Update July 20th: Trump Administration extends TPS for Somalis until March 2020, see here.
Frankly, I don’t know why they still have TPS for Somalis when we have admitted over 100,000 Somalis as permanent refugees. Tens of thousands of permanent Somali refugees are in Minnesota alone.
One of those stumping for the continuation of TPS for Somalis is Jaylani Hussein, executive director of CAIR MN
And, you should know that in order for those here on TPS, the temporary refugees were supposed to have been in the country (usually they were here illegally) before TPS was designated for their country. It is not an on-going opportunity for certain immigrants to get in and then say—gee I want to apply for TPS. Continue reading “Trump Administration may end temporary protected status for Somalis”→
According to the LA Times, as paying refugee clients decline, refugee NGOs are now focusing on helping immigrants of all stripes on a longer term basis, presumably by raising private money! Could this be a reawakening of real Christian charity?
I’m really sick of these stories. I see them all over the country (this is the PR run-up to the President’s decision on how many refugees the US will take in FY19, a decision expected to be made public in September).
However,this storydid have a few bits of information that are useful and make it worth posting.
Arrivals of refugees have hit historic lows. To stay afloat, resettlement agencies re-brand
The door to the nonprofit World Relief, tucked between a dance studio and a tutoring company on the second floor of a Garden Grove strip mall, still says “refugee resettlement services.”
In 2015, we obtained a World Relief internal letter instructing staff to not read Ann Corcoran’s blog! https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2017/10/31/former-refugee-contractor-ceo-america-needs-refugees-to-teach-us-how-to-love-one-another/
But it’s been nearly a year since a new refugee has walked through it.
The number of refugees admitted to the U.S. since President Trump took office has dropped to its lowest level in decades. As a result, the office and dozens of other refugee resettlement operations across the country have been forced to close, shift their resources or re-brand.
One of the advances I’ve seen over the last decade is that the media now reports that the contractors*** are paid by the US taxpayers on a per refugee basis.
Nine nonprofits across the country are federally approved to resettle refugees and receive government funding for each case they handle.Until last year, each of them had an office in Southern California.
But World Relief and four others have shut down in the region, suspended operations, laid off staff or reduced their hours.
[….]
The office closed its refugee operation last July and shifted its resources to helping immigrants, which had long been a sideline of its operation.
[….]
The declines [in refugee admissions] left many agencies depleted of federal funding and struggling to survive.
Even in places where new refugees are still arriving, changes are afoot. The International Rescue Committee office in Glendale, which once resettled more than a thousand refugees each year, has received only about 100 people this year.
“The need just isn’t there in the same way anymore,” said Martin Zogg, the group’s executive director. “So we have to give people other jobs to do.”
I would like to think that the nine resettlement contractors listed below have seen the light and are raising private money and not depending on the money trees growing in Washington, DC for their charitable ‘good works,’ but my cynical side says they are just trying to stay in business until Trump is no longer President and the refugee spigot opens again.
Sorry if you are sick of me saying it, but there will be no long term change to our refugee policy and program as long as there are no changes in the law during the Trump years.
***I post these as often as I can because new readers need to know that these quasi-government groups (funded with taxpayer dollars) are also politically pushing for more immigration of all sorts in Washington—they are not simply refugee advocates.
The number in parenthesis is the percentage of their income paid by you (the taxpayer) to place the refugees and get them signed up for their services (aka welfare)! From most recent accounting, here.
“This is a disaster for the bureau. She is really a good ally.”
(Anonymous State Department official)
That quote above is all you need to know! If the Deep-staters at the US State Department consider her an ally, then she needed to go.
She reportedly butted heads with Stephen Millier
As I’ve been mentioning, this is the time of the year when Administration wrangling over refugees really begins to heat up. That is because the President submits his determination to Congress in September in which he tells them how many refugees and from where they will come when the feds begin to admit the next batch of refugees for the next fiscal year (FY19 begins October 1).
Itold you herethat State Department resettlement contractors want 75,000 in the coming year. It looks like this year will barely break the 20,000 mark setting a record for the least number of refugees entering the US since the Refugee Act of 1980 was signed in to law by Jimmy Carter.***
For new readers, the contractors are paid on a per refugee head basis, so there is never any incentive for them to take a breather and agree to slow the flow.
The article at Foreign Policy says that the ousted staffer was a Trumper since the campaign days. But, then I wonder why she was so cozy with the career professional resettlers in the State Department who are working to undermine (through leaks to contractors and the media) the President’s policy on refugees.
It is a good campaign message, but in reality will get MN no where.
How quickly people forget that in the last few years three other Republican governors made a big show out of withdrawing their states from the federal program (Texas, Kansas, New Jersey) and of course they still get refugees with Texas presently being the top ‘welcoming’ state in the nation.
Somali population in St. Cloud and elsewhere in MN is increasing.
As they did with those states, the US State Department will simply turn the whole resettlement plan for the state over to a non-profit (contractor) group to manage. (The Tennessee case is on appeal and if by a miracle, TN wins, then that strategy could go up in flames for the feds.)
Don’t get me wrong, there are political considerations for Mr. Johnson as he is up against former governor Tim Pawlenty in the primary, it is definitely worth discussing in the campaign. And, as governor there will be many things the state government could do to rein-in the program by reforming the state’s welfare system, etc.
Indeed, Pawlenty was a Republican establishment governor of the state during the expansion of refugee resettlement to St. Cloud and must have known what was happening. I would say look to his campaign donors and see if he was being funded by big business (poultry!) interests looking for a steady supply of cheap labor to the St. Cloud area. I presume Mr. Johnson has some good investigators at work to discover Pawlenty’s ties to the program while he was governor. LOL! Any photos of Pawlenty snuggling with the Lutheran resettlement people?
