We’ve been talking a lot lately about the big bucks involved in the refugee industry—first with the federal ‘non-profit’ contractors and also with global corporations hiring refugees and other immigrants
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Jewish Family Service of San Diego offers employment services for corporations.
Thanks to reader Kevin for directing me to the website of Jewish Family Service San Diegoand a page they post for the business clients.
When I see this kind of information it reminds me that there is no longer such a thing as capitalism without the federal government putting a thumb on the scales for certain businesses, or to benefit certain sharp operators who use their connections to Senators and Members of Congress to aquire financially lucrative deals for government contracts.
But I digress….
Below is a screenshot of a portion of Jewish Family Service San Diegowebsite as they fulfill their role as a ‘headhunter’ helping businesses find employees—in this case immigrant employees. See the whole list of benefits, here.
Jewish Family Service of San Diego is a subcontractor of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society,see here.
Doing well by doing good!
I looked around at their financials and got sidetracked as I often do especially when I see ginormous salaries for non-profit CEOs (at an organization that receives millions annually from taxpayers)….. maybe a story for another day!
The important point I want to make with this post is that the federal refugee contractors help refugees/immigrants (their “clients”) find work (in competition with American workers) to benefit big business while you pay for it.
What is Monday? It is the beginning of the federal fiscal year. It is the first day of FY19. It is the day when the writing will be on the wall for many refugee resettlement offices around the country.
Dumb way to run an organization! Did no one in the refugee industry ever question a business model where some non-profits are 97% and up federally funded?
Why? Because in 1980 Jimmy Carter signed the Refugee Act of 1980 in to law and set up a house of cards that needs to fall now. Originally (supposedly!) designed as a public-private partnership, the federal government and ‘humanitarian’ non-profit groups were to share equally in the costs of admitting tens of thousands of refugees to the US each year.
But, over the years, because Congress has been so remiss in overseeing the program (the Rs want cheap labor!), those non-profit groups (aka federal contractors) have gotten fat and confident (like Aesop’s grasshopper) on ever larger amounts of federal funding and too lazy to raise sufficient amounts of private money to see them through if for any reason the number of paying clients/refugees declined.
(An aside: The inability to raise enough private money is also indicative of the fact that there isn’t enough interest by average Americans in financially supporting the program in the first place.)
So here we are with one story after another about what Monday will bring to dozens of resettlement contractors around the country.
From Austin, Texas we learn that a Catholic contractor—Caritas—is closing its refugee program.
EXCLUSIVE: As refugees dwindle, Caritas will end resettlement program
Since 1974, the organization has helped thousands of people fleeing war or persecution find a new life in Austin. But after 44 years, Caritas is ending its refugee resettlement program and as of Monday, it will no longer serve new refugees.
“It’s really a tragedy that this program has to go away,” said Jo Kathryn Quinn, executive director for Caritas.
[….]
For the past two years, Caritas has seen a sharp decline in the number of refugees arriving in Austin, and the development has made the program “financially unsustainable,” Quinn said. Between 2010 and 2016, Caritas resettled an average of 576 refugees each year. Since last October, Caritas has resettled 151 refugees, but the nonprofit has not received any new refugees since April.
“Having zero refugees arrive in two months was unheard of for us,” Quinn said. “It was the final alarm bell that told us that we couldn’t continue this way.”
[….]
In June, Caritas’ board of directors voted to close the program at the end of the fiscal year at the recommendation of the nonprofit’s executive leadership.
When fewer refugees arrive, less federal money comes in to support them as well. Refugees receive a one-time amount of $1,125 from federal funds for resettlement needs, including housing and food, said Adelita Winchester, Caritas’ director of integrated services. Caritas would supplement federal funds with about $1 million annually in philanthropic donations,Winchester said. [The reporter has missed an important piece of information. The refugee gets $1,125 and Caritas gets another $1,125 for themselves per refugee.—ed]
“We didn’t have any excess philanthropic dollars to shift to aid this program,” Quinn said.
Budget Cuts, Layoffs And Closures Hit Refugee-Serving Organizations
Donna Duvin is executive director at the San Diego office of the national nonprofit International Rescue Committee, or IRC, one of nine federally funded resettlement agencies in the U.S. Duvin said the local office’s VESL funding dropped by 34 percent this year forcing the agency to replace some paid instructors with volunteers and interns.
Red meat for readers! I love running this photo of the IRC’s David Miliband outside their Manhattan office. He is the Brit who is compensated at nearly $700,000 annually as he calls the shots about who will be placed in your towns.
“As the numbers began to fall, the support that we had from the county that passed through dollars from the federal government, those declined as well,” Duvin said.
Duvin said in past years more than three-fourths of the agency’s budget relied on government dollars, causing a loss of millions as the office’s arrivals dipped by 85.5 percent since 2016. She said the budget changes during that time forced the agency to eliminate 15 positions.
Apparently the IRC is trying to raise private money to keep some functions going. LOL! Maybe CEO David Miliband could give up some of his nearly $700,000 in annual salary to keep some low-level staffers in a job!
The IRC is not alone.
A representative for the national resettlement agency Church World Service estimated it lost possibly hundreds of staffers when it closed 10 offices after it was forced to merge operations with other organizations in some U.S. cities. And a spokesman for World Relief said it laid off 140 employees after shutting down five offices across the U.S.
If you are looking for something to do, go to this list from last year of the resettlement agencies working in your towns and cities and call them. See if they are still in operation, or plan to close soon.
Reminder!
The 1980 structure of the US Refugee Admissions Program is still in place and the Trump Administration must push now for a complete reform of the program or in 2021 or 2025, it will be full steam ahead for these contractors. They will quickly staff-up and a new President could say—We must make up for the lost Trump years and quadruple the numbers of refugees coming in.
I’ve never thought this was a good argument to be pushed by the supposed ‘humanitarians’ receiving millions from the US taxpayer to place refugees in hundreds of US towns and cities, but they are doing it in the age of Trump. Report was released on World Refugee Propaganda Day. https://www.rescue.org/report/unwelcome-state-refugee-resettlement-america
Hurting most from the slowdown in the arrival of fresh grunt laborers (aka refugees), according to a new report from the International Rescue Committee headed by former British Labor Party official, David Miliband, are employers in key U.S. industries—including manufacturing, hospitality and meatpacking!
Why must US taxpayers subsidize big business?
If those industries can’t fill their labor needs, maybe they need to raise wages!
And, besides why is it the taxpayers’ duty to subsidize globalists like the BIG MEAT giants by supplying them with third world laborers while paying fake humanitarian groups, like the IRC, gobs of money to sign them up for welfare to supplement those meager wages before moving on to the next fresh batch of paying clients. Continue reading “International Rescue Committee says US businesses need more low wage workers”→
I’m reminded by this report on the San Diego refugee housing scandal at Inewsource.org.
The US State Department on some sporadic basis sends monitors out to refugee resettlement offices around the country to see if your local resettlement agency is compliant with guidelines for the care of refugees they have placed.
Years ago I spoke with Chris Coen who had a blog called ‘Friends of Refugees’ and he regularly submitted Freedom of Information Actrequests to the State Department for those monitoring reports, then patiently waited YEARS to get responses. Lacking patience, I never sought them (little did I imagine that nearly 11 years later, I am still doing this!). IRC’s representative in San Diego: Mireille Cronin Mather
Now that we know that the Tillerson State Department is trying to clear its FOIA backlog, maybe some of you should try again to get the reports for contractors operating in your towns.
Clearly the reporters at Inewsource.org were able to obtain one for the International Rescue Committee in San Diego.
Here is the title and first paragraph of their latest report. The contractors are extremely vulnerable on the issue of how they care for refugees they are paid to care for (I’ve been hearing it for years), and it goes to the heart of the question about whether this is really a ‘humanitarian’ program or simply driven by money.
Federal monitors warned San Diego refugee nonprofit of problems with resettlement practices
Federal monitors raised concerns about a local refugee resettlement agency’s housing placement practices months before the organization’s employees committed additional violations, which KPBS uncovered and detailed in a series of reports last year.
Hereis the State Department’s FOIA guideline site.
If you need to know which resettlement agencies are working near you, go here for a directory. Pick offices that are within a hundred miles of your home.
This post is filed in my ‘What you can do’ category, see here.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not defending the Russian government (or Russian anybody). But, I do want to say that this is rich (and it makes me laugh!)—Soros/Podesta‘s Think Progress apparently doesn’t like the competition from skilled propagandists when propaganda is Soros’s greatest asset!
The implication in the story is that these “fake” Russian facebook pages are promoting fake news. We know in one case, the Starbuck’s story, there is nothing fake about the news. It happened. So, I guess Think Progress is really just furious (and jealous!) about the way the news is presented in order to have the most impact.
How Russia’s Facebook ads inflamed America’s social tensions
Gun rights and same-sex marriage. Secession movements and refugee intake. Racial tensions and, of all things, dog lovers.
These are a smattering of the topics unearthed so far from Russia’s fake Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts.
[….]
Facebook, as it has over the past few months, remains hesitant to publicly identify the accounts they’ve since pulled down. But the handful of accounts reporters have uncovered thus far highlight how Russian actors viewed the types of schisms running through the U.S., and how best to incense, provoke, and enrage millions of followers.
[….]
The Russian “Secured Borders” account, which attempted to host an anti-immigrant rally in Twin Falls, Idaho, pushed material regularly regurgitating nativist talking points. According to a search through Google Cache, the “Secured Borders” page was fraught with the types of anti-migrant language familiar to the current administration.
[….]
The site appeared to espouse a special ire for refugees, especially those from the Middle East. One post from August claimed a link between increased refugee resettlement and higher rates of tuberculosis, complaining that refugees were allowed to be hired at Starbucks (which the site referred to as “Shariabucks”).
(LOL! Shariabucks! Clever!)
We reported on the research about the increasing rates of TB especially high in San Diego, and the special hiring event at Starbucks! It happened. So what is Think Progress‘s beef, that this real news was presented by Russian facebookers in a format that would get people’s attention?
Does the Soros Open Borders propaganda machine have some serious competition from sites like these? I think so!
Here is one of the facebook ‘ads’ (ads or just pages that anyone can set up?) that Think Progress wants you to treat as fake news (filed in my ‘Laugh of the day’category):
