Refugees and Asylum Seekers

• We want to restate what we have said before on this blog: we are in favor of legal immigration, and now we can add, we are in favor of granting refugee status to those who face persecution in their homelands; with a caveat: we are broke so we have to dramatically cut back and only accept those who REALLY face persecution as well as those who can afford to take care of themselves without welfare from the U.S. taxpayers

• Our Federal politicians have to face the fact that we can no longer afford to be the savior of every man, woman and child on earth, even though in our hearts we desperately want to be

• Correction: We can no longer be the savior of every man, woman and child on earth until we pay down our enormous debt

• To remind you of important U.S. financial numbers:
• Total U.S. national debt is

~$13 Trillion

• In Fiscal 2009 (the last full year for which we have numbers) the U.S. had a deficit of over $1.4 Trillion for just that year (and is expected to run a similar deficit for 2010)

• The deficit = Federal spending minus revenue received; this is money that we have to borrow and pay interest on until the money is finally repaid
  
• Federal spending in 2009 increased by 18% (including raises for Federal workers)

• It is interesting that the Obama administration estimated that the deficit would be “only” $482 Billion for the year; it appears we have a problem in managing if we forecast a deficit of $482 Billion and end up with three times that figure
  

• This Posting discusses something you might not be aware of: Every year we grant “refugee” status (which for purposes of this Blog will include those who are granted asylum, since it is basically the same thing except that we have no annual limit on the number of asylum seekers) to hundreds of thousands of people, many of whom are indigent and/or sick

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DISCUSSION

U.S. Refugees

(1) A “Refugee” is defined in the U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act, as amended by the Refugee Act of 1980, as a person who is fleeing {their homeland} because of persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion, and who is of special humanitarian concern to the United States; someone who seeks asylum fits under the same definition except they enter the U.S. and then ask for asylum

(2) Over the years, Congress and the Administration have “stretched” that definition to include many others. For example, according to a 2007 CRS (Congressional Research Service) report, Congress decided to allow those fleeing China because of the one-baby mandate to become “Refugees” in this country which gives them all of the rights of a U.S. citizen including welfare

(3) There are no age, income or even health requirements that must be met to obtain Refugee status (in the past, those with HIV/AIDs could not be admitted, but that is no longer true, and waves of entrants from Africa are admitted who immediately obtain free medical and other benefits which they have for at least seven years and which most continue to have because by the 8th year they have become naturalized citizens)

(4) Basically, all benefits that are available to U.S. citizens are available to Refugees, which include:

1. TANF - Temporary assistance for needy families
2. Medicaid
3. food stamps
4. subsidized public housing
5. Low-Income home energy assistance program
6. SSI- Supplemental Security Income
7. Social Security disability benefits
8. if 65 or older, Social Security benefits

(5) The most recent report to Congress by the Office of Refugee Resettlement (see the US Department of Health and Human Services website at www.acf.hhs.gov ) is for 2007; that report gave these figures for Refugees settled in the U.S.:

25% live in public housing

39.1% receive Medicaid or Refugee Medical

Assistance

24.6% have no medical coverage (so they

presumably will be subsidized by the new health

care bill)

15.3% receive cash assistance from SSI

49.3% are on food stamps

(6) In 2007, “welfare” for Refugees cost taxpayers over $10 Billion; unfortunately, we could not find any reports after 2007, so we do not know recent cost figures for welfare benefits obtained by Refugees; our best guess is that we pay at least $20 Billion, but that is just a guess; we called many Senators and Representatives’ offices and got the same answer, “they don’t know” and they don’t know how to find out, which is strange because Congress is supposed to oversee these programs

Note: The U.S. still conducts a “diversity lottery” every year that brings in 50,000 more people who get the same benefits as Refugees; the only requirements for these entrants is that they have graduated from high school and have worked at least two years in their country

(7) Where do we find Refugees to Resettle? According to a CRS report, the U.S. takes at least

one-half of the refugees recommended by the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees; According to someone we talked with at the UN [who asked to remain anonymous], we actually take much more than 50%

(8) A website called Refugee Resettlement Watch claims that 95% are chosen from the U.N. with some would-be refugees paying the U.N. to get on the U.S. resettlement list; we could not prove or disprove this allegation, but corruption at the U.N. would not be anything new

(9) Additional Costs to Taxpayers for Refugees:

Public Buildings: The U.S. has to pay for offices

throughout the nation that handle refugee

questions/issues

Law Courts: If a person is denied a claim for

asylum or refugee status, they get to appear before

a judge who hears their case where there is an

attorney for the claimant paid for by taxpayers (the

same is true when they apply for some benefits

such as Social Security disability; if benefits are

denied, they get a hearing to appeal

Lawsuits: In our research, we came across a lot of litigation brought by the states as a result of the disallowance of Federal payments for various refugee/asylum costs [the amount disallowed by the Federal government was hundreds of millions of dollars that that the states had to pick up because they had failed to apply for the correct program for the Refugee; Also, we found a class action settlement [called the Kaplan Settlement] forcing the USCIS [US Citizenship & Immigration Service] to expedite applications for naturalization so that people will not have their SSI benefits cut off after seven years even though they have not become U.S. citizens

(10) The Obama Administration wants to increase the number of Refugees: Every year the President, with the consent of Congress, announces how many refugees will be admitted from certain countries; you can go to the White House web page to see Presidential Determination No. 2009-32; for 2010,

Obama made the following quotas:

15,500 Refugees from Africa

17,000 Refugees from East Asia

2,500 Refugees from Europe and Central Asia

5,000 Refugees from Latin America/Caribbean

35,000 Refugees from Near East/South Asia

5,000 unallocated Reserve

80,000 Grand Total

In addition: the following may be considered Refugees

(if they qualify, meaning, that they don’t have a criminal history)

1. Persons in Cuba
2. Persons in the former Soviet Union
3. Persons in Iraq
4. In exceptional circumstances, persons identified by a United States Embassy in any location

Not referenced in the President’s directive are Asylum seekers who don’t have an annual quota and the 50,000 diversity lottery winners

So the President may bring in many more than 80,000 people, as you can see from the above, he may let in unlimited people from certain countries and also anyone recommended by a U.S. Embassy

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• Reluctant as we are to cut back on aiding those who want to come to this country, these are extraordinary times and therefore we need to dramatically limit Refugee status to people who require welfare services unless there REALLY is a present danger that, if left in their home land, they will be killed

• We stress that there REALLY needs to be the prospect that people will be killed if they cannot leave their homeland; a good example is the “List Project” which is bringing to the U.S. as refugees people from Iraq who worked for the U.S. government as translators, doctors, engineers, etc.; as a result of their work, their lives are truly in danger

• People who are fleeing their country because they want to have more than one child should only be permitted Refugee status if they can afford to take care of themselves [frankly, they should be applying to enter as legal immigrants rather than as Refugees]; we are told by aid workers that there are many people in this category, i.e. entering as Refugees or seeking asylum because they cannot afford to take care of themselves or their families [a case in point is President Obama’s aunt who argued that she feared for her life in her country because she is related to the President, but there happen to be many other relatives of Mr. Obama’s living just fine in Africa, and it is doubtful that someone would try to attack a very old, very sick woman because she is related to the U.S. President

• Many aid workers that we talked with suggested that, even in good times, we should consider not giving refugee status to those who are old unless they already have family living in the U.S. [an aid worker told us about an old man who was flown here at cost to U.S. taxpayers of $1,900 but who had no family or friends in this country; he died in public housing several months after arriving; the aid worker thought it was a waste of money for the U.S. to bring him in the first place and incredibly sad for the man to have died all alone in a strange place]

• The thing that bothers us the most, was that our politicians have no idea how much it is costing taxpayers to bring Refugees into this country who have to go on welfare

• We want to stress again that probably most Refugees who come here WANT very badly to work; we are not saying that they are lazy; however, with double digit unemployment, and the U.S. with a $13 Trillion deficit, we cannot afford to bring in and take care of more people who have not “paid into the system”