The Leftwing media and talking heads have been using a number of 11 million illegals in the US for at least a decade, but commonsense told you it was higher.
In June thousands turned out in Washington DC in support of those crossing our borders illegally thus encouraging even more illegal crossings.
Now some ‘smart people’ at Yale and MIT actually crunched a few numbers and much to their chagrin (because they went in to the study assuming the number was lower than 11 million) are reporting it is a whopping 22 million!
(By the way, refugees that we bring to the US are legal aliens, but the hundreds of thousands coming across borders as asylum seekers—wannabe refugees—were, we presume, included in the 22 million because they are not legally here until they have been granted asylum!)
The population of illegal migrants is roughly 22 million, or twice the establishment estimate of 11 million, say three professors from Yale University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The shocking estimate will force establishment politicians and pro-migration advocates to recalculate the estimated impact of the huge illegal population on wages and salaries, on crime rates, welfare consumption, rental and real-estate prices, productivity rates, and the distribution of job-creating investment funds to coastal vs. heartland states.
Build the Wall!
The higher illegal population estimate helps explain why Americans’ wages and salaries have risen so little amid apparently record-low unemployment rates, and it also undercuts companies’ loud demands for yet more immigration of foreign workers, consumers, and renters.
The population estimate also raises the political and economic stakes of any amnesty legislation. In 2014, public opposition blocked the bipartisan, establishment, media-boosted Gang of Eight bill, which claimed to offer an amnesty to just 11 million migrants. Currently, advocates for a ‘Dream Act’ amnesty claim it will provide green cards to roughly 3 million sons and daughters of illegal immigrants.
The new estimate also bolsters President Donald Trump’s demand that reluctant GOP and hostile Democratic legislators fund a border wall.
[….]
The academics expected their techniques to show the population is smaller than the consensus estimate of 11.3 million. “Our original idea was just to do a sanity check on the existing number,” said Edward Kaplan, operations research professor at Yale. “Instead of a number which was smaller, we got a number that was 50 percent higher. That caused us to scratch our heads.”
These are the math geniuses, but isn’t it 100% more if 11 million is now 22 million? (I’m math impaired, so let me know!).
A couple of days ago I reportedon the Asylum process which is part of the Refugee Act of 1980. The difference from the US Refugee Admissions Program is that these wannabe ‘refugees’ are already in the US usually illegally and they claim they will be persecuted if returned home.
It is a huge backlog of cases that is concerning the Trump Administration and is why they say that a 30,000 cap on the refugees the UN/US State Department bring in to the country is all we can handle. I assume they are expecting more than the 20,000-30,000 asylum seekers who have been approved each year for the last ten will grow with their stepped- up processing.
I have no time to snip this Fact Sheet from the American Immigration Council on ‘Asylum in the US,’ but you will find it answers many of your questions.
Although AIC is a non-profit legal advocacy group promoting more immigration, the facts seem pretty straight forward.
Take note of the definition of ‘refugee’ and see that they still pretty much stick to the original definition that doesn’t include a lot of expansions.
Oh, and for those who have asked, asylum seekers, who often wait years for an asylum hearing (while free in America), are permitted to work after a certain time.
What I didn’t mention the other day was where most of the asylum seekers who are approved come from.
Total Asylum Grants by Country of Nationality, Fiscal Year 2016
From the American Immigration Council Fact Sheet
I’m urging all of you to start paying attention to the tens of thousands of ‘refugees’ being approved as your new neighbors after they got in to the US illegally, or came in on an approved visa and then asked for asylum.
The Boston Bombers got in through the asylum system.
Several people have asked me about the statement made by Secretary of State Pompeo when he announced the Administration’s intentions of capping refugee admissions at 30,000.
According to the New York Times, Pompeo mentioned a backlog of 800,000 asylum cases piled up in immigration courts and the NYT is quick to point out that the number is too high.
It is ONLY 320,000!
(And, remember readers that those waiting for their asylum hearing are mostly free to roam the USA, relatively few are in detention!)
“This year’s refugee ceiling reflects the substantial increase in the number of individuals seeking asylum in our country, leading to a massive backlog of outstanding asylum cases and greater public expense,” he added.
Nazanin Ash (left) speaking for refugee contractor the International Rescue Committee: “In justifying its policy intention, the administration has pitted those seeking asylum against refugees.”
Mr. Pompeo said refugees had to be weighed against a backlog of 800,000 asylum seekers who are awaiting a decision by immigration authorities about whether they qualify as in need of protection under United States law and will be granted status to remain.
But he vastly overstated the numbers, while making a linkage between two groups of immigrants that are not the same and are processed differently.
As of the end of June, the Department of Homeland Security reported just under 320,000 people who had claimed asylum— meaning they had passed an interview conducted to verify that they met the “credible fear” threshold to be considered — and were awaiting a decision from the department about whether they could stay.
About 730,000 additional immigrants were waiting for their cases to be resolved by immigration courts, according to the Justice Department…
In other words Pompeo is saying that the Trump Administration is going to focus first on a huge backlog of asylum claims.
So what is this asylum issue?
Perhaps we haven’t talked about it enough over the years, but asylum is the other side of a two-sided coin for ‘refugee’ admissions to the US.
The cap we are talking about refers to the refugees who are found abroad, are accepted for admission and are flown here at taxpayers’ expense and turned over to one of the nine refugee resettlement contractors for care.
Asylum seekers are people who got to the US on their own dime and upon entering the country across a border illegally (or sometimes with a legal visa) they request asylum claiming they would be persecuted if returned home. They then go through a legal process to determine if their claims are legitimate or not. (Another can of worms involves the question of how many of those whose claims of asylum were rejected actually leave the country!)
If granted asylum they are called Asylees and are eligible for all of the social service goodies we give to the refugees we fly in. Therefore, US taxpayers’ generosity is not only to the smaller number of refugees we flew in, but potentially to tens of thousands more each year!
The asylum system here and in Europe has been massively scammed where worldwide millions are claiming asylum when in fact most are economic migrants or just plain crooks.
There are so many that they are overwhelming our legal system and that is why Sec. of State Pompeo says we are prioritizing—getting those hundreds of thousands processed.
(See Jim Simpson’schart in this post to see how many had successful asylum claims for each of the last 10+ years. Total is over 266,000 since 2008!)
Refugee Industry thrilled with Asylum avenue to America!
In 2010 I attended the 30th anniversary celebration for the Refugee Act of 1980at Georgetown University in Washington, DC and was struck by the focus speakers were placing on the asylum process.
At the Georgetown anniversary event, it was Doris Meissner (who apparently had a role in crafting the Refugee Act of 1980) who said with obvious pleasure: We only expected the odd Russian ballet dancer to use the asylum process, but now (yippee!) large numbers of migrants are using it!
They were downright giddy that so many migrants were now showing up at our borders seeking asylum. In fact, they seemed to be conscious of the fact that there were limits to the numbers they could get in to the US in the normal refugee admissions process even before Trump ever appeared on their radar screens.
In 2011, after seeing more stories about asylum seekers arriving at our borders from far flung places like Somalia, I wrote this post:
Is there a conspiracy by NGO’s to bring asylum seekers to US borders?
I said this at the time about the Georgetown shindig after calling for a Congressional investigation.
I was also struck at the conference by how much emphasis the pro-refugee, pro-open borders activists and speakers were placing on our asylum program. They wanted to educate more asylum lawyers and hire more asylum judges (apparently the refugee program itself wasn’t bringing immigrants in fast enough!). One speaker even said that the original idea behind the program was to rescue the odd ballet dancer seeking asylum from some repressive regime, but had now expanded to thousands every year.
You can read the whole post here, but the gist of it was that I believe the international open borders Leftists are actively involved in pushing migrants to first world countries’ borders (maybe even paying their way!) where, having been previously coached, they know how to ask for asylum. Of course that is exactly what we are seeing now here and in Europe.
By the way, check out thewhole NYT story. The reporter says that Secretary of State Pompeo wanted to keep the CAP where it was at 45,000, but Stephen Miller in the White House pushed for an even lower ceiling.
See my post yesterdaywhere I say it should have been ZERO!
Update: CWS didn’t have to wait for long. Secretary of State Pompeo has announced a ceiling of 30,000 refugees for FY19. But, will the administration be ready to welcome those ‘new Americans’ in two weeks from today? See the news here.
In what I thought was going to be another ho-hum whinny story about Church World Service, a Lancaster, PA refugee agency director dropped this bomb:
Sheila Mastropietro
Mastropietro [Sheila Mastropietro, director of the CWS Lancaster office] said the CWS national office is being kept in the dark.They just found out this week that the fiscal year will be extended to Dec. 31, delaying the decision of who will be fundedand leaving CWS “on pins and needles for an additional three months,” she said.
If you have been a regular student of Refugee Resettlement Watch, you know that the fiscal year ends on September 30th, and for decades September is the month when we learn how many refugees will be admitted in the following year and from where they will come.
And, surely you haven’t missed my many posts on the PR campaign the federal contractors*** have been promoting as they demand that Trump admit 75,000 refugees beginning on October 1.
I can only guess that if true, that there will be no announcement this month, it means there is an internal battle of ginormous proportions going on, or it could be a complex funding issue involving the whole federal government.
The story, thanks to Joanne for sending it!, is at LancsterOnline:
With funding at risk, Church World Service ‘on pins and needles’ about future of refugee program
As President Donald Trump took office in January 2017, the 30th year of Church World Service resettling refugees in the county, Lancaster city was deemed “America’s refugee capital” by BBC News for resettling 20 times the number of refugees per capita than the country as a whole.
The distinction led to a visit from Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai, who went on to promote Lancaster’s efforts on a national stage.
Now, in the 20 months since Trump’s travel ban, Church World Service has resettled about half as many refugees here as it did in the previous 20 months, according to data provided by CWS.
Mastropietro says, if Trump cuts the refugee funding, they will continue their advocacy (like this?) with other private and PUBLIC money!
The reporter continues with many paragraphs featuring personal refugee stories and about what President Trump is doing to the refugee program. Then this:
Church World Service, headquartered in Elkhart, Indiana, is one of nine national organizations funded by the Department of State for refugee resettlement. Each of them is a large operation with multiple local offices spread throughout the country.
Indiana?
Actually, CWS still has it original headquarters at the famous 475 Riverside Dr. building in New York City, home to dozens of hard Left ‘religious’ groups, like the National Council of Churches, and other similar socialist organizations. I’m guessing the lower level staffers work in Indiana to keep costs down.
But with fewer refugees making it to America’s doorstep, the Department of State’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration “expects to fund a smaller number of recipient agencies” in the next fiscal year, according to a notice provided by a State Department spokesperson.
How many fewer agencies — and what factors might lead to the decision — is unclear. Mastropietro said the CWS national office is being kept in the dark. They just found out this week that the fiscal year will be extended to Dec. 31, delaying the decision of who will be funded and leaving CWS “on pins and needles for an additional three months,” she said.
While stripping refugee resettlement funding may be a fatal blow for some of the nine agencies, Mastropietro said CWS in Lancaster will carry on even if resettlement — its largest program — goes away.
Carrying-on will be tough!
Church World Service is in column one at James Simpson’s incredible table of how many taxpayer dollars each resettlement contractor consumes. CWS is 71% government funded and received nearly a half a billion dollars since 2008 from taxpayers! https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2018/09/16/capital-research-center-publishes-an-overview-of-the-us-refugee-admissions-program/
Lancaster Onlinecontinues….
With other public [public of course means taxpayer dollars!–ed] and private funding avenues, CWS would continue operating programs such as legal immigration counseling, employment services and advocacy.And if it does lose the resettlement money, Mastropietro is convinced it will be a temporary, if difficult, setback.
And, she confirms what I have been saying!
“We’re just going to wait it out,” she said. “If anything happens, we’ll wait it out until the next president.”
Ambitious readers might like to learn more about refugees in Amish country. See my complete archive on Lancaster by clicking here.
Do not become complacent!
If the Trump Administration only reduces numbers of refugees and funding for a few years nothing will change!
A few of the smaller contractors may go belly-up, but it only will mean a greater monopoly for the surviving contractors like Church World Service.
Those contractors will be working to elect the next president, they will continue to lobby for more federal dollars and more refugees, and they will resume placing refugees quietly in to your unsuspecting towns and cities!
***Here below are the nine federal refugee resettlement contractors.
You might be sick of seeing this list almost every day, but a friend once told me that people need to see something seven times before it completely sinks in, so it seems to me that 70, or even 700 isn’t too much!
And, besides I have new readers every day.
The present US Refugee Admissions Program will never be reformed if the system of paying the contractors by the head stays in place and the contractors are permitted to act as Leftwing political agitation groups, community organizers and lobbyists paid on our dime!
And, to add insult to injury they pretend it is all about ‘humanitarianism.’
The number in parenthesis is the percentage of their income paid by you (the taxpayer) to place the refugees into your towns and cities and get them signed up for their services (aka welfare)! And, get them registered to vote eventually!
James Simpson has done an outstanding job of pulling together facts about the history of how the US came to be the top refugee resettlement country in the world. Hint: It all began with the UN!
And, then in this three-part seriesgives readers the facts about who we are bringing to America and how much it costs us—the US taxpayer.
Summary: A vast network of foundations, non-profits, government entities and political organizations have a vested interest in the continued growth of the resettlement of refugees in America. Because they receive billions of dollars in federal grant money, publicly-financed, tax-exempt organizations have significant incentives to support political candidates and parties that will keep these programs alive. These organizations need to be thoroughly audited and the current network of public/private immigrant advocacy and resettlement organizations needs to be completely overhauled. Resettling refugees should be a voluntary, genuinely charitable activity, removing all the perverse incentives government funding creates.
The refugee resettlement program is popular with many policymakers. It enjoys bipartisan support in Congress and state houses because it supplies low-wage, low skill labor that many big businesses crave, while enabling supporters to embrace “diversity” and thus avoid the Left’s favorite attacks and mischaracterizations: “bigot,” “racist,” “xenophobe,” “Islamophobe,” etc. This faux-moralizing on the Left stifles a necessary conversation our nation sorely needs. Meanwhile, the Left’s true motive is to import ever more people from third-world nations that are likely to become reliable Democrat voters once they achieve citizenship.
Under the Trump presidency, the United States’ refugee resettlement has been temporarily reduced, but by no means curtailed. A change in administration could resuscitate it overnight. There are many objectionable aspects of this program, not the least of which is finding resources to fund this enormous undertaking. The difficulty associated with assessing the true costs of the programs key to resettling refugees presents another obstacle to policymakers at every level of government.
It is important for readers to know that although we most often talk about the actual Refugee admissions numbers, there are tens of thousands more considered ‘refugees’ by the US government for the purpose of providing federal dollars for their care as they become ‘New Americans.’
Resettling Refugees: Who’s Coming to America?
According to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS), refugees are:
[P]eople who have been persecuted or fear they will be persecuted on account of race, religion, nationality, and/or membership in a particular social group or political opinion.
This mirrors the U.N. definition established at the 1951 U.N. Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees. It is important to note here, however, that under these definitions, “individuals who have crossed an international border fleeing generalized violence are not considered refugees.” This includes large numbers of people who are regularly resettled anyway, for example some of the Syrians fleeing that country’s conflict, and most—if not all Somalis.
Those who meet the definition include:
~refugees (those seeking protection in the United States who are not already in the country),
~asylum seekers or asylees (those who apply for asylum after coming to the U.S.),
~Cuban/Haitian Entrants,
~Special Immigrant Visas (SIV) and
~trafficking Victims.
The Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) program is also administered by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, although UACs do not meet the definition of “refugee.”
Table I below provides up-to-date estimates for each category.
Get a load of these numbers!
The table shows that this category of legal entry to the US is a much bigger problem than the one we usually discuss on these pages which is the Refugee column.
Don’t miss the total admitted in the last full year of the Obama presidency—269,491!
But, see that the Trump Administration is presiding over the arrival of a huge number (higher than Obama’s welcome!) of Special Immigrant Visa holders from Iraq and Afghanistan.
And, last but not least! You really need to read the whole thing yourself, but prepare to be sick when you see how many millions of dollars are flowing out of the US Treasury to hundreds of non-profits who are in one way or another in the business of bringing in and then spreading refugees and other migrants around the US while lobbying for ever higher admissions numbers (aka paying clients!).
Simpson begins with the usual nine federal contractors, but that is only the tip of the iceberg!
Federal Refugee Resettlement Grants
Think about this! Earlier this year Church World Service and the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society helped organize this protest against the President. Combined, those two refugee contractors consumed $620 million taxpayer dollars in the last ten years. Why are we paying for this? https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2018/01/28/church-world-service-and-hias-join-cair-to-protest-at-white-house/
The nine VOLAGs, their many affiliates, and unaccompanied alien children contractors all receive funding from the federal government to resettle the various refugee categories. As mentioned earlier, unaccompanied alien children do not meet the definition of “refugee,” however their resettlement is managed through the Office of Refugee Resettlement and they are included when calculating the total cost of the overall program.
Most funding comes in the form of grants. Prime awards are grants directly from the federal government to the state or the contractor. Sub-awards are those given to contractors by other contractors or state governments that received the prime grant. They are left out to avoid double counting. Table III below enumerates prime grants to VOLAGs and unaccompanied alien children contractors for refugee resettlement and related programs. Some of the VOLAGs, for example the Ethiopian Community Development Council, focus almost entirely on refugee resettlement. Others, like the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, International Rescue Committee, and World Relief Corporation of the National Association of Evangelicals, have a broader mission.
Of the latter, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is the largest. As Table III shows, in FY 2018 USCCB received $47.7 million for resettlement purposes. However, USCCB participates in other federal grant programs and that year received a total of $363.9 million from the federal government.
Here is a chart you need to keep handy. Prepare to be sick!
Billions of dollars have flowed to the refugee contractors in the last ten years alone!
The nine major contractors (VOLAGS) that monopolize the US Refugee Admissions Program are these:
Church World Service (CWS)
Ethiopian Community Development Council (ECDC) (secular)
Episcopal Migration Ministries (EMM) (DFMS is its other name)
Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS)
International Rescue Committee (IRC) (secular)
Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIRS)
US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) (secular)
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB)
World Relief Corporation (WR)
Thanks to Jim Simpson for letting us know just how much each is being paid from the US Treasury!
Please, please take time to read the rest of Part III, it is stunning the amount of your money being distributed to non-profits who then act as political agitation groups!
And, these dollars do not include the cost of welfare, education, medical care, housing, etc. that you pay for!
Tell the White House to reform the whole program and begin by getting rid of middlemen federal contractors!
