Because President Trump initiated an important reform of the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program in September, here, many new readers are arriving at RRW and I’m finding it a challenge to respond to so many requests for basic information that I’ve written about for a dozen years.
Starting today, I’m going to provide a tutorial of sorts to help readers become more knowledgeable about the USRAP (that is the acronym for US Refugee Admissions Program), largely driven by the nine federal refugee contractors*** often referred to as VOLAGs (hilariously that stands for Voluntary Agencies).
That acronym VOLAG has fallen out of favor since Trump took office, but you will see it mentioned often in the media and elsewhere.
The nine contractors (the VOLAGs) monopolize the program that was created in 1979 by leading Democrats in the Senate (including Ted Kennedy and Joe Biden) and the Refugee Act of 1980 became law when President Jimmy Carter signed it.
Working under the nine are subcontractors in most states which get their marching orders, their refugees, and their federal MONEY as it is passed from the middle men (the nine major contractors) who take their cut before passing some of their (your) money to their local ‘affiliates’ (their word for subcontractors). See recent map of contractor affiliates.
Sheesh, already I’m getting windy. So I’ll get to my point for this lesson.
In order to better involve yourselves in supporting the President in reducing the number of immigrants arriving in the US, you must have your facts. First, and foremost you need to understand that refugees being admitted through the USRAP are LEGAL immigrants. If you talk about refugees brought in under this program as Illegals you are showing ignorance and will be discredited.
That said, know that our US system of admitting LEGAL immigrants is in very bad shape and the USRAP is one such program that in my opinion should be repealed (replaced if there is enough support for that in Congress). I don’t think that Ted, Joe and Jimmy had conservative America’s best interests at heart when they set up the system four decades ago.
I’m getting to today’s instructions!
You have a State Refugee Coordinator.
That person is supposed to be the central point for information to flow from and between the contractors, the state government, the federal offices (both at the State Department and the Office of Refugee Resettlement in Health and Human Services), and presumably you—the citizens!
If you are seriously interested in learning enough to become an important voice where you live, start by calling your state refugee coordinator. Go here to see who to call in your state.
Get your state’s Refugee plan!
Be polite and ask for a list of the refugee agencies working in your state (where they are being placed) and ask for the state’s Refugee Plan—every state must keep an up-to-date plan, approved by the governor, on file at the Office or Refugee Resettlement. See what that plan entails, here.
You should ask the coordinator for data on how many refugees are being admitted to your state and ask where they are coming from. Also ask the coordinator if your state is getting Special Immigrant Visas from Iraq and Afghanistan and how many.
(By the way the issue of Wilson-Fish states will have to wait until a future tutorial.)
You may get a runaround! But that is part of your education when you start asking questions. The contractors and government officials working on refugee resettlement have been operating for decades with no one asking questions and they want to keep it that way. Again, be polite!
Now that (if) you have the information, what do you do with it?
I have said this until my head wants to explode! You must write a website or blog for your state, or find an existing one that would like to post the information you are learning.
You can do it, it isn’t that complicated, but it is a waste to have gained knowledge and then keep it hidden in your desk drawer!
Facebook is okay, but really you must have a place where your information is readily available for new people to read in the months and years ahead.
(That reminds me, please use my search window before reaching out to ask me a question. There are over 9,000 posts archived here at RRW and I may have written about your specific issue earlier.)
You have an excellent model in this website from Tennessee–Dailyrollcall!
And, finally I am going to say this at the end of each of my ‘Knowledge is Power’ lessons—your first priority if you care about immigration and its impact on the future of America is to get involved to re-elect Donald Trump.
Getting the USRAP repealed or at least constricted is not going to happen with any other President in the White House.
This post is filed in a new category so going forward you can easily access the ‘Knowledge is Power’ series.
RRW is a blog specifically for refugee related issues, for other news on ‘new American’ frauds and crooks (and killers) see my other blog here.
***For new readers these (below) are the nine federally-funded refugee contractors that operate as a huge conveyor belt monopolizing all refugee placement in America.
And, they do not limit their advocacy toward only legal immigration programs, but are heavily involved in supporting the lawlessness at our borders.
The question isn’t as much about refugees per se, but about who is running federal immigration policy now and into the future?
(I plan to say this once a day from now on!)
I continue to argue that these nine contractors are the heart of America’s Open Borders movement and thus there can never be long-lasting reform of US immigration policy when these nine un-elected phony non-profits are paid by the taxpayers to work as community organizers pushing an open borders agenda.
- 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)
Thank you!
I’m looking forward to this series. Been following you for several years now. At times I pass on information you publish from time to time to friends in different parts of the USA. We have Family living Minnesota and they have commented often about the invasion of Muslims that never stop multiplying. I can’t imagine why so much attention is given to our Southern border with very little being said about a much more serious threat storming the N.E. USA. Maybe we should start a RRW/FCC society dedicated to helping you spread your message. If you have one already where do I sign up?
Thomas, it is so frustrating to me that we have no national grassroots network focused on this issue. Several of the immigration restriction groups tinker around the edges, but there is no network while we are up against nine major organizations that are set up in almost every state. It is just me here—the proverbial blogger in the basement often in my pajamas.
I made charts like this to try to educate people on what is going on:
Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society
In 2015:
Taxpayers gave them: $20.4 million
CEO was paid $375,000
In 2016:
Taxpayers gave them: $25.5 million
CEO was paid $344, 000
In 2017:
Taxpayers gave them: $24.5 million
CEO was paid $344,000
In 2018:
Taxpayers gave them: $19.1 million
CEO was paid $330,000
I have another one for Church World Service, but still haven’t done my homework for the other ones. I left out how much they are getting paid from other sources for brevity.
Good job! I hope to post Jim Simpson’s work on the numbers. He used USA Spending.gov so he got a better handle on all of their money. If you do no other research see if you can figure out the US Conference of Catholic Bishops!!! And, it gets even more complicated because many of the Catholic Charities get $$$ from the Bishops (that came from the taxpayers) and then they get additional separate funds (from the taxpayers).
BTW, with HIAS I chuckled when I too had seen that their CEO’s salary actually went down as their federal funds were slowing. Have a look at Church World Service, I don’t think the Rev. Robinson’s salary went down!