Since I was just telling you that we (the Department of State) jumps when the UN says ‘jump!’ I thought it might be a good time to show you the numbers of refugees we are now taking from the DR Congo after Asst. Secretary of State for Population, Refugees and Migration, Anne Richard (formerly a VP at federal resettlement contractor International Rescue Committee) agreed here in 2013 to take 50,000 refugees from the DR Congo off the UN’s hands.
By the way, the Republicans did this too when the UN wanted to clean out its Bhutanese camps on the border of Nepal and then Bush Administration Asst. Secretary Ellen Sauerbrey agreed to invite 60,000 Bhutanese to the US over a five year period—they are still coming!
Here in 2014 we learned the Bhutanese numbers to the US were up to 80,000. But, surprise! Some of them want to go home.
Since fiscal year 2012, we have placed 33,212 from the DR Congo in all but five states (see map below).
The vast majority are Christians of some sort, but there are 1,240 Muslims in the bunch. In FY2012 we resettled 1,863, but by FY2016 we took 16,370 in one year. Expect 2017 to be even higher as the drive is on to get as many refugees in to the US as possible before Obama leaves office.
Our interest in reporting the Congolese numbers was stimulated by the mysterious death this week of an 8-year-old Congolese boy at O’Hare Airport. His family was bound for Texas.
These are very poor people, mostly with limited educations, who will need a couple of generations of care by the US taxpayer before they can return anything to the US economy.
Early reports are that the women are especially traumatized and will need costly mental health treatment.
Here is where the Congolese (DR Congo) refugees have been placed between FY2012 and FY2016 (inclusive). Map from the Refugee Processing Center. Hawaii got zero (didn’t fit on the map), but it rarely gets any anyway.
Tag: Congolese
Refugee child died arriving in Chicago; look for many more problems as the DOS crams them into your towns
My next post today was going to be on this very subject when I spotted this news about an 8-year-old refugee boy from the DR Congo dying mysteriously during a flight change in Chicago. His family was reportedly on the way to Texas and their new home (so much for Governor Abbott’s efforts to close the program in the state).
We will have to wait until an autopsy is performed to learn why the child sickened and died. Here is the news at Breitbart:
“An 8-year-old refugee from Congo died Tuesday after landing at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport,” the local CBS affiliate reports:
David Dieme, an 8-year-old boy landed Tuesday at approximately 4:30 p.m. with a refugee family at O’Hare International Airport.
Dieme was traveling with his father and several other children, who arrived to Chicago on a flight from Dubai. After clearing paperwork, the family was being escorted to their next flight, when a U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer noticed Dieme unresponsive.
Emergency Medical Services was immediately notified and arrived at the terminal. Standard procedures are in place to address sick passengers, according to a spokesman for the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention. Dieme was sick prior to the flight, but did not report any symptoms on the flight. He was examined at the airport by CDC officials, in an isolated room. Dieme’s temperature was taken, but he had no fever. He experienced diarrhea and vomiting. It was determined he should be taken to the hospital.
Dieme was taken to Presence Resurrection Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead.
Waiting on an autopsy report.
Leahy continues:
Breitbart News has reported extensively on the public health risk to the general public posed by a resurgence of diseases that had been on a path to eradication until the recent influx of migration to the country. Among the diseases newly resurgent are tuberculosis, whooping cough, intestinal parasites, mumps, and measles.
Refugees are required to undergo overseas medical screenings prior to their arrival in the United States. Those screenings, however, do not prohibit refugees with a number of diseases from arriving in the United States. Few arriving refugees, for instance, are tested and treated for latent tuberculosis infection prior to their arrival in the United States.
Though initial domestic medical screenings of all arriving refugees are recommended within ninety days of their arrival, those screenings are not required by either law or regulation.
Go here for more of that news (plus to follow the links I was too lazy to add!).
Is carelessness and neglect of the refugees themselves the inevitable next step as the White House has obviously demanded the program be accelerated?
I think it’s a very real possibility.
Did this child die because it was a rush-job to get his family here?
With the huge number of refugees being flown in to the US right now, look for refugees to not be properly taken care of with possible breaches of the contract the resettlement agencies sign with the Department of State.
Our news above highlights the medical issues that might be overlooked when attempting to get the refugees placed at an accelerated pace. Are they cutting corners on more than security screening?
What you need to do where you live: look for refugees being neglected by the agencies hired to bring them in.
I think there is a very good chance that your local resettlement agency won’t be able to handle the numbers coming in. We are already hearing about drives in many communities to find enough volunteers. (I’ve heard there is a pretty high turnover rate for volunteers as they learn how needy, and sometimes not very grateful, the refugees can be.)
- If you see refugees confused and wandering in an airport, take note. They are supposed to be met by the resettlement agency and escorted to an apartment where the refrigerator is required to be stocked with culturally appropriate food.
- Get friendly with the local medical officials in your town and stay on top of any notices being released to the public about health threats arriving in your community. Try to find out if the refugees are being screened in the prescribed time frame and whether school-aged children are being vaccinated.
- Look for refugees being placed in temporary housing. Refugees are supposed to have apartments/houses that have sleeping space for large families. (You probably have a zoning code requiring certain limits on family size for the size of the apartment.)
- Keep an eye out for any news about refugees being homeless (yes, that is happening).
- Report any suspicions about refugee kids turning up at school hungry or sick.
- If you see or hear that refugees are not being supplied with adequate winter clothing and bedding, take note.
- You should try to find out how many refugees are living in your community and what sort of housing they have. Have they been placed in dangerous slums. Especially try to determine if any of your local poor and disabled are being bumped down the list for subsidized housing.
- See if refugees who speak little English are being bugged unnecessarily soon by the resettlement agency for the repayment of the airfare loan (which they get a cut of!).
- Maybe even volunteer yourself so that you will have firsthand knowledge of any shortcuts the resettlement agencies are taking in the care of the refugees. Remember the contractors are supposed to be putting their own time and money into this and if they can’t do a good job they need to say to the DOS—we can’t handle that many refugees! Don’t send so many. (NOT! Ask for more federal money.)
So what do you do if you believe refugees are being neglected, contact the US Department of State.
Barbara Day is in charge of the resettlement of refugees to your towns via the contractors (or at least she was last I checked). Send her any information you have about refugees not being taken care of by your local resettlement agency.
Her address is:
Barbara Day
Domestic Resettlement Section Chief
Bureau of Population Refugees and Migration
2202 C St. NW
Washington, DC 20520
This may still be her e-mail address: daybj@state.gov
Apparently no 'pocket of resistance' in Reno as first refugees arrive, but we learned something important!
We told you months ago that Reno, NV was on the list to get a refugee resettlement office for the first time. You can see the abstract submitted by the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) here.
This is the puff-piece about the first family of refugees from the DR Congo (we are taking 50,000) and the welcome they received. Most of the Congolese are not Muslims but a small percentage are.
Note two things: first that this family had a home in Uganda (these are not destitute camp dwellers) and that there will be a public meeting on Wednesday night (the 21st) to (LOL!) answer the public’s questions, but alas (they must have chosen a small venue on purpose) and it is sold out. You have got to watch on line (so there goes the opportunity to make any noise).
I have to give them credit, the feds and their contractors/subcontractors really know how to get these offices up and running in secrecy.
But, this is the important news we learned:
The US State Department has chosen 47 new towns to be primary resettlement sites this year! Has your’s been chosen and you don’t even know about it yet?
From the Reno Gazette-Journal:
The Musungus are among 75 refugees coming to Reno over the next year as part of a refugee resettlement project sponsored by the Northern Nevada International Center. The nonprofit applied earlier this year to be one of 47 new sites chosen by the State Department to accept refugees from worn-torn countries.
[….]
While in Uganda, he was able to live better than most by using some of his musical background to work as a sound engineer, later moving up to managing a band that played in hotels. It gave the family enough to rent a home, but they were constantly required to check in with government officials regarding their status.
I bet they ‘sold out’ the event by stacking it with friendlies!
RGJ.com [that is the local newspaper—ed] and the Northern Nevada International Center will host a town hall meeting Wednesday, Sept. 21 to answer questions about the resettlement of conflict-zone refugees in Reno-Sparks.
The event is sold out. You can watch the event live from 6 to 8:30 p.m. on the RGJ’s Facebook page at Facebook.com/RGJMedia.
The whole story is here.
So what industry near Reno is looking for cheap labor? Don’t Nevada’s Hispanics need work?
First African refugees arrive in Montana; Helena advocates say they will wait until after November for theirs
Update: Be sure to see the mayor of Missoula’s op-ed of a few days ago. Not so much for what he says, but for the large numbers of comments on both sides of the issue. Makes you realize that there is a huge divide in Montana about whether it is wise to bring in the third world.
A family of 6 “Congolese” refugees have arrived in Missoula, MT as the first “east African” refugees we are told. (The Congo and the DR Congo are not in east Africa. The countries producing refugees in east Africa are Somalia, Ethiopia and Sudan. Just saying!)
Here is the story (Montana Public Radio) on the family that will be very costly for Montana and US taxpayers to support:
MISSOULA, Mont. (AP) — An exhausted Congelese family of six experiencing culture shock has arrived in Missoula, the first of an anticipated 100 east African refugees expected to be resettled in Montana over the next year, a resettlement agency official said.
The family arrived last Thursday and International Rescue Committee Missoula director Molly Short Carr declined to identify them because of privacy concerns, but said three of the family’s four children spent their entire lives in a Tanzanian refugee camp.
Temporary housing? The US State Department normally requires that they be placed in permanent housing upon arrival, and heck this contractor in Missoula has had months to get housing organized.
The family has been placed in temporary housing. The IRC will help them apply for social services, Social Security cards, register the children for school and help the parents enroll in English classes. The parents speak Swahili and French.
A total of 25 refugees are expected to arrive in Missoula by the end of September. Missoula County commissioners previously invited 100 refugees a year to resettle in the county, and the IRC re-opened its Missoula office earlier this year.
Meanwhile advocates for diversifying Montana in Helena say they will wait until after the November election to renew their call for Africans/Middle Easterners for their city.
Great Falls Tribune (hat tip: Joanne):
HELENA – The head of an effort to relocate Syrian refugees to Helena said Monday the group is delaying efforts until after the Nov. 8 election, saying the current political climate has stifled progress.
Stephen Maly, vice president of World Montana, said a grass-roots effort to bring Syrian refugees has been in “arrested development because of political turmoil surrounding the issue.”
“We’re trying to make progress without getting involved in politics,” he said.
Maly said there is draft legislation for the 2017 session to change refugee policy. But that is a federal issue and “not in the state bailiwick.”
He said the timing is horrible for his group of volunteers “to push something forward in political climate. People are misinformed and angry.”
“It’s not in the cards until the election is settled,” he said.
Continue reading and see how the subject of refugees has become a big issue in the gubernatorial contest there. This is the sort of effort you should make where you live—inject the refugee controversy in to any race you can in your state!
But, it also confirms what we have been saying—November is it! If Hillary is elected the flood gates to the third world will be flung wide open!
See our extensive archive on Montana, here. And, why are we getting so many refugees from the DR Congo? Because in 2013 the Obama Administration said we would take 50,000 because the UN told us to!
Are all Africans xenophobes, or do they just want to live with their own kind of people?
Yesterday I mentioned the latest African black on other African black crime and discrimination. Today there is a story at the Mail & Guardian Africa which lays out other, what some would call “xenophobic” or “racist,” unhappiness with “foreigners” in Africa.
I find this so amusing (sort of!) that we are expected to welcome the new African refugees to America and accept them into our communities without question (with no demands that they accept our heritage, history and culture), yet they, in their own country resent “foreigners” who prefer to keep their own culture and language. And, I am sure this same attitude, as this one described in DR Congo, can be found (and largely accepted) the world over.
From Mail & Guardian Africa:
THE last week has been a bad time to be a foreigner in some parts of Africa. Clashes between Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) police and political protestors that left some 40 people dead last week also revealed the level of hostility towards the Chinese in the capital Kinshasa.
[…..]
The Kinshasa residents also resent what they see as the Chinese preference for sticking together in segregated communities, retaining the customs, habits, and language in their native land. The same sentiments are played out in other African countries not just with the Chinese, but Indians, Somalis, and Lebanese.
By the way, for readers who don’t know, we are in the early stages of resettling 50,000 or so “refugees” from DR Congo to your towns and cities. We have resettled a whopping 1,390 from DR Congo in the first three months of FY2015! (Don’t ask me why the State Department has not colored the map of DR Congo, but the numbers may be found in the list that follows the map.)
Editor: I’m trying something new, not writing such long posts (but maybe more of them), what do you think?