Here it is!—a great summary of the US Refugee Admissions Program and where it has gone wrong according to Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studiesin an interview at Blaze TV. H/t Kevin
I get pretty deep in the weeds here at RRW, so this is excellent to send to everyone—especially newbies—who want a quick overview of the program’s failings!
Editor: This is the seventh in my ‘Knowledge is Power’ series. Although there is a lot of knowledge provided here daily my goal with this series is to supply readers with sources of information so that (LOL!) I don’t have to continually answer basic questions and you can get to work where you live to help educate your friends, neighbors, elected officials and the media about the expensive, dysfunctional program that is changing America by changing the people!
Stop reading here if you don’t want to know more! If you do, then read this post, check out the 2017 annual report and go to the category specifically set up to archive this series of posts for more information—Knowledge is Power.
The Refugee Act of 1980 requires the HHSOffice of Refugee Resettlement to submit an annual report to Congress within three months of the close of the previous fiscal year (fiscal years close on September 30 of the previous year), but they perennially seem incapable of producing the document on time and often don’t publish one for years.
The Trump ORR hasn’t gotten it done on time either!
Well hallelujah, the 2017 report came out just about a week ago.
If they followed the law we should be seeing the 2019 report by now. By the way, I once did an analysis of those reports and when they were submitted and learned that during the Reagan and George HW Bush administrations the ORR followed the law, but when Clinton came in and Lavinia Limon (see post yesterday) became the head of the office they went off track and have never been on time since.
In FY17 the Office of Refugee Resettlement’s funding was $1.6 BILLION!
And no where in the report did I find the cost of the US State Department’s share of the budgetary burden or the Dept. of Homeland Security share (it could be there, it usually is reported in the annual reports, but I didn’t see it).
Page 4. By the way, appropriations are made by Congress and usually dumped into big appropriations bills making it virtually impossible for a President to veto the funds for specific programs.
Again, I haven’t analyzed it carefully yet, but did have a look at the pages on welfare use and as usual it’s an eye-opener.
Of those who willingly reported in a survey for FY16 (page 20) here are some examples:
35% were on some form of cash assistance
14% TANF
16% SSI (Supplemental Security Income, Social Security)
67% Food Stamps
24% Housing Assistance
Go to the report to see how much federal boodle the contractors get for myriad projects.
I found them all useful when I wanted to find out how many Somalis we admitted since the program began, because, as you know if you have been using the Refugee Processing Center data (Knowledge is Power IV), that data only extends back to 2002. Before 2002 you can do the laborious work of looking at the data provided on admissions in each annual report before 2002.
See that 2008 post about Somali numbers since the Refugee Admissions Program began. I used annual reports to find the numbers for much of it. I was updating for awhile and I guess I better not be lazy and add 2017, 2018, and 2019 one of these days!
Again, today’s post is archived in a category set up for only this series of posts I call—Knowledge is Power.
SIVs are nationals of Iraq and Afghanistan who supposedly helped us during our long involvement in the Middle East. They are most often referred to as “interpreters” but they could have done any menial job connected to our military or connected to non-profit groups operating in those countries and be eligible to come here and be given the same benefits as refugees—which means of course virtually all social services.
So the US goes to war in some hellhole country and then, admitting we didn’t leave them a better government and a safer country, Americans are expected to reach out and welcome tens of thousands of their people to the US so that the next time we go to war, the military can offer a ticket to America in exchange for our largely unwilling presence in their hellhole country.
Sorry, I do respect our military, but this is going too far.
Since October of 2006, and as of a week ago, we have admitted 64,501 Afghan SIVs and another 18,677 Iraqi SIVs and so we are being told that over 83,000 is NOT ENOUGH!
83,000 is NOT enough says the International Refugee Assistance Projectthe same ‘non-profit’ law firm that has fought the Trump Administration in court on every immigration/refugee reform issue the administration has undertaken.
From the Military Times(a report that leaves readers believing that only a trickle have come in so far):
Former interpreters laud court ruling to accelerate special visa decisions
For thousands of Afghan and Iraqi nationals who served as interpreters with the U.S. military, visa applications to gain permanent legal residence in the United States have languished in legal limbo for years. Now there may be help on the way, in the form of a court ruling.
[….]
This week, however, a judge granted “class certification” to Afghan and Iraqi nationals suing the federal government for overdue visa decisions, allowing thousands of outstanding cases to be included in a class-action lawsuit.
[….]
US District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan,
Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, district judge for the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, ruled in favor of the five anonymous Afghan and Iraqi nationals, “who, despite significant personal risk, aided the United States in its time of need and now look to the United States for refuge for themselves and their immediate family members.”
The federal government now has 30 days to submit a plan to adjudicate long-delayed visa applications that have been pending for more than nine months.
“We are thrilled that the judge is holding the government accountable to its obligations to the thousands of men and women who have sacrificed so much in serving the U.S. missions abroad,” said Deepa Alagesan, a supervising attorney at the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP), in a press release.
[….]
Currently, a total of 22,500 visas could be issued to former Afghan interpreters through the Special Immigrant Visa program — up from the 18,500 limit — after a provision was included in the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act.
Never forget! The SIV programs for Iraq and Afghanistan were created as riders to must-pass Defense authorization and appropriation bills and thus never went through the committee process to be stand-alone bills sent to the President for his signature. Snuck on when hardly anyone was looking!
And, if you are wondering about vetting for the SIVs, here is another bunch (besides the CO rapist gang) who clearly slipped through and werebusted for running an international fencing ring in California late last year. There are probably plenty more like that they just haven’t come to my attention yet!
Mark my words, the SIV program is a ticking time bomb!
I’ve been noticing the absence of the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI), one of the top nine federal contractors***, in all the anti-Trump media hubbub and wondered if they were shrinking financially and therefore laying low to stay out of Trump’s line of sight.
So I checked today, and guess what?
USCRI is approximately 96% federally funded, and…..
They are doing financially better under the Trump Administration than they ever did in the Obama years.
But, before I give you the data, let me tell you how much controversy they stirred over the years.
Memory lane:
Former USCRI CEO Lavinia Limon with Chobani CEO at the Clinton Global Initiative (all you need to know!).
Longtime readers may remember the huge controversy in Twin Falls, Idaho that I wrote about extensively for months that involved USCRI’s subcontractor there. It revolved around Chobani Yogurt’s hunger for refugee labor and came to a media explosion over the sexual abuse of a child by refugee boys.
Then there was USCRI’s effort to open a new office in Rutland, VT that ended in failure when citizens rose up, protested, and threw out the ‘welcoming’ mayor.
Earlier I reported on the mess USCRI was embroiled in in Bowling Green, KY when Burmese refugees were placed in substandard housing.
(Here I am going to urge readers to use thesearch window top right at RRWand enter key words to find out more about Twin Falls, Rutland, Bowling Green, Lavinia Limon, Eskinder Negash etc. and save me some work putting in a zillion links!)
One point on the issue of subcontractors:
Someone knowledgeable about the big nine recently mentioned that local agencies don’t have the same name sometimes as their parent organization. Exactly right! Whether they do that on purpose I don’t know, but for those of you wanting to better understand how secretive this program is, that is one important piece of evidence.
Hundreds of subcontractors work for the big nine and those nine move federal funding to their subcontractors usually referred to as affiliates.
They have been wailing and moaning about having to close offices in the Trump era, apparently Trump isn’t hurting USCRI.
Also, USCRI is notable as a prime example of the revolving door between government contractors and the agencies from which the organization gets most of its funding.
Both USCRI’s previous CEO Lavinia Limon (headed Clinton’s Office of Refugee Resettlement) and its present CEO Eskinder Negash (headed Obama’s ORR) revolved in and out of government. Both have done very well themselves in the process as you will see below.
First, here is the stunning financial information at USA Spending. (I told readers how to use the invaluable site in Knowledge is Power V.)
Remember that we are only 4 months into FY2020 and that is why that number is so low. So check back in September.
Looking at the most recently available IRS Form 990, we can say that USCRI is 96% federally funded—that is funded by you, the US taxpayer!
That means they are acting like a government agency but without any of the checks and balances of a federal agency. For example you can’t use the Freedom of Information Act to get information out of a ‘non-profit.’
Check out the 6-figure salaries you pay! Some are higher than US Senators or Supreme Court Justices!
*** Here are the nine major federal refugee contractors. I’ve analyzed five so far including USCRI today and only the US Conference of Catholic Bishops has taken a serious budgetary hit under the Trump Administration. Congress and the Deep staters are making sure these fake non-profits are staying in the black.
I will work on the remaining four in the coming days and weeks.
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.
John Binder does excellent work on the immigration/refugee beat for Breitbart and this is one post I missed (lost in my overflowing e-mail inbox).
Thanks to reader Robert for bringing it to my attention.
More confirmation that we aren’t only dealing with liberal Open Borders types on immigration, but must battle Chamber of Commerce Republicans who are shilling for businesses looking to make money off of the immigrant population either as cheap labor or consumers.
As one of my readers once quipped—refugees buy used cars.
Ohio GOP Chair Defends Republicans Importing Refugees to Fill U.S. Jobs
Chairwoman of the Ohio Republican Party, Jane Timken, is defending Republican governors like Ohio’s Mike DeWine for asking the federal government to continue resettling refugees in their states.
[….]
Coupled with the refugee reduction, Trump signed an executive order that gives localities, counties, and states veto power over whether they want to resettle refugees in their communities.
DeWine, along with 18 other Republican governors, announced he would continue allowing refugee contractors to resettle refugees in Ohio — a decision that Timken is now defending using widely circulated talking points, which Breitbart News exclusively reported.
Here are the 19 Republican governors who thumbed their noses at President Trump and said—send us more impoverished people willing to work for low wages and for our taxpayers to support!
An orange X indicates those who quickly dissed the Prez, and the pink X marks the second wave of Republican governors who told Trump they want more refugees. Of course Governor Abbott of Texas is the only governor to say NO (so far).
In a statement to Ohio Republicans, Timken said she is “supportive of Governor DeWine’s decision” to bring more refugees to Ohio, declaring without evidence that the refugee vetting process has been fixed and thus previous national security concerns are no longer valid:
“Accusations that the federal government is letting dangerous individuals into the country through poor vetting are no longer accurate. President Trump’s administration approves every refugee resettled into Ohio, and the process is now very stringent. We can now be confident in how the federal government is vetting refugees.”
Vetting is only one issue, what about Ohioans who need jobs?
Does the President know she opposes his refugee reform effort?
Like so many other state officials she doesn’t know how the program works.
We get a lot of Chinese asylum seekers (who get across our borders without any vetting and then apply for asylum), but vetted Chinese refugees are rare.
Timken also said refugees arriving in the U.S. today “are truly victims of oppression,” citing that “an example of someone who would be able to seek refugee status would be a Christian in China who is being persecuted by the Chinese government for her religious beliefs.”
That example, though, is not indicative of the refugees who are often resettled in Ohio. Since Trump’s inauguration in 2017, only 18 refugees from China have been admitted to the U.S. and none have been resettled in Ohio.
Ohio, since 2017, has resettled nearly 4,500 refugees in areas like Cleveland Heights, Columbus, Cleveland, and Cincinnati. The majority of these refugees have arrived from Bhutan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Eritrea, Iraq, Somalia, Syria, and Ukraine.
[….]
Today, there are more than 242,600 unemployed Ohioans — indicating that Ohio has the sixth-largest unemployed state population in the U.S. just behind Pennsylvania with an unemployed population of about 293,000. Likewise, Ohio’s unemployment rate of 4.2 percent remains above the national average.
I’ve been noticing the absence of the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI), one of the top nine federal contractors***, in all the anti-Trump media hubbub and wondered if they were shrinking financially and therefore laying low to stay out of Trump’s line of sight.
