Resettlement Agencies: Increase Middle East-South Asia Refugees in Michigan by 40 Percent, Send 100 to Flint

Breitbart News has obtained the FY 2017 refugee resettlement proposals from the five leading resettlement agencies that operate in Michigan showing they plan to jam down a 40 percent increase in refugees from the “Middle East-South Asia” region, which includes Syria, on residents of Michigan in the fiscal year that begins on October 1.

These plans in Michigan are completely consistent with the nationwide “refugee number determination” the Obama Administration presented to Congress on Tuesday: an increase of the FY 2017 ceiling by 29 percent to 110,000, up from the ceiling of 85,000 that was approved for FY 2016. The actual final number for FY 2016 is likely to reach or exceed the original ceiling number, if the run rate of the last few months continues for the final two weeks of the fiscal year.

In their FY 2016 plans, these five agencies–Lutheran Social Services (which recently changed the name of its Michigan operation to Samaritas), Church World Service, Catholic Charities, HIAS (formerly the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society), and Episcopal Migration Ministries— proposed 4,060 refugees overall to be resettled in Michigan, 2,567 from the “Middle East-South Asia” region, which includes Syria. As of September 13, 3,783 total refugees, 1,217 of whom are from Syria, have been resettled in Michigan to date this fiscal year. At the accelerated run rate of the past few months, year end numbers are likely to hit or exceed the FY 2016 plan for 4,000 total refugees in Michigan, of which over 1,300 are Syrian refugees.

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