Ten governors representing their states, including three Republicans, have officially asked President Trump’s administration to resettle more refugees in their communities in 2020.
For Fiscal Year 2020, President Donald Trump will continue cutting refugee admissions by reducing former President Barack Obama’s refugee inflow by at least 80 percent. This reduction would mean a maximum of 18,000 refugees can be resettled in the U.S. between October 1, 2019, and September 30, 2020. This is merely a numerical limit and not a goal federal officials are supposed to reach.
Coupled with the refugee reduction, Trump signed an executive order that gives localities, counties, and states veto power over whether they want to resettle refugees in their communities.
Thus far, the Democrat governors of Kansas, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Washington have approved more refugee resettlement in their local communities. An additional three GOP governors, Doug Ducey of Arizona, Doug Burgum of North Dakota, and Gary Herbert of Utah have approved refugee resettlement in their states as well.
Localities and states have until about January 2020 to request that the Trump administration resettle refugees in their communities for Fiscal Year 2020 which started October 1.
Aside from the ten states approving, ten localities have also given official consent to the federal government to resettle more refugees in their towns and cities, including:
- New Haven, Connecticut
- DuPage County, Illinois
- Easthampton, Massachusetts
- Holyoke, Massachusetts
- Northampton, Massachusetts
- Salem, Massachusetts
- Durham County, North Carolina
- Bexar County, Texas
- Alexandria, Virginia
- Richmond, Virginia
Refugee contractors, as detailed by Ann Corcoran, have a vested interest in making sure as many refugees are resettled across the U.S. as possible because their annual federally-funded budgets are contingent on the number of refugees they resettle. Those refugee contractors include:
Church World Service (CWS), Ethiopian Community Development Council (ECDC), Episcopal Migration Ministries (EMM), Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), International Rescue Committee (IRC), U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI), Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services (LIRS), U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), and World Relief Corporation (WR).
As Breitbart News reported, pro-mass immigration groups linked to billionaire George Soros have previously claimed that another three GOP governors have signed off on refugee resettlement in their states, though their official consent has not been sent to the State Department yet.
The federally mandated refugee resettlement program has brought more than 718,000 refugees to the U.S. since January 2008 — a group larger than the entire state population of Wyoming, which has 577,000 residents. In the last decade, about 73,000 refugees have been resettled in California, 71,500 resettled in Texas, nearly 43,000 resettled in New York, and more than 36,000 resettled in Michigan.
Refugee resettlement costs American taxpayers nearly $9 billion every five years, according to the latest research. Over the course of five years, an estimated 16 percent of all refugees admitted will need housing assistance paid for by taxpayers.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.