“We’ll do all we can to help [get to 125,000] — and to hold the administration accountable.”
(Did you get that Joe? A little threat from Melanie Nezer!)
I guess they aren’t too annoyed that he isn’t going to flood America with poverty at least for the next few months. Maybe even Biden is wise enough to know that it would be a bridge-too-far for MOST Americans who are suffering due to the China virus hysterics.
Biden’s promise of 125,000 is for next fiscal year (2022) which begins on October 1, 2021. We haven’t admitted that many refugees since 1992, so Biden will be beating Barack on that score.
Prior to the Trump administration, HIAS and the other eight resettlement contractors*** resettled large numbers of Somali Muslims living in Kenya and chosen for the US by the UN.
However, for policy wonks who have followed the Refugee Admissions Program for over a decade, the flow will be creeping in shortly because there is a provision in the Refugee Act of 1980 which allows the Prez to change the cap during the year if he/she sees a need.
HIAS says Biden will follow the law and “consult” with Congress as he makes a case that he should begin raising Trump’s 15,000 cap right now. Consult does not mean Congress can say no, but they won’t say no anyway.
An astute readers suggested that Biden will use the coming months to send massive amounts of federal money (your money!) out to the contractors so they can get their offices up and running to ‘welcome’ the New Americans.
Biden Administration Announcements on Refugees Are Welcome News
WASHINGTON — In the first days of the Biden administration, HIAS has been encouraged by the new president’s swift and positive actions to welcome refugees. His pledge today to raise the annual refugee admissions cap in consultation with Congress is another much-needed step toward repairing the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program and making our immigration system more humane.
HIAS’s Melanie Nezer. Gee what is that little symbol in the left hand corner of the pic?
The annual refugee admissions cap — also called the Presidential Determination, or PD — was cut during every year of the Trump administration, setting a new record low each time.
For Fiscal Year 2021, the PD stood at just 15,000. President Biden has promised to consult with Congress and raise the PD before the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30, allowing more people in desperate need of safety to come to the United States as quickly as possible. The administration has said it will fulfill President Biden’s campaign promise to raise the PD to 125,000, its highest level in more than two decades, during FY22.
“President Biden has stated formally and in no uncertain terms that U.S. humanitarian leadership is back,” said Melanie Nezer, HIAS’ senior vice president of public affairs. “Rebuilding the resettlement system the prior administration nearly broke won’t be easy. The refugee resettlement program must bring people to safety, protect national security, and integrate people across the country, all in a contentious political environment and during a global pandemic. Despite these challenges, the president has made clear he intends to get there. We’ll do all we can to help — and to hold the administration accountable.”
*** For new readers here they are, the America Lasterswho want more refugees as the ones they previously resettled are struggling in the Chinese virus lockdown (as are many low income Americans!).
I meant to post on the numbers and geographic distribution of refugees in 2019 yesterday, but got sidetracked by the feckless GOP governors again.
So here is what I learned about calendar year 2019.
(We normally talk about refugee data on a fiscal year basis but because this is the time of year for look-backs on the previous year, I thought I would look back at 2019.)
We admitted a total of 27,513 refugees as your new neighbors during the course of 2019. 13% of those were Muslims from a variety of countries. The others represented many many religions, or none at all.
And, in light of the newest Middle East flare-up you should know that we admitted almost equal numbers of Shiites and Sunnis and so we have invited both of the warring factions to come live among us!
I’ll give you some more interesting data below, but first I want you to see where the federal refugee contractors*** placed the refugees.
Always humorous is the fact that Delaware hardly ever gets refugees, although it was then Senator Joe Biden who joined Ted Kennedy’s team to create the dysfunctional program back in 1979 (Jimmy Carter signed it into law in 1980).
(I love this pic of Joe and Ted! Do you think this pair had our best interests at heart when they figured out how to fund Leftwing ‘non-profit’ groups with taxpayer dollars to distribute refugees around America?But, of course we can’t expect Republican governors to know anything about the history of the program or how it works! That would be expecting way too much!).
I know it is hard to read the numbers, but the top five ‘welcoming’ states in calendar year 2019 were Texas, Washington, California, New York and Kentucky (slaughterhouse workers?).
The bottom five were Washington DC with 3, and big fat zeros for Delaware, Hawaii, West Virginia and Wyoming.
The top sending country was the DR Congo by far with 11,152 impoverished, poorly educated and low-skilled Africans delivered to many states(I need to do another post just on the DR Congo). Obama told the UN we would take 50,000 over five years and we are way beyond that number now.
Burma (4,681) and Ukraine (4,013) were the next two big senders. I need to look into this Ukraine conveyor belt because now that we have confirmed that refugees are used as pawns/bargaining chips for other purposes of the State Department, I’m wondering if that is driving that resettlement.
Of the 4,681 Burmese, 689 are the Muslim Rohingya which gets me to the point I made recently.
If you think that we are saving Middle Eastern Christians and other minorities from the three largest distribution centers in the Middle East—Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria—we are not.
During 2019 we admitted 1,364 Afghans and 1,290 of those were Muslims.
In addition to the 27,513 regular refugees we admitted in 2019, another 9,561 Special Immigrant Visa holders from Afghanistan and Iraq arrived. You can bet they are all Muslims and are treated just like regular refugees in that they can access social services and bring their families!
So we can safely say that in calendar year 2019 we admitted 37,000 refugees/SIVs and that approximately 38% of the total are Muslims.
And, get this! According to the Funding Guidance I’ve been yakking about for days, we will be taking another 10,000 SIVs from Iraq and Afghanistan (maybe Syria!) in the 2020 fiscal year. That is over and above the 18,000 ceiling that the President determined for the year.
The FY 2020 ceiling for refugee admissions established by the President, after consultation with Congress, is 18,000. In addition, applicants should include 10,000 Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) recipients in their planning. Applicants should assume similar admissions and recipient numbers for performance periods beyond FY 2020.
***For new readers these (below) are the nine federally-funded refugee contractors that operate as a huge conveyor belt monopolizing all refugee placement in America.
Church World Service poster girl!
For decades they have decidedin secrecy where to place refugees and they don’t want to lose that power because even as they pontificate about their religious convictions and humanitarian zeal, they are Leftwing political activist groups working to change America by changing the people and using your money to do it!
And, they do not limit their advocacy toward only legal immigration programs, but are heavily involved in supporting the lawlessness at our borders.
The question isn’t as much about refugees per se, but about who is running federal immigration policy now and into the future?
(I plan to say this once a day from now on!)
I continue to argue that these nine contractors are the heart of America’s Open Borders movement and thus there can never be long-lasting reform of US immigration policy when these nine un-elected phony non-profits are paid by the taxpayers to work as community organizers pushing an open borders agenda.
(If you are new and are confused because your local resettlement agency doesn’t have one of these names, just know that they are a subcontractor of one of the nine and you can usually find out which one by going to their website.)
Bye Bye Harry! Guess he made a big boo-boo here in 2013. Going nuclear: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/senate-nears-vote-curbing-filibusters-article-1.1524644
See GOP takes over (if somehow you missed the news overnight!).
Remember the Refugee Resettlement program, as we know it (run by federal contractors with vested financial interests in bringing in more and more immigrants), has been around for nearly 35 years and has marched on under the radar and unchallenged until recent years. Remember that it was Pres. George W. Bush who presided over the three biggest years in which Somalis (for instance) were admitted to the US.
For avid followers of RRW there is (in my view) only one way to slow this program and that is for you to continue to be vocal where you live, demand accountability from all those pushing to overload your towns and cities, and continue to develop ‘pockets of resistance’until the point in time when Washington is forced to listen.
And, then the next step after that is to get the first-ever serious Congressional oversight hearings of the whole original law created by Ted Kennedy and Joe Biden and signed by Jimmy Carter—the Refugee Act of 1980—which has never been thoroughly reviewed with an eye to reform or complete repeal.
By the way, if Obama succeeds in shoving amnesty down our throats, it will only serve to create more anger toward immigrants (and their supporters) in general. And, Republicans who think they can negotiate and capitulate to the Obama immigration agenda in order to take immigration off he table for 2016 will be stunned and shocked as the issue will not go away.
How much immigration we allow going forward is the most important decision our government will make in determining whether America survives or it doesn’t. You must stay in the fight!
Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) one of four Members looking for answers on the cost to the taxpayers of asylum fraud.
Last night I was going through news I’ve missed lately and found this excellent Newsmaxstory by Cheryl Chumley. Besides the encouraging news about a GAO study in the opening paragraphs, the article is a thorough source of information on what is happening with asylum and how asylees relate to resettled refugees.
Our present asylum system came out of the Refugee Act of 1980 (Ted Kennedy, Joe Biden and Jimmy Carter), so refugee resettlement and asylum are two sides of the same coin. We, with the UN, select refugees and fly them here. Asylum seekers get into the US often illegally, or overstay a visa, and then ask for asylum. Once granted asylum, the asylee gets all the welfare goodies that refugees receive (and can avail themselves of the services of the contractors). See our fact sheet, here.
Although to be commended for asking for a GAO study, if Goodlatte, Gowdy and others really wanted to do something they would hold hearings on the entire Refugee Program with the eye to reforming it! (Never been done!)
Four Republican congressmen have asked the Government Accountability Office to investigate the U.S. asylum process after a leaked Department of Homeland Security report showed that up to 70 percent of cases contained proven or possible fraud.
“Once individuals are granted asylum in the U.S., they become immediately eligible for all major federal welfare programs. And if, as it appears, asylum fraud is rampant in the system, American taxpayers could potentially be defrauded out of hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars each year,” House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte of Virginia wrote to the GAO. [Letter is here—-ed]
Also signing the letter were House Immigration and Border Security Subcommittee Chairman Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, and Reps. Lamar Smith of Texas and Jason Chaffetz of Utah.
“For years, there have been reports of abuse in the asylum program; we are troubled by a continued lack of appropriate oversight by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the component of the Department of Homeland Security that administers the asylum program,” Goodlatte said in an introduction to the letter.
Goodlatte referred to a report from DHS written in 2009 that was recently obtained by the House Judiciary Committee, revealing that 70 percent or more of affirmative asylum cases from 2005 showed signs of fraud.
Speaking of GAO studies, a few years ago then Senator Lugar of Indiana requested a study on the Refugee Resettlement program that had overloaded the state of Indiana with needy third-worlders. That study produced some useful information, but I’m sure the resettlement industry just ignored it. Or worse, used it to demand more federal $$$ for resettlement in over-loaded communities.
Update: Website for Refugee Resettlement Relief is here.
Last week we told you about Amarillo, TXand the mayor’s plea to STOP THE FLOW OF REFUGEES! Now, here is an op-ed from Joe Newton of ‘Citizens for Refugee Resettlement Relief’ in Georgia. From the Marietta Daily Journal:
Joe Newton, chairman, Citizens for Refugee Resettlement Relief in Georgia
Thirty-four years ago, President Jimmy Carter — grandfather of Georgia Democrat gubernatorial candidate Jason Carter — signed into law the Refugee Resettlement Act. This well-intentioned and costly law, however, is outdated and must be drastically overhauled.
According to Newton, 66,000 refugees have been resettled in Georgia. Wyomingare you listening!
In 2010 the welfare cost to Georgians was $17 million, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. Counties chipped in $4 million of your money — most of which came from your property taxes. The federal government pays most of the cost for 90 days, and then Georgians absorb the welfare cost in perpetuity. Estimates show that the Georgia welfare cost is now approaching $40 million annually and rising exponentially.
Because of this program, DeKalb County schools must provide costly instruction in over 100 languages. Cobb schools also have to grapple with this growing language burden.
To his credit, Gov. Nathan Deal asked the State Department to stop sending more refugees to Georgia— and it has so far complied. But that is only a temporary solution.
The bottom line: Georgia does not have to participate. It doesn’t have to accept the federal money. Research shows that if a state legislature cuts off the money, these people move to another state. [Wyoming!–ed]
We have long suspected that the employment numbers the contractors supply for refugees are bogus. Because the contractor is expected to find employment for the refugees it resettles by a certain date, they find anything they can possibly find for the poor refugee even if he/she quits it a few months down the road. Here is what Newton says:
Also, according to HHS, of the Georgia refugees who do want to work only 40 percent are still working after 90 days. At the end of a year, only 18 percent still work and there is a rapid drop-off soon thereafter.
This is an entirely new welfare class we are creating to the detriment of our state and culture.
Jason Carter—it is granddaddy’s legacy:
It is noteworthy, by the way, that state Sen. Jason Carter has never made any effort to try to reduce or eliminate this program even though it is overburdening his DeKalb County constituency. In fact, he supports it as part of his grandfather’s “legacy.”
Democrats joined the Republican governor to temporarily stem this refugee tide into our state. But why doesn’t the General Assembly just simply end this refugee racket by cutting off the money flow?
I wonder if the Republican Governor of Georgia could have a chat with the Republican Governor of Wyoming who wrote to Washington to ask for refugees!
Just a reminder: If it were true that refugees brought economic prosperity to cities, as David Lubell and his “Welcoming America”PR campaign says, then DeKalb County and the state of Georgia would be begging for more, not less!
Folks, the US State Department is running out of “welcoming” places to drop-off the thousands of refugees and the new asylum seekers/asylees entering the US each month.
