A bucket of cold water on the International Rescue Committee

March 27th, 2013:  Now I know why everyone is here at this old post on the IRC—it’s because the IRC just hired former UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband.  See my post today on the “dream job” which will allow Miliband to muck around in world affairs and collect a huge salary at the IRC—really a quasi-government agency, fueled with buckets of taxpayer dollars!  Type ‘International Rescue Committee’ (that once touted George Soros on its BOD) into our search function for more.

For everyone arriving here and looking for George Rupp’s salary, this is the latest I have:

The IRC is a $431 million dollar organization which gets $247 million from YOU, the US taxpayer (page 9 of their most recent Form 990, here).  And, guess where you have to go to find out the salaries being paid at the IRC?  Page 254 of their 299-page Form 990.  George Rupp, their head honcho makes a cool $447,432 in salary and benefits which beats Obama’s $400,000 salary!

March 26th, 2013For all of the readers arriving at this post today (for whatever reason) should know that Anne Richard cited below as the IRC’s Veep (a federal refugee contractor) has now revolved back into the government revolving door and heads the whole shebang as Asst. Secretary of State for Population Refugees and Migration.  Cool how that works (not!).

The International Rescue Committee (IRC) is one of the top ten volags resettling refugees in the US.   Yesterday the Mercury News published the usual puff piece on an IRC fundraising intiative they held recently in San Jose.

Then here comes Chris Coen of Friends of Refugees with a comment to throw some ice cold water on the warm and fuzzy piece:

Readers should know that the International Rescue Committee (IRC) has been mired for years with chronic problems in its refugee resettlement program in California and throughout the U.S.

At the IRC office in San Jose U.S. State Department inspectors found a refugee family living in a two-bedroom apartment with another family of three. Neither of the parents had received English lessons or job training and neither one of them had submitted a single job application. The family was barely scrapping by, and the father said that he was just waiting for IRC to find him a job and send him to English lessons. The government inspectors also met with two other IRC refugee client families – they reported that they had not received any furniture (basic household furniture is supposedly a “minimum requirement” of IRC’s refugee contracts with the government).

An inspection of the IRC office in San Francisco showed that early refugee employment outcomes to be a low 50% after one year – that is, only 50% of the refugees were employed after one year in the US, even though the US refugee program supposedly stresses early self-sufficiency for the refugees. Case files also contained a form which refugees were required to sign stating that they would accept “any job offered” (refugee resettlement agencies such as IRC receive public funds to refer refugees to jobs that will allow them to become economically self-sufficient, jobs which are sustainable – not simply to take any job offered). Home visits to the IRC San Francisco office’s refugee clients revealed one refugee family that reported that IRC had not given them any furniture. The parents were also not taking any English classes. Yet another refugee client reported that he had been placed in an apartment nearly bereft of furniture (with only a mattress and box springs, a small card table, and one folding metal chair).

The IRC needs to get its house in order.

Lest you think the IRC is a struggling outfit, here is what I wrote about them last October.  I was writing about how the volags create a kind of drumbeat by getting articles published about needy refugees.  Anne Richard (IRC vice president) had written such a piece about Iraqis that prompted my post.

… 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.

See my post of June 23rd about a radio program from California and check out the ‘needy’ Iraqi refugees the IRC is bringing to a city near you.

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