Stephen Bauman, a former CEO of World Relief, one of nine federal resettlement contractors*** (paid by the head to place refugees in towns that are kept in the dark about the resettlement process) was speaking to an interfaith gathering in North Carolina recently when he said some annoying things.
The one that really got me is the one about needing refugees to teach us how to love.
What the heck, what’s wrong with loving the neighbors in your own town, the low income Americans of all colors who are suffering. In fact the first question I get when someone first learns about refugee resettlement is:
We have our own poor people why aren’t we taking care of them first?
Here is the story from Baptist News Global:
America needs refugees as much as refugees need places like America, says Stephan Bauman, former president and CEO of World Relief, which has helped to resettle thousands of desperate wanderers.
Bauman addressed refugees and volunteers who have helped to make them at home during a “refugee welcome” event attended by more than 350 at Knollwood Baptist Church in Winston-Salem, N.C., Oct. 21. [Can we conclude that Winston-Salem has no American poor people remaining, that these good Baptists have taken care of them all?—ed]
In the past two years, Knollwood has helped to settle four refugee families — three of them in partnership with Temple Emanuel, a Jewish community in the city. Their resettled families have been Muslim.
[….]
While other such relationship building events are not unique, organizer Diane Lipsett said this event paid special attention to why helping refugees “matters to our faith.” She led panel discussions with volunteers from three faiths, and had the entire discussion translated into both Arabic and Swahili so refugees primarily from Syria and the Congo would be fully integrated.
Bauman, who this year became executive director of Cornerstone Trust, a grant management firm in Grand Rapids, Mich., said America needs refugees “so we can love one another, because we don’t naturally love each other.” The common task of service for others induces us to drop our regard for differences.
Resettling refugees, sometimes those from countries not friendly to the United States, shows us “how to love our enemies,” Bauman said.
[….]
For Bob Schwartz, it is the Jewish tradition of “Tikkun olam,” the mandate to repair the world, “to make the world a better place.”
What! It isn’t sufficient to love those around you and repair your own neighborhood? And, why isn’t Bauman still heading World Relief (National Association of Evangelicals) if resettling refugees is such a wonderful thing?
Continue reading here. This article is better than a cup of coffee to wake you up!
Feel the love!
All this phony-baloney love-talk reminds me how much Bauman and World Relief don’t love you—people who ask questions and want to know how the refugee program is working in your home towns (what it costs and the potential cultural/social upheaval that could follow)!
In 2015 I traveled to Minnesota and was interviewed on a local radio station. (BTW, World Relief was one of three federal contractors originally responsible for the placement of Somali refugees in the state).
I told listeners that they needed to get a copy of the R & P (Reception & Placement) Abstract, that is the plan each contractor operating in a city prepares for the federal government. It tells how many refugees the contractor wants to bring and what amenities your town/city has to offer the refugees. (See the recent one from St. Cloud here).
Not only should this document be available to you after it is prepared, but frankly taxpaying citizens should see it and be able to comment on its drafting. For most areas of the country this document is still SECRET! (Feel the love!)
And, shame on any mayor and council that is not even aware there is such a planning document!
So if Bauman loved YOU, why would he have been running such a secretive program?
Or, is his love limited to only those who agree with him politically (and for the “strangers” he places in your towns)?
See below in this internal memo sent from World Relief headquarters (while Bauman was still CEO) to their subcontractors (they call them affiliates) around the country and shared with me.
Feel the love!
(I’ve removed the names of recipients and highlighted the portions of most interest to me.)
From: Casey Leyva
Sent: Thursday, May 14, 2015 5:07 PM
Subject: Potential Anti-Refugee Contacts
Dear Office Directors,
We’ve heard recently from other members of RCUSA (Refugee Council USA) that local affiliates have been contacted by individuals questioning the U.S. refugee program. This is a result of an interview Ann Corcoran, a blogger who runs Refugee Resettlement Watch, with a local news station in Minnesota. She has told her followers to to ask you for your R&P abstract – please do not send it. And please let us know if you are contacted.
Finally, please don’t go searching for this woman’s blog. I give you her information so you know if and when someone calls that this is the same topic. Here are Scott’s tips on interacting with these types of blogs:
Here is an important remember of how blog analytics work. Remember that what feeds the beast essentially are clicks. Ever hear the term “click-bait”? Seeing something in your Facebook feed that says “Velociraptor eats Skittles and your mind will be blown at what happens next!”, would be a dramatized example of that. In other words, while we all don’t really like anything this blogger has to say, every time we share the link, she gets a click. Bloggers have some very useful tools. They are able to tell when people read articles, what they are interested in, and what they search for on the blog. The more times this article is shared, the more the blogger will think they are onto something here and post more about it. Just as a news organization may hammer on a specific story, not because it is a great story, but because it builds up ratings and viewership. What can be done about this?
The best thing I recommend is if a blog such as this is posted by ForRefugees (Chris C.) or Refugee Resettlement Watch (Ann C.) and we believe it is worth sharing for FYI, that the person who locates it simply copy and paste the text from the blog into the e-mail. This will ensure that the clicks are limited. It will get 1 or 2 clicks from WR, versus 20 clicks. Those add up.
Casey Leyva
R&P Program Manager
7 E. Baltimore Street
Baltimore, MD 21202
T 443.451.1916
E cleyva@wr.org
www.worldrelief.org
Fascinating isn’t it how hard they tried to keep my posts from being widely read. And, I love it that they didn’t want any conflicting information reaching the sensitive ears of their staffers.
The Refugee Council USA mentioned in the first paragraph is the lobbying arm of the refugee industry and we have mentioned them many times here. Most recently they (including World Relief) were involved in joining CAIR to march at the #NoMuslimBanEver rally against the President here.
***These are the nine federal refugee contractors that are responsible for placing all refugees in your towns. These nine get the refugee cases from the US State Department and distribute them to over 300 subcontractors operating in your towns. They all keep the R & P Abstracts under wraps because they don’t want you to know their plans.
- Church World Service (CWS)
- Ethiopian Community Development Council (ECDC) (secular)
- Episcopal Migration Ministries (EMM)
- Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS)
- International Rescue Committee (IRC) (secular)
- US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) (secular)
- Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services (LIRS)
- United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB)
- World Relief Corporation (WR)