Will Donald Trump follow through beginning on day 1?
Two days ago, I reportedon the total number of refugees being rushed in to the US right now presumably to beat an expected cut-off of resettlement from at least some countries (terror-producing) of the world after Donald Trump becomes President on January 20th.
And, although we reported new proposed sites have been placed on hold (see Bloomington, IN), there are still plenty of existing sites where refugees are being placed at the highest rate in recent memory.
Here is a map from Wrapsnet.orgshowing the numbers and placement of Syrians admitted to the US in the first ten weeks of this fiscal year (Oct. 1, 2016 to Dec. 10, 2016). 2,671 have been placed, and at this rate we would expect 13,889 by September 30th, 2017, if Donald Trump doesn’t do what he promised.
This map is for the first 10 weeks of FY17. Florida is 132 (couldn’t fit whole map in shot) and Alaska and Hawaii are zero.
Here are the top ten states so far in FY2017 receiving Syrians.
Data from Wrapsnetputs the percentage of Muslims at 98% and the vast majority of those are Sunnis (remember it is the UN choosing our refugees!).
Just a reminder, this is only data for resettled refugees and does not take in to account Syrians getting in to the US through other means.
….For those of you who are hardcore refugee research geeks! I’ve mentioned ‘processing countries’ from time to time over the years with a special animus for the program (initiated during the Bush Admin) to bring ‘refugees’ in to the US from Malta.
These ‘refugees’ are primarily economic migrants (but what else?) who crossed the Mediterranean from North Africa in hopes of getting farther north in Europe. For some never-explained reason we take hundreds to America every year.
So this morning when I wrote about how NGOs are being accused of aiding and abetting the human traffickers to Europe, I mentioned processing countries again. I thought it would be a good idea now to bring this to the attention of the Trump transition team and Members of Congress who care about our security. How can we possibly know who these wandering (mostly Muslim) ‘refugees’ are? And, since most are being processed first by the United Nations, can we trust the UN?
We are entitled to know which ethnic groups come through these processing countries!
We know from news reports that Syrians are coming in from Turkey and Jordan. We are still bringing thousands from Iraq. We know that a large number of the Somalis come to the US from Kenya, but we know from news reports that Somalis make their way all over the world and get to such odd places as Pakistan, Malaysia, South Africa (the rainbow nation!) and Malta and then we pick them up as refugees (if they are legit refugees why didn’t they just go to the UN camps in Kenya?). Hint to Trump team: Note that we take zero Somalis directly from Somalia so you won’t be able to say we are pausing immigration from Somalia, you must refer to the ethnic group no matter where in the world we get them!
I want you to have a look at the numbers (screenshot below) of those who have come in the US in just the first two months of the fiscal year (October 1, 2016 to November 30, 2016), many from countries where they would have been perfectly safe. (Having fun with geography!)
BTW, it is important to capture this information now because by the end of the next month, these maps disappear down some black hole at Wrapsnet.org(or at least I can’t find them!).
I mostly wanted to know what the numbers are looking like because I’m sure the Obama Administration is pouring them in as fast as they can before January 20th, the day Donald Trump moves in to the White House.
So checking Wrapsnet.org this morning, and to make it easy on myself (with the math) I checked the data from October 1, 2016 to December 10, 2016 (exactly ten weeks) and this is what I found. We admitted 21,117 refugees from all over the world in those ten weeks. That is a rate of approximately 2,112 per week so far this fiscal year*** which is way beyond anything we have seen in years. See the monthly rates for the last ten years here.
So here is a screenshot (sorry couldn’t get it all on the screen) of where the 21,117 have been placed in the last ten weeks:
Numbers include all nationalities for the first ten weeks of FY 2017. Florida is 599, Hawaii is 3 and Alaska is 22.
And here is the list of the top ten states so far:
Clearly the feds are not respecting the wishes of the Texas governor. By the way, “cases” involve family units and obviously “Inds” stands for individuals.
For all sorts of data and reports, visit two important categories here at RRW. Visit ‘Refugee statistics’and ‘Where to find information.’ Both are categories where I post information like this.
I’ll try to do one of these reports for some of the primary ethnic groups over the coming days.
***I always try to use fiscal year which runs, in this case, from October 1, 2016 to September 30, 2017, because the Refugee Admissions Program operates on a fiscal year basis. So, if you see numbers being reported elsewhere, take note of whether the reporter is using the fiscal year or calendar year.
Someone asked me about refugee reports, and in this particular case where one could find information on welfare use by refugees.
Annual Reports to Congress
The best place that I know of for that information may be found in the Office of Refugee Resettlement Annual Reports to Congress. (Not to be confused with the reports submitted by the State Department in September in conjunction with the Presidential Determination for the next year.) Annual Reports to Congress are very useful. In the FY2014 report ‘Public Benefit Utilization’ tables begin on page 105. See example below. https://www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/orr/orr_annual_report_to_congress_fy_2014_signed.pdf
Annual reports are listed here.
Federal law requires that the reports be submitted to Congress within 4 months of the close of the previous fiscal year. So unless ORR has failed to update its website, they are now behind for FY2015 (and if they don’t get that one done by the end of January 2017, they will be two years behind!).
There was a point a few years ago (and we wrote about it often and loudly) that ORR was behind by as much as 3 years. I did some research to see when they went off track with following the law and found out it was during Lavinia Limon’s tenureas the Director of ORR during the Clinton Administration. What they apparently did during those years was to take the dates off of the covers, so you never really knew when it was actually submitted. It might say FY1987 (oops typo supposed to be 1997), but with no date for its delivery to Congress.
But the fact that they were so far off also highlighted the fact that Congress clearly did not care whether they were on time.
See here that Senator Jeff Sessions and Rep. Marsha Blackburn did ultimately go after ORR in late 2015 to force the agency to comply with the law.
So go to the Annual Reports and you will find welfare use for refugees. However, I want you to see page 112 at the end of FY2014and understand that the reports for such things as welfare use are based on a small sample number of present and former refugees who are able to be found and who are willing to admit to welfare use! Frankly, there should be a requirement to obtain that data from local welfare agencies, thus forcing local social service agencies to keep track of refugee ‘clients.’
One more thing, since Wrapsnet.org only keeps data back to 2002, you can go back to extensive tables at the end of older annual reports. That is how I found all this information about Somali resettlement all the way back to the beginning.
Proposed refugee admissions for coming year report to Congress
The annual reports I mentioned above are done after the fact, while this report (which is still pretty useful) is sent to Congress usually in the month of September and informs Congress of what the President plans for the upcoming fiscal year. See the most recent one here.
ORR’s Key Indicators
This is a relatively new report and I don’t know if ORR has ever done more than maybe two of these. But, the purpose was to identify states that have the best situation (vis-a-vis social services) for refugees. Here I told readers about how if your state expanded Medicaid, you had a better shot at getting more refugees. This report also tracks secondary migration something that I was told was not done way back in 2007 when I started writing about the Refugee Admissions Program (RAP).
Key Indicators for FY2014 is here.
Congressional Research Service Reports
I have not read the latest one issued just a few weeks ago, but these CRS Reports by Andorra Bruno have been very useful in the past. See the most recent one by clicking here.
General Accounting Office Reports
There is a really good (useful) GAO Report issued in July 2012 which was commissioned by then Senator Richard Lugar entitled, ‘Greater Consultation with Community Stakeholders Could Strengthen Program.’ Go here to see that report.
I think there are more reports, but that is all my old brain can remember at the moment. Will add more if you know of more!
Example of a table found near the end of the FY2014 Annual Report to Congress linked above (be sure to read the note under the table!). After 5 years 60% of refugees were still on Food Stamps!
I have a category here at RRW entitled‘Where to find information’but it is huge and pretty unwieldy now, but ambitious readers might want to scroll through some of the material archived there.
This is from Infowars (hat tip: Richard at Blue Ridge Forum). It is a good thing for the governor that the Obama Administration is headed out the door, or they might just flex their federal muscles and send Mississippi Syrians just for spite.
Here is what Infowars says about what the Governor said on a Fox News program:
Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant informed Stuart Varney that his state has not accepted any ‘Syrian refugees’ to date, and has no plans to even consider doing so until the District of Columbia takes some first.
Governor: There are no Syrians resettled in the District of Columbia. He is right.
Appearing on Thursday on Varney and Co., Governor Bryant discussed the stand he has taken against the Obama administration on behalf of his constituency.
“[We have taken] none so far, so certainly we can claim that as a win,” he said. “In November of 2015, I sent a letter to the President saying much of the same that other governors had said – that we will simply just refuse to accept Syrian refugees because we don’t think that they can be properly vetted.”
[….]
Governor Bryant also noted that nearly half of Mississippi’s 2016 non-Syrian refugee intake has been comprised of Cubans fleeing a totalitarian regime that Obama and his comrades in the mainstream media, Hollywood, and academia continue to romanticize to this day.
Bryant went on to highlight the hypocrisy of the Beltway Elite, who have appropriated massive sums of American tax dollars for their ‘refugee resettlement’ programs, importing tens of thousands of incompatible, low-skilled welfare leaches from Third World countries to small communities in the United States – despite not having accepted any ‘Syrian refugees’ themselves.
“Strangely enough – [there are] no Syrian refugees in the District of Columbia,” he observed. “So, when we see some moving to Georgetown and Pennsylvania Avenue, certainly we’ll reconsider them moving to Mississippi.”
Again, it is a good thing Obama is on the way out, or they would send some to Mississippi just to show they can!
We know that neither Mississippi or the District of Columbia get very many refugees, but I thought it would be interesting to check. For those of you following the program closely, you know that some states are overwhelmed every year with thousands upon thousands of refugees while others get only a trickle. I’m guessing the feds see both Mississippi and the District of Columbia as ‘unwelcoming’ for very separate reasons.
This is what I learned after having a look (at Wrapsnet.org) at the last ten fiscal years for each location. (Oh, and by the way, when the governor says they are getting Cubans in Mississippi that would likely be secondary migrants since I found only one Cuban actually placed through the RAP in the last ten years.) In ten fiscal years Mississippi got 89 total refugees. The countries from which ten or more were placed there were as follows:
Afghanistan (22)
Burma (15)
DR Congo (10)
Eritrea (15)
Iraq (13)
Six other countries were represented by less than 10 individuals. The state got 3 Somalis. In those same ten fiscal years, the District of Columbia took in 249 refugees. The ethnic groups admitted with ten or more were as follows:
DR Congo (12)
Eritrea (38)
Ethiopia (29)
Iraq (124)
13 other countries were represented, but in each case it was less than 10 individuals. DC got 4 Somalis.
![rpcLogoSmall [Converted]](https://refugeeresettlementwatch.files.wordpress.com/2016/12/rpclogosmaller1.jpg)
I’ve mentioned ‘processing countries’ from time to time over the years with a special animus for the program (initiated during the Bush Admin) to bring ‘refugees’ in to the US from 
