Michigan: More confirmation that refugee resettlement is an industry

03/11/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I don’t have enough time in my day to post all of the stories from around the country where federal refugee resettlement contractors are crying about their loss of clients and thus their loss of taxpayer funding.
But, this one from Michigan has a few extra nuggets of information that further confirms our contention that refugee resettlement is more of an industry than it is a humanitarian endeavor.

Julie Harris, St. Vincent Catholic Charities Refugee Services, photo here from one year ago this same week (what a difference a year/election makes). http://www.secondwavemedia.com/capitalgains/features/fugee1005.aspx

The Trump Administration must pressure Congress to repeal, and, if necessary, replace the Refugee Act of 1980 with its perverse incentives to place refugees (secretively) in towns that can ill afford the additional poverty.
If a town is overloaded with costly-to-support refugees, the system is set up in such a way as to conspire against rational decision-making.
Watch for these key points:

~Contractors are paid by the head, so there is no incentive for contractors to voluntarily slow the flow.

~Landlords with low income and subsidized rentals have become dependent on the arrival of poor people from the third world.

~Businesses want the cheap compliant immigrant labor.

~And, ‘refugees’ have become dependent on the idea of being able to bring over the whole family after one member scouts out your town to see if it suits them before others are brought over (with the help of those same contractors and their per head payment).

From WKAR Lansing, Michigan:

The executive orders on immigration directly impact immigrants and refugees trying to come to the US and those living here already. But the orders are also causing problems for organizations who support refugees.

[….]

There’s a call for a 120 day delay on all refugee resettlement from everywhere. And during that time presumably there will be a revision and a a reestablishment of vetting procedures. And then the other piece of that that will be hurting us is the overall reduction in the number of refugees coming in for the rest of 2017 and 2018 probably.”

And this impacts St. Vincent and other refugee resettlement organizations because they are based on a per-capita funding structure.

“All of that greatly reduces the number of refugees that we’ll be receiving, and that in turn reduces our budget. So we’ve had to do some staff reductions and layoffs and reorganizing while we’re still trying to serve the people who are here, the people who have already arrived” Harris says.

It goes beyond just St. Vincent. Harris says the community and the organizations they partner with when resettling refugees are impacted too.

“We work with a lot of different landlords and different apartment complexes and different landlords around the city and some of them have called us and said ‘what are we going to do? Who are we going to put in our housing?’

Because they rely on us because there’s a lot of folks who move in and out, and a lot of the low income places who have been very kind to the whole community, they need people to be coming in and keeping their units full. And also a lot of our employers, we work with some big companies who look forward to having a steady stream of people who come in. A lot of refugees will start off in an entry level job and they’ll work hard and after they learn English, they learn a few more things, they’ll move up. And so these companies need the steady flow of people coming in and keeping their businesses running.”

Continue reading here to learn about how the family reunification works and will be disrupted by the Trump EO.
If you are working in a ‘pocket of resistance’ investigating the program where you live, be sure to research costs, but look for those people/businesses benefiting from the refugees. Remind your fellow (taxpaying) citizens that there is money (for some people) in the resettlement industry.
Endnote: I just did a quick look at USASpending.gov and see that the Diocese of Lansing gets millions of $$$ of federal funding from the usual agencies—HHS and Dept. of State, and that St. Vincent’s also got money from HUD.
They aren’t in the landlord business themselves are they?

Hawaii needs refugees! Sues feds over refugee pause, travel restrictions from certain Muslim countries

03/10/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

You can’t make this up.
Surely you have already seen the news that the state of Hawaii is claiming that the Trump Administration’s latest Executive Order limiting travel to the US from certain countries and pausing the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program will hurt Hawaii!

Hawaii Attorney General Doug Chin spoke at Muslim Association of Hawaii, alleges they aren’t getting enough Muslim refugees (he didn’t really say that exactly), but they clearly need some! http://www.civilbeat.org/2017/03/hawaii-becomes-first-state-to-challenge-trumps-new-travel-ban/

I’m going to propose (when the refugee pause and the travel restrictions are lifted) that the state of Hawaii be placed at the top of the refugee-receiving list and get its FAIR SHARE of refugees especially from Somalia, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan etc. to make up for lost time in reaping the rewards of diversity!

Hawaii resettled a grand total of 123 refugees in 14 years, 5 months and ten days (up to today).

I’ll show you below with more numbers how completely ignorant and ill-informed Hawaii’s AG sounds.
Here is Seattlepi:

Hawaii has become the first state to mount a federal court challenge to President Trump’s revised executive order blocking travel from six predominantly Muslim countries and barring Syrian refugees for 120 days.

Attorneys for the Aloha State on Wednesday asked a U.S. District Court judge in Honolulu to block the new Trump order.

“This new executive order is nothing more than Muslim Ban 2.0; under the pretense of national security, it still targets immigrants and refugees,” Hawaii Attorney General Doug Chin said in a statement.

[….]

In its court filing, Hawaii argues that the rights of its citizens, and its tourism economy, will be damaged by the revised Trump order, which takes effect March 16.

The new executive order will damage Hawaii’s “economy, educational institutions and tourism industry,” the state argues in its brief.

Rolling on floor laughing my head off! Hawaii “welcoming persons from all nations around the world into the fabric of its society.”

“It is damaging Hawaii’s institutions, harming its economy and eroding Hawaii’s sovereign interest in maintaining the separation between church and state as well as in welcoming persons from all nations around the world into the fabric of its society.”

Ismail Elshikh, Muslim Association of Hawaii is a co-plaintiff in suit against Trump Administration. http://www.civilbeat.org/2017/03/hawaii-becomes-first-state-to-challenge-trumps-new-travel-ban/

Now, here is the real power behind the suit—Muslim Association of Hawaii!

Seattlepi continues….

The state’s suit has a co-plaintiff, Ismail Elshikh, the imam of the Muslim Association of Hawaii, saying the Trump order “inflicts a grave injury on Muslims in Hawaii, including Dr. Elshikh, his family and members of his mosque.”

Let’s look at Hawaii’s refugee program!

Checking Wrapsnet this morning, here is a summary of the refugees admitted to Hawaii in the last 14 years, 5 months and 10 days:
Of the total 123 refugees they “welcomed” to Hawaii, the largest number (66) were Vietnamese who came in the early years (FY03,04,05). Another 40 were Burmese (most Burmese are Christians). Only 5 from any Middle East country came. In 2004, 1 Iranian was resettled there and in 2013 they got a grand total of 4 Iraqis. None of the thousands of Syrians admitted to the US in the last 2 years were seeded in Hawaii!
A smattering of Russians and Ukrainians were placed there over the years.
There were no refugees sent to Hawaii at all in FY11 and last year!
Zero Africans were planted in Hawaii in all those years. That is interesting since when I read some books on Obama’s father arriving in Hawaii in about 1960, see especially this book, I learned that Hawaiians were not partial to Africans and that Barack Sr. attracted much attention because of his race and demeanor. Hmmmm?
Why wasn’t the state of Hawaii begging for refugees over the last 14 years, 5 months and 10 days?

Seems it might be just the right time to send Hawaii its fair share of Somalis, Ethiopians, Eritreans, and Congolese!

BTW, how is the welfare system in Hawaii, does anyone know?

Here is an idea! There are no travel restrictions between Minnesota and Hawaii. Maybe load up a few planes with excess refugees there and send them to Hawaii (I hear that the climate is much better!).

This post is archived in our ‘laugh of the day’ category, here.

Rutland, VT mayor defeated over his plan to seed city with Syrian refugees

03/09/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

“[W]hat happened here in Rutland….should be used as a template for the rest of country!”

Don Cioffi (Rutland First!)

It wasn’t only the plan—there are lots of mayors pushing for refugees to be placed in their towns—but it was the way he went about it that riled citizens there in VERMONT, of all places!
Thanks to all who sent me one of the many many stories written in the last 24 hours about his defeat at the ballot box. We mentioned the upcoming election on Sunday, here. Leo Hohmann writing at World Net Daily quoted that post.

Representatives of the federal resettlement contractor, USCRI, field questions from standing room only crowd in Rutland last year. Photo: http://news4security.com/posts/2016/09/rutland-first-vermonts-homegrown-opposition-to-syrian-resettlement/

(Just as I am writing this post this morning, Fox & Friends is reporting on the mayor’s election loss due to his support of the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program.)
Update: Michael Patrick Leahy at Breitbart weighs in here.
Mayor Christopher Louras’ defeat should be a wake-up call to mayors around the country that pushing the refugee program in collusion with a paid refugee contractor and the US State Department, while trying to keep the plan secret from the public, is not a good model for success.
Not only did Mayor Louras lose his reelection bid, but the federal resettlement contractor, USCRI in this case opened an office there for 2 families that they will now surely have to close, and their friends in the liberal media—see the New York Times hyping the Rutland resettlement—who were working to make Donald Trump look bad in advance of his inauguration, show how weak they have become.
For our many posts on Rutland going back to (I think) last May, click here.
The Rutland, Vermont model for all of you!
From Leo Hohmann at WND:

The people of Rutland, Vermont, have gained a measure of revenge against former President Obama’s forced influx of Syrian refugees, voting out the five-term mayor who helped negotiate the controversial resettlements with a federal contractor.

Rutland is Vermont’s third-largest city but still very small, with a population of 16,500.

The candidacy of Mayor Christopher Louras went down in flames in Tuesday’s election as he was defeated by the refugee program’s most ardent opponent on the board of aldermen. David Allaire won with 52 percent of the vote to 34 percent for Louras.

“That’s not just a win, that’s a drubbing,” said Don Chioffi, an activist who supported the upstart candidate Allaire.

Louras came out last April and “announced,” much to the surprise of his residents, that the city would be taking in up to 100 Syrian refugees [98.5% of the Syrians entering the US are Muslims—ed] in fiscal 2017 along with others from Iraq.

The announcement divided the city among those who wanted to welcome the refugees – no questions asked – and those who thought the refugee program was being dictated without any local input and with very little information. Protests and counter-protests were organized, attracting national media attention.

Unfazed by the division it caused in Rutland, a State Department contractor opened an office and started placing Syrians into the community.

The Leftist media doesn’t give you a fair shake, so go around them!

Hohmann continued:

Local activist Don Chioffi, an ACT for America chapter leader in Rutland, said Allaire got no help from the local media. But supporters bypassed the newspapers and TV stations by using social media, meetings and a conservative radio host to get their message out.

“The people we talk to always react positively, but you would never know that from the media coverage we get,” Chioffi told WND.

“In their sacrilegious and diabolical effort to squelch the truth, they won’t put it out there, so it’s hard to emphasize how important this victory is because the leftist media just doesn’t give you a fair shake, and we went into it expecting that. We knew we wouldn’t get a fair shake.”

[….]

“What won this race in Rutland is we concentrated on principles of democracies and how far we’ve strayed from those principles when a private, nonprofit agency is taking people’s rights away from them, using secrecy, getting government funding, all of the things about this refugee program that have been taken away from the people.”

Chioffi said his group’s requests for public-record documents were rejected by USCRI, which claimed the information was proprietary, even though it was doing the government’s work as a contractor.

Amila Merdzanovic, Director for USCRI of the Vermont Refugee Program: If we go public too soon “…all sorts of people will come out of the woodwork.”

“We said we have questions and we want answers,” he said.

The group’s big break came when the USCRI director of the state resettlement program stumbled in trying to answer a question about why the refugee plan for Rutland was so secretive.

In an April 14 email to Mayor Louras, USCRI Director Amila Merdzanovic wrote in an email “if we open it up to anybody and everybody, all sorts of people will come out of the woodwork, anti-immigrant … anti-anything.”

“When they came out and said they don’t’ think this should be made public because ‘too many people would come out of the woodwork,’ we just pummeled her and branded her,” Chioffi said.

Chioffi said Rutland is a microcosm for what happened nationally on Nov. 8 with the election of Donald Trump.

“We the people spoke, and we were sick and tired of being dictated to and people making decisions on our behalf. And we’re certainly sick of being dictated to by a private, nonprofit agency,” he said. “Since when do you turn over your local government to a 501c3 private contractor, which then denies you public information? So the lack of transparency was the focus of our campaign against this mayor.”

There is much, much more including quotes from our friend James Simpson, continue reading here.
***Update 2*** See my latest on USCRI here.

What does the Refugee Admissions timeline look like for the remainder of 2017 and in to 2018?

03/08/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

And, what more can President Donald Trump do?

If today is the first day you ever began to try to understand the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program, I’m going to walk you through from where we are.
Presumably you are here because you heard that President Donald Trump announced a 120-day moratorium on the USRAP beginning next Thursday (March 16th). And, let’s assume that activist groups will be unable to stop it in the courts, see here.

LOL! This is going to be long! Serious students of the USRAP, continue reading…..

We will start our timeline by explaining that planning for the upcoming fiscal year (FY2018) is happening now over the next few months and culminates in September….

In September, the President submits a “determination” to Congress with the number of refugees that could be admitted (and regions from which they will come) in the upcoming fiscal year. Right now we are in FY2017 which began on October 1, 2016 and runs to September 30, 2017. The number he chooses is a CEILING, it is not a target!
President Obama in his last months in office set the CEILING at 110,000 for the year FY2017 (most of a year in which he would not be in office). It grates me to see stories like this from a Nebraska newspaper that says Trump is bringing in less than half of what Obama brought in! Obama had never set a CEILING that high in his previous seven years! In his highest year (2016) he brought in just short of 85,000.
Congress’ only role is to “consult.” I have followed the USRAP since 2007 and up until 2 years ago, I was not aware of any interest by Congress (House or Senate) to do anything. Perhaps there was “consultation” behind the scenes. Early on I asked my Congressman to help me attend a “consultation,” but I was told the public could not attend. I suspected it was because there was nothing much to attend!

The “determination” is sent to the House and Senate Judiciary Committees and someone from the US State Department goes to The Hill with the letter and report prepared by the Department of State (you can see last year’s here).
The Refugee Act of 1980 does mention Congressional hearings on the “determination,” and to his credit, Senator Jeff Sessions held two very good hearings in 2015 and 2016.
I shouldn’t have said “only role” for Congress is consultation because they do hold the ultimate card—funding! The USRAP could be seriously curtailed through the Appropriations process (something I have discussed at length in my tag ‘Where is Congress‘). Trump could control the program through his budget too!
And, I am going to argue below that Congress, if it had the guts, could reform the whole program.

Department of State Public hearings were a sham!

In preparation for the ‘determination,’ the US Department of State holds (held!) a ‘hearing’ of sorts to supposedly gather information from interested parties about how many and which ethnic groups we should admit in the upcoming fiscal year. That ‘hearing’ happens (happened!) usually in May.
However, during my years, I’ve watched what was a stacked hearing (dominated by refugee resettlement contractors) to begin with become a nothing-hearing by last year.
The first year I attended the meeting/hearing was fairly large—maybe 100 people in a room in Northern Virginia. It was a parade of those who were being paid to resettle refugees before a panel that included bureaucrats from the Dept. of State, ORR (in Health and Human Services) and USCIS. They all asked for more refugees and more ethnic groups (notably the Rohingya of Burma/Bangladesh).
After that year, readers of RRW began sending in testimony and more of us with concerns who lived locally attended, until 2014 when the meeting was tiny, held in the US State Dept. with security screening, and was dominated by those of us with problems with the program. Most of the contractors mailed in their testimony!
Here is the testimony I sent (or delivered in person) each year.
They thumbed their noses at the citizens with concerns!
And, finally, in 2015 there was no public hearing at all! Why? I am sure it is because they didn’t like what they were hearing! They only took written testimony that was not available to the public!
Here is what I said last May:

If you would like to see what some of your fellow critics of the program said in the past, go here, here and here (when you click each of these, scroll down for all the posts in the category). These are our archives for any discussion of hearing years 2012 (for FY13), 2013 (for FY14), and 2014 (for FY15). The only reason we obtained any of that testimony is that some of you sent it to us and we attended the hearings in person and were given the testimony.

That testimony is not made public because secrecy has always been the watchword of the program!

I doubt that any Member of Congress or Senator has ever attempted to make that testimony public and I’d bet a million bucks (if I had it!) that no Members/Senators have ever asked for that testimony! Shameful!

Hold field hearings!

If Donald Trump’s Administration is serious about reforming the USRAP (and not just temporarily reducing the numbers), his DOS should hold field hearings in refugee overloaded cities!
Any Member of Congress or US Senator could do the same! (I can help guide anyone who wants to hold such hearings to the troubled communities.)

Right now Secretary of State Rex Tillerson must depend on career State Department officials like Henshaw who we presume likes the USRAP the way it had operated for decades.

Right now you can assume that any planning for FY18 is being done by career bureaucrats and an acting Asst. Secretary of State (Henshaw here). The Trump team has apparently not selected an Asst. Secretary of State for Population, Refugees and Migration, an appointment that requires Senate approval.
Of course right now, I suspect the careers are all in disarray and figuring out how to get the last refugees in to the US before the moratorium that begins on the 16th.

This morning we are at 37,425 admitted so far (again Trump’s CEILING is 50,000). Trump has no legal obligation to reach the CEILING.

Will there be hearings in May? Who knows!
But….

Planning for the annual determination (for FY18) will begin in your local community (but you won’t know it!) soon.

The local subcontractors (of the nine major contractors) will, in late spring/early summer, be preparing those very secretive documents called R & P Abstracts. To learn what they are click here for our complete archive on ABSTRACTS.
Those documents list what refugees your community could support (numbers and ethnic groups). It will give the amenities your town has available—medical care, housing, jobs, education system, etc—for refugees! It is a document we maintain should be available to you—local taxpayers—BEFORE it goes to Washington!
The R & P Abstracts go to the US State Department and are used to determine how much money will be spent for refugees and will be used to make the President’s “determination” to be sent to Congress in September.

Stakeholder meetings!

The bureaucrats of the refugee industry at the DOS and the ORR will tell the Trump people that there is public input, that they hold quarterly “stakeholder” meetings, and the Trump people will not know what a sham this is.
They will trot out their ‘stakeholder’ meetings as an example (here is one post on those) of how transparent they are with the communities they are targeting. But, you need to know that unless you are watching closely and demanding public admission to those meetings, they are dominated by the subcontractors (list here), and various branches of local government. Elected officials who oppose more resettlement will be excluded. And, taxpaying citizens in most places are not considered ‘stakeholders’ and have no role in the preparation of the planning documents.

Back to the 120-day Moratorium which puts us into mid-July, leaving only half of July, August and September to reach the 50,000 CEILING.

This is what John Podesta’s Center for American Progress was tweeting out yesterday to show why the USRAP might in fact be dead for the entire fiscal year.

Again, today we are already at 37,425.
Depending on who is chosen for Asst. Sec. for PRM and for the Director of the ORR (in Health and Human Services), they may or may not be able to gear-up for a huge number of refugees because the process abroad is pretty time-consuming.
The contractors’ fears (and the Open Border advocates like CAP at left) are that the flow cannot get moving with only 2 and 1/2 months left in the fiscal year.

If you have made it this far through this long post, the point I am getting to is this: What will Donald Trump do for FY2018 which is rapidly approaching?

He can set the CEILING low (we don’t consider 50,000 low! See here.). He can make regulatory changes to make the program more transparent and involve state and local governments in the process.
But, will he pressure Congress to reform the law because only changing the law will assure that in 4 or 8 years we don’t go back to the same old flawed system!
Pens and phones only last so long as the particular President is in power! If the USRAP is not reformed legislatively (I would get rid of the whole VOLAG system of paid refugee contractors) then there is no real reform.
Right now, during a Trump presidency, is the only opportunity we will probably ever have to rein-in and reform the out-of-control Refugee Admissions Program. By 2018 everyone will be looking to the next election and nothing will get done!
Endnote: If you missed it, see my post yesterday where I suggested that if you live in a state where state legislators are having problems with the program, you must convince them to call Sec. of State Tillerson and ask to meet him and tell him the problems at the state level!
They should go in with one message: Yes, do as much regulatory reform as possible, but Trump must pressure Congress to repeal and re-write the law (assuming some refugee program will be needed).

US Catholic Bishops assail Trump refugee slowdown, never mention the millions they are paid!

03/07/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Actually it is over a half billion the US Conference of Catholic Bishops received from US taxpayers since 2008!

(By the way, I just heard Raymond Arroyo on Fox and Friends say that the USCCB gets millions of tax dollars annually from the federal treasury, but I couldn’t find the clip. Yeh! Finally that information is getting in to the mainstream media!)
***Update*** Reader Robin has found the clip. Be sure to watch (click here) at about 50 seconds in when Brian Kilmeade asks why Lutherans and Catholics oppose the Trump refugee slowdown. Clearly Arroyo has done some homework!
Here is the latest from Catholic News Agency (CNA):

Washington D.C., Mar 6, 2017 / 03:50 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- With people fleeing humanitarian crises around the world, President Donald Trump’s new executive order halting refugee admissions is wrong, Catholic bishop and aid groups maintain.

Bishop Vasquez chairs the U.S. bishops’ committee on migration. Last time we looked we reported that 97% of the Bishop’s Migration funds money comes from you—the taxpayers! https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2017/01/11/and-we-almost-missed-it-us-conference-of-catholic-bishops-celebrates-its-national-migration-week/

“We remain deeply troubled by the human consequences of the revised executive order on refugee admissions and the travel ban. While we note the Administration’s efforts to modify the Executive Order in light of various legal concerns, the revised Order still leaves many innocent lives at risk,” Bishop Joe Vasquez of Austin stated March 6. Bishop Vasquez chairs the U.S. bishops’ committee on migration.

“The U.S. Catholic Bishops have long recognized the importance of ensuring public safety and would welcome reasonable and necessary steps to accomplish that goal,” he said.

“However, based on the knowledge that refugees are already subjected to the most vigorous vetting process of anyone who enters the United States, there is no merit to pausing the refugee resettlement program while considering further improvement to that vetting process.”

Here comes the big lie that Trump is reducing the number of refugees dramatically! Contractors, like the US Bishops, did just fine on less than 50,000 refugees during 4 of Bush’s years.
But, for only one year did Obama propose the astronomical number of 110,000 (for most of the year he would not be in office!) and that becomes the standard that the ignorant, gullible media goes with! For the many new readers we get every day, the resettlement contractors, including the USCCB, gets paid by the head to place refugees in your towns. More refugees=more money!

“Resettling only 50,000 refugees a year, down from 110,000, does not reflect the need, our compassion, and our capacity as a nation,” Bishop Vasquez stated. “We have the ability to continue to assist the most vulnerable among us without sacrificing our values as Americans or the safety and security of our nation.”

He goes on to oppose any religious test (like the prioritization of Christians in the first EO) for admission to the US.
Now, here comes a major truth! And, this is why Christians are not prioritized from Muslim countries!

Refugees must first register with the UNHCR to be eligible for resettlement.

Trump should immediately sever our ties with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, save us millions of dollars, and put in place a program where we, the US, chooses our refugees without the UNHCR middle men!
CNA continues……

“The Obama administration policy was to prioritize these groups, but despite this they remain severely underrepresented in U.S. refugee admissions, so it’s clear that a fair outcome is even more important than a stated priority,” he said. [Andrew Walther, vice president of communications and strategic planning at the Knights of Columbus.]

Syriac Patriarch Ignatius Joseph III Younan of Antioch has warned that Christians hoping to be resettled in the U.S. or Canada have never even had the chance.

“I personally heard on several occasions from many of our Christian refugees in Lebanon and Jordan, that their applications for refugee visas, either to the USA or Canada, are without any response, if not refused by the consulates of the USA and Canada,” he stated.

Never mentioned at CNA News is the financial reason the USCCB does not want to slow the flow for even a short period of time—$$$$$!
Here (below) is just one page of the income the USCCB is getting from you (from 2008-2016). This does not include the millions and millions of tax payer dollars received separately by individual Catholic Charities around the country.
My screenshot from USASpending.gov captures only 7 of 227 transactions.

For those of you interested in the USAID funding be sure to scroll through the pages and see how much of that money the USCCB gets!

By the way, since the Bishops are exempt from filing Form 990’s we can’t get at their salaries.