The State Department pours refugees in at a much higher rate in the final month of the fiscal year, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that, with only a couple more days to go in this month, we are above the average admission rate for the previous 11 months.
Rohingya refugees protesting in Phoenix. 979 came to the US this year. 109 were welcomed by the Trump State Department since September first! https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2017/09/20/arizona-rohingya-refugee-story-from-poor-refugee-to-political-agitator/
Checking the data at Wrapsnet, as of this morning we are at 22,469 refugees admitted.
That is 2,570 more than we had on September first.
The average for the previous 11 months was 1,809.
Nevertheless, it is nearly official—and it will be official on Sunday evening—that this is the lowest number of admissions since the Refugee Act of 1980was signed in to law by Jimmy Carter.
Top ethnic groups arriving since September 1 are from these countries:
DR Congo (1,058)
Burma (381)
Ukraine (363)
Of the total 2,570 September arrivals, 418 are Muslims of one sect or another.
Most concerning to me is that 109 of the Burmese are devout Rohingya Muslims.
P.S. I’m going to be away over the weekend, but will give you year-end numbers on Monday or Tuesday next week.
I’ve been watching the news unfold for a couple of days about what happened at Valley Fair, an amusement park in Shakopee, Minnesota, not far from Minneapolis when fights broke out throughout the park—enough fights to require hundreds of police being called to clear the area.
The mainstream media in Minnesota says, ho hum, nothing to see because no one was hurt. And they steadfastly refuse to use the word “Somali” when discussing the incident they say involved “multiple-ethnicities.” (Could there ultimately have been multiple ethnicities fighting back against the roving gangs of Somalis?)
From a video taken by a witness….Multiple ethnicities?
On Saturday September 22, 2018 at the ValleyFair amusement park in Shakopee, Minnesota, police and emergency responders had to evacuate all guests after a mob of Somali teenagers and men rushed through security and caused several violent fights to break out inside the park.
According to eyewitnesses who were at the park to celebrate Law Enforcement Appreciation Day, a group of nearly 100 Somali men mob rushed past security and amusement park staffers at the front entrance, and proceeded to run through the park and instigate fights among themselves and with guests.
Shakopee is 30 minutes from Minneapolis. Interesting! When I looked at the map I recognized other US State Department refugee resettlement sites. Bloomington, Burnsville, Eagan, St. Paul and Roseville have all ‘welcomed’ Somali refugees in the last ten years.
As several violent fights broke out, guests began to panic as reports of people being stabbed and shot began to circulate.
Cliff Hallberg, who was inside the park with his children at the time the fights broke out said it was very frightening for his children. “I saw about 60 Somali teenagers push their way through lines and scream at guests.”
[….]
The violent fights erupted during Law enforcement appreciation day when the park was full of police officers and other members of law enforcement who received discounted tickets so that their families could enjoy the amusement park. An estimated 263 police officers responded to the fights inside the park, according to witnesses.
“This looked like a targeted attack on law enforcement,” Hallberg added.
Hallberg also told Big League Politics that his car was spit on and that the rioters were setting off car alarms and causing chaos in the parking lot, all of which can be seen in video that was exclusively obtained by this reporter.
[….]
According to eyewitnesses and police officers who wish to remain anonymous, they believe the media is covering up the fact that the violent rioters were Somali men because the media and police don’t want to offend the Muslim Somali population or influence the upcoming election.
Officers in Minnesota have told this reporter that they are often told to avoid using the word Somali when discussing crimes committed by members of the Somali population because police and local Democrats have asked them to “stand down” in an effort to create positive community relations between Minnesota natives and the continually increasing Muslim Somali “refugee” population.
In the United States, Minnesota is the state with the largest Somali population.
Continue here where Loomer has much more plus videos from witnesses who were at the park last Saturday evening.
When you search around on the story, you will see that a mention of the Somalis at Valley Fair comes only in a story attacking Loomer which (I know firsthand!) is par for the course in that state!
Just like Lake Calhoun intimidation!
When I read Loomer’s story, I was reminded of a similar incident at Lake Calhoun, five miles from downtown Minneapolis, two years ago. Although involving fewer people, a similar scenario was described by eyewitnesses as gangs of Somali youths roamed the park and the adjoining neighborhood threatening whoever they encountered. The frightening incident was swept under the rug by the police department there.
What is Monday? It is the beginning of the federal fiscal year. It is the first day of FY19. It is the day when the writing will be on the wall for many refugee resettlement offices around the country.
Dumb way to run an organization! Did no one in the refugee industry ever question a business model where some non-profits are 97% and up federally funded?
Why? Because in 1980 Jimmy Carter signed the Refugee Act of 1980 in to law and set up a house of cards that needs to fall now. Originally (supposedly!) designed as a public-private partnership, the federal government and ‘humanitarian’ non-profit groups were to share equally in the costs of admitting tens of thousands of refugees to the US each year.
But, over the years, because Congress has been so remiss in overseeing the program (the Rs want cheap labor!), those non-profit groups (aka federal contractors) have gotten fat and confident (like Aesop’s grasshopper) on ever larger amounts of federal funding and too lazy to raise sufficient amounts of private money to see them through if for any reason the number of paying clients/refugees declined.
(An aside: The inability to raise enough private money is also indicative of the fact that there isn’t enough interest by average Americans in financially supporting the program in the first place.)
So here we are with one story after another about what Monday will bring to dozens of resettlement contractors around the country.
From Austin, Texas we learn that a Catholic contractor—Caritas—is closing its refugee program.
EXCLUSIVE: As refugees dwindle, Caritas will end resettlement program
Since 1974, the organization has helped thousands of people fleeing war or persecution find a new life in Austin. But after 44 years, Caritas is ending its refugee resettlement program and as of Monday, it will no longer serve new refugees.
“It’s really a tragedy that this program has to go away,” said Jo Kathryn Quinn, executive director for Caritas.
[….]
For the past two years, Caritas has seen a sharp decline in the number of refugees arriving in Austin, and the development has made the program “financially unsustainable,” Quinn said. Between 2010 and 2016, Caritas resettled an average of 576 refugees each year. Since last October, Caritas has resettled 151 refugees, but the nonprofit has not received any new refugees since April.
“Having zero refugees arrive in two months was unheard of for us,” Quinn said. “It was the final alarm bell that told us that we couldn’t continue this way.”
[….]
In June, Caritas’ board of directors voted to close the program at the end of the fiscal year at the recommendation of the nonprofit’s executive leadership.
When fewer refugees arrive, less federal money comes in to support them as well. Refugees receive a one-time amount of $1,125 from federal funds for resettlement needs, including housing and food, said Adelita Winchester, Caritas’ director of integrated services. Caritas would supplement federal funds with about $1 million annually in philanthropic donations,Winchester said. [The reporter has missed an important piece of information. The refugee gets $1,125 and Caritas gets another $1,125 for themselves per refugee.—ed]
“We didn’t have any excess philanthropic dollars to shift to aid this program,” Quinn said.
Budget Cuts, Layoffs And Closures Hit Refugee-Serving Organizations
Donna Duvin is executive director at the San Diego office of the national nonprofit International Rescue Committee, or IRC, one of nine federally funded resettlement agencies in the U.S. Duvin said the local office’s VESL funding dropped by 34 percent this year forcing the agency to replace some paid instructors with volunteers and interns.
Red meat for readers! I love running this photo of the IRC’s David Miliband outside their Manhattan office. He is the Brit who is compensated at nearly $700,000 annually as he calls the shots about who will be placed in your towns.
“As the numbers began to fall, the support that we had from the county that passed through dollars from the federal government, those declined as well,” Duvin said.
Duvin said in past years more than three-fourths of the agency’s budget relied on government dollars, causing a loss of millions as the office’s arrivals dipped by 85.5 percent since 2016. She said the budget changes during that time forced the agency to eliminate 15 positions.
Apparently the IRC is trying to raise private money to keep some functions going. LOL! Maybe CEO David Miliband could give up some of his nearly $700,000 in annual salary to keep some low-level staffers in a job!
The IRC is not alone.
A representative for the national resettlement agency Church World Service estimated it lost possibly hundreds of staffers when it closed 10 offices after it was forced to merge operations with other organizations in some U.S. cities. And a spokesman for World Relief said it laid off 140 employees after shutting down five offices across the U.S.
If you are looking for something to do, go to this list from last year of the resettlement agencies working in your towns and cities and call them. See if they are still in operation, or plan to close soon.
Reminder!
The 1980 structure of the US Refugee Admissions Program is still in place and the Trump Administration must push now for a complete reform of the program or in 2021 or 2025, it will be full steam ahead for these contractors. They will quickly staff-up and a new President could say—We must make up for the lost Trump years and quadruple the numbers of refugees coming in.
Sorry Trumpsters but I gotta call it the way I see it—Trump was foolish to agree to Obama’s “dumb” deal (to move up to 1,250 illegal aliens that Australia had sent to detention camps and refused to admit to their mainland) to America as legitimate refugees.
Refugees receive all sorts of welfare goodies and their hands are held through the process of signing them up for those benefits by a resettlement contractor. Then they are free to roam anywhere in America.
Seventeen more single young men (likely all Muslims)—Pakistanis and Rohingya—just left for Yourtown, USA.
Meet your new neighbors!
Manus Island detainees! 17 more are coming to a town near you! But, the State Department will not reveal where they are located, and eventually they will lose track of them!
Why were they in detention on offshore islands in the first place?
About five years ago, the Australian government had a brilliant idea of how to deter illegal boat migration to their country. They made it a policy that anyone trying to break in illegally by boat would be sent to detention and never allowed access to the mainland.
The deterrent worked (too bad the Europeans were too foolish to follow the Aussie lead!) and they have severely limited the number of illegal border jumpers.
However great for them, it stinks for us since the Trump Administration is now bringing those illegals to America and we (citizens!) are not being told where they are being placed.
Here is news on the latest shipment, bringing the number we have ‘welcomed’ to 361!
Seventeen single men being held on Manus Island have flown to the United States under a refugee resettlement deal with Australia.
The 11 Pakistanis and six Rohingyans*** flew out of Port Moresby on Tuesday after almost five years in immigration detention.
Since the US won’t take Somalis, Iraqis and Syrians from the island detention camps, Refugee Action Coalition’s Ian Rintoul, calls the transport to the US a failure.
Their departure takes to 147 the number of refugees who have departed Papua New Guinea to start new lives in America.
Another 214 refugees have been taken from Nauru.
The US has promised to accept up to 1250 people under the refugee deal, but advocates are concerned there are still about 600 detainees being held on Manus Island and another 800 on Nauru.
Advocates are also concerned US officials will not accept Iranians, Somali, Sudanese, Iraqi or Syrian refugees for resettlement because of President Donald Trump’s so-called “Muslim ban” on immigration.
When we bring Muslim Pakistanis, Afghans, and Rohingya, it is not a “Muslim ban.”
Just great isn’t it! More single men who have been held in all male detention for 5 years are now free in America!
Go here for a lengthy archive on the dumb Obama deal.
***I have a whole category here at RRW called Rohingya Reports. I have over 200 posts there and have followed the Burma/Bangladesh Rohingya situation for ten years. Early on when we brought Rohingya to America, the US State Department said we were bringing only women and children. I wondered when the men would follow—now it seems hubbies are on the way!
By all accounts (from people I politically agree with!) Trump gave a great speech at the UN yesterday. And, although we stepped back from one of two new compacts related to refugees under construction in the world body, we participate in this one. (See herethat Trump removed us from a second UN compact deliberation.)
President Trump gave America First speech at the UN yesterday.
Writing at the Center for Immigration Studies, Nayla Rush, tells us what is wrong with the deliberations that would actually expand the protection the 1951 Refugee Convention presently offers to supposedly only legitimate refugees.
(See wikipedia for more on the 1951 Convention and don’t miss the definition of who is a ‘refugee.’)
In my view, these negotiations are one more way to expand the definition of what constitutes a ‘refugee’ which then would allow more people from the third world to move to the first without them having to prove that they would be persecuted if returned home.
By the way, this discussion of a new refugee compact was launched at Obama’s UN pow-wow in the fall of 2016 when they all were assuming Hillary was moving to the Oval!
U.S. Continues to Back UN Refugee Compact that Contradicts Administration Goals
Despite announcing a lower refugee-resettlement ceiling for the coming fiscal year, the Trump administration continues to support the UN’s Global Compact on Refugees, which is in total contradiction to the administration’s refugee policies.
The final text of the Global Compact on Refugees was released late July. This refugee compact was expected to be adopted by UN member states (including the United States) at the 73rd General Assembly in New York later this week; but the vote is now expected to take place in December. The UN refugee compact seeks for more resettlement places while using expedited processing modalities; facilitating access to family reunification for resettled refugees and encouraging complementary pathways for refugees through private sponsorship programs (such as student scholarships, employment opportunities etc.) that would be additional to regular resettlement and are harder to monitor.
The Trump administration, on the other hand, announced the FY 2019 refugee ceiling of 30,000***, down from 45,000 for 2018 (both ceilings count as the lowest ceiling determinations since the creation of the refugee resettlement program following the Refugee Act of 1980). The reasoning behind such low ceilings is two-fold: Improving the screening and vetting of resettlement candidates (which means slower admissions) and reducing the untenable asylum backlog by reassigning refugee officers to asylum cases.
The Trump administration’s continued commitment to the UN agreement is puzzling.
Beware COMPLEMENTARY PATHWAYS!
The UN wants to tell member states HOW THEY MUST SHARE THE BURDEN!
UNHCR’s Protection head, Volker Türk, insisted on the need for a new international agreement on refugees other than the 1951 Refugee Convention.
According to him, the 1951 convention, while focusing on rights of refugees and obligations of states, does not deal with international cooperation; it “does not specify how you share the burden and responsibility, and that’s what the global compact does. It responds to one of the major gaps we have faced for decades.” Türk added: “Also, we would aim [through the Global Compact on Refugees] to get more resettlement places and find more ways refugees can move to third countries – such as through family reunification, student scholarships, or humanitarian visas, so that refugees can travel safely (what we call ‘complementary pathways’).”
You can readily see how the UN wants an expansion of the definition of the 1951 definition of refugee protection to family members (who may not be legitimate refugees in their own right), students, and whatever that broad new category called humanitarian visasmight allow.
Rush has many more details,click here to read it all.
I’m assuming the Trump Administration stayed involved in this series of meetings so they would continue to be informed. I guess we will find out in a few months how serious the President is about not letting the rest of the world dictate who the ‘new Americans’ will be.
***I’ve been arguing for a refugee cap of zero for the coming year. It would be the only way to force Congress to review the program with an eye to serious reform. I would argue that the United Nations should be completely removed from our decisions on who comes to America and who doesn’t.
At the present time the UN is dictating that we take theDR Congoleseand the Burmese Rohingya. Before that it was the Bhutanese camps they wanted cleared and we said ‘yes master’ and did it! They pushed heavily for us to take the Syrian Muslims from their camps too, but Trump managed to stop that.
If we are going to take any refugees, we should demand that we pick only those we want!
