Unlike their Central American counterparts, these Africans are very well organized!
See what Judicial Watchis reporting (hat tip: Joanne).
As you read this remember that LEGITIMATE asylum seekers are required to file for asylum (for refugee status) in the first safe country they get to (after supposedly escaping their home country where they supposedly were persecuted).
What these migrants and so many other wannabe ‘refugees’ around the world are doing is called Asylum Shopping!
They want to be in the country of their choice! They want to be your new neighbors in the United States!
ASSEMBLY OF AFRICAN MIGRANTS IN TAPACHULA DEMANDS ASYLUM IN U.S.
Among the multitude of migrants waiting in Mexico to get asylum in the United States are thousands of Africans boldly demanding passage into the country. They are far more coordinated than their Central American caravan counterparts and have formed an official organization to spread their message and advocate on their behalf. The group accuses Mexican authorities of discrimination and racism and is ordering Mexico to grant visas that allow them to continue their trek north to seek “protection” in America.
For about three months the Africans have been holed up in Tapachula, in the southeast Mexican state of Chiapas bordering Guatemala.They traveled for two months and crossed eight countries to reach Mexico, they assert in a mission statement that outlines their suffering as well as their demands. “We have climbed mountains and valleys,” the document reads. “We have crossed rivers with strong current. We have slept in the middle of the mud. We have gone hungry and drank rainwater to survive. We have seen bodies of migrant brothers on the road, dead of exhaustion, or drowned in the rivers. The jungle is populated by wild animals, snakes and poisonous insects. In that territory there are also criminals who assault people, who rape girls and women, killing those who try to resist. Many of us have lost all our belongings, including our official documents. We have gone through extremely dangerous cities and towns. We had to hide. We have suffered extortion and threats by authorities in Panama, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico.”
They describe themselves as the Assembly of African Migrants in Tapachula, a group of 3,000 men, women (many pregnant), boys and girls from various African nations, including Angola, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea Conakry, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Congo, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Togo.They claim they left Africa because they suffered “political persecution” due to their religious beliefs and “sociocultural identities.” They also write in the statement that their homeland is “impoverished and subdued from the Western powers” though they aspire to obtain asylum in a nation considered to be a Western power.
Long time readers will remember that for a couple of years we were on a hunt to reveal the forty plus new resettlement sites the US State Department was quietly targeting for placement of the huge flow of refugees they expected in the waning years of the Obama Administration (and planning ahead for the Hillary years to come!). Obama State Department’s guide for community organizers to teach them how to set up new resettlement sites in their unsuspecting communities. I only discovered it by chance. https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2017/12/03/arrogant-church-world-service-closes-doors-in-poughkeepsie/
We were able to identify some sites in various stages of planning just because local newspapers reported that their town was being chosen (or might be chosen), but there was never any official release of information from the DOS.
Thus, Judicial Watch went to work to try to uncover the list and the criteria being used to select new sites.
In December 2016 this is a listI had put together from various news reports:
Below are new sites we have identified so far of the supposed 47 the Obama Administration is (or has been) trying to get established.
One of the first things the Trump Administration must do is to make all of this information public information. Here are some of the sites we have identified so far by just keeping an eye on local news reports in 2015 and 2016:
From time to time over the years we have mentioned that refugees are required to repay their airfare loans they receive from you, the US taxpayer.
Citizen watchdog, Judicial Watch, reported yesterday that they asked, through the Freedom of Information Act, for records on those loans. No information was received and JW sued. Now in response to legal filings, the DOS (Trump’s State Department!) says they have no records!
How could that be! We know that the resettlement contractors are tasked with sending the dunning notices to impoverished refugees and that the contractors—including those kind souls at the US Conference of Catholic Bishops—keep 25% of what they collect for themselves. So someone must be keeping records!
I’m guessing the mystery relates to the fact that the public (if fully informed) would react negatively to finding that the repayment rate is pretty low and that the contractors*** put a quarter of anything repaid in their pockets (so they can teach ‘new Americans’ all about debt!).
(First Judicial Watch, then see below, what a coincidence to see a sob story on airfare loans at NorthJersey.com just yesterday as well.)
In response to a Judicial Watch lawsuit, the State Department claims in a legal document that it has no records involving refugee travel loans that the agency gives foreigners overseas to buy plane tickets to fly to the United States. The program is operated by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), an intergovernmental group that assists refugees worldwide with hundreds of millions of dollars from Uncle Sam. The money is channeled through the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM). In fiscal year 2016 the State Department gave IOM $477,257,564, according to the agency’s report on contributions to international organizations. That doesn’t even include millions more that the State Department gives the IOM for special refugee resettlement “platforms” that pop up throughout the year. [IOM is now part of the United Nations—ed]
[….]
In a federal court document responding to Judicial Watch’s lawsuit, the State Department writes that its “search did not retrieve any records reflecting the number of refugee travel loans furnished per year using U.S. Government funds, the number of such travel loans defaulted on annually, nor the amount of money written off per defaulted loan.”In a footnote the agency writes that it did retrieve some records reflecting IOM’s “general reporting” on refugee travel loans, but none of it contained the “specific information sought” by Judicial Watch. This is outrageous because it suggests that the State Department can’t account for money American taxpayers are lending to foreigners to fly here to declare themselves refugees. A source with inside knowledge of the matter confirmed to Judicial Watch that the records exist and years ago a State Department insider provided figures that show only about half of the travel loans have been repaid since the program was launched in the 1950s, representing a loss of hundreds of millions of dollars to American taxpayers. Judicial Watch viewed the records, which span from 1952 to 2002 and reveal that the IOM issued $1,020,803,910 in “transportation” loans and recovered only $584, 219,453.
Continue reading here at JW’s “Corruption Chronicles.”
Now check this out! Coincidence? Just yesterday (JW’s news was yesterday) NorthJersey.comreports on poor Syrian refugees who can’t repay those loans!
Clearly this is a State Department program, so how can they possibly say they don’t keep records. In fact, how do the contractors get their 25% cut if no one is keeping records?
WE have to teach these refugees about borrowing money so that will help them be better Americans say contractors!
The travel loan program is supposed to help families build a positive credit history in the United States, advocates say. But families like the Al Samakehs worry that the reverse will be true and that they’ll be saddled with debt and a bad credit rating.
The State Department established the travel loan program after the passage of the Refugee Act of 1980, setting up a revolving fund for the continued support of refugees. Before they travel, refugees agree to repay the interest-free loans for travel costs within four years, including a six-month grace period.
The agencies that resettle and help refugees in their new lives also oversee repayment, collecting a 25 percent commission.
It helps refugees build good credit. Most pay the loan back. How do we know, if there are no records?
Sean Piazza, a spokesman for U.S. Programs at International Rescue Committee, one of the resettlement agencies, said the arrangement teaches refugee families financial literacy and helps them build a credit history. That, he said, “can later help realize huge steps in a family or individual’s self-sufficiency, including automobile or home ownership.”
Erol Kekic, executive director of the Immigration and Refugee Program of Church World Service, said the travel loan program is controversial, but that building good credit could help refugees. He also said that clients get financial counseling and that most pay back loans on time.
“They go into it knowingly and they try to honor their responsibility,” he said.
So, the State Department had records in 2015!
Nationally, around 70 percent of loan balances are repaid within five years and 78 percent are repaid within 10 years, the State Department reported in 2015. The average loan amount is $1,200 per person.
This is from the annual report of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops Migration Fund in 2014 showing clearly the travel loan collection fee of over $3 million. More recent financial docs show a similar pot of money. So, if the DOS has no records on travel loans, how do the Bishops determine their income from collecting loans (from getting the money out of the impoverished refugees they “serve.”)
Still, some critics say the agencies’ [the volags, the contractors—ed] role poses a conflict of interest. Steven Sacco, an immigration attorney at a New York City nonprofit legal organization, said a debate about the loan program had been stifled because the agencies that are primary advocates for refugees also make money from the program.
“They’re trying to support themselves and their mission, but because they are short on cash they guard their income sources,” Sacco said. “It’s a conflict of interest because it’s a burden on the people they serve.”
Sacco argued that the loan program should be illegal because it amounts to a tax on refugees.
This is one more reason that Congress should be investigating the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program.
*** Here are the contractors who monopolize all refugee resettlement in America. Six consider themselves ‘religious charities.’
By the way, back in 2007 when resettlement contractor Church World Service came to the county where I live, one of the first revelations to me came when an English language instructor told me about some poor refugee who didn’t speak English coming to her to ask about a letter he didn’t understand—it was his letter from the contractor to begin repaying his airfare loan through them. It came as an unhappy surprise to him.
The leading non-profit watchdog on government transparency, Judicial Watch, has been digging in to records relating to the resettlement of tens of thousands of refugees and other migrants and the money we spend on them.
Yesterday, JW reported that while the Dept of Health and Human Services was forthcoming about the cost of care for the tens of thousands of ‘Unaccompanied Alien Children’ (they are NOT refugees) spread throughout America, the State Department continues to withhold information about what you pay for the resettlement of refugees from around the world. Incidentally I like the use of the words “foreign nationals” in this article to describe the disparate people we are paying to care for.
Again, the ‘children’ from Central America are not “refugees” and that distinction must continue to be made because the Open Borders Left is working every day to make you think that the mostly male teens are refugees escaping persecution. Judicial Watch (two days ago):
The U.S. government spends billions of dollars to “resettle” foreign nationals and transparency on how the money is spent depends on the agency involved.Judicial Watch has been investigating it for years, specifically the huge amount of taxpayer dollars that go to “voluntary agencies”, known as VOLAGs, to provide a wide range of services for the new arrivals. Throughout the ongoing probe Judicial Watch has found a striking difference on how government lawyers use an exemption, officially known as (b)(4), to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to withhold records. All the cases involve public funds being used to resettle foreigners on U.S. soil and Americans should be entitled to the records.
The (b)(4) exemption permits agencies to withhold trade secrets and commercial or financial information obtained from a person which is privileged or confidential. Depending on the government agency and the mood of the taxpayer-funded lawyers handling public records requests, that information is exempt from disclosure. In these cases, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) disclosed a VOLAG contract to resettle tens of thousands of Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) that entered the U.S. through Mexico under the Obama administration while the State Department withheld large portions of a one-year, $22.8 million deal to resettle refugees from Muslim countries.Most of the UACs came from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala and the Obama administration blamed the sudden surge on violence in the three central American nations. The agency responsible for resettling the minors and issuing contracts for the costly services is HHS.
See the JW postfor the details of where your money went for the ‘children.’
JW continues…. Bishop Joe Vásquez, Chairman of the USCCB Migration Committee, opposes President Trump’s EO on immigration. What galls me is that they are never honest and tell the public how much taxpayer money they are sucking up for their ‘religious charitable work.’http://www.usccb.org/news/2017/17-026.cfm
This has become a heated issue for the government which may explain why other agencies aren’t as forthcoming in providing specific figures, thus abusing the (b)(4) exemption. The State Department, for instance, redacted huge portions of records involving contracts with VOLAGs to resettle refugees from mostly Muslim countries. The files illustrate the disparate redaction treatment given by different government agencies to the same types of records. The State Department paid a VOLAG called United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) a ghastly $22,838,173 in one year to resettle refugees that came mostly from Muslim countries. Unlike HHS, the agency redacted information related to what the USCCB charged the government for things like furniture, personnel, equipment and other costs associated with contracts to resettle refugees. Why did one government agency hand over the same types of records that another agency claims are trade secrets? Judicial Watch is challenging the State Department’s (b)(4) exemption and will provide updates as they become available.
Continue reading here.
I don’t know if JW’s FOIA request was an older one to the Obama State Department. If it was, it would be interesting to see how the Trump State Department handles such requests. If this was from a new FOIA (post Trump inauguration), then we know that the Trump DOS is going to be as secretive as Obama’s was.
As we said yesterday, the Trump Administration in FY18 is going to continue to spend billions on these foreign nationals.
Just so you know, Baptist Children and Family Services, that is getting the millions for the UACs is not one of the nine federal resettlement contractors calling themselves VOLAGs. It doesn’t resettle real refugees through the US Refugee Admissions Program.
It is, of course, a federal contractor just as the nine which monopolize resettlement in America are. Here is an example of a research project someone should undertake—-figure out how much federal money goes to BCFS every year. The nine VOLAGs comprise a closed little click and I suspect they are not happy that BCFS has wormed its way in to their pots of (your) money. Two of the nine (possibly more now) have been getting payola from HHS to care for ‘Unaccompanied Alien Children’ for years (in addition to resettling refugees) and the two are the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service.
For new readers, in government-speak the word VOLAG stands for Voluntary Agencies which I have said is such a joke because they are mostly paid out of the US Treasury to do their ‘charitable good works.’ Go hereat HHS where they list the nine so-called VOLAGs. See them here below:
Just so you know, when I started writing RRW in 2007, there was a tenth VOLAG. It was the state of Iowa. To break in to this closed group, a wannabe government contractor must show they have experience resettling refugees. Maybe BCFS is hoping to get in on the refugee resettlement action by first ‘resettling’ the children from Central America. I’ve also hypothesized that the Mormon Church in Utah might at some point try to break in to this charmed circle.
“This is an opportunity for the Trump State Department to come clean and clean up this refugee welfare program.”
(Tom Fitton, President, Judicial Watch)
We sure hope so!
It is hard to get public information from the US State Department as Judicial Watch found out during this past year. Tom Fitton
So, don’t miss this news about Judicial Watch (the government watchdog organization that first revealed the presence of Hillary Clinton’s home server) filing suit over failed public information requests involving federally-funded travel loans given to refugees.
The refugees are supposed to repay the taxpayer for the cost of their travel to the US, but those same nine non-profit agenciesthat place them in your towns do the collecting. And, for their work we pay them 25% of the loan dollars they collect. (See amount USCCB received below for one year.)
For years the DOS has been mum about the rate of return to the US Treasury of these and other loans to refugees.
Here is Judicial Watch earlier this week:
(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of State seeking records on the number of “Refugee Travel Loans” issued by State’s Bureau for Population, Refugees, and Migration to the United Nation’s International Organization for Migration from 2010 to the present. Judicial Watch is also seeking the number of loans defaulted on and the amount of money written off on each defaulted loan. The suit was filed on January 24, 2017, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:17-cv-00157)).
Judicial Watch filed the suit after the State Department failed to respond to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request on February 5, 2016, seeking the following:
All records reflecting the number of Refugee Travel Loans furnished by the State Department’s Bureau for Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM) to the International Organization for Migration (IOM) per year; the number of travel loans that are defaulted upon per year; and the amount of money written off per defaulted loan.
JW also asked for information from the Department of Health and Human Services about special Microenterprise loans given to refugees to start businesses, etc.
Continue reading, here. Then this:
“The State Department has stonewalled our request for refugee loans and associated taxpayer losses for a year – an unlawful delay that screams ‘cover up’,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “This is an opportunity for the Trump State Department to come clean and clean up this refugee welfare program.”
To citizen investigators: When you are looking at financial documents of the nine major refugee contractors, you will often see the special line item for the amount of money they get from the federal government (from you) for collecting the travel loan reimbursement from the poor refugees.
Here is an example from the 2014 Annual Report (page 10)of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops Migration Fund. See that the “travel loan collection fee” for that year was over $3.4 million.
So, while we are at it, please notice that 97% of the the Bishop’s funding in this year was provided by you! (Add travel loan collection fee and federal grants.) Not even $3 million came from private Christian charity.
It is because these supposedly non-governmental groups are being so heavily subsidized by our tax dollars we have every right to transparency about how our money is being spent!
Where is Congress? The Refugee Act of 1980 must be reformed!
