They are called Special Immigrant Visa holders (SIVs for short) and they supposedly helped the US in some way (or they could have helped an NGO!), sometimes as interpreters. They and their immediate family members are welcomed to the US and treated with the same package of goodies refugees receive.
Also, we are told that the resettlement contractors are paid (by you) to place them as well, and those funds we’ve heard are helping to keep the contractors from completely going belly-up!
(See my post yesterdayabout the number of regular refugees admitted this fiscal year, the number is relatively low, but the SIV number is not! 2,196 Muslims were admitted as regular refugees, but add to that 9,166 Afghan Muslims in the last 11 months!)
Yesterday US General Austin Miller took over NATO command in Afghanistan. We have been there for 17 years. Here is what I want to know? If we continue to bring to America the tens of thousands of Afghans who willingly helped us, won’t only the worst of the worst be left in the country? http://www.foxnews.com/world/2018/09/02/us-general-assumes-nato-command-in-afghanistan.html
Daniel Horowitz has penned an excellent (and frightening) analysis of who is being admitted to the US through myriad legal programs (in addition to the usual refugee numbers that we know are way down in recent months).
Aimless fighting in Afghanistan — while we bring Afghanistan to our shores
A reader has brought it to our attention that the last column is obviously mislabeled and should read (2001-2018)
Whoever thought of the strategy of sending our troops to referee Islamic civil wars on their soil while bringing their civil wars and terror financing to our own shores was brilliantly dumb.But that is still the strategy of the West in combatting jihad. The European countries are even worse than we are in importing the Middle East, but we are not that far behind. Meanwhile, we continue to put our boots on their ground and shoulder the burden of endless wars that would not affect us if not for our immigration policies.
Here’s a novel idea: What if we focused on our own borders, stopped self-destructing through our front-door immigration policies, busted up terror financing networks globally and domestically, and disrupted the Muslim Brotherhood and other radical networks operating here at home?
Unlike China, Russia, North Korea, and potentially Iran, nothing that happens in these Sunni hellholes – from Somalia, Yemen, Niger, and Mali to Syria and Afghanistan – can harm us … unless we bring them to our country, as we did for years and are increasingly doing now. Yet our endless and aimless missions, chasing our tails in their sand dunes at a cost of trillions of dollars and thousands of precious U.S. lives, have depleted our resources and our resolve to deal with those who truly pose a conventional threat to our homeland, now or in the future.
One year later, the Afghanistan surge is a failure….
[….]
The miserable irony is that while nothing in Afghanistan can come close to hurting us, as the Taliban has nowhere near the global reach of a group like Hezbollah, we are bringing Afghans here at a record pace.Just in the first quarter of 2018, we brought in 5,718. At that pace, 2018’s total number will dwarf the recent trend of 12,000 per year. We’ve brought in over 86,000 Afghans since 9/11! In last year’s defense authorization bill, Congress authorized another 3,500 special immigrant visas, which grant refugee status to Afghan officials, despite a SIGAR report showing that half of all the foreign personnel who have gone AWOL in this country after being brought here for training were Afghans. Most are still at large and unaccounted for.
The rise in immigration from Afghanistan reflects a broader trend of importing the Middle East to our country. I counted the number of green cards given out in 2017, the first year of Trump’s presidency, to nationals from 47 majority-Muslim countries, and the total number was up to 167,000. The pace for 2018, based on hard data from the first quarter, seems to be tracking with that rate. This is still a very high level and only very slightly down from Obama’s record year in 2016. Overall, we’ve admitted 2.2 million immigrants from those countries from 2001 through March 31, 2018.
See myprevious posts on Afghan Special Immigrant Visa holders. While the number of regular refugees is declining under the Trump Administration, Afghan SIVs are treated as refugees and their numbers are helping the refugee contractors stay afloat because the contractors (the VOLAGs) are paid to place them as well.
Maryland and Virginia are in the top five welcoming states…
I’ve been told that the flow of these ‘special’ immigrants are helping to keep federal money flowing to the resettlement contractors*** as they are treated as refugees (but not counted as part of the 45,000 ceiling set by the President last September) and as such, the contractors are paid by the head for their work in resettling them.
Just now I checked Wrapsnetto see what those numbers looked like. I’ve written other posts on the topic before, here, so this is an update.
Prior to FY14 we admitted small numbers of the people that supposedly helped us in some capacity in Afghanistan, but the number began to skyrocket in FY14.
The top year so far, 16,866 Afghan SIV arrivals, was in President Trump’s first year in office. Top states for Afghan resettlement (regular refugees and SIVs) from FY07 to the present were California (20,171), Texas (8,229), Virginia (7763), Washington (2,898) and Maryland (2,745).
Here are some partial screen shots. The whole graph obviously doesn’t fit on the page.
Top of graph: Note that the first column in white is the number of normal refugees we admitted and the second is the SIVs and their family members.
Bottom of graph: Unfortunately, you can’t see the far left with the names of the states. The number in the dark column is the total number of refugees plus SIVs that went to each state.
The total number of Afghans admitted to the US, 60,623, above is from FY07 to the present. Less than 10,000 were determined to be refugees.
*** Here are the nine federal refugee contractors. They have been complaining as their regular paying client numbers (refugees) have declined, but it seems they have some taxpayer supplied funds coming in with this huge push to bring in Afghan ‘interpreters’ and their families.
The original Refugee Act of 1980, that set up this monstrosity, envisioned a public-private partnership that over the years has almost completely morphed in to a federal program.
The number in parenthesis is the percentage of their income paid by you (the taxpayer) to place the refugees (SIVs too) and get them signed up for their services (aka welfare)! From most recent accounting, here.
But a big problem, says the Government Accountability Office , is that neither the US State Department or the Office of Refugee Resettlement in HHS are doing much to track the outcomes of those admitted to the US from Iraq and Afghanistan who supposedly worked for us as interpreters.
I told youhere recentlythat the number admitted to the US from those two violent countries is pushing 70,000 in the last ten years.
As Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) holders they are treated as full-fledged refugees with all the welfare benefits other refugees receive.
We have been told that the resettlement contractors*** are relying on these paying clients to keep federal dollars flowing to their budgets as the refugee flow they hoped for is not materializing.
Some members of Congress must have requested this GAO study because problems are obviously brewing with this portion of our ‘welcome’ to Middle Eastern Muslims. I did not read the whole report, here, but it seems that there are some pretty disillusioned SIVs who thought they would have good jobs and decent housing when they got here.
Here are a few snips from the summary:
Not exactly a bombshell title:
AFGHAN AND IRAQI SPECIAL IMMIGRANTS:More Information on Their Resettlement Outcomes Would Be Beneficial
What GAO Found
Since fiscal year 2011, about [about?—ed] 13,000 Afghan and Iraqi nationals (excluding family members) have resettled in the United States under special immigrant visas (SIV), but limited data on their outcomes are available from the Department of State (State) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). State collects data on SIV holders’ resettlement outcomes once—90 days after they arrive. GAO’s analysis of State’s data from October 2010 through December 2016 showed that the majority of principal SIV holders—those who worked for the U.S. government—were unemployed at 90 days, including those reporting high levels of education and spoken English.
Very high unemployment rate at 90 days. Why is 90 days important? That is when their resettlement contractor is done with them and has moved on to the next batch of paying clients (aka refugees). By 90 days the SIV is expected to be self-sufficient. BTW, don’t you wonder who the 1,760 “interpreters” without “good spoken English” are?
GAO continues…
Stakeholders [must be referring to the resettlement contractors—ed] GAO interviewed reported several resettlement challenges, including capacity issues in handling large numbers of SIV holders, difficulties finding skilled employment, and SIV holders’ high expectations.
Officials from local resettlement agencies in Northern Virginia reported capacity challenges for their agencies and the community due to the large increase of SIV holders. In almost all of GAO’s focus groups with principal SIV holders, participants expressed frustration at the need to take low-skilled jobs because they expected that their education and prior work experience would lead to skilled work. [You can bet they aren’t going to the slaughterhouse jobs where contractors like to place those in their care.—-ed]
State and HHS have taken steps to address some resettlement challenges. For example, in 2017 State placed restrictions on where SIV holders could resettle and HHS announced a new grant to support career development programs for SIV holders, refugees, and others.
In addition, State provides information to prospective SIV holders about resettlement. However, the information is general, and lacks detail on key issues such as housing affordability, employment, and available government assistance. Providing such specifics could lead to more informed decisions by SIV holders on where to resettle and help them more quickly adapt to potential challenges once in the United States. [I don’t think that GAO knows that the SIVs original resettlement location is not chosen by the refugees, but by the State Department in conjunction with contractors*** as they bid for bodies (aka paying clients).—ed]
In light of so many disillusioned and unemployed SIVs, I sure hope that someone is reporting that news to others in the pipeline on their way to America!
Why the discrepancy in the numbers?
I wondered if GAO is downplaying the numbers on purpose…. were they as shocked as we are to find these enormous numbers?
In the summary, GAO talks about 13,000 SIVs since 2011, excluding family members, but in the full report they describe the real numbers we have placed in your towns and cities.
And, rather than saying “over 60,000”, they could have said closer to 70,000! As Ireported early this month, using data readily available at the State Department’s Refugee Processing Center (Wrapsnet), we admitted from FY2008-right up to my post on March 8th, the numbers as follows:
Iraq: 18,084
Afghanistan: 49,358
Total to March 8th: 67,442
When I went to the full report they say this (below) on Page 1, but once again use the word “about.” They do clarify one point: “about 20,000” are the people who worked for us or on behalf of us, the remaining, over 40,000! are their family members.
Afghan and Iraqi nationals who were employed by or on behalf of the U.S. government in Afghanistan or Iraq and have experienced ongoing serious threats as a consequence of such employment, or who worked directly with the U.S. Armed Forces or under chief of mission authority as a translator or interpreter, may apply for a special immigrant visa (SIV) to the United States.
Upon securing a visa, the principal SIV holder and his or her eligible dependents may resettle in the United States and are granted lawful permanent resident status upon admission into the United States. Since fiscal year 2008, over 60,000 individuals—about 20,000 principal SIV holders and their families—have been admitted under SIVs and received federal resettlement assistance upon arrival.
SIV holders are authorized to receive resettlement assistance from the Departments of State (State) and Health and Human Services (HHS), as well as federal public benefits, to the same extent and for the same periods of time as refugees.
***These are the nine federal contractors working with the US State Department to place the SIVs and their families. Although GAO seems to have been fixated on how poorly the State Department and ORR are keeping track of the SIVs and their progress toward assimilation, it seems to me that the contractors should come in for more blame if their charges are doing so poorly.
The number in parenthesis is the percentage of the nine VOLAGs’ income paid by you (the taxpayer) to place the refugees, line them up with jobs, and get them signed up for their services! From most recent accounting, here.
I heard recently that the refugee resettlement agencies (the big nine)*** which the State Department contracts to place refugees in your towns and cities were busy resettling ‘interpreters’ from Afghanistan and those federal payments were helping keep them financially afloat.
So…I checked some numbers atWrapsnetand was amazed by what I saw. Sure enough we are bringing in Afghans at an astounding rate.
From FY08 to FY18 we have admitted 49,358 ‘interpreters’ from Afghanistan and that number does not include their spouses and children. Holy cow!
Were there really nearly 50,000 people doing translation work for us? (And, more to come!)
I know I can hear it now—-shouldn’t we take care of those who helped us in Iraq and Afghanistan (while we were helping their countries!), but really, 50,000 and more! (I think you can also surmise from this flood of supposedly friendlies out of Afghanistan that we are done there, but that is a story for another blog.)
Know that our usual bunch of federal contractors are paid to place those ‘refugees’ as well.
Poster boy for Iraqis who helped Americans! Jasim Ramadon doing 28 years to life for brutal rape. https://townhall.com/columnists/dianawest/2014/01/24/from-us-helpers-in-iraq-to-sex-criminals-in-colorado-n1783901
I early on wrote about the Special Immigrant Visa program for Iraqis that ol’ Ted Kennedy got placed in a Defense Authorization bill in the dark of night in 2006, but have never followed it closely. (Numbers of slots available were low. For comparison, we admitted 18,084 ‘interpreters’ from Iraq during the same time period we have admitted nearly 50,000 Afghans!).
However, I see this morning that Donald Trump, when signing the Defense Authorization bill for FY18, also signed in to law a new Afghan Special Immigrant Visa program which permits the entrance to the US of thousands more Afghans in that category. Read all about it here, and note that the ‘interpreters’ don’t even have to have been employed directly by the US government! They could have been working for allies and presumably NGOs too!
(I have something else I have to do today, so this is just your intro. to this under-the-radar push for more Middle Easterners to be distributed around the US.)
Here are screenshots of a few pieces of the data at Wrapsnet.
Below is the top of the data sheet on our Afghan admissions.
Circled in red is the column for Special Immigrant Visas compared to the number of regular refugees from that country. On the fourth line down, that is California which is obviously being flooded.
This is the bottom half of the same data chart: Refugee numbers (column one) are relatively low for Afghanistan, but the SIV numbers (column two) are huge!
See that in Trump’s first (partial) year in office (FY17) we admitted an astounding 16,866 ‘interpreters’ and in this fiscal year (2018) to March 5th we have already admitted 7,017! Again those numbers do not include spouses and children.
To conclude, although the regular refugee numbers are way down as we reported here.
8,583 refugees have been admitted in 5 months.
You can add to that another 7,017 paying SIV clients (and their families!) for the VOLAGs (resettlement contractors) to place in your towns. (There are also ‘interpreters’ still coming in from Iraq, but numbers are much lower now.)
***Here are the nine federal refugee contractors. They have been complaining as their regular paying client numbers (refugees) have declined, but it seems they have some taxpayer supplied funds coming in with this huge push to bring in Afghan ‘interpreters’ and their families.
The original Refugee Act of 1980, that set up this monstrosity, envisioned a public-private partnership that over the years has almost completely morphed in to a federal program.
The number in parenthesis is the percentage of their income paid by you (the taxpayer) to place the refugees and get them signed up for their services (aka welfare)! From most recent accounting, here.
