At present rate of admissions, Trump FY17 refugee numbers will be in average range
Posted by Ann Corcoran on May 26, 2017
Sorry to all of you who follow RRW regularly to have to keep repeating myself, but I want to blow a gasket every time I see a story about “plummeting” refugee admission numbers.
The story that steamed me this morning is one Drudge has listed (what is going on with Drudge, losing his mojo?).
Here is the story from Pew (I know what Pew is!) with this blaring headline:
Pew: Refugee arrivals in U.S. decline sharply as world crisis grows
What Pew is doing in its story (besides skewing the news against Trump), read it yourself, is comparing October FY17 (9,945) the first month of this fiscal year when Obama was pouring refugees in at an unheard of rate to April FY17 (3,316) when frankly Trump is bringing in a moderate number of refugees.
Look at this chart (again!) (from Wrapsnet):
After you note that October FY17 was the largest first month (by far) of any fiscal year in the last eleven, then take note that Trump’s April (3,316) is larger than Bush’s April 2007 (2,060) or even Obama’s April 2011 (2,190). So what the h*** are they talking about! I don’t recall any story in 2011 bashing Obama for his huge drop from October FY11 to April FY11!
I also had a chuckle as I read the Pew story about how the numbers are plummeting in Texas, but not a mention that the state withdrew from the program and that although it is up and running now (without the state government), the transition to the Wilson-Fish program did cause a slight slowdown. Texas is still the number 2 state behind California for refugee admissions this year.
Remember that when Trump came in to office he wanted a MORATORIUM on refugee resettlement for 4 months while they reviewed the program for security concerns and, now long-forgotten, they wanted to look into the issue of notification to communities. That would have caused “plummeting” admission numbers.
With no talk of reforming the program anywhere in sight, Trump is now on schedule to admit to the US somewhere around 60,000 refugees this year. Compare that to Bush in 2007 and Obama in 2011 and 2012—all three years under 60,000!
Endnote: As of today we are at 45,732 for this fiscal year. See my right hand sidebar where I am tracking the numbers every few days.
And check out the fact that they have removed the CEILING (which is not a target!) from the chart for this year—the Obama dream number for FY17 of 110,000 has been removed. (See that Obama never had a ceiling that high for his previous 7 years! Why was that?)
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