Category: Refugee statistics

ORR Year in Review for FY2013 has some handy stats

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Near the top of the list of our most-read posts almost every day is our Fact Sheet on Refugee Resettlement.  In addition to that fact sheet here is a handy report from the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) that was published in December that I just came across while searching for something else.

ORR Director Negash: we served 143,000 “refugees” last year.

It is a year-end review for FY2013 and the cover letter is written by ORR Director Eskinder Negash, formerly a Vice President at the contractor US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI).  His former boss at USCRI, President Lavinia Limon, was a former director of the ORR (did you get that! the ultimate revolving door between grantor and grantee!).

Here are some numbers one should get firmly planted in one’s mind (that applies to me as well!) when people ask you how many refugees are there.   Here is what Negash says the ORR “serves:”

….with the United States welcoming refugees from 65 countries across the globe this past year. The highest number of overseas arrivals represented a slight switch from those of the past few years, with nearly 19,500 Iraqi refugee admissions and 16,300 Burmese refugees accounting for more than half of all refugee arrivals. They were followed by Bhutanese (9,100), Somali (7,600) and Cuban refugees (4,200), with Iran, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, Eritrea and Ethiopia rounding out rest of the top ten admissions groups in FY2013.

The overall population served by ORR and its partners, however, grew to a projected 143,000 new arrivals in Fiscal Year 2013, including almost 72,000 refugees and Special Immigrant Visa holders, an estimated 46,000 asylees and Cuban/Haitian Entrants and Parolees; more than 500 Victims of Trafficking, and nearly 25,000 Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC).

And yippee, in the very next paragraph he says they are almost all on a path to citizenship and VOTING!  Those unaccompanied kids as well!

The numbers only tell part of the story: most of the 143,000 people ORR served last year are on a path to U.S. citizenship that began the day they arrived. Former refugees, asylees, and UAC are making positive changes in communities across the country—and will continue to do so throughout their lives—opening businesses, buying homes and raising families, and voting (and running!) in local elections.

I often say that we take 70,000 refugees a year on average, but I think we need to follow Negash’s lead and start using a number twice that—143,000 a year arriving in the US and in need of “services” you, the taxpayers, are providing.

Posted in our ‘where to find information’ category.

Norway accepting fewer asylum seekers, Canada too!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

….but, what is the US Justice Department hiding?

This is a long article published on the same day as the European Union parliament elections (surely before the results were in)—elections which clearly demonstrated that Europeans from various countries are beginning to stand up and demand that Europe put its own ethnic people first.   See French police storm migrant camp yesterday.

One has to wade through many many column inches of text about “Ismael” the Somali poster boy for Northern Norway to find a few interesting facts.

Ismael, a Somali in Northern Norway, tells a heartwarming story and the reporter laps it up.

I’ve often laughed over the years about reporters who write ‘refugee-sees-first-snow-stories,’ and this one actually did that!

From the Barants Observer:

After two weeks Ismael was accepted in Norway and soon thereafter he boarded a plane to a place where he would buy his first ever winter coat, see snow for the first time in his life and have to learn a new language and way of living – one he never could have imagined before.

The five Nordic countries received 76,400 requests, in total in 2013, with Sweden accepting 70 percent of these applications. This equates to accepting 9 percent of the total global asylum seekers. Norway received 11,500 claims in the same year – a two percent share of the global total. This is down from the over 17,000 Norway accepted in 2009 and up from the all time low of 9,050 in 2011.

For the last three years Europe has been the primary region sought by asylum seekers – in 2013 Europe received 484,600 asylum claims from across the globe. The US and Canada are second.

Canada approved a paltry 10,400 new claims in 2013. That’s a 50 percent decrease from the 20,500 accepted in 2012. They now match Norway in accepting only two percent of asylum seekers who apply to “industrialized countries” as defined by the UN.

The Breivik factor is mentioned near the end (after you feel all warm and fuzzy about Ismael and his Muslim friends).

Norway, like many other countries, is becoming more closed off to refugees. The country has been accused of ignoring its racist undertones, but events like the brutal shooting rampage of Anders Behring Breivik three years ago have forced Norwegians to contemplate the place of race in their society.

In the middle of all the mushy stuff about Ismael, the reporter did direct us to this handy report from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees—Asylum Trends for 2013.

Here are a couple of interesting facts reported by UNHCR:

*An estimated 612,700 asylum applications were registered in 2013 in the 44 industrialized
countries covered by this report, some 133,000 claims more than the year before (+28%). This is the third consecutive annual increase and the second highest annual level of the past 20 years.

* With 109,600 new asylum applications registered during 2013, Germany was for the first time since 1999 the largest single recipient of new asylum claims among the group of industrialized countries.

* The United States of America was second with an estimated 88,400 asylum applications, followed by France(60,100), Sweden(54,300), and Turkey (44,800).

What is Obama’s Justice Department hiding?

Since I didn’t see any bullet-point telling us how many of the 88,400 US asylum applications were approved (as the Norway and Canada stats do), I went back to the report to see if I could find the number.  However, look at this disclaimer on the report’s first page!

*The United States Department of Justice,
Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR)
has temporarily suspended the dissemination
of asylum statistics. As a consequence, the
information available is limited to the number
of asylum applications lodged between January
and August 2013 (17,892). Data from September to
December have been estimated by UNHCR using
a statistical model (seasonal ARIMA). Because no
information is available on the country of origin
of asylum-seekers during this period, its analysis
should be considered as indicative only.

We know some Mexicans are now making bogus asylum claims, but this would indicate that there are a hell-of-a-lot of OTMs (Other than Mexicans) coming across the US border.

And, just a reminder, successful asylum seekers (claims are approved) become full-fledged “refugees” and are eligible for all the same benefits that refugees get in America.  However, keep in mind that they never get the security screening that refugees identified abroad receive.  Remember the Tsarnaev Boston bomber family!

Click here for more of our ‘invasion of Europe‘ posts.  This post is also archived in our ‘where to find information’ category.

 

Minneapolis: Somalis want to expand mall, neighbors opposed

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I expect to see David Lubell and his “Welcoming America” gang stepping in here to support the Somali “entrepreneurs” who say business is booming in South Minneapolis and to get the minds right of these clearly “unwelcoming” neighbors.

Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges donned a hijab to visit business leaders in South Minneapolis! http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/04/mayor-hodges-dons-the-hijab.php

 

However, here is what I don’t get, how does this notion that business is booming fit with the statistics we reported yesterday from Minnesota that 63% of Somalis in that state live below the poverty level.  Where are they getting the money then to shop and hang around to watch soccer and drink tea?

From the Minneapolis Star Tribune:

Local Somalis had high hopes for the expansion of a Somali mall in south Minneapolis, after the owner proposed adding nearly 9,000 square feet of space and expanding the parking lot.

But one by one, the mall’s neighbors showed up to testify at a Planning Commission meeting late Monday that the mall had already caused many traffic and parking problems in the area.

City planning commissioners voted down the expansion Monday night, calling on the developer to further study how it would affect traffic. City planners had supported the project.

The crowded mall is the latest example of a problem throughout the city: balancing the needs of neighborhood businesses with complaints that their customers overwhelm the streets.  [Do you have “customers” overwhelming the streets where you live?—ed]

Are they just hanging around with not much to do (on the taxpayers’ dime)?

Cars park where there are no designated spaces, often boxing each other in and sometimes even blocking the mall’s entrances as East African immigrants stream in to drink tea, watch soccer, log on to computers, have their hair cut, and buy dresses, scarves and rugs.

Here is what the neighbors say:

Many Somali immigrants stepped up to support the project before planning commissioners on Monday, but opponents said that Village Market, as the mall is known, was never designed to support so many visitors and businesses. It has invited noise, illegal parking, littering, crime, dangerous driving maneuvers and loud music. Some said they had seen ambulances struggle to weave through.

Hey, lucky Cheyenne, Wyoming!  This could be you someday!

Thank Catholic Charities, Lutheran Social Services and World Relief Minnesota for helping make this lovely situation possible in Minneapolis!

US State Department hiding stats on which US cities receive refugees

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Why is that?

For the longest time we were able to access statistics for cities at the US State Department contracted site called WRAPS (Worldwide Refugees Admissions Processing System/Refugee Processing Center (RPC)).

Most of the website is NOT available to the public, but at this public page there had been for years a link for ‘arrivals by destination city by nationality.’    I thought I might be imagining that there had been that statistical category, but noticed just now, when visiting another US State Department contracted site, that indeed it exists (but not for you!).

Here is what the Cultural Orientation Resource Center (gee I wonder when they turned the ‘C’ in their logo into a crescent?) says about the WRAPS/RPC stats:

The Refugee Processing Center (RPC), operated by the U.S Department of State, Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM), coordinates the processing and tracking of the movement of refugees from various countries around the world to the U.S. for resettlement under the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program.

Working closely with Resettlement Support Centers, national refugee resettlement agencies, and others, the RPC oversees the use of an interactive computer system called the Worldwide Refugee Admissions Processing System (WRAPS). The RPC uses this data to produce a variety of reports on refugee arrivals per region within a fiscal year, arrivals by state within a fiscal year, arrivals by destination city by nationality, and so on.

To access these reports and more, see the Refugee Processing Center’s Admissions and Arrivals reports page.

What else do they keep from the public?  They keep the stats on the number of Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, Hindus etc. that are coming in as refugees, but do not release those to the public either.  Only special people can get further into the password-protected site.  It is all part of the secrecy that is a hallmark of the program.

See a list of State Department “preferred communities,” here.  But, we don’t know how many and what nationalities are being resettled. Is your city one of them?

Don’t forget!  Please send a comment to the US State Department by May 29th (one week from today!) on the “size and scope” of refugee admissions for FY 2015!

90,000 Bhutanese from Nepal resettled in the West since 2007…

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

…..and they are not done!

The US has taken 75,000 of those and more are on the way.

The UN and the International Organization for Migration say that 21,000 more have expressed interest in coming to your city.

The Bhutanese are really from Nepal originally and were sent packing from Bhutan when that country wanted to keep Bhutan for its own people.  Nepal didn’t want its people back, so what the heck, we lined up to take them.  And, readers, remember! it was the Bush Administration that opened the pipeline.  Bush said 60,000 (of the 100,000) over five years was our limit!

Before we get to the short news story, please look at this map of the camps in Nepal.

When you tally up the number of residents in each camp in 2007 the total number comes to 107,700, yet this article tells us that the total number (resettled 90,000 and waiting 27,000) is closer to 10,000 more.  Either they were cranking out babies or other “refugees” (having heard the good news) have come to the camps since 2007 looking for a ticket out!

http://www.culturalorientation.net/providing-orientation/overseas/programs/rsc-south-asia/images/map-of-bhutanese-refugee-camps-in-eastern-nepal

Here is The Himalayan (90‚000 refugees from Bhutan resettled: IOM)

The resettlement of the Bhutanese refugees began in 2007. So far, over 5,800 refugees from Bhutan have been resettled in several communities across Canada, including Charlottetown, Saint-Jérôme, Quebec City, Ottawa, Toronto, Vancouver, among others. The other resettlement countries are Australia, Denmark, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The majority of resettled refugees – over 75,000 – have been taken in by the United States, the statement read.

“This is another important step towards resolving one of the most protracted refugee situations in Asia. This has been possible due to the strong support of the Government of Nepal and the excellent cooperation between the resettlement countries, UNHCR and IOM…..   [LOL!  I bet there was strong support from Nepal—they didn’t want their people back.  But, I still wonder why that was our (US) concern? Cheap labor?—ed]

[….]

According to IOM, of the 27,000 refugees remaining in the camps, about 21,000 have already expressed an interest in resettlement and are expected to depart in the coming years.

What is the lesson here?  Don’t believe the US State Department the next time they say we are only taking ____ refugees.  For example, once the doors are opened wide to Syrians there will be no end in sight!

Click here for our extensive Bhutanese refugee archive.