Tag: Center for Immigration Studies

Refugees do NOT bring in more tax dollars than they consume in social services

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This news was all over my alerts yesterday morning (one version of the story at Business Insider):

Study finds refugees actually pay the US government thousands more than they get from it

The glowing (and deceptive) report was clearly released now as a run-up to World Refugee Day next Tuesday and has probably been widely distributed on Capitol Hill by the legion of lobbyists for the refugee industry.
My reaction was that the conclusions fly in the face of all common sense.  And, LOL!, I wondered right away whether they included the costs to the criminal justice system.  Imagine how much those life prison terms of some refugee murderers and terrorists cost the American taxpayer!

Esar Met, a Burmese refugee raped and murdered a little girl in his apartment complex shortly after arriving in the US (he had surely not paid in any taxes yet!) and is doing life in prison. Someone with some economic training and the interest should figure out what it costs taxpayers for these expensive trials and life sentences. One of my many posts on Met is here: https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2014/01/14/utah-medical-examiner-little-girl-suffered-excruciating-pain-before-dying-from-tear-to-heart/

So, I wondered if  there was a rebuttal and sure enough there is!
If you see the deceptive news published in your newspaper, you must respond with a ‘letter to the editor’ using key points of Jason Richwine’s rebuttal.  You can’t let their propaganda go unanswered.
The Center for Immigration Studies responded here this morning (emphasis is mine):

Refugees do not pay their own way

A working paper released this week by Notre Dame economists William Evans and Daniel Fitzgerald makes the head-scratching claim that refugees, despite below-average incomes and high rates of welfare use, pay $21,000 more in taxes than they receive in benefits during their first 20 years in the United States. Immigration-boosting wonks such as Matt Yglesias and Dylan Matthews immediately trumpeted the findings, and the Washington Post and FiveThirtyEight added favorable write-ups.

They should have been more skeptical. The claim that refugees contribute more in taxes than they receive in benefits is simply implausible.

[….]

So how does the Evans-Fitzgerald paper come to such an implausible result? First, the authors count all (or nearly all) taxes paid by refugees but reduce the services they receive to six social programs — cash welfare, SSI, Social Security, food stamps, Medicare, and Medicaid. All other costs that governments might incur from immigration — housing, infrastructure, education, law enforcement, and so on — do not count.

Second, they fail to adjust for the underreporting of those social programs…

[….]

Third, the paper excludes refugees’ minor children. When refugees cannot afford to provide food, housing, or medical care to their children, taxpayers foot the bill. Most of those costs are omitted.

Fourth, the authors restrict the refugee age range to 18-65, cutting off the analysis just before the age where most people stop working and begin participating in the nation’s costly retirement programs.

By the way, we bring in a significant number of refugees to the US over the age of 65 who immediately draw on SSI.
More here.
Don’t miss CIS’s previous detailed study of the cost of refugees to taxpayers, here.  Middle Easterners are especially expensive!
This is posted in my ‘What you can do’ category (created because new readers are asking).  If you see the deceptive report mentioned in your local newspaper do not let it go unanswered!  Send a letter to your member of  Congress too and tell him or her (in advance) to watch for the propaganda (Big Lie!) campaign about refugees supposedly adding to the US economy. (The cheap labor supply might add to the bottomline at Tyson Foods, but not to the overall economy!).

CIS: Entire refugee admissions system is broken!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

screenshot-46
http://www.unhcr.org/en-us/protection/resettlement/575836267/unhcr-projected-global-resettlement-needs-2017.html

Nayla Rush at the Center for Immigration Studies has done the work for us and analyzed a new UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) report which makes suggestions for reform that basically increases the number of migrants (aka refugees) that would move from the third world to the first.
Watch for it! They will be pushing for “alternative pathways” because they know that the refugee system they have been relying on is crumbling.
Of course, one option in that reform (in my opinion) should be to sever our connection with the UNHCR altogether and choose our own refugees (and how many!) and thus leave the UN out of our immigration business!

Wouldn’t it be great if Trump UN Ambassador Nikki Haley could preside over the process of severing our ties to the UNHCR!  (I can dream!)
Here is Rush’s opening paragraph:

The latest United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) resettlement assessment report summarizes its 2015 activities and introduces its 2017 strategic direction and needs.1 At a time when refugee protection is addressed on a global scale, the report, “UNHCR Projected Global Resettlement Needs 2017”, provides us with insightful information about submission categories and acceptance rates, top resettlement countries of origin and destination, and more. It also suggests how badly in need of reform the entire refugee system is. [Of course the UN’s idea of reform and ours is very different!—ed]

Go here to read her analysis.

America's Refugee Admissions Program a dumping ground, Krikorian has it exactly right!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

In an article posted last evening at National Review Online, Center for Immigration Studies Director, Mark Krikorian highlights one of the most important outrages we have observed with how our present Refugee Admissions Program is being used (and abused!).

idaho-uzbek
Fazliddin Kurbanov sentenced in Idaho last year on Islamic terrorism charges is one of hundreds (thousands?) of Uzbek Muslims who obtained refugee status in the US during the Bush Administration. Why? Uzbekistan is a safe Muslim country. Were they too radical for the Muslim government there?

It is something we pointed out here in 2012 (#7) when we gave Ten Reasons there should be a moratorium on the program.  We said Congress must disallow the use of the program for other foreign policy objectives of the US State Department.
At NRO (The Corner) Krikorian uses the news-hook of the recent Somali terror attack at Ohio State and the insane Australia deal and then says this (emphasis is mine):

Whether or not the Australia scheme reaches fruition, it’s important to realize that it’s not unusual. For years now, the State Department has been using resettlement back in America-land as a way of making other countries’ diplomatic problems go away. They’ve done this with the Somali Bantu, Bhutanese in Nepal, Meskhetian Turks from Russia, Bangladeshi Rohingya from Burma, and others. What they have in common is that they are groups the State Department has decided to collectively move to the United States for foreign policy purposes. In other words, the refugee program is being used as a way of smoothing over diplomatic disputes in the interest of maintaining global stability, with the “irritant” populations being dumped in American communities for the hicks in flyoverland to cope with as best they can. This is yet another area of immigration policy that urgently needs change.

Read Krikorian’s whole piece here.
We might also add airlifts of Kosovars to Ft. Dix during the Clinton administration (many went home later) and the airlift of the mysterious (and sometimes unwilling!) Uzbeks to the US for some foreign policy goal of the George W. Bush administration.
Changing the subject, this reminds me!  Recently those resettlement contractors going in to new towns to sell the RAP where the citizens are uninformed and naive are being told that no refugee has been involved in terror cases in the US.  It is such a big lie and I really need to put together a list of all the cases I know about!

Unaccompanied Alien Children eating up Health and Human Service's agency budgets

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

You’ve probably all seen this news about the Dept. of Health and Services scrambling to re-direct money from other areas of the agency budget to take care of the largest number of ‘children’ (ever!) entering the US illegally.

train-map
Seems like the Trump Admin. might be able to figure out exactly where the wall needs to be!

I’m posting this so that as we move ahead in the coming days with news on the budget for FY17 and the Continuing Resolution, you have some background understanding of the dilemma the refugee program is in during the waning days of the Obama Administration.  The ‘kids’ (who are NOT refugees) are gobbling up limited funds putting their needs in direct competition with the refugees entering the US from all over the world. (In addition to depriving US citizens of other needed programs.)
For new readers, the Office of Refugee Resettlement is an agency at HHS which has been given the duty of taking care of the illegal alien kids.
Here is Jessica Vaughan at the Center for Immigration Studies:

An average of 255 illegal alien youths were taken into the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) every day this month, according to the latest figures the agency provided to Congress. This is the largest number of illegal alien children ever in the care of the federal government. To pay for it, the agency says it will need an additional one or two billion dollars for the next year – above and beyond the $1.2 billion spent in 2016 and proposed for 2017 – depending on how many more arrive. For now, the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), where ORR resides, is diverting $167 million from other programs to cover the cost of services for these new illegal arrivals through December 9, when the current continuing resolution expires.

An email to congressional staff from Barbara Clark of the HHS legislative liaison office, dated November 28, 2016, stated:

Daily referrals of unaccompanied children averaged 247 over the last seven days, and 255 so far in November. For comparison, referrals averaged 185 per day in November of FY 2016 and 64 per day in November of FY 2015. As of November 27, 2016, the number of children in ORR care is approximately 11,200.

A separate email informed congressional offices of HHS Secretary Burwell’s intent to transfer money from other programs to ORR to pay for shelters, health care, schooling, recreation, and other services for the new illegal arrivals, who typically were brought to the border by smugglers paid by their parents, who often are living in the United States illegally.

Continue reading here and see which programs are being robbed to pay for the ‘kids.’
About the map: I was searching for a graph to show how many ‘kids’ (mostly Central American teenage boys, see here) had come in to the US in the most recent years, but every graph I found only went to 2014. So what is up with that!  I figured the map would be a nice addition to the post instead.
By the way, this post is tagged ‘Unaccompanied minors’ because many years ago they were called that and that is how I first tagged the topic.

More on Sunday rally in DC: goal is to increase refugee numbers for FY2017

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

And, here Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies reminds us of the huge cost of resettling each refugee to your town or city.  It is far less expensive to find safe places in the Middle East for the Syrians, says Krikorian.

Safe zones!

In fact, Donald  Trump has remarked in the past that he would like to see “safe zones” established where refugees could be protected until the conflict is over in Syria.  I’m thinking one such safe zone could be in Saudi Arabia!
Maybe Trump could make a deal with the Saudis who at present do not take care of their fellow Muslim refugees (a fact that we have chronicled over the years) to establish a safe zone in the kingdom.
From the Daily Signal about Sunday’s Rally for Refugees (see our earlier post here).  Emphasis below is mine:

Are you concerned about the plight of international refugees? Would you like to see the U.S. government take decisive, constructive action on behalf of displaced persons across the globe who have been forced to flee their homes?

Mark-Krikorian
Krikorian points out that there are much more fiscally responsible ways to care for Syrian refugees than to scatter them through hundreds of American towns.

If so, you’re invited to “stand up against the voices of intolerance” this Sunday in Washington, D.C., where you can join forces with other concerned Americans.  [If you are concerned about the costs and social upheaval for both refugees and for Americans when refugees are secretly placed in your towns, you are intolerant! Get used to it!—ed]

But if you do participate, policy analysts who have examined the refugee crisis want you to know they have good reason to believe the rally is a highly politicized event organized for the purpose of lobbying the Obama administration and Congress to allow more refugees into the U.S.—including those from war-torn Syria and Iraq who may have ties to terrorism.

A major contributor to causes on the left, the Tides Foundation, is collecting contributions for the rally.

[….]

High Costs of Resettling Refugees

A report by the Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies found that it costs 12 times as much to resettle a refugee in America than it does to provide for services and relief to the same refugee in the Middle East.

The nonprofit, nonpartisan research outfit included State Department expenditures, welfare use rates, and other figures and benefits from the departments of Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, and other U.S. agencies. Its report says:

Based on that information, this analysis finds that the costs of resettling refugees in the United States are quite high, even without considering all of the costs refugees create. We conservatively estimate that the costs total $64,370 in the first five years for each Middle Eastern refugee. This is 61 times what it costs to care for one Syrian refugee in a neighboring country for a single year or about 12 times the cost of providing for a refugee for five years.

“The organizers, funders, and the supporting groups are putting this rally together to exert pressure to ensure that the Obama administration increases the admission of Syrians into the U.S.,” Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, told The Daily Signal.

[….]

Krikorian, of the Center for Immigration Studies, said he sees more than mere happenstance at work in the timing of the rally: Obama is set to play host to a refugee summit at the U.N. on Sept. 20. The president also is expected to release his fiscal year 2017 plan for refugees by the end of September.

The rally is not only “to exert pressure to ensure that the Obama administration increases the admission of Syrians,” Krikorian said, but “timed to influence the number of refugees the State Department is trying to settle.”

And, it is my view that it is also to exert pressure on Congress to loosen the purse strings on funding for the program as Congress addresses the budget this fall. The nine federal contractors*** who resettle refugees in your towns and cities want to expand their operations to even more towns and they need your money to do that!
We have talked about this before, but I’m going to be a broken record on it!  Your focus for the next couple of months should be on pressuring your Member of Congress to grow a spine and oppose the expenditure of your money on resettling ever larger numbers of refugees.

Don’t focus your anger at Obama and the Progressives, they are doing what they always do—focus on someone you can change—your member of Congress and US Senators up for re-election in a little over two months.

***The nine federal resettlement contractors (participating in the rally Sunday) which are almost completely funded with your tax dollars: