Litany of layoffs!

Priscilla Alvarez writing at The Atlantic runs through a partial list of the nine federal refugee contractors and tells us how many staffers have been fired because of that mean old Donald Trump not sending them enough refugee paying clients.

There really isn’t much new here (like so many of the fear-mongering stories the lapdog media is publishing these days, there isn’t much here that you haven’t heard over the last few months), however, it is worth posting for a couple of reasons.

First, we are reminded that the US State Department is rumored to be preparing to cut one of the nine federal contractors completely off the federal dole!

Which will it be?

My guess is that they might cut out the smallest—The Ethiopian Community Development Council.  It surely won’t be the giants: International Rescue Committee or the US Conference of Catholic Bishops!

It could be one of the others (besides ECDC) that is almost COMPLETELY funded by you through your tax dollars.  See the list below.***

Here is The Atlantic headline:

America’s System for Resettling Refugees Is Collapsing

And, here is a mention of one of the nine getting the ax:

Part of the current downsizing has come about as a result of a State Department order last December that said agency offices handling fewer than 100 refugees in fiscal year 2018 would not be authorized to resettle new arrivals. The department also warned that it expects to eliminate one or more agencies from the refugee-resettlement process in fiscal year 2019, effectively slimming down the resettlement operation—and reducing its ability to quickly staff back up, should a future administration expand the nation’s refugee ceiling.

“Every time an office has to shut its doors, the impact isn’t just about the initial people affected,” said Mary Giovagnoli, the executive director of Refugee Council USA, a coalition of 24 nongovernmental agencies focused on refugee protection.

“Once that office has closed, the people with the expertise and the knowledge of working with particular groups have to find other jobs, find other work, and it’s not necessarily going to be in refugee resettlement. We start to lose the skills and capacity, the more you do that, the more you’re likely to lose the critical infrastructure.”

 

As I have reported previously, and don’t doubt me….

…They will “staff back up” in a heartbeat as soon as Donald Trump is no longer in the White House.

And, that is why it is vitally important that this administration makes major PERMANENT reforms in the program NOW.

And, here is the second reason I’m posting this:

We learn that Senators Grassley and Feinstein told the Trump Administration to follow the law and hold required “consultations” with Congress. The Refugee Act of 1980 requires consultation with the House and Senate Judiciary Committees as I have pointed out here most recently.

However, the decision about how many refugees will be admitted is the President’s alone. 

Alvarez continues:

What remains true is that support for refugees is a bipartisan issue. Members of Congress have recently chimed in, relaying their concern about the lack of discussion between lawmakers and the administration about the refugee cap. In August, Senators Chuck Grassley and Dianne Feinstein demanded that the administration continue collaborating with lawmakers to set a figure, as is custom.

See the Grassley/Feinstein letter here.  Go here for the whole Atlantic story.

What a joke!

Now they want consultation when for at least the last decade the consultation was a sham.  It was a cursory little meeting where some State Department bureaucrats went to the Hill to meet with a couple of lawmakers/staff in a closed-to-the-public setting.

In fact, the law requires public hearings prior to the beginning of the fiscal year that have never happened since I’ve followed the program (11 years).  A rare hearing was held after October 1.

They don’t want real hearings because they have wanted to keep the whole program running in a secretive manner, that is until Donald Trump came along!

And, one more time on the “bipartisan support” for higher numbers of refugees.

The Republicans are the Chamber of Commerce Republicans who want more refugees for cheap labor for their big business donors—meatpackers, other food processing companies, manufacturing and hospitality (maids and janitors for hotels!).

The Dems of course see the refugees as their future voter base!  And, to heck with the average American taxpayer who pays for it all, and lives next door to it!

 

***These below are the nine federal refugee resettlement contractors.

You might be sick of seeing this list almost every day, but a friend once told me that people need to see something seven times before it completely sinks in, so it seems to me that 70, or even 700 isn’t too much!

And, besides I have new readers every day.

The present US Refugee Admissions Program will never be reformed if the system of paying the contractors by the head stays in place and the contractors are permitted to act as Leftwing political agitation groups, community organizers and lobbyists paid on our dime!

And, to add insult to injury they pretend it is all about ‘humanitarianism.’

The number in parenthesis is the percentage of their income paid by you (the taxpayer) to place the refugees into your towns and cities and get them signed up for their services (aka welfare)!  And, get them registered to vote eventually!

From my most recent accounting, here.  However, please see that Nayla Rush at the Center for Immigration Studies has done an update of their income!

• 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%)