Month: June 2017

IRC gives up plans for new resettlement site in Asheville, NC; write to Congress!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This story is from about ten days ago (just getting around to posting it).  What it says to me is that the resettlement contractors are a) pretty worried that the Trump Administration will come in low when it sends its FY18 ‘determination’ to the Hill in September, and b) they aren’t going to push an office where the Congressman for the area is totally opposed to it.
On that last point, I am going to continue to hammer every day that you must hound your member of Congress on the refugee program.
In my opinion, the only way to bring about reform is for the Trump Administration to send a determination for ZERO refugees for FY18 and demand Congress get to work reforming the monstrosity. As it stands now the Republican leadership wants more cheap refugee labor available for big business and the Dems want reliable Democrat voters.  Taxpayers foot the bill!
Here is the news from Asheville (from the Citizen-Times).  And, btw, since 9/11 North Carolina is #13 on the list of states ‘welcoming’ refugees. It received 30,827 refugees in that time (overall, the US admitted 917,639 since FY2002).

ASHEVILLE – A global aid and humanitarian organization announced Thursday it was cancelling plans to make Asheville a resettlement site for 150 refugees.

The move comes six months after the inauguration of Republican President Donald Trump and one year since staff with the International Rescue Committee conducted an exploratory visit in Asheville.

Sean Piazza at linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/seanpiazza

During meetings with stakeholders last June, the IRC received “overwhelming” support to move forward, said Sean Piazza, a spokesman for the large nonprofit.  [LOL! even the reporter here knows this is a large nonprofit!—ed]

But, executive orders issued by the new administration place in question admission of refugees to the United States in 2017 and beyond, he said.

“Unfortunately, in light of these current policies, IRC is not in a position to continue opening an office in Asheville,” Piazza said.

[….]

The IRC is in conversation with the Trump administration to ensure the United State’s commitment to offering a safe haven for the world’s most vulnerable citizens, Piazza said.

“We ask supportive communities to convey this same message to your members of Congress,” said Piazza.

“We appreciate the warm reception and support we received in Asheville.”

Rep. Mark Meadows strong opposition likely played a role in the IRC’s abandonment of the Asheville site.

The IRC helped resettle nearly 10,000 refugees in 2015 including people from Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.

Even before Trump’s orders, the expansion of refugee services into Western North Carolina was challenged some of the region’s more conservative residents.

U.S. Rep. Mark Meadows, R-Buncombe, opposed the IRC’s plan in August.

More here at the Citizen-Times.

Meanwhile in Montana another IRC office is limping along

The International Rescue Committee is responsible for opening Montana to refugees (there was a small resettlement program there years ago), but against strong opposition, they convinced the US State Department in 2016 to let them open a new site in Missoula.  At present, Montana is #47 on the list of states ‘welcoming’ refugees (only Hawaii, Mississippi and Wyoming received less).
Here is recent news on that program.  See my Montana archive by clicking here.

So where else is the large, very rich and powerful IRC working?

Here is a list of the cities where the International Rescue Committee is planting third-world poverty (their effort to get a foothold in NC has failed for now):

 
And, since I hadn’t checked the IRC’s finances lately, I figured it was a good time to check a recent Form 990. (BTW, this is the first time I am using this ProPublica website. Try it out!) The IRC is about 67% funded by taxpayers (yesterday we learned that EMM is 99.5% funded by you, the American taxpayer!)
In addition to the income in my screenshot (below), they have another $1,451,183 listed as IOM Loan Collection Fee.  This is your money too. The contractors are the collection agencies for the loan given to refugees for their airfare to your town and as the collection agency they get a cut of what they collect from the financially struggling refugees. (LOL! this is justified as teaching refugees how to handle their money and their debt!).
 

 

Doing well by doing good!

Miliband center with George Soros and Soros Jr.

Editor: Let me be clear! If this was a private organization raising private funds, I wouldn’t care what kind of salaries they pay, but since approximately 67% of their annual income comes from taxpayers, this becomes our business!
The most fun part of reporting on the refugee contractors*** finances is always the salaries page of the Form 990.  Here is the page from the same Form 990 I got the income from above.
David Miliband, the CEO of the IRC, is a British national who was the former Labor Foreign Secretary.  He was feted when he arrived in New York City to take the reins of the IRC by the likes of Bill Clinton, George Soros and Samantha Power, here.
See my David Miliband archive here.  He was the first to call for Obama to bring in 65,000 Syrians in one year!
Drum roll please! Here are the top salaries at the IRC (most are higher than most members of Congress/Senators, here).
Look at it this way, you are paying 67% of these peoples’ salaries as they make decisions affecting your neighborhood!
 

 
I know this is getting long, but the more I think about it, if what you have read concerns you, you should consider writing a real letter (not a call or e-mail) to your member of Congress and US Senators and demand that the US Refugee Admissions program be defunded until an effort is made to reform it.
Because of the huge amounts of money sent from the US Treasury to these supposed non-profits for their ‘charitable’ work, there is never any incentive to slow the flow for any reason.  The Refugee Act of 1980 has set up a permanent class of activist lobbying groups who will naturally scream bloody murder if the flow is slowed because it is attached to their budgetary bottom lines.
And, if you do write a real letter, tell your representatives that you expect a letter in response.  Please feel free to take anything from these pages!
*** For new readers, these are the nine federal refugee contractors that monopolize the admissions program (and lobby Congress for more and more refugees!).

Refugee contractor Episcopal Migration Ministries is 99.5% funded by you, will close some offices

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This is old news from back in April and I don’t know if they have changed their minds about closing offices after it was announced by the Dept. of State on May 26th that the number of refugees being admitted to the US is going to tick up to 1,500 a week.
Since the refugee contractors*** are paid by the head to place refugees in your towns and cities they may feel there is some hope for their finances to pick up with an increase in paying client (aka refugees) arrivals.
(As of June 11th, 47,434 refugees have been admitted to the US in FY17. This is 9,328 refugees since the supposed moratorium began and 17,312 since Trump was inaugurated.)

Rev. Canon E. Mark Stevenson and staff at EMM headquarters in NY city. http://episcopaldigitalnetwork.com/ens/2017/04/04/trumps-immigration-policies-force-reduction-of-episcopal-churchs-refugee-resettlement-network/

However, office closure news isn’t the primary reason I’m posting this news.  I’m posting it because a reader has solved a mystery I’ve been wondering about for years—why is there no Form 990 (the IRS form required of non-profit groups) for Episcopal Migration Ministries (EMM)?
Before I get to the answer.  Here is what the Episcopal News Service reported on April 4th (they are looking ahead to FY18 and even lower numbers of refugee clients):

As a result of changing U.S. policy that lowers the number of refugees to be resettled in this country annually by more than half, Episcopal Migration Ministries will be reducing the size of its affiliate network by six sites in the next fiscal year. Currently, the Episcopal Migration Ministries network consists of 31 affiliate locations.

Episcopal Migration Ministries is a ministry of the Episcopal Church, and is one of nine national agencies responsible for resettling refugees in the United States in partnership with the government.

“We are disappointed that we need to take these steps, but the current situation leaves us no choice,” commented the Rev. Canon E. Mark Stevenson, director of Episcopal Migration Ministries. “We have reduced our national core staff by 22% due to funding cuts and we are now looking at a similar cut in our network of affiliate partners through which refugees are resettled. While difficult, the decision making process regarding these reductions has been carried out carefully and strategically, with the welfare of refugees at the forefront of our minds.”

As Episcopal Migration Ministries prepares for fiscal year 2018, six offices will not be included in the resettlement plan submitted to the government. The affiliates, and the Episcopal dioceses in which they are located, are: Refugee One, Chicago, IL (Diocese of Chicago); Lutheran Social Services of Northeast Florida, Jacksonville, FL (Diocese of Florida); Lutheran Social Services of ND, Fargo, ND (Diocese of North Dakota); Lutheran Social Services of ND, Grand Forks, ND (Diocese of North Dakota); Ascentria Care Alliance, Concord, NH (Diocese of New Hampshire); and Ascentria Care Alliance, Westfield, MA (Diocese of Western Massachusetts).

More here.
Readers this does not mean that the entire refugee program in, for instance, Fargo, ND is closing. Many of these contractors double up in places where the flow coming in is pretty lucrative.  See the page from the State Department’s affiliates directory.  You will see for Fargo, for instance, that EMM shares an office with Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service. Presumably LIRS will stay in business.
 

 
If you are wondering what the DFMS stands for in the lefthand corner of two entries, it is for EMM’s other name Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society.  You see how tricky this gets when trying to figure out what these secretive agencies are doing while using different names and housing their money in difficult-to-find places!  (BTW, I was told by a DOS employee nearly ten years ago that there are no financial audits done of this particular group of federal contractors.)

They are not passing the plate on Sundays for their refugee program!

Take, for example, my quandary about trying to find EMM’s Form 990. Here is what one reader spotted in a lengthier story from Episcopal News Service in April:

The executive order’s impact on EMM’s bottom line is especially drastic because EMM is a unique ministry of the Episcopal Church, both structurally and fiscally. While not separately incorporated, as is Episcopal Relief & Development, EMM receives very little money from the church-wide budget, instead receiving 99.5 percent of its funding from the federal government. Its main office is housed at the Episcopal Church Center in New York.

EMM takes the prize!  99.5% of its funding is from you. And, you have no way of knowing where your money is going!

And, come to think of it, where is the ACLU on the issue of separation of church and state?  Hmmmm?
The next highest contractors run at the 97%-98% federal funding level (US Conf. of Catholic Bishops, USCRI and LIRS).
Endnote:  With all of this news about EMM closing offices, one wonders why the DOS is contemplating opening a new EMM office in Charleston, WV?
*** The nine federal contractors that depend largely on tax dollars to do their charitable good works are these:

Australian Prime Minister mocks Trump at journalist gathering in Canberra

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Hey Malcolm, these mostly Muslim boat people are not our problem!

Check out the news here at Australia’s Nine News.
So here’s my idea!
Donald Trump could get the last laugh by cancelling the “dumb deal” Obama agreed to that would bring up to 1,250 of Australia’s unwanted so-called ‘refugees’, presently held in offshore detention facilities, to (your!) American towns.
Bringing them here would save Turnbull’s political neck, while American taxpayers foot the bill and risk our lives! Some deal!
 
See my post yesterday about the deal! (A deal implies both sides get something!).

Looking for something you can do? 

Contact the White House and tell them to scrap the “dumb deal” with Australia!
Click here.
Then tell your Congressman too!

Here we go again, local resettlement agencies operating in secrecy

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Electing Donald Trump has apparently changed nothing in the way local refugee resettlement agencies contracted by the federal government treat taxpayers—the very people paying their salaries!
I’m beginning to get calls from some of you working in your communities telling me that you are (again!) being barred from “stakeholder” meetings.
For new readers “stakeholder” meetings occur in resettlement towns and cities usually quarterly and it is where the contractor gets together with impacted agencies and departments in your town—like the school system people, health officials, criminal justice officials, and sometimes non-profit group members who are supportive of more refugees for the town. Not usually admitted are concerned members of the taxpaying public who might want a smaller number brought to their neighborhoods.

(At this time of  year they often talk about how many refugees your town can take in the coming fiscal year.)

State Department bureaucrat Larry Bartlett told then Senator Jeff Sessions that there is “consultation” in towns targeted for resettlement. What he didn’t say is that anyone in opposition was not welcome to the meeting!

I had to laugh during testimony to the Senate in 2015 when Lawrence Bartlett, with a straight face, told Senator Jeff Sessions that refugee planning for towns was done in full and open planning meetings called “stakeholder” meetings and implied the consultation was open to all citizens of the towns. (Come to think of it, maybe he doesn’t know that his contractors are turning people away!)
This is what I said in October 2015 (reporting on Sessions’ hearing) about “consultation” and stakeholder meetings:

Consultation is a joke!

Near the end of the hearing, Senator Sessions asked about whether there was consultation with the communities that would be receiving the refugees, and Lawrence Bartlett (US State Department) said with a straight face that there are quarterly consultations with stakeholders and elected officials.

He did not mention that the taxpaying public is prohibited from attending!  He did not mention that if elected officials are hostile, they aren’t invited.  He did not mention that in many communities there is no quarterly meeting.  He did not mention that the meeting usually only involves ‘stakeholders’ that are friendlies.  Go here to a post we wrote in May about the efforts by citizens in St. Cloud, MN to get into a ‘quarterly consultation’ (while ‘leaders of the Somali ‘community’ had been invited), but were told initially that they were not permitted to attend.  (After a public outcry, a few representatives of the concerned public did eventually gain entry to a sanitized meeting.)

Readers are always asking me what they can do.  You can do this!

Go here and find a contractor operating near you (even one within a hundred miles).
Call them and ask when the next ‘stakeholder’ meeting is scheduled and tell them you want to come.  If they say no, call your member of Congress and complain. I know you think they are useless, but you must hound them!
While you have the contractor (they call themselves ‘affiliates’) on the phone ask for the 2017 R & P ABSTRACT.  They may pretend they don’t know what you are talking about, but be polite and persistent.
Even if we should be seeing the documents before they go to Washington, they are not going to give you the FY18 one they are working on at this minute, but there is no reason for them to withhold the 2017 version.  Tell them you want all of the pages including any letters of support attached.
The best one I ever saw is this one from Reno, Nevada.  BTW, they tout Tesla as one of the global companies looking for laborers.
For FY18, they will claim it is a planning document not yet submitted to the US State Department.  The ABSTRACT is the document in which they justify how many refugees your town could get starting on October 1, 2017 and you should have every right to know what they are asking for.
I’ve talked about those documents here at RRW until I’m blue in the face.  Use my search function for the words R & P Abstracts.

The Trump team did not need an Executive Order for this—for creating more transparency and involvement in the local planning process!

Sure hope he is working on this because it would only require some regulatory tweeks, not an EO!

When the Trump team came in to office and crafted those now stalled Executive Orders, they said this (below) in the first order.  I see no reason why this effort should be stalled and I sure hope that they are working on it behind the scenes. They can accomplish this goal with some simple regulatory tweeks!
However, from what I’m hearing about the process on-going in communities, nothing is changing.  Secrecy is still the watchword as much now as it was under Obama.
Here is what the early Trump EO said about a larger role for targeted states and communities:

“It is the policy of the executive branch that, to the extent permitted by law and as practicable, State and local jurisdictions be granted a role in the process of determining the placement or settlement in their jurisdictions of aliens eligible to be admitted to the United States as refugees. To that end, the Secretary of Homeland Security shall examine existing law to determine the extent to which, consistent with applicable law, State and local jurisdictions may have greater involvement in the process of determining the placement or resettlement of refugees in their jurisdictions, and shall devise a proposal to lawfully promote such involvement.”

If anything the Dept. of  State has become more secretive.  I could be wrong, but I don’t believe they held an annual scoping meeting that normally happened in May (for all the years I’ve been writing this blog) where they at least pretended to get public input about the program.

BIG MEAT wants the cheap refugee labor, no wonder Congress won't reform law

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

But, it isn’t just the Meatpacking industry, it is the Chamber of Commerce, the hospitality industry, other food processing and manufacturing that has become dependent on the refugee labor force that you and I pay to bring to America (and support with our social service dollars!)  See my previous post where CIS refutes a very big lie.

Tyson Foods at Storm Lake, Iowa changing the demographic makeup of heartland towns, paying low wages to refugees and lobbying Congress for more!

In a few days I’ll tell you why I am re-posting this information about greedy companies like Tyson Foods lobbying Congress side by side with the refugee contractors/’religious’ charities who claim they are working for the good of humanity.
Have a look at some of my recent posts on Big Meat (particularly Tyson Foods!):

NYT: How Tyson Foods and its greedy demand for cheap immigrant labor ‘saved’ an Iowa town

Garden City, Kansas to become new poster-city for the joys of BIG MEAT-generated multiculturalism

Bloomberg: Trump’s refugee ceiling of 50,000 could hurt BIG MEAT

Storm Lake, Iowa: Filling America’s “dead spots” with diversity!

Nebraska: Lutherans, Somalis, meatpackers, mosques (and controversy) in small town America

My list is huge and I could go on, but you get my drift. Click here for my complete archive on Tyson Foods.
Big Meat’s desire for cheap labor, in conjunction with the lobbying efforts by the NGO refugee industry, produce a powerful juggernaut working against taxpaying citizens (we have no lobbyists) just looking for reform of the system that would include some say as to what is happening to our home towns and how much it’s costing us—financially, culturally and security-wise!
If you really want to do something (rather than sending angry comments to blogs and facebook pages), call your member of Congress this week and next—tell them to defund the US Refugee Admissions Program, then get to work reforming it.