HOW THE FEDS respond to opposition against refugee resettlement.

Titled “Resettlement at Risk: Meeting Emerging Challenges to Refugee Resettlement in Local Communities,” [PDF] the report by [the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society] admits that communities “across the country” are pushing back . . .

The report blames the backlash not on any failure of the government to properly vet refugees but on “anti-Muslim views” held by native-born Americans. The report also points a finger at refugee watchdog Ann Corcoran, who started the Refugee Resettlement Watch blog in 2007 after she learned that Muslim refugees were arriving in her rural farm community in western Maryland. . . .

The report also calls for Congress to increase funding of the refugee program, which currently costs taxpayers nearly $1.5 billion per year, not including the social welfare benefits handed out to refugees. Unlike most other categories of immigrants, refugees immediately qualify for food stamps, public housing, Medicaid, Social Security disability and TANF, a monthly cash assistance program for poor families with children.

The resettlement agencies claim that most refugees are “self-sufficient” within three to six months. But, Corcoran says, that does not mean they are earning their own living and paying their own way.

“That only means that they have been set up on government welfare and the resettlement agencies are no longer helping them,” she said.