“Whatever that number is, it will absolutely be driven principally by the capacity of my agency and the law enforcement, security, and vetting practices.”
(Francis Cissna, director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS))
Granted we are only 4 days into the month of October so things could change tomorrow or the next day, but so far zero refugees have been placed since the new fiscal year began on Monday (October 1).
Here we hear from Voice of America and a distressed resettlement lobbyist about the disappointment in the refugee industry.
The Trump administration has missed the end-of-fiscal-year deadline to set the maximum number of refugees that will be allowed in the United States in the next 12 months.
An “extraordinarily disappointed” Mary Giovagnoli of the Refugee Council USA, the lobbying arm for the refugee contractors.
“Consultations and the subsequent Presidential Determination (PD) normally take place by Oct. 1. However, on some occasions, the consultations and subsequent PD have been completed later,” a U.S. State Department spokesperson said in an emailed statement to VOA. “We do not expect this will have any operational impact on the Refugee Admissions Program.”
The agency declined a request from VOA to provide a timeline for the consultations.
[….]
Last month, the administration proposed a record-low refugee ceiling for the 2019 fiscal year of 30,000 refugees. By law, Congress must be consulted about the cap before a final number can be issued.
“We are extraordinarily disappointed that the administration has failed to honor the spirit and the letter of the law when it comes to consultations,” said Mary Giovagnoli. executive director of Refugee Council USA. “For two years in a row now, the administration has just failed to take it seriously.”
President Donald Trump has dramatically cut refugee arrivals to the United States since taking office.
[….]
Cissna: operational realities will dictate the final number.
Francis Cissna, director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), said at a conference Monday that new vetting measures have increased processing times for refugee admissions.
He added that the suggested ceiling of 30,000 for FY2019 takes into account the “operational realities” of those measures for “national security and public safety.”
“The number is not final yet. The president has not signed the proclamation. Whatever that number is, it will absolutely be driven principally by the capacity of my agency and the law enforcement, security, and vetting practices,” Cissna said.
“The costs are staggering. The costs are truly staggering!”
(Don Barnett, Fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies)
I reported a few days agoon the ‘Report to Congress’ released by the US State Department as part of the consultation with Congress requirement of the Administration when determining how many refugees will be admitted to the US beginning on Monday.
Here LifeZetteanalyzed a portion of that report about what you pay for the program (actually only a small portion of the costs!).
America’s refugee program cost taxpayers more than $125 billion over a 10-year period, according to a Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) report to Congress on a proposed cut in the émigré cap.
The report accounts for refugees resettled from abroad, foreigners in the United States granted asylum, and people participating in special programs set up for Iraqis, Cubans, Haitians, and Amerasians from Vietnam.
The cost to federal taxpayers for refugees and individuals granted asylum in fiscal years 2005 through 2014 came to $74.7 billion, plus an additional $21.9 billion for state matching funds for programs available to refugees.
The total cost was $96.65 billion. Including spouses and children, the overall cost to state and federal taxpayers rises to $125.696 billion.
That total includes the cost of relocating refugees, services provided by the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), child care subsidies and three main welfare programs — Medicaid, Medicare, and Temporary Assistance to Needy Families.
In a speech to the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday, President Donald Trump alluded to the cost in arguing that U.S. generosity is better demonstrated near locations from which refugees come.
[….]
The nearly $126 billion estimated cost over 10 years, however, represents but a fraction of the total taxpayer investment. It does not include more than a dozen other programs, such as Social Security, various tax credits, education spending, and other welfare.
[Other welfare supplied by federal and state taxpayers would include food stamps, and other costs include federally required interpreters for courts, medical care and schools, the criminal justice system and most often ignored—remittances—money the refugees send home and out of our economy.—-ed]
[….]
Don Barnett, a fellow at the Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), told LifeZette that it makes sense to take a comprehensive approach to assessing refugee costs that go beyond just the relocation expenses.
Unlike other immigrants, who must wait five years before they are eligible for government-assistance programs, refugees and individuals granted asylum immediately can receive welfare.
“The costs are staggering. The costs are truly staggering,” said Barnett.
[….]
The Libertarian CATO Institute has been talking about reform that would include private citizens sponsoring refugees. It does have its appeal. But, he knows that not enough sponsors would be found especially if they were on the hook for all of the care of a refugee or refugee family, so CATO is not proposing abolishing the present contractor system of resettlement. CATO wants both systems at the same time—the same as Canada!
The government report estimates that in a typical year, major HHS programs cost about $3,300 per refugee.
A 2015 study by CIS, which favors lower levels of immigration, attempted to account for a broader range of costs imposed by refugees. The study found that the five-year cost of relocating refugees from the Middle East came to $64,370 per person and $257,481 per household.
[….]
Alex Nowrasteh, an immigration policy analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute, did not dispute the government’s cost estimates.
[….]
A better approach than a bureaucratic, taxpayer-funded refugee system, Nowrasteh said, is to allow private citizens and organizations to sponsor refugees and take financial responsibility for them. He said Canada has such a system and that the United States has had similar policies in the past.
What is Monday? It is the beginning of the federal fiscal year. It is the first day of FY19. It is the day when the writing will be on the wall for many refugee resettlement offices around the country.
Dumb way to run an organization! Did no one in the refugee industry ever question a business model where some non-profits are 97% and up federally funded?
Why? Because in 1980 Jimmy Carter signed the Refugee Act of 1980 in to law and set up a house of cards that needs to fall now. Originally (supposedly!) designed as a public-private partnership, the federal government and ‘humanitarian’ non-profit groups were to share equally in the costs of admitting tens of thousands of refugees to the US each year.
But, over the years, because Congress has been so remiss in overseeing the program (the Rs want cheap labor!), those non-profit groups (aka federal contractors) have gotten fat and confident (like Aesop’s grasshopper) on ever larger amounts of federal funding and too lazy to raise sufficient amounts of private money to see them through if for any reason the number of paying clients/refugees declined.
(An aside: The inability to raise enough private money is also indicative of the fact that there isn’t enough interest by average Americans in financially supporting the program in the first place.)
So here we are with one story after another about what Monday will bring to dozens of resettlement contractors around the country.
From Austin, Texas we learn that a Catholic contractor—Caritas—is closing its refugee program.
EXCLUSIVE: As refugees dwindle, Caritas will end resettlement program
Since 1974, the organization has helped thousands of people fleeing war or persecution find a new life in Austin. But after 44 years, Caritas is ending its refugee resettlement program and as of Monday, it will no longer serve new refugees.
“It’s really a tragedy that this program has to go away,” said Jo Kathryn Quinn, executive director for Caritas.
[….]
For the past two years, Caritas has seen a sharp decline in the number of refugees arriving in Austin, and the development has made the program “financially unsustainable,” Quinn said. Between 2010 and 2016, Caritas resettled an average of 576 refugees each year. Since last October, Caritas has resettled 151 refugees, but the nonprofit has not received any new refugees since April.
“Having zero refugees arrive in two months was unheard of for us,” Quinn said. “It was the final alarm bell that told us that we couldn’t continue this way.”
[….]
In June, Caritas’ board of directors voted to close the program at the end of the fiscal year at the recommendation of the nonprofit’s executive leadership.
When fewer refugees arrive, less federal money comes in to support them as well. Refugees receive a one-time amount of $1,125 from federal funds for resettlement needs, including housing and food, said Adelita Winchester, Caritas’ director of integrated services. Caritas would supplement federal funds with about $1 million annually in philanthropic donations,Winchester said. [The reporter has missed an important piece of information. The refugee gets $1,125 and Caritas gets another $1,125 for themselves per refugee.—ed]
“We didn’t have any excess philanthropic dollars to shift to aid this program,” Quinn said.
Budget Cuts, Layoffs And Closures Hit Refugee-Serving Organizations
Donna Duvin is executive director at the San Diego office of the national nonprofit International Rescue Committee, or IRC, one of nine federally funded resettlement agencies in the U.S. Duvin said the local office’s VESL funding dropped by 34 percent this year forcing the agency to replace some paid instructors with volunteers and interns.
Red meat for readers! I love running this photo of the IRC’s David Miliband outside their Manhattan office. He is the Brit who is compensated at nearly $700,000 annually as he calls the shots about who will be placed in your towns.
“As the numbers began to fall, the support that we had from the county that passed through dollars from the federal government, those declined as well,” Duvin said.
Duvin said in past years more than three-fourths of the agency’s budget relied on government dollars, causing a loss of millions as the office’s arrivals dipped by 85.5 percent since 2016. She said the budget changes during that time forced the agency to eliminate 15 positions.
Apparently the IRC is trying to raise private money to keep some functions going. LOL! Maybe CEO David Miliband could give up some of his nearly $700,000 in annual salary to keep some low-level staffers in a job!
The IRC is not alone.
A representative for the national resettlement agency Church World Service estimated it lost possibly hundreds of staffers when it closed 10 offices after it was forced to merge operations with other organizations in some U.S. cities. And a spokesman for World Relief said it laid off 140 employees after shutting down five offices across the U.S.
If you are looking for something to do, go to this list from last year of the resettlement agencies working in your towns and cities and call them. See if they are still in operation, or plan to close soon.
Reminder!
The 1980 structure of the US Refugee Admissions Program is still in place and the Trump Administration must push now for a complete reform of the program or in 2021 or 2025, it will be full steam ahead for these contractors. They will quickly staff-up and a new President could say—We must make up for the lost Trump years and quadruple the numbers of refugees coming in.
For years we have been flying Africans to America and placing them in hundreds of US towns and cities, and President Trump’s State Department will continue that trend as its number one refugee admissions priority!
The UN asked the US to take in 50,000 Congolese over 5 years and we are doing just that!
Frankly, as I said just yesterday if Africa doesn’t soon slow its population growth and get the Islamic extremists under control, Africa is going to sink first Europe, and then us under the weight of millions of needy (mostly unskilled) people in the not too distant future.
Based on current trends, Africa as a whole is projected to double in [population] size by 2050. Between 2050 and 2100, according to the United Nations, it could almost double again.
(from 1 about 1.3 billion in 2018 to over 4 billion in 2100!)
Yikes! See the Africa ticking (time bomb) population clock, here.
Trump to prioritize Africa…..
Although the US State Department has announced a greatly lowered refugee cap (30,000)for the coming fiscal year which begins this coming Monday! the administration will place a priority on Africans according to the just released ‘Report to Congress’ that explains why the President is setting the level where he is.
This year it is a slimmed-down version of a report I have handy for FY16 (Obama’s last full year) which is 71 pages. The Trump report, at a mere 39 pages, does not go in to the great detail that Obama’s did.
I encourage serious students of the US Refugee Admissions Program to read it (LOL! I haven’t read it all yet, but I will!) because it is a very useful educational tool even if it is discouraging.
Here (below) is a screenshot of the Trump priorities. At least we can cheer about the dramatic slowdown in the Near East and Asia (where most of the Muslim countries, besides Africa, are found).
And it is an improvement on Obama’s last full year when he set the ceiling for Africa at 27,500 and came in at 31,624!
By contrast, from October 1, 2017 to September 1, 2018 (11 months of the fiscal year), Trump admitted 9,007 Africans.
But, what on earth makes anyone in the Western World think we can save Africa by serving as their population pressure valve.
There is no way, even if we wanted to, to take enough refugees to keep up with their exploding population growth.
Let’s look at the DR Congolese
Anne Richard and then UNHCR Antonio Guterres who is now Secretary General of the United Nations. By the way, Trump is still without an Asst. Secretary of the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration
I reported here in 2013 that then Asst. Secretary of State for Population, Refugees and Migration, Anne Richard, told the United Nations (told UNHCR Guterres) that we would ‘welcome’ to America 50,000 UN Camp-dwelling Congolese over 5 years.
I just checkedWrapsnetand although we were bringing these people prior to FY14, since Richard’s announcement we have admitted 45,667 from that fiscal year up until today.
(In fact, from FY08 to the present day, we have admitted 56,106 from the DR Congo.)
And, by the way, I checked numbers for this month and in a little over 3 weeks we admitted 684 DR Congolese refugees, followed by Burma (290) in second place. In case you are wondering, most Congolese are not Muslims but there are a few in the flow to your towns and cities.
So by my calculation we have 4,333 DR Congolese to go to fulfill a promise we never needed to make!
But, do not hold your breath that it will end at 50,000 because our track record is that we just keep taking them long after the supposed cut off number has been reached—see Burmese, Bhutanese and Somalis for starters!
Endnote: I did a quick check and am not seeing anything about prioritizing persecuted white South Africans. Let me know if you see any mention.
Rep. Keith Ellison is among 50 or so Congressional members of the House Progressive Caucuswho have submitted a Resolution in the House pushing for Trump to return to Obama’s proposed 110,000 ceiling for refugees to be admitted to the US in the coming fiscal year.
Keith Ellison Wants to Flood Minnesota and the U.S. with 110,000 Refugees in 2019
Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) is leading an effort to try to force President Trump to boost the number of refugees permanently resettled in the United States over the next fiscal year by more than 300 percent.
Ellison is the Democrat nominee for the statewide office of attorney general in Minnesota. He holds a slight lead in the most recent polls over his Republican opponent, Doug Wardlow, and is currently entangled in allegations of sexual abuse by two women.
Taxpayer dollars at work? In February 2017, Ellison headlined an anti-Trump rally in New York organized by the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society a federally-funded refugee resettlement ‘non-profit’ group. Since 2008, HIAS has received $186 million from the US Treasury. https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2017/02/14/breitbart-federally-funded-refugee-resettlement-contractor-hias-organized-ny-rally-against-trump/
The Minnesota Sun continues….
The issue of refugee resettlement has become a hot topic in the state’s gubernatorial race between GOP nominee Jeff Johnson and Democrat nominee Rep. Tim Walz (D-MN).
House Resolution 1073was submitted by Ellison and more than 50 other Democrat members of Congress to the House Judiciary Committee, where it could receive a hearing or be ignored.
Minnesota and Ohio have ranked among the top five states for receiving refugees over the last 10 years, with the vast majority coming from Somalia. And both states have had problems with Somali violence, including knife attacks at two difference malls in Minnesota and a car-ramming and knife attack at Ohio State University, among the most bloody examples.
The list of signatories on the resolution reads like a who’s who of the leadership of the House Progressive Caucus, which is considered the most far left of the Democrat Party. Ellison is vice chair of the caucus.
[….]
As Barack Obama once said, “elections have consequences,” and one of Trump’s campaign promises was to admit fewer refugees and other low-skill immigrants.
That infuriates, almost more than anything else Trump has done, the far left of the Democrat Party.
Hence, you have the resolution drawn up and submitted this week by Ellison, who is one of two Muslim members of Congress along with Rep. Andre Carson, (D-IN). Carson has also signed the resolution.
The House resolution claims to be “Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that the Presidential Determination of the annual refugee admissions limit in fiscal year 2019 shall be no less than 110,000 and that President Trump and his administration must operate the United States Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) in good faith.”
As faithful readers know, Secretary of State Pompeo announced a week ago that the administration is looking at a ceiling/cap of 30,000, see here.
