Those two countries are Syria and Somalia*** as the Obama Administration works overtime to pour as many refugees in to the US as they can before Donald Trump takes office on January 20th.
The numbers we have been reporting in recent weeks go way beyond anything we have seen in the last nearly ten years of writing this blog.
Questions are also beginning to arise about whether the refugee agencies (the non-profit resettlement contractors) can properly care for them due to those high numbers of arrivals. We have reports of refugees placed in hotels, delays in medical screening, and refugees without winter clothing, all are violations of US State Department regulations for contractors.
I promised some maps for someone, which sent me to Wrapsnet.org this morning.
These are maps (screenshots) for the placement and numbers of Syrians and Somalis for the last 15 months. That would include all of FY2016 and the first three months of FY2017 which ended on December 31, 2016. (The fiscal year for the placement of refugees runs from Oct. 1 of one year to Sept. 30th of the next year.)
Obama said at the beginning of FY16 that his State Department would admit 10,000 Syrians (98% Muslim) to the US that year. We are now (in the last 15 months) up to 16,153!
Virtually all Somali refugees are Muslims. You should know we pick them up all over the world and place them in your towns and cities. So Donald Trump’s administration needs to be careful and not say we will halt refugees coming from Somalia (for example), because few if any come from Somalia directly. (We do expect Trump to halt them!)
And, if you missed it yesterday, many questions remain about one Somali admitted to the US in 2016 who was free to wander the streets of Aberdeen, SD and attempt to sexually assault a special-needs woman there. See our post yesterday, here.
***Thousands more Iraqi, Afghan, and Burmese Muslims have entered as well during these same 15 months, but we chose to focus only on Syria and Somalia for this report.
Category: 2016 Presidential campaign
We need Kris Kobach in the Trump White House!
If you have been looking around and wondering who might champion our causes in a Trump Administration and only seeing Senator Jeff Sessions as Attorney General and his former staffer Stephen Miller at Trump’s side in the White House, this appointment could go a long way to assuage your concerns!
From McClatchyDC:
WASHINGTON
Groups that want President-elect Donald Trump to make good on his campaign promise to rein in illegal immigration may have found a way to get a key ally into a pivotal job – while getting around a potentially reluctant Congress.
They are urging Trump to hire Kris Kobach, Kansas secretary of state and an immigration hardliner, for a newly created position – immigration czar – that would not need Senate confirmation.
“We have been pushing them,” said Roy Beck, executive director of NumbersUSA, a group that advocates for greater immigration enforcement. “The idea has been percolating in a number of places.”
The proposal would put one person in charge of an issue that impacts a dozen departments and agencies, including the departments of Homeland Security, State, Justice, Labor, Housing and Health and Human Services.
Kobach, a member of Trump’s transition team who has met with the future president twice in recent weeks, had been considered for attorney general and homeland security secretary.
But Kobach could face confirmation problems. Republicans who have more moderate views on immigration would be unlikely to support him. They include Sens. John McCain and Jeff Flake, both of Arizona. [beware the open borders Republicans—ed]
“It’s designed to put Kris Kobach in a position of authority,” said Frank Sharry, the executive director of America’s Voice, an immigration advocacy group. “It’s widely recognized that Kris Kobach can’t be confirmed by the United States Senate.”
Kobach had advised Trump on immigration policy throughout the campaign and added Trump’s promise to build a wall along the Southern border to the Republican Party’s national platform.
More here.
Although with a mission narrower in scope, Obama designated Samantha Power (who would later become Ambassador to the UN) as his Iraqi refugee “czar” early in his administration—-so such appointments are not unprecedented.
BT! Church World Service working hard to get Syrian Muslims placed in Lancaster, PA
BT=Before Trump
This is the first of two posts (second one is here) on Lancaster, PA this morning. I’ve been interested in Lancaster ever since that city’s refugee program was linked to Church World Service’s (CWS) placement of refugees in my county seat. Those were mostly Meshketian (Russian Turkish Muslims) back in 2007.
Five years later, I traveled to Lancaster to a meeting of the refugee industry there—the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement was meeting with refugee contractors and advocates in 2013. A federal ORR employee shocked me by referring to any of the communities questioning the program as “pockets of resistance.” He was happy to tell the gathering that Pennsylvania was ‘welcoming’ and didn’t have any PORs.
If you would like to get some background on Lancaster before reading this below, click here for our Lancaster archive.
This is the news that appeared in the New York Times and reposted here in Vermont newspaper. Church World Service (with the NYT) is trying so hard to make everything look so perfect in Lancaster. But, it isn’t and you will see what I mean in my next post.
Their [Syrian family—ed] imminent arrival explains all the commotion inside this slate-colored house in the small city of Lancaster, in south-central Pennsylvania. The state may have gone to Donald Trump, who likened the Syrian resettlement program to a “a great Trojan horse” for terrorists. But he isn’t president yet.
[….]
He [Josh, CWS’s 26 year old housing guy—ed] scours a government checklist of housing requirements for a resettlement [Contractors sign contracts to provide essential items for the refugees’ new home—ed], mindful that whatever he spends is deducted from a refugee’s one-time government grant of no more than $1,125. A family’s combined grants must cover its rent and other expenses until the nonprofit has helped the adults acquire Social Security numbers and jobs.
I want you to know (and the NYT doesn’t) that it is $1,125 per family member, so the Syrian family of 6 being discussed here will get $6,750 (plus welfare) and that CWS will get another approximately $6,750 as their share (of your tax dollars) to resettle this family (for their salaries and overhead).
Such encounters [Josh meets a refugee at Walmart***] happen often in Lancaster, whose rich history of acceptance is rooted, in part, in the influence of the Mennonites, Amish and other faiths. A glimpse of the local worldview came in January when a supportive rally of more than 200 people drowned out a much smaller anti-immigrant protest outside the Church World Service office in Lancaster. [See our report on the resistors rally, here.]
Sheila Mastropietro, the group’s longtime supervisor in Lancaster, took heart in the moment. It reflected a communal understanding of both the global refugee crisis and the rigorous screening process that refugees undergo before coming to the United States. [The communal understanding is wearing thin as you will see in my next post.—ed]
The big question for the resettlement contractors is: What will Trump do and when will he do it?
Still, given a president-elect who seems averse to the country’s modest commitment to refugee relocation, Mastropietro says, “We don’t know what to expect.”
[….]
Last fiscal year, the Lancaster office of the Church World Service helped to resettle 407 of the 85,000 refugees admitted to this country; this fiscal year, its target is 550 of a hoped-for 110,000.
“We are acting as if the numbers are going to be the same — until we hear something different,” she says.
Lancaster a happy “medley of cultures” (then why did Lancaster County go 57% for Trump):
Decades of resettlement work have transformed the Lancaster area into a medley of cultures so rich that Amer Alfayadh, 34, a senior case manager, struggles to name them all: “Syrians, Iraqis, Somalis, Congolese, Ukrainians, Belorussians, people from Kazakhstan. Then, of course, Lebanese, Palestinians. Bhutanese, Nepalese, Burmese, Sri Lankans …”
***I would love to know what the deal is with Walmart. Wherever I traveled on my middle America tour this past summer, I heard that Walmart was a gathering place for Muslim refugees. Is Walmart giving them gift cards or other goodies? Does anyone know?
US State Dept. announces 'new' program to admit Iraqis persecuted by ISIS
Frankly folks, I’m suspicious. If the Obama Administration had any interest in saving the Yazidis, what took them so long? And, why this new category of refugee just as Obama exits the White House.
My first thought upon reading this article at Voice of America (VOA) is that the State Dept. is setting up this special category of Iraqi refugee (btw, we admitted 122,532 Iraqis over Obama’s 8 years), so when Trump comes in and tries to pause the program from certain terror-producing regions of the world, the Left/Dems will scream and holler that he is opposed to saving Yazidis, Christians and other religious minorities.
A brief mention of the Center for American Progress by Voice of America makes me suspicious and my guess is that this story was fed to VOA by CAP. You know that is the group John Podesta created with George Soros and the Clintons (see my 2009 post) and if you enjoyed reading John Podesta’s Wikileaks e-mails you will recognize the name Neera Tanden who is CAP’s Prez. and was on the Clinton team.
The article reads like we haven’t been hauling Iraqis to America by the tens of thousands during the Obama Administration (see numbers below).
Voice of America:
WASHINGTON —
The U.S. government is working to permanently resettle hundreds of Iraqis who were victims of Islamic State (IS) violence.
Larry Bartlett, director of the Office of Refugee Admissions at the State Department told VOA that the U.S. is coordinating with the U.N. Refugee Agency (UNHCR) to bring in hundreds of Iraqis to several to be determined locations in the U.S. Most of them are Yazidis and Christians whose communities were uprooted by IS. Many of them suffered brutality and torture at the hands of IS.
[….]
The resettlement efforts mark the first widespread attempt by the U.S. to admit Iraqis who survived under IS. [So who was persecuting the 122,000 plus we admitted in the last 8 years?—ed]
[….]
“We confirmed that Yazidis were the most traumatized [and] were the most victimized,” Bartlett said. “But there are other groups that were also affected by [IS] such as Christians and other religious minorities up there in the north.”
[….]
“We would expect that within a course of a year we would do hundreds of people,” Bartlett said. “One of the things we want to focus on is resettling families as a whole. There have been other programs in the past where just some of the victims were resettled for treatment. We are looking at this differently. We are looking at this as a family unity program of linking families together as much as possible.” [And, we haven’t been bringing families?—ed]
There is more, continue reading here.
BTW, interesting that Bartlett is making this announcement. Is Anne Richard (Asst. Sec. of State for Population, Refugees and Migration) busy packing up her office?
So let’s look at the numbers for Iraqi refugees admitted to the US since Obama took office!
And, remember readers that refugees by definition are supposed to be escaping persecution for one of several reasons (including race, religion, political views).
From the very beginning I have asked: so if Sunni Muslims persecute Shiite Muslims in Iraq and vice versa, does it make any sense to bring in both warring factions, and place them in your towns as we have been doing for over 8 years (Bush reluctantly opened the Iraqi flood gates at the end of his Administration).
From Fiscal Year 2009 until December 1, 2016 (8 fiscal years and a few months) we admitted to the US 122,532 Iraqi refugees (in some of those years Iraqis were the top ethnic group we resettled).
The numbers break down like this:
Sunni Muslims: 44,367
Shiite Muslims: 32,766
Moslems (not specified): 1,887
Catholics: 13,306
Christians (not specified): 21,173
Yazidis: 1,215
There were many other groups, including some other Christian denominations that were smaller in number.
So, I will ask again, who was persecuting the Muslims? Are they persecuting each other and thus they are eligible for refugee status? Sure looks like it!
For ambitious readers, this is the 715th post I’ve written about Iraqi refugees, see Iraqi category here.
Refugee Resettlement was big news in 2016
Just now as I read through news on my various alerts I saw several year-end wrap-up local news stories including from Poughkeepsie, NY and Rutland, VT which ranked refugee resettlement controversies among their top stories of the year.
The one from Idaho places refugee resettlement right up there with the 2016 Presidential election as a leading story for 2016!
I’ve been writing RRW since 2007 and I must say, this has not happened in those nearly ten years—that the refugee issue would be a leading story of the year anywhere, so keep up the good work.
When you are feeling frustrated that your concerns about the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program are not being addressed, know that getting those concerns reported in your local media (within an overarching theme of agitating your elected officials) is a first important step toward reaching a political tipping point.
Here is some of what MagicValley.com had to say:
Refugee resettlement, which was a controversial issue in Twin Falls in 2015 and continued to be on in 2016, was also a major issue in the presidential race, and the debate over Medicaid expansion in Idaho will be shifted drastically because of the outcome. [By the way, the Office of Refugee Resettlement itself says that if your state has expanded Medicaid it makes it a more ‘welcoming’ target for the placement of refugees.—ed]
[….]
A movement to shut down the College of Southern Idaho Refugee Center started last year, after news came out that some Syrians could be among the refugees to be resettled in Twin Falls. (None have been to date.) As the Syrian civil war dragged on, displacing millions of people, refugee resettlement became a topic of worldwide debate and a major issue in the presidential race, with Trump’s hard-line views on refugee admissions and anti-Muslim rhetoric energizing some and horrifying others. As for Twin Falls, it started to attract national media attention as an example of a town divided over what was becoming a focus of national political arguments.
A drive for a countywide referendum on whether to shut down the refugee center fizzled this spring when organizers got about a quarter of the number of signatures they would need to get on the ballot. In June, however, the debate flared back up after news came out about a 5-year-old girl at the Fawnbrook Apartments being sexually assaulted by three boys from Middle Eastern refugee families.
Continue reading here.
LOL! That is all I am snipping. I am really careful about not taking too much of published news accounts, however, this publication is the only one in the nation to ever send me a legal letter telling me I have snipped too much of their report.
Does anyone know where the case is regarding the sexual assault from last June?
Our archive on Twin Falls may be found by clicking here.