We will answer these questions and more during this presentation.

1. What is the Refugee Resettlement?

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2. How does it work?
3. How many refugees has Missouri received?
4. Where are those refugees today?
5. What is a Wilson-Fish state?
6. Why Missouri must retain control and give oversight

   to our refugee program.

• • • • •

What is Refugee Resettlement?

Under the Carter Administration, in 1980 the United States Refugee

Resettlement Act was established. The main objectives of the act

were:

to create a new definition of refugee based on the one created at

here

the UN Convention and Protocol on the Status of Refugees,

to raise the limitation from 17,400 to 50,000 refugees admitted each fiscal year,

to provide emergency procedures for when that number exceeds 50,000,

and to establish the Office of U.S. Coordinator for Refugee Affairs and the Office of Refugee Resettlement

[link is here]

How does it work?

The Act amended the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 by defining a

refugee as any person who is outside his or her country of residence or

nationality, or without nationality, and is unable or unwilling to return to, and is

unable or unwilling to avail himself or herself of the protection of, that country

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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.

The annual admission of refugees is set to a 50,000 cap per fiscal year, but in an emergency situation, the President may change the number for a period of twelve months. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refugee_Act#cite_ref-6

Kennedy, E. M. (1981). Refugee Act of 1980. Refugees Today, 141-156.

Pres. Obama wanted 110,000 refugees by Sept. 1, 2017. Pres. Trump has dropped that number to 50,000. 34,825 refugees have been placed nation wide
in the last 4 and 1/2 months

(the US State Department has added 395 nationally since Feb. 13th)

NATIONALLY

Prior to 1980, the total number of all legal immigrants that were permitted to the enter
the U.S. numbered just under 300,000.
We are currently at a million per year and climbing.

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Somalian refugees that arrived at the Kansas City Airport on Feb. 6, 2017

http://www.kansascity. com/news/nation- world/immigration- refugees/article13105 2734.html

http://www.pewforum.org/2013/05/17/the-religious-affiliation-of-us-immigrants/

Upon arrival the “refugees” are immediately eligible for cash

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welfare, food stamps, housing, and medical aid to the value of $19,884 on each refugee the US takes in.

http://newobserveronline.com/refugee-costs-us-taxpayers-20k/

All refugees arriving in the United States are entitled to Refugee Cash Assistance (RCA) from the date of their U.S. arrival.

The RCA amounts vary based on the size of the

family.

here

[link is here]

If a family qualifies for Temporary Assistance to Needy

Families (TANF), they will not receive cash funds, but will

immediately begin receiving temporary assistance funds,

which provide the same amounts of funds as outlined for

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families (Refugee or American), yet unlike RCA, there is 5

year time limit to their receipt of funds which can be reviewed and extended depending on need. All TANF recipients must be participating in verified educational courses, volunteer placements, and/or employment searches in order to access these funds.

here

here

These are the proposed placement totals for the various states for the fiscal year of 2017.

The proposed total for Missouri is 2,430

tp://www.wrapsnet.org/consolidated- acement-plan/

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Since Oct. 2016 Missouri has received 789 refugees of the proposed state plan of 2,650 .

https://refugeeresettlementwatch.wordpress.com/

Trump ordered two things on Jan. 27,2017.

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1. A 90-day travel ban on all refugees coming in

from the seven countries listed on Obama’s

list.
Iraq, Syria (indefinitely), Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia, and

Yemen
2. A 120-day freeze on refugee resettlement.

As of Feb. 13, 2017

The federal appeals court that blocked the president’s travel ban on people from seven

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majority-Muslim nations did not directly rule out two provisions in the executive order.
Refugee resettlement agencies are scrambling to figure out what they will do if those provisions survive.

http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2017/02/13/514966051/for-refugees-and- advocates-trump-immigration-order-stay-leads-to-disarray

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judges did not address the most sweeping provision in the Trump order — the deep cuts in the numbers of refugees allowed to come to the U.S.

here

1. President Trump slashed the refugee quota for

fiscal year 2017 by more than half, to 50,000. (remember: Obama set it at 110,000 by Sept. 1, 2017)

2. In addition, the court did not rule on a provision that would make it easier for states and cities to veto refugee placements.

http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2017/02/13/514966051/for-refugees-and- advocates-trump-immigration-order-stay-leads-to-disarray

Governors are not notified before refugees are

placed in their state.
However there is constant discussion between state coordinators and

refugee agencies. The public is generally left out of the conversation .

here

• Trump has directed the Homeland Security secretary to “devise a proposal” to give state and local governments “great involvement in the process of determining the placement of refugees in their jurisdictions.“ Trump wants to give veto power to the governors.

http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2017/02/13/514966051/for-refugees-and- advocates-trump-immigration-order-stay-leads-to-disarray

The State Department alerted resettlement

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agencies that new arrivals will end on March 3.

http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2017/02/13/514966051/for-refugees-and- advocates-trump-immigration-order-stay-leads-to-disarray

For further information on the Refugee Resettlement Plan for Missouri go to this website and click on the PDF link at the bottom.

On Jan 31, 2017 there was a quarterly U.N.

Refugee Resettlement meeting

in Columbia, Missouri.

There were three points extracted from that

meeting.

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1. Administrative changes- moving the offices to Kansas City

Beth Cox is the new coordinator
2. Wilson-Fish- if the state gets out of the refugee

business, it simply changes who administrates

the program
3. Refugee Case Management-centralizing the system out-of-state

Wilson-Fish

The Wilson-Fish (WF) program is an alternative to the traditional state

administered refugee resettlement programs for providing assistance

(cash and medical) and social services to refugees.

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The purposes of the WF program are to:
•Increase refugee prospects for early employment and self-sufficiency •Promote coordination among voluntary resettlement agencies and service providers
•Ensure that refugee assistance programs exist in every state where refugees are resettled [there are states who are actively refusing to accept refugees]
•To strip away states ability to monitor and control the resettlement program.

https://www.acf.hhs.gov/orr/programs/wilson-fish

What do we do in Missouri?

We do not want to lose our ability to monitor the

refugees.
American laws for American courts.

here