No kidding!
I have to steel myself to write AGAIN about the issue of the President’s legal right to set the annual CAP (aka ceiling) for the number of refugees to be invited to the US to become your new neighbors. But, I know how important repetition (to the point of wanting to barf) is!
In fact, as I read the Daily Beast story by Scott Bixby, I was heartened to see that maybe after all these years the facts about the program are beginning to be reported and understood.
Progress is being made!
Reporter Bixby actually did some good reporting when he said that many of the contractors are 97% federally funded on a refugee per capita basis. (You know that, but believe me the average voting American doesn’t!).
Most reports by the Leftwing lapdog media about these federal contractors, aka VOLAGs, leave readers and viewers with a wrong assumption that they are paying for all of their ‘humanitarian good works’ from their own charitable pockets. It ain’t so!
Before I get into the latest whinefest by the contractors*** consider one of my primary fundamental concerns:
Taxpayers should not be required to pay large (any!) salaries and supply non-profits with cushy office space only to have those same non-profits act as political community organizers and agitators for not just more refugees, but for more migrants, legal and illegal, trying to get to the US.
The story is entitled:
The New Collateral Damage in Trump’s War on Refugees
The Trump administration has cut the number of refugees they let into the country by a third. That decision could gravely harm organizations that assist those already here.
(Emphasis is mine)
When the Trump administration announced its intention to slash the number of refugees allowed to enter the United States to the lowest level in nearly four decades, the decision sparked worry among thousands of displaced persons who feared that the nation’s doors were now closed to them. But in addition to the record number of global refugees seeking safety from unrest in the Middle East and Southeast Asia, the admissions cap will likely also harm organizations designed to help the thousands of displaced people who do make it safely to the United States.
As the U.S. government slows the number of legal refugees who can enter the country to a trickle, the nine private voluntary agencies with cooperative agreements with the State Department to help settle those refugees must now contend with a potentially devastating budget crunch.
“It’ll have a tremendous impact on the number of people who are able to access these life-saving services,” Nazanin Ash [working for Miliband—ed] vice president of policy and advocacy at the International Rescue Committee, told The Daily Beast. “There’ve been over 150 office closures over the last two years, and that shutters a vital resource in many communities across the country.”
[….]
Government grants, provided on a per capita basis tied to the number of refugees assisted, account for as much as 97 percent of the resettlement grants for these organizations. Lower resettlement admissions therefore mean fewer federal dollars—and program funding is now set to plummet as precipitously as the number of admitted refugees.
That loss in grant money threatens a funding shortfall that could endanger community-based resettlement offices nationwide, as well as programs intended to help those who have fled their homes to establish a life in the United States, from housing placement and food support to professional support, English classes and community integration.
[….]
Under the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, the president has the sole authority, following consultation with Congress, to determine the maximum number of refugees who can be resettled in the United States, called the Presidential Determination. Under President Donald Trump, the Presidential Determination was decreased from 110,000 in 2017 to 45,000 refugees in 2018, one-seventh of its peak. Even then, the cap is a limit, not a requirement—so far, only 20,918 refugees have actually been admitted to the United States this year.
Don’t miss my post on the myth of Obama’s 110,000 ceiling, here where I said this:
Never once in his previous 7 years did he propose a ceiling (a cap!) that high and he came no where near that number of refugees admitted.
LOL! Now they are really stretching.
Below Melanie Nezer of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (which received $186 million from the US Treasury since 2008) says, because of that meany Trump, you are being deprived of the joy, of not getting to know refugees who might have been placed in your towns.
Do not forget that these nine contractors were working closely with the US State Department in the Obama years to locate as many as 40 new resettlement sites and it was all being kept secret from you—the citizens of the 40 or so new targets.
If you were to benefit so much from being ‘chosen’ then why were they keeping those sites secret?
See Judicial Watch sues State Department for new sites under consideration!
The Daily Beast continues:
Nezer cautioned that the grant reduction won’t just negatively affect the refugees they’re intended to serve, but may foster a sense of isolation and complacency among native-born Americans.
“Fewer resettlement offices means fewer opportunities for people to volunteer and work with refugees,” Nezer explained. “If fewer refugees come, and fewer Americans get to engage directly with refugees, that kind of starts a cycle where there’s less direct connection” with refugee populations.
“As fewer comes and fewer Americans get to have that relationship, then there’s less support for letting refugees in at all.”
There is much more in this story, but its getting way too long.
Read it all here, see that reporter Bixby, trying to make a case for bipartisan support for the program, tells us how angry REPUBLICANS in the House and Senate are at the President for not consulting them as the law stipulates. See my post here on that.
These R’s are just a bunch of phony-baloneys who cared not one whit about past consultation requirements when numbers were large!
Many only care about one thing—cheap labor for their pals at global corporations and at the Chamber of Commerce!
***Here 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, as has James Simpson at the Capital Research Center!
- 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%)