Category: Refugee statistics

Buffalo, NY refugee contractors jumping for joy as refugee arrivals pick up

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

…and they seem especially pleased to announce that they are getting them from those terror-producing countries—a flow that the Trump Administration was trying to curtail.
From Buffalo News:

WASHINGTON – President Trump’s promise to cut in half the number of refugees coming to America – and therefore Buffalo – has turned into a dream unfulfilled.

Buffalo offers proof of it. State Department figures show the city welcomed 376 new refugees between Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration and last Wednesday. That’s a 32 percent reduction from the 554 who arrived a year before, but nothing close to a 50 percent reduction.

Yippee! More refugees coming to Buffalo from Africa and the Middle East. Ms. Scott works for a subcontractor of Church World Service. http://www.jersbuffalo.org/index.php/news/entries/journeys_end_refugee_services_announces_new_executive_director

What’s more, 149 of those new arrivals come from Iran, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan or Syria – nations subject to Trump’s travel ban before the federal courts ruled it was unconstitutional.

And now, the city’s refugee resettlement agencies are gearing up for a growing wave of refugees under a new State Department announcement that further undercuts Trump’s promise.

“We had a very busy May, and we will have a very busy June,” said Karen Andolina Scott, executive director of Journey’s End Refugee Services, one of Buffalo’s four refugee resettlement agencies.***

Church World Service, the national refugee agency affiliated with Journey’s End, “was able to send us more people than we thought,” Scott added.

[….]

Now Buffalo stands poised to welcome a growing number of refugees in the next few months. That’s because the State Department last month quietly abandoned the weekly refugee admission quotas that had been in place earlier in the year.

[I’m highlighting this (above) because I have readers who still don’t believe this happened.—ed]

Congress fully-funded refugee resettlement for the remainder of FY17 and Trump signed it!

Budgetary constraints previously limited the number of refugees coming to America in the current fiscal year. But a State Department spokesman said the temporary budget bill that Trump signed on May 5, which funds the government through Sept. 30, includes full funding for the nation’s refugee resettlement program.

That returns the annual cap for refugees coming to America the same as the one Obama set: 110,000 for the year ending Sept. 30.  [This part is still up in the air, however, a reminder that this number—110,000—is a ceiling not a target!—ed]

Refugee resettlement advocates doubt the nation will receive that number. They said it appears the Department of Homeland Security, which vets prospective refugees, slowed down that process in several countries in wake of Trump’s earlier actions, which in turn could slow refugee arrivals in the United States.

Still, local resettlement agencies expect the pace of new refugee arrivals to grow in the coming months.

Yippee! Their paying “clients” are arriving!
More here.
I have a fairly large archive on Buffalo (here) and its problems (similar to Utica).
*** Go here for the list (not sure if it is complete) of resettlement contractors working near you.

Update:  Refugee admissions picking up in Twin Falls, Idaho too!  See here.

 

After initial disappointment, Ohio resettlement agency getting excited for higher refugee influx

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The Trump Administration is on target to blow past its own 50,000 admission determination number in 2 weeks!

As we reported here, just as the Memorial Day weekend was getting underway, the US State Department announced to its contractors that it was  going to open the refugee spigot wide again for the remaining months of fiscal year 2017 (the year ends on September 30th).

A picture speaks a thousand words! Lavinia Limon is the CEO of federal resettlement contractor USCRI and on her left is the CEO of Chobani Yogurt which has been a leading ‘consumer’ of refugee labor in America. “Give me your tired, your poor…” willing to work for lower wages…”yearning to breathe free.”

That means some of the federal refugee contractors, like this one in Ohio, may need to hire back some employees they had earlier let go, but there is still a question about how quickly Trump’s State Department and Dept. of Homeland Security can get the processing ramped-up abroad.
I had been waiting for the Trump White House to correct the mistake about opening the spigot, but their silence now signals that the White House is in agreement with the ramp-up!
From WKSU.  The International Institute of Akron is a subcontractor of one of nine major contractors (USCRI***in this case):

President Obama authorized 120,000 [No! It was 110,000!—ed] refugees for the fiscal year that ends Sept. 30.

President Trump cut that in February to 50,000. But the State Department sent a memo in late May telling refugee groups they would no longer be restrained by weekly quotas.

Liz Walters of the International Institute of Akron says resettlement numbers have always ebbed and flowed, with the agency resettling as few as 25 and as many as 130 a month. She says how many will be coming now depends on what happens overseas.

“The big question mark is how many folks have been in process overseas and how quickly they can start to schedule those folks for travel or at what point they finish up their security clearances and can get them here before the end of the fiscal year.”

[….]

Walters notes that Trump’s budget proposal for the next fiscal year [begins Oct. 1, 2017—ed] includes funding to resettle 50,000 refugees, the minimum under the law.

As far as I can tell, there is no legal minimum!
I’m not lawyer, and perhaps there has been some case law or regulations that I don’t know about, but as I read the Refugee Act of 1980, there is no requirement for any specific number after 1982.  Here (below) is the Act on admissions.  There is a lot of discussion about procedures if the President needs to ‘up’ the numbers, but I don’t see any prohibition about going below 50,000!
 

 
Be sure to read the law yourself and see that “consultation” is with the House and Senate Judiciary Committees and as far as I can see only requires the President to supply them with information.
I repeat!
Do you see how clever the refugee industry propaganda machine is—we are only talking about admission levels, not reform of the whole program.
The only way to force Congress to scrap/reform the Refugee Act of 1980 is for Donald Trump to set the admissions number at zero for FY18 and tell Congress, no more until they get to work. Heck, make them work through the month of August!
He also has the power to stop the flow right now without any Executive Order.

Today the Trump admission level is at 47,434 (Wrapsnet) and, at the admissions rate announced on the eve of Memorial Day, he will thus blow past the 50,000 mark (set by him) in 2 weeks!

***By the way, USCRI is approximately 97% funded by you—taxpayers! See here.

Trump: In wake of latest Islamic terror attack, come on Supremes! we need the travel ban

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

….And, although he didn’t say it (yet?), we should all be urging that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg recuse herself due to her outrageous and injudicious comments about Donald Trump during his campaign for the Presidency.  After all, the justices will be deciding a case that hinges almost completely on Trump’s campaign comments. What about hers!

Here is quintessential Trump on twitter since last night’s terror attack in London:
 

 
 
On Thursday, I am sure you know that the Trump Justice Department appealed the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals decision on the temporary so-called travel ban from six Muslim majority countries. (Obviously that is what Trump is talking about in that tweet last night.)

I checked Wrapsnet this morning to see how many refugees have been admitted since Trump was inaugurated from these six countries. The total, as of today is 4,554, in just the refugee category for migration to America. See below***

I want to impress upon readers again that the 4th Circuit only addressed the ban on travel (for any class of traveler/immigrant/refugee) from the six countries shown here at right. The Maryland case did not address the refugee CEILING and the power of the President to set it (and change it!).
It was the Hawaii judge (case before the 9th Circuit) that addressed the overall 120-day refugee moratorium that would have applied to all countries and all ethnic and religious groups as well as addressing the reduction in the overall CEILING for FY17 from Obama’s dream number (110,000) to 50,000.
The 9th Circuit has not yet (as of this writing) handed down its decision. It has been my contention all along that the President did not need the EO to reset the CEILING on refugee admissions or to halt the entire program for 120 days, and I expect an honest 9th Circuit to throw out that portion of the Hawaii judge’s decision.
The DOJ’s appeal of the 4th Circuit decision to the Supreme Court is being expedited.  See reports here, here and here about the case (s).
Here is the text of the 4th Circuit ruling.

Travel ban will not rid us of Islamic terrorists already here.

(Remember, former FBI director Comey, in his last testimony to Congress said there are 300 US refugees being watched by the FBI!)

There are calls for Justice Ginsburg to recuse herself from Trump travel ban case because her animus toward the President has been so evident.

In my opinion there is an inordinate amount of emphasis being placed on temporary slowdowns on entry to the US and not enough on pressuring the US Muslim ‘leadership’ to get their people, who live here already, under control because in fact, many terror attacks and  thwarted terror attacks (and those extremists being watched) here involve second generation Muslim immigrants/refugees who were radicalized in their homes and mosques on US soil!
Maybe, a halt to Muslim immigration and refugee admissions could serve as an impetus for them to get their house in order!  It is worth trying to find out!
I’m not holding my breath that the Muslim ‘community’ will reform itself.
But, by limiting Presidential power which a ruling against Trump will do, there will be even greater long-term ramifications for keeping the country safe for decades to come (no matter who is President).

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg should not hear the case!

There is an excellent legal argument here  (read it!) suggesting that she is so biased against Donald Trump that she should recuse herself from the case.  Really the heart of the 4th Circuit case is whether Donald Trump’s campaign rhetoric can be used to dismiss an important policy decision. So, she shouldn’t be able to sit in judgement of campaign statements and be looking in to his heart!
*** We admitted 4,554 refugees from the six countries the Trump Administration (and before it the Obama Administration) recognized as terror-producing countries.
However, I submit that it was a huge mistake to leave out Afghanistan, Burma (Rohingya), Eritrea, Ethiopia, Pakistan, Uzbekistan and Iraq, and possibly others! By the way, there are many other immigration/visa programs admitting entry from these countries besides the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program.
These are the refugee numbers from the six known terror breeding grounds since January 20th up to today:

Iran (808) I didn’t check today, but most Iranians we take are not Muslims

Libya (0)

Somalia (1,668)

Sudan (425)

Syria (1,637)

Yemen (16)

 

15,726 refugees admitted to US since Inauguration Day, see where they went

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

 
I recommend that all of you interested in the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program have some fun at the Refugee Processing Center (aka Wrapsnet).  Play around with the databases and you can learn a lot about what is happening in your state and of course in the country.

Because Donald Trump has not put his people in place in the DOS, Simon Henshaw, a career official, is in charge of the US Refugee Admissions Program. https://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/biog/bureau/213334.htm

Today I wanted to see exactly who are the Trump refugees and where were they placed.
Here (below) is the breakdown of nationalities (top 12) admitted by the Trump Department of State which is still largely being run by the bureaucrats because, at least for the department of Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM), there is still no Trump appointee running the bureau.
Henshaw, at right, would have been the person responsible for the shocking announcement last week that the number of refugees arriving per week are going to jump dramatically.***
Here are the top 12 sending countries:

DR Congo (2,579) The Obama Administration promised the UN we would take 50,000 and we are getting pretty close now.

Burma (2,083) A whopping 541 of these are Muslim Rohingya

Iraq (1,711)

Syria (1,626)

Somalia (1,564)

Ukraine (1,275)

Bhutan (1,104)

Eritrea (765)

Iran (751)

Sudan (406)

El Salvador (392) Not refugees, these are the result of a special illegal program Obama set up!

Afghanistan (385)

So where did Trump’s 15,726 refugees go:

 

Alaska got 23 and Hawaii, Wyoming and Washington DC ‘welcomed’ zero. The fact that Hawaii, begging for more diversity, got zip is so telling.

 
Here are the top ten states receiving Trump’s refugees:
 

 
***15,726 is about 874 refugees a week entering the US since Trump was inaugurated. We are told that the number will be jumping to 1,500 a week shortly.

45,732 refugees admitted this fiscal year so far, 45% are Muslim

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I’ve been asked frequently what the numbers look like for which religions are practiced by refugees entering the US right now.
Unless Donald Trump tells us that the New York Times story was fake news last week, see here, and that we are not shooting for 70,000 refugees this year, we will assume it is true (and report the numbers as they come in).  Just a reminder that any number in excess of 70,000 will put Trump ahead of most Bush years and ahead of several of Obama’s years.

It doesn’t matter what religion the alleged Burmese biter practices, the questions you should ask are, how did he get through “extreme vetting” and can we afford ‘refugees’ with this degree of apparent mental illness? https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2017/05/28/burmese-biter-was-headed-for-new-bern-nc-are-we-importing-mentally-ill-in-refugee-program/

Before I give you the list, I want to emphasize that religion should not be the main criteria for your assessment of whether the refugee is good or bad for America.
First, these people are all supposed to have been PERSECUTED?   Do we take some who are really simply economic migrants, those who need work? If so, that is not the purpose of the Refugee Act of 1980.
Can we afford large numbers with mental illness, or illnesses such as TB?
Can we afford those who have no hope of getting off welfare for a generation?
Can we afford those who might already have criminal tendencies that do not become evident in those personal interviews (when no data is available from failed nation states)?
Are we to take into consideration the need by big companies and the Chamber of Commerce for a steady supply of cheap immigrant labor (supported by your tax dollars)?
Are we taking some supposed ‘refugees’ for other purposes of the US State Department, to ‘help-out’ some country that is having a security or economic problem? Or, as we have done in some cases (Uzbeks? Meskhetians?), where we want something from that country?
Again, religion should not be the primary reason we admit or deny anyone, unless they can prove they are being persecuted for it!
Here is a list of some of the religions recorded at Wrapsnet and the refugees who practice those religions (data for this fiscal year from October 1, 2016 to today).  Note: This program operates on a fiscal year basis!
Again, I do not include below all of the religions listed. These are the larger (or more interesting to me) numbers and these are not my categories, they are how they are categorized at Wrapsnet.  45% of those entering the US in this fiscal year practice some form of Islam.   Since Trump was inaugurated on January 20th, the percentage of Muslims entering the US has dropped to 39%.
Numbers for the fiscal year 2017 (so far):

Baptists (1,591)

Buddhists (1,380)

Catholics (2,713)

Christians (6,890)

Evangelical Christians (364)

Hindu (979)

Jehovah Witness (388)

Jewish (149)

Moslem Suni (9,663)

Moslem Shiite (2,509)

Moslem (8,180) These must not have designated a sect

No religion (369)

Orthodox (983)

Pentecostalist (3,901)

Protestant (1,918)

Yezidi (416)

Total refugees this fiscal year:  45,732
Like it or not, these will be Trump’s refugees because years from now (especially if we reach the 70,000 mark by September 30th), no one will remember that Obama presided over 3 1/2 months of the fiscal year.
Again, the data base goes on for 22 pages and I’ve picked those with the largest numbers, or in a few cases ones that interested me like the small number of Jews entering as refugees.  If HIAS (formerly Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society) still focused on Jewish refugees they would be out of business by now!
One last thing!
We have been admitting mostly Burmese Christians for probably a decade, but the number of Burmese Muslims (Rohingya) are on the rise and I note that, for this fiscal year, 1,108 of the ‘Moslems’ are from Burma.  I was also surprised to see how large a number of ‘Moslems’ there were from the DR Congo (325) when that whole flow was supposed to have been, we were led to believe, Christians.