Update October 11th: 35 more came since yesterday. 21 of those were from the DR Congo. Total 108 refugees since October 1.
We told you yesterday that President Trump signed the Memorandum (the Presidential Determination) capping refugee admissions for FY19 which began on October 1 at 30,000.
A total of 73 were admitted yesterday in the first group.
In 2013, the UN asked Obama’s State Department to take 50,000 from the DR Congo over five years. More than 45,000 have arrived so far. The Trump State Department is continuing their resettlement to American towns and cities.
The vast majority (57) are from the DR Congo.
As we previously reportedPresident Trump’s State Department is prioritizing Africans.
I reported here in 2013 that Obama told the UN we would take 50,000 from the DR Congo over five years. We have surpassed 45,000 so far and I will keep you posted about when we go over the 50,000 Obama promised.
I have said repeatedly on these pages that we must get the UN out of the business of choosing our refugees. If we are going to take refugees, let’s choose them ourselves!
We aren’t going to solve Africa’s overpopulation and poverty problems by siphoning off ten thousand (or more) each year.
There are 14 from Afghanistan and two Syrians in this first wave. Nine of the total 73 are Muslims, the remainder are various Christian sects with six from Afghanistan claiming no religion. The two Syrians being placed in Michigan are Muslims.
Below is a map from Wrapsnetshowing the states that are ‘welcoming’ refugees in the first ten days of this fiscal year.
Ohio received the most with 16.The top five states were Ohio, Arizona, Vermont, California and Georgia.
Just a quick mention so that you know that one advanced country after another is tightening borders and getting its illegal migrants sent home. We reported on Denmark yesterday, here. Heartburn at the UN?
Here is the Washington Post, but a similar story can be found at many media outlets:
India deports Rohingya Muslims, drawing U.N. ire
NEW DELHI — India deported seven Rohingya Muslims who had fled their native Myanmar back to their country Thursday, sparking concerns that the move could endanger their lives and violate international laws that protect refugees.
Rohingya protesters in New Delhi in 2017. Indian government says they have ties to terror groups. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/09/india-rohingya-muslims-terror-ties-170918134840406.html
The move comes as India’s ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party has escalated its rhetorical attacks on migrants who have entered the country illegally.
The party’s powerful president, Amit Shah, has repeatedly promised to deport all such migrants, and portrayed them as a security threat. At a public rally in September, he likened them to “termites.”
The northeastern state of Assam, where the seven men were imprisoned since 2012, has been ramping up efforts to identify and deport immigrants who are in the country illegally.
“If someone enters the country illegally, we will send them back,” Bharat Bhushan Babu, spokesman for India’s Home Affairs Ministry, said. When asked if that included people fleeing violence in their native countries, he said, “This is applicable to everyone.”
[….]
An additional 40,000 Rohingya refugees are thought to be in India, although only 18,000 are registered with the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Many of India’s Rohingya refugees came before the most recent wave of violence in 2017. A statement from the UNHCR said the seven men deported Thursday were not registered with the agency.
Just so you know, Rohingya Muslims are being resettled in the US by the Trump Administration, see here. In June, Rohingya were the top ethnic group of Muslims we were admitting.
Leave it to the refugee industry’s public relations apparatus to get a story planted in the Kansas City Starjust as Donald Trump arrived in the state next door for a rally for Kansas Republican candidates including gubernatorial candidate, a leading immigration control advocate, Kris Kobach. One story is here.
(This Somali family lives in Kansas City, Missouri)
Here is the headlinewith the usual story line (family happy to be in America, only wish Dad was with them).
As Trump cuts refugee numbers, outlook dim for father to join KC Muslim family of 9
But, why wasn’t Dad with them and caring for them in Kenya (a safe country btw)?
The family arrived from Kenya in 2017 to cheers from local advocates for more refugee admissions. https://www.nwahomepage.com/news/fox-24/somali-family-of-nine-touches-down-in-kansas-city-mo/653945636
Somali refugee Sahra Hassan Absuge and her eight children today enjoy what they could only dream of two years ago.
A two-story house. A couple of jobs. Schools. Donated appliances. [Food stamps and Medicaid fills the gap says the story.—-ed]
“I am so lucky,” Absuge said. “It’s by the grace of God that we are here.”
All that’s missing is her husband.
Also a refugee from Somalia, he seeks to one day join his Kansas City family after four years of being separated, trapped in another war zone. But chances for a reunion anytime soon appear slim, given ever-deepening cuts in the number of refugees allowed into the U.S.
Absuge and her children barely got in themselves.
Twenty months ago, dozens of cheering supporters at Kansas City International Airport greeted the family after they had squeezed through a tightening slipknot on refugee travel.
Continue here for all the happy talk and mention of their resettlement agency—Della Lamb—a Methodist group, a subcontractor of the Ethiopian Community Development Council (one of nine federal resettlement contractors that work for the US State Department).
Then a lament about a slowdown in family reunification:
At Della Lamb, Hyde and director of refugee resettlement Abdul Bakar could think of resettling only one Muslim on the Missouri side in the past year.
Absuge’s husband, the father of all eight of the children, is Muslim.
“There used to a good pipeline for family reunification,” said Judy Akers, Della Lamb’s executive director. “But there hasn’t been much spoken of that recently.”
Family reunification suspended in 2008 for Somalia….
Longtime readers may remember that the US State Department had to suspend the whole family reunification program for Somalis beginning in 2008 due to massive fraud in the P-3 (family reunification) program, see here. The suspension lasted several years.
I sure hope Homeland Security is doing some robust vetting of Dad. He left their Nairobi village in 2014? (Someone check the age of the youngest child!). But other news reports say they were living in a UN camp.
He went to Sudan looking for work in the middle of civil unrest there? And, then instead of returning to his family in a safe Kenya he ‘flees’ to Uganda. WTH!
Dad then ‘finds his family’ on YouTube videos?
He could have found them if he had returned to safe Kenya from his sojourn in Sudan instead of hotfooting it to Uganda!
KC Star continues….
….father left their Nairobi refugee village in 2014 to seek work in Sudan. He instead encountered homelessness, civil war and hunger before fleeing to Uganda. When his family resettled in America, his wife didn’t know if Abdullahi was alive or dead. [Really! Or did this family have a better shot of getting in to the US as women and children only?—ed]
Wow! Dad found after the family got to KC!
The father, through friends in Nairobi, learned of the family’s whereaboutswith the help of the internet and those YouTube videos. “Search ‘refugees’…and our family of nine pops up,” Absuge said through the interpreter.
For those who want to read the whole long (anti-Trump propaganda) story,click here.
Sobia Siddiqui, communications coordinator for the Council on American-Islamic Relations Texas Chapter, said the cuts are discriminatory.
“Our president ran his campaign and one of his strongest and most vocal points is that he called for a ban on all Muslims,” said Siddiqui.
She said there are refugee families in Houston who can’t be reunited with family members facing dangerous situations abroad because of the ban.
“There’s a lot of anxiety and uncertainty about if people will be able to have their families rejoin them back here in the United States or even in Houston,” said Dan Stoecker, CEO of The Alliance, which offers refugee services in Houston.
The Alliance is a subcontractor of the Ethiopian Community Development Council, the smallest, and likely most vulnerable to a federal budget cut, of the nine refugee contractors that monopolize all resettlement to the US.
In 2016, I excitedly reported that the State of Texas withdrew from the US Refugee Admissions Program, but you can see that without a follow-up legal challenge by the state it was a meaningless move. The contractors now run the program in the state!
I really don’t get it—why a Libertarian think tank, the CATO Institute is so hot for more refugees for America. I can only assume it has to do with a pro-business orientation (the LEGAL worker issue again). I’m not going to try to figure it out today.
CATO immigration policy analyst David Bier
However, they had a handy graph in a story yesterday criticizing Trump for reducing the overall number of refugees entering the US and pointing out that the number of Christians entering has declined (which is actually a function of the overall decline in numbers). Muslim entrants have declined at an even greater percentage.
This is the latest talking point from the refugee industry—that Trump isn’t admitting enough Christians—and CATO is carrying their public relations water.
Let’s have the debate!
I would really like to see a serious and honest public debate about the economic need for refugee workers, rather than the continued appeals to Americans’ emotions as CATO does here.
This is one of Bier’s wrap-up sentences:
By cutting the refugee program across the board, the Trump administration has not just violated a campaign promise to resettle more Christian refugees—it has condemned many more to desperate poverty, persecution, or death.
Have a debate about labor needs, but leave out the ‘humanitarian’ appeal because we know that isn’t was this is all about.
