Federal Office of Refugee Resettlement playing hardball with immigration lawyers it funds

02/16/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

A little background first….
The Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) in the Department of Health and Human Services somehow, awhile ago, was tasked with taking care of the Unaccompanied Alien Children entering the US illegally. In fact, their involvement created a huge new money stream to at least two refugee contractors—the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service—which received government grants and contracts to care for the ‘children.’

Scot Lloyd 3 — Director of ORR Scot Lloyd had to face some really witchy Congresswomen over the issue of abortion for the illegal alien children. https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2017/10/28/no-borders-left-aimed-at-destroying-orr-director-scott-lloyd/

But, in yet another demonstration of the expanding taxpayer funding to care for illegals, the ORR also has a grant program to provide the ‘children’ with legal services.
Keep in mind, however, that the ‘children’ (mostly teenage boys) are not refugees. Refugees must prove they will be persecuted if returned to their home country. The Central American lawbreakers may be running from crime and poverty, but those are not criteria for receiving asylum (refugee status).
In recent months a controversy has exploded for ORR because some of the illegal alien ‘children’ claim they have a constitutional right to an abortion and ORR is saying, NO! They do not.

You fund the Open Borders industry!

ORR is warning a large legal aid contractor that they could be removed from the federal dole if they instruct the ‘children’ about abortion rights.

Who knew ORR would have such gumption!
The Leftwing WaPo clearly is disconcerted by this move….

A major legal services group for immigrant children told its lawyers nationwide not to discuss abortion access, even if minors in custody ask for help understanding their legal rights, for fear it would jeopardize a multimillion-dollar contract with the Department of Health and Human Services.

The constraints on what government-funded lawyers can say to young detainees was contained in an email from the nonprofit Vera Institute of Justice, which said it acted after a phone call with an HHS employee. Vera’s instruction to lawyers comes as the Trump administration has tried in court to block access to abortion procedures for undocumented teens in federal custody.

“We know for a fact that there is a very real risk to the entire legal services program for children in [Office of Refugee Resettlement] custody if issues other than immigration are addressed in consultations or representation, the abortion issue in particular,” a Vera official cautioned in a Feb. 2 email obtained by The Washington Post.

ANNE_MARIE_MULACHY_0020 — In an internal e-mail someone forwarded to the WaPo, Mulcahy says that VERA does not want to risk losing the millions of dollars taxpayers give them to represent the Unaccompanied Alien Children.

The government pays $57 million a year under a five-year contract to Vera, which works with 38 organizations in six regions to provide legal help to minors who have crossed the border illegally and without their parents.

In the email, Vera official Anne Marie Mulcahy said she was sending it after a conversation with the government analyst who manages the program within the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) at HHS.

During the call, the employee “directed us to ensure that Vera’s legal services providers are not talking to children in HHS custody about abortion,” wrote Mulcahy, who is the director of Vera’s unaccompanied minors program.

Mulcahy instructed lawyers to immediately strip references to abortion from “Know Your Rights” legal pamphlets and said lawyers could refer children with abortion-related questions to other attorneys.

[….]

The office is responsible for the care of approximately 7,700 minors in custody, nearly 70 percent of whom are boys, according to HHS. The minors are facing possible deportation to countries such as El Salvador and Honduras…..

There is much more here at the WaPo.
Below is a screenshot page of a recent Form 990 for VERA, note that the vast majority of their income comes from you—US taxpayers. In order to view the 990, go to ProPublica here and follow links. If you visit their Form 990, don’t miss the salaries page!

vera form 990 — You paid VERA lawyers $41.5 million in 2014 to represent the illegal alien children. Obviously VERA could not exist without federal funding!

Immigration is big business in America, not just for the global corporations greedy for cheap labor, but for the extensive industry the federal government runs through its grants and contracts like those to VERA—Institute of Justice.

Go for it! ORR should cut off their taxpayer-funded money stream.

Is Trump planning to suck-up to Aussie PM Turnbull next week? The Australian thinks so

02/14/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Is that why the number of fake ‘refugees’ arriving in the US from Australia has picked up—-President Trump wants to have the meetings begin on a positive note?
This is yet another update on the “dumb” deal that President Obama made with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull just as Obama was walking out the door in 2016, a deal that Trump has agreed to honor.

Australia doesn’t want them!

Trump and Turnbull — Trump is saving Turnbull’s political hide and we would like to know why! One of these detainees goes off the rails and it will be Trump whose hide is in danger.

At first there was hope that President Trump would dump the deal where we agreed to take up to 1,250 ‘asylum seekers’ being held by Australia in offshore detention camps in exchange for Australia taking Central Americans in Costa Rica.

Do any of you see what we get out of this “deal?” Those Costa Rica fake refugees are not our problem either!

By the way, the No Borders International Left has succeeded in so muddying the waters about who is, and who isn’t, a refugee that it’s even got the Australian media calling Salvadorans refugees just because their country is a hellhole and they don’t have jobs.
A legitimate refugee must be able to prove he/she will be PERSECUTED if returned to a home country—poverty and crime are not persecution!
Here is The Australian suggesting that the number of detainees being moved to the US (where they will be free) has picked up because Trump wants to please Turnbull. (Sorry The Australian link isn’t working because it is behind a pay wall.)
Huh! I sure hope this isn’t a suck-up move on Trump’s part. He had it right when he said it was a “dumb” deal that could politically “kill” him. Just one of these Muslim men goes off the rails and it will be all on Trump (we will be watching!).

The controversial Australia-US refugee swap is gathering pace ahead of Malcolm Turnbull’s meeting with Donald Trump in Washington next week.

Two groups of refugees were this week sent from Manus Island in Papua New Guinea and Nauru to the US, and two groups of asylum-seekers from El Salvador have been assembled in Costa Rica for clearance to resettle in Australia.

Immigration officials have denied the refugee deals were linked but they were the source of early friction between the President and Prime Minister.

Mr Trump slammed the deal negotiated with Barack Obama as “the worst deal ever”, “stupid” and said it would “kill” him politically. But the US has stuck to its agreement to take 1250 refugees from the Middle East and Asia who were denied entry to Australia after arriving by boat and diverted to Nauru and Manus Island for processing.

In return, Australia has agreed to take refugees fleeing one of the countries reportedly labelled a “shit hole” by Mr Trump at the height of a recent US debate on immigration.

Salvadorans are NOT refugees!

The Australian continues….

Refugee numbers have exploded in El Salvador in recent years in response to a breakdown of law and order.

A UNHRC [UNHCR-ed]spokesman in New York said about 30 Salvadorian refugees were in Costa Rica en route to Australia.

[….]

But resettlement of refugees from Manus Island to the US has been stepped up ahead of next week’s meeting between Mr Trump and Mr Turnbull. A third group of 18 refugees from Manus Island flew from Port Moresby yesterday to be resettled in the US.

The men were all single Afghan, Pakistani and Rohingyan refugees.

And, although in detention on offshore islands for years, they will be free on the streets of Your Town, USA!

Click here for all the posts about the long sorry history of the dumb deal which by the way sets a terrible precedent for the refugee program going forward.

Next batch of Australian rejected asylum seekers headed our way, mostly single men

02/12/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

They are mostly single men from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Burma (Rohingya) and they are on their way to Anytown, USA.
Here is the news at The Guardian:

The fourth group of refugees to be accepted for resettlement in the United States from Australia’s offshore immigration regime [detention centers!—ed] are poised to leave Nauru for the US, via Fiji.

The 22 refugees are all single men except for one Rohingyan man and his wife, according to Ian Rintoul from the Refugee Action Coalition.

It is the second group to leave Nauru under the controversial resettlement program, following two groups that have also been resettled from Australia’s detention centre on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea.

The latest cohort will bring the number of refugees resettled in the US to about 110. About 2,000 refugees and asylum seekers remain in Australia’s offshore system.

The controversial “US deal” – decried as “dumb” but upheld by the US president Donald Trump – was brokered by his predecessor Barack Obama and the Australian prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, in September 2016.

Mr. Prez where are you?
Why is the US running camps in Costa Rica (unprecedented!) in the first place, and remember escaping violence in one’s own country does not make someone a legitimate REFUGEE!

In exchange for the US considering to resettle 1,250 refugees from Australia’s offshore camps, Australia has agreed to take refugees from US-run refugee camps in Costa Rica. Those refugees are from the violence-plagued northern triangle countries of central America: El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

Rintoul said all the refugees in the new cohort are Afghans, Pakistanis and Rohingya. The makeup further confirms fears that Iranians, who make up the largest national group on Nauru, will be excluded from the US intake.

Continue reading here.
There is a discussion about how we (and the Aussie government) are mean and insisting that only single men be allowed to be placed in America. But, it is a bit deceptive because the families are on Australian soil, and I will bet we said, no way are we bringing the whole family when they are already firmly planted in Australia.
But, of course there is no reason to bring any of them. These are Australia’s problem not ours!
Go here for my extensive archive on the Australia “dumb” deal.

UN: Western countries not 'welcoming' enough 'refugees' now residing in Indonesia

02/03/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Let’s be clear right off the bat. Indonesia is a Muslim country and most of those attempting to pass through Indonesia (arriving there illegally), with a goal of being resettled in the US, Australia, Canada, or Europe, are Muslims.
What happened to the supposedly humanitarianism of Islam and governments ruled by it? Why are these people our problem in the first place?
The truth is that Indonesia doesn’t want them either!
For years the UN has been processing illegal aliens arriving in Indonesia from Somalia etc. in to your US towns via the US State Department. Frankly it needs to stop and it looks like it is slowing.
I just checked Wrapsnet for processing through Indonesia to the US and found that we admitted 18 cases (21 individuals indicating most are single (men?) people, hmmm) in the first three months of FY18 (beginning Oct. 1, 2017).

Indonesia waiting — Waiting in Indonesia for a ticket to America, Australia, Canada, Europe…..

Here is Gulf News (NY Times story):
(Journalism 101 requires that every refugee story begins with a sob story!)

JAKARTA: Ebrahim Adam fled armed conflict in his home region of Darfur, Sudan, in 2011, and ended up seeking asylum in Indonesia, hoping to be eventually resettled in Australia or another Western country so he could resume his dream of being an economist. [Usually they want to be doctors, so they say!—ed]

But after languishing for nearly seven years in Indonesia — where he cannot legally work, access public services or obtain citizenship — Ebrahim recently received bad news: His resettlement is unlikely to ever happen. The UN Refugee Agency’s office in Indonesia has begun informing the nearly 14,000 refugees and asylum seekers in Indonesia that they should not expect to be welcomed by another country. Instead, they should prepare to assimilate into Indonesian society as best they can, or consider returning to their strife-torn countries.

[….]

Analysts said Ebrahim faces additional obstacles: He is single, Muslim and of military age, which could make countries worried about terrorism less likely to take him in.

[….]

Globally, there are more than 24 million certified refugees and asylum seekers, the highest levels since the Second World War, according to the United Nations.

Historically, the chances of refugees ever being resettled are only around 1 per cent.

Those refugees residing in Indonesia face the additional obstacle that the United States and Australia, the two main resettlement destinations for refugees here, have put in place more stringent immigration policies, further decreasing their already long odds.

“Mark Getchell, the IOM’s chief of mission in Indonesia, said the policy changes in Australia and the United States, combined with a reluctance by Canada, New Zealand and European nations to take in additional refugees, means the number of resettlements are only about 400 people a year now in Indonesia.” (IOM is a branch of the UN)

[….]

The situation of refugees hoping for resettlement in the West became more dire after President Donald Trump took office last January. His administration’s travel ban blocks people from eight countries from entering the US, including Somalia, the country with the second-highest number of refugees and asylum seekers stuck in Indonesia.

400 too many!

Last year, only about 400 refugees living in Indonesia were resettled in the United States, according to the United Nations. Indonesia is not a signatory to the 1951 UN refugee convention, which prohibits governments from returning people fleeing persecution to areas where they face serious threats, but the country has allowed certified refugees to remain here as they await resettlement in a third country.

[….]

For years, asylum-seekers from the Middle East and South Asia have used Indonesia as a transit point to reach Australia, boarding rickety wooden boats run by human smugglers for the perilous voyage across the Indian Ocean.

In 2013, however, the Australian government adopted strict new measures to discourage future arrivals by immediately transferring those who made it to its shores to spartan detention centers in Papua New Guinea and Nauru, and refusing to ever consider them for resettlement.

But, golly gee, now we get the booby prize! We admit to America those same lawbreakers who attempted to get to Australia and were detained. And, we pay for it thanks to the Obama “dumb” deal that Trump agreed to!
More from Gulf News here.

It would make enormous sense if the UN spent more time persuading Indonesia to keep their coreligionists, and promote a PR campaign through Africa and the Middle East that there is no ticket to the West through Indonesia!

Lancaster, PA: Church World Service puts on sob story event, never mentions their federal boodle!

01/29/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Church World Service, one of the nine major federal resettlement contractors***, paraded ‘refugees’ before the public in a media event designed to put-down the President (and by extension, you, who voted for him!).
This isn’t pick-on-Church-World-Service week, but they seem to be conspicuously out in front leading the Open Borders political activism (along with their friends at HIAS) recently.
See my previous posts, here and here (see if your church is a member of CWS demonstrating with CAIR).
In Lancaster (Amish country) they put on one of many events as part of their first anniversary bash-Trump campaign to gain support for more refugee admissions (for more paying clients for them).

Here is Lancaster Online:

Three years ago, Palestinian writer Emtiaz Zourob said goodbye to her husband and two children and fled Gaza after being warned her life was in danger because of her views.

U.S. authorities granted her asylum and led her to believe her family would be able to join her in Lancaster, where she was resettled.

Palestinian in Lancaster — CWS’s Palestinian poster girl can’t understand how America could have elected “this man.”

Then, with election of Donald Trump as president, Zourob’s hopes for family reunification crashed. [Family reunification=chain migration.—ed]

On Saturday, one year after Trump suspended admittance of people from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Palestinians, Zourob told her story at a Church World Service forum on refugees.

About 60 attended the panel discussion at Lancaster Theological Seminary. Refugees from Congo, Somalia and Sudan also told their stories.

I have a lot of questions about Zourob’s story. First and foremost she must have gotten in to the US on her own (illegally?) in order to have applied for asylum. How did she do that? Who paid her way? What is the real story here? And, then if her family is in Egypt (no longer in ‘dangerous’ Gaza) surely she can join them there.
Lancaster Online continues….

Zourob, in an interview, said that in 2016 her husband, son and 10-year-old daughter applied for asylum at the U.S. embassy in Cairo and expected to obtain visas granting them entry.

Zourob, 37, hoped she would be seeing them soon and told friends in Gaza she liked the United States.

“I told them I feel like I’m home because all the people here, they are very nice with me,” she said. “But after Trump, I’m not sure about this actually, if it’s still my home or not.”

“It’s very difficult to explain, but the American people, they choose this man to lead America,” she said.

Go here for more on CWS’s Lancaster PR campaign.
A Church World Service rep once told me that they get the first refugees planted (no he didn’t use that word) and then follow-up in subsequent years with helping bring in the family.
For additional information see our archive on Lancaster (America’s refugee capital?) by clicking here.

CWS fuck — Do your tax dollars pay for political action by ‘loving’ Christians like this one?

Why is Church World Service really so worked up?

The answer is that they are paid millions of dollars annually from the federal treasury for their ‘Christian good works’ and Trump is cutting off the money train.
How much exactly are they getting from the Department of State, the Department of Health and Human Services, HUD, Homeland Security, and the Defense Department? You can find out at USASpending.gov.
First I looked at their federal grants and contracts for FY2008 to FY2018 and this is what I found (screenshot of first page below):
Forget ‘humanitarianism!’ This is about M-O-N-E-Y!
Nearly $450 MILLION since 2008 for Church World Service alone!

Screenshot (174) — This is just the first page of many pages!

So what did they get (involuntarily) from your wallets in FY2017 (end of Obama and beginning of Trump presidencies.) Screenshots below are of three pages for FY17:

Screenshot (175)

Now, see why they are so upset!
Look at USA Spending for the first 3 months of FY18 (Fiscal years begin Oct. 1 of previous year).
For 3 months, only $171,950 in sub-grants!
Yikes! No wonder they are working so hard against this President!

Screenshot (181)

***Church World Service is just one of the nine (and not one of the largest recipients of your generosity)! This was so much fun, I think I’ll try to do more of these!
The number in parenthesis is the portion of their budget that you involuntarily pay!

Category: Asylum seekers

Federal Office of Refugee Resettlement playing hardball with immigration lawyers it funds

You fund the Open Borders industry!

ORR is warning a large legal aid contractor that they could be removed from the federal dole if they instruct the ‘children’ about abortion rights.

The government pays $57 million a year under a five-year contract to Vera, which works with 38 organizations in six regions to provide legal help to minors who have crossed the border illegally and without their parents.

Immigration is big business in America, not just for the global corporations greedy for cheap labor, but for the extensive industry the federal government runs through its grants and contracts like those to VERA—Institute of Justice.

Go for it! ORR should cut off their taxpayer-funded money stream.