Day: June 14, 2009

2006 ORR Annual Report to Congress: Pages and pages of taxpayer money flowing to the volags

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Your tax dollars:

Just now I got sidetracked on something else I was searching for and spent some time looking at the millions of tax dollars flowing out of the Federal Treasury to the Top Ten (volag) Government Contractors and hundreds of smaller ‘non-profits’ getting grants for all sorts of reasons through the Office of Refugee Resettlement (Dept. of Health and Human Services).

Here are just three things that caught my eye in the 2006 Report (sorry it’s a pdf file)

*  Preferred Community ‘continuation grants’  (p.32).    I guess that means they are on-going and volags can get the bucks from year to year.  ORR awarded $2,552,795 nationally.   

Church World Service received $250,000 of that for “enhanced entry level services” for five cities.  I assume that means money to set up an office to turn some poor unsuspecting city into a “preferred community.”   Why do I say that?  Because our county seat, Hagerstown MD, is one of the five!   So, they were getting money to set up shop here before the people of the city had a clue what was coming down the pike.   This “preferred” business is a bunch of baloney!  By the way, they no longer have an office here.    Readers:  go and see if your city is “preferred.”

* Then here is another good excuse to give taxpayer money to volags—-the Healthy Marriage Program.   Whatever that is, the money is really good.   The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society got $830,000 for promoting healthy marriages in one year.  I wonder if they are figuring out how to stop polygamy among Muslim refugees they are resettling.  Sounds like a Healthy Marriage goal, wouldn’t you agree!    The US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants got a healthy $780,000 in that same year.  (p. 37)

And, to think, these volags are telling reporters, boo hoo, all we get is half of $900 for each refugee we resettle.

*  Then here was an amusing find.  You know I have been telling you about the allegations of grant fraud involving the Somali Community Center of Nashville.  The amount of the grant misused was about $400,000 and it was from another agency of the Dept. of Health and Human Services. 

Surprise!  Here is another grant for the same outfit that was supposed to be under investigation at that time.    The Somali Center received a $150,000 Ethnic Community Self Help grant (whatever that is!).   Well, at least the Self Help part sounds right! (p.34)

To those of you wondering where the money is coming from for refugee projects in your cities,  or for new offices for certain ethnic groups, you need to check out this fascinating report.  I can’t wait to see 2007!

Comment Worth Noting: Where is George?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

A week ago today, reader George Benedict said I wasn’t being truthful when I commented that resettlement agencies are required to find jobs for refugees and I suggested they would somehow be hurt financially if they did not.  Mr. Benedict said that was not true, he said there was no obligation on the part of agencies to find jobs for refugees.

I asked Mr. Benedict to write a guest post to explain how I was wrong and I am still looking for it.   Here is what I said in response to Mr. Benedict’s criticism at this post about Everett, WA.

Dear Mr. Benedict, It sounds like you work for a resettlement office and since the main reason we began writing this blog in the first place was to get information out to the public on how the program works—it strikes us that its inner workings are a closely held secret. Would you write a guest post for us with the focus on your statement:

“IN FACT – the USA volags and resettlement agencies get NO MONEY for finding people jobs!! As a matter of fact, they have no obligation or legal responsibility to find any type of jobs for refugees. IN FACT the resettlement agencies get all of their money upfront from the USA government and their pay and reputation has NOTHING to do with finding the refugees jobs!”

In your guest post, please explain especially how the Match Grant program works and its connection to finding jobs within a certain time frame in addition to explaining, as you say, that there is no legal obligation to find refugees jobs. I wonder how that can be when the agencies we hear are so hell-bent on finding employment for the refugees—why hurry if there is no obligation to find them work. And, if an agency doesn’t find work for a large number of its refugees will they be alotted more refugees in the future?

Please help clarify. You can write your guest essay as a comment here and I will post it prominantly as a post linked to this post on Everett, WA.

Thanks and look forward to your explanation about how I have made misleading statements.

“Outside-the-box idea” explains a lot

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I told you just last week, at the time of the national pro-amnesty campaign kick-off by the Open Borders crowd, that I couldn’t understand why groups like USCRI (US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants) which must find jobs for deserving refugees could support the legalization of 12 million presently illegal aliens living in the US who would then be in direct competition with refugees for few jobs.

Here is a possible explanation in Christianity Today.   Bear in mind that the Top Ten (volag) Government Contractors and their 300 plus subcontractors are largely compensated by you, the tax payer, to act as  agents to find employment and plug clients into our welfare system.   They basically teach immigrants—up until now refugees and asylees—the ropes of our system so that they can get the most out of it.  You know, putting it crassly, they teach how to  milk the system.

Here is the “outside-the-box idea” (trial balloon? leak of insider discussions?) from an unidentified author (presumably the editor) at Christianity Today.

Refugee resettlement is one of the most successful church-state partnerships in the U.S. [Edit:  I beg to differ]. Using mostly volunteers [not enough true volunteers], faith-based groups have decades of operational experience resettling on average 50,000–60,000 refugees annually.

One outside-the-box idea would be for refugee-resettlement groups to work with the federal government to identify, screen, and process undocumented workers. The same services given to refugees—housing, education, health care, and employment—could be provided. Teaching respect for the law should be one necessary part of the integration process. The idea is not for a 1980s-style amnesty, but it is a way for willing churches to help assimilate undocumented workers and their families. (During the late 1980s, some immigrant-friendly congregations undertook such services successfully.)

I should have known there was a financial motive.  Since volags (supposedly voluntary refugee agencies) are paid by the number of refugees they resettle, increasing the CLIENT base would assure they stay in the money (your money)!

Liar, Liar pants on fire!  Then this next line really ticked me off.

It’s time to face the political reality: There is still no consensus for spending millions of taxpayer dollars on hunting down 11.9 million people and transporting them to their home nations.

This is the straw man argument.   No reasonable person is suggesting “hunting down” anyone.  If our present laws were enforced, many here illegally would leave on their own.   I thought Christians were not supposed to lie.

Florida group suing Marriott hotel for breach of contract

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update June 16th:  Hear participants in the lawsuit interviewed on radio this evening, go here for more information.

Isn’t this interesting.   Remember we told you about the conference in Nashville, TN that I recently attended and how the hotel—Loews Vanderbilt—cancelled the New English Review Conference days before it was to begin.   Now comes news a Marriott hotel in Florida did the same thing to the Florida Security Council and that group is suing the hotel.   Read their press release here, and watch a youtube clip here on the group’s home page.

Tom Trento, in that youtube clip, tells us the Florida Security Council also wants to discover if some one or some group was behind the hotel’s decision to cancel their event and he announced a new program at the FSC.    Entitled the ‘Free Speech Command Center’ it will gather cases across the country where citizens free speech is being stymied by those from a certain political and/or religious ideology.