The longtime president of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), one of the top nine federal contractors resettling refugees in our cities, resigned this month. Hat tip: Friends of Refugees.
He says it’s for family reasons (that is what they all say!), but this article suggests that the agency was being criticized for not focusing on Jews in trouble around the world. To tell you the truth from the earliest days of writing RRW I wondered how HIAS justified resettling Muslims. But, I will bet if they didn’t agree to resettle everyone, the feds would cut them off financially.
You can read all about it here. Aronoff confirms that in order to keep the organization going you need to resettle as many warm bodies as possible—not just Jews—because their funding is dependent on a per capita payment from you, the taxpayer.
The interim President, Mark Hetfield, testified at the May 1 State Department meeting among other things to lighten up on the security restrictions and to get the P-3 program completely up and running. He specifically, sensibly, says, “The terror which refugees fled must not follow them to the United States,” then goes on to say we are being too strict with our security screening. Go figure!
We have written about HIAS and Aronoff previously, here is one post where we learned that Aronoff was letting staff go in 2009 while holding on to his quarter of a million dollar salary.
Learn more about HIAS! Check out our archives with all the posts in which we mention this contractor here.