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.

Mohamed is third most popular boy's name in St. Cloud, MN

01/08/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Did you see the news that in Austria it is number three as well? At Breitbart here a few days ago.
Since Pew Research can’t seem to get the numbers (and growth!) of the Muslim population accurately pinned down, maybe this informal way of gauging an increase where you live can be used!

Here Leo Hohmann at WND tells us Mohamed (spelling varies) is now the third most popular boys name in the maternity ward at St. Cloud hospital when in 2013 it wasn’t even in the top 20.

We already know this is happening in London and Paris. [And Austria!—ed]

St. Cloud Hospital in St. Cloud, Minnesota, came out with its annual list of top 10 most popular baby names for 2017, and No. 3 on the list of boys’ names was a bit of a surprise.

No. 1 – Henry
No. 2 – Liam
No. 3 – Mohamed
No. 4 – Jack
No. 5 – Nolan
No. 6 – William
No. 7 – Jackson
No. 8 – Logan
No. 9 – Wyatt
No. 10 – Grayson

The hospital has been publicizing its top baby names for boys and girls for as long as anyone can remember, but this is the first time the namesake of the Islamic prophet ended up in the top five.

In fact, as recently as 2013 the hospital published a list of its “Top 20” most popular baby names, and Mohamed was nowhere to be found.

But in 2015, the name Mohamed showed up for the first time, coming in at No. 6 on the list of boy’s names.

The vast majority of Muslims in Minnesota are refugees from Somalia, and the Somalis have large families. Just since 2002, the U.S. State Department, in cooperation with the United Nations, has distributed more than 54,000 Somali refugees into Minnesota cities and towns.

Cost of interpreters is through the roof!

(The other day I told you again about the Bill Clinton executive order that requires this cost to be absorbed locally).

…..the St. Cloud Hospital has been struggling to keep up with heavy translator costs due to the large number of Somali men, women and children receiving medical attention. In 2010, the translation costs were about $400,000, but by fiscal 2017 those costs soared to $1.7 million. The city started getting large numbers of refugees in 2008, and 10 years later the demographics of the city have been completely transformed.

St. Cloud Hospital serves three counties: Stearns, Benton and Sherburne.

“These are big, big numbers, these numbers are huge,” said area resident Ron Branstner. “I have complained about these translation costs at schools, medical facilities, courts and 911 center to our local councils to no avail.

Continue reading, much more here.
I have an extensive archive on St. Cloud, click here, and learn about the resistance there.

Nebraska health officials: Public safety our top concern, but we are telling you nothing about TB death

11/09/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We don’t know if the person who died of TUBERCULOSIS in Nebraska in late October was an American who had been traveling or an immigrant who might have lived in that part of Nebraska as part of the ever-expanding foreign born meatpacker work force in the state.

Fremont Nebraska — Downtown Fremont, NE where the largest employer in town is Hormel, the company that makes Spam according to wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fremont,_Nebraska#Economy

We don’t know because health officials there aren’t saying and didn’t answer questions by Breitbart reporter, Michael Leahy, who has become an expert on TB over the last year.

So, of course, one naturally asks the question:

How does the secrecy surrounding this case and withholding of statistics in other states keep us safer?

Wouldn’t you like to know if the deceased person crossed your path (the patient isn’t alive to explain where he or she had traveled for months preceding death)?

From Breitbart:

State and local public health officials are offering few details about the mysterious tuberculosis (TB) death of a patient first diagnosed last month at a hospital in Fremont, Nebraska.

Fremont is a city of 26,000 about 40 miles northwest of Omaha that was at the center of a national controversy in 2010 when it passed an ordinance that prohibits landlords from renting to individuals who are not American citizens.

“Three Rivers Public Health Department said they received notification that a patient evaluated and treated at Fremont Health on October 29, 2017 tested positive for tuberculosis. That patient was transferred to Nebraska Medicine and later died at that facility,” WOWT reported.

“We’re actively investigating this case of TB and we’re interviewing family and community members to identify any setting where other individuals might have been exposed to this patient,” Terra Uhing, executive director of Three Rivers Public Health Department, which is responsible for public health in three rural counties–Dodge, Washington, and Saunders–with a combined population of about 77,000, said in a statement released on Monday.

“Safety is our number one priority and we’re taking all the necessary steps to make sure people identified at risk for exposure are evaluated,” Uhing added in that statement.

Deaths from active TB are rare in the United States, since highly effective and relatively inexpensive treatment regimens have been widely in effect for more than five decades [Unless it is Multi-drug resistant TB—ed]. Virtually all patients who receive an early diagnosis and complete the treatment regimen survive.

The patient who was diagnosed with TB in Fremont, Nebraska on October 29 died within days of that diagnosis, indicating the patient had been walking around with active TB for many months prior to death.

There is much more including how local communities have been stressed by BIG MEAT bringing in cheap immigrant labor. I’m not saying the dead patient worked at a meat plant, but the point is, we don’t know because health officials are withholding virtually all information.

Continue reading here.

If you have a few hours, visit RRW’s ‘health issues category’ here where I have archived 342 other posts on refugee/immigrant physical and mental health. There are lots of TB stories there because refugees are admitted to the US with TB (with the understanding that state and US taxpayers will foot the bill for their meds!).

More bad news for Minnesota: 17 cases of Multi-drug-resistant TB reported, 6 dead so far

11/07/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I hate to say it, but in light of the attitude of elected officials in Minnesota, and news like this, maybe some of you should consider leaving the state. Just saying!

From Michael Patrick Leahy at Breitbart:

An outbreak of 17 cases of multi-drug-resistant (MDR) tuberculosis (TB) has been reported in Ramsey County, the second most populous county in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area, a spokesperson for the Minnesota Department of Health confirmed to Breitbart News on Monday.

TB symptoms 2 — Working with refugee populations? Do you know what to look for?

“The outbreak has primarily affected elderly residents in the Hmong community, with 10 cases linked to a senior center where the first case was detected in 2016. Four other Hmong residents were also infected. So far six of the 17 people have died, three as a direct result of tuberculosis [TB],” the Star Tribune reported on Monday adding:

Some of the first transmissions occurred among a group of seniors who regularly played cards at the senior center.

But one of the card players had been sick and infectious for five years before diagnosis. That has left public health officials playing catch up in an effort to find everyone who is at risk.

No kidding!

More here.

I ask this same question every time we have a story about refugees with communicable diseases: Are volunteers for resettlement agencies trained to spot diseases in order to keep themselves and their families safe?

See my ‘health issues‘ category with over 300 posts on refugees’ physical and mental health. Many of Leahy’s previous articles on TB can be found there.

By the way, I bet none of those glowing reports about the economic boon refugees bring to a city factor in the cost of TB treatment. I hear it is a huge ticket item in some cities’ health departments.

As fears of the Black Death spread in Africa, is the Trump Admin adjusting refugee/immigrant health screening?

11/01/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Pandemic?

Lost in all the hubbub over the tax bill, Hillary/Trump and the Russians, and now another Islamic terrorist attack, is the little known, but growing concern about the reemergence of the Plague, otherwise known as Black Death that decimated Europe in the 14th Century.

Is it even on America’s radar screen?

Black death in Europe — The disease moved more slowly in the 14th Century. Today we are one refugee and one plane flight away from infecting the North American continent.

Here (below) is news from the UK Express.

Readers should know that many of the countries now on the Plague’s possible flight path are also countries from which refugees arrive almost daily to the US—most specifically Kenya (most US-bound Somalis come through Kenya), Ethiopia and South Africa.

From the UK Express:

The latest outbreak, which took root in Madagascar, has now killed 124 people and infected around 1,300, but scientists say this figure will definitely rise.

South Africa, Mozambique, Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia, Comoros, the Seychelles, Mauritius and Reunion have all been placed on high alert by World Health Organisation (WHO) monitors.

Experts say the deadly disease is caused by the same bacteria that wiped out 25 million people in Europe in the 13th and 14th centuries.

And WHO officials, who have been working with Madagascar’s Ministry of Health, warn the risk of the epidemic spreading is “high”.

[….]

…concerned WHO officials claim there is “something different” about this outbreak and “health officials couldn’t explain it”.

Map of countries now infected in East Africa from the UK Express:

Screenshot (1034)

Sure hope the Trump Admin is aware and working on this!

See our Health Issues category (340 previous posts archived there) on more about the diseases and mental health problems entering the US with the refugee flow. Did you know refugees with HIV and TB are admitted to the US?