16 Feb 2018 Washington, D.C.
More than 20 refugee resettlement offices across the United States will close as President Trump’s administration cuts down on the costly, taxpayer-funded process of mass relocating foreign refugees across the country.
An exclusive Reuters report reveals that more than 20 refugee resettlement offices, supported by the federally-funded nine voluntary agencies (VOLAGs), will close, and more than 40 resettlement offices across the U.S. will cut back on their services.
Currently, there are 324 refugee resettlement offices nationwide, but Trump’s State Department told Reuters that all of the offices are no longer necessary because the administration has cut down on the number of foreign refugees being resettled throughout the U.S.
The 6,708 refugees admitted into the United States for the first four months of FY 2018 represents a 79 percent decline from the 32,448 admitted during the same four month period of FY 2017, all but ten days of which took place during the Obama administration.
Refugee advocates and the non-profit voluntary agencies (VOLAGs) that have collectively been paid more than $1 billion annually by the federal government for decades to resettle refugees were hopeful that a slight monthly increase in refugee admissions that had occurred from October to December might continue into January, but they were sorely disappointed.
A total of 1,248 refugees were admitted in October, 1,858 in November, and 2,217 in December.
But refugee admissions for January 2018 dropped to 1,368.
Likewise, in his first year in office, Trump reduced refugee resettlement to the U.S. by 70 percent, as Breitbart News reported. In his first 11 months, Trump admitted 28,875 foreign refugees to the U.S., a vast difference from the whopping 93,668 foreign refugees admitted in the same time period under Obama.
The cutting down of resettling foreign refugees in the U.S. is a saving for American taxpayers, who pay more than $8 billion over five years to have refugees resettled in their American communities. For VOLAGs, though, the reduction of refugee resettlement has meant less federal money pouring into their pockets.
The nine VOLAG federal contractors tasked with resettling foreign refugees in the U.S. in return fund the local refugee resettlement offices. Now that refugee resettlement is being reduced by the Trump administration, the VOLAGs are raking in less money, which means less money to fund their local offices, prompting the shutdowns.
Most recently, Breitbart News reported how the CEO of one of the nine VOLAGs, Linda Hartke of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, stepped down just weeks after Breitbart News exclusively reported on alleged financial mismanagement, abuse, and fraud inside the refugee resettlement contractor.
Every year, Americans have been forced to pay more than $860 million in costs to provide welfare to the mass amounts of foreign refugees who have been resettled across the country, costing taxpayers in total nearly $2 billion a year overall.