The structure of the US Refugee Admissions Program as designed by then Senator Ted Kennedy (with his sidekick Joe Biden) and signed in to law by Jimmy Carter in March 1980 is crumbling (crumpling, whatever) and I want to know—
Where is Congress?
The original concept—non-profit groups being paid by the head to place refugees—is flawed. How do you run an organization and create an annual budget when the program is almost wholly dependent on that per head government payment?
Any legitimate advocate for refugees, should be asking Congress to reform the entire program.
But, of course the leadership (with fat salaries!) of the nine non-profit contractors*** isn’t urging Congress to reform the program and instead is working tirelessly, through the media, to show how mean Donald Trump is to have reduced the number of paying clients (aka refugees) with the assumption that in a few years they will get rid of him and go back to the good ol’ days.
Here is one more whinny story about how the contractors are struggling and I’m posting it, even if it is the same old sob story because ten years ago they never admitted in the press that they were almost completely dependent on taxpayer funding and I want to hammer that point. See Catholics whining here.
From Fronteras:
As U.S. Refugee Resettlements Drop, Infrastructure To Help Them Crumples
Reporter, Matthew Casey, opened with the usual fluffy story about an attractive refugee, then this….
….the stream of refugees flowing into the United States has been reduced to a trickle, which means government funding has fallen for humanitarian groups that receive the world’s displaced.
“We have closed several offices,” said Patrick Poulin, acting regional director of the IRC’s Pacific West Region. “We’re closing the Miami office. We’re closing another office in Garden City.”
Closing offices! Right, and so where is the list of offices still open as I asked in my previous post this morning.
The national infrastructure for refugee resettlement was built to take in about 85,000 people a year, Poulin said.
President Donald Trump’s administration cut the cap to 45,000 this year. But the United States will likely let in less than half of that number.
“This is a systematic attempt to try to deconstruct resettlement,” Poulin said.
When the government clears a refugee to enter the U.S., the groups that welcome them get about two weeks of notice, said Connie Phillips, president and CEO of Lutheran Social Services of the Southwest (LSS-SW).
“And we go into action,” she said.
They find an apartment, furnish it and stock it with food. When the refugee arrives, they’re met by a case manager who speaks their language. Next comes ongoing orientation to U.S. society.
“For that, we’re paid a fee,” Phillips said. “And that fee is a per-person fee that comes with the refugee. If we’re not doing resettlement work, then we’re not receiving the fees.”
These “fees,” of course, are taxpayer dollars! Don’t you love it! The average reader probably has no clue who is paying the fees! Maybe the fees are growing on Washington, DC money trees!
More here.
*** These are the nine federal contractors whose budgets are being blown to smithereens by the Trump slowdown in refugee arrivals because they receive their payments on a per head basis. We hear that at least one will not survive the year.
The number in parenthesis is the percentage of their income paid by you (the taxpayer) to place the refugees and get them signed up for their services (aka welfare)! From most recent accounting, here.
If you are wondering, I post this list every chance I get because we have new readers daily and because I want all of you to know that for reform to be possible these nine fake non-profits have to go.
- Church World Service (CWS) (71%)
- Ethiopian Community Development Council (ECDC) (secular)(93%)
- Episcopal Migration Ministries (EMM) (99.5%)
- Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) (57%)
- International Rescue Committee (IRC) (secular) (66.5%)
- US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) (secular) (98%)
- Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services (LIRS) (97%)
- United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) (97%)
- World Relief Corporation (WR) (72.8%)