Iraqi refugee admissions—falling short already

Just an hour ago, before your kids even got their Halloween candy spread out on the kitchen table to properly  examine the loot, the AP was reporting the end of the month count on Iraqi refugees resettled to America.   You would think they could have waited at least until the official end (about 3 and a half hours from now) of the first month of the new fiscal year to complain.

I can just see the press officers of the multi-million dollar refugee industry organizations madly dialing their press contacts telling AP and others in the mainstream media to nail that dastardly Bush Administration TONIGHT!   [Additional comment on Nov. 1, things are improving in Iraq so now you will be hearing more on the refugee subject because the left needs to continue bashing their boogey man Bush .]

Horrors!  Only 450 Iraqi refugees have arrived this month and advocacy groups were promised 1000 a month for each month of FY 2008.

The slow pace of admissions for members of what is the world’s fastest-growing refugee population has sparked criticism from refugee advocacy groups and lawmakers. They complain that Washington is not doing enough for those who have fled the violence in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

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The blame has been placed on bureaucratic slowdowns — including bickering between the State Department, which is in charge of refugee resettlement, and the Homeland Security Department, which must screen would-be admittees. Another factor was a lack of cooperation from some foreign countries, notably Syria, which hosts the largest number of Iraqi refugees.

The article reminds us that it is the United Nations that is picking the refugees for us.

Charitable(?) groups beating the drum, closing the circle

In my view, here is how it works.   What works you ask?  The great taxpayer rip-off of course.   It doesn’t matter whether the groups are left-leaning environmental groups or the ten volags (non-governmental organizations) bringing refugees to America, the strategy is the same.   There are probably many more hands in our pockets then we can imagine,  it just happens I know about these two pets of the liberal big government crowd.

Lets take Refugee Resettlement, the subject of our blog of course.  And, lets take for a specific example, The International Rescue Committee (IRC).  Today I noticed this drum-beating article  in something called “The Globalist” (what else!) about Iraqi refugees by Anne Richard, a VP at the IRC.   The title of the article is, “Americas responsibility to the Iraqi refugees”.  There is absolutely nothing new in this opinion piece dressed up as news.  This is boiler plate; if I’ve seen one of these articles I’ve seen ten.  They are all the same, they are everywhere.  These articles are meant to tug at the heartstrings of Americans, you know to soften us up, to make us feel obligated to bring millions of Iraqis to America NOW.

By the way,  Anne Richard is a former employee of the US State Department having worked for Madeleine Albright  (the revolving door in action).    She makes a salary of between $100,000 and $200,000 (based on the salaries of other VP’s at IRC).  But that is ‘chump change’ compared to the IRC CEO’s salary.  Dr. George Rupp, former Pres. of Columbia University, brings in a cool $357,657 a year salary according to the organization’s 2005 Form 990.   Thats more than the Vice President of the United States, the Speaker of the House, or the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court receive (no wonder public service is so unpopular).

The IRC is a $200 million plus a year organization that recieves close to half of its income from you, the taxpayer.   Actually it was $88 million from government grants in 2005.  The immigration industry is big business and in order to stay in business it needs to find “refugees” to move around the world.

So, the circle goes like this: 

*   Beat the drum in the mainstream media to bring more refugees while wearing the ‘white hat’ (its about feeling good).

*    Convince Congress, the President and the public that we must do something.

*    More of your money goes out to these private groups through grants and contracts with the federal government.

*    Employees of these NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS make big salaries while wearing the ‘white hat’.

*    To stay in business (and get more of your tax dollars) they need to beat the drum (create the crisis) to bring more refugees to America.

I wonder if there are actually courses in this because the M.O. is the same from one leftist cause to the next.

10,000 visits mark is reached!

We know it isn’t much compared to the mega-blogs, but we just reached our 10,000 visits mark at RRW! Sometime in the last hour, and exactly 4 months from our first post, we reached this milestone for our down-home clearinghouse for news about Refugee Resettlement.  

We plan to continue bringing you information about this complex program of the federal government so that you can play a constructive role in directing the future of your community.  And maybe, just maybe, we will see the program reformed someday.   Thanks for visiting!

P.S.  If you can shed some light on why 6 days after Judy’s post about the UN ignoring Christian Iraqi refugees it continues to top the list of visited posts, we would love to know!

Haitian Immigrant brought AIDS to US

This report, originally from Reuters, was published all over the world yesterday.

The strain of HIV that touched off the US AIDS epidemic and fueled the global scourge of the disease came to the continent from Africa via Haiti, according to a study released Monday.

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“Haiti was the stepping stone the virus took when it left central Africa and started its sweep around the world,” said Michael Worobey, an assistant professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona in Tucson, and senior author of the paper.

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The deadly virus probably arrived on US shores in about 1969, more than a decade before the full-blown US AIDS crisis of the 1980s, and may have been carried there by a single Haitian immigrant, according to the study.

What relevance to refugees?   During the Clinton Administration the ban on immigrants with HIV AIDS was lifted and refugees with AIDS are permitted entry into the US.   We pay for their treatment upon arrival.  This was confirmed by State Dept. representatives at the September Forum in Hagerstown.

From 1983 to 2005 we admitted 28,625 Haitians with the lions share resettled in Florida.  Just a reminder that the 2005 ORR Annual report to Congress is a handy source of information.   See Appendix A for country of origin and resettlement state.

Note:  We may soon make available DVD copies of the Public Forum on Refugee Resettlement held in Hagerstown, MD on September 19, 2007.    If you are new to RRW you might want to review the September Forum category here.