Tag: Syrian refugees

Obama announces Syrian refugee numbers for resettlement to US—4,000 for FY2015

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

But, I don’t buy it! The numbers will be much higher!

The UNHCR has been spouting-off that the US will be on par with Germany in taking Syrians which is 10,000 or more per year!  Also, State Department honcho Simon Henshaw said in Turkey recently that our Syrian resettlement will come close to our Iraqi numbers in recent years which is close to 20,000 per year (approximately 68% of the Iraqis we are taking are Muslims)!

Syrian refugees coming to a town near you starting today! Photo: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/10/16/world/middleeast/syrian-refugee-crisis-photos.html?_r=0

Here is the Washington Post on the FY 2015 Presidential Determination.  Hat tip: Skip

As you read this article with its several references to 2015, remember FY 2015 begins TODAY!

The Obama administration will greatly increase the number of Syrian refugees approved for permanent resettlement in the United States next year but has opted against a separate refugee program to serve victims of that intractable civil war, administration officials said Tuesday.

The State Department is reviewing more than 4,000 applications from Syrian refugees seeking permanent homes in the United States next year or beyond, up from dozens considered for resettlement this year and last, officials said. The expansion reflects determinations by the United Nations refugee agency and the United States that tens of thousands of refugees living outside Syria are unlikely to ever be able to return.

The White House said Tuesday that it has approved permanent resettlement for up to 70,000 refugees worldwide next year, the same figure as for fiscal 2014.

Up to 33,000 could be resettled from the Middle East and South Asia, including Syria. Although there is no set target for Syrian refugees, they are expected to form a far larger percentage of the total than ever before.

The State Department has received more than 4,000 referrals in recent months and is processing them, a State Department official said. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak for attribution, said “large numbers” of Syrian refugees will begin to arrive in 2015.

We are then expected to be grateful to Obama for not setting up a separate Syrian program to bring in even greater numbers which the refugee resettlement contractors must have been clamoring for.  Remember the State Department kept the contractor’s testimony secret from the public here in June.

The Bhutanese resettlement program which the Bush Administration began will be closed we are told, so there will be lots more room in the regional allotment for the Syrians!  We resettled over 8,000 Bhutanese in 11 months of FY2014, here.

So we will increase the number of Muslims entering the US because the Bhutanese are mostly Hindus (60%), Buddhists and Christians.

Next year, Syrians seeking resettlement in the United States will benefit from the closure of a dedicated program for refugees from Bhutan that has brought tens of thousands of refugees to America over several years.

Because all the nations of the Middle East and South Asia are lumped together for purposes of refugee consideration, elimination of special consideration for the Bhutanese gives other applicants from the same region a better shot.

More importantly, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees has expanded the number of Syrians it screens for resettlement anywhere, including the United States.

The UN picks most of our refugees!

The overwhelming majority of refugees resettled in the United States are first identified as candidates by the UNHCR. The United States then does its own review. The UNHCR hopes to identify 50,000 for resettlement somewhere next year, and another 50,000 in 2016.

The WaPo story mentions briefly at the end that the Presidential Determination released yesterday does not mention Syrians by name at all—of course not!    Would you expect any honesty from this White House in the run-up to November elections?

Update:  Be sure to check the WaPo comments, they are more interesting than the news itself (well almost!).

Click here for our very large archive on Syrian refugees.

Michigan writer: we should take all the Syrians and Iraqis we can get!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I suspect this opinion writer (C.A. Joseph Peters) from Ypsilanti, Michigan writing in The Eastern Echo is connected in some way to federal resettlement contractor US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, but there is no mention of his affiliation and we are thus expected to believe he is just a member of John Q. Public.

Michigan is already in the top five states for Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) immigrant population. https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2014/02/26/what-is-the-population-of-middle-eastern-and-north-african-immigrants-in-your-state/

From The Eastern Echo (emphasis is mine):

Michigan is the best candidate to accept Iraqi and Syrian refugees, not because of its railroads and factories, forests and rivers, or even because of its system of government, but because of Michiganders themselves. Of the many chapters of the American immigration success story, two of its finest – Polish immigration in the early 20th Century and Lebanese immigration half a century later – were written in Michigan. Michigan may yet write a third.

The situation is this: Iraqis and Syrians are fleeing in the tens of thousands, and Michigan is in need of people. Michigan accepting these refugees would not only be generous but practical.

Mr. Peters then goes on with a lot of the mumbo-jumbo about Polish and Italian immigrants as if they are the same as Middle Eastern Muslims in their world view.  Then he talks about the Christian Middle Easterners as if that is all they will get from Iraq and Syria.  In fact, they will get mostly Muslim refugees from Syria.

The U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI), a non-profit refugee aid organization, reported that of the more than 120,000 Chaldeans (Iraqi Christians) who made their way to Detroit almost half a century ago, more than half of them are now business-owners, now helping new Iraqi refugees get on their feet in their new state.

Peters:  Michigan ought to “welcome” hundreds of thousands!

The crisis in Iraq and Syria is known well enough. Hundreds of thousands are fleeing. And Michigan, a state that has welcomed Middle Eastern refugees before, ought to welcome these hundreds of thousands who are feeling [fleeing?–ed] the region today, and encourage one generation of Middle Eastern Michiganders in preparing the next.

Michiganders need to bombard The Eastern Echo with another point of view!

Michigan is this year in the top five resettlement states, see here.  A few years ago the US State Department, fearing Michigan was in overload, slowed the flow (Detroit News 2008) but it looks like that limited moratorium is off now!

Relatives of Syrian refugees join ISIS

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment
Syrians wanting in to Turkey. Who is going to sort out which are legitimate refugees and which are ISIS sympathizers? Photo: http://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2014/sep/23/violence-erupts-as-syrians-fleeing-isis-cross-the-turkish-border-in-pictures

 

So how will security screening be done for the thousands of Syrians expected to enter the US from Turkey?

From CCTVAmerica (China*** News outlet):

Turkey is now host to more than 144,000 new Syrian refugees who have fled Islamic State battles in the past week. Some have relatives now fighting for IS. CCTV America’s Michal Bardavid reports from a Syrian border in Turkey.

Thousands of Syrians have joined the Islamic State or IS, abandoning their family. Those who are left behind are faced with the reality and challenges that their relatives are now part of a brutal and extremist organization.

Watch the news clip where the “refugees” distance themselves from their IS fighter relatives.  They aren’t dumb, they know their chances of moving on to the good life in a Western country will be diminished by their Caliphate-creating family members.

Good luck Homeland Security sorting through these people!

The Obama Administration should be announcing shortly how many Syrians we will be taking in FY2015 which begins on Wednesday (Oct. 1).

*** Just FYI, China doesn’t take refugees so they can keep China for Chinese people!

New UNHCR report on asylum: US is second most desirable nation in the world for asylum seekers

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees has released his ‘mid-year’ report and it’s no surprise asylum claims are up world-wide.

For clarification, asylum seekers are people who get into another country on their own and then apply for asylum in hopes of being declared legitimate refugees a designation which brings with it access to social services and usually puts them on track for citizenship in their new country.   The Tsarnaev family had been granted asylum and thus were called political refugees.  The no-borders agitators are trying to make the case that the ‘Unaccompanied alien children’ fit this category as well.

A few countries have temporary asylum.  In the US if you are granted asylum you are in!

UNHCR Antonio Guterres, former President of the Socialist International, said that the US has pledged “open-ended” numbers for Syrian refugee resettlement! https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2014/06/30/unhcr-says-us-has-pledged-open-ended-resettlement-numbers-for-syrians/

The other track for potential refugees is to be selected by the UN abroad and then to be assigned to a resettlement country—most are assigned to the US!

From the Malta Independent:

A UNHCR report released today shows that the number of people seeking refugee status in industrialized countries continued to climb in the first half of 2014, driven by the wars in Syria and Iraq as well as conflict and instability in Afghanistan, Eritrea and elsewhere.

[….]

We are clearly into an era of growing conflict,” said UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres. “The global humanitarian system is already in great difficulty. The international community needs to prepare their populations for the reality that in the absence of solutions to conflict more and more people are going to need refuge and care in the coming months and years. Unfortunately, it is not clear that the resources and the access to asylum will be available to help them.”

Despite the net overall increase in new claims shown in the report, more than two thirds of these were in just six countries – Germany, the United States, France, Sweden, Turkey and Italy.

Central Europe, in particular Hungary and Poland, as well as Australia saw declines in the numbers of people asking to be accepted as refugees.   [The Abbott government is clearly having success in pushing back the illegal alien boats!—ed]

Go here for the whole report.  The UN is happy to help you replace your population!

Squabble among aid agencies highlights rise in TB cases among Syrian refugees

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This is an article that is mostly about money and aid agencies, but it interested me because I didn’t know that TB was prevalent in the Syrian refugee population flowing into surrounding countries.

News about Tuberculosis among Syrian refugees in Lebanon. http://www.uossm.org/index.php/uossm-urge-the-who-to-implement-preventive-measure-to-stop-the-spreading-of-tuberculosis-among-syrian-refugees-in-lebanon/

It reminds us that we are taking refugees into the US with Tuberculosis and then we, US taxpayers, pay for their treatment.

Watch this incredible film from a few years ago where refugees for the US and for Australia with multi-drug resistant TB are being prepared by the IOM  for resettlement.  We first became aware of the TB issue among Burmese refugees in our earliest months of writing RRW in 2007 when the Allen County, Indiana Health Department was overloaded with expensive TB cases, here.

From Aidspan:

An expression of interest for a $10.18 million regional initiative to develop a harmonized response to a TB crisis among Syrian refugees scattered across neighboring countries was rejected by the Global Fund.

The pitch was determined ineligible because it was submitted by a cluster of UN and international agencies led by the International Organization for Migration (IOM): a violation of the eligibility requirements for regional proposals that limit regional organizations to those that are legally registered entities that are not UN, multilateral or bilateral agencies.

[….]

In submitting the proposal, IOM and partners the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, the World Health Organization, the UN Development Program and the national TB programs in Syria and six of its neighbors, aimed to develop a coordinated response to the widening TB burden among Syrians displaced by four years of conflict.

[….]

The regional TB initiative would have primarily directed funds to support national TB programs in Syria’s neighbors, either in service delivery to the refugee populations or technical assistance to the workers within the health system. Part of the problem is that the TB burden in Syria is higher than in its neighbors; Jordan, for example, was on track for TB elimination but its prevalence rate has trended higher due to the influx of Syrian refugees.

Another problem is that countries now hosting the influx of Syrian refugees have made clear that their communicable disease strategies — and attendant budgets — did not contain provisions to respond to the health needs of refugee populations. Iraq, itself undergoing yet another security crisis and a widening of its own TB burden, has made abundantly clear in conversations at the highest levels that there is just not enough money to diagnose, and treat, the refugee TB caseload.

See our health issues category with more information on refugee health and TB by clicking here.

Obama will soon be announcing how many Syrians we will be resettling in your towns and cities.  I have wondered what is holding up the process and assumed the delay was due to security screening, but perhaps there are some health issues causing the hold up.