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.

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.