Tag: Human Rights Watch

Is State Department refugee data being manipulated? Why are CEILING numbers missing?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Bill Frelick of Human Rights Watch: “…there is no requirement that the U.S. resettle a single refugee….” https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2017/03/31/confirmed-trumps-department-of-state-is-going-back-to-normal-refugee-admission-numbers/

Readers, more important, in my opinion, than the so-called ‘travel ban’ portion of the Trump Executive Orders held up in our power-hungry court system, is the issue of the President’s power to set the CEILING on refugee admissions for the year.
My contention is that he has the right to set the CEILING and change the CEILING without any Executive Order. 
The Refugee Act of 1980 says only that he must “consult” with Congress on an annual determination.  If he changes the number throughout the year (the law envisions a wish to increase the number and is silent on the issue of decreasing it) he must notify Congress.
Since the number set annually is a CEILING (not a target), then there would be no need to even announce any lowering of the number during the year, nor would there have been a need to address a procedure for lowering the incoming numbers in the original law. The Dept. of State and Homeland Security would simply just bring in fewer numbers.
The dirty little secret is that for years, the refugee industry has tried to turn the CEILING in to a target, but at least Frelick is honest.
Frelick of Human Rights Watch (a pro refugee organization) knows that this garbage (the Buffalo story mentioned it again) we keep seeing that there is a minimum 50,000 refugees required under the Act is inaccurate, see what he said here.
It’s the media, the contractors, and the bureaucrat holdovers who are busy bluffing the White House by counting on the fact that no one there understands the program and its history!
And, now as for the missing CEILING data…..

I’ve been following the program since 2007 and Presidents have never reached the CEILING in those years.  Obama came pretty close several times, but he was under the ceiling—by huge numbers—in two years in particular.
See this chart (below) from Wrapsnet for 2006-2016.  Pay close attention to the columns for CEILING and the ultimate admission numbers. See the gap!  It varies from year to year under the CEILING.
 

 
 
In FY11 Obama set the ceiling at 80,000 and came in with 56,424 (a shortfall of 23,576).
In FY12 Obama’s ceiling was 76,000 and he ultimately admitted 58,238 (a shortfall of 17,762).
Did anyone sue President Obama for leaving thousands “stranded in war-torn countries”? No!

There were NO lawsuits and no screams (at least in public!) from the contractors!

Look at this same chart for the end of March 2017 (at that point Wrapsnet still lists the last CEILING set by Obama (110,000) his highest ceiling by far). I discussed it here.
 

 
Now here is the chart for the end of April 2017.  I discussed it here.  See the note!  **FY2017 ceiling is currently in litigation.
 

 
Today, I decided to have a look at Trump’s numbers for May because of my earlier post today about the contractors getting excited by increasing numbers coming in, but what did I find when I checked this monthly update?
Can you see what is missing?
 

 
Incompetence or an effort to obscure the facts?
Did you see it? They have removed the CEILING column arguably the most useful number from this particular data base.
Why?  Is it a deliberate attempt to hide facts? Or, just some dumb mistake by an underling at the Refugee Processing Center (aka Wrapsnet)?  You decide.
And, one last thing, for a chuckle, note how extraordinarily high the numbers were for October, November, December of FY2017 compared to the previous ten years.  Do you think the outgoing Obama Admin. was in a hurry to pour as many refugees in to your towns and cities as they could before getting out of Dodge?  You betcha!

Eritreans top list of Muslim 'refugees' entering the US this past week

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

But, are they really persecuted refugees or are they economic migrants from yet another African country whose government is a mess?
And thus the fundamental question for us, as always, is: So why are they our problem?

Pordenone, Italy. 15th April 2015 — (A group of 47) Somali and Eritrean migrants on the run as they try to escape from a police station in Pordenone while being round up for identification, Italy. https://reported.ly/2015/04/15/african-migrants-make-desperate-attempt-escape-italian-detention/

I did my usual end-of-the-week look at Wrapsnet just now. If you are following my updates in the right hand side bar here at RRW, note that as of today we have admitted 44,888 refugees this fiscal year (the FY ends on September 30th).
Checking the numbers this week I was interested to see that only a little over a quarter of the 813 admitted since last Friday are Muslims.  The Syrian numbers are way down (18 of the 22 admitted this week are Muslims).  We did admit another 57 Somalis, but of the 49 Iraqis admitted, the vast majority (38) are Yezidis. There were zero Iraqi Christians admitted this past week.
I was also interested to see that our Burmese Muslim numbers are growing with 35 admitted this past week (from 5/12-5/19), but of most interest to me was the large number of Muslims admitted during the week from Eritrea (68!).
I have to admit, I’ve never really paid any attention to the flow of Eritreans to the US.  We know they are one of the larger groups flooding in to Europe mostly passing through Hillary’s failed state of Libya, but apparently our US State Department is scooping up a fair number of them as well.
They have an African “authoritarian government,” but why is that our problem? 
Eritrea and Ethiopia have been on-again, off-again at war forever.  Why is that our problem?
One of the ‘human rights’ complaints about Eritrea is its mandatory conscription to military service, so,again, why is that our problem?
Felix Horne photo: https://www.hrw.org/about/people/felix-horne

Indeed, many question whether the Eritreans are legitimate “refugees” or are they “economic migrants.”

“In refugee law, it can be tricky to draw the line between an economic migrant and someone who is fleeing persecution,” says Felix Horne, a researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Eritrea is the best example of that…”

Admissions of Eritreans are on the rise in the US

I explored Wrapsnet a bit to see what we have  been doing for about the last ten or so fiscal years with Eritreans and sure enough, the numbers we admit are on the rise.
In FY2008 we admitted only 251.  That number jumped to 1,571 in Obama’s first year. In 2016 it was 1,949 and, in the first seven and a half months of this fiscal year, the number stands at 1,307.
In the past week, ending this morning, we admitted 90 Eritreans and 68 of those are Muslims. That was the highest ethnic group of Muslims in the week. Are they getting “extreme vetting?”

If we continue to admit 90 a week*** for the remaining  weeks of the fiscal year, the Trump Administration could reach 3,000 by September 30th (well above any year during the Obama Administration).

Since FY2007 we admitted 16,897 Eritreans to the US.
There is a lot of useful information in the article I linked above and here from the Council on Foreign Relations if you want to learn more about the Eritrean tide spreading to Europe and America.  One of the points that jumped out at me is one we discussed, here, recently.
Note that US dollars sent out of the US economy prop up Eritrea’s economy:

Eritreans in the diaspora also contribute to Eritrea’s economic survival by sending their families remittances, which provide the country with foreign reserves and keep families afloat.

So, as Syrian and Somali refugee numbers decline slightly, we are seeing an increase in Burmese Rohingya Muslims to the US as well as the Eritreans we have featured in this post.
*** Here is the breakdown of the Eritrean refugee admissions for the week of May 12-May 19, 2017 from Wrapsnet:

 

Refugee resettlement industry panicked; fears funds will be slashed

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

And, if funds are slashed, the numbers to be resettled in your towns and cities will be slashed because as I have told you ad nauseum the resettlement contractors have little money of their own.  They need your tax dollars or they wither and die.

“If [Trump] decides to cut the state funds or federal funds for refugees, refugee resettlement will collapse…” (former Church World Service employee)

 
Here is what Newsweek has to say about the panic (hat tip: Michael). The article begins with Muslim immigrant fears, then this:

Another point of concern to many Muslim families and others is what will happen to the country’s refugee resettlement program during a Trump presidency, considering his repeated Islamophobic statements during the campaign. [At this point, reporter uses the word ‘Islamophobic’, I went back to see if this was supposed to be straight reporting or an opinion piece! It is supposed to be a straight news story!—ed]

[….]

We’re all afraid. Afraid is probably putting it mildly. Most refugee advocates are really terrified of what’s coming,” says Neil Grungras, executive director of the Organization for Refuge, Asylum & Migration (ORAM), a San Francisco-based organization that specializes in helping LGBT refugees. “From a global standpoint, this development could be a real catastrophe.”

He adds: “The world’s resettlement system—if the worst case scenario occurs—will take an extreme blow.”

Readers, pay attention to this next paragraph. Trump has the power to suspend the program, and to cut the funding (pretty much one and the same!).

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Bill Frelick of Human Rights Watch. Call me shell-shocked!

During his presidential campaign, Trump said he planned to suspend the Syrian refugee program, which is “fairly easy for him to do because this is discretionary,” says Bill Frelick, director of Human Rights Watch’s refugee program, who described himself as “shell-shocked” when he spoke with Newsweek on Wednesday. “In the U.S., there’s not a quota that has to be filled. The U.S. has a budgeted amount of money to do refugee resettlement, but there’s no requirement that the U.S. resettle a single refugee, and there’s no legal obligation to do it.”

[….]

Whether the entire refugee resettlement program will be shut down is difficult to predict, but I think it’s safe to say that from a policy standpoint, a Trump administration will be looking to limit the number of refugees resettled, and if refugee resettlement continues, it will be from countries that are ‘safe,’” says Joel Charny, director of Norwegian Refugee Council USA.

I had no idea that we were paying the UN for their work of picking our refugees, this is useful information:

In addition to resettling large numbers of refugees, the U.S. is also a key financial contributor to a number of refugee resettlement organizations, including the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR). The U.S. gave UNHCR nearly $700 million in the last fiscal year, and more than $1.3 billion in fiscal year 2015. What will happen to those contributions remains unclear; UNHCR did not respond to Newsweek’s request for comment.

[….]

“If [Trump] decide to cut the state funds or federal funds for refugees, refugee resettlement will collapse and we won’t be able to bring in any refugees to this country,” Vidhya Manivannan, a former employee of Church World Service—one of the nine U.S. refugee resettlement agencies—said in an email to Newsweek.

Click here for more.
I was interested to see that only one (former) employee of a resettlement contractor was quoted. Where is the gang? Where is the Refugee Council USA (the lobbying arm of the industry)?
More tomorrow!

Illinois is a leading state for Syrian (Muslim) refugee resettlement

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This is a longish article at the Chicago Tribune that anyone concerned with Illinois should have a look at.  Any ‘pockets of resistance’ in Illinois?

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Bill Frelick of Human Rights Watch says Syrian Muslims figure low on the list of asylum seekers. Has he ever looked at the stats? Or is he helping promote a victim narrative for the Leftwing media?  https://www.hrw.org/about/people/bill-frelick

But, this whining bit (below) jumped out at me and I want to bring it to your attention.
The article implies that Syrian Muslims are not getting into the US in the refugee stream, but that just isn’t true.  In 2015, 97% of the Syrians arriving in the US through the State Department’s Refugee Admissions Program are Muslims (the vast majority are Sunnis) coming from UN camps.
We know this from the US State Department’s own Refugee Processing Center data base (if you don’t believe me, see for yourself) where the State Department tracks nationality and religion!
Last week we reported, here in that same post, that Illinois had the 4th highest number of Syrians resettled so far.
Here is a snip below from the Chicago Tribune story. Is Frelick ignorant or purposefully being deceptive and why don’t reporters at these big papers try to find out the truth—that we are bringing mostly Muslim Syrians and NOT the Christians.
Incidentally, we wouldn’t have such a difficult time screening Christians, would we?

But Syrian Muslims figure low on the list of asylum-seekers designated as being of “special humanitarian concern” when U.S. politicians consider applicants from among the world’s 60 million refugees because of fears that would-be terrorists from Islamic State, also known as ISIS, occupying much of northeastern Syria, might slip in among those trying to escape the violence, said Bill Frelick, director of the refugee rights program at Human Rights Watch.

And, what the hell does he mean when he says ‘when US politicians consider applicants.’  What politicians?  Does he mean Obama because it is the Administration that actually considers applicants.  Sad to say, Congress doesn’t have much of a role in the final decisions (LOL! assuming Congress would have the guts to stop anything anyway).
They talk big—like Rep Michael McCaul, here, but he really doesn’t have much authority to stop Obama short of legislation that could stall the whole process.
We will be watching to see if there is any action by McCaul or other House leaders responsible for refugees—Reps Goodlatte and Gowdy—in the coming weeks.
The Chicago Tribune goes on to tell us more of what Frelick said:

“If there is even a whiff of a security concern, no consular officer or security officer (from the multitude of U.S. agencies vetting applicants) wants to be the one that has his name on the bottom of a form where someone turns out to have done something horrible,” Frelick said of the asylum-seekers from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and other Muslim countries in conflict. “There is every incentive to say no and very few incentives to say yes. This stigma of terrorism, the fear of a needle in the haystack, tends to hold the whole haystack back.”

That is all fine and dandy, but always remember that history tells us that the Jihadist tendency is more likely to rear its ugly head in the next generation as we have seen innumerable times with the Somalis.  The parents aren’t the Jihadists, it is the youths that we helped raise with our tax dollars who are radicalized in neighborhood mosques who have turned to Islamic terrorism.  It might be 10-15 years before we see the Syrian refugee kids make their move.  Why gamble?  Save the Christians first.
Continue reading here and listen to a Syrian Muslim doctor whine.
One final funny note (NOT)!  The family which serves as the star of the story (there is always a heartwarming refugee story) has a three-year-old name ‘Osama.’   I think if someone named their kid ‘Hitler’ it would send a message wouldn’t it?  Same goes for Osama!