Category: Where to find information

Who are the 525 Syrian refugees admitted to the US in recent years; where have they been resettled?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Everybody is talking about the Syrian refugees admitted to the US, including the British press, here at the Daily Mail.  But, let me be clear, most news outlets are reporting that we are going to quadruple the number already here from recent Syrian crisis to around 2,000 in the coming year.

Please remember that the US State Department has 9,000-10,000 in the pipeline created by the UNHCR and in fact until the recent revelation by the FBI, they had every intention of getting the flow up to that level this fiscal year!

The resettlement contractors have been agitating for 15,000 a year!

First Syrian refugee family arriving in Louisville, KY being helped with a grant from an Islamic charity. Hey! Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul—are you paying attention! https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2015/02/15/first-syrian-refugees-arriving-in-louisville-ky-helped-with-grant-from-islamic-charity/ Photo: http://www.wave3.com/story/28105459/first-refugee-family-from-syrian-civil-war-arrives-in-louisville

From the Daily Mail:

More than 500 refugees from Syria’s bloody civil war have already been resettled in the United States, and U.S. officials and members of Congress are becoming increasingly worried that jihadis linked to the ISIS terror army could slip into the country along with them.

Since war broke out in Syria nearly four years ago, America has welcomed 524 people from the rapidly disintegrating country with open arms. U.S. intelligence agencies lack the resources to vet them properly, but the Obama administration plans to admit a few thousand more this year.  [My stats beginning January 1, 2012 indicate 525 Syrians have been admitted—ed]

‘The United States has admitted 524 Syrians since 2011,’ State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters on Feb. 13.

‘We’re likely to admit 1,000 to 2,000 Syrian refugees for permanent resettlement in Fiscal Year 2015 and a somewhat higher number, though still in the low thousands, in Fiscal Year 2016.’

You can read the rest of the Daily Mail article.

As I said yesterday when I told you where Somalis have been resettled in the US in recent years, I’m doing a series of posts on facts the media (and you!) need to know.

The vast majority of Syrian refugees entering the US right now are Muslims (89%)

Here is how the religions of our newest Syrians break down (from Refugee Processing Center data).  Arrival dates between 1/1/12 and 2/23/15.   These are the exact category names used by the State Department:

Atheist (1)

Bahai (2)

Catholic (1)

Christian (36)

Jehovah Witness (8)

Moslem (20)

Moslem Shiite (8)

Moslem Sunni (437)

No Religion (2)

Orthodox (3)

Other Religion (6)

Yazidi (1)

So where did the US State Department resettlement contractors*** send them?

Arizona (19)

Arkansas (1)

California (72)

Colorado (8)

Connecticut (3)

Florida (21)

Georgia (15)

Idaho (9)

Illinois (50)

Indiana (25)

Kansas (5)

Kentucky (5)

Maine (1)

Maryland (19)

Massachusetts (21)

Michigan (20)

Missouri (1)

New Hampshire (3)

New Jersey (17)

New Mexico (6)

New York (8)

North Carolina (33)

Ohio (6)

Oregon (1)

Pennsylvania (30)

Tennessee (8)

Texas (79)

Utah (5)

Virginia (16)

Washington (16)

West Virginia (1)

Wisconsin (1)

*** For reporters and other interested media, here is a list of the federal contractors and the percentage of tax dollars they use to do their work of distributing refugees around the country via their approximately 350 subcontractors.

Where have all the Somalis been resettled in the US? Minnesota takes the prize!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

My plan (ha! ha! if I don’t get distracted!) is to try to do a series of posts to answer the many questions I’m getting from the media in recent days.  The US State Department has an extensive data base called the Refugee Processing Center.  Sometimes you can access the data and sometimes you can’t!

First a few basic points:  The UN High Commissioner for Refugees chooses most of our refugees.  The Department of Homeland Security is responsible for screening them.  The US State Department sends them out via contractors they euphemistically call Voluntary Agencies (VOLAGs).  They are not voluntary—you pay them through your tax dollars to place the refugees through their offices in 180 cities across America.  The nine major VOLAGs have 350 subcontractors to form an extensive network.   The contractors spread the refugees out to surrounding towns if the main resettlement city gets overloaded (especially if ‘pockets of resistance’ form).

Reporters!  Find the resettlement contractor contact information in your city by clicking here.

The Department of Health and Human Services (Office of Refugee Resettlement) makes sure the nine contractors are well paid for myriad activities.

Back to the data…

Minnesota ‘welcomed’ 17% of all Somalis resettled in the US since 2005. Three resettlement agencies were responsible: Catholic Charities, Lutheran Social Services of MN, and World Relief MN (aka Arrive Ministries).

I searched this morning for Somali refugees resettled to which states from February 1, 2005 to February 1, 2015 and here is what I learned:  The US State Department distributed Somalis to 45 states and the District of Columbia basically establishing “seed communities” or colonies.

Remember though that this is America and people can move without permission so some originally resettled in one place may have long-since moved.  The professionals in the refugee industry call those who move “secondary migrants.”   The state receiving the most secondary migrants is Minnesota-–why? because Somalis want to live with their kind of people.

Here is the link for the data base I used for the following information.  You will need to put your own search parameters in.

From February 1, 2005 to February 1, 2015 we brought a total of 64,332 Somalis to the US from all over the world!

By the way, our Somali refugees don’t come directly from Somalia, but we pick them up all over the world including from Kenya, South Africa, Malaysia, Malta and even it appears Saudi Arabia (more on that later).

The states not (yet!) getting Somali refugees resettled directly are:  Delaware (LOL! Joe Biden was one of the original sponsors of the Refugee Act of 1980), Arkansas, Montana, Wyoming, and West Virginia.  We know that ‘secondary migrant’ Somalis are going to Wyoming.

(Any state over 1,000 is in red)

Alabama:  207

Alaska:  224

Arizona: 3,727

California:  2,375

Colorado:  1,803

Connecticut:  696

District of Columbia:  1

Florida:  274

Georgia:  2,720

Idaho:  733

Illinois:  1,284

Indiana:  374

Iowa:  395

Kansas:  254

Kentucky: 1,631

Louisiana:  118

Maine:  1,181

Maryland:  371

Massachusetts:  1,936

Michigan:  1,316

Minnesota:  10,804

Mississippi:  3

Missouri:  2,132

Nebraska:   322

Nevada:  331

New Hampshire:  270

New Jersey:  41

New Mexico:  161

New York:  3,721

North Carolina:  1,212

North Dakota:  690

Ohio:  5,439

Oklahoma:  76

Oregon:  1,492

Pennsylvania:  1,053

Rhode Island:  136

South Carolina:  94

South Dakota:  635

Tennessee: 2,091

Texas:  4,716

Utah:  1,990

Vermont:  368

Virginia:  939

Washington:  3,182

Wisconsin:  813

That should total:  64,332

If you are visiting RRW for the first time, you might want to visit this 2008 post where we did an original accounting of the Somalis resettled in the US going back to the early 1990’s.

How many Muslims living in the US could justify “violence against civilians” in defense of Islam?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment
Once again Obama put down Europe this week—says Europe hasn’t warmly embraced its Muslims like we have!

This past week as the theme coming out of Washington was—hug a Muslim—there were many press accounts saying that the US was somehow different from Europe in that our Muslims are more “integrated” into society than those young violent ones in Europe.  Ours also have more stuff according to Obama.

In our view, the only difference is that in Europe there are more of them! 

When we have a higher percentage here in the US, the Muslim population will be emboldened and along with higher numbers will come more demands from the Muslim ‘community’ for America to accept precepts of shariah law.

The numbers!

One important statistic being misused by the mainstream media and highlighted in an article from the Associated Press by Josh Lederman is drawn from this 2011 Pew report.

First, before we get to the news, put these numbers in your head:  By 2011, Pew Research estimates that the US population of Muslims stands at 2.75 million.  Pew’s numbers are now nearly 4 years old so I believe the population is higher.  It must be! because Pew says 100,000 legal immigrant Muslims enter the US each year.

The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) puts the number at 6-7 million (also a few years old).

From the Associated Press at Eyewitness News 3:

Ample evidence suggests that Muslims in America do feel more integrated into society than those living in Europe. Often marginalized and relegated to poorer neighborhoods in European cities, many Muslim immigrants to the U.S. have flourished as doctors and scientists and in other white-collar professions. Middle-class, predominantly Muslim or Arab-American enclaves have cropped up in places such as Dearborn, Michigan, and Minneapolis, allowing immigrants to carve out their own stories.  [So sick of this story c***!—we have stories too!—ed]

“That’s the story extremists and terrorists don’t want the world to know: Muslims succeeding and thriving in America,” Obama said during separate remarks at the summit Wednesday.

Now this is how Obama and the media use numbers in deceptive ways. AP continues with its editorial piece disguised as news:

There’s also reason to believe that sense of successful assimilation has offered a degree of protection against the allure of extremism. In 2011, a Pew Research Center survey of American Muslims found that just 2 in 10 Muslims in the U.S. thought there was a great deal or a fair amount of support for extremism among Muslim Americans. Roughly 80 percent said suicide bombings and other violence against civilians was never justified to defend Islam from its enemies, compared to just 8 percent who said it was sometimes or often justified. [Doesn’t sound bad, right?—ed]

By the way there is another 5% who say “rarely” justified.  (See the full report, here)

O.K. now look at it this way!

If 8% of the US Muslim population believes that VIOLENCE AGAINST CIVILIANS IS JUSTIFIED (often or sometimes) TO DEFEND ISLAM, then:

Using a low of 2 million Muslims in America and a high of 7 million, that means that 160,000 Muslims in the US could justify violence against civilians to defend Islam at the low end, to 560,000 at the high end!

Sounds like a ticking time bomb to me!

 

Attitudes on Islam: The great awakening has begun says ‘Citizen Warrior’

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Please check out the summary of many polls taken in Western Countries about citizen’s negative views on Islam—here at Citizen Warrior and re-posted at The Counter Jihad Report earlier this week.  Hat tip:  Judy.

Be sure to open one for the USA, here, and note that Republicans are less “warm” about the Islamic faith than they are about any other religion, however, Democrats rated Mormons lowest on their ‘warmness’ scale. Figures!  (Know any Mormons killing and maiming in the name of their religion?)

Office of Refugee Resettlement planning ‘RefugeeCorps’ to employ refugees at contractor offices

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The new RefugeeCorps will be patterned after AmeriCorps and and in partnership with AmeriCorps’ parent government agency.

It makes me laugh, they are very clever—very good at working all the angles!

Eskinder Negash is the outgoing Director of ORR. I wonder if they have picked his replacement yet, does anyone know?

The former refugees will be working for the refugee agencies (the federal contractors!) that operate in 180 plus cities across America.  So, rather than the resettlement agencies using some of their government money to employ people they will be getting access to another pot of government money to hire refugees who can’t find work otherwise.

So tell me why we don’t just open federal refugee offices in those 180 cities and quit this charade where non-profits pretend to be non-governmental (charitable!) agencies.

They still spend our tax dollars, but as non-profits they are unaccountable to those of us paying their freight!

This is more news from the ORR outgoing Director Eskinder Negash’s annual review.  We posted previous information from that document—58,000 unaccompanied minors entered the US in 2014 and were distributed to 124 locations around the country.

Here is the information on the RefugeeCorps (emphasis is mine):

ORR is pleased to announce the establishment of a new partnership with the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS)—the agency that supports the AmeriCorps program, the RefugeeCorps. An entirely new initiative, this program places former refugees in positions at resettlement agencies to work directly with new arrivals. The goal is to improve the self-sufficiency and well-being of refugee populations and promote successful local integration.

Programs will focus on three key areas:

Economic Opportunity: improved economic well-being and security; improved access to financial literacy-focused services; safe, affordable housing; and, improved employability;

Education: improved educational outcomes for economically disadvantaged children; improved school readiness and educational outcomes for children; and, post-secondary education, and

Healthy Futures: improved access to primary and preventative health care; increased physical activity; and, improved nutrition in youth and reduction in childhood obesity.

This new RefugeeCorps will begin in late Summer/Fall 2015 with nine agencies, with a plan to expand the program to every refugee resettlement site in the U.S. over the next few years. Participating RefugeeCorps members receive the same benefits as a traditional AmeriCorps member, including a stipend, post-service educational benefit, health insurance and other benefits. ORR will provide the funding for this program to national voluntary agencies through the Preferred Communities grant.

Yippee! Money! Money! Money!