Fiscal year 2014 just ended on September 30th, so this is a good time to visit the Refugee Processing Center where statistics are managed for the US State Department. Shortly the 2014 year-end stats will disappear down a black hole, so visit Admissions and Arrival reports now! (FY2015 stats for the first month of this new fiscal year will appear shortly after the end of October.)
Just a reminder that it will be your local government and state that will be responsible for providing (paying for!) interpreters in schools, health departments and the criminal justice system as these refugees are resettled in your towns and cities.
Here are the top languages spoken by refugees who arrived in the US in FY2008 – FY2014 (and be sure to note the number speaking ‘minor’ languages):
1 Arabic 91,040
2 Nepali 78,862
3 Sgaw Karen 36,419
4 Somali 34,632
5 Spanish 27,814
6 Chaldean 15,694
7 Burmese 12,248
8 Armenian 12,066
9 Kayah 10,384
10 Other Minor Languages 9,448
Total 328,607
By the way, the US State Department’s Refugee Processing Center previously provided a lot of other very useful information—like what cities refugees were resettled in—which is no longer available to the public. One more effort to keep this program as secret as they can possibly make it.
Coming to a town near you! Photo: http://www.humanosphere.org/world-politics/2013/02/mixed-reactions-to-the-dr-congo-peace-deal/
Your tax dollars:
We told you here in June of 2013that the US was aiming to resettle 50,000 Congolese (DR Congo) refugees over the next few years and the US State Department has been busy, busy, busy getting the flow started. Indeed this article tells us something we didn’t know—they want to get the 50,000 here by 2019!
If you visit the statistics at the Refugee Processing Center(US State Department) you will see that at the close of Fiscal year 2014 on September 30th, we resettled 4,540 from the Democratic Republic of the Congo during the year (Don’t look at the map where someone has left out DR Congo! or case numbers, look at individuals numbers listed for DR Congo in chart below map).
Apparently enough of them are here to begin studying their needs, in this case, their need for costly mental health treatment (also needed by the Bhutanese). The report (partially funded by the UN) suggests “leveraging local resources.” Of course that means the feds aren’t going to pay for it—state and local taxpayers will! Wyoming are you listening!
Anne Richard, US State Department and Antonio Guterres head of UNHCR. The UN is calling the shots on Congolese resettlement to America. Richard to Socialist Guterres: Jump? How high?
AUSTIN, Texas — The U.S. government must do more to address the needs of Congolese refugee “women at risk” through trauma-related services and social support, according to a report by the Institute on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault (IDVSA) at The University of Texas at Austin and the Department of Sociology & Social Work at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University.
The report issued recommendations for the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, which is responsible for resettling 50,000 Congolese refugees in the United States by 2019. The recommendations are based on a study of refugee women from the Democratic Republic of Congo who have resettled in the United States after decades of unrest in their homeland.
“The women who participated in our study experienced multiple traumas and hardship,” said Noël Busch-Armendariz, lead author of the report and director of IDVSA in The University of Texas at Austin School of Social Work. “This study provides empirical evidence to inform the tremendous efforts already underway to meet the needs of Congolese female refugees.”
Although the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program emphasizes economic integration through job placement, the report finds that many refugee women had unmet needs for trauma-related services, social support and longer-time financial support, said IDVSA researcher and project director Karin Wachter. The study was partially funded by a $15,000 grant from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). [So the UN is basically telling Americans to spend more money on this problem they created for us!—ed]
Leveraging and long-term service = your money!
“Access to long-term services to address trauma and loss is essential for this population,” said Maura B. Nsonwu, the lead researcher from North Carolina A&T. “The U.S. Refugee Admissions Program could leverage local resources for these services, such as domestic violence and sexual assault centers in cities who receive Congolese refugees.”
So what does the US get out of this arrangement when mentally-impaired single mothers raise large numbers of children in your town?
Actually the mayor did what every sensible mayor should be doing—she insisted on a delay so that the International Rescue Committee could “present a formal refugee integration plan” to local elected officials and others (presumably with public input!).
Athens, Georgia dodges a bullet for now as Democratic Mayor Nancy Denson insists on a formal plan for refugee integration before resettlement begins (what a novel idea!).
Make them have a long range plan for your town!
Such a plan would include research on where the refugees will work, what social services they will need, how many children can the school system accommodate, how much affordable housing is available, is the health department ready to take care of some communicable diseases, how long will the resettlement contractor be involved with refugees it resettles, how many, for how many years—etc. Make sure there is public input.
And, be sure to make them spell out exactly which refugees from which countries are coming to your city!
And, finally insist on an escape clause so that, if the State Department contractor brings too many, the city can say STOP!
(Remember there are several US cities trying to get them to stop to no avail—Manchester, NH, Springfield, MA and Amarillo, TX come immediately to mind.)
Our previous coverage of the Athens, GA refugee controversy can by found by clicking here, here, and here.
Here is the full story yesterday from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution which sought comment from the US State Department and got none (no surprise there). Emphasis is mine.
The U.S. State Department has shelved a plan to resettle 150 refugees in Athens following objections from Mayor Nancy Denson and Gov. Nathan Deal’s administration.
The International Rescue Committee said it got an email last week from the federal agency saying it would consider the proposal “after additional planning and community consultation.”
J.D. McCrary, the IRC’s executive director in Atlanta, said in an email that he was “not entirely sure what is meant by additional planning and community consultation as this was extensively undertaken during the past year.”
“There is always hope in the future and the good news is that senior level officials from the State Department are planning a visit to Athens next month to view the area in person for future consideration,” he wrote. [Boy, would I love to be a fly on the wall!—ed]
“During the visit we will be clarifying with them what additional planning and consultations they are requiring, showing them firsthand why Athens has already become a preferred destination for refugees seeking a new life, and discussing a concrete plan to resubmit a proposal to establish an official resettlement site.”
[….]
The IRC has proposed resettling refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Iraq, Myanmar and Syria in the region in the coming months.
In a letter sent to the U.S. State Department in August, Georgia Human Services Commissioner Keith Horton said he did not want the refugee resettlement plan to “go forward at this time.”
“The degree of cooperation, communication and consultation is not where I would like for it to be,” Horton wrote. “It is my hope that the community of Athens/Clarke County and the IRC will continue to work together to resolve the issues and concerns that have been raised.”
Horton’s letter followed one Denson sent Deal’s administration two days before. In her letter, the Democratic mayor complained the IRC did not reach out to enough people in her community early enough about its plans. She also raised concerns that the refugees could strain public resources in Athens-Clarke County, which is home to about 120,000 residents. Denson said she wanted the IRC to delay its efforts and to “present a formal refugee integration plan” to local elected officials and others.
LOL! Seeing a new “pocket of resistance,”I suspect we will see “Welcoming America” moving in to re-educate the mayor and others if they haven’t arrived there already!
Update December 9, 2015: We have much more up-to-date data and the percentage of Syrian Muslims coming into the US this fiscal year is now 99%, here.
Update November 17, 2015: This post is over a year old. We do know exactly how many Muslims are in the refugee stream arriving from Syria, it is well over 97%, see today’s post, here.
That is a question I get all the time. My best guess is that a few will be, but the vast majority will be Sunni Muslims.
My guess is based on a few facts from the past, first that of the Iraqi refugees we have resettled in recent years, the majority (we hear 62% this past year) are Muslims, and secondly, I have never seen in print any clamor from our major refugee resettlement contractors***, most of which are ostensibly Christian groups (US Conference of Catholic Bishops, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee service and others), for specifically saving the Christians of the Middle East.
Now outdated map (thanks to ISIS), but it gives you some idea of the areas that were Christian. See this article about Christians fighting with Assad against the “rebels.” http://thechristians.com/?q=node/880
Maybe someone could direct me to anything where these contractors said to the US State Department—we want more Christians to resettle! My guess as to why they haven’t said that (correct me if I’m wrong and they have) is because of an overwhelming and insane desire to be politically correct and a fear of being called Islamophobes.
(Oh, and believe me, they aren’t taking mostly Muslims because they think they can convert them to Christianity, this is all about multiculturalism, diversity and inclusiveness!)
A writer (Terry Mattingly) at a website called ‘GetReligion’ addressed his question—how are refugees being chosen?—in response to the Washington Postarticle of this past week (our post here) where the WaPo tells us the State Department is processing 4,000 resettlement applications.
Mattingly found more evidence that most will be Muslims.
He says that since they will come from UN camps (after all the UN is pre-selecting for the US State Department), and the Christians are not in camps, surely the majority will be Muslims. As a matter of fact, I’ve read that many Christians are still in Syria somewhat protected by the secular Assad government.
Most Syrian refugees considered candidates for U.S. residency have been living in refugee camps or elsewhere outside Syria for a year or much longer.
And then this from Terry Mattingly (emphasis is mine):
This leads to a logical question: Who is, when push comes to shove, running these UNHCR camps? In particular, I was curious to know how this selection system would affect the cases of refugees who are part of oppressed religious minority groups. I decided to ask a veteran human-rights activist about that.
The response? Christians on the run have been avoiding these camps because they tend to be hostile to minority-faith refugees. In other words, these camps are run by those in majority forms of Islam, even if they have – logically enough – clashed with the radicalized Islamic State.
In other words, we have a major religion ghost in this story. It is likely that the current pipeline to safety is all but closed to Christiansand members of other minority faiths in this ravaged region.
***The US State Department’s nine major contractors (they have hundreds of subcontractors working for them if you don’t recognize these names in your cities):
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
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 contractorsmust have been clamoring for. Remember the State Department kept the contractor’s testimony secret from the public herein 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.
Fiscal year 2014 just ended on September 30th, so this is a good time to visit the Refugee Processing Center where statistics are managed for the US State Department. Shortly the 2014 year-end stats will disappear down a black hole, so visit Admissions and Arrival reports now! (FY2015 stats for the first month of this new fiscal year will appear shortly after the end of October.)
