Category: Christian refugees

Just when I thought I had found some real Christian charity helping refugees with private money

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

As our daily readers know, a big part of what we do is to expose the supposedly charitable Christian and Jewish groups which say they are driven to care for the “least of these among us” purely because it is a Godly thing to do. Then we find out they are doing their ‘charitable work’ by ripping off local, state and federal taxpayers.  Some of their ‘leaders’ are being paid handsomely (by you) to do it.

Adding insult to injury, they are bringing Muslim refugees to your towns and cities with your money.

World Help CEO Vernon Brewer. At least it appears that they help refugees where they are and aren’t paid to bring them to America. (As far as I can tell!)

So, this morning when I saw this news story from Virginia about a “Christian charity” called World Help, I said, wow!, this Christian charity is actually talking about saving Iraqi Christians by making dangerous trips to Iraq and helping them there.  I can’t see any mention of bringing more refugees to America.  Good!

Then I had a look at a recent IRS Form 990.

World Help (that year) was a $25 million a year operation.  Yes, it has some big salaries (not as big as some we have reported), but much to my surprise $8.7 million came to them in the form of “government grants.”   What is up with that?  For what?  I don’t know and don’t have the time to research it.  All I know is there needs to be book (is there one?) that describes the “religious charity” racket!

It gets a little worse.  To acquire those government grants they hired an outfit called CMF Unlimited from Florida.  On their 2012 Form 990, WH reported paying them $131,250 to acquire taxpayer-funded grants.

Then at some point after filing that return…..

CMF Unlimited was blamed by World Help in 2012 for submitting fraudulent records that helped the charity get on Forbes list of top 100 charities (Forbes announced the “error.”)

Apparently it’s a dog-eat-dog world out there in the Christian charity business.

From Forbes:

Calling itself a victim of “fraudulent documents,” World Help said today that the actual value of donated medical goods it received during 2011 was less than half the $227 million listed in its filing with the Internal Revenue Service. The large Forest, Va.-based Christian international-aid charity said it would soon file an amended tax return listing only about $100 million in gifts. That means that just a few months ago World Help filed a tax return claiming nearly twice the donations of goods for 2011 than it actually received.

“We are self-reporting this,” World Help president and CEO Vernon Brewer told Forbes. “It’s the right thing to do.” Without that added sum, World Help would not have made the latest Forbes roster of the country’s largest charities. “I feel so bad you put us on your list,” he said.

Brewer said a paid consultant World Help hired to seek gift-in-kind contributions, as donated goods are called, obtained an allotment  of medical supplies from Direct Relief International, a Goleta, Calif. charity also on the Forbes list.  In shipping paperwork and on its own tax return, Direct Relief had valued the goods at $3.3 million.  Brewer said his charity received from the consultant the same Direct Relief shipping paperwork–except that, according to World Help’s 2011 tax return,  it valued the goods at $100 million–a 3,o00% markup. “The values had been whited out and new numbers put in,” Brewer said. “We got fraudulent documents. A couple of zeros were added.”

World Help’s publicly filed tax return identified the consultant as CMF Unlimited Inc., based in the Fort Lauderdale area. Florida corporate records say its owner is Clifford M. Feldman. Brewer said Feldman has not returned any of his recent phone calls seeking an explanation. Voicemail messages seeking comment that Forbes left Wednesday for Feldman also were not returned.

In California, Direct Relief CEO Thomas Tighe said Wednesday he was “deeply concerned” when he learned that his charity’s modest $3.3 million donation had morphed into a reported $100 million donation still bearing his organization’s name on the paperwork. Of World Help, he said, “There was clearly a mistake that was made on their part.”

Someone needs to write a book (maybe there is one) on The Religious Refugee Charity Racket in America.   Hey!  There is a title right there!

Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society launches petition drive to increase this year’s refugee quota from 70,000-100,000

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment
We want 75,000 Syrians admitted to US in next five years.

Citing the crisis in Syria and Iraq, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, one of nine major federal contractors has launched a drive to petition the Obama Administration to increase the Fiscal Year 2015 admissions to the US.

Always keep in mind that the contractors are paid by the head to resettle refugees to your towns and cities.

See a previous post this morning for what all this is costing you.

Readers will remember it was Nezer who earlier this year said we should take 75,000 Syrians over 5 years.

Although she says they are trying to save Christians and religious minorities, interested readers should call them and ask how many Muslims they resettled in recent years and ask what percentage of the Syrians in the pipeline for America right now are Muslims.

From an e-mail alert this morning:

Dear Friend,

10.14---HIAS_SyriaIraq_callout_v4.pngThe conflict in Syria has forced more than 3 million people from their homes. In Iraq, the Islamic State has engaged in an ethnic cleansing campaign against Christians and other ethnic and religious minorities. Those who have fled will likely never be able to return home.

Yet, despite ongoing persecution and conflicts creating more and more refugees, the United States has not increased the quota of people we will resettle in the coming year.

Sign our petition! It is imperative that the annual US refugee quota be increased from 70,000 to 100,000. 

Raising the resettlement ceiling will not put an end to the violence sweeping Syria and Iraq. But it will allow us to save more of the most vulnerable refugees of this unimaginable suffering. It will support the countries hosting them. And it will uphold our nation’s promise to support religious freedom and provide safe haven to those who are persecuted.

Stand with us and urge President Obama to uphold our nation’s promise to support religious freedom and offer safe haven to those who are persecuted for their faith and beliefs.

Sincerely,
Melanie

Melanie Nezer
Vice President, Policy and Advocacy

Will the thousands of Syrian refugees now being admitted to the US be Christians?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update December 9, 2015:  We have much more up-to-date data and the percentage of Syrian Muslims coming into the US this fiscal year is now 99%, here.

Update November 17, 2015:  This post is over a year old. We do know exactly how many Muslims are in the refugee stream arriving from Syria, it is well over 97%, see today’s post, here.

That is a question I get all the time.  My best guess is that a few will be, but the vast majority will be Sunni Muslims.

My guess is based on a few facts from the past, first that of the Iraqi refugees we have resettled in recent years, the majority (we hear 62% this past year) are Muslims, and secondly, I have never seen in print any clamor from our major refugee resettlement contractors***, most of which are ostensibly Christian groups (US Conference of Catholic Bishops, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee service and others), for specifically saving the Christians of the Middle East.

Now outdated map (thanks to ISIS), but it gives you some idea of the areas that were Christian. See this article about Christians fighting with Assad against the “rebels.” http://thechristians.com/?q=node/880

Maybe someone could direct me to anything where these contractors said to the US State Department—we want more Christians to resettle!  My guess as to why they haven’t said that (correct me if I’m wrong and they have) is because of an overwhelming and insane desire to be politically correct and a fear of being called Islamophobes.

(Oh, and believe me, they aren’t taking mostly Muslims because they think they can convert them to Christianity, this is all about multiculturalism, diversity and inclusiveness!)

A writer (Terry Mattingly) at a website called ‘GetReligion’ addressed his question—how are refugees being chosen?—in response to the Washington Post article of this past week (our post here) where the WaPo tells us the State Department is processing 4,000 resettlement applications.

Mattingly found more evidence that most will be Muslims.

He says that since they will come from UN camps (after all the UN is pre-selecting for the US State Department), and the Christians are not in camps, surely the majority will be Muslims.  As a matter of fact, I’ve read that many Christians are still in Syria somewhat protected by the secular Assad government.

Here is ‘GetReligion:’

First, the WaPo said this:

Most Syrian refugees considered candidates for U.S. residency have been living in refugee camps or elsewhere outside Syria for a year or much longer.

And then this from Terry Mattingly (emphasis is mine):

This leads to a logical question: Who is, when push comes to shove, running these UNHCR camps? In particular, I was curious to know how this selection system would affect the cases of refugees who are part of oppressed religious minority groups. I decided to ask a veteran human-rights activist about that.

The response? Christians on the run have been avoiding these camps because they tend to be hostile to minority-faith refugees. In other words, these camps are run by those in majority forms of Islam, even if they have – logically enough – clashed with the radicalized Islamic State.

In other words, we have a major religion ghost in this story. It is likely that the current pipeline to safety is all but closed to Christians and members of other minority faiths in this ravaged region.

Read it all.

***The US State Department’s nine major contractors (they have hundreds of subcontractors working for them if you don’t recognize these names in your cities):

Austin, MN: Meatpackers changing the demographics of American towns

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

There is nothing earth-shattering in this article from MPR News, but it’s just further evidence of the role the meatpacking industry is playing in changing towns in America’s heartland with its avaricious desire for cheap labor—refugee labor!  (Remember Senator Sessions called the meatpackers out here last year as a driving force behind amnesty).

We have been following this topic for going on seven years first brought to our attention by the turmoil created by Somali workers demanding workplace accommodation for their ‘religious’ requirements.  We have an entire category entitled, Greeley/Swift/Somali controversy, where we archived posts on the topic.

But, you know what is really funny (sort of) is that the meatpackers apparently got sick of the Somali workers in some places and must have asked the US State Department (and their contractors***) for some more docile workers like these Burmese Karen Christians or the mostly Hindu Bhutanese refugees we have been bringing in ever since Bush “welcomed” them in 2007.

The refugees are basically cheap, legal, captive laborers which you subsidize through the myriad social services they receive (see our fact sheet for the list of welfare programs open to refugees).

 

The largest employer in Austin, MN, Hormel and Quality Pork. Photo from a NYT article in 2008 about a mystery illness there. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/05/health/05pork.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

 

From MPR News (hat tip: Deb):

St. Paul is home to the largest Karen population in the country. But in recent years, Austin has attracted hundreds of the Karen and Karenni people.

Austin, a meatpacking town that has seen big demographic changes in the last few decades, started attracting workers from Mexico and Latin America in the early 1990s, followed by a wave of African immigrants. [The meatpackers used illegal labor from south of the border until the feds clamped down and then they discovered refugee labor thanks to Bill Clinton—ed]

The city’s growing Karen population is the first influx of minorities that has not been Latino or African, and the change has come fast.

According to the city’s Welcome Center, the number of Karen and Karenni residents in Austin nearly tripled to 1,224 this year, up from 463 in 2012. Driven out of their long-adopted home of Myanmar to camps in Thailand, the members of the two groups are flowing to the United States as refugees.

That means they can work legally, and some have replaced other immigrants at workplaces like Austin’s Hormel and Quality Pork processing plants, Austin schools superintendent David Krenz said.

Of course this massive plant in Austin would not have had Somali workers in the first place!  (Pork of course!).

The Minnesota resettlement agencies affiliated with the federal government are listed here.  They are subcontractors of the big Volags below.  BTW, they call themselves Voluntary Agencies (Volags), but that is an obvious misnomer as most are nearly completely funded by tax dollars.

***The federal migrant resettlement contractors which we have followed for years (Grant recipient big dogs (devouring federal cash) Baptist Child and Family Services and Southwest Key Programs  are new on the scene in recent years and mostly due to UACs.):

How many Iraqi refugees came to America since 9/11? How are they doing?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

In our earlier post this morning, we reported that the US State Department is going to begin bringing in Syrians (at the UN’s direction) on par with what we have done for Iraqis.  That reminded me that I wanted to pull together the Iraqi resettlement data.

We are on our way, as this fiscal year ends in a few weeks, to 115,000 Iraqis admitted to the US since 9/11.  Approximately 62% are Muslims (71,300).  How do we know?

Recently a reader sent me some numbers for Iraqi refugees from a data base kept by the US State Department that only select people have access to.  It was the data base of religions refugees bring to America.  Our reader said that of 111,854 Iraqis admitted since 2003, 42,137 are Christians. (38%).   I don’t have access to the religion data, but I did want to check the total numbers for myself.

I don’t come up with 111,854 (I get 111,731, but it’s close and we could easily reach 115,000 by the end of the fiscal year).  This information below comes from data tables at the end of Annual Reports to Congress, here.

Iraqi refugees who were ultimately convicted on terrorism charges were arrested in KY and caused a dip in the numbers for 2011.

From 1983-2002:  we resettled 41,549 Iraqis

From fiscal year 2003 to August 31, 2014:

2003:  294

2004:  65

2005:  186

2006:  189

2007:  1,605

2008:  13,775 (this was a George Bush year)

2009:  18,709

2010:  18,016

2011:  9,388  (Assume this dip is because of the Iraqi terrorists arrested in KY which resulted in a federal freak-out and a re-do on the security screening of Iraqis).

2012:  12,233

2013:  19,500

2014 (11 months of the fiscal year): 17,771

Bottom line is that we are approaching 115,000 Iraqis admitted to the US in the last 12 years (the State Dept. and contractors will make a big push this month to hit their targets and so I am guessing they will reach 115,000).

How are they doing? 

See the special section on Iraqi refugees in the 2012 ORR Annual Report to Congress (the most recent data available) beginning on page 110.

Not so hot!

~The overall US unemployment rate that year was 7.6%, the Iraqi unemployment rate was 22.6% (but up from 40% or so in some previous years).

~Of those not looking for work, 33.6% had poor health or disabilities.

~The average hourly wage for Iraqis who were working was $9.79 per hour.

~ORR says that the goal is self-sufficiency in 3 months, but only 21% got their first job in 6 months and welfare continued.

~60% were on Medicaid or Refugee Medical Assistance.

~82% were receiving food stamps.

~58% were receiving some sort of cash assistance.

~36% were getting SSI (Supplemental Security Income).

The report tries to put a happy face on it, but the numbers are abysmal!

Sure looks like we are importing poverty and you can expect the Syrians to be in the same situation when they begin arriving at rates comparable to the Iraqis—from 10,000-20,000 a year!

For ambitious readers, our Iraqi refugee category has 628 previous posts in it.

Update:  About the photo.  The photo we placed in this post this morning disappeared. This is not the first time, that has happened with the official photo of this pair.  Let’s see what happens with this one.