It’s official: US admits lowest number of refugees since Jimmy Carter’s Refugee Act signed in to law

by Ann Corcoran  Refugee Resettlement Watch

Yesterday ended Donald Trump’s first full fiscal year for refugee admissions as FY18 officially came to a close.

President Trump breaks the GW Bush record for the lowest refugee admissions.

However, I’m going to say it over and over again—-lowering the numbers for a few years is meaningless without a serious push for robust reform of the entire US Refugee Admissions Program!

The previous low admission year record belongs to George Bush who put the breaks on the US Refugee Admissions Program in 2002 with 27,070 arrivals due to fear of another 9/11.

Expect the media today to make comparisons to the mythical 110,000 refugee CEILING that Obama proposed as he was walking out the door. They never mention that their hero had a couple of low years when he admitted tens of thousands below the ceiling he had proposed (click that link above and see the chart).

Widget not in any sidebars

George Bush’s home state of Texas was the top resettlement state in the nation this past year! (Turning red states blue and the Rs can’t see it!):

Here is a map from Wrapsnet this morning. Total for the year is 22,491.

Since the numbers are hard to read, Wrapsnet has an accompanying list.

Here below are the Top Ten Welcoming States.

By the way, for most of the years I’ve been writing about the refugee program, California, New York and Florida were always at or near the top:

Texas (so much for withdrawing from the program!)
Washington
Ohio
California
New York
Arizona
North Carolina
Pennsylvania
Kentucky
Georgia

Since I know some faithful readers will be wondering, Minnesota was #11 , Michigan was #13, Florida #14, Maryland #19, Virginia #21 and Tennessee #23.

The bottom five states are below. I always chuckle when I consider that former VP Joe Biden of Delaware was one of the pushers of the Refugee Act of 1980 and yet his own home state is near the bottom always. In fact, 21 may be the highest number it ever ‘welcomed’ in one year!

Delaware (21)
District of Columbia (1)
West Virginia (1)
Hawaii (0) LOL! the state the loves diversity!
Wyoming (0) the state that has wisely stayed out of the program for these last 38 years!

Inquisitive readers might want to visit Wrapsnet and play around with the data.

Click on the ‘reports’ tab and then go to ‘Interactive reporting.’

You then put in your own parameters for the search.

You can find out which towns and cities in your state received refugees.

Endnote: Since the fiscal year ended on a weekend, there could still be a few changes in the final tally. I’ll update this report if I see that in the next few days.