A story two days ago posted by Jesuit Refugee Service in Africa, joyfully reporting that things are improving in the DR Congo and refugees are moving home, reminded me to tell you where we stand with the movement of DR Congolese to American towns and cities.
However, you can bet the Congolese (numbering over 50,000) that our US State Department has moved to America are not going home!
In 2013 I reportedthat Obama’s top Refugee official at the State Department, Anne Richard, promised the UN that we would take 50,000 refugees from the DR Congo over a five year period.
Well, time is up!
From fiscal year 2014 to today we have admitted 58,999 and there is no sign of the migration stopping.
In fact, in the fiscal year just ended, the Trump Administration admitted 12,958 from the DR Congo, by far the largest ethnic group of refugees admitted.
I will bet the Trump officials have NO CLUE that number was to be capped at 50,000, but I remember!
This is a pattern I have observed over the last decade!
We tell the UN we will take a certain number and then the number is ultimately exceeded by tens of thousands and the wholesale movement of an African, Asian or Middle Eastern ethnic group continues long after it was supposed to end.
Do you know that most Americans are still under the impression that we take refugees until their country improves—Nope! Refugees are here permanently and on track to become voting citizens.
Here is where the nearly 59,000 impoverished, largely uneducated third world Africans have been placed. Data from the Refugee Processing Center.
Since the numbers are difficult to read, here are the top ten resettlement states that have welcomed more poverty from Africa.
Missouri is a big surprise, it is rarely in the top ten in any category.
*** You should know that Anne Richard, former Obama Asst. Secretary of State for PRM was one of those arrested recently on the Capitol steps in an act of “civil disobedience” in support of more refugees. I’m guessing she is trying to stay relevant in hopes of returning to government when Trump is no longer President.
BTW, Trump never did place a political appointee (as Richard was for the Dems) at the helm of the Refugee Program and I think that was a mistake leaving the deep staters there to make mischief (and leak to the media via their old pal Anne!).
As many of you may recall, at this time last year the Trump Administration set the CEILING, for resettlement of refugees largely chosen by the UN for the fiscal year, at 30,000. And, that is exactly how many refugees were admitted and distributed to 48 states and the District of Columbia.
That 30,000 does not include the Special Immigrant Visas (SIV)from Iraq (181) and Afghanistan (7,501!) who entered the US this past fiscal year with all of the benefits refugees receive (welfare, food stamps, job counseling, housing, medical care and the list goes on!)
For the fiscal year that begins today, the President hasreduced the ceiling (or cap) to 18,000and by doing so has lit a firestorm in the refugee industry that includes Open Borders advocacy groups, federal resettlement contractors, and businesses which are freely admitting that they need the steady flow of cheap legal labor (labor that doesn’t complain and can’t readily leave!).
So from what countries did they originate and which states were the most ‘welcoming?’
The top five sending countries (FY19) in descending order are these:
DR Congo
Burma
Ukraine
Afghanistan (if you add the SIVs, Afghans would make up the second highest number of taxpayer supported ‘refugees’ for this year.)
Eritrea
Muslim refugees made up about 16% of the 30,000. However, virtually all of the SIVs are Muslims so that would push the percentage of arriving ‘refugees’ who are Muslims to 33%. No Muslim ban!
Here is a map showing where the 30,000 were placed. There is a spread sheet detailing where the SIVs were placed, but it isn’t in this handy format.
I know the numbers are difficult to read so here are the top ten ‘welcoming’ states for FY19:
Texas
Washington
New York
California
Kentucky
Ohio
North Carolina
Arizona
Georgia
Michigan
Two states received no refugees.
Wyoming has never agreed to resettling refugees in the history of the program. And, then Hawaii rarely gets any.
Delaware got one refugee in FY19 and it also usually only gets a handful—a fact that has always made me laugh since their homeboy, Joe Biden, was one of Ted Kennedy’s sidekicks when the program was created in 1979/80. (Ha! And, don’t say it is because the state is geographically small, RI is smaller than Delaware and it usually gets a bundle!).
West Virginia got 2 refugees, and the District of Columbia got a whopping total of 5 refugees!
But, Congress has never seemed to care (likely because no one there bothers to read anyway!).
This post is a service for serious students of the US Refugee Admissions Program.
The Annual Report to Congress, in which the Office of Refugee Resettlement analyzes the entire program and the refugee population for a given year, is required by law to be submitted to Congress in January of the following fiscal year.
In other words we should expect the FY19 report to be available in January 2020. But, much to my shock I just now checked the Annual reports and find that the last one that ORR published is the FY16 report!
By the way, this report should not be confused with a report the President will be sending to Congress along with his Presidential Determination for FY2020 which begins tomorrow!
The reports that are now very late are a treasure-trove of information on the program and serious students should at least see the FY16 report (published in June of 2018) to get an idea of, for instance, the percentage of refugees finding jobs and/or using welfare.
It also includes pages and pages of federal grant money—-millions of dollars—going out to ‘non-profit’ groups for myriad reasons.
Some of you might also like to see how much payola your state is getting from the Office of Refugee Resettlement.
About ten years ago the ORR was equally remiss in getting these reports done in the time frame outlined by the law, then for a few years they got better at it, but I guess they are again dragging their bureaucratic feet!
The Philadelphia Inquirer’s esteemed foreign affairs columnist Trudy Rubinhas penned an opinion piece dripping with venom and bias against the President (and White House aide Stephen Miller) claiming we still owe US citizenship to thousands more Iraqi and Afghan “translators” who supposedly all helped the US military.
The war in Iraq ended in 2011, so first let me ask why after 8 years we still must be giving anyone from Iraq (maybe with an exception for truly persecuted Christians) a taxpayer-funded new life in America?
We spent enormous blood and treasure giving Iraqis new leadership and a fresh chance at governing themselves, why must we move tens of thousands of the newly freed Iraqis (mostly Muslims) to a town near you?
Just a reminder here, dear readers, that when we go to war in a Middle Eastern country the Leftists will claim, now and forevermore, that we are morally bankrupt if we don’t bring that country’s nationals to America!
To hear Ms. Rubin you would not know that since the fall of 2006 through last week we admitted the following astronomical numbers from these two countries.
Afghanistan:
11,142 refugees and 59,104 SIVs (those that supposedly helped us)
Iraq:
143,135 refugees and 18,530 SIVs
(Below I’m going to show you all where Ms. Rubin can find accurate numbers so that maybe next time she won’t get all her facts from refugee contractors who make fat salaries off the US taxpayer and thus have a pecuniary interest in ever-growing refugee numbers.***)
So I guess Trudy Rubin doesn’t think we have already done enough!
And, by the way, by highlighting a sympathetic case she deploys the sob story method to play on her readers’ emotions. I can do that too….learn moreabout the convicted rapist Jasim.
For extra added measure she throws in the canard that our population is declining in America so we need all these new people to pay taxes.
Another Trump scandal: Blocking visas for Iraqis who saved American lives
Apart from Ukraine-gate, another White House scandal revved up recently, almost unnoticed.
The White House effort to block legal immigration shifted into overdrive. The State Department announced last week it would slash the already shrunken U.S. refugee program almost in half, to 18,000 admissions over the next 12 months, nearly eliminating America’s historic role as a safe haven. [I’m questioning why America always has to be a safe haven!—ed]
And the Trump team is trying to limit the impact of a recent D.C. District Court ruling that it end years-long delays in granting special immigrant visas (SIV) for thousands of Afghans and Iraqis who helped the U.S. military – as mandated by Congress.
The SIV mandate is a joke. Then Sen. Ted Kennedy added the provision for SIVs to a defense authorization bill and so there was never a Congressional debate on Iraq and Afghanistan SIVs.
What kind of moral bankrupts try to shut our doors to those who saved American lives?
Cry me a river!
Look who is talking!
“With one final blow, the Trump administration has snuffed out Lady Liberty’s torch and ended our nation’s legacy of compassion and welcome,” says the Rev. John L. McCullough, president of Church World Service,a cooperative ministry of 37 Christian denominations.
Just a cooperative ministry of 37 Christian denominations?
John McCullough pulls down a salary of over $300,000 a year as President and CEO of Church World Service, a federal refugee contractor that got over $40 million in federal tax dollars in a recent year to place refugees throughout America while acting as a leading far left Open Borders political agitation group!
(Ms. Rubin might want to have a look at CWS’s Form 990 here.)
Even more shocking is the White House willingness to betray Iraqis and Afghans who are at risk because they helped the U.S. military.
[….]
Administration callousness beggars belief. Many of these applicants and their families have been hiding for years under death threats.
Meantime, State Department data show that only 1,649 Afghans got SIV visas in 2018, a 60% drop from 2017.
See how she cherry-picks the numbers to put Trump in the worst light! Is it possible that maybe, just maybe, it is time to stop the SIV program? Haven’t we brought enough already? Isn’t 59,104 enough already!
As for Iraqis, the situation is far worse. Those in greatest danger – such as military interpreters and their families – have been tossed into a huge pool of applicants also entitled to visas because they worked for U.S. civilians. That backlog has reached 100,000.
Under Stephen Miller, only 51 Iraqis were admitted in 2018 (as compared with 10,000 in 2016). [LOL! Of course, gotta get their boogey man Miller in here. Don’t they call this dog whistling!—ed]
“They [the SIV applicants] served bravely in support of our missions abroad, and we promised them a pathway to safety in return,” points out Deepa Alagesan, the supervising attorney who brought the successful court case on behalf of the International Refugee Assistance Project.
Under pressure from Congress, 4,000 [more—ed] of the rare refugee slots will supposedly be reserved for Iraqis who worked for the U.S. military. But will they ever receive them?
161,665 refugees and SIVs moved to America isn’t enough?
Was our blood and treasure squandered for a country that eight years after the war ended isn’t safe enough according to the refugee industry agitators?
Are we expected to bring Iraqi ‘refugees’ to our American towns for the next ten years and ten after that?
*** For inquisitive readers, lazy reporters and for Ms. Rubin, hereis where you can find accurate numbers. This is the State Department’s Refugee Processing Center.
These particular data bases for Iraq and Afghanistan show placement for each state for refugee numbers vs. SIV numbers.
Muslim refugees from 35 countries arrived in the US this fiscal year!
Granted fewer Muslims are entering the US right now as refugees compared to when Obama was in office, but yesterday I checked the data for this fiscal year (the one that is ending this coming Monday night) and was surprised at the great ethnic diversity of refugees from 35 countries representing several sects of Islam we have ‘welcomed’ this year.
It’s one of those reports meant to draw media attention to—you guessed it—that meany Donald Trump.
By the way, the Refugee Council USA (RCUSA) is a consortium of twenty plus Open Borders groups that includes the nine federal contractors and the Muslim charity Islamic Relief USA, see here.
RCUSA has a lobbying office in Washington, DC and their finances are handled byChurch World Service.
On page 8 of the report, they published a chart that caught my eye. They want to show how few Muslims the Trump Administration is admitting to the US compared to the huge numbers Obama admitted.
Here it is. FY16 is definitely Obama, but FY17 was already underway when Trump moved into the White House. FY18 is, of course, Trump’s, and the numbers for FY19 are only up to June (8 months of FY19).
(These are just the refugee numbers and do not include all of the other programs that admit immigrants to America.)
But, their chart doesn’t tell the whole story!
First their column for FY19 through today is updated here:
Egypt 4
Iran 31 (no explanation for the discrepancy, I found 31)
Iraq 353
Libya 0
Mali 3
Somalia 230
Sudan 220
Syria 503
and Yemen 3
Okay, still not a lot you say. But, surely enough to prove there is no Muslim ban!
However, there is more. We admitted Muslim refugees from 35 different countries (not just the eight or so singled out by RCUSA).
In addition to those above:
Afghanistan came in at number one with 1,113, then Burma Rohingya (931), DR Congo (519), Eritrea (343), Central African Republic (165), Pakistan (78) and dozens more with smaller numbers for each.
The grand total of Muslim refugees admitted in FY19 up to yesterday is 4,759!