Your tax dollars!
Sure enough, the whining has paid off for the resettlement contractors, Congress is going to send more of your money their way! The excuse this time is that the poor contractors now have 26,000 illegal alien kids to care for—the unaccompanied minors we have been hearing about.
Make no mistake, this is not money going to the “refugees” this is money to keep the small and large contractor fiefdoms going—for staff, for offices, for travel, for lobbying even! There is one bright spot in this article—a Duke University professor, who works with refugees, is calling these numbers into question!
From the Duke Chronicle. Hat tip: Joanne:
Despite budget increases, experts fear for the future of refugee services.
Congress has largely increased funding for the Office of Refugee Resettlement to $1.489 billion from last year’s $1.12 billion, said Jen Smyers, associate director for immigration and refugee policy at Church World Service—a group that works with refugees in Durham and across the country. ORR estimated it would need $1.6 billion to serve all the populations in its care this year—a half billion increase from last year’s budget—and is looking for ways to meet the more than $100 million shortfall, Smyers added.
“We never thought [the funding] was going to get cut from last year’s level,” Smyers said. “Our fear was that they would not get anywhere near [ORR’s] needs. Due to some really great advocacy and last minute phone calls, we were able to get the number to $1.489 billion, which is a substantial increase, but there still is a gap between that number and the number ORR projected.”
Projected costs for this fiscal year increased by nearly half a billion dollars to cover an estimated 26,000 unaccompanied alien children coming to the United States from Mexico and Central America this year, Smyers said. This is an increase of approximately 10,000 unaccompanied children from the number of children in the 2012 fiscal year.
Suzanne Shanahan speaks up!
Suzanne Shanahan, associate director of ethics at the Kenan Institute and associate research professor in sociology, was critical of the calculations used to reach the increase in ORR’s budget requirements. She said that taking care of 10,000 extra children should not require a 30 percent increase in funds.
“The U.S. resettles 60,000 refugees a year, and the 60,000 refugees cost $1.12 billion [last year],” Shanahan said. “To say that a half billion dollars is what it takes to increase that by 10,000, the math is extremely wrong.”
With regard to the $100 million shortfall, Shanahan said this is only between a 6 and 7 percent total shortfall, which is not “extraordinary.”
“Even if refugees had to bear the entire cost of this, it’s not clear that [the burden] would be that dramatic,” Shanahan said.
It is unclear how the shortfall will affect refugees. Smyers said Congress appropriates an agency to their funds, and the agency decides how those funds are used. Currently, the ORR provides refugees with eight months of assistance. If, however, the shortfall cannot be remedied, the ORR may reduce the duration of assistance they are able to provide. ORR will likely prioritize unaccompanied children over longer-term refugee assistance.
The article goes on to discuss how surprising it is that refugee allocations should be increased in light of the fact that refugees have little clout in Congress. Refugees may not, but you can be absolutely sure the contractors, including the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, have a huge amount of clout on The Hill! Not to mention the hard Left open-borders lobby (which overlaps with the contractors).
By the way, the USCCB and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services have federal contracts to take care of the illegal alien kids (dreamers or schemers?).
See my previous post—if we can’t afford them why bring so many refugees?
