Month: June 2017

Refugees do NOT bring in more tax dollars than they consume in social services

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This news was all over my alerts yesterday morning (one version of the story at Business Insider):

Study finds refugees actually pay the US government thousands more than they get from it

The glowing (and deceptive) report was clearly released now as a run-up to World Refugee Day next Tuesday and has probably been widely distributed on Capitol Hill by the legion of lobbyists for the refugee industry.
My reaction was that the conclusions fly in the face of all common sense.  And, LOL!, I wondered right away whether they included the costs to the criminal justice system.  Imagine how much those life prison terms of some refugee murderers and terrorists cost the American taxpayer!

Esar Met, a Burmese refugee raped and murdered a little girl in his apartment complex shortly after arriving in the US (he had surely not paid in any taxes yet!) and is doing life in prison. Someone with some economic training and the interest should figure out what it costs taxpayers for these expensive trials and life sentences. One of my many posts on Met is here: https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2014/01/14/utah-medical-examiner-little-girl-suffered-excruciating-pain-before-dying-from-tear-to-heart/

So, I wondered if  there was a rebuttal and sure enough there is!
If you see the deceptive news published in your newspaper, you must respond with a ‘letter to the editor’ using key points of Jason Richwine’s rebuttal.  You can’t let their propaganda go unanswered.
The Center for Immigration Studies responded here this morning (emphasis is mine):

Refugees do not pay their own way

A working paper released this week by Notre Dame economists William Evans and Daniel Fitzgerald makes the head-scratching claim that refugees, despite below-average incomes and high rates of welfare use, pay $21,000 more in taxes than they receive in benefits during their first 20 years in the United States. Immigration-boosting wonks such as Matt Yglesias and Dylan Matthews immediately trumpeted the findings, and the Washington Post and FiveThirtyEight added favorable write-ups.

They should have been more skeptical. The claim that refugees contribute more in taxes than they receive in benefits is simply implausible.

[….]

So how does the Evans-Fitzgerald paper come to such an implausible result? First, the authors count all (or nearly all) taxes paid by refugees but reduce the services they receive to six social programs — cash welfare, SSI, Social Security, food stamps, Medicare, and Medicaid. All other costs that governments might incur from immigration — housing, infrastructure, education, law enforcement, and so on — do not count.

Second, they fail to adjust for the underreporting of those social programs…

[….]

Third, the paper excludes refugees’ minor children. When refugees cannot afford to provide food, housing, or medical care to their children, taxpayers foot the bill. Most of those costs are omitted.

Fourth, the authors restrict the refugee age range to 18-65, cutting off the analysis just before the age where most people stop working and begin participating in the nation’s costly retirement programs.

By the way, we bring in a significant number of refugees to the US over the age of 65 who immediately draw on SSI.
More here.
Don’t miss CIS’s previous detailed study of the cost of refugees to taxpayers, here.  Middle Easterners are especially expensive!
This is posted in my ‘What you can do’ category (created because new readers are asking).  If you see the deceptive report mentioned in your local newspaper do not let it go unanswered!  Send a letter to your member of  Congress too and tell him or her (in advance) to watch for the propaganda (Big Lie!) campaign about refugees supposedly adding to the US economy. (The cheap labor supply might add to the bottomline at Tyson Foods, but not to the overall economy!).

EU launches legal action against 3 countries refusing refugees

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Invasion of  Europe news….

President Trump is going to Poland on July 6th. Time could not be better! (Trump visiting PNA in September 2016.) http://www.nydailynews.com/newswires/news/world/poland-hails-upcoming-trump-visit-huge-success-article-1.3240554

Here is a short bit at the Independent:

The European Commission says it is launching legal action against the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland for failing to take in refugees under a legally binding sharing plan agreed by the European Union.

The Commission said Tuesday in a statement that it has repeatedly urged the three countries to relocate refugees or at least pledge to do so.

But it said they have not taken action “in breach of their legal obligations,” and that it “has decided to launch infringement procedures” on Wednesday.

A longer article at The Guardian says this.  Sure looks like nobody wants to take in more refugees. Gee, I wonder why!

Out of 160,000 refugees due to be taken under the scheme agreed in 2015, only 20,869 have been relocated. In theory, countries can be fined for every refugee in the quota they fail to accept.

Lots of ‘fining’ coming soon….
Our complete ‘Invasion of Europe’ archive is here.

CIS: More on the Australian "dumb deal;" 'refugee' deal gets dumber by the day!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Nayla Rush at the Center for Immigration Studies has done us all a great service by pulling all the threads together on the “dumb deal” that could see the US taking over 1,000 ‘refugees’ that Australia does not want to take to its mainland.
Leo Hohmann at World Net Daily summarizes the key points and adds some comments by me and others:

According to a new report, President Trump is moving forward with a deal made by the Obama administration to resettle illegal-immigrant boat people whom Australia will not accept as “refugees” even though they have been classified as such by the United Nations.

The Trump administration is reportedly preparing to implement the deal with Australia. Under the terms, the U.S. will accept hundreds of unwanted Muslims rejected for asylum by the Aussies in return for several thousand Central American refugees awaiting resettlement at a U.N. camp in Costa Rica.

The deal was negotiated last summer by Obama’s Secretary of State, John Kerry. And Trump famously tweeted that he was going to study the “dumb deal” before accepting it.


 
 

Now, Trump is reported to be moving forward with the deal.

There’s only one problem, say refugee watchdogs.

These really aren’t refugees at all. They are illegal aliens who tried to sneak into Australia, were interdicted at sea and taken to an off-shore detention center in Papua New Guinea. They migrated from some of the world’s worst jihadist strongholds – in Afghanistan, Sudan, Somalia, Iran and Iraq.

The process of resettling these refugees, mostly men, is “well underway,” immigration analyst Nayla Rush reports for the Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies.

“The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) referred for resettlement in the United States over 850 detainees who were granted refugee status,” Rush writes. “Those could be admitted by the end of October, after undergoing ‘extreme vetting.’ But, no matter how ‘extreme’ or dependable the vetting (and the data U.S. officials use to screen these refugees is transmitted from a private refugee-resettlement contractor), the question remains: Why resettle Australia’s unwanted refugees in the United States?”

Rush highlights that these “refugees” are, for the most part, from countries which the Trump administration is trying to ban travel.

“Most also suffer from serious mental health issues, are not keen on coming to the United States to begin with (Australia was and still is their preferred destination), and are likely to have nothing but disdain for President Trump,” she reports.

Continue here, and read Rush’s full report here it is loaded with more details on the “deal.” She has a follow-up here. See the role one of the nine federal refugee contractors is playing.

The CIS report is so loaded with nuggets of information, don’t be surprised to see me write about it again in coming days.

Tennessee: World Relief accused of not taking care of their refugees

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

When refugees were initially being placed in the county where I live (now more than 10 years ago), our community’s first impression was that the ‘Christian’ resettlement agency—the Virginia Council of Churches—was basically dropping off a couple hundred refugees, placing them in deplorable housing, and then not providing them with some of their basic needs.
I wanted to know what sort of program was this.  Did the government allow this? But, of course as we know now, nine major federal resettlement contractors (including World Relief)*** are federal government contractors who oversee a network of over 300 subcontractors.  The nine sign agreements with the US State Department laying out what services they will provide refugees in their care. Indeed the contractor is paid by the head for each refugee it is assigned.
Over the years, we have reported on many cases like this one being made in Tennessee that the contractor is not fulfilling its end of the bargain.
From The Tennessee Star:

During the March “Murfreesboro Muslim Youth” (MMY) meeting soliciting help for refugees brought to Rutherford County by federal resettlement contractor World Relief, it was disclosed that goods and services that the government paid for were not provided to the new refugees.

Abdou Kattih has been an outspoken critic of efforts by the legislature to keep Shariah law out of TN and to rein-in the refugee industry in the state. http://www.dnj.com/story/news/politics/2016/01/20/legislative-proposals-prompt-muslim-community-efforts/78809062/

According to Abdou Kattih, founder and president of MMY, were it not for his organization, special emergency needs such as getting medical care for the refugee who arrived with a broken jaw or simply providing household essentials and even clothing, would not have been addressed, explaining they had taken care of “someone that does not have literally anything but the clothes they had off of last month.”

Melissa Sohrabi, who merged her group “Roots for Refugees” with MMY, was more direct in detailing the deficiencies of the government contractor in this talk she delivered in March:

“There is an expectation of what should happen and there’s reality of what really does happen. . . Why didn’t World Relief give them a table and chairs? Why didn’t they bring them a couch? What’s going on? . . . Not only did it not happen but if it did happen, those families are charged for every belonging, every item that is donated to World Relief, the family is then charged for, for having it delivered to them.”

World Relief (WR), based in Baltimore, is one of nine national refugee resettlement organizations that sign a “Cooperative Agreement” with the U.S. State Department to receive federal funding to resettle refugees. This is taxpayer money allocated for each refugee brought to a community; the funds are split between the refugee and the agency. In addition, the resettlement agency is required to provide the goods and services as detailed in the signed agreement.

Between fiscal years 2016 -17, WR was paid over $40 million by the federal government to resettle refugees in communities where they operate local offices which also receive federal funding through grants administered by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Continue reading here.
One of several things that came to mind when I read this, is something I have been wondering about for some time.  Five of the nine resettlement contractors are ‘Christian charities’, one is Jewish and three are secular.
They all eagerly resettle Muslim refugees, but I have wondered when will some Muslim charity demand to get in on the federal gravy train? Laying the groundwork in this story?
***Here are the nine federal contractors that monopolize the US Refugee Admissions Program:

 

If you want to (really) do something? Call your Member of Congress!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Tell him or her that you want the Refugee Act of 1980 scrapped and the program defunded because it has been a boondoggle for supposed ‘religious’ charities who secretly place refugees (chosen first by the United Nations) in your towns while their salaries/offices/travel and lobbying you pay for with your tax dollars!
They spend your money while putting your security in jeopardy!

President Trump can’t protect you all by himself. You need to let Congress know that the UN/US Refugee Admissions program must be defunded!

Every day I get comments and e-mails from readers with a plea—tell me what I can do!

I’ve told you this before many times—you must make your members of Congress lives miserable no matter who they are—Left, Right or Center!
Clearly Donald Trump can’t do this alone!  It is Congress that must change the law and it is Congress that appropriates the money.
And, I don’t want to hear you say—they don’t listen!  Enough of you obviously aren’t demanding that they listen.

Guess who knows the value of Congress—-the refugee industry lobbyists and the contractors spending your money! They are all calling Congress this week because they get it!

World Refugee Day is June 20th and in advance of that the industry has gone into high gear with a grassroots lobbying campaign—-“stand with refugees” is a euphemism for give us more money to move more third world poverty to American towns!

See the e-mail I just received (below). Before you read it, I must emphasize that one call from you won’t change a thing, you need to call again and again.  Stand outside their district offices too if necessary, visit their offices in Washington, DC—make  your presence known!
This is what the refugee contracting industry is telling their members to do (probably by the tens of thousands), so you need to make sure Congress hears your side of the story too! This is from World Relief (Evangelicals!)….

Very organized aren’t they!
 

 
 
 
 

Friends,
Starting today, and every day this week, make a phone call to your Member of Congress to tell them that you want the United States to be a welcoming country for refugees.
We’ve made it easy for you to join us:

  1. Call 1-844-4STAND5 (1-844-478-2635) to connect to your Members of Congress. Please call this number three times to connect to your two Senators and Representative. Tell them you want the U.S. to be a welcoming country for refugees.
  2. Ask your friends and your family to join in calling this week!
  3. Check out and share these videos of Hillsong United, Ann Voskamp, Jeremy Courtney and others asking us to call to stand with refugees.

We hope you join the movement and get your friends to do the same!
CALL NOW!
1-844-4STAND5
(1-844-478-2635)

 
This post is filed in my ‘What can you do’ category, here.  I’ll soon be posting more ideas on what you can and MUST do!