(1) of the Act [Migration and Refugee Assistance Act of 1962], that it is important to the national interest to furnish assistance under the Act, in an amount not to exceed $5.75 million from the United States Emergency Refugee and Migration Assistance [ERMA] Fund, for the purpose of meeting unexpected and urgent refugee and migration needs, including by contributions to international, governmental, and nongovernmental organizations and payment of administrative expenses of the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration of the Department of State, related to the humanitarian needs of conflict victims and those displaced by recent violence in Georgia.
For you numbers folks, here is the FY2007 ERMA fund (couldn’t find 2008 in my few minutes of research), but here is a report from our friends at Refugees International (RI) about how happy they are that the FY2008 monies in this category bring the fund to its chock-full level of $100 million. RI must be busy lobbying on the FY2009 fund about now.