And the numbers I’m about to give you don’t account for the millions of needy migrants you are still supporting through some welfare/medicaid program or another from previous years!
Thanks to Joanne for pouring over the FY2017 Budget document for the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement in the Department of Health and Human Services. And, this is only half of the story since the US State Department is also shelling out millions for the same group of refugees. The US State Department budget likely adds another $2 billion to the $2 billion price tag below.
And remember! Much of this expenditure to care for these refugees/asylees/assorted other migrants (legal and illegal) flows through federal contractor middle men (for salaries, offices etc.) Go here for the full report.
Now check out these numbers on page 240! 195,231 arrived in FY 2015 for us to take care of (it’s not just the resettled refugee numbers, 70,000-85,000, being bandied about).
If you can’t read the numbers here they are for 2015:
Refugees: 69,933
Special Immigrant Visas: 8,709
Cuban/Haitian Immigrants 61,000 (look at that column and see the massive expansion of Cubans you are caring for!)
Asylees: 21,000
Trafficking victims: 863
Unaccompanied Children: 33,726
You will see in the text that Obama is going to up the number in FY2017 to “213,000 humanitarian arrivals.”
This post is archived in our ‘where to find information’and ‘refugee statistics’categories.
Back to our daily grind (after yesterday’s record-breaking day)—working to educate you about the UN/US State Department Refugee Admissions Program…. Annual Report to Congress
The law says that the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement must get their Annual Report to Congress out by January 31st of the year following the close of the fiscal year. The fiscal year closes on September 31st, so the Annual Report for 2104 was over a year overdue when it was released a few days ago. Their flagrant lawbreaking is nothing new and at one point a few years ago they were THREE years behind. Until recently no one in Congress said boo!
Senator Jeff Sessions and Rep. Marsha Blackburn (and others) here in December 2015 did write to the Secretary of the Dept. of Health and Human Services demanding the 2014 report. But, you should know that ORR is now behind (as of January 31, 2016) in producing 2015!
There are only a couple of reasons for the lawbreaking—incompetence, or they are hiding information until it is out of date. Go hereto read about the 2014 Report and follow links to the entire report. (Hat tip: Joanne) If you take the time to review it, you will see it is a treasure-trove of information for anyone wishing to learn more about how the refugee program effects you and your city (and the nation!). That is the Director of ORR Bob Carey (on right and responsible for the report) campaigning on the prevention of refugee suicides. He came over to ORR from a lucrative job as a federal resettlement contractor. Photo: http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/orr/resource/national-suicide-prevention-month-social-media-campaign
I haven’t had time to open it, but the best sections are the statistics on refugee welfare use etc. (always shocking!). Go hereto see the list of annual reports going back decades. For energetic researchers: Do you know how the interactive data base, here, only goes back to 2002? Well, using these reports you can go all the way back to the first one for 1980 and get statistics on who came to your state, etc. I wrote this 2008 post on how many Somalis the US admitted every year by going back through those annual reports.
Are you a new reader?
For all of the new readers who arrived here this week, we have a category entitled‘where to find information’with hundreds of posts where we cataloged reports and documents and so forth. I also recommend ourfact sheet (a little out of date) and our Frequently Asked Questionsboth of which are linked in our header. About the photo: Why are refugees committing suicides? They have found out that America’s streets are not paved with gold. Some have a very tough time transitioning to American life and they miss their culture, their homes. I wonder if the do-gooders ever consider that they may not being doing the humanitarian thing by ripping people from their cultures so they can become the cheap labor force, for example, BIG MEAT.
They must really be seeing something they aren’t telling us about for Homeland Security Director Jeh Johnson to be so forthcoming at a Congressional hearing yesterday.
And, it isn’t just the Syrians and Iraqis we should worry about! Johnson: Refugee stream does present potential for terrorist attacks. At least someone is being honest in the Obama Administration.
From The Hill:
The head of the Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday said that the United States’s acceptance of Syrian refugees could pose a national security threat.
Even as President Obama has called for the U.S. to welcome 10,000 Syrian refugees this year, Secretary Jeh Johnson maintained during a hearing on Capitol Hill that the initiative is not risk-free.
“In all candor, I do agree that the refugee flow coming out of Iraq and Syria represents a potential opportunity for terrorist organizations to move its members into other nations for potential attacks,” Johnson testified before the House Homeland Security Committee. “So I agree that there is that potential, which is why just within the last several months we have enhanced our vetting for refugees.”
The claim hints at the problems vexing the Obama administration as it seeks to ramp up the number of refugees brought into the country.
The administration is so far falling far behind Obama’s pledge to bring in 10,000 new Syrian refugees this fiscal year. Since October, the U.S. has brought in just 1,115 of the refugees.
Meanwhile, during this same time period, Canada has admitted 25,000 Syrians with apparently little concern for thorough vetting. It isn’t just Syrians we should worry about. Rescued Rohingya are being resettled in the US by the thousands. They can’t possibly be screened any better than Syrians! https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2016/02/27/european-ship-headed-to-asia-to-help-rescue-rohingya-why-you-should-care/
How about security threats from other countries? What do the numbers look like?
(The 2016 fiscal year began on Oct. 1, 2016,numbers below are through February 29th—5 months).
Truth be told: they can’t screen the others below any better than the Syrians!
Syria: 955 (with 946 of those being Muslims). Not sure where The Hillgot the 1,115.
Iraq: 3,476 (2,856 are Muslims)
Somalia: 3,036 (3,034 are Muslims)
Burma: 4,774 (1,135 are Muslims) Yikes! We must be making a big push to get those Rohingya Muslims in to the US before Obama leaves office. I had no idea the number of Burmese Muslims would be this high!
Be sure to see our whole category on the Rohingya of Burma/Bangladesh. Scary!
If you missed it, see the New York Times on terror threat posed by refugee program, here.
Update:Reader Jim sent us corrections to the table. LOL! must have been originally typed up by a government intern: 1. There is no Tampa, Alaska, it should be FL 2. Atlanta should be GA 3. Savannah should be GA
Haven’t had time to write today (except for this morning at American Resistance 2016! ) so was pleased to see this short news story (hat tip: Jim) so that I could put something up and not break my posting streak here at RRW. Only problem is that this writer at the US Herald says this is the list for right now, but FY2015 ended on September 30, 2015. If you find a list like this for FY2016 you win a prize! (not really, but we will all love you for it!)
(Just resettled refugees below, does not include successful asylum seekers, unaccompanied alien children, or any other legal immigrants coming under the care of the US taxpayer.)
Obama is aiming for 85,000 for the present fiscal year (2016). If your city is listed above expect numbers to be even higher this year. If your city is not on the list, it does not mean you are off the hook because the scramble is on to find more ‘welcoming’ towns and cities. This post is filed in two important categories here at RRW: Where to find information and Refugee Statistics.
Over and over again we hear from political leaders and grassroots organizers looking to bring refugees into new (unsuspecting) communities that this is a federal program funded by the feds. (LOL! as if Washington has an orchard of money trees!)
However, this short model letter-to-the-editor in Tennessee quickly dispels the notion that the resettlement of refugees in your town will cost you nothing. Don Barnett, a resident of Tennessee, is a longtime expert on the US Refugee Admissions Program, and is a fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies.
The letter, by Don Barnett of Nashville, is in response to the debate on-going in the State Legislature which we reported recently, here. Tennessee is a Wilson-Fish state (a state where a federal contractor, Catholic Charities of TN, is making decisions for the state taxpayers with no accountability to those elected to protect the state’s purse).
Barnett inThe Tennessean (emphasis is mine):
The reporting on Senate Joint Resolution 467 is proof that, at the very least, something must be done to bring the refugee resettlement program out of the shadows.
So misunderstood and secretive is the program that contractors who profit from it are able to make blatantly false statements and be assured they will be reported as fact.
According to Tennessee’s state refugee coordinator, who is an employee of the main federal resettlement contractor, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the program does not cost state taxpayers a dime.
But the contractors refuse to publicize the number of refugees they place into TennCare, a program paid for by state taxpayers as well as federal taxpayers. The last time they released this data, 2011, nearly 60 percent of refugees went into TennCare upon arrival.
The 2011 report of TennCare usage is consistent with national trends. According to the latest data available — a federal study of refugees who had been in the country five years or less as of 2013*** — 47 percent of refugees were dependent on cash assistance, 74 percent were in the food stamp program, and 56 percent were in Medicaid (TennCare) or short-term federal refugee medical assistance. Twenty-three percent were in public housing or receiving public housing assistance.
There is considerable evidence pointing to long-term dependence. The federal cash welfare program SSI is a good indicator of long-term welfare dependency rates. It is generally a lifetime entitlement and usually automatically includes Medicaid and other social services. The federal study of arrivals over the previous five years found that 21 percent of refugee families had one or more members receiving SSI.
For refugees from the Middle East, 91 percent of this population was on food stamps and 32 percent of families from this group had one or more members on SSI.
Is there really no cost to the state? And what about those costs to the federal government?
This is a letter you should use as a model where you live. Not mentioned by Barnett are the costs to local and state taxpayers to educate the children and the costs to the criminal justice system (for even minor legal infractions involving court interpreters).
***The report referenced here is the Office of Refugee Resettlement Annual Report to Congress for 2013. You can find all of the very useful reports (as of today) through 2013, here. But once again, the ORR is breaking the law! As of January 31, 2016 they are TWO years behind in sending reports to Congress.
Where are the reports?
In December, Senator Jeff Sessions and Rep. Marsha Blackburn sent a letter to ORR wanting them to deliver the 2014 report, see here. And, since reports to Congress are legally required to be delivered 3 months after the close of the fiscal year, ORR should now be providing the report for 2015 as well. Are they hiding something at ORR or is it just sheer incompetence and mismanagement? It certainly looks like a (excuse the expression) middle finger to Congress.
