Before I get started on my latest foray into the Office of Refugee Resettlement’s flagrant law breaking regarding the Annual Report to Congress, yesterday I told you what people are searching that brings them to RRW, here.

This morning I just want to mention that searches yesterday were dominated by the phrase “Little Baghdad”—that would be El Cajon, California which we have discussed on many previous occasions.  Here is our archive on the refugee-overloaded city of El Cajon.  The most-read post yesterday with over 100 hits is this old post from 2009.

Back to the Annual Reports I spend a lot of time harping about!

Federal law says that the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) must file a report to Congress within three months of the close of the fiscal year.  A fiscal year ends on September 30th of a given year and so the report is due in Congress by January 31st of the following year.  Presently the ORR is THREE YEARS LATE!  They owe Congress 2010, 2011 and 2012.

Earlier this week I told you about the Legislative summary I found at the Library of Congress on the Refugee Resettlement Act of 1980, here.   This is what I found on the Annual Reporting requirement:

Requires the Secretary, not later than the January 31 following the end of each fiscal year beginning with fiscal year 1980, to submit reports to the Senate and House Judiciary Committees containing: (1) a labor profile for refugees who have entered the U.S. since May 1975; (2) a geographic description of refugee location; (3) a summary of the location and status of unaccompanied refugee children; (4) a description of the activities and expenditures of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, States, voluntary agencies, and sponsors; and (5) an evaluation of services provided under this Act. Requires the Secretary, in consultation with the Coordinator, to report to the Congress within one year of enactment of this Act an analysis of: (1) resettlement systems used by other countries; (2) the desirability of using a system other than the welfare system to provide refugee assistance; and (3) alternative resettlement strategies.

Hah!  I wonder if they ever did that last part!

So when did they start breaking the law, thumbing their noses at Congress and not getting these reports done?  That is what I wanted to know.

First, the ORR makes it very hard to find all the annual reports.  Some are available at their website, here.  But the missing ones are housed at the Georgetown Law Library—WHY?

My original plan was to start researching at 1990 and move toward the present time to see when they went off track and began breaking the law.  It didn’t take long—1993!

So, I went back to 1980 and sure enough through the entire Reagan Presidency and the George HW Bush Presidency from 1980 to 1992 those Annual Reports were right on time—submitted to Congress on January 31st of the following year.

But, you know what the little cheaters did beginning with the 1993 report (and continued to do for the next 20 years)—they stopped putting publication dates on them.  Oh, they had FY 1993 on the cover, but no information about when that actually went to Congress—heck it could have been three years late then!

So, who was the Director of the ORR during Bill Clinton’s time in office? 

Lavinia Limon who now heads up one of the nine major federal contractors—the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants—was in charge of getting those reports to Congress.   And, isn’t it funny that her former VP at USCRI is presently the Director of ORR.  There are a lot of revolving doors with this program between those who are handing out federal grants and those receiving them, but that’s a story for another day!

By the way, we have written a bunch of posts on Lavinia Limon over the years.  Here her subcontractor in Waterbury, CT was found to be treating refugees poorly and had come under review by the US State Department and Ms. Limon famously said “whoop-de-do”—we don’t get paid enough to do the job any better.

Incidentally, according to the most recent Form 990 (p.9) available for Ms. Limon’s organization they received 94% of their $35 million plus income from you—the taxpayer.

Only because I was keeping track do I know that the FY2008 report was released two years and 3 months late and the FY2009 report was three years and one month late.  And, as far as I know there hasn’t been a peep from the do-nothing House and Senate Committees responsible for over-seeing the Refugee program over all these 20 years since Clinton’s ORR flagrantly began breaking the law.   I’m guessing the attitude all around is that these are good people doing good work so they don’t have to follow the law!

About the photo and Ms. Limon:  Read all about her here at Fox News Latino.  Also, when you type ‘Lavinia Limon’ into our search function, you get this archive on the dozens of posts in which we have mentioned her.