Yesterday ended Donald Trump’s first full fiscal year for refugee admissions as FY18 officially came to a close.
President Trump breaks the GW Bush record for the lowest refugee admissions. However, I’m going to say it over and over again—-lowering the numbers for a few years is meaningless without a serious push for robust reform of the entire US Refugee Admissions Program!
The previous low admission year record belongs to George Bush who put the breaks on the US Refugee Admissions Program in 2002 with 27,070 arrivals due to fear of another 9/11.
Expect the media today to make comparisons to the mythical 110,000 refugee CEILINGthat Obama proposed as he was walking out the door. They never mention that their hero had a couple of low years when he admitted tens of thousands below the ceiling he had proposed (click that link above and see the chart).
George Bush’s home state of Texas was the top resettlement state in the nation this past year! (Turning red states blue and the Rs can’t see it!):
Here is a map from Wrapsnetthis morning. Total for the year is 22,491.
Since the numbers are hard to read, Wrapsnethas an accompanying list.
Here below are the Top Ten Welcoming States.
By the way, for most of the years I’ve been writing about the refugee program, California, New York and Florida were always at or near the top:
Texas (so much for withdrawing from the program!)
Washington
Ohio
California
New York
Arizona
North Carolina
Pennsylvania
Kentucky
Georgia
Since I know some faithful readers will be wondering, Minnesota was #11 , Michigan was #13, Florida #14, Maryland #19, Virginia #21 and Tennessee #23.
The bottom five states are below. I always chuckle when I consider that former VP Joe Biden of Delaware was one of the pushers of the Refugee Act of 1980 and yet his own home state is near the bottom always. In fact, 21 may be the highest number it ever ‘welcomed’ in one year!
Delaware (21)
District of Columbia (1)
West Virginia (1)
Hawaii (0) LOL! the state the loves diversity!
Wyoming (0) the state that has wisely stayed out of the program for these last 38 years!
Inquisitive readers might want to visit Wrapsnetand play around with the data. Click on the ‘reports’ tab and then go to ‘Interactive reporting.’ You then put in your own parameters for the search. You can find out which towns and cities in your state received refugees.
Endnote: Since the fiscal year ended on a weekend, there could still be a few changes in the final tally. I’ll update this report if I see that in the next few days.
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.
President Donald Trump has many avenues to slow the immigration steam roller that is changing America by changing the people.
Making it harder for wannabe future ‘new Americans’ to stay, is to require that they won’t suck off the federal teat in the process of advancing toward a green card and future citizenship.
Stephen Miller is at it again says Politico
But before you get excited, know that refugees and asylees (and a whole bunch of other categories of legal immigration) are exempt from a proposed rule change.
When the bill that became the Refugee Act of 1980was debated in Congress, ol’ Teddy Kennedy promised that we weren’t simply bringing more impoverished people to America to place on welfare. He lied!
I want to know why the supposed humanitarian NGOs (the contractors) presently being paid by us, the taxpayers, to take care of refugees can’t use their own money to feed and house the refugees they say they love. After all, they claim that the refugees quickly find work and become self-sufficient!
Here is Politico which obviously is sending a message for Dems and Leftwingers to strongly oppose (protest!) the proposed rules they claim are straight from the evil brain of White House aide Stephen Miller. Never mind that controlling immigration was the primary reason Donald Trump was elected to sit in the Oval Office and Miller is one of the few who remember the promise!
The Leftwing media focus on Miller is a classic Saul Alinsky tactic. I suspect he finds the attacks amusing.
Immigrants may be denied green cards if they’ve received benefits
The Trump administration proposed expanding its pre-election crackdown on immigration by denying green cards to legal immigrants if they have received government assistance.
Under the new rule, which the Department of Homeland Security posted online Saturday, immigrants can be denied so-called “lawful permanent residency” if they’ve received certain government benefits — or if the government anticipates that they may do so in the future.
The measure represents the latest move by White House aide Stephen Miller to reduce drastically all immigration to the U.S., both legal and illegal, and reflects his strong conviction that doing so will improve congressional Republicans’ chances in the midterm elections. The benefit programs targeted include the the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (welfare), Medicaid, and Medicare Part D (prescription drug subsidies).
The regulation could force millions of low-income families to choose between government assistance and permanent settlement in the United States.
Advocates fear it could ultimately restrict children’s access to food and health care.
The move will affect mainly legal immigrants and their families, since undocumented immigrants are not eligible for most federal benefits.
[….]
The proposed regulation would provide a more robust enforcement mechanism for longstanding statutory boilerplate that bars immigrants “likely to become a public charge.”
[….]
Trump’s fatal error in the end could be his failure to put people like Von Spakovsky in his administration so loyal aides like Miller would not be virtually alone in fighting the deep state.
Roughly one million people become lawful permanent residents each year — a generous allotment, according to Hans von Spakovsky, a senior fellow with the conservative Heritage Foundation.
“We can be choosy about who we allow into the country,” he said. “One of the primary factors ought to be ensuring that the legal immigrants who come in are people who can financially support themselves.”
Approximately one-third of the federal budget goes to health insurance subsidies and social safety net programs, according to the non-partisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities — an expenditure the Trump administration and Republicans seek to reduce.
[….]
A range of activists spent months preparing for the rollout of the proposed regulation and plan to wage an opposition campaign.The proposal will now be subject to a public comment period, an opportunity for opponents to mount an assault on the plan.
A coalition led by the National Immigration Law Center and the D.C.-based anti-poverty Center for Law and Social Policy will push for a wide range of businesses, organizations and government officials to submit comments.
Refugees, Asylees, Cuban/Haitians, Special Immigrant Visa holders, those here through the ridiculous ‘temporary protected status’ program, more! are all exempt!
The prospective regulation wouldn’t apply to all immigrants. Refugees and asylees are exempt, as are certain victims of domestic violence and children who qualify for “special immigrant juvenile status,” which is available to minors who were abused, neglected or abandoned by a parent.
Foreigners who apply for “temporary protected status” to remain in the U.S. after a natural disaster or armed conflict in their home countries will also be exempt, so long as they received a blanket waiver to absolve them of any public charge considerations.
See Jim Simpson’s charton how many refugees and others have been approved as ‘new Americans’ in the last ten years and know that all of these will be exempt!***
It isn’t clear if the UAC ‘children’ will continue to receive welfare but I suspect they will.
Continue here if you wish. Politico, through its long report, is helping the Left figure out who opposes the draft measure and offering a blueprint on how best to fight it including stalling it by overwhelming the system with thousands and thousands of comments.
***If you need more proof than what Politico says, here is a screenshot of a portion of the draft regulationsexempting refugees and asylees. This is from page 85 but more exemptions are on page 86,87,88, and 89!
The list of exemptions goes on for four more pages!
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!
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!
