COVID-19 News…..
From time to time over the years, I’ve told you about “processing countries” which are locations around the world where refugees are gathered and as the word says, are processed into the US. It doesn’t mean that all those processed are the nationality of the country that is doing the processing.
Indeed when you look at the map of processing locations from the Refugee Processing Center (below), you will see Malaysia, Thailand and Turkey are high on the list, but in those cases they are locations where refugees of various nationalities are being selected for movement to your towns and cities.
However, in the case of Ukraine, they are mostly (if not all) Ukrainians. Don’t ask me what the deal is and why we are moving supposedly persecuted Ukrainians to America, but we are.
Every day I look for any news about whether the US State Department is taking any action to either delay refugee arrivals or at least to test refugees for coronavirus exposure and am not seeing it.
That said, I did see that the Ukrainian government has announced that as of March 17th, Ukraine’s borders (both in and out) will close even as the country only has a handful of cases so far, so presumably that will bring refugee arrivals from Ukraine (presently among the largest numbers we are getting) to a halt.
By the way, the largest number of Ukrainian refugees arriving in the US are going to Washington, California and New York states with more cases of COVID-19 than the whole country of Ukraine.
Keep an eye out! If you see news about delays in refugee arrivals due to the virus crisis let me know!
Editor’s note: As RRW approaches its 13th birthday, there are over 10,000 posts archived here at Refugee Resettlement Watch. Unfortunately, it is just me here with no staff and so it has become virtually impossible to answer all of the basic questions that come into my e-mail inbox or to RRW’s facebook page every day. I don’t want to appear rude—I simply haven’t enough hours in the day.
Please take time to visit RRW (don’t just read posts in your e-mail) and use the search window in the right hand sidebar and see if you can find the information you need. Also see my series that I wrote in recent months entitled Knowledge is Power which explains some basic principles of how Refugee Resettlement is carried out in the US.
And, lastly, I don’t write that much every day, so if you made a habit of reading my posts here on a daily basis, you would eventually catch on to what is happening because I do link back to previous posts as much as possible. LOL! Thank you for helping me not go crazy!
Note to PayPal donors! I want to thank all of you who send me donations for my work via PayPal. I very much appreciate your thoughtfulness. However, PayPal is making changes to their terms of service and I’ve decided to opt-out beginning on March 10, 2020.
New data released by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) on its 2019 resettlement activities shows that the United States remains the top country for refugee resettlement. Furthermore, just like in previous years, the vast majority of refugees referred by UNHCR for resettlement in third countries in 2019 were not the most vulnerable or in urgent need of relocation. This contradicts the UN refugee agency’s constant claims that resettlement is a “life-saving tool”, a “critical lifeline” for refugees that needs strengthening. This also casts some doubt on UNHCR referral processes.
