I foundthis very informative map earlier this morning and want you to see it. Just over 40,000 refugees have been resettled in the US this fiscal year (FY 2015 began October 1, 2014) and this map is up to date as of May 31, 2015. Teddy and Joe created the Refugee Act of 1980! What do you know, Delaware has gotten a whole 6 refugees this fiscal year. That is a record high number I think! Here are the states that have received over 1,000 refugees this fiscal year, so far:
Texas: 4,284
California: 3,370
New York: 2,297
Michigan: 1,817
Arizona: 1,810
Ohio: 1,681
Washington: 1,602
Georgia: 1,598
Pennsylvania: 1,535
Florida: 1,513
Illinois: 1,501
Minnesota: 1,426
North Carolina: 1,327
Kentucky: 1,070
Colorado: 1,054
Indiana: 1,038
Can you believe it! Veep Joe Biden’s Delaware actually got a whole 6 refugees this year (zero has been their allotment in recent years). Winners are Montana and Wyoming each with zero so far!
Just a reminder, these are the numbers for resettled refugees only, and it doesn’t include successful asylum seekers, Special Immigrant Visa holders, Cuban/Haitian parolees or the unaccompanied alien children now being treated as ‘refugees.’
Update June 9th: Part III is here. It is for everyone, not just Texans! Update June 8th: Part II is here.
I’m doing some research on Texas because I will be going there later this week. There is so much material on the number one resettlement state so I plan to post a little every day until I leave. For those of you who will be attending a gathering in Dallas, LOL!, this is your homework assignment! You will be tested! In Fiscal year 2014, Texas resettled 7,234 refugees. However, that doesn’t tell the whole story because according to the Texas Dept. of State Health Services (an excellent source of information on refugees in Texas), the actual number of migrants legally being treated as refugees last year was really 12,800 (up 24% from the previous year!).
The website also tells you which counties got the most refugees.
The 12,800 includes refugees, asylees, parolees, special immigrant visa holders (these are Afghans and Iraqis), and victims of trafficking.
They hailed from 58 countries (therefore Texas taxpayers are on the hook for many expensive translators—gratis a Bill Clinton executive order—for all sorts of reasons—access to health care, school system problems and the criminal justice system).
When I went to several different sources, I find that over 150,000 refugees have been resettled in Texas since 1983, and that number doesn’t include secondary migrants from other states (Dallas County got the most secondary migrants last year–60% of all those arriving in Texas).
And, of course, it doesn’t include all of the children produced in three decades! Nor does it include the thousands of ‘unaccompanied alien children’ that may not have been distributed around the nation from last year’s border invasion. Obama would like nothing more than to have them declared “refugees” as well (refugees get all forms of welfare upon arrival!). These numbers do not include all of the other categories of ‘refugees’ cared for by local resettlement contractors and your tax dollars.
The top resettlement cities in Texas are (resettlement is not limited to these sites, dozens and dozens of smaller cities and towns are receiving refugees):
Abilene
Amarillo
Austin
Corpus Christi
Dallas
El Paso
Fort Worth
Houston
San Antonio
For new readers, you might want to have a look at our archive on Amarillo which has developed into a ‘pocket of resistance’as the mayor there has asked the federal government to slow the flow since the school system is suffering with the influx of non-English speaking children many of whom are illiterate in their own language. The meatpacking industry is responsible for much of the resettlement to Amarillo (hunger for cheap labor!). The top nationsfrom which Texas received refugees in 2014 were in this order: Iraq, Cuba, Burma, Afghanistan, and tied for 5th place Somalia and Bhutan(Nepal).
So when did Texas move into the number one spot in the nation?
For years and years other states ranked above Texas including California, New York and Florida. According to this very cool graph (above right), it was in 2011 that Texas gained this dubious distinction. And, if you are wondering why the number dipped in 2011, this is why: That year it was learned that Iraqi terrorists disguised as refugeeswere arrested in Kentucky. Turns out the pair had lied (can you believe it, they lied!) on their refugee application and it was only when they were found to be planning on helping Al-Qaeda in Iraq was it discovered that one of them had left fingerprints on an IED shard that was warehoused by the US military. The shard came from an IED that had killed Pennsylvania National Guard troops. They are in prison for life.
The arrest threw the Refugee Admissions Program of the US State Department into chaos because they had to re-screen thousands and thousands of Iraqis headed to America. Iraqis make up the largest ethnic group we are admitting to America now at a rate of about 20,000 a year. The majority are Muslims (both Shiites and Sunnis as we import their centuries old squabble to your towns!).
That is enough for today. Here is your homework assignment:
In order to question this 35-year-old legal immigration program, you must first get the facts!
* Read our Fact Sheet, here. Open and read all the links in this post!
* Go to the Texas Department of State Health Serviceswebsite and learn all you can about the refugees coming to Texas. Don’t miss the stats on their health conditions (refugees are admitted with TB, HepB, HIV and parasites).
* You have a State Refugee Coordinatorand her name is Caitriona Lyons (she is Irish, btw), call her and ask her to direct you to the Texas refugee plan. Here is a description of the plan and the legal requirement that every state have one (and they must keep it current). Ask her to direct you to it and read it!
Remember in Texas your governor does have a say in what happens with refugee resettlement! Where has he been?
Here is a whole list of State Coordinators in case others of you want to start your research! Scroll down to Texas for Ms. Lyons contact information. There will be further information and more homework tomorrow!
Editor’s note: I have so much news to post, but internet connection is dropping today. If I disappear, know that I am frustrated about not getting it to you or posting your comments! Or, answering your many e-mails.
Since everyone is talking about the number of Syrians admitted to the US as refugees (see yesterday’s comments by House Homeland Security Committee chairman), I thought it was time to update the numbers. Most of our Syrians are coming from UN camps like this one which house primarily Muslim refugees. Photo: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/jul/30/syria-aleppo-fight-continues-live
When I search thedata base for Syrians I go back to calendar year 2012 (1/1/2012) so as to include those who might have gotten here right after the recent conflict began in 2011 (thus numbers you see published may vary some depending on when the source began counting).
I reported on May 1that we had admitted 815 Syrians (92% Muslim) from 1/1/2012 to 5/1/2015. This time I searched up until May 20th and here are the results:
* 843 Syrian refugees have been sent to your towns and cities.
* 508 of those came since January 1, 2015
* The top ten states receiving Syrians are:
Texas (107)
California (107)
Illinois (91)
Arizona (64)
Pennsylvania (54)
Michigan (34)
North Carolina (34)
New Jersey (31)
Florida (30)
Indiana (29)
* Yesterday Rep. Michael McCaul speculated that not too many US communities would want them right now, however Texas, his home state tops the list. Here are the cities in Texas which ‘welcomed’ Syrians:
Austin (4)
Dallas (31)
Ft. Worth (38)
Houston (34)
*One might assume that we were saving the Christian Syrians, but that isn’t happening. Just as we reported earlier in the month, 92% of those we are bringing in are Muslims. Here is the breakdown:
777 of them identify as one form of Muslim or another (729 are Sunni Muslims)
42 Christians are listed and 1 Catholic, several other religions or no religion are listed (for example, there is 1 Yazidi)
That works out to 92% Muslim!
By the way, if you are saying to yourself, heck, there are more Syrians in my town than this small number, remember that there are other legal avenues for entry. Syrians already in the US were granted Temporary Protected Status (TPS) in 2012 by the Obama Administration and a reader recently shared with me that his US Senator says there are over 11,000 Syrians (who were already in the country when the conflict began) and are thus eligible for TPS.
By the way, it was our usual suspects, the US State Department resettlement contractorswho lobbied, along with Arab groups, for the TPS designation.
Those same contractors want us to take 65,000 Syriansby the end of 2016 and the UNHCR has 11,000 picked out for us this year.
Look at this cool map I found for how many refugees were resettled in your state relative to your population: “This map by Casey Cupp is warped to show which states take on the highest number of refugees relative to their population. For example, the densely populated New Jersey takes in a far lower rate of refugees than that of the two Dakotas. What the map shows is that the distribution of refugees looks very different when considering state populations as opposed to strictly the number of people living in each state.” http://www.humanosphere.org/basics/2014/02/map-day-refugees-accepted-us-states-population-adjusted/
I was just having a look at the statistics for FY2015 maintained by the US State Department on refugee admissions (I was checking out Malta), but thought you might like to know which groups we are admitting (welcoming!) in the largest numbers.
The total number of refugees admitted so far in FY2015 (which ends on September 30th) is 36,144 from 80 countries. (Making sure we get lots and lots of diversity for your school systems to cope with!)
Here are the top ten in descending order:
Burma (9,040)
Iraq (8,229)
Somalia (4,993)
DR Congo (2,921)
Bhutan/Nepal (2,849)
Iran (1,474)
Cuba (1,093)
Ukraine (831)
Eritrea (801)
Syria (651)
Tip for using the data base: Do not use the map for “processing country” because that tells you nothing about who we actually admitted. For example, you will see that Kenya (on the processing country map) is listed as 1,537. That does not mean that we admitted 1,537 Kenyans (we don’t take Kenyans as refugees, unless they are Obama relatives). It means that 1,537 were processed in Kenya and those most likely are Somalis from the UN camps located in Kenya.
States which received over 1000 refugees in the last seven months (in descending order):
For wannabe researchers, this data base (where I got the above numbers) is only for the present fiscal year. To go to a more extensive data base going back to 2002, go here.
This is a gem. Thanks to Conservative Reviewand investigator/writer Daniel Horowitz for pulling these numbers together in an easy to see graphic form. See the whole story here. Horowitz mentions refugees as part of the flow. (hat tip: Dick):
There is one caveat we need to mention and that is that not all of those entering the US from countries such as Iraq or Iran are Muslims, but we do get at least a ball park number from this data. Also, we do not take refugees from all of those countries listed above which reminds us that there are other LEGAL immigration programs admitting Muslim immigrants into the US. The next step is to identify all of those methods of entry.