Update September 23rd: 30,000 may not be final number, here.
Update September 19th: One more reason the Trump Administration could have gone with a ZERO cap this year—320,000 migrants already in US looking to get refugee status, here.
Update September 18th:See why I think a cap of 30,000 was a bad decision, here.
So, I guess Church World Service can get off its “pins and needles!”
The President with Secretary of State Pompeo
It was only this morning that we reportedthat a Church World Service employee announced that there would be no CEILING (aka CAP) announced until December. They sure seem to have gotten their facts wrong, or did they?
There will be much wailing from the usual contractor gang (they wanted the number to be 75,000!), but remember readers that we are under 30,000 this year—we should come in at less than 25,000. (Update: as of today we have admitted 20,919 refugees with only 2 weeks to go in the fiscal year.)
Here is the brief news posted a little over an hour ago at Politico:
Trump administration intends to slash refugee cap
The Trump administration will admit no more than 30,000 refugees to the U.S. in the coming year, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said, down from the current cap of 45,000.
Pompeo announced the lowered ceiling during a press conference Monday at the Department of State headquarters in Foggy Bottom.
Pompeo said the 30,000 cap “must be considered in the context of the many other forms of protection and assistance offered by the United States” and should not be “sole barometer” to measure the country’s humanitarian efforts.
The hawkish turn demonstrates President Donald Trump’s willingness to push hard-line immigration policies in the run-up to the November midterm elections ….
When Trump took office, the refugee cap stood at 110,000. He lowered that to 50,000, and subsequently to 45,000.
It is my opinion that the program won’t be reformed as it should be until the number is ZERO with the understanding that Congress and the Administration must reform the entire program during a moratorium.
Without real reform, as the Lancaster, PA Church World Service employee said: they will just wait out this president and claim they need huge numbers in 2021 or 2025 to make up for Trump’s lost years.
Will the Administration and Congress follow the law in the next few weeks?
The Refugee Act of 1980 requires the US State Department, in conjunction with the President, to present a detailed Report to Congress explaining how many refugees they would like to admit and from where they will come.
The report should arrive in Congress weeks before the end of the fiscal year (September 30th) and BEFORE refugees begin arriving in the new year. The House and Senate Judiciary Committees are supposed to hold PUBLIC hearings and “consult” with the Administration on that report.
Where is the report? Has it been made public? How can they go forward with resettlement on October first with no guide as to which refugees will get priority?
After consultation with Congress about The Report, the President then is supposed to make his final determination.
Of course they haven’t been following the law for years, so it remains to be seen if they will this year or not.
We will be waiting with great anticipation to see if the first of the new batch of 30,000 begins arriving on October first (2 weeks from today!).
Delingpole: ‘Civil War Is Coming to Europe’ Warns German Politician
“Civil war is coming to Europe,” a German city politician told me this week.
I shan’t mention his name – it was an off-the-record briefing and, anyway, in Germany there are penalties for this kind of frankness.
James Delingpole
But he was only repeating what plenty of other people say in private in Germany where I’ve spent the last couple of weeks, soaking up the atmosphere, people-watching, gauging the public mood in the wake of Angela Merkel’s open invitation to perhaps three million immigrants – most of them fighting-age males from Muslim countries.
Three million is higher than the figure admitted by the German authorities, which tend to put it closer to 1.5 million. My source tells me the higher number is closer to the mark.
[….]
Why is Germany inflicting this immigration on itself?
Apart from desperation to show itself in a good light to make amends for World War II and the Holocaust, there are two main reasons.
Economics:there is a view abroad, mostly promoted by the mainstream liberal-left but also by squishy conservatives, that Germany’s ageing population needs an influx of fresh blood. If native Germans won’t breed at replacement rates, then “guest-workers” must be imported to keep the economy going strong.
[….]
Anti-Nationalist, Post-Borders New World Order: this the world-view promoted and funded by George Soros and his acolytes, an article of faith for many on the hard left. Encouraging immigration from apparently inimical foreign cultures will ultimately make us better people. It will solve the disgusting problem of white privilege. We will interbreed and cross-pollinate and abandon our unhelpful nationalistic identities which have led to so much chauvinism and war in the past.
And here is his wrap-up:
I welcome articulate disagreement.
But in order for it to persuade me it will have to answer a simple question:
When there is such a huge and growing gulf between where our governing, globalist elites are on Islam and immigration – and where ordinary people are on Islam and immigration – how can there ever, possibly, be a happy ending?
Update: CWS didn’t have to wait for long. Secretary of State Pompeo has announced a ceiling of 30,000 refugees for FY19. But, will the administration be ready to welcome those ‘new Americans’ in two weeks from today? See the news here.
In what I thought was going to be another ho-hum whinny story about Church World Service, a Lancaster, PA refugee agency director dropped this bomb:
Sheila Mastropietro
Mastropietro [Sheila Mastropietro, director of the CWS Lancaster office] said the CWS national office is being kept in the dark.They just found out this week that the fiscal year will be extended to Dec. 31, delaying the decision of who will be fundedand leaving CWS “on pins and needles for an additional three months,” she said.
If you have been a regular student of Refugee Resettlement Watch, you know that the fiscal year ends on September 30th, and for decades September is the month when we learn how many refugees will be admitted in the following year and from where they will come.
And, surely you haven’t missed my many posts on the PR campaign the federal contractors*** have been promoting as they demand that Trump admit 75,000 refugees beginning on October 1.
I can only guess that if true, that there will be no announcement this month, it means there is an internal battle of ginormous proportions going on, or it could be a complex funding issue involving the whole federal government.
The story, thanks to Joanne for sending it!, is at LancsterOnline:
With funding at risk, Church World Service ‘on pins and needles’ about future of refugee program
As President Donald Trump took office in January 2017, the 30th year of Church World Service resettling refugees in the county, Lancaster city was deemed “America’s refugee capital” by BBC News for resettling 20 times the number of refugees per capita than the country as a whole.
The distinction led to a visit from Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai, who went on to promote Lancaster’s efforts on a national stage.
Now, in the 20 months since Trump’s travel ban, Church World Service has resettled about half as many refugees here as it did in the previous 20 months, according to data provided by CWS.
Mastropietro says, if Trump cuts the refugee funding, they will continue their advocacy (like this?) with other private and PUBLIC money!
The reporter continues with many paragraphs featuring personal refugee stories and about what President Trump is doing to the refugee program. Then this:
Church World Service, headquartered in Elkhart, Indiana, is one of nine national organizations funded by the Department of State for refugee resettlement. Each of them is a large operation with multiple local offices spread throughout the country.
Indiana?
Actually, CWS still has it original headquarters at the famous 475 Riverside Dr. building in New York City, home to dozens of hard Left ‘religious’ groups, like the National Council of Churches, and other similar socialist organizations. I’m guessing the lower level staffers work in Indiana to keep costs down.
But with fewer refugees making it to America’s doorstep, the Department of State’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration “expects to fund a smaller number of recipient agencies” in the next fiscal year, according to a notice provided by a State Department spokesperson.
How many fewer agencies — and what factors might lead to the decision — is unclear. Mastropietro said the CWS national office is being kept in the dark. They just found out this week that the fiscal year will be extended to Dec. 31, delaying the decision of who will be funded and leaving CWS “on pins and needles for an additional three months,” she said.
While stripping refugee resettlement funding may be a fatal blow for some of the nine agencies, Mastropietro said CWS in Lancaster will carry on even if resettlement — its largest program — goes away.
Carrying-on will be tough!
Church World Service is in column one at James Simpson’s incredible table of how many taxpayer dollars each resettlement contractor consumes. CWS is 71% government funded and received nearly a half a billion dollars since 2008 from taxpayers! https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2018/09/16/capital-research-center-publishes-an-overview-of-the-us-refugee-admissions-program/
Lancaster Onlinecontinues….
With other public [public of course means taxpayer dollars!–ed] and private funding avenues, CWS would continue operating programs such as legal immigration counseling, employment services and advocacy.And if it does lose the resettlement money, Mastropietro is convinced it will be a temporary, if difficult, setback.
And, she confirms what I have been saying!
“We’re just going to wait it out,” she said. “If anything happens, we’ll wait it out until the next president.”
Ambitious readers might like to learn more about refugees in Amish country. See my complete archive on Lancaster by clicking here.
Do not become complacent!
If the Trump Administration only reduces numbers of refugees and funding for a few years nothing will change!
A few of the smaller contractors may go belly-up, but it only will mean a greater monopoly for the surviving contractors like Church World Service.
Those contractors will be working to elect the next president, they will continue to lobby for more federal dollars and more refugees, and they will resume placing refugees quietly in to your unsuspecting towns and cities!
***Here below are the nine federal refugee resettlement contractors.
You might be sick of seeing this list almost every day, but a friend once told me that people need to see something seven times before it completely sinks in, so it seems to me that 70, or even 700 isn’t too much!
And, besides I have new readers every day.
The present US Refugee Admissions Program will never be reformed if the system of paying the contractors by the head stays in place and the contractors are permitted to act as Leftwing political agitation groups, community organizers and lobbyists paid on our dime!
And, to add insult to injury they pretend it is all about ‘humanitarianism.’
The number in parenthesis is the percentage of their income paid by you (the taxpayer) to place the refugees into your towns and cities and get them signed up for their services (aka welfare)! And, get them registered to vote eventually!
James Simpson has done an outstanding job of pulling together facts about the history of how the US came to be the top refugee resettlement country in the world. Hint: It all began with the UN!
And, then in this three-part seriesgives readers the facts about who we are bringing to America and how much it costs us—the US taxpayer.
Summary: A vast network of foundations, non-profits, government entities and political organizations have a vested interest in the continued growth of the resettlement of refugees in America. Because they receive billions of dollars in federal grant money, publicly-financed, tax-exempt organizations have significant incentives to support political candidates and parties that will keep these programs alive. These organizations need to be thoroughly audited and the current network of public/private immigrant advocacy and resettlement organizations needs to be completely overhauled. Resettling refugees should be a voluntary, genuinely charitable activity, removing all the perverse incentives government funding creates.
The refugee resettlement program is popular with many policymakers. It enjoys bipartisan support in Congress and state houses because it supplies low-wage, low skill labor that many big businesses crave, while enabling supporters to embrace “diversity” and thus avoid the Left’s favorite attacks and mischaracterizations: “bigot,” “racist,” “xenophobe,” “Islamophobe,” etc. This faux-moralizing on the Left stifles a necessary conversation our nation sorely needs. Meanwhile, the Left’s true motive is to import ever more people from third-world nations that are likely to become reliable Democrat voters once they achieve citizenship.
Under the Trump presidency, the United States’ refugee resettlement has been temporarily reduced, but by no means curtailed. A change in administration could resuscitate it overnight. There are many objectionable aspects of this program, not the least of which is finding resources to fund this enormous undertaking. The difficulty associated with assessing the true costs of the programs key to resettling refugees presents another obstacle to policymakers at every level of government.
It is important for readers to know that although we most often talk about the actual Refugee admissions numbers, there are tens of thousands more considered ‘refugees’ by the US government for the purpose of providing federal dollars for their care as they become ‘New Americans.’
Resettling Refugees: Who’s Coming to America?
According to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS), refugees are:
[P]eople who have been persecuted or fear they will be persecuted on account of race, religion, nationality, and/or membership in a particular social group or political opinion.
This mirrors the U.N. definition established at the 1951 U.N. Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees. It is important to note here, however, that under these definitions, “individuals who have crossed an international border fleeing generalized violence are not considered refugees.” This includes large numbers of people who are regularly resettled anyway, for example some of the Syrians fleeing that country’s conflict, and most—if not all Somalis.
Those who meet the definition include:
~refugees (those seeking protection in the United States who are not already in the country),
~asylum seekers or asylees (those who apply for asylum after coming to the U.S.),
~Cuban/Haitian Entrants,
~Special Immigrant Visas (SIV) and
~trafficking Victims.
The Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) program is also administered by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, although UACs do not meet the definition of “refugee.”
Table I below provides up-to-date estimates for each category.
Get a load of these numbers!
The table shows that this category of legal entry to the US is a much bigger problem than the one we usually discuss on these pages which is the Refugee column.
Don’t miss the total admitted in the last full year of the Obama presidency—269,491!
But, see that the Trump Administration is presiding over the arrival of a huge number (higher than Obama’s welcome!) of Special Immigrant Visa holders from Iraq and Afghanistan.
And, last but not least! You really need to read the whole thing yourself, but prepare to be sick when you see how many millions of dollars are flowing out of the US Treasury to hundreds of non-profits who are in one way or another in the business of bringing in and then spreading refugees and other migrants around the US while lobbying for ever higher admissions numbers (aka paying clients!).
Simpson begins with the usual nine federal contractors, but that is only the tip of the iceberg!
Federal Refugee Resettlement Grants
Think about this! Earlier this year Church World Service and the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society helped organize this protest against the President. Combined, those two refugee contractors consumed $620 million taxpayer dollars in the last ten years. Why are we paying for this? https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2018/01/28/church-world-service-and-hias-join-cair-to-protest-at-white-house/
The nine VOLAGs, their many affiliates, and unaccompanied alien children contractors all receive funding from the federal government to resettle the various refugee categories. As mentioned earlier, unaccompanied alien children do not meet the definition of “refugee,” however their resettlement is managed through the Office of Refugee Resettlement and they are included when calculating the total cost of the overall program.
Most funding comes in the form of grants. Prime awards are grants directly from the federal government to the state or the contractor. Sub-awards are those given to contractors by other contractors or state governments that received the prime grant. They are left out to avoid double counting. Table III below enumerates prime grants to VOLAGs and unaccompanied alien children contractors for refugee resettlement and related programs. Some of the VOLAGs, for example the Ethiopian Community Development Council, focus almost entirely on refugee resettlement. Others, like the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, International Rescue Committee, and World Relief Corporation of the National Association of Evangelicals, have a broader mission.
Of the latter, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is the largest. As Table III shows, in FY 2018 USCCB received $47.7 million for resettlement purposes. However, USCCB participates in other federal grant programs and that year received a total of $363.9 million from the federal government.
Here is a chart you need to keep handy. Prepare to be sick!
Billions of dollars have flowed to the refugee contractors in the last ten years alone!
The nine major contractors (VOLAGS) that monopolize the US Refugee Admissions Program are these:
Church World Service (CWS)
Ethiopian Community Development Council (ECDC) (secular)
Episcopal Migration Ministries (EMM) (DFMS is its other name)
Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS)
International Rescue Committee (IRC) (secular)
Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIRS)
US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) (secular)
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB)
World Relief Corporation (WR)
Thanks to Jim Simpson for letting us know just how much each is being paid from the US Treasury!
Please, please take time to read the rest of Part III, it is stunning the amount of your money being distributed to non-profits who then act as political agitation groups!
And, these dollars do not include the cost of welfare, education, medical care, housing, etc. that you pay for!
Tell the White House to reform the whole program and begin by getting rid of middlemen federal contractors!
I have no sympathy for giant globalist meatpackers because they brought this on themselves when they actively sought out (with the help of federal refugee contractors like Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service) Somali refugee workers.
However, what we increasingly see is an accommodation of Islamic religious practices in the workplace with this settlement and others like it. CAIR is very happy!
Big Meat! Changing America, one meatpacking town at a time!
Ft. Morgan has a mosque now. https://www.denverpost.com/2016/03/19/somalis-struggle-to-make-new-home-in-colorado/
DENVER — A big U.S. meatpacker has agreed to pay $1.5 million to 138 Somali-American Muslim workers who were fired from their jobs at a Colorado plant after they were refused prayer breaks, a federal anti-discrimination agency said Friday.
Cargill Meat Solutions, a division of Minnesota-based agribusiness company Cargill Corp., also agreed to train managers and hourly workers in accommodating Muslim employees’ prayer breaksat its Fort Morgan beef processing plant, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said.
Wichita, Kansas-based Cargill denies wrongdoing but agreed to settle to avoid further litigation, the federal agency said. The dispute dates back to the firings of the workers in late 2016 after management rescinded policies allowing Muslim employees to take short breaks for prayer.
In 2017, the agency found that the workers had been harassed and discriminated against for protesting the unannounced policy change that denied them opportunities for obligatory prayer. Hundreds of Somali-Americans work at the plant in Fort Morgan, about 50 miles southeast of Greeley.
The Teamsters union also agreed to pay them, an admission that they too were not happy with the Somali workers and their religious demands.
In a related announcement, a Teamsters union local that was supposed to represent the workers will pay them $153,000 to settle discrimination complaints.
The federal agency said it determined that Teamsters Local Union No. 455, based in Denver and in Fort Morgan, failed to advocate for the Muslim workers in their dispute with Cargill and even harassed them because of their race, religion and national origin. The workers were dues-paying union members.
Union officials denied wrongdoing, but the local unit agreed to pay the workers, undergo training in handling grievances, and publicize employee rights to be free of discrimination based on race or national origin.
[….]
Like other U.S. firms that employ Muslim line workers at meatpacking and processing plants, Cargill managers must balance religious accommodations with demands of processing meat in an operation that frequently runs 24 hours.
Managing possible disruptions not only slow production but can create safety issues for line workers.
Here comes CAIR:
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim advocacy group, and Qusair Mohamedbhai, a Denver attorney who represented the workers praised the settlement.
See my Fort Morgan file here. I visited that small city on my tour of midwestern and western towns and cities disrupted by an influx of refugee workers. I spoke with residents who told me that at one time Cargill paid very good wages, but then discovered the ‘benefits’ of immigrants and refugees who would work for less.
You might want to search RRW for the word ‘meatpackers’ because I have dozens and dozens of posts going back ten years about how BIG MEAT is changing America.
Here is just one postyou should see. It isn’t just meatpackers, but others in the food industry, the hospitality industry and other manufacturing companies that drive the US Refugee Admissions Program.
This post is filed in my category ‘Stealth jihad’for obvious reasons.
