Why isn't Afghanistan on President Trump's list?

02/01/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

trump-watch — Trump Watch! Let President Trump know what you think by going here: https://www.whitehouse.gov/contact#page

Update: Paul Sperry writing at the New York Post a couple of days ago asks the same question, here.
As you know there are seven countries (Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Sudan, Yemen) from which the Trump Administration is restricting immigration/entry because of terror infiltration concerns.
There are lots of countries one might question that are not on the list, but I wondered why Afghanistan isn’t an obvious choice.
Someone asked me this week whether there was an increase in ‘refugees’ being admitted from Afghanistan and I thought it seemed like there was, so I just checked.
We admitted 11,191 ‘refugees’ from Afghanistan since FY 2004 and here is what it looks like (sorry this is the best I could do with the screenshots at Wrapsnet):
screenshot-221

screenshot-222 — My columns aren’t the straightest, but see that the for FY2004 the number is 959, etc. Note the big jump in FY2016, indicating my suspicions were right.

There was a big uptick of refugee admissions from Afghanistan in FY2016. I checked religions as well and found that 97% were Muslims of some sort (not a surprise!).

As we have done in Iraq as well, we are bringing both sides of the Sunni vs. Shiite conflict to America. 4,106 were Shiites and 5,783 are Sunnis. So do we place them in the same communities in America?
A few of the 206 we admitted since last Friday are from Afghanistan.
Here is where those 11,191 were placed (from FY 2004 until yesterday):
screenshot-224

So, again, why isn’t Afghanistan a nation of concern?

This post is filed in our Trump Watch! category as well as ‘refugee statistics’ and ‘where to find information.’

4 months into FY2017, US admits 32,331 refugees, 206 since Trump order

02/01/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

You’ve seen it all over the news I’m sure: the Trump Administration has reportedly given a waiver to 872 refugees who are already in transit around the world to enter the US despite the freeze announced on Friday. 206 of those are represented in the summary below.

Today marks the end of 4 months of Fiscal year 2017.

For new readers, the fiscal year ends on September 30th and sometime during the week of September, President Donald Trump will be making his determination for how many refugees and from where they will come for fiscal year 2018. He will send the determination to Congress and Congress’ role is ONLY to consult. For decades, until 2015, the determination was met on the hill with virtual silence.

As you know the Executive Order of last Friday evening reset this year’s ceiling from Obama’s 110,000 (a number not seen since before 9/11) to 50,000. 50,000 is the maximum ceiling set in the original Refugee Act of 1980, see here.
Go here to see why 50,000 is still too high for this year.
Wrapsnet is up today (I couldn’t get it yesterday). As of Friday I had recorded 31,125 refugees admitted and this morning the number is 32,331 (an addition of 206 since the EO went into effect Friday evening). None of the 7 restricted nationalities were admitted in the 206 allowed in over the last day or two.
Here is a screenshot of where the 32,331 have been placed (from Wrapsnet):
screenshot-216

screenshot-217 — Cut off in the screenshot: FL is 1,052, Alaska (32) and Hawaii (3)

Here are the top ten states so far this fiscal year. Readers in Texas take note. Anything the Governor has done, although admirable, has done nothing to slow the flow to Texas. Look at these states—they are working full time to make sure that, in addition to the big prize Texas, they ultimately turn swing states blue!

screenshot-218

This post is filed in our Trump Watch! category as well as ‘refugee statistics’ and ‘where to find information.’

Wrapsnet update: Number of refugees arriving slowed since yesterday

01/28/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

See my post, here, about how I have been tracking refugee arrivals since the morning of Inauguration Day.

Here is a recap of what I posted each day:

January 20th: 29,895

January 21st: 30,063

January 22nd: 30,063

January 23rd: 30,063

January 24th: 30,063

January 25th: 30,885

January 26th: 31,521

January 27th: 32,094

This morning the number is 32,125.
I’ll try to keep readers posted each day going forward. The President, in yesterday’s executive order, reset Obama’s ceiling of 110,000 to 50,000 (go here to see my explanation about why that is still too high).
Here is a map from Wrapsnet (Refugee Processing Center) this morning. How many have already gone to your state this fiscal year?
screenshot-196

screenshot-197 — If you can’t read Florida it is 1,047. Alaska is 32 and Hawaii is 3.

By the way, note that states that in recent months withdrew from the US Refugee Admissions Program have shown no reduction in the number of refugees they receive. Those states are Texas, Kansas, New Jersey and Maine. The federal government is simply turning the work of placing refugees in those states over to the (we believe) unlawful Wilson-Fish alternative which puts a non-profit refugee contractor in charge of the program in that state!
Governors in those states—all Republicans—should consider suing as Tennessee is doing, or at minimum screaming to the Trump Administration!
Wyoming has wisely never had a refugee program!

Trump Watch! Is rumored refugee cap reduction to 50,000 that significant?

01/27/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

One more post on numbers and the rumored executive order on refugees, and then I am moving on to a lot of other refugee news that has gone unreported for days as we watch and wait for President Trump’s delayed order on the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program.

george-w-bush-net-worth — The Bush Administration was favorable toward refugees, and yet he had 4 years where the numbers admitted were under 50,000. Bush’s average was around 58,750. So, if Trump comes in at 50,000, it isn’t a shockingly unprecedented reduction.

The rumor (and who leaked the draft executive order anyway?) is that Donald Trump will cap the refugee admissions for FY2017 at 50,000. Obama had proposed 110,000 (and the refugee resettlement contractors have been busy finding new sites for their placement).
As of today we are at 32,094 (see previous post).
(Trump will be setting the numbers for FY2018 in September of this year.)
But this is what you need to know: 50,000 doesn’t represent a shocking reduction when you look at the history of resettlement since 2001. (These numbers, below, came from this chart, Wrapsnet, and from ORR annual reports to Congress).
Here are the numbers we admitted through the Bush and Obama Administrations (Bush had 4 years under 50,000!). Remember the resettlement agencies are paid by the head, so it is to their financial benefit to see high numbers:

2001: 87,259 (this year’s number would have been proposed by Clinton in the fall of 2000)

2002: 45,896

2003: 39,554

2004: 79,158

2005: 69,006

2006: 41,223

2007: 48,282

2008: 60,191

2009: 74,654

2010: 73,311

2011: 56,424

2012: 58,238

2013: 69,926

2014: 69,987

2015: 69,993

2016: 84,994

Again, 50,000 might look like a great reduction when compared to Obama’s 110,000 proposed number, but it isn’t that significant a reduction. I bet the media will report this as Trump cutting the refugee numbers in half!
See our Trump Watch! category for all the news about the delayed executive order.

My methodology when using Wrapsnet (the DOS data base for incoming refugees) explained

01/27/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Sorry, I got screwed up in my math last night and had to change the headline of my post.
rpcLogoSmall [Converted]
For new readers, here is the Refugee Processing Center (Wrapsnet) website where you find the numbers of refugees entering the US—where they are from and where they are going.
Click here and see the various choices you can make in pulling up data. Try it yourself!
By the way, this was information not available to the general public for many of the early years of RRW. It was a password protected site.
The problem (and one that caught me yesterday) is that we don’t know exactly when in the course of 24 hours data is being posted, so by going back later in the day on any given day, one can get deceptive results.
So, I’m going back to my previous (safe) methodology of checking numbers at only one time of the day, between 5 a.m. and 6 a.m., and capture all the entries for a previous 24 hour period.
This is what I know:
On the morning of President Trump’s inauguration the number of refugees admitted to the US this fiscal year (which began on October 1, 2016), the same fiscal year that Obama had proposed entry numbers of 110,000 *** (the highest since way before 9/11), it was 29,895.
This morning, one week later the number is 32,094. That means 2,199 refugees arrived in the US since Inauguration Day. That is a daily rate of 314 per day!

Here are the numbers I recorded each day (all between 5 and 6 a.m.):

January 20th: 29,895

January 21st: 30,063

January 22nd: 30,063

January 23rd: 30,063

January 24th: 30,063

January 25th: 30,885

January 26th: 31,521

January 27th: 32,094

We added 2,199 refugees in the week. It is still a mystery why there were no refugees being recorded on those 4 days. The data began to be updated in the afternoon of the 24th.
If you play around with Wrapsnet, you can find out how many refugees of each nationality were placed in your towns (since 2002).

New readers looking for which resettlement agencies are working in your cities and towns, go here.

***Obama proposed 110,000 for this fiscal year, and as of today we are already at 32,094. If Trump changes the number to 50,000, yes that is a reduction from Obama’s proposal, but it is not that significant when looking back ten years. Obama had 2 years under 60,000 and Bush had 4 years under 50,000. (See my next post)