One of the most frequent questions we get here is: How are these refugees getting money to open businesses in my city, when Americans are having a tough time getting loans?
Well, one way is through the Office of Refugee Resettlement’s Microenterprise Program. That is where your tax dollars are funneled to a federal contractor who in turn gets to be the big shot (and probably keeps a little of the money for administrative purposes) and doles out your money to upstart businesses where the refugee has little credit and few personal assets.
Here is the description by Director of ORR Eskinder Negash (of the revolving door) in the Director’s message to Congress in the finally released ORR annual report to Congress for 2008 (they still are behind and owe Congress reports for 2009 and 2010):
ORR’s Microenterprise Program helped recently arrived refugees who possessed few personal assets and who lacked credit history to start, expand, or sustain a small business. ORR funded 17 grantees nationwide for a total of $3,680,000 to help refugees start various businesses, including ethnic restaurants, child care, taxicab and limo services, and cleaning companies. In FY 2008, more than 3,400 refugees were served in the Microenterprise Program, which assisted 681 businesses. Of those, 261 were new business starts, 320 were expansions of existing businesses, and 100 represented strengthening or stabilization of existing businesses. The above businesses created 605 jobs that were taken by other low income refugees.
I was going to tell you more, but I am out of time today. Go to pages 38 and 39 in the Annual Report and see how much money was given out and to which groups for Microenterprise loans.