These spin-doctors in the refugee industry are good, I gotta hand it to them. In 2007 when many of us were scratching our heads about why federally contracted resettlement agencies were placing refugees in the worst neighborhood they could find locally, the only obvious conclusion was that they were cheap. If they found cheap housing for refugees their resettlement dollars would go further—never mind the crime and horrible living conditions in such neighborhoods.
Then I saw Chris Coen’s post at Friends of Refugees and marveled at how the contractors now spin this placement of poor traumatized refugees in dying sections of poor cities—they are using the refugees to rebuild inner cities! Oh brother! And, we were told the refugee program was to help humanity, the poor and the downtrodden. Since when was it to build the tax base of rotten Democratically-governed cities (every decaying city in America has been governed by Democrats for decades)? Are the contractors going to be advertising this on their websites anytime soon?
Read Coen’s post here where he rightly criticizes the scheme because it frankly hurts the refugees. One of the points that continues to motivate my writing at RRW is that all of you who want to help refugees must understand that the “leaders of this refugee industry” are not all driven by a simple desire to be good toward the individual human being, there is a financial motivation as well—even if its for their own individual pay checks. Now, it looks like they are selling refugees to cities which are losing population. Fine, but at least be honest about it!
Erie, PA example!
The Friends of Refugees post was about Buffalo, NY, but here we have the same admission inserted in an opinion piece ostensibly about Peter King’s terrorism hearings. Columnist Ed Grode* says:
The only population growth in Erie over the past 10 years has come from refugees of all faiths. Our state and federal subsidies rely on census stats.
Refugees, often Muslim, are instrumental in rebuilding our inner city. Often they will purchase poorly maintained homes — homes that poor white and black Americans would not attempt to purchase and restore.
Federal taxpayer money flows to cities based on census data! What happens when the federal government runs out of money! And, here is another dirty little secret. Refugees and immigrants are eligible for all sorts of micro-loans to establish businesses and special government programs to buy homes that are not available to poor white or black Americans. (More on micro-loans which are available through the federal resettlement contractors later).
*So who is Ed Grode? From the end of his column:
ED GRODE, of Fairview, is a board member of the United States Committee for Refugees and Immigrants in Alexandria, Va. He is a former administrator at four Erie public high schools and is the retired director for the Institute of Geography Education at Mercyhurst College.
On the board of USCRI!!! USCRI is one of the top federal refugee resettlement contractors headed by Lavinia Limon a former head of the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) and now USCRI’s former VP, Eskinder Negash, is head of the ORR from which your tax dollars flow to the resettlement contractor, in this case USCRI! The revolving door at work!
One last thing, USCRI subcontractors have had some problems with this issue of placing refugees in slums. There was that mess in Bowling Green, KY linked above, and they were shut down in Waterbury, CT (maybe the State Department didn’t get the memo about refugees needed to rebuild slums), and had financial funny business going on in Erie, here, in 2008. There were additional locations too where USCRI was criticized for its work of bringing refugees to slums, but I’m out of time to dig out all the links.