Savannah, GA: Hot new resettlement site when Atlanta suburbs went into overload? Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services benefited from federal grant for Savannah!
As I mentioned, I took some reading material with me when I was away last week and had a chance to make this list of “preferred communities” from the 2010 Annual Report to Congress from the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) in the Department of Health and Human Services.
According to the feds, a”preferred community” is one in which newly arriving refugees have the best opportunity for “self-sufficiency and integration.” I look at the list and know that many of these cities are having big problems with refugees/immigrant joblessness and poverty, and lack of integration (assimilation!).
The grants for 2010 totaled nearly $6 million. And, take note Wyoming, the grants did not go to the city or state, the grants went to the contractors, so they decide what is needed to smooth the way for refugees in your “welcoming” city!
It strikes me that this is just one more excuse to funnel your tax dollars to a contractor.
Below are the cities that were “preferred” for both continuation grants and new grants in 2010 (from 2010 Annual Report). Since my return I see that the Annual Report for 2011 is out, so I’ve added those cities in red. Keep in mind that the ORR is always late in producing these reports, so by 2012 and 2013 surely they have added new cities to their “preferred communities.”
***Again, cities in red were added in 2011. This list gives you an idea of the cities being overloaded and that problems have developed.***
Bet you didn’t know your city was “preferred!”
Arizona: Tuscon, Phoenix
California: San Diego, Sacramento, Modesto, Walnut Creek
***Update*** Here you can see a list of new grantees. Note that the US Conference of Catholic Bishops gets nearly $2 million through 2016 for preferred communities, but no specific sites are listed (they probably don’t want you to know that your city is among the chosen!).
They are still breaking the law since the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) was required in the original Refugee Act of 1980 to produce an annual report four months after the close of the previous fiscal year. So technically ORR should, by now, have submitted reports for 2012 and 2013.
Eskinder Negash (right) is the Director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement. Previously he was a VP for one of the contractors. Revolving door between contractor and government job is standard operating proceduere in this program.
As we reported here, they have been behind ever since the Clinton Administration.
I hadn’t been checking, so I don’t know when they submitted 2011 to Congress because as you see they have no date on the cover (another trick that began during the Clinton Administration!).
For those of you in Wyoming considering inviting refugees to your state, please read the annual report before you make that move!
Wouldn’t you think that the federal government and its contractor partners would have a good handle on employment and welfare usage by refugees. They really don’t.
Much of the information in the report is obtained through surveys where another contractor tries to track down refugees and expects them to answer truthfully about what they are receiving from welfare and if they are working. So when you read some of the stats in the report (which are really pretty awful as it is) consider this information on how the survey is done (emphasis is mine):
For the 2011 survey, 2,514 households were contacted and 1,534 households completed the interview. Refugees included in the 2010 survey—but had not resided in the U.S. for more than five years—were again contacted and interviewed along with a new sample of refugees, Amerasians, and entrants who had arrived during the period from May 1, 2010 through April 30, 2011. Of the 1,509 re-interview cases from the 2011 sample, 954 were contacted and interviewed, and 37 were contacted, but refused to be interviewed.The remaining 518 re-interview cases could not be traced in time to be interviewed.Of the 1,005 new sample cases, 580 were contacted and interviewed, another 22 were contacted but refused to cooperate, and the remaining 403 could not be traced in time to be interviewed. [So 403 fairly new arrivals couldn’t even be found?—ed] The resulting responses were then weighted to adjust for differential sampling rates and response rates across refugee cohorts and ethnic groups.
The overall response rate of the 2011 Survey was 61 percent.
Then get this from a footnote on welfare use:
Caution must be exercised when reviewing refugee declarations of public assistance utilization. These are self reported data and the questions asked are subject to wide variation in interpretation by the respondent.
The surveys are conducted in the refugee’s native language, and certain technical terms which distinguish types of income do not translate well into foreign languages.
Refugees readily admit to receiving “welfare” or “assistance”, but they are frequently confused about the correct category. Past surveys have found that refugee households are very accurate in reporting Supplemental Security Income (SSI) because their claims are handled by the Social Security Administration.
However, RCA, TANF,and GA cases are all handled by the local county welfare office and are not clearly distinguished from each other by the refugee family. [Note to Wyoming: you think this is all going to be taken care of by the feds with no cost to your counties—ed]
Over the years, we have noted that many refugees claim RCA many years after arrival even though the program is confined to the first eight months in the U.S., claim receipt of TANF even though they have no children, or claim receipt of general relief even though they reside in States that do not provide such assistance, such as Florida or Texas.
So, considering all of that above, here is the “Economic Adjustment” section of the Executive Summary (emphasis is mine). My suspicion is that the numbers are much worse than portrayed here due to the small sample size and the large number unwilling to participate or were not found.
• The 2011 Annual Survey of Refugees who have been in the U.S. less than five years indicated that 52 percent of refugees age 16 or over were employed as of December 2011, as compared with 59 percent for the U.S. population.
• The labor force participation rate was 63 percent for the sampled refugee population, as compared with 64 percent for the U.S. population. The refugee unemployment rate was 18 percent,*** compared with eight percent for the U.S. population.
• Approximately 58 percent of all sampled refugee households in the 2011 survey were entirely self-sufficient (subsisted on earnings alone). About 28 percent lived on a combination of public assistance and earned income; another nine percent received only public assistance. [This doesn’t equal 100%—ed]
• Approximately eight percent of refugees in the five-year sample population received medical coverage through an employer, while 48 percent received benefits from Medicaid or Refugee Medical Assistance. About 40 percent of the sample population had no medical coverage in any of the previous 12 months.
• Approximately 39 percent of respondents received some type of cash assistance in the twelve months prior to the survey. About 61 percent of refugee households received assistance through Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and 24 percent received housing assistance.
• The overall hourly wage of employed refugees in the five-year population in the 2011 survey was $9.43. This represents a five percent drop from the 2010 survey, when respondents reported an overall hourly wage of $9.90 in current dollars (not adjusted for inflation).
***Think about it—18% unemployment rate for refugees and these same contractors are lobbying for amnesty for millions of illegal aliens, what will that do to refugee unemployment?
Of the nearly a half million refugees, asylees, Cuban-Haitians etc. we resettled in the last 5 years, this information was extracted from approximately 1,500 WILLING TO BE INTERVIEWED refugees.
While I was away, I was able to do a lot of reading, so this will be the first of many reports on documents I’ve been reviewing and this post and others will be filed in our ‘where to find information’category,here.
I was just looking for statistics on Afghan refugees coming to the US in large numbers (for years) because of a post I’m writing about Pakistan wanting them OUT of their country when I came across the existence of the missing 2009 ANNUAL REPORT TO CONGRESS on the refugee program.
Now we can see what the program looked like in the first year of the Obama presidency.
The Office of Refugee Resettlement needs to now get cracking on reports for 2010, 2011, and 2012 which they are still LEGALLY required to produce and are breaking federal law every day by not producing them!
I won’t have time to scan the 181 pages chock full of information about how much this program is costing the taxpayer today, but look forward to reading it soon!
One of the goals of Refugee Resettlement Watchis to help you, the average taxpaying American, find the information on this program—which “refugees” are coming, from what country, to which states, and how much all this costs us (among other things). To that end we have a category entitled“where to find information.”
On Monday, I mentioned that I would like to see how many Iraqis we have resettled over the years, first the ones we resettled because of Saddam Hussein the crazy and cruel dictator, and now the ones we are resettling because the crazy, cruel dictator is gone and they have a democracy from which “refugees” wish to escape. We can always find an excuse to import the masses.
I then wrote to ORR to ask where they are and am told they are at a Georgetown University Law Library website. I’m sure the average interested citizen should have been able to find that easily (not!).
If you are at all interested in who has come to your state and how much this all costs, please visit these annual reports. Go to tables at the end to see stats on states, refugee nationalities and numbers of refugees and asylees resettled in your states.
One final thing—drum roll please! The annual report to Congress for 2009 (three years late) is in the review process and should be out soon we are told!
