Editor’s note: I think I need to add another thing to my Frequently Asked Questions post which is now readily available just under our header above.
So many of our readers are eager to start researching the resettlement contractors working near you, so here are a few places to start to learn about how they are financed (this is in no way meant to be an all inclusive list, because I don’t know every place to research myself!).
But, first, although off-topic, I want you to see what a one-woman blogger accomplished in Chicago (not a refugee issue, but one involving fraud in the Chicago school system!). See here (hat tip: Judy). It can be done!
I’m tech-impaired, but if I can find stuff, so can you. It just takes a little patience!
Call or write the non-profit group:
Start with contacting the resettlement agency near you (a handy list is here). As IRS designated 501(c)3 organizations they are NOT allowed to keep their financial documents from you—they are required to give anyone who calls a copy of their financial statement and their Form 990 (if they have one). Legitimate churches are not required to file Form 990’s so some of the contractors are doing this federal work (resettling refugees) pretending to be churches only.
Go to Guidestar:
Find their IRS Form 990’s on Guidestar by going here and registering to use Guidestar. It can get tricky because you have to use their exact name as they filed on their Form 990. For example, you won’t find the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, but you will find its Form 990 by typing in HIAS, Inc.
USA Spending.gov:
USA Spending.gov is a very handy site as long as you know the exact name of the entity you are searching for. It also has the advantage of tracking across federal agencies and will give you grants and contracts! Enter the name of the non-profit in the search window in upper right.
For example, you might find that a resettlement contractor is getting cashola, not just from the Office of Refugee Resettlement (in HHS), but from the US Justice Department from some voter registration grants. If you don’t find the non-profit group listed, don’t give up right away, try to find the exact name it is using. I looked up a specific Catholic Charities this morning under its diocese name and nothing came up, but then I saw on their website that they had a slightly different name and found what I was looking for under that name.
Annual reports to Congress:
These are a treasure trove of information on grants and statistics on welfare use (among other things). I see here that they are late again. FY2014 should have been released months ago.
Office of Refugee Resettlement:
Go here to programs and click on those of your choice to see who is getting all of the (your!) money!
Non-Profit Facts. com:
A reader sent me this website, which I have never used until today, so try it too by clicking here. I did test it on the specific Catholic non-profit I searched at USA Spending.gov and was disappointed to see that this website did not mention the $140,000 HUD grant they had received in the last year. However, there are still some useful bits of information here. For example, I learned that this “church” group was not required to file a Form 990.
And, finally, you will need to check with your state and local governments about funding these ‘non-profit’ groups receive from you at that level. This post is meant to address only federal money flowing to them. You may have to use state public information laws to extract information from them.
Other suggestions that have worked for you? Send them my way!
Month: October 2015
Group to rally against refugee resettlement in Twin Falls, ID today
Here is a short announcement from MagicValley.com:
TWIN FALLS • The III Percent of Idaho is holding a march Sunday to call for an end to the refugee program, which is run locally by the College of Southern Idaho.
[….]
Refugee resettlement has been an issue worldwide this year due to the refugee crisis triggered by the civil war in Syria, and there is a movement in Twin Falls to shut down the refugee center here, with opponents citing security and cost concerns.
“The ramifications of ignoring Idaho veterans, homeless, and students will continue to yield tragic consequences if Idaho tax dollars are shifted into a broken refugee system,” the III percenters said in the statement. “Until refugees can be thoroughly filtered, and a more reliable, systematic method of accepting refuges is implemented, we must stand in opposition.”
The article goes on to say that the group supports the bill introduced in Congress by Rep. Brian Babin of Texas that seeks to put the program on hold until the cost to the taxpayers is fully determined. One of our many posts on the Babin bill is here.
Rep. Raul Labrador…..
Idahoans should be urging Rep. Raul Labrador to co-sponsor the Babin bill AND urge him to push for hearings on it—he sits on the House Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security.
In fact he is the vice-chairman of the subcommittee responsible for the refugee program!
Although Twin Falls is not in Rep. Labrador’s district, he should be encouraged to take a lead on this issue from his all important committee leadership position. He needs to tell Trey Gowdy (the chairman!) to hold hearings on the Babin bill.
Learn more about the III of Idaho, here.
We have an extensive archive on Twin Falls, Idaho. Go here to learn more.
Labrador’s district has dodged a bullet (so far) as we learned here.
And, one more bit of news: we’ve learned that a new ‘Pocket of Resistance’ is forming in Boise!
Concord, NH: Bhutanese refugees' religious ceremony draws neighbors' ire
I’m running out of time this morning after writing so much about Allentown, PA, but want to get a few more things posted before I have to move on to other of life’s duties.
Over a week ago a large gathering of Bhutanese refugees disturbed a quiet Concord neighborhood with chanting, large numbers of people and traffic. The original story is here at the Concord Monitor. One resident put a “GO HOME” sign in a window.
That story was followed by an apology of sorts from one of the Bhutanese refugees involved. But interestingly he blamed the federal refugee contractor for not giving the former UN camp residents, the Hindu Bhutanese, a sufficient cultural orientation.
For new readers, we have now resettled over 80,000 Bhutanese refugees from camps in Nepal (they are really Nepali people that Nepal didn’t want back once they were expelled from Bhutan). The UN wanted to clean out the camps (the plan was very controversial because many did not want to be “scattered to the four winds” as they said at the time).
The Bush Administration decision to resettle 60,000 in the US was made by former Maryland candidate for Governor Ellen Sauerbrey who was the Bush Asst. Sec. of State for PRM. As I said, we are now up to 80,000 and they are still coming.
Don’t forget readers that the Refugee Admissions Program is 35 years old and Republicans like George W. Bush enthusiastically helped this migration of third worlders to America.
We have a very lengthy archive on the Bhutanese resettlement going back to 2007, learn more by clicking here. Pay attention to stories about the high suicide rate of the Bhutanese people in America.
So back to the Concord news. This is PRAJA SHAPKOTA writing a sort-of apology for the disruption in the neighborhood, here (see photo!).
I feel concerned with the discontentment generated due to the religious ceremony in the Heights neighborhood of Concord (Monitor front page, Oct. 7).
As a member of the community in Upstate New York, I wish to express my personal viewpoints with some background information.
We the Bhutanese people of Nepali ethnicity have come to the United States after persecution and eviction by the absolute monarchy of Bhutan from 1985 to 1995. We have spent more than 18 years in crowded refugee camps of Nepal in uncertainty when Nepal was undergoing political metamorphism.
The refugee camps strengthened family and neighborly bonds with higher interpersonal interactions, which has become a community culture. What we see and do shapes our ways of life – our very culture.
We primarily follow the Hindu traditions, and for a family a lengthy religious function is once or twice in a generation. In case of Rudra Timsina, the function was a way of sharing joy with the community after buying a house – the achievement of a dream. Most invitees attend the discourses and cultural activities at least once in seven days as this is also a method to socialize among people with cultural and language barriers.
Such people constitute more than 50 percent in our community – illiterate in English and unaware of the American culture and traditions. We have never lived with people of totally different culture. Hence, this is a case of “conflict of culture and outlook” and not a conflict of community.
[….]
….in my opinion, the resettlement agencies with local community organizations should initiate at least a month of group orientation on the various aspects of American culture, such that a “conflict of culture” can be lessened.
I’ve had complaints from some of our readers about the large number of Bhutanese refugees in their communities. At least this writer is sensitive to the disruption created in this Concord situation.
Who is bringing the Bhutanese to Concord?
Go here to the handy list, and see that three federal refugee contractors are dividing up the pie in the same office in Concord (Church World Service, Episcopal Migration Ministries and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service). Manchester, NH has been overloaded so now it looks like they are busy little beavers colonizing Concord.
Lutheran meeting in Allentown, PA gets contentious, but who is this wealthy 'Lutheran' group?
This is an update of the post we wrote here the other day. Lutheran Children and Family Service of Eastern Pennsylvania held a public meeting to bring together churches in the Allentown area to prep them for the arrival of Syrian refugees.
The Morning Call reported on what happened next, here.
A Lutheran group that settles refugees in the Lehigh Valley got more than it bargained for at a meeting Wednesday when members of the Lehigh Valley Tea Party and other groups questioned whether some of those refugees might be terrorists.
Lutheran Children and Family Service, which oversees the refugee settlement program in the area, held an informational meeting at St. Peter’s Lutheran Church in Allentown on how churches and others can help in light of the Syrian refugee crisis.
Janet Panning, program director of Lutheran Children and Family Service, told the approximately 70 people in attendance that the agency expects to resettle about 120-130 refugees in the next year, including about 50-60 Syrians in 15 families.
[….]
Representatives of about 25 churches attended to find out how they would help. But when Panning and others on her panel started taking questions, it became clear that others in the audience were more concerned with whether the Muslim refugees might be terrorists, might try to impose strict Islamic law and customs on the United States and become burdens to society.
I am not going to get into the weeds of the misinformation spouted by Ms. Panning and others. Read the whole thing and be sure to see the comments.
Two things!
Remember two things (no matter how maligned you might be at a meeting like this one): First, you are paying for this whole resettlement business and have a right to know what they are doing with your money and to your town, and secondly, the FBI has testified to Congress that the Syrian refugees cannot be thoroughly screened to assure terrorists won’t get in!
You have every right to be there and to question those promoting the colonization of your community and using your money to do it!
Lutheran Children and Family Service of Eastern Pennsylvania is rolling in YOUR bucks!
They are from Philadelphia where refugee overload means diversity is not such a beautiful thing and thus they need to be spreading their refugees out to surrounding towns and cities—Allentown is about 50 miles from Philadelphia. More here.
Some parts of their website are password protected (what are they hiding there?).
If you think this ‘church’ group is passing the plate on Sunday mornings to pay for all of this, forget it. By the way, they are a subcontractor of major federal contractor Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, here.
We had a look at the most recent Form 990 available for Ms. Panning’s organization and here is some of what we learned (p.9):
Gross receipts that year were: $14,273,796
Government grants: $13,506,480 (federal and state taxpayer dollars!)
So that comes to 95% funded by taxpayers! This is not a private non-profit group, this is essentially a quasi-government agency!
It gets worse!
They spent $8,889,752 of your money on salaries, benefits, pensions, payroll taxes and management!
Now, have a look at the salaries for this NON-PROFIT GROUP! (p. 7) Ahhhh! Doing well by doing good!
CEO: $411,357 (in compensation and related benefits)
Senior VP: $269,734
Another Senior VP: $205,456
VP of Community Services: $153,837
So, when Ms. Panning is trying to tell an audience that they aren’t paid much, that all they get is $925 per refugee from the State Department, I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt. Maybe she doesn’t know herself how many millions come from taxpayers or how huge the salaries are of her senior leadership. Next time, how about sending CEO Luanne Fisher*** out to field the questions!
From The Morning Call:
The State Department, which works with Lutheran Children and Family Service on resettlement, provides $925 per refugee to help with the effort. The rest is up to the Lutheran Service group and churches that partner with the organization.
By the way, you need to know that when groups like this one seek volunteer help and donated junk, they get to count both the time and the donations as ‘cash’ so they can tell the federal government they have a little skin in the game.
Read the whole Morning Call update here.
Another Lutheran doing well by doing good is Jodi Harpstead, here at Lutheran Social Service of Minnesota. How many more of them are out there sucking from the government teat?
p.s. If you have made contact with your Pennsylvania US Senators’ offices, please send them this post! Afterthought: Dr. Fisher makes twice what your US Senator makes, here.
*** Ms. Fisher was the CEO at the time of the filing of the 2012 Form 990 we were able to access and we can only assume she is still the CEO as of this writing. It is the staff portion of their website that is password protected.
eBay founder's publication 'The Intercept' having hissy fit over refugee resettlement backlash
The reporter (Lee Fang) for ‘The Intercept’ singles out a wealthy California man as its target in his piece in which he is literally freaking-out over all of us. The implication here is that without this one man, there would be no backlash against the UN/US State Department Refugee Admissions Program.
I love to read stories like this one because it means you are having a huge impact!
By the way, he (Fang) is using Alinsky Rule 13 (we discussed Rule 13 here in 2009). Alinsky taught his followers in ‘Rules for Radicals’ to target individuals because they hurt more quickly than institutions.
It won’t work because the movement to hold back the tide of third world migration to America is much much larger than this one California man.
And, what Fang and eBay founder Omidyar don’t want their readers to know is that there are thousands of citizens working on this issue who are paid by no one and fueled only by a desire to save America—economically and culturally! If Mr. Shillman went away today, it wouldn’t matter because we are fed by passion and patriotism, not cash.
The Intercept:
Strident calls to reject Syrian refugees fueled by wealthy California donor
While humanitarian groups and religious charities across the country are urging the U.S. to open its arms to refugees fleeing the bloody conflicts in Syria and Iraq, a number of bloggers and political pundits are beating the drums of intolerance, using conspiracy theories and anti-Muslim rhetoric to mobilize the American public against accepting migrants escaping war.
Several of the leading voices in this effort are sponsored by Robert Shillman, a wealthy donor to conservative causes who lives in Rancho Santa Fe, a suburb of San Diego.
Shillman, who did not respond to a request for comment, is the founder and chairman of Cognex Corp., a company that produces manufacturing technology.
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at FrontPage Magazine, has argued that the only “genuine refugees” are “Christian and non-Muslim” and that the U.S. should not accept any Muslims from the conflict in Syria because those fleeing the region “are not victims, they are perpetrators.”
This is what makes me laugh: the reporter would like his readers to think that Shillman had something to do with Spartanburg and St. Cloud. I bet the majority of those demanding answers in those cities have never even heard of Shillman.
Shillman Journalism Fellow articles about the dangers of accepting Syrian refugees have gone viral over the last two months, with versions reposted on conservative blogs and news hubs. Fear of Syrian migrants has fueled anger in small towns that fear they will become hosts for Islamic terrorists. Residents in cities such as Spartanburg, South Carolina, and St. Cloud, Minnesota, have organized opposition to the possibility of refugee resettlement efforts.
Asked earlier this year by Reuters about his support for David Horowitz and Pamella Geller, two well-known anti-Muslim activists, Shillman explained that he is not anti-Muslim, but rather simply more outspoken than most business leaders. “Most CEOs are hired guns and their future depends on what their boards think of them. I don’t give a fuck,” he said.
Best antidote to Rule 13—Rule 5! Laugh at them!
There is lots of amusing stuff in here, continue reading.