A couple of days ago, reader Mark, sent the comment below (to this post) questioning the numbers the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services(LIRS) included in a report that outlined their need for more of your tax dollars to resettle all the refugees they agreed to take.   I just now, in my previous post, pointed to LIRS most recent annual report and noted that almost all of their income is from the government (presumably federal government).  Mark says it’s 92% which is on par with many of the other so-called non-profits in the refugee business.

 So, where is their private contribution? This is supposed to be a public-private partnership!

Here is reader Mark, someone please explain the discrepancy he has pointed out.

It’s interesting that the task force [this is the federal task force headed by Samantha Power at the White House that just announced the pay raise for these agencies including Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services] recommended $1800 per refugee (for the first 90 days, via State Dept’s R&P program) just as the volags requested. Apparently no questions asked.

See LIR’s cost analysis of refugee resettlement ‘The Real Cost of Welcome, A financial analysis of local refugee reception’, see: http://www.rcusa.org/uploads/pdfs/LIRS%20-%20The%20Real%20Cost%20of%20Welcome.pdf

This analysis claimed that LIRS and their resettlement agency affiliates were paying 61% of the costs to resettle refugees ($3228 out of the $5,291 for the true cost of each refugee resettled, up to their 90th day in the US), and the State Dept was only paying 16% ($850 per capita for refugees for FY2008 out of $5,291 per refugee), and some other mysterious federal funds paying 23%, thus the feds paying 16% + 23% = 39%.

So where did LIRS and their resettlement agencies get the money to supposedly pay 61% of the costs of refugee resettlement in the first 90 days – the so-called highly valuable “private“ contribution? The LIRS 2008 annual report shows that they got 92% of their money from the US government. If we look at one of their affiliate refugee resettlement agencies that participated in the cost analysis study, e.g. Lutheran Family Services of Colorado (LFS), we see that LFS also got 92% of it’s money from the US government in 2008. In other words, the resettlement agencies didn’t have the private funds to supposedly pay 61% of the costs of resettlement. The cost-analysis is bogus.

Other problems with the cost analysis report — LIRS did not use a random sample; their affiliates were able to hand-select the refugee cases they wanted to report on. Also, costs for refugees who out-migrated to other cities and states were left out. Were they out-migrating due to some lack of support from the resettlement agencies? If so, the costs per refugee were skewed in favor of refugees that the agencies spent more money on. Also, the resettlement agencies included in costs such things as free, donated labor of volunteers (the “cost” assigned was $17.50 per hour). Free, donated stuff from community members was also listed as a “cost”. Also, costs for services included such things as helping refugees open banks accounts (this is rarely if ever done) and time for taking refugees to shop for clothes (they don‘t; they just give them a few donated used clothes, and not even the few minimum-required clothes required by the State Dept. contracts).

So the NSC’s ‘interagency task force’ just seems to have rubber-stamped the private refugee resettlement agencies’ increased public funding requests. They just got a cool extra $72 million a year with no questions asked. The government’s checks and balances that are supposed to review this funding were completely ignored. The question is, will refugees continue to be neglected by the resettlement agencies, and what excuses will the agencies use when they get caught now that they got this yet additional windfall from the taxpayers?

By the way, not included in any of this cost analysis was the largest part of the federal contribution for refugee resettlement — the money from HHS’s Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) for the refugees first eight months. Whoops! Nor was all the other government contributions – ongoing welfare payments – food stamps, TANF, other cash assistance, section 8, WIC, energy assistance, etc.

Your tax dollars:

Here are a pair of comments that are worth highlighting because most people just learning about refugee resettlement don’t know that refugees receive loans for their airfare to the US and then must repay the loans.  All of the repayment does not go back to the taxpayer though; the refugee agency gets to keep a cut of the money they collect.   So every time you see a news story about the pittance the agencies get from the government remember there are myriad sources of other money they receive—grants and contracts for all sorts of programs and even a cut of the airfare loans.

I would like to find a government link that explains how this works, but haven’t been able to, so if someone knows of a State Department, International Organization for Migration, or Office of Refugee Resettlement official explanation, please send it.

In a public meeting in Hagerstown in September of 2007, a State Department representative told the audience that if the refugee agencies didn’t collect the loan money, they would have to hire a collection agency, so why not let the local resettlement agency get a piece of the pie (that’s me saying ‘piece of the pie’, not the State Department). 

The general taxpaying public is always interested to learn this information.

Here then are the two comments I want to highlight at the Houston story that are among those generating lots of discussion.

Nicolinahawaii said:

oh wow. I didn’t know they pocket 25% of the funds. Hmm.. that does change things.

Dar_Al-Harb responded:

Yes, and, as usual, it is even worse than that.

One example: The following letter is a recent attempt from the Controller’s Office of the Episcopal Church to collect on a $5,000 travel bill from a Somali Bantu family of 8, in the country for about a year. The father has a part-time, near minimum wage job and is the only family member with a job.

“The deferment granted to you expired…. However you did not resume payments as agreed. We, the travel loan staff, are dedicated to assist you as much as possible. In turn, we expect your honest cooperation… Unless we hear from you in the next 3 weeks, your account until now reported as ‘good’ will be reported as ‘delinquent’ to TransUnion, a national credit bureau. Your failure to contact us and honor your obligation will affect your credit rating. To protect your credit, please resume payments by sending regular and monthly installments…”

These threatening letters, in English with the heading “Protect Your Credit”, now arrive regularly from the Episcopal Church for this illiterate family—which prior to arrival in the U.S. may never have even seen a clock or operated a door knob, let alone worried about a credit rating.

To pick just one of the many ironies in this story:

First of all, Episcopal Migration Ministries (EMM), the contracting arm of the church, is part of a lobbying consortium which lobbies (from offices partly paid for by the US taxpayer) for enforcement of Executive Order 13166, requiring all federally funded services to be provided in the language of the service recipient.

Secondly, The U.S. government pays EMM to translate its brochures into the Bantu’s language.

Therefore, the Episcopal Church’s English-only dunning letters may be in violation of civil rights law, not to speak of human decency and common sense. And, of course, hypocritical.

Note that the Episcopal Church is dunning these refugees for its own benefit. If the refugees pay, the Church gets its cut. If they do not pay, the taxpayer gets to eat the whole bill.

Readers may be interested in this post last week about the Episcopal church having money problems and an investigator suggesting they are using refugee funds to stay in the black.