Category: Where to find information

Emerging Infectious Diseases: a useful site at the CDC

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The Centers for Disease Control has an interesting section entitled ‘Emerging Infectious Diseases’ that you might find a useful resource.    I came across it just now and note this recent article and study about the health of Burmese refugees arriving in Australia.

As we consider the cost of health care in America, the health of refugees should be considered.

We have a category here at RRW called ‘where to find information’ and I’ll post this link there for your future reference.  I found that one need only use the sites search function for “refugees”  (presumably the search could be narrowed to specific refugee groups) to find all sorts of interesting studies on refugee health issues.

US Conference of Catholic Bishops cozy with Islamist group

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Reader Robert alerts us to a meeting coming up this week in Milwaukee, WI between the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA).  If you are in the Milwaukee area you might want to drop in.

The Midwest Dialogue of Catholics and Muslims will present the lecture “Faithful Citizenship: Catholic & Muslim Engagement in Civic Life” at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 25 at the Islamic Society School, 815 W. Layton Ave.

The presentation features Marquette University Theology Professor Irfan Omar, who specializes in Islamic thought, and Michael Hovey, assistant adviser for ecumenical and interfaith affairs for the Archdiocese of Detroit.

The Midwest Dialogue is a program of the Islamic Society of North America and the United Sates Conference of Catholic Bishops. To register, call (414) 769-3452.

This is an on-going series of meetings.  Here is some information from an earlier meeting in 2007.

Regular readers of RRW know that the USCCB is one of the top ten federal government contractors resettling refugees and the group also was entangled with ACORN for years.

For more on ISNA, a sister group to CAIR, visit Discover the Networks, here.  We most recently mentioned ISNA when they announced their intentions of not cooperating with the FBI, here.   Here is a post from Jihad Watch about ISNA’s most recent convention.

The Immigration Managers series, excellent source of information on legal immigration programs

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

David North, an associate at the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) has been blogging on “Immigration Managers.”   For those of us confused by the myriad federal programs involved in immigration, it is a handy resource.    Here is the one on the US State Department and the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration.

Readers are encouraged to go to Mr. North’s blog, here, and see the other posts in the Immigration Managers series.  Also, see his “who’s who” series on the Washington insiders making immigration policy.

Just a reminder, we have a category entitled ‘where to find information’ in which we have posted links to all sorts of documented information on refugees and immigration in general, here.

US takes lion’s share of world’s refugees, costs US taxpayers over a $billion a year

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Your tax dollars:

As I said yesterday when I told you about the President’s report to Congress on the refugee program for FY2010, there would be lots more interesting information included in the report.

Note that on page 59, the US takes 75% of the world’s UNHCR-referred refugees!  The number doesn’t include others we have picked up through other means and does not include asylees.  After the US at 75% comes Canada (8%), Australia (7.8%), Sweden (2%), and New Zealand (1%).

Now check out the cost of the program on page 58.   The figure reported here, $891,800,000, does not include the taxpayer funding of programs relating to healthcare, subsidized housing, education, food stamps and so forth from local and state governments.

It looks to me that at minimum, it costs way over $10,000 a year per refugee.  And, now that the International Rescue Committee is reporting to us that only about 20% of refugees are finding work, the cost to care for more refugees will only go up.

See my post last month on refugee horrors in Houston:

For years, agencies across the country have used private funds, unpaid overtime and volunteers to patch together a system that before the recession was typically able to find jobs for more than 80 percent of refugees after six months. Those numbers are plummeting — to as low as 20 percent at one national agency, the  International Rescue Committee, which Bob Carey, its vice president of resettlement and migration policy, expects is more or less the situation at most. In some states, refugees are becoming homeless.

Flooding the welfare system?

State Department: Lousy economy, who cares, bring in more refugees

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Wishful thinking, I guess, but I thought there was some possibility that the Obama Administration would take into account the rotten economy and high unemployment figures and slow the flow of refugees into the US (and on to our welfare rolls) this coming fiscal year.   Fat chance in light of recent revelations about the Democratic strategy of flooding the welfare system and changing the demographics of the US.

According to a report from President Obama to Congress as the new fiscal year begins tomorrow, we will keep record high numbers of refugees coming to America. Nevermind that in some areas of the country only 20% of refugees find work and fear eviction from their apartments after only a few months in their new homes.

I haven’t yet read the full report, “Proposed Refugee Admissions for FY2010, Report to Congress from the President,” but the chart on page 5 tells us all we need to know.   Incidentally in fiscal year 2009, a deep recession year which ends today, we resettled more refugees than any year since 9/11.  The ceiling* for 2009 was 80,000 and at the time of this report the projected actual resettlement number is 75,000 (in a few days we should know the actual number).

For Fiscal year 2010, the State Department and the Office of the President set the ceiling for admissions at 80,000 again.  That figure includes a substantial increase in the number of Africans proposed for resettlement while East Asia and the Near East/South Asia will have less slots for resettlement.  Which, of course, suggests that Iraq numbers may not be increasing (again I haven’t read the whole report, to see exactly what they say about the controversial Iraqi refugees).

I did note that. according to the report, there have been meetings of insiders in the refugee industry on reforming some aspects of the program, but surely they didn’t include any outside criticism from the likes of us or our readers.

Interesting stats from FY2008

The report also gives us some interesting information and statistics from 2008.  We learn that the twelve top states for refugee resettlement are (in decreasing order by number of refugees resettled):  CA, TX, FL, NY, MI, AZ, IL, GA, NC, WA, PA, IN.   Among the lowest receiving states are Arkansas (9), West Virginia(5), and Delaware (1).  And, of course, Wyoming doesn’t participate in the program and so has zero.

I have said this on many previous occasions, but I find it fascinating that Delaware takes virtually no refugees.  One might argue that it’s such a small state, but so is Rhode Island and it took 134 in 2008 to Delaware’s 1.  Why is that interesting, because former Senator, now VP, Joe Biden is one of the original sponsors of the Refugee Act of 1980 and I think somehow he (an elitist like Ted Kennedy, the chief sponsor) likes the idea of refugees, just not too close to home.   I even called Delaware officials once and got some gobbledegook answer about why that state took so few.

I’m sure we will have more on this report as we find time to digest it all!

 *”Ceiling” is an important word. It is not a goal per se, although the resettlement industry advocates are making it one.  Its original meaning was that we were not to go over that number, not necessarily shoot for it.