World Relief Atlanta: with less government funding for refugees, agency will rely on church donations

~ Ann Corcoran

What a shock! What an outrage, as President Donald Trump reduces the number of paying clients for the refugee contractors***, this ‘religious’ charity declares it will have to seek private donations from churches.

Last I checked, World Relief (full name: World Relief, National Association of Evangelicals) a private Christian non-profit group was 73% funded by you, the taxpayer, to place refugees in your towns and cities.

 

World Relief Atlanta
So how many will donate their private money for their (religious) humanitarian good works? 

 

When the Refugee Act of 1980 became law, it was understood that resettlement was a public-private partnership, but as the years have gone by the contractors have gotten lazier and lazier about raising private money.  Poor managers, they must never have envisioned a day when some of their federal money would dry up.

Now (gasp!) World Relief Atlanta says it will have to go to the churches for their ‘religious’ charitable work.  Imagine that!

From WABE:

Atlanta Resettlement Agencies Cut Staff As Refugee Arrivals Drop

At World Relief Atlanta, a resettlement agency in Stone Mountain, 21 of 30 employees were laid off in the past year. It now has a staff of nine people.

Fewer refugees coming in means reduced federal funding to resettle them.

Joshua Sieweke, director of World Relief Atlanta, said part of the problem is the number of refugees the Trump administration declares it will accept — the annual presidential determinations — has not been accurate.

“We were told to expect 450 [refugees], but now our best estimates are around 100, and that means we will only receive money for 100,” Sieweke said.

In 2016, his group helped resettle about 600 refugees in the Atlanta area.

He said World Relief will need to shift from depending on federal funding to donations from local churches.

“[Refugees] are suffering, and we need to do what we can to eliminate that suffering and give them hope and a chance to rebuild their lives,” Sieweke said. “As an American, I think it’s incredibly important because it represents our country’s great history and tradition and the values that have made our country so great. We have been blessed, and we have a great opportunity to then be a blessing to others.”

So has Atlanta run out of poor Americans, homeless people and struggling veterans who need to be blessed? Are only refugees from the third world worthy of their Christian Evangelical blessing (with other people’s money!)?

More here at WABE—an NPR affiliate.  It sure looks like NPR is busily promoting the refugee industry from sea to shining sea!

By the way, see that in 2015, World Relief headquarters wrote to all of its subcontractors telling them not to give out any information about their upcoming plans for resettlement in your towns.

Here is what they said:

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 ask you for your R&P abstract – please do not send it. And please let us know if you are contacted.

They went on to tell their subcontractors to not visit Refugee Resettlement Watch, they would monitor my blog and pass along anything important.

That kind of secrecy is what keeps me going! If they were a truly private organization I would have no problem with their secrecy, but when they use millions of taxpayer dollars for their ‘charitable’ work, then it becomes our business!

 

***I post these as often as I can because new readers need to know that these quasi-government groups are funded largely with your money, your tax dollars.

The number in parenthesis is the percentage of their income paid by you (the taxpayer) to place the refugees in your towns and cities and get them signed up for their services (aka welfare)!  If they were truly public-private partnerships, they should be getting no more than 50% of their funds from the US Treasury.

Truth be told, they couldn’t raise enough private money because the general public wouldn’t donate enough for their cause (importing poverty rather than helping American poor people).

From most recent accounting, here.

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Published by Ann Corcoran

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