I haven’t mentioned ECBOs in awhile but noticed a week or so ago that they were still busy and being funded by you.
By the way, I’m going away without computer for a few days so this will be my last post until maybe Monday. Also I won’t be able to post your comments until then.
Back to ECBOs—Ethnic Community Based Organizations. We have a whole category I started sometime back on these mini-ACORNS. [Remember ACORN, Obama, Wade Rathke and the Breitbart bust?—ed]. They are community organizing groups that you fund with your tax money and they organize their “ethnic” groups in various cities across the US.
Last week I told you about the ECBO “Somali Community Center” in Nashville which became the “Center for Refugees and Immigrants of Tennessee” presumably because they got into grant trouble under the old name and they wanted to look more “inclusive,” but it’s still headed by Somalis.
Here is what the Office of Refugee Resettlement says about ECBO’s:
This program provides assistance to refugee community based organizations and other groups that address community building, facilitate cultural adjustment and integration of refugees, and deliver mutually supportive functions such as information exchange, civic participation, resource enhancement, orientation and support to newly arriving refugees (and other refugees that maybe in need of such assistance regardless of their resettlement date) and public education to the larger community on the background, needs and potential of refugees. In short, the purpose is to promote community organizing that builds bridges between newcomer refugee communities and community resources.
As regards to the first part of that statement, one might wonder if it wasn’t the job of the Volags in the first place to help refugees adjust and integrate. Surely community colleges could do that too through English language programs. And, I’m not sure why we need to spend money on public education to teach Americans what the refugees need (again, isn’t that the job of the agency that has chosen your city as a resettlement site)?
Of course, the “civic participation” part is about getting them ready to vote and in the meantime teaching immigrants how to demonstrate and make demands.
But, it’s that last line that is so telling—it’s about teaching refugees to tap into the wide variety of social welfare programs we now have in place. It’s teaching them how to get their stuff!
Go here and check out the list of those ECBOs being funded with your tax dollars.