Category: Where to find information

Handy little report from Homeland Security on Refugee and Asylees admitted to the US in 2008

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Here are the opening paragraphs of the report, dated June 2009:

The United States provides refuge to persons who have been persecuted or have a well-founded fear of persecution through two programs: one for refugees (persons outside the U.S.) and one for asylees (persons in the U.S.). This Office of Immigration Statistics Annual Flow Report provides information on the number of persons admitted to the United States as refugees or granted asylum in the United States in 2008.

A total of 60,108 persons were admitted to the United States as refugees during 2008 (see Figure 1). The lead ing countries of nationality for refugees were Burma, Iraq, and Bhutan. During 2008, 22,930 individuals were granted asylum, including 12,187 who were granted asylum affirmatively by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and 10,743 who were granted asylum defensively by an immigration judge during removal proceedings. The leading countries of nationality for persons granted asylum were China, Colombia, and Haiti.

Read the report (it is only 6 pages) and see who was admitted to America last year.

A reminder to new readers: we have a category entitled ‘where to find information’ that you might find useful.

Who do we complain to about a refugee issue?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

That is a question we have been getting with more frequency.    So, here is the answer!

Eric P. Schwartz, the new, just sworn in, Assistant Secretary for Population, Refugees and Migration in the US State Department.   I first told you about his nomination here, and just this past week he was sworn in at the State Department, here.

If you want to tell him what you think about the program for any reason— refugees not being cared for by their federal contractor, too many refugees in your city/state, any criminal elements, news clips about unhappy refugees from your local papers, incompatible religious/cultural practices you see going on, health issues and so on and so forth—write to him.  You can be angry, but be polite!

Eric P. Schwartz

Assistant Secretary of State, Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration

US Dept. of State

2201 C St. NW

Washington, DC 20520

AND DON’T FORGET!  Any letter you send to him should be copied to your Senators and Representative in Congress, with a question.  That is, you need to ask your elected officials to do something, answer a question for you, not just copy the letter otherwise they will ignore it.   Well, they might ignore it anyway, but you have a better shot at getting some action if you ask them to take action!

Cultural Orientation abroad: what does it entail?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Nothing earth-shattering to report.  I just wanted to add to our ‘where to find information’ category something we know little about—what sort of cultural orientation do refugees receive before getting on the plane for the US.  I know to some of you—-dealing especially with Somalis—-you are wondering if they had any instruction on how Americans live.

Readers can go to this website, Cultural Orientation Resource Center, and order a “Guide for Refugees.”

This resettlement guide, revised in 2004, was funded by the Department of State, Bureau for Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM). It resulted from numerous meetings and the work of a special Cultural Orientation Task Force convened by the State Department/PRM. The Task Force, comprised of PRM staff, staff of national and local refugee resettlement agencies, state refugee coordinators, overseas orientation implementors, former refugees, and the Center for Applied Linguistics was formed to undertake a review of overseas pre-departure orientation/briefings to make sure the orientation refugees were receiving was relevant to their needs as identifed by resettlement agencies and by refugees already in the U.S.—and to ensure that each U.S.-bound refugee receive consistent information about resettlement.

I hope to have time to look into this further and research this website because I continue to be puzzled by reports that Somalis are trying to set wood fires on top of  kitchen stoves, or that Iraqis are somehow getting such erroneous information about what to expect with American life.  They uniformly say they hadn’t been told about lousy jobs and slum apartments.  Who is doing the teaching?

No surprise, welfare use is up

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The Wall Street Journal reported this not surprising story  yesterday.  I’m linking it here because it includes a good summary of many of the welfare programs refugees are eligible for, and I wanted to have it handy if I needed it.   I see our home state of Maryland is a hot state for welfare usage.

The Cloward-Piven strategy and why we need the poor and angry immigrants.

Cloward would be so proud if he were alive and surely Piven is proud to see their theory so close to fruition.  They esposed overloading the welfare system with the poor as a means of tearing down our government.   Robert Chandler writing in the Washington Times last fall.

Developed in the mid-1960s by two Columbia University sociologists, Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, much of their strategy was drawn from Saul Alinsky, Chicago’s notorious revolutionary Marxist community organizer. The   Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN)* succeeded the National Welfare Rights Organization in the execution of the Cloward-Piven grand tactics of using the poor as cannon fodder to tear down the capitalist system. It was low-income, mostly black and Hispanic people, who were used by ACORN guerrillas to take subprime toxic mortgages.

* Of course we have just learned that ACORN has changed its name, here.

This post is filed in our Where to find information category but also appropriately in Community destabilization and Obama.   If you are a new reader and want to get an understanding of Obama/Saul Alinsky and Community organizing, I recommend you begin reading our community destabilization posts.    Makes me wonder if all those angry Iraqi refugees we have been writing about are filling a critical role for the advocates of “change.”

Welfare usage by refugees increases in most categories

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Your tax dollars:

Each year the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) in the Dept. of Health and Human Services reports to Congress on the status of refugees in the US.  It is really a valuable resource for anyone wanting to understand more fully how this complex program which was a ‘brainchild’ of Senator Ted Kennedy, Joe Biden and President Jimmy Carter works.

The most recent ORR Report to Congress is for FY 2006.  You can find it here.  I’ve told you about it before, but it bears repeating as our economy continues to go south.

Before I get to welfare usage by refugees,  a couple of things interested me right off the bat.   In 2006, BEFORE THE ECONOMIC CRISIS,  the US unemployment rate was 4.6% while refugee unemployment was 8.7 %.  Imagine what those numbers must be now if  US unemployment is approaching double-digits.

I also noticed that each of the Top Ten (volag) government contractors was given a rating called the ‘180th day self-sufficiency outcome’ which suggests to me that despite what our commenter, George Benedict, said yesterday, here, that there is some evaluation or comparison going on of the contractors and how successful they are in finding jobs for their “clients.”    Otherwise, why even have a ‘self-sufficiency outcome’ rating.  I’ve asked Mr. Benedict to write a guest post to explain his claim that the volags have no legal requirement or  financial or ratings incentive to get refugees employed quickly.   I’ll post it as soon as he sends it.

Welfare usage (from page 75) is up in all categories except one from 2001 until 2006.  Again in 2006 our economy was still humming.  Imagine what these numbers will look like for 2009.  Unfortunately we won’t see them published for several years!

Here are the categories:

Any type of Cash Assistance (this is the category that went down)

2001:  35.9%  (of refugees on cash assistance)

2006:   33.7%

Medicaid or RMA:

2001:  33%

2006:  44%

Food Stamps:

2001:  33.8%

2006:  54.9%

Public Housing:

2001:  10.2%

2006:  20.5%

Whew!  Look especially at Food Stamp usage, at that rate probably 3/4ths of all refugees entering the country are on food stamps now.  And, by the way, we are on track to admit 80,000 new refugees this year.   Importing all this poverty must make Cloward and Piven so proud (if they are still alive!), here and here.