Someone asked me today where to find the number of refugees who were resettled in each state in the US over the years and it reminded me that we have many many new readers every day who are just beginning to try to get a handle on how the UN/US State Department Refugee Admissions Program works.
Very useful documents are the Office of Refugee Resettlement Annual Reports to Congress*** which are full of all sorts of data, not just the statistics on how many refugees were resettled in your state, but they include data on welfare use, employment, housing, and medical assistance, among other things.
They also include reports from the VOLAGs (the federal contractors) and discussions of special problems that some refugee populations encounter here. And, of course there is information about the myriad grants these contractors receive each year.
I can’t say it enough, but knowledge is power. If you want to begin to understand what is happening in your towns and cities, start by looking at one of these documents.
Click here for a list of available reports.
By the way, the Refugee Act of 1980 specifies that this report should be completed and sent to Congress by the end of January following the close of the fiscal year. Thus, the 2015 Annual Report should be available, but they are behind in producing it.
So what else is new! At one point a few years ago, they were three years behind!
For new readers we have a category entitled ‘where to find information,’ and you might want to have a look at it from time to time.
P.S. I just spent a few minutes examining Table 1 (of the Appendix) in the FY2009 Annual Report where it cataloged how many refugees and from what countries were resettled in each state between 1983 and 2009. Wow! Amazing!
***This is not to be confused with another report to Congress that accompanies the President’s proposal for the upcoming fiscal year. That report also has much useful data but is not as comprehensive as the reports found here.
Tag: 2009 Annual Report to Congress
Another suggestion for the sequestration budget cutting ax: IDAs
Your tax dollars!
IDAs—Individual Development Accounts!
What is that? It’s a fancy name for your tax dollars matching a refugee’s savings. For every dollar a refugee saves in this program (administered not by a government agency, but laundered through a non-profit), he or she is matched a dollar from the federal treasury. I am not kidding!
How many times over the years have I heard someone complain—how are these refugees getting cars and such—this is how. The monies can be used toward purchasing a car, a house, a business or education.
Here is a profile of a refugee eligible for this special deal. He/she is usually employed (and may earn up to $3000 a month!) and own a house, have one car, and no more than $10,000 in assets, and can sign up for the program. Nothing like this is available to a low income American citizen that I know of! Ever heard of it?
$4-5 million could be saved annually if we dumped this discriminatory program!
In 2009 (from that finally-released three years late 2009 Annual Report to Congress, p.38) we spent $4.6 million on the program, again by passing your money through an unaccountable non-profit agency. If we insist on redistributing taxpayers money this way, couldn’t the program go through the state refugee agencies which are at least nominally open to public scrutiny?
By the way, ORR tells us that 8% of participants quit the program—I wonder do they give your money back?
Here then are the resettlement contractors and ethnic community group grants for 2009. I bet they each get to keep a cut of the pie for their own “administration” of the program.
Continuation grants awarded in FY 2009 to the following programs with cycles that will end on September 29, 2010 are:
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Lao Family Community Development, Inc., Oakland, CA, $200,000
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World Relief DuPage, Wheaton, IL, $235,000
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ISED Ventures, Des Moines, IA, $235,000
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Jewish Family & Vocational Services, Inc., Louisville, KY, $230,000
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International Institute of Metropolitan St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, $180,000
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New York Association for New Americans, New York, NY, $300,000
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Women’s Opportunities Resource Center, Philadelphia, PA, $235,000
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Catholic Charities of Tennessee, Nashville, TN, $194,392.
Continuation grants awarded in FY 2009 to the following programs with cycles that will end on September 29, 2012 are:
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Catholic Charities of Santa Clara County, San Jose, CA, $204,000
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Western Kentucky Refugee Mutual Assistance Society, Inc., Bowling Green, KY, $150,000
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Economic and Community Development Institute, Columbus, OH, $230,000
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Maine Department of Health and Human Services, Augusta, ME, $207,901
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Catholic Charities, Diocese of Camden, Inc., Camden, NJ, $225,000
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Diocese of Olympia, Seattle, WA, $205,000
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ECDC Enterprise Development Group, Arlington, VA, $280,000
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Mountain States Group, Boise, ID, $201,018
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United Way, Inc., Los Angeles, CA, $240,000
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Neighborhood Assets, Spokane, WA, $50,000
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International Rescue Committee Phoenix, New York, NY, $230,000
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Alliance for Multicultural Community Service Inc., Houston, TX, $203,500
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Catholic Charities, Diocese of St. Petersburg, Inc., St. Petersburg, FL, $200,000
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Cambodian Mutual Assistance Association of Greater Lowell, Inc., Lowell, MA,$192,380
I wonder if the Health and Human Services Inspector General has ever looked into this program? Does anyone audit these outfits?
Editors note: This is the third in my series of suggested budget cuts. Here I suggested we could cut the grants for refugee “healthy marriages,” and here for the little ACORN-like ethnic community based organizations. Including the IDAs, I’ve now saved the US taxpayers over $13 million! I wonder what the sequester is going to require ORR to cut overall?