Five Months Into Fiscal Year, 6,273 Refugees Admitted; Big Story is Number of Afghans

03/03/2020 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ 5 Comments

As you all know by now the President submitted a refugee cap of 18,000 refugees to be admitted to the US between October 1, 2019 and September 30, 2020 (FY2020). Five months into the fiscal year, the number stands at just over 6,000 according to the Refugee Processing Center.

But, not counted in that number is a special category of nationals from Afghanistan and Iraq known as Special Immigrant Visa holders who supposedly worked with us during those two long wars. They are admitted with their families and are treated as refugees, but rarely mentioned.

(Don’t miss Daniel Greenfield’s piece on the “interpreter scam” where he did a deep dive into the numbers of Special Immigrant Visa holders, mostly Muslims, entering the US.)

Another 6,221 Afghans and 146 Iraqis were admitted (as SIVs) in this fiscal year (so far) bringing the total of those given all the benefits of refugee resettlement to 12,640 in the last five months.

I think we should get used to referring to the refugee numbers that way—adding together the regular refugees and the SIVs.

Here (below) is a map showing where the regular refugees were resettled.

The top ten ‘welcoming’ states are Washington, California, Texas, New York, Michigan, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Minnesota, and Ohio.

How many Muslims?

If you are wondering how many of the 6,273 regular refugees are Muslims, the number is 1,233. There is no Muslim ban!

Top Muslim sending countries so far this year:

Afghanistan: 514

Burma: 143

Iraq: 136

Syria: 115

Somalia: 80

Special Immigrant Visas…

So as I said above, so far this fiscal year we have admitted 6,221 Afghan SIVs.

In FY19 the number was 7,703, FY18 9,651 and in Trump’s first year FY17—a whopping 16,866!

There is no breakdown of religions for SIVs, but I suspect that virtually all of the Special Immigrant Visas are Muslims. If I am right and the vast majority are Muslims then 60% of the refugees/SIVs entering the US right now are Muslim.

There is also no map for SIVs, but there is a spreadsheet at the Refugee Processing Center.

See where most of the Afghan SIVs have been placed since FY07. Out of a total admissions number of 65,916. Five states have taken on most of the financial burden of these special ‘refugees.’

California: 24,307

Texas: 9,913

Virginia: 8,849

Washington: 3,806

Maryland: 3,506

Want to dig into these numbers yourself. See my post Knowledge is Power IV on how to use the Refugee Processing Center.

Note to PayPal donors! I want to thank all of you who send me donations for my work via PayPal. I very much appreciate your thoughtfulness. However, PayPal is making changes to their terms of service and I’ve decided to opt-out beginning on March 10, 2020.

Middle East Migration: Could it Hasten the Spread of Covid-19?

02/28/2020 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

According to a report at The New Humanitarian, moving populations of people in conflict zones and where governments are weak are particularly vulnerable to a critical health crisis like the coronavirus.

Pakistan has closed its border with Iran

Of course, The New Humanitarian is most concerned with the refugees themselves and less concerned with the citizens of the countries where the migrants may end up.

Countries that seal their borders may be able to ward off the worst of a potential crisis.

I just told you in my previous post this morning, that Turkey is opening borders to allow ‘refugees’ to move through to Europe.

I wonder, is the US screening refugees and asylum seekers especially those from hotspots like China and Iran?

From The New Humanitarian:

How the coronavirus outbreak could hit refugees and migrants

A surge in coronavirus cases outside China has raised concerns the outbreak could be particularly devastating for vulnerable refugee and migrant populations in countries hobbled by conflict.

Over the last week, cases of the illness known as Covid-19 have escalated dramatically in Iran, and new infections linked to the cluster have emerged in more than half a dozen other countries in the region including Iraq, Afghanistan, and Lebanon.

Very cool interactive map! Go here to see it: https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/national-international/map-watch-the-coronavirus-cases-spread-across-the-world/2303276/

At least 12 million refugees and internally displaced people (IDPs) live between Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Turkey – countries linked to Iran by either frequent travel, irregular migration routes, shared borders, or all three. Iran itself hosts nearly one million refugees, mostly from neighbouring Afghanistan, and an estimated 1.5 to two million undocumented people.

The effects of armed conflict “fragment the public health system and the infrastructure that enables governments to actively perform surveillance of diseases”, said Dr. Mohammed Jawad, a researcher at Imperial College London who studies the impact of conflict on public health.

Dr. Adam Coutts, a public health specialist at Cambridge University who focuses on the Middle East, said refugees are especially vulnerable to the coronavirus or other diseases, due to ”high geographical mobility, instability, living in overcrowded conditions, lack of sanitation and WASH (waters, sanitation and hygiene) facilities, and lack of access to decent healthcare or vaccination programmes in host communities”.

But refugee populations are often left out of disaster and epidemic preparedness planning at the best of times. And simply reaching marginalised refugees and migrants with information is also a challenge.

Politicians in Italy and Greece have already started using the spectre of asylum seekers and migrants carrying the virus across international borders to drum up support for hardline migration policies. But public health experts believe the real risk is to refugee and migrant communities themselves, who face instability, sporadic access to healthcare, and now the growing threat of stigmatisation.

Much more here.

This post is filed in my ‘health issues’ category along with 300 plus additional posts.

Bad News for Europe: Turkey Will No Longer Stop Migrants from Crossing into Greece

02/28/202002/28/2020 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Invasion of Europe news….

If Europe doesn’t have it bad enough already, it looks like a new wave of migrants from Syria is on the way to the west. And, they aren’t all Syrians!

In 2016 the Turkish government, in a deal with the EU, agreed to not permit border crossings into Europe, but it looks like that agreement is now out the window.

At a time when the whole world is focused on the movement of sick people, here is an example of how vulnerable every country that doesn’t seal its borders is to the transmission of deadly pathogens.

From Deutsche Welle:

Turkey will not stop refugees ‘who want to go to Europe’

No caption to indicate where or when the photo was taken but note the two on the left in face masks.

Hundreds of Europe-bound migrants have begun heading to northwest Turkey towards Bulgaria and Greece. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling party said the refugees began their journey after a Syrian attack in Idlib.

Turkey is “no longer able to hold refugees” following a Syrian attack that killed 33 troops in Idlib, Omer Celik, a spokesman for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling AKP party, said on Friday.

The announcement comes as some 300 migrants walk through northwest Turkey towards its borders with Greece and Bulgaria on Friday, according to DHA news agency.

“As a result of the attack, the (refugees) in Turkey are heading towards Europe, and those on Syrian territory are heading towards Turkey,” Celik told CNN Türk shortly after midnight Friday morning. “Our refugee policy is the same as before, but we are now in a situation where we can no longer hold them.”

Demiroren news agency said the group of migrants, including women and children, embarked on their journey from Turkey’s Edirne province toward borders with Bulgaria and Greece — two European Union nations — at around midnight. Syrians, Iranians, Iraqis, Pakistanis and Moroccans were among those in the group.

[….]

According to EU figures, Greece saw more than 60,000 asylum seekers arrive from Turkey on the shores of its Aegean islands in 2019, and it expects more than 100,000 more in 2020.

More here.

See my Invasion of Europe archive where I’ve been filing stories for a decade on the topic.

***Update***

Don’t miss my follow-up post this morning:

Middle East Migration: Could it Hasten the Spread of Covid-19?

Actor Ben Stiller Joins Chorus: NY Taxpayers Must Shell Out for Refugees

02/26/2020 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

My first thought when I saw this news was, everywhere we are told by the likes of Michael Bloomberg’s New American Economy that refugees are working and bringing economic boom times to dying cities, so why do they need more taxpayer dollars?

And, my second thought was, why can’t a bunch of entertainers like Stiller pool their excess cash and donate the $5 million. Why should the hardworking families of NY state, scrimping and saving for their kids’ college educations, have to pay anything for refugees?

Oh, but it isn’t really for the refugees, it is to keep the phony-baloney non-profit groups afloat.

From the NY Daily News:

Actor Ben Stiller joins advocates urging aid for New York refugees

ALBANY — Actor Ben Stiller’s latest role is no laughing matter.

The “Zoolander” star joined lawmakers and advocates Tuesday in the capital in calling for more money for a state-funded refugee program.

Stiller is an ambassador for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. How many refugees has he welcomed to his home?

“New York has a great history of doing this,” Stiller said. “These programs need to keep going. There’s institutional memory that needs to stay alive and as the refugee flow is lower right now at some point it’s going to come back up and these institutions need to be up and working when it happens.”

He means that they expect to oust Trump and then go back to full steam ahead with 100,000-200,000 annual refugee admissions (compared to Trump’s 18,000 this year).

And, as for this next bit, in my analysis of six of the nine major federal resettlement contractors, five are doing financially as well or better under Trump as they did under Obama.

Federal funding for refugee resettlement services has dropped significantly in recent years as Trump administration policies restricted the number of people being granted asylum or refugee status each year.

[….]

The New York State Enhanced Services to Refugees Program has received $2 million each year in the budget since it was formed in 2017 in response to the changes at the federal level.

But advocates say the state needs to step up and ensure funds are available to non-profits assisting the thousands of refugees already here.

[….]

The 14 resettlement agencies in the program, the Fiscal Policy Institute, and the New York Immigration Coalition joined Stiller, Ryan, and other lawmakers in calling for at least $5 million set aside for the program. [They have salaries to pay, after all!—ed]

Gov. Cuomo included no funds for the measure in his fiscal proposal earlier this year.

Cuomo trying to balance his budget to slow the bleed of taxpayers leaving the state?

But, heck, a state full of fully employed refugees and immigrants paying taxes should keep the state budget flush, right?

Australia Dumb Deal News: Over 600 of Australia’s Rejected Asylum Seekers are Now in the US

02/25/2020 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I haven’t seen much news lately about the “dumb deal” that Obama made to admit over a thousand asylum seekers that Australia had been holding for years in offshore detention camps, until this story from Saturday.

In 2017 news leaked about a phone call with Australian PM Malcolm Turnbull in which Trump called the refugee swap arrangement a “dumb deal.” Gee, don’t you wonder who leaked that call! **https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2017/02/02/australia-deal-not-a-sure-thing-after-word-that-trump-yelled-at-australian-prime-minister/**

Of course, even as President Trump described the deal as a “dumb” one, he went along with it supposedly with extreme vetting determining who we would admit and who we would reject.

This story from the Brisbane Times is mostly about how one Rohingya escaped the detention camp and ultimately made it to Canada where he was granted asylum.

There is a bit at the end updating readers on where the number being sent to your US towns and cities stands today.

‘Never heard of anything like this’: Advocates stunned by Manus escape

Toronto, Canada: Refugee advocates have described a Rohingya asylum seeker’s escape from Australia’s offshore processing centre on Manus Island, and successful resettlement in Canada, as unprecedented and extraordinary.

Jaivet Ealom, 27, has spoken publicly for the first time about his high-risk and secretive journey to freedom in a series of interviews with The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age in Canada.

[….]

Political activist who used social media to pressure the Australian government, Iranian Behrouz Boochani, has permission to come to America as a refugee.

The department said 699 refugees have been resettled in America under the deal with the US government while another 26 have been resettled in other countries.

In November, Iranian asylum seeker Behrouz Boochani, author of the award-winning No Friend But the Mountains, travelled from PNG to New Zealand for a literary festival and overstayed his visa.

He said he had been offered resettlement in the US but was also open to resettlement in a third country.

More here.

Feeling guilty, Australia expats set up support group for the mostly Muslim Australian-rejected asylum seekers as they arrive in America.

From Marie Claire:

Meet the Aussie Expats Fighting to Give Asylum Seekers A Fair Go

When entrepreneur and former fashion designer Fleur Wood heard that 1250 asylum seekers from Australia’s off-shore detention centres were being resettled in the US, she was struck with empathy.

Wood (in Chicago) with a Rohingya ‘refugee’ who had been held in detention by the Australian government after trying to illegally enter Australia by boat. He is now on his way to US citizenship. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-02-05/ads-up-co-founder-fleur-wood-with-rohingya-refugee-rahman-mojub/10775128

It was 2016 and the men, women and children who had spent years languishing on Nauru and Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island would now be transferred to a country on the other side of the world as part of a deal between the Australian government and the Obama administration. After so much uncertainty and despair, this was their chance to start over – but not without enormous challenges.

[….]

Wood began building a network of Australians living in the US who were keen to help out, and in 2018 she co-founded the not-for-profit Ads-Up (Aussie Diaspora Steps Up) with fellow Australian Ben Winsor.

Their aim was to do what the Australian government would not: provide a social network and financial assistance to help refugees begin their lives in a new country.

[….]

For volunteers, connecting with refugees provides a chance to make amends in some small way for Australia’s inhumane treatment of asylum seekers. Says Wood, “Regardless of where you stand on the immigration issue, or whether you think these people should be allowed into Australia, you can’t deny the incredible human rights violations that they have suffered.”

The Australian government doesn’t provide regular information about Nauru and Manus Island, but according to the Refugee Council of Australia, 632 people have been resettled in the US.

[….]

Last June, Minister for Home Affairs Peter Dutton said the target of resettling 1250 refugees wouldn’t be met, hindering the Coalition’s goal of closing down the detention centres. US President Donald Trump was also famously scathing of the deal.

More here.

But Trump went along with the deal for over 600 detainees (so far) that Australia would not allow on its own soil. 600 plus is just as “dumb” as 1,250 in my view.

The practice of taking another (safe) country’s rejects is outside the normal accepted international resettlement procedure and should never have been encouraged.

See my extensive archive on the ‘Australia dumb deal.‘