So what is this asylum issue the Secretary of State mentioned?

09/19/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Several people have asked me about the statement made by Secretary of State Pompeo when he announced the Administration’s intentions of capping refugee admissions at 30,000.

Intelligence Chiefs Testify To Senate Committee On World Wide Threats

According to the New York Times, Pompeo mentioned a backlog of 800,000 asylum cases piled up in immigration courts and the NYT is quick to point out that the number is too high.

It is ONLY 320,000!

(And, remember readers that those waiting for their asylum hearing are mostly free to roam the USA, relatively few are in detention!)

See here:

“This year’s refugee ceiling reflects the substantial increase in the number of individuals seeking asylum in our country, leading to a massive backlog of outstanding asylum cases and greater public expense,” he added.

Nazanin Ash (left) speaking for refugee contractor the International Rescue Committee: “In justifying its policy intention, the administration has pitted those seeking asylum against refugees.”

Mr. Pompeo said refugees had to be weighed against a backlog of 800,000 asylum seekers who are awaiting a decision by immigration authorities about whether they qualify as in need of protection under United States law and will be granted status to remain.

But he vastly overstated the numbers, while making a linkage between two groups of immigrants that are not the same and are processed differently.

As of the end of June, the Department of Homeland Security reported just under 320,000 people who had claimed asylum — meaning they had passed an interview conducted to verify that they met the “credible fear” threshold to be considered — and were awaiting a decision from the department about whether they could stay.

About 730,000 additional immigrants were waiting for their cases to be resolved by immigration courts, according to the Justice Department…

In other words Pompeo is saying that the Trump Administration is going to focus first on a huge backlog of asylum claims.

So what is this asylum issue?

Perhaps we haven’t talked about it enough over the years, but asylum is the other side of a two-sided coin for ‘refugee’ admissions to the US.

The cap we are talking about refers to the refugees who are found abroad, are accepted for admission and are flown here at taxpayers’ expense and turned over to one of the nine refugee resettlement contractors for care.

Asylum seekers are people who got to the US on their own dime and upon entering the country across a border illegally (or sometimes with a legal visa) they request asylum claiming they would be persecuted if returned home. They then go through a legal process to determine if their claims are legitimate or not. (Another can of worms involves the question of how many of those whose claims of asylum were rejected actually leave the country!)

If granted asylum they are called Asylees and are eligible for all of the social service goodies we give to the refugees we fly in. Therefore, US taxpayers’ generosity is not only to the smaller number of refugees we flew in, but potentially to tens of thousands more each year!

The asylum system here and in Europe has been massively scammed where worldwide millions are claiming asylum when in fact most are economic migrants or just plain crooks.

There are so many that they are overwhelming our legal system and that is why Sec. of State Pompeo says we are prioritizing—getting those hundreds of thousands processed.

(See Jim Simpson’s chart in this post to see how many had successful asylum claims for each of the last 10+ years. Total is over 266,000 since 2008!)

Refugee Industry thrilled with Asylum avenue to America!

In 2010 I attended the 30th anniversary celebration for the Refugee Act of 1980 at Georgetown University in Washington, DC and was struck by the focus speakers were placing on the asylum process.

Doris Meissner 2 — At the Georgetown anniversary event, it was Doris Meissner (who apparently had a role in crafting the Refugee Act of 1980) who said with obvious pleasure: We only expected the odd Russian ballet dancer to use the asylum process, but now (yippee!) large numbers of migrants are using it!

They were downright giddy that so many migrants were now showing up at our borders seeking asylum. In fact, they seemed to be conscious of the fact that there were limits to the numbers they could get in to the US in the normal refugee admissions process even before Trump ever appeared on their radar screens.

In 2011, after seeing more stories about asylum seekers arriving at our borders from far flung places like Somalia, I wrote this post:

Is there a conspiracy by NGO’s to bring asylum seekers to US borders?

I said this at the time about the Georgetown shindig after calling for a Congressional investigation.

I was also struck at the conference by how much emphasis the pro-refugee, pro-open borders activists and speakers were placing on our asylum program. They wanted to educate more asylum lawyers and hire more asylum judges (apparently the refugee program itself wasn’t bringing immigrants in fast enough!). One speaker even said that the original idea behind the program was to rescue the odd ballet dancer seeking asylum from some repressive regime, but had now expanded to thousands every year.

You can read the whole post here, but the gist of it was that I believe the international open borders Leftists are actively involved in pushing migrants to first world countries’ borders (maybe even paying their way!) where, having been previously coached, they know how to ask for asylum. Of course that is exactly what we are seeing now here and in Europe.

By the way, check out the whole NYT story. The reporter says that Secretary of State Pompeo wanted to keep the CAP where it was at 45,000, but Stephen Miller in the White House pushed for an even lower ceiling.

See my post yesterday where I say it should have been ZERO!

Why I think a refugee cap of 30,000 was a bad decision

09/18/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I’m going to try to be brief because faithful readers have heard this all before.

The President was going to be vilified if he had come in anywhere under the 75,000 the ‘humanitarian’ refugee industry was pushing for anyway. (See Pompeo announces 30,000 cap here yesterday.)

He should have, in my opinion, halted the entire program until it was completely reformed. *

Simply cutting the numbers for a few years will do NOTHING. If the basic flawed structure is left in place the big contractors will simply hold out until Trump is no longer in office. They have already said so!

Yes, one or two of the contractors might go belly-up with a paying client number of 30,000 or less to be divvied up by the present nine contractors, but the giants, like the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and the International Rescue Committee, will survive.

Why do political activists who want to see lower immigration numbers always play small-ball?

Screenshot (1452) — Church World Service employee in Lancaster, PA

If the President said no refugees will be admitted until the program is reformed that would be the hammer to get the job done because those in Congress who want the cheap labor and those who want more Democrat voters would have been forced to cooperate with the White House.

Here are some of the reforms I want to see (assuming there is a demand for a refugee admissions program at all!):

~The present contracting system must go. For non-profit groups to be paid by the head for each refugee they place is an insane system that only encourages them to beg for more refugees each year whether our towns and cities are already in overload or not!

And, it sets up an advocacy (read political agitation) system potentially using taxpayer dollars to promote policies and candidates.

~States must have a larger role (the largest role!) in determining the number of refugees placed in their states since the federal government is at present burdening states by requiring state taxpayers to carry much of the load for refugee care (medical, schooling, housing, translation services, criminal justice and so forth).

In the present system the US State Department and the contractors sit down every week and determine which refugees will be your new neighbors without any input from state and local governments (LOL! Unless those governments have been determined to be friendly in advance!).

~The program must be reformed to promote transparency. Local citizens have a right to know who is coming to their towns. When President Trump first came in to office, his early executive orders on refugees actually mentioned that the Administration was going to visit refugee placement towns and cities to hear testimony and ascertain the impact the refugees are having in those locations. What happened to that idea?

In fact, right now, we can’t even find out which towns are targets. At least during the Obama years we could find which contractors and subcontractors were working in each location. That list maintained by the Refugee Processing Center is no longer available under the Trump Administration. Why?

Screenshot (1449) — This is the most recent map available, produced in 2015, showing the resettlement sites and contractors operating around the country. Why is the Trump State Department keeping this information from us?

Continuing on reforms that would promote transparency—for many prior years (although Obama cut this off toward the end of his Presidency) there were “scoping meetings” held by the US State Department in May or June of each year where people like me (us!) could at least voice our opinions about admissions for the coming fiscal year. They are no longer held even by Trump’s State Department.

~Citizens must be assured that the vetting process is as fool-proof as it could be and that additional steps are taken to eliminate fraud. By just reducing the numbers and not telling us—the public—about what measures are being taken to eliminate dangerous refugees and the ones committing fraud, we are still being left with great uncertainty and frankly fear!

~The United Nations should be removed from our decision-making process. We should pick our own refugees based on our own US interests and concerns. We don’t need the UN to tell us which people in the world need help.

~If big business is looking for cheap laborers, let’s have that debate. Stop talking about the refugee program as solely a humanitarian program. Have them come forward and identify themselves so citizens in communities, where the business is located, know who is coming to their towns and why.

~We must stop stretching refugee law by picking up illegal migrants from places like Malta, South Africa, Israel or Australia.

More as I think of them, but this is getting too long! Simply reducing the numbers for a few years does nothing to solve the problem going forward.

The window for serious reform is rapidly closing. Does the Trump team assume the House and Senate will remain in Republican hands and they will get it done next year? Big assumption!

Or, is this (reducing numbers for a few years) it?

If so, in 2021 or 2025 it will be business as usual for the refugee industry and we might as well go lay on a sunny beach somewhere with a cool drink in hand!

*To head off the complaints from even people on the immigration restriction side, there could have been provisions made for the admission of some extreme cases.

Holy cow! Is the Trump Administration extending this fiscal year to December 31 for refugee admissions?

09/17/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update: CWS didn’t have to wait for long. Secretary of State Pompeo has announced a ceiling of 30,000 refugees for FY19. But, will the administration be ready to welcome those ‘new Americans’ in two weeks from today? See the news here.

In what I thought was going to be another ho-hum whinny story about Church World Service, a Lancaster, PA refugee agency director dropped this bomb:

lancaster-sheila — **Sheila Mastropietro**

Mastropietro [Sheila Mastropietro, director of the CWS Lancaster office] said the CWS national office is being kept in the dark.They just found out this week that the fiscal year will be extended to Dec. 31, delaying the decision of who will be funded and leaving CWS “on pins and needles for an additional three months,” she said.

If you have been a regular student of Refugee Resettlement Watch, you know that the fiscal year ends on September 30th, and for decades September is the month when we learn how many refugees will be admitted in the following year and from where they will come.

And, surely you haven’t missed my many posts on the PR campaign the federal contractors*** have been promoting as they demand that Trump admit 75,000 refugees beginning on October 1.

I can only guess that if true, that there will be no announcement this month, it means there is an internal battle of ginormous proportions going on, or it could be a complex funding issue involving the whole federal government.

The story, thanks to Joanne for sending it!, is at LancsterOnline:

With funding at risk, Church World Service ‘on pins and needles’ about future of refugee program

As President Donald Trump took office in January 2017, the 30th year of Church World Service resettling refugees in the county, Lancaster city was deemed “America’s refugee capital” by BBC News for resettling 20 times the number of refugees per capita than the country as a whole.

The distinction led to a visit from Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai, who went on to promote Lancaster’s efforts on a national stage.

Now, in the 20 months since Trump’s travel ban, Church World Service has resettled about half as many refugees here as it did in the previous 20 months, according to data provided by CWS.

Screenshot (1253) — **Mastropietro says, if Trump cuts the refugee funding, they will continue their advocacy (like this?) with other private and PUBLIC money!**

The reporter continues with many paragraphs featuring personal refugee stories and about what President Trump is doing to the refugee program. Then this:

Church World Service, headquartered in Elkhart, Indiana, is one of nine national organizations funded by the Department of State for refugee resettlement. Each of them is a large operation with multiple local offices spread throughout the country.

Indiana?

Actually, CWS still has it original headquarters at the famous 475 Riverside Dr. building in New York City, home to dozens of hard Left ‘religious’ groups, like the National Council of Churches, and other similar socialist organizations. I’m guessing the lower level staffers work in Indiana to keep costs down.

But with fewer refugees making it to America’s doorstep, the Department of State’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration “expects to fund a smaller number of recipient agencies” in the next fiscal year, according to a notice provided by a State Department spokesperson.

How many fewer agencies — and what factors might lead to the decision — is unclear. Mastropietro said the CWS national office is being kept in the dark. They just found out this week that the fiscal year will be extended to Dec. 31, delaying the decision of who will be funded and leaving CWS “on pins and needles for an additional three months,” she said.

While stripping refugee resettlement funding may be a fatal blow for some of the nine agencies, Mastropietro said CWS in Lancaster will carry on even if resettlement — its largest program — goes away.

Carrying-on will be tough!

simpson table CWS — Church World Service is in column one at James Simpson’s incredible table of how many taxpayer dollars each resettlement contractor consumes. CWS is 71% government funded and received nearly a half a billion dollars since 2008 from taxpayers! https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2018/09/16/capital-research-center-publishes-an-overview-of-the-us-refugee-admissions-program/

Lancaster Online continues….

With other public [public of course means taxpayer dollars!–ed] and private funding avenues, CWS would continue operating programs such as legal immigration counseling, employment services and advocacy. And if it does lose the resettlement money, Mastropietro is convinced it will be a temporary, if difficult, setback.

And, she confirms what I have been saying!

“We’re just going to wait it out,” she said. “If anything happens, we’ll wait it out until the next president.”

More here.

Ambitious readers might like to learn more about refugees in Amish country. See my complete archive on Lancaster by clicking here.

Do not become complacent!

If the Trump Administration only reduces numbers of refugees and funding for a few years nothing will change!

A few of the smaller contractors may go belly-up, but it only will mean a greater monopoly for the surviving contractors like Church World Service.

Those contractors will be working to elect the next president, they will continue to lobby for more federal dollars and more refugees, and they will resume placing refugees quietly in to your unsuspecting towns and cities!

***Here below are the nine federal refugee resettlement contractors.

You might be sick of seeing this list almost every day, but a friend once told me that people need to see something seven times before it completely sinks in, so it seems to me that 70, or even 700 isn’t too much!

And, besides I have new readers every day.

The present US Refugee Admissions Program will never be reformed if the system of paying the contractors by the head stays in place and the contractors are permitted to act as Leftwing political agitation groups, community organizers and lobbyists paid on our dime!

And, to add insult to injury they pretend it is all about ‘humanitarianism.’

The number in parenthesis is the percentage of their income paid by you (the taxpayer) to place the refugees into your towns and cities and get them signed up for their services (aka welfare)! And, get them registered to vote eventually!

From my most recent accounting, here. However, please see that Nayla Rush at the Center for Immigration Studies has done an update of their income, as has James Simpson at the Capital Research Center!

Capital Research Center publishes an overview of the US Refugee Admissions Program

09/16/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Jim Simpson

James Simpson has done an outstanding job of pulling together facts about the history of how the US came to be the top refugee resettlement country in the world. Hint: It all began with the UN!

And, then in this three-part series gives readers the facts about who we are bringing to America and how much it costs us—the US taxpayer.

He begins his serialized report this way:

Resettling Refugees: An International Agenda

Summary: A vast network of foundations, non-profits, government entities and political organizations have a vested interest in the continued growth of the resettlement of refugees in America. Because they receive billions of dollars in federal grant money, publicly-financed, tax-exempt organizations have significant incentives to support political candidates and parties that will keep these programs alive. These organizations need to be thoroughly audited and the current network of public/private immigrant advocacy and resettlement organizations needs to be completely overhauled. Resettling refugees should be a voluntary, genuinely charitable activity, removing all the perverse incentives government funding creates.

The refugee resettlement program is popular with many policymakers. It enjoys bipartisan support in Congress and state houses because it supplies low-wage, low skill labor that many big businesses crave, while enabling supporters to embrace “diversity” and thus avoid the Left’s favorite attacks and mischaracterizations: “bigot,” “racist,” “xenophobe,” “Islamophobe,” etc. This faux-moralizing on the Left stifles a necessary conversation our nation sorely needs. Meanwhile, the Left’s true motive is to import ever more people from third-world nations that are likely to become reliable Democrat voters once they achieve citizenship.

Under the Trump presidency, the United States’ refugee resettlement has been temporarily reduced, but by no means curtailed. A change in administration could resuscitate it overnight. There are many objectionable aspects of this program, not the least of which is finding resources to fund this enormous undertaking. The difficulty associated with assessing the true costs of the programs key to resettling refugees presents another obstacle to policymakers at every level of government.

Continue reading here for a history of the program.

Then here is Part II:

It is important for readers to know that although we most often talk about the actual Refugee admissions numbers, there are tens of thousands more considered ‘refugees’ by the US government for the purpose of providing federal dollars for their care as they become ‘New Americans.’

Resettling Refugees: Who’s Coming to America?

According to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS), refugees are:

[P]eople who have been persecuted or fear they will be persecuted on account of race, religion, nationality, and/or membership in a particular social group or political opinion.

This mirrors the U.N. definition established at the 1951 U.N. Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees. It is important to note here, however, that under these definitions, “individuals who have crossed an international border fleeing generalized violence are not considered refugees.” This includes large numbers of people who are regularly resettled anyway, for example some of the Syrians fleeing that country’s conflict, and most—if not all Somalis.

Those who meet the definition include:

~refugees (those seeking protection in the United States who are not already in the country),

~asylum seekers or asylees (those who apply for asylum after coming to the U.S.),

~Cuban/Haitian Entrants,

~Special Immigrant Visas (SIV) and

~trafficking Victims.

The Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) program is also administered by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, although UACs do not meet the definition of “refugee.”

Table I below provides up-to-date estimates for each category.

Get a load of these numbers!

Simpson table 1

The table shows that this category of legal entry to the US is a much bigger problem than the one we usually discuss on these pages which is the Refugee column.

Don’t miss the total admitted in the last full year of the Obama presidency—269,491!

But, see that the Trump Administration is presiding over the arrival of a huge number (higher than Obama’s welcome!) of Special Immigrant Visa holders from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Continue here.

And, last but not least! You really need to read the whole thing yourself, but prepare to be sick when you see how many millions of dollars are flowing out of the US Treasury to hundreds of non-profits who are in one way or another in the business of bringing in and then spreading refugees and other migrants around the US while lobbying for ever higher admissions numbers (aka paying clients!).

Part III is here.

Resettling Refugees: Social and Economic Costs

Simpson begins with the usual nine federal contractors, but that is only the tip of the iceberg!

Federal Refugee Resettlement Grants

cws protest at WH 2 — Think about this! Earlier this year Church World Service and the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society helped organize this protest against the President. Combined, those two refugee contractors consumed $620 million taxpayer dollars in the last ten years. Why are we paying for this? https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2018/01/28/church-world-service-and-hias-join-cair-to-protest-at-white-house/

The nine VOLAGs, their many affiliates, and unaccompanied alien children contractors all receive funding from the federal government to resettle the various refugee categories. As mentioned earlier, unaccompanied alien children do not meet the definition of “refugee,” however their resettlement is managed through the Office of Refugee Resettlement and they are included when calculating the total cost of the overall program.

Most funding comes in the form of grants. Prime awards are grants directly from the federal government to the state or the contractor. Sub-awards are those given to contractors by other contractors or state governments that received the prime grant. They are left out to avoid double counting. Table III below enumerates prime grants to VOLAGs and unaccompanied alien children contractors for refugee resettlement and related programs. Some of the VOLAGs, for example the Ethiopian Community Development Council, focus almost entirely on refugee resettlement. Others, like the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, International Rescue Committee, and World Relief Corporation of the National Association of Evangelicals, have a broader mission.

Of the latter, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is the largest. As Table III shows, in FY 2018 USCCB received $47.7 million for resettlement purposes. However, USCCB participates in other federal grant programs and that year received a total of $363.9 million from the federal government.

Here is a chart you need to keep handy. Prepare to be sick!

Billions of dollars have flowed to the refugee contractors in the last ten years alone!

Simpson table 2

The nine major contractors (VOLAGS) that monopolize the US Refugee Admissions Program are these:

Church World Service (CWS)
Ethiopian Community Development Council (ECDC) (secular)
Episcopal Migration Ministries (EMM) (DFMS is its other name)
Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS)
International Rescue Committee (IRC) (secular)
Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIRS)
US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) (secular)
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB)
World Relief Corporation (WR)

Thanks to Jim Simpson for letting us know just how much each is being paid from the US Treasury!

Please, please take time to read the rest of Part III, it is stunning the amount of your money being distributed to non-profits who then act as political agitation groups!

And, these dollars do not include the cost of welfare, education, medical care, housing, etc. that you pay for!

Tell the White House to reform the whole program and begin by getting rid of middlemen federal contractors!

This is no way to run a government!

Colorado: Meatpacker agrees to pay Somalis $1.5 million in prayer break dispute

09/15/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I have no sympathy for giant globalist meatpackers because they brought this on themselves when they actively sought out (with the help of federal refugee contractors like Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service) Somali refugee workers.

However, what we increasingly see is an accommodation of Islamic religious practices in the workplace with this settlement and others like it. CAIR is very happy!

Big Meat! Changing America, one meatpacking town at a time!

Ft. Morgan Somalis Islamic center — Ft. Morgan has a mosque now. https://www.denverpost.com/2016/03/19/somalis-struggle-to-make-new-home-in-colorado/

From the Greeley Tribune:

DENVER — A big U.S. meatpacker has agreed to pay $1.5 million to 138 Somali-American Muslim workers who were fired from their jobs at a Colorado plant after they were refused prayer breaks, a federal anti-discrimination agency said Friday.

Cargill Meat Solutions, a division of Minnesota-based agribusiness company Cargill Corp., also agreed to train managers and hourly workers in accommodating Muslim employees’ prayer breaks at its Fort Morgan beef processing plant, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said.

Wichita, Kansas-based Cargill denies wrongdoing but agreed to settle to avoid further litigation, the federal agency said. The dispute dates back to the firings of the workers in late 2016 after management rescinded policies allowing Muslim employees to take short breaks for prayer.

In 2017, the agency found that the workers had been harassed and discriminated against for protesting the unannounced policy change that denied them opportunities for obligatory prayer. Hundreds of Somali-Americans work at the plant in Fort Morgan, about 50 miles southeast of Greeley.

The Teamsters union also agreed to pay them, an admission that they too were not happy with the Somali workers and their religious demands.

In a related announcement, a Teamsters union local that was supposed to represent the workers will pay them $153,000 to settle discrimination complaints.

The federal agency said it determined that Teamsters Local Union No. 455, based in Denver and in Fort Morgan, failed to advocate for the Muslim workers in their dispute with Cargill and even harassed them because of their race, religion and national origin. The workers were dues-paying union members.

Union officials denied wrongdoing, but the local unit agreed to pay the workers, undergo training in handling grievances, and publicize employee rights to be free of discrimination based on race or national origin.

[….]

Like other U.S. firms that employ Muslim line workers at meatpacking and processing plants, Cargill managers must balance religious accommodations with demands of processing meat in an operation that frequently runs 24 hours.

Managing possible disruptions not only slow production but can create safety issues for line workers.

Here comes CAIR:

The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim advocacy group, and Qusair Mohamedbhai, a Denver attorney who represented the workers praised the settlement.

Much more here.

See my Fort Morgan file here. I visited that small city on my tour of midwestern and western towns and cities disrupted by an influx of refugee workers. I spoke with residents who told me that at one time Cargill paid very good wages, but then discovered the ‘benefits’ of immigrants and refugees who would work for less.

You might want to search RRW for the word ‘meatpackers’ because I have dozens and dozens of posts going back ten years about how BIG MEAT is changing America.

Here is just one post you should see. It isn’t just meatpackers, but others in the food industry, the hospitality industry and other manufacturing companies that drive the US Refugee Admissions Program.

This post is filed in my category ‘Stealth jihad’ for obvious reasons.