Savannah, GA: Hot new resettlement site when Atlanta suburbs went into overload? Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services benefited from federal grant for Savannah!
As I mentioned, I took some reading material with me when I was away last week and had a chance to make this list of “preferred communities” from the 2010 Annual Report to Congress from the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) in the Department of Health and Human Services.
According to the feds, a”preferred community” is one in which newly arriving refugees have the best opportunity for “self-sufficiency and integration.” I look at the list and know that many of these cities are having big problems with refugees/immigrant joblessness and poverty, and lack of integration (assimilation!).
The grants for 2010 totaled nearly $6 million. And, take note Wyoming, the grants did not go to the city or state, the grants went to the contractors, so they decide what is needed to smooth the way for refugees in your “welcoming” city!
It strikes me that this is just one more excuse to funnel your tax dollars to a contractor.
Below are the cities that were “preferred” for both continuation grants and new grants in 2010 (from 2010 Annual Report). Since my return I see that the Annual Report for 2011 is out, so I’ve added those cities in red. Keep in mind that the ORR is always late in producing these reports, so by 2012 and 2013 surely they have added new cities to their “preferred communities.”
***Again, cities in red were added in 2011. This list gives you an idea of the cities being overloaded and that problems have developed.***
Bet you didn’t know your city was “preferred!”
Arizona: Tuscon, Phoenix
California: San Diego, Sacramento, Modesto, Walnut Creek
***Update*** Here you can see a list of new grantees. Note that the US Conference of Catholic Bishops gets nearly $2 million through 2016 for preferred communities, but no specific sites are listed (they probably don’t want you to know that your city is among the chosen!).
Cute kid! They surely wouldn’t put some tough teens on the cover! http://www.unhcr.org/53206a3d9.html
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees told the US that we better darn well take care of the tens of thousands of Mexican and Central American kids coming across the border without Mom or Dad, that these “refugees” are our responsibility.
Regular readers know this is the latest push by the one-worlders to force open our borders—send in the “kids.”
In the Wall Street Journal piece last week, note how the word “refugee” is applied to the mostly teen invaders who are really illegal aliens. The definition of ‘refugee’ does not include running from gang violence where the alien’s own country simply can’t enforce the law.
Real refugees or asylum seekers must prove that they are escaping persecution for their religious or political beliefs. This is about changing the rules by changing the language.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has called on the U.S. and other governments in the Americas “to keep children safe from human rights abuses, violence and crime” in what the agency says is a surge of undocumented minors trafficked into the U.S. by criminal smuggling networks.
The report, “Children on the Run,” was released in Washington, D.C., Wednesday by the U.N. refugee agency. It said such trafficking involved 21,537 children last year, up from 4,059 in 2011.
It is the latest call for action in response to a rising tide of child refugeesemerging from Mexico and the Central American countries of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala.
[….]
The program, run by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, cost the federal government $376 million in fiscal year 2013, and this year has a budget of $868 million.
A large portion of the millions being spent on the “kids” is going to a couple of the contractors: US Conference of Catholic Bishops and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services. Here!
What happens when the “kids” turn 18? They are released into America as “dreamers.”
The United States on Friday urged Thailand to protect some 200 asylum seekers who are reportedly from China’s Uighur minority, after police said they discovered them at a secret camp.
Thai police said Thursday that they discovered the families in a raid in the kingdom’s deep south and that the asylum seekers, who appeared to be preparing to head elsewhere, said they were Turkish.
The Uighurs come from Xinjiang province. The March 1 terror attack occurred in Kunming.
US broadcaster Radio Free Asia, quoting relatives, said that the asylum seekers were actually Uighurs — a Turkic-speaking, predominantly Muslim group from China’s northwestern Xinjiang region.
“We are urging the Thai government to provide full protection to the victims (and) to ensure that their humanitarian needs are met,” State Department deputy spokeswoman Marie Harf told reporters.
The annual US Human Rights Reports said that China carries out “severe official repression” of Uighurs in Xinjiang, including over their freedom of speech and religion.
March 1 mass stabbing at train station:
Xinjiang is periodically hit by violent clashes and Chinese officials blamed Uighur separatists for a March 1 mass stabbing at a train station in the southwestern city of Kunming that killed 29 people and injured 143 others.
Malaysia among countries forcibly returning Uighurs to China.
Under Beijing’s pressure, Cambodia, Malaysia and Pakistan have all in recent years forcibly returned Uighurs to China.
The UN refugee agency criticized Malaysia for its deportation of six Uighurs to China in December, saying that they were sent back to a country where they were at risk even though the group had registered asylum claims.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said that it is providing assistance to the 200 asylum seekers in Thailand but has not confirmed their identifies.
They are still breaking the law since the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) was required in the original Refugee Act of 1980 to produce an annual report four months after the close of the previous fiscal year. So technically ORR should, by now, have submitted reports for 2012 and 2013.
Eskinder Negash (right) is the Director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement. Previously he was a VP for one of the contractors. Revolving door between contractor and government job is standard operating proceduere in this program.
As we reported here, they have been behind ever since the Clinton Administration.
I hadn’t been checking, so I don’t know when they submitted 2011 to Congress because as you see they have no date on the cover (another trick that began during the Clinton Administration!).
For those of you in Wyoming considering inviting refugees to your state, please read the annual report before you make that move!
Wouldn’t you think that the federal government and its contractor partners would have a good handle on employment and welfare usage by refugees. They really don’t.
Much of the information in the report is obtained through surveys where another contractor tries to track down refugees and expects them to answer truthfully about what they are receiving from welfare and if they are working. So when you read some of the stats in the report (which are really pretty awful as it is) consider this information on how the survey is done (emphasis is mine):
For the 2011 survey, 2,514 households were contacted and 1,534 households completed the interview. Refugees included in the 2010 survey—but had not resided in the U.S. for more than five years—were again contacted and interviewed along with a new sample of refugees, Amerasians, and entrants who had arrived during the period from May 1, 2010 through April 30, 2011. Of the 1,509 re-interview cases from the 2011 sample, 954 were contacted and interviewed, and 37 were contacted, but refused to be interviewed.The remaining 518 re-interview cases could not be traced in time to be interviewed.Of the 1,005 new sample cases, 580 were contacted and interviewed, another 22 were contacted but refused to cooperate, and the remaining 403 could not be traced in time to be interviewed. [So 403 fairly new arrivals couldn’t even be found?—ed] The resulting responses were then weighted to adjust for differential sampling rates and response rates across refugee cohorts and ethnic groups.
The overall response rate of the 2011 Survey was 61 percent.
Then get this from a footnote on welfare use:
Caution must be exercised when reviewing refugee declarations of public assistance utilization. These are self reported data and the questions asked are subject to wide variation in interpretation by the respondent.
The surveys are conducted in the refugee’s native language, and certain technical terms which distinguish types of income do not translate well into foreign languages.
Refugees readily admit to receiving “welfare” or “assistance”, but they are frequently confused about the correct category. Past surveys have found that refugee households are very accurate in reporting Supplemental Security Income (SSI) because their claims are handled by the Social Security Administration.
However, RCA, TANF,and GA cases are all handled by the local county welfare office and are not clearly distinguished from each other by the refugee family. [Note to Wyoming: you think this is all going to be taken care of by the feds with no cost to your counties—ed]
Over the years, we have noted that many refugees claim RCA many years after arrival even though the program is confined to the first eight months in the U.S., claim receipt of TANF even though they have no children, or claim receipt of general relief even though they reside in States that do not provide such assistance, such as Florida or Texas.
So, considering all of that above, here is the “Economic Adjustment” section of the Executive Summary (emphasis is mine). My suspicion is that the numbers are much worse than portrayed here due to the small sample size and the large number unwilling to participate or were not found.
• The 2011 Annual Survey of Refugees who have been in the U.S. less than five years indicated that 52 percent of refugees age 16 or over were employed as of December 2011, as compared with 59 percent for the U.S. population.
• The labor force participation rate was 63 percent for the sampled refugee population, as compared with 64 percent for the U.S. population. The refugee unemployment rate was 18 percent,*** compared with eight percent for the U.S. population.
• Approximately 58 percent of all sampled refugee households in the 2011 survey were entirely self-sufficient (subsisted on earnings alone). About 28 percent lived on a combination of public assistance and earned income; another nine percent received only public assistance. [This doesn’t equal 100%—ed]
• Approximately eight percent of refugees in the five-year sample population received medical coverage through an employer, while 48 percent received benefits from Medicaid or Refugee Medical Assistance. About 40 percent of the sample population had no medical coverage in any of the previous 12 months.
• Approximately 39 percent of respondents received some type of cash assistance in the twelve months prior to the survey. About 61 percent of refugee households received assistance through Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and 24 percent received housing assistance.
• The overall hourly wage of employed refugees in the five-year population in the 2011 survey was $9.43. This represents a five percent drop from the 2010 survey, when respondents reported an overall hourly wage of $9.90 in current dollars (not adjusted for inflation).
***Think about it—18% unemployment rate for refugees and these same contractors are lobbying for amnesty for millions of illegal aliens, what will that do to refugee unemployment?
Of the nearly a half million refugees, asylees, Cuban-Haitians etc. we resettled in the last 5 years, this information was extracted from approximately 1,500 WILLING TO BE INTERVIEWED refugees.
While I was away, I was able to do a lot of reading, so this will be the first of many reports on documents I’ve been reviewing and this post and others will be filed in our ‘where to find information’category,here.
Readers, most of the Somalis in the US are here as refugees, or family members of refugees. After Minnesota, Ohio is a destination of choice for Somalis as secondary migrants where they move to create Somali enclaves. The population in some Ohio cities is rapidly expanding.
LOL! In fact David Lubell and his ‘Welcoming America’group of community organizers has been pushing Cleveland as a mecca of immigrant entrepreneurial economic activity!
EBT Nation! My go-to graphic when photos of the alleged crooks can’t be found!
Although we have had a few food stamp fraud busts in the past that specifically mention the fact that your taxpayer dollars are being sent out of the country, it is still rare for the feds to mention that part of the fraud scheme.
CLEVELAND — Four men from Northeast Ohio were charged in a five-count indictment with engaging in a conspiracy to defraud the food stamp and Women, Infants and Children programs from a store on Detroit Avenue in Cleveland, law enforcement officials said.
Indicted are: Bashir Mohammed, 31, of Cleveland; Yusuf Maalin, 45, of Cleveland; Ali Shire Ahmed, 54, of North Olmsted, Ohio; and Farah Hasan Warsame, 27, of Cleveland. [I could find no photos of the perps, but from these names we believe they are all Somalis, they generally live together and commit crimes with their own kind.—ed]
The indictment alleges that Mohamed, Maalin, Ahmed, and Warsame conspired to illegally allow customers to redeem food stamp and WIC benefits at Bashir Market, 8401 Detroit Avenue, in exchange for cash, ineligible items, and credit towards overseas wire transfers.
Mohamed, Maalin, and Warsame allegedly worked at the market and redeemed the food stamp and WIC benefits for the cash, unauthorized items, or credit towards overseas funds transfers. The credit for overseas funds transfers was tracked on a ledger kept at the market, according to the indictment.
Mohamed or Maalin would then provide Ahmed with cash or a check that Ahmed would take to Columbus to send overseas by wire transfer.
The indictment alleges that the conspiracy involved the attempted redemption of approximately $670,612 in food stamp and WIC benefits, according to the indictment.
See all of our posts in our immigrant-run food stamp fraud archive by clicking here.
