Washington Post highlights refugee contractor Church World Service’s role as employment service for big business

Recently the Center for Immigration Studies released a report on Tennessee (we reported on it here) about how immigrant employment was responsible for most of the job growth in that state, and then today I see they have another study out, this time on Florida.  Here is how a piece by Ryan Lovelace at National Review Online begins:

A new report from the Center for Immigration Studies finds that the majority of the net increase in employment among Florida’s working age population since the first quarter of 2000 has gone to legal and illegal immigrants. Florida ranked second in the nation in employment growth among 16 to 65 year olds since the first quarter of 2000, CIS says, but still ranks 34th nationwide in labor-force participation of its native-born population in the same age range.

They need to do a study on North Carolina if they haven’t already!

One of the quasi-government/quasi-religious groups, Church World Service, is busy supplying refugee laborers for North Carolina companies and now they are whining again about cuts in taxpayer dollars that allow them, a non-profit ‘church’ group, to bring in workers to compete with native workers.

Here is the Washington Post helping Church World Service get its cry heard for more money (from the US Treasury’s money tree), in the wake of the unaccompanied minors’ border invasion:

“We measure our success as a company by the number of rice cookers we have,” Lindsay Hancock, Creative Snacks’ director of business administration, says only half-jokingly. The company has four now.

All 30 full-time employees on the plant floor are refugees. Many came through the Church World Service resettlement agency and its Greensboro employment training program. But that program’s future remains uncertain because, in the world of immigration and refugee policy, it turns out that the Mexican border and all its politics can run right through a North Carolina snack plant full of refugees.

File this under unintended consequences: The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement allocates funds to programs for refugees and unaccompanied alien children. Earlier this year, when the number of children fleeing Central America and Mexico for the United States started skyrocketing, the office reallocated more money to help address a mounting crisis at the border. That money — $94 million — came directly out of refugee programs and services. Taking the hit were grants that help refugees with employment, preventative health services and adaption to America and its school system.

Don’t make us choose between refugees and illegal immigrants! WE want money for everybody (our salaries too)!

For state refugee coordinators and immigration advocates, the crisis at the border has meant walking a tightrope: Do not make refugees bear the cost of Congress’s refusal to provide more funding. Do not pit refugees against immigrant children. Do not make us choose one or the other.

State refugee coordinators have been scrambling to figure out how to avoid layoffs and keep their health-care, educational and employment services intact.

Then this (below) is what jumped out at me!  “Creative Snacks” DEPENDS on Church World Service to supply it with workers and the owners have NO REAL ANSWER AS TO WHY THEY DON’T HIRE AMERICANS.

I have a few theories and one is that there are tax breaks of some sort for the employers when they hire refugees and what the refugees can’t afford through their salaries comes to them via various social services and training supplied by you!  (There are even special savings plans for refugees for such things as cars, homes and education where the government matches their savings.) So, the company can keep salaries low—you take care of everything else.  And, most importantly, refugees are basically trapped employees with nowhere else to go.

The WaPo continues (We want to know why is this the responsibility of the US taxpayer?):

“We depend upon Church World Service to help us find people,” Hancock says. “The loss of funding would have an immediate impact on our business.”

Yes, Hancock says, the company could hire the native-born, but Creative Snacks’ owners, Marius and Hilary Andersen, are committed to providing opportunities to refugees, who, by definition, have been wrenched from their homelands and who, in that loss, must place their faith in a new country.  [So, they have been wrenched by the UN and Church World Service from their homeland, what does that have to do with answering the question about why the Andersens don’t hire native North Carolinians?—ed]

Read the whole article, it is pretty informative.

Church World Service’s Form 990

CWS isn’t as bad as some of their fellow contractors*** in terms of the percentage of federal dollars they gobble up in any given year (most contractors are up in the 90% range).   Their 2013 Form 990 says they took in $74,101,599 and that $43,999,257 came from you as government grants.  That’s about 59.3 %.

Doing well by doing good!

Their CEO, Rev. John McCullough makes a cool $285,830 in salary from CWS (and related activities).  Five other employees are in the 6-figure salary range.  Maybe if the shortfall continues they could cut those salaries down a bit and help the refugees more.  (just saying!)

You should know that CWS lobbied for so-called Comprehensive Immigration Reform which we all know helped inspire the border surge.

***The federal refugee resettlement contractors (I suspect grant recipient big dogs Baptist Child and Family Services and Southwest Key Programs  are now devouring all the federal cash):

Our complete archive on ‘unaccompanied minors’ goes back several years, click here for all of those posts.