Numbers update: end of first 5 months of fiscal year, highest number of refugees admitted in over 10 years

03/01/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Yesterday, February 28th, was the end of the first 5 months of fiscal year 2017.
I checked the refugee admission numbers this morning (at Wrapsnet) and see that we admitted 37,026 refugees from all over the world since October 1, 2016.

tillerson-and-trump — How low will they go for Fiscal Year 2018? In 6 months that determination will be made.

Two days ago we reported that 36,822 had arrived.
By two days from now (March 3), the flow should almost come to an end for now, although remember that President Trump has said 50,000 will be admitted by September 30th—a number that is too high in my opinion.
It is obviously too late, but I had argued for 35,000.
I knew that for the time I’ve been writing this blog (since 2007), that 37,026 was much more than we had ever admitted in the first 5 months of a fiscal year, so I was able to go to this chart and confirm it.
If you live in one of over 100 resettlement sites in the US, and felt that you were being swamped recently, you probably were!
37,026 is 7,834 more than the highest year below, and a whopping 24,782 more than the lowest year!
Here are the admission numbers for the first 5 months of the fiscal year going back to 2006:

2006: 16,287

2007: 12,244

2008: 14,224

2009: 22,809

2010: 29,192

2011: 25,680

2012: 18,581

2013: 28,078

2014: 26,925

2015: 26,717

2016: 22,827

Next big test for the Trump Administration!

In September, President Trump will make his ‘determination’ for the number (and regions of the world from which they will come) of refugees to be seeded in to your towns and cities in FY2018.
This post is filed in our Trump Watch! category as well as ‘refugee statistics’ and ‘where to find information.’

Starving the beast! Another way to set policy at the Department of State

02/28/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Politico is reporting that they are getting out their worry-beads all over the world as the Trump Administration works on its first budget.
Could this mean what we hope it means—a reduction in the millions of dollars we give away to the UNHCR while they dictate to us, telling us which refugees and how many America must take.

unhcr-headquarters-in-geneva — UN High Commissioner for Refugees huge glass-domed office building in Geneva, Switzerland. How many of your tax dollars, paid out through the DOS, keep this international organization going? Aid organizations seem to like nice buildings!

Politico (it is kind of cryptic, but hopeful sounding!):

U.S. diplomats and aid workers have been afraid that President Donald Trump wants to sideline them in favor of the military.

On Monday, they got even more reason for concern.

The Trump administration is developing a federal budget proposal the White House says will give defense programs a $54 billion boost while cutting funding to the other agencies, including the State Department, and especially foreign aid programs.

Lawmakers, foreign embassies and others were scrambling to get the details of the budget plan Monday. Officials at the State Department declined to share their budget reduction targets — it was not clear if the guidance had yet been delivered to them — but some reports forecast as much as 30 percent reduction, a devastating blow.

[….]

Funding for the State Department and foreign assistance falls under what’s called the “international affairs budget,” a category that doesn’t include the military. Those programs overseas — including everything from embassy security to pandemic prevention to refugee assistance via the United Nations — cost roughly $58.8 billion. The vast majority of that figure goes to the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development.

[….]

On a call with reporters, officials with the Office of Management and Budget noted that most federal agencies will be expected to trim their budgets. But they singled out foreign aid programs in particular, indicating the administration believes that other countries are merely taking advantage of the United States.

More here.
I wish I knew exactly how much the US Department of State is paying the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. If anyone can figure it out, send it our way!
Here is one place to start your research!

Numbers update from Wrapsnet as refugee arrivals slow to US

02/27/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

In advance of a new EO supposedly coming out on Wednesday, checking the numbers this morning here are a few things I learned.

Total arrivals this fiscal year (which began on October 1, 2016) are at 36,822. Last time we checked on 2/23 we were at 36,637.
President Trump has set the ceiling for this fiscal year which ends on September 30th at 50,000 (a number we argue is not that low when one examines all of the post 9/11 years, see here. Bush’s lowest year was 39,554).
47% of the 36,822 are Muslim refugees of some stripe.
Here is how they break down:

Ahmadiyya: 130

Shiite: 2,152

Sunni: 8,659

Muslim (who apparently don’t designate a sect): 6,547

A couple of things that interested me in the numbers. First we are bringing in large numbers of Burmese Muslims now (Rohingya, I presume). 817 are recorded as from Burma. In reality we don’t know exactly where they came from. They could be from the Muslim country of Bangladesh. These are not our responsibility!
Then for Iraqis we admitted both sides of the warring factions: 1,472 are Shiites and 2,506 are Sunnis.
So, let me get this straight! From Iraq we must have Sunnis saying they are persecuted by Shiites and Shittes saying they are persecuted by Sunnis, and we bring them both to be resettled in your cities. How long before they go after each other on American soil?
So here (from Wrapsnet) is a map of where the 36,822 were placed one day short of 5 months in to FY2017.
Wyoming remains the only state in the nation with no refugee program. Of course Washington, DC only gets a tiny number.
screenshot-369

screenshot-370 — Florida is 1,197. Alaska is 41 and Hawaii is 3.

Here are the top ten receiving states.
I repeat! Governor Abbott’s withdrawal of the state of Texas from the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program did not slow the flow to the state! If you want to help President Trump succeed, Texans need to focus their political activism on Senator John Cornyn as we explained here.

screenshot-368

This post is filed in our Trump Watch! category as well as ‘refugee statistics’ and ‘where to find information.’

Refugees trickling in now as March 3rd approaches; 50,000 is not low enough!

02/23/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

There are some rumors floating around that the new EO on refugees, especially those entering from the seven terror hotspots previously identified, won’t happen until next week. But, it is only a rumor, and LOL!, Trump could be signing it shortly, for all I know.
However, we do know that the US State Department alerted refugee contractors (the nine volags) here that they should expect the spigot to stop around March 3rd, a week from tomorrow. I’m assuming this advance notice is so they can clear up those cases coming in and there won’t be anyone caught at airports who could make a scene for the media.

karl-rove — Why is Rove still an ‘expert’ for Fox News when he was soooo wrong during the presidential campaign?

I see this morning at Wrapsnet that we are already at 36,637 today (up from 36,461 yesterday) for this fiscal year.
So unfortunately the Trump team didn’t cap the arrivals at my recommended 35,000 and must still be aiming for 50,000 this year.

50,000 is not that low!

I wanted to throw a shoe at Karl Rove on Fox News sometime yesterday or the day before when he said that Trump had cut the number in half for refugee arrivals.
Sorry to be a broken record, but when Obama set the CEILING, for most of the year he would no longer be in the White House, at 110,000 that was his dreamland proposal. If Hillary won, surely that is where we would be headed, but with Trump’s win, it allows the refugee industry to cry foul because they thought they would get the whopping 110,000 (a figure not seen since well before 9/11).
Here (again) are the numbers we admitted since FY2001 (in red are the years we were BELOW 50,000!):

2001: 87,259 (this year’s number would have been proposed by Clinton in the fall of 2000)

2002: 45,896

2003: 39,554

2004: 79,158

2005: 69,006

2006: 41,223

2007: 48,282

2008: 60,191

2009: 74,654

2010: 73,311

2011: 66,424

2012: 58,238 (Obama had a low year here!)

2013: 69,926

2014: 69,987

2015: 69,993

2016: 84,994

Check my math, but that looks like the average is around 65,000 per year, so Trump’s 50,000 represents only a 23% drop (again you better check my math! I know you will!) from the average number in the last 16 years.

There is still time for the Trump team to set the ceiling lower yet for this fiscal year! And, frankly Congress must begin to reform this out of control program or else we go back to the same old flawed system in a few months!

Go here and see why it is important for you to let Donald Trump know what you think!

Update: Here is Fox News saying the ceiling reduces entry by 50%! It is so maddening to see how screwed up the media can be when it is something one knows a bit about!

Will new EO slow the Syrian migration to the US?

02/19/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Everyone (including me!) would like to know what the President’s new Executive Order might contain. Rumor has it there will be a new one this week.
As you will remember, the original one blocked entry for a limited time from seven countries initially identified by the Obama Administration as terror hotspots.
Additionally, it contained a moratorium for an indeterminate time for refugees (or anyone!) entering the US from Syria.
So, on the eve of a week where we might see more changes in the Trump Administration’s efforts to slow the flow to the US while security screening is made more muscular, I thought it would be good to show you how many Syrians have entered the US since the migration began in earnest in fiscal year 2015.

rpcLogoSmall [Converted]
According to Wrapsnet, in fiscal years 2011, 2012, and 2013 the total Syrian arrivals were less than 100. Then in FY2014 we admitted 105 Syrians.
But, then in FY2015 the number began to rise—to 1,682—followed by the huge jump to 12,587 in FY2016. In this fiscal year (FY2017), which is not yet 5 months old, 5,486 have arrived already.
Of the total of 19,860 who arrived in those years (FY2014 to today), 19,577 are Muslims (roughly 98.5% of arrivals are Muslims of some sort). A whopping 19,272 are Sunni Muslims.
Here is where the 19,860 have been placed:
screenshot-310

screenshot-308 — Florida is 1,075 if you can’t read it. And, Alaska and Hawaii are at zero.

And here are the top ten states that ‘welcomed’ them:

screenshot-311

Finally, we do know that the number entering the US will be slowed simply by Trump’s legal action to reduce the overall ceiling to 50,000 refugees entering the US before September 30th. We have been arguing it could still be reduced further, see here.
By the way, it isn’t just security we are concerned about, go here to see how expensive it is (for taxpayers!) to resettle Middle Easterners.
This post is filed in our Trump Watch! category as well as ‘refugee statistics’ and ‘where to find information.’