Your tax dollars:
What’s up with this? Just now, having some fun at USA Spending.gov on that huge list of Catholic Charities that get taxpayer cash—$85,557,665 for the whole country in 2009, I was struck by how much Catholic Charities in Kentucky receives for its refugee program. I had initially assumed that Catholic Charities was receiving federal money for all sorts of charitable programs, but when I checked Kentucky and Tennessee I was shocked to see its all for their refugee programs.
For 2009, Catholic Charities Kentucky received $8,153,041 (EIGHT MILLION DOLLARS!) just for its refugee program! I don’t have the stats yet on how many refugees were resettled in Kentucky in 2009, but it couldn’t be a whole lot more than 2007 and 2008.
In 2007, Kentucky resettled a measly 899 refugees (about 2% of the national total) and Catholic Charities ALONE received $5,391,237 (FIVE MILLION DOLLARS!) and they aren’t the only refugee agency in Kentucky so they didn’t even resettle the entire 899. If they had resettled the entire lot of 899 that amounts to $5997 per refugee just to Catholic Charities. I know they are not the only agency bringing refugees to Kentucky because I wrote about another “non-profit” with varying names earlier this morning, here.
In 2008, Kentucky resettled 1,215 refugees and Catholic Charities received $5,784,609, although it didn’t even resettle the entire 1,215 refugees!
Note to reporters: The next time some refugee industry spokesman says that refugees only get $450 per refugee to get started in the US, ask more questions.
And, by the way, since the primary refugee contractor is the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (one of the top ten contractors), they probably get a slice of the taxpayer pie for their overhead too!