Refugee resettlement industry panicked; fears
funds will be slashed, by Ann Corcoran 11/10/16
And, if funds
are slashed, the numbers to be resettled in your towns and cities will be
slashed because as I have told you ad nauseum the resettlement contractors have
little money of their own. They need your tax dollars or they wither and
die. “If
[Trump] decides to cut the state funds or federal funds for refugees, refugee
resettlement will collapse…” ( former Church World Service employee)
Here is what Newsweek has to say about the panic (hat tip:
Michael). The article begins with Muslim immigrant fears, then this: Another point of concern to many Muslim
families and others is what will happen to the country’s refugee resettlement
program during a Trump presidency considering his repeated Islamophobic
statements during the campaign. [At
this point, reporter uses the word ‘Islamophobic’, I went back to see if this
was supposed to be straight reporting or an opinion piece! It is supposed to be
a straight news story!—ed]
We’re all
afraid. Afraid is probably putting it mildly. Most refugee advocates are really
terrified of what’s coming,” says Neil Grungras, executive director of the
Organization for Refuge, Asylum & Migration (ORAM), a San Francisco-based
organization that specializes in helping LGBT refugees. “From a global
standpoint, this development could be a real catastrophe.”
He adds: “The
world’s resettlement system—if the worst case scenario occurs—will take an
extreme blow.” Readers, pay attention
to this next paragraph. Trump has the power to suspend the program, and to cut
the funding (pretty much one and the same!).
Bill Frelick of
Human Rights Watch. Call me shell-shocked! During his
presidential campaign, Trump said he planned to suspend the Syrian refugee
program, which is “fairly easy for him to do because this is discretionary,”
says Bill Frelick, director of Human Rights Watch’s refugee program, who
described himself as “shell-shocked” when he spoke with Newsweek on Wednesday. “In the U.S.,
there’s not a quota that has to be filled. The U.S. has a budgeted amount of
money to do refugee resettlement, but there’s no requirement that the U.S.
resettle a single refugee, and there’s no legal obligation to do it.”
Whether the
entire refugee resettlement program will be shut down is difficult to predict,
but I think it’s safe to say that from a policy standpoint, a Trump administration
will be looking to limit the number of refugees resettled, and if refugee
resettlement continues, it will be from countries that are ‘safe,’” says Joel
Charny, director of Norwegian Refugee Council USA.
I had no idea
that we were paying the UN for their work of picking our refugees, this is
useful information: In addition to resettling large numbers of refugees, the
U.S. is also a key financial contributor to a number of refugee resettlement
organizations, including the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR). The U.S. gave
UNHCR nearly $700 million in the last fiscal year, and more than $1.3 billion
in fiscal year 2015. What will happen to those contributions remains unclear;
UNHCR did not respond to Newsweek’s request for comment.
“If [Trump]
decide to cut the state funds or federal funds for refugees, refugee
resettlement will collapse and we won’t be able to bring in any refugees to
this country,” Vidhya Manivannan, a former employee of Church World Service—one
of the nine U.S. refugee resettlement agencies—said in an email to Newsweek. Click here for more.
I was
interested to see that only one (former) employee of a resettlement contractor
was quoted. Where is the gang? Where is the Refugee Council USA (the lobbying arm of the industry)? More
tomorrow!
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