Every year about 130,000 people in the U.S. are hospitalized with a foodborne illness, and 3,000 people die.

To protect against this, the Food and Drug Administration inspects facilities that produce and handle food to ensure safety and compliance with regulations.

But a new report from the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General raises some red flags about the inspections program.

“We found a number of weaknesses in the way that FDA is protecting the food supply,” Meridith Seife, the deputy regional inspector general, told us.

For instance, FDA often relies on facilities to voluntarily correct violations, which can be ineffective.

Consider this case: Back in 2013, when FDA inspectors went into a facility in Kansas that produces beans and sauces, they uncovered serious problems.

“Inspectors found rain water leaking through the roof, directly above where food was being prepared,” Seife says. “And perhaps most worrisome, the inspection revealed the presence of listeria throughout the facility,” which is a pathogen that can cause life-threatening illness.

The FDA issued a warning letter to the facility and requested prompt correction. But the problems were not fixed. “These violations went uncorrected for the next two years,” according to the report.

“It is clear that FDA could have done more in this case to have compelled the facility to act more quickly,” Seife told us.

Overall, the report concludes that the FDA “consistently failed to conduct timely followup inspections to ensure that facilities corrected significant inspection violations.” And in 17 percent of cases, the FDA did not conduct a followup inspection at all. Also, in some instances where inspectors found significant violations, the FDA took no enforcement action.

The Food Safety Modernization Act, which was signed into law in 2011, aims to ensure a prevention-oriented approach to food safety. The Act gave FDA new enforcement authority so the agency could better respond to problems. But the new report concludes that FDA has rarely taken advantage of these new tools.

“We think FDA really needs to do more to take swift and effective action,” to ensure that safety problems at food facilities are fixed promptly, Seife says.

Officials at the FDA have reviewed the report. The agency’s response is included as an appendix. “FDA agrees that there are challenges in its conduct of domestic inspections,” writes Lisa Rovin, deputy associate commissioner for public health strategy and analysis at the FDA.

Rovin says that FDA concurs with the recommendations in the inspector general’s report, including the need to ensure better use of resources and to take appropriate action against all facilities with significant violations.

In a response from the FDA Wednesday, a spokesperson said the agency is working as effectively and rapidly as possible to implement the changes brought forth by the Food Safety Modernization Act. She says “our commitment to public health remains strong and unwavering.”

The Trump administration plans to cap the number of refugees the U.S. will accept next year at 45,000. That’s a dramatic drop from the level set by the Obama administration, and would be the lowest number in years.

The White House formally announced its plans in a report to congressional leaders Wednesday, as required by law.

The number of refugees the U.S. admits has fluctuated over time. But this cap is the lowest that any White House has sought since the president began setting the ceiling on refugee admissions in 1980.

Refugee resettlement agencies are disappointed with the 45,000 cap, which they say falls far short of what’s necessary to meet growing humanitarian needs around the world. They had recommended a limit of at least 75,000.

Last year, the Obama administration set the cap at 110,000 — though only about half that number have been admitted, after the Trump administration put the entire refugee resettlement program on hold under its travel ban executive orders.

“Churches and communities, employers and mayors, are heartsick at the administration’s callous and tragic decision to deny welcome to refugees most in need,” said Linda Hartke, the president and CEO of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, one of largest resettlement agencies in the country.

The debate over refugees is often framed as a clash between humanitarian goals and national security.

But Trump administration also argues that the U.S. spends millions of dollars a year to screen and resettle refugees, and to help them once they arrive.

“For the cost of resettling one refugee in the U.S., we can assist more than 10 in their home region,” President Trump said in a speech to the United Nations earlier this month.

Once they arrive, refugees qualify for many social services, including health care, food stamps and cash assistance. Many of those costs fall on state and local governments and some states are now pushing back.

Earlier this year, Tennessee took the federal government to court over refugee resettlement.

“The bottom line is, the federal government is coercing the state of Tennessee to spend Tennessee taxpayers monies in ways that some individual Tennesseans disagree with,” Republican State Sen. John Stevens told member station WPLN in March.

But many mayors across the country see refugees as an economic boon for their cities.

“These people are paying taxes. They’re buying houses. They’re going into our schools,” said Stephanie Miner, the mayor of Syracuse, N.Y. Miner, a Democrat, says refugees are helping revitalize the city’s north side, which was home to Italian and German immigrants before them.

“They create their own businesses which add economic energy that, but for them, would not be here,” said Miner.

One of those businesses is the Himalayan Store, where you can buy traditional clothing from Nepal, authentic lentils from India, or a plate of fried rice. Owner Jay Subedi arrived in Syracuse eight years ago.

“When I came here, the door was open for all opportunities. And I keep working hard every day,” Subedi said.

Subedi was born in Bhutan, and spent 18 years in a refugee camp in Nepal before coming to the US. He got a job at Subway. Now he owns a store, a gas station and a house, in addition to his job as housing coordinator for InterFaith Works, a local refugee resettlement agency. Subedi says a lot of refugees share his work ethic.

“Even [if] they don’t have any English, even [if] they don’t have any skills, they want to work,” said Subedi. “They come to me ask me for a job. Jay, where I can work? I want to work. I want to buy a car. I want to buy a home.”

Economists who’ve studied the issue say it’s true that refugees can be expensive, especially when they first arrive.

It costs “something like $180,000” to resettle each refugee, estimates William Evans, chair of the economics department at the University of Notre Dame. He says that estimate includes direct and indirect costs like social services.

For the first nine years they’re in the country, Evans said, refugees tend to be net takers. They cost the government more in social services then they pay in taxes. But then, something changes.

“After that ninth year,” Evans said, “they’re actually paying more to the government than they’re taking out.”

Over 20 years, Evans and his colleague found that refugees pay about $20,000 MORE in taxes than they use in social services.

“Refugees tend to work at really high rates after a few years in the country,” said Evans. “They’re paying taxes like everybody else. I think it’s a reasonably positive story.”

That fits with what researchers at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services found. They prepared an internal report this summer that showed refugees brought in $63 billion more in revenue than they cost between 2005 and 2014. But the White House never released that report, which was leaked to The New York Times.

“There is an investment that you have to make to help them get acculturated to help them learn the language and learn the culture,” said Syracuse Mayor Stephanie Miner. “But once they do, they are really committed to this country.”

What Miner wonders is whether this country is committed to them.