In mid March we reported that the UN’s International Organization for Migration had halted refugee travel due to the virus crisis, so imagine my surprise this morning when I checked the data for the last two weeks of March and learned we admitted 221 regular refugees and 373 Special Immigrant Visas from Afghanistan in those two weeks.
For the entire month of March we admitted 1,110 regular refugees and 844 SIVs mostly from Afghanistan that are treated just like refugees except some can choose where they want to live in the US.
So we can’t safely fly, but nearly 2,000 ‘refugees’ were being flown into the US during March.
The refugee admissions program is scheduled (so far) to resume this week after April 7th, but it never really stopped!
Here is where the 1,110 were placed in March:
Top ten ‘welcoming’ states are: TX, OH, NY, IL, WA, KY, MA, CA, MO, and TN.
Now see this map (below) for where the 221 regular refugees were placed since the supposed suspension of travel. They must have been transported across America on near empty flights.
The vast majority of the arrivals in the last two weeks are from the DR Congo (161). See my post about how many we have now taken since Obama agreed to take tens of thousands of Congolese. We are way past 50,000 but they are still coming!
More unemployed and more hungry mouths to feed as America suffers…..
This story is no surprise and I expect there will be many more like it in the coming days and weeks.
Refugees work at menial labor—cleaning hotel and dorm rooms, working in restaurant kitchens, etc. all no longer essential services—and they are increasingly unemployed (however $$$ is on the way from the feds).
I guess we can say it sure is a good thing that the Trump administration cut the flow of refugees to America starting last October or we would have even more unhappy, struggling people as those described here.
Refugees in Orange County struggle to make ends meet amid COVID-19 economic hardships
All those North Carolinians who have been ‘welcoming’ refugees to the state for the last decade need to get out there now and pay the rent, tutor the kids and feed/clothe the impoverished people they invited to their towns and cities.
Coronavirus has forced many families to alter their ways of life. Although COVID-19 has impacted almost every Orange County resident, a group that has been especially devastated is the local refugee community.
Refugees can already be a vulnerable population without something like the coronavirus, said Flicka Bateman, director of the Refugee Support Center, a volunteer-based organization that helps transition refugees in Orange County to their new lives.
“I know people who’ve been here less than three weeks, I can’t imagine what in the world for them it must be like,” she said. “They’re totally uprooted, they’ve left situations that were full of violence and uncertainty, and then they come here and instead of being able to learn English and get all these services, suddenly they’re told to stay where they are and people will do the best they can remotely. It’s just very tough.”
Orange County has about 1,200 refugees, primarily from Burma, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Syria. [It would be many more if Trump had not cut the flow this year—ed]. Bateman said a lot of refugees in the area have lost their jobs or seen reduced hours, especially those who work in restaurants or hotels, or in food service and housekeeping at UNC, where dorms have been closed and dining services have been severely reduced.
Adam Clark, office director of World Relief Durham, a refugee resettlement agency based in Durham that serves refugees across the Triangle area, said programs that help refugees with employment have seen a spike in applications due to a greater amount of people needing sudden job assistance.
He said they’ve seen about 20-30 unemployment applications among refugees just in the last week, and a long list of people are already waiting.
“There are a lot of refugees worried about their rent, obviously the same things that are affecting everyone,” he said. “But I think it just affects them even more because of the sectors they work in.”
Hannah Olmstead, a junior at UNC who is a part-time caseworker at World Relief Durham, said as local school districts transition to online instruction, many refugee parents don’t have the English ability or understanding of American education to homeschool their children.
Although as you know by now the arrival of refugees has all but stopped due to travel restrictions put in place worldwide.
The UN halted refugee travel a few days ago and the US State Department has reported that no new refugees will arrive now before April 6th.
However, I have been on the hunt to find out if Special Immigrant Visas are still coming in and sure enough they are.
Thanks to a reader for spotting this e-mail from Lutheran Social Services National Capital Area:
Now check this out! They want a piece of a House goody bag! You’ve been reading that Nancy and her Democrat pals are working on a massive giveaway that apparently the refugee contractors expect to benefit from!
I have been checking the data at Wrapsnet (Refugee Processing Center) and sure enough 211 Afghans (who receive all the benefits regular refugees are entitled to) arrived this week bringing the total for the month of March (3 weeks) to 660 from Afghanistan.
That brings the overall total to over 66,000 since FY2008 when this effort to bring Afghan ‘interpreters’ to American towns began.
Although there is no data readily available on where the 211 were placed in the last week, one might expect they were placed in the usual top sites—obviously in Virginia and Maryland as LSS reported in its e-mail.
In this fiscal year (FY2020) that began on October 1, 2019 these are the top five states that ‘welcomed’ Afghan interpreters and their relatives.
California (2,697)
Texas (1,280)
Virginia (730)
Maryland (510)
Washington (489)
So, as your travel is being restricted, planes are still in the air bringing Afghans here for American taxpayers to support!
And, btw, Afghanistan has COVID-19. Are the arriving special refugees being tested?
Just a little over three years ago, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau issued a now infamous in-your-face tweet to challenge the newly sworn-in President of the United States.
Now here comes the news about the border closures that all sensible countries are putting in place in an effort to slow the momentum of the virus crisis.
It is a long story, probably not worth reading, by a Canadian professor clearly unhappy with the turn of events. The Open Borders Lefties are generally treading lightly because citizens are in no mood to have their liberties restricted (and health threatened) while migrants have free movement around the world.
Coronavirus: Racism and the long-term impacts of emergency measures in Canada
The dangers to public health during the COVID-19 pandemic are terrifying, so it’s not surprising governments around the world are taking extraordinary measures to curb its spread, including closing borders to non-nationals.
Canada has become one of many countries to either partially or completely close their borders and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has also announced that Canada will no longer consider asylum claims.
[….]
One of many PR events when Trudeau welcomed Syrians to Canada by the thousands.
Canada has won international praise over the last few years for its commitment to refugee resettlement in particular, as evidenced by the arrival of 25,000 Syrian refugees in a few short months.
But Trudeau has announced that due to these “exceptional times,” a new agreement has been signed with the United States that would see asylum-seekers crossing the border on foot returned to the U.S.
This exceptional reaction goes against Canada’s commitments under the 1951 United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and a 1985 Supreme Court ruling that says refugee claimants have a right to a fair hearing (the Singh decision).
What the heck! We have been admitting 400-500 a week recently and so it seems we are right on schedule if 182 arrived in the last three days.
***Update March 20***Total since Monday is now 214, presume that is it until April 6th when they expect to resume the movement of third worlders to America. We will keep an eye on it!
When I checked the Refugee Processing Centerthis morning I expected to see the number of new refugee arrivals stalled at 69, not more than doubled!
Of the 182 ‘new Americans’ arriving just this week, 124 are from the DR Congo.
Top ‘welcoming’ states are Texas, Massachusetts, Idaho, Tennessee and Georgia.
According to contractual arrangements with the State Department, workers and volunteers for resettlement ‘charities’ must meet the new arrivals at airports and get them settled in their new apartments and sign them up for myriad welfare and healthcare programs available to them.
Guess those do-gooders will be out and about while the rest of us are told to stay home!
