State Department: Lousy economy, who cares, bring in more refugees

Wishful thinking, I guess, but I thought there was some possibility that the Obama Administration would take into account the rotten economy and high unemployment figures and slow the flow of refugees into the US (and on to our welfare rolls) this coming fiscal year.   Fat chance in light of recent revelations about the Democratic strategy of flooding the welfare system and changing the demographics of the US.

According to a report from President Obama to Congress as the new fiscal year begins tomorrow, we will keep record high numbers of refugees coming to America. Nevermind that in some areas of the country only 20% of refugees find work and fear eviction from their apartments after only a few months in their new homes.

I haven’t yet read the full report, “Proposed Refugee Admissions for FY2010, Report to Congress from the President,” but the chart on page 5 tells us all we need to know.   Incidentally in fiscal year 2009, a deep recession year which ends today, we resettled more refugees than any year since 9/11.  The ceiling* for 2009 was 80,000 and at the time of this report the projected actual resettlement number is 75,000 (in a few days we should know the actual number).

For Fiscal year 2010, the State Department and the Office of the President set the ceiling for admissions at 80,000 again.  That figure includes a substantial increase in the number of Africans proposed for resettlement while East Asia and the Near East/South Asia will have less slots for resettlement.  Which, of course, suggests that Iraq numbers may not be increasing (again I haven’t read the whole report, to see exactly what they say about the controversial Iraqi refugees).

I did note that. according to the report, there have been meetings of insiders in the refugee industry on reforming some aspects of the program, but surely they didn’t include any outside criticism from the likes of us or our readers.

Interesting stats from FY2008

The report also gives us some interesting information and statistics from 2008.  We learn that the twelve top states for refugee resettlement are (in decreasing order by number of refugees resettled):  CA, TX, FL, NY, MI, AZ, IL, GA, NC, WA, PA, IN.   Among the lowest receiving states are Arkansas (9), West Virginia(5), and Delaware (1).  And, of course, Wyoming doesn’t participate in the program and so has zero.

I have said this on many previous occasions, but I find it fascinating that Delaware takes virtually no refugees.  One might argue that it’s such a small state, but so is Rhode Island and it took 134 in 2008 to Delaware’s 1.  Why is that interesting, because former Senator, now VP, Joe Biden is one of the original sponsors of the Refugee Act of 1980 and I think somehow he (an elitist like Ted Kennedy, the chief sponsor) likes the idea of refugees, just not too close to home.   I even called Delaware officials once and got some gobbledegook answer about why that state took so few.

I’m sure we will have more on this report as we find time to digest it all!

 *”Ceiling” is an important word. It is not a goal per se, although the resettlement industry advocates are making it one.  Its original meaning was that we were not to go over that number, not necessarily shoot for it.