Refugee agencies nervous about what’s ahead for
program under Trump Administration, by
Ann Corcoran 12/15/16
Editor: Apologies for not posting all of the comments you sent yesterday,
most didn’t appear until I got up this morning. What is up with
wordpress?
I’ve been keeping an eye out for
stories about how refugee resettlement contractors and the Obama agencies
responsible for resettlement are reacting to the coming Trump
Administration. They are no doubt fearful that Trump will act on his
campaign promises—-some are more optimistic than others that it was all talk on
the campaign trail.
(For the record we expect Trump to stop the program (at a minimum) from
terror producing regions of the world within days of his inauguration on
January 20th. And, we expect all Obama political appointees responsible
for the refugee program to be gone before that date!)
Here is news from VICE magazine (featuring Texas) about some of the
reaction (emphasis is mine): Resettlement agencies in Texas and other states
with governors who have fought to block refugees are working harder than ever
to soothe their clients in the wake of the election of Donald Trump, who
pledged during his campaign to severely restrict refugees from settling in the
US. Now,
as resettlement agencies try to keep a calm face, they also brace for a
possible halt on the country’s refugee program, which advocates warn
could cause a humanitarian disaster.
Kekic points out that as legal
immigrants refugees are free to move anywhere they wish in America. For more on
Kekic, see what I said about him last month:
The president-elect has kept quiet
about his resettlement plans since his election, and his press office did not
return requests for comment. But during his campaign, Trump vowed to suspend
the acceptance of all Syrians and to stop sending refugees to any community
that opposed them. [More
on this below—ed]
“A Trump administration will not
admit any refugees without the support of the local community where they are
being placed,” Trump said just three days before the election in a Minnesota
campaign speech. He added that the state had “suffered enough” since Somali
refugees began arriving. Later, after a Somali refugee attacked students at
Ohio State, Trump tweeted that the 18-year-old “should not have been in our
country.”
If a Trump administration does decide to block refugee resettlement in
certain communities, the move would be unprecedented. Currently, the Office of Refugee Resettlement places
refugees throughout the country with the help of national NGOs under the
federal refugee resettlement program. States cannot turn away refugees, even if
their communities don’t want them.
Abbott’s withdrawal, largely seen as
a political move, can’t actually prevent new refugees from coming to Texas. But some warn that the
Trump administration could cut services and funds, effectively gutting these
programs. [This is the key in
my opinion because the resettlement contractors have almost no private
resources—ed]
“If the services we provide now were
to stop, it would be a humanitarian disaster,” Rippenkroeger told me. “There
would be people homeless, without medical coverage and food. It would be a very
direct human catastrophe so we can’t afford for the program not to be fully
functional.”
Look at this! This
program costs the federal taxpayer $100 million alone just for Texas for one
year! Texas is slated to receive about $100 million in federal
funds for refugee resettlement in 2017…
“There’s no amount of fundraising we could do to replace federal
support.” [That is
right because people give their private charitable gifts to efforts they
approve of!—ed]
Then this is something I expected was going on big time and not just in
Texas—emptying the coffers at ORR before January 20th (not necessarily for
refugees but to keep the contractor offices open).
Amid the uncertainty, Rippenkroeger said the Office of Refugee
Resettlement was working with a “nose to the grindstone approach” in setting up
a system to distribute federal funds through the Texas NGOs.
Refugee advocates in other parts of
the country where anti-refugee sentiment is common displayed similar reserve
when I asked them about Trump’s resettlement plans. Cole Varga, executive
director of Exodus Refugee Immigration Inc.—the organization that sued Mike
Pence, the governor of Indiana and vice president-elect, for trying to block
Syrian refugees from the state—told me he was hopeful.
“Currently, we have not received any
word from our national partners or the State Department on how the incoming
Trump administration will run the federal government’s refugee resettlement
program,” Varga told me in an email, declining to comment on the lawsuit.
Do not get excited by
Trump’s statement about not sending refugees to communities that don’t want
them. This is not realistic and a long-time Church World Service head
honcho gives us one reason why: Even if Trump allows certain
communities to pull out of resettlement, he can’t stop refugees from moving
states after arriving in the US—which means the most significant difference may
be the money states receive, noted Erol Kekic, executive director of the
national resettlement agency Church World Service.
“Immigration is a federal matter, and if the nation continues to admit
refugees, they’re free to go wherever they want the moment they arrive,” Kekic
told me. “They may not receive services, but they’re free to move, so
even if Governor Abbott says he wants none in Texas, how will he know a refugee
won’t move to Texas?” Continue reading here.
The RAP is built on a house of cards
primarily based on federal funding per head of refugee admitted to the US. The
ultimate answer is to stop the program (stop
the numbers coming in and the funding for it!) altogether until the Refugee Act of 1980 can be
reformed or trashed entirely.
I have to laugh when Kekic (above)
says that “immigration is a federal matter,” but I would bet a buck he is all
for those sanctuary cities thumbing their noses at the incoming Trump team
saying they (the city) will decide whether to enforce federal immigration law
or not.
On terror producing regions of the
world. I am talking specifically about Syrians, Somalis, Burmese Rohingya
Muslims, Afghans, and most Iraqis wherever in the world we are picking them up.
For example, Trump’s people can’t say “we won’t take any refugees from Somalia.” Most
Somalis are not in Somalia any longer, but scattered around the world (some in
very safe countries) and we are taking them to America anyway! Again, at this
point in time, Donald Trump as President must stop or slow the flow across the
board and not get into the weeds on the issue of whether a community wants
refugees or not!
https://refugeeresettlementwatch.wordpress.com/2016/12/15/refugee-agencies-nervous-about-whats-ahead-for-program-under-trump-administration/
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