Christopher Coen
Melissa Sogard
nancylee1
President Obama, via the Presidential Determination for Refugee Admissions, has announced his authorization for the admission of up to 80,000 refugees to the United States during Fiscal Year (FY) 2011.
The admission of up to 80,000 refugees to the United States during Fiscal Year (FY) 2011 is justified by humanitarian concerns or is otherwise in the national interest; provided that this number shall be understood as including persons admitted to the United States during FY 2011 with Federal refugee resettlement assistance under the Amerasian immigrant admissions program, as provided below.
The 80,000 admissions numbers shall be allocated among refugees of special humanitarian concern to the United States in accordance with the following regional allocations; provided that the number of admissions allocated to the East Asia region shall include persons admitted to the United States during FY 2011 with Federal refugee resettlement assistance under section 584 of the Foreign Operations, Export Financing, and Related Programs Appropriations Act of 1988, as contained in section 101(e) of Public Law 100-202 (Amerasian immigrants and their family members):
Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15,000
East Asia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19,000
Europe and Central Asia . . . . . . . . . . 2,000
Latin America/Caribbean. . . . . . . . . . . 5,500
Near East/South Asia. . . . . . . . . . . 35,500
Unallocated Reserve . . . . . . . . . . . . 3,000
The total of 80,000 refugees authorized by President Obama is the same number that he authorized for last year. Refugee Council USA (RCUSA) recommended that the president authorize 100,000 refugees in 2011. RCUSA is the lobbying group for the national refugee resettlement agencies and each years recommends the entry of larger numbers of refugees, seemingly irrespective of our capacity or ability to absorb those numbers of refugees. In fact they have spent the past year announcing to anyone who will listen that there is not enough public money in the system to cover refugees’ minimum needs during their first year or so in the US, in spite of the State Department doubling the refugee resettlement per refugee grant in January. They then go ahead and recommend that we increase resettlement by 20,000? Their local affiliates simultaneously tell everyone that they have no control over the numbers of refugees entering the US.
So remember that. They have no control this year over the number of refugees entering the US. They got 20,000 fewer refugees than they wanted. I wonder what their new excuse will be now when the media continues to find them neglecting their refugee clients?
