Editor:  This is the next installment of my ‘Knowledge is Power’ series designed to help new readers and interested media get up to speed on how the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program works (because I simply can’t answer all of the incoming e-mails!).

As I told you in ‘Knowledge is Power I,‘ VOLAG stands for Voluntary Agency and is the acronym favored over the years by the nine federal refugee contractors*** that monopolize all refugee resettlement in the US.

My plan this morning was to expound on two things the VOLAGs don’t want you to know about and those are local “stakeholder” meetings and R & P Abstracts, but as I went back through literally dozens of posts over the years on those two supposed opportunities for citizens to find out what is happening to your resettlement sites, your towns (see the present sites here), I realized it is way too much for new readers to absorb.

Just know this about the quarterly stakeholder meetings that your local subcontractors are supposed to be holding in your community—you will have a helluva time getting into one!

The meetings are to ‘consult’ with various agencies that must interface with the new refugees—like the school system and the health department—but they don’t want you, the taxpayer, the ultimate stakeholder, to be in attendance.  Interestingly, they will often invite former refugees, leaders of local ethnic groups.

In ‘Knowledge is Power I’ I told you how to find your state refugee coordinator.  Call him or her and ask when the various subcontractors (call them refugee agencies) in your state will be holding their upcoming quarterly stakeholder meetings and try to get in.  The state coordinator is supposed to be the go-between for the state, the citizens and the feds (and their contractors).

If you can’t get in, if the meeting is barred to you, then make sure your county or city elected officials will be there.  If local elected officials are not attending these planning meetings, then it is a dereliction of their duty as your representative.

As a matter of fact, right now as you are contacting county commissioners about whether they will consider opting-out of the refugee program this year as part of the President’s reform initiative, ask them if they have ever attended a “stakeholder meeting.”

Use my search window for “stakeholder meetings” and see what I have said over the years.

Now to the R & P Abstracts….

You might call them planning documents that the VOLAGs must submit to the US State Department each year for your town or city.  Of course the contractors don’t want you to see them. But, they are fascinating because they actually list the amenities your community has to offer new refugees—one of my favorites is when they mention the great mental health facilities locally available.

Ask your state refugee coordinator for recent abstracts for each VOLAG working in your state.  You might get older ones, but if they give you a recent one, I would be stunned.

Or, if you know the refugee subcontractors working near you then call and ask directly for recent R & P Abstracts and when their next quarterly stakeholder meeting will be!

Just to show you how secretive the VOLAGs are, I’m posting a 2015 letter leaked to me in which contractor World Relief tells its staff to NOT give out any Abstracts to anyone who calls!

(Refugee Council USA is the lobbying arm for the refugee industry.)

From: Casey Leyva
Sent: Thursday, May 14, 2015 5:07 PM
Subject: Potential Anti-Refugee Contacts

Dear Office Directors,

We’ve heard recently from other members of RCUSA (Refugee Council USA) that local affiliates have been contacted by individuals questioning the U.S. refugee program. This is a result of an interview Ann Corcoran, a blogger who runs Refugee Resettlement Watch, with a local news station in Minnesota. She has told her followers to to ask you for your R&P abstract – please do not send it. And please let us know if you are contacted.

Finally, please don’t go searching for this woman’s blog. I give you her information so you know if and when someone calls that this is the same topic. Here are Scott’s tips on interacting with these types of blogs:

Here is an important remember of how blog analytics work. Remember that what feeds the beast essentially are clicks. Ever hear the term “click-bait”? Seeing something in your Facebook feed that says “Velociraptor eats Skittles and your mind will be blown at what happens next!”, would be a dramatized example of that. In other words, while we all don’t really like anything this blogger has to say, every time we share the link, she gets a click. Bloggers have some very useful tools. They are able to tell when people read articles, what they are interested in, and what they search for on the blog. The more times this article is shared, the more the blogger will think they are onto something here and post more about it. Just as a news organization may hammer on a specific story, not because it is a great story, but because it builds up ratings and viewership. What can be done about this?

The best thing I recommend is if a blog such as this is posted by ForRefugees (Chris C.) or Refugee Resettlement Watch (Ann C.) and we believe it is worth sharing for FYI, that the person who locates it simply copy and paste the text from the blog into the e-mail. This will ensure that the clicks are limited. It will get 1 or 2 clicks from WR, versus 20 clicks. Those add up.

Casey Leyva
R&P Program Manager

7 E. Baltimore Street
Baltimore, MD 21202
T 443.451.1916
E cleyva@wr.org
www.worldrelief.org

Of course it made me laugh to see that they were telling their employees to NOT visit RRW because I wouldn’t get so many ‘clicks’ that way.  In fact, for me, the clicks don’t matter as RRW is not monetized (with advertising etc.).

I suspect the real motivation was to keep their staff from learning some things they might not know.

I’ve posted that letter to show you just how much the contractors want to continue to operate in secrecy—something they have enjoyed for decades.

After all, to them you are just a bunch of “deplorables” while they are the smart, elite, good people who know what is best for your community and for America.

 

***For new readers these (below) are the nine federally-funded refugee contractors that operate as a huge conveyor belt monopolizing all refugee placement in America.

And, they do not limit their advocacy toward only legal immigration programs, but are heavily involved in supporting the lawlessness at our borders.

The question isn’t as much about refugees per se, but about who is running federal immigration policy now and into the future?  

(I plan to say this once a day from now on! Oops! I missed yesterday!)

I continue to argue that these nine contractors are the heart of America’s Open Borders movement and thus there can never be long-lasting reform of US immigration policy when these nine un-elected phony non-profits are paid by the taxpayers to work as community organizers pushing an open borders agenda.

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

 

Some years ago I said I would write a post every time I saw a story about US Catholic Bishops lecturing us about “welcoming the stranger” without mentioning the millions of dollars in federal boodle they are paid to do their ‘good works.’

I haven’t written every time, but this story particularly irked me.

And, certainly, I can’t speak for Jesus Christ (as the US Bishops think they can), but I sincerely doubt he ever had in mind that his church would be living off of Caesar’s money.

This morning I see that Archbishop Thomas Wenski of Miami is slamming Texas Governor Greg Abbott for his decision to forego resettlement for a small portion of this fiscal year.

Of course the Archbishop is playing politics and trying to keep Florida Governor Greg DeSantis from going down that same evil (in their eyes) path.

From Eurasia Review:

Miami Archbishop Promotes Refugee Resettlement

 

The Archbishop of Miami has emphasized the importance of welcoming refugees, and decried the decision of Texas Governor Greg Abbott not to participate in the federal refugee resettlement program.

“Often mentored by church volunteers and given resettlement support, refugees and their family quickly integrate into American society, finding work and making a positive contribution to their adopted country,” said Archbishop Thomas Wenski in a Jan. 16 letter to the editor of the Miami Herald.

Tomorrow is the big day when the Bishops must get their requests for MONEY into the federal government! 

“Submit proposals” means apply for taxpayer MONEY!

“Resettlement agencies are preparing to submit proposals to the Office of Refugee Resettlement on Jan. 21 to continue this ministry of ‘welcoming the stranger.’ Catholic Charities look forward to local governments continuing welcoming refugees in those communities where we already serve.”

[….]

Archbishop Wenski expressed disappointment in Abbott for discontinuing Texas’ participation in the refugee resettlement program.

[….]

“As Catholics, an essential aspect of our faith is to welcome the stranger and care for the alien.”

But, where does it say that the church can extract money from taxpayers so they can act holier-than-thou and pretend they are doing Christian charity!

So here is ‘Knowledge is Power V’

Use USASpending.gov to find out exactly how much government boodle (your tax dollars) is going to ‘religious’ charities like the US Conference of Catholic Bishops.

This is what I learned.

The Bishops over the last twelve months received $62.7 MILLION from you via the US Treasury for their migration programs which includes the US Refugee Admissions Program and their sweet deal to ‘take care of’ Unaccompanied Alien Children.

But, see the graph (below) and note that they are way down from the peak of the Obama years when they were really rolling in dough.

When you do your search, be aware that it might take a few minutes to figure out how the ‘non-profit’ is titled. In the case of my Bishops search I needed to spell out United States rather than enter simply US Conference of Catholic Bishops.

BTW, the Bishops get millions more dollars for other things they do, but I was only interested in their ‘refugee’ funds.

$62.7 Million is what the Bishops received over the last 12 months (to welcome the stranger).

 

The screenshot below shows how much of our money involuntarily went to the Bishops in FY2019, $52,867,109.

 

And, then see why they are hopping mad at President Trump! Their funding has been cut in half since its peak in Obama year 2016!

 

 

See what you can find!  Go to USA Spending.

I clicked on ‘Profiles’ and then chose ‘Recipients’ in the drop down.

My plan is to do this for all of the nine federal contractors in the coming days.  I did learn already that Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service did not have such a precipitous loss of federal payout.

And I learned that some of the totals are greater than those in the table I posted in ‘Knowledge is Power II.’

All previous ‘Knowledge is Power’ posts are here.

And, see that I have updated one post in the series when I found the subcontractors that benefit from the US Conference of Catholic Bishops traunch from the US Treasury.

Back in early November, before I launched my series of posts I’m calling Knowledge is Power (KiP) I told readers how to use the US State Department’s Refugee Processing Center sometimes simply referred to as Wrapsnet.

I’m re-posting this as part of my KiP series because I often receive e-mails from readers asking me who has been placed in their state/city/town.

As much as I would like to do the searches for you I can’t and once you learn how to do it, you can have a lot of fun searching around.

But, one note of caution, refugees can and do move and this data only applies to what is known in the industry as ‘primary resettlement.’  It is ‘secondary’ migration that is changing some communities significantly as refugees move from where they were placed by one of the nine federal contractors*** to join others of ‘their people’ in ethnic enclaves growing in many areas of the country.  They want to live with their own kind of people!

For a brief time a few years ago the Office of Refugee Resettlement (HHS) did publish information on ‘secondary’ migration but I haven’t seen any such data for a long time.

 

Here then is how to use the Refugee Processing Center database (from a post I wrote in November 2019):

Go here.

Click on ‘reports’ in the right hand corner.

Then click on ‘Interactive reporting’ (there are useful data in the other categories), but for today’s lesson it is ‘Interactive reporting’ that you want.

You will get a screen that looks like this:

For the first exercise I picked the first choice:  MAP.

A screen opens that asks for your start date and the last date. I chose November 1 to today, the 9th.  It asks for nationalities and provides a drop- down (I chose all) and I chose for sort order ‘number of individuals.’

And presto, I got this map (below) to show where 563 refugees were placed between November 1 and today.  On the page after the map I can see the numerical breakdown for all of the states that ‘welcomed’ refugees over the last week.

As usual Texas is numero uno!

(Reminder! These are just refugees admitted through the US Refugee Admissions Program, not unaccompanied alien children, not Special Immigrant Visa holders, and not asylum seekers!)

 

 

Now go back to the first screen and see your other choices for searches.  You can find out which ethnic groups were placed in which cities in your state.

When choosing parameters for the ‘arrivals by destination’ search, choose ‘fiscal year’ and ‘destination.’  Just for fun I did Minnesota.  Here are the ‘new Minnesotans’ that arrived this week [that was the first week of November 2019.—ed].

You can find out the religions of refugees arriving (although not by state). And you can even find how many kids are coming (cost to your schools!) and how many senior citizens will be coming to collect their SSI.

I’ve never been able to find out which contractors settled which refugees.  It might be there somewhere and if you find it let me know!

Now try it yourself!

See the previous installments of Knowledge is Power by clicking here.

 

*** For new readers these (below) are the nine federally-funded refugee contractors that operate as a huge conveyor belt monopolizing all refugee placement in America.

And, they do not limit their advocacy toward only legal immigration programs, but are heavily involved in supporting the lawlessness at our borders.

The question isn’t as much about refugees per se, but about who is running federal immigration policy now and into the future?  

Go here to see that the nine contractors sucked down over $3 BILLION in federal grants in the last 11 years.

(I plan to say this once a day from now on!)

I continue to argue that these nine contractors are the heart of America’s Open Borders movement and thus there can never be long-lasting reform of US immigration policy when these nine un-elected phony non-profits are paid by the taxpayers to work as community organizers pushing an open borders agenda.

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

 

This is the third in my series of posts I’m calling ‘Knowledge is Power’ because it is up to you to push back on the Open Borders groups operating with taxpayer dollars to change your communities.  There is no national group working for you, so it is up to you to collect the information so that when you speak up, you have your facts.

I am also writing this series because I am getting so many e-mails from new readers asking me questions about how all this works, and I haven’t enough time in the day to answer them all (if I want to have time for other things in life!).

See previous posts in this series here.

As I have said repeatedly, there are nine federal refugee resettlement contractors that monopolize all resettlement in the US.

They do not do their work out of charity, religious or otherwise!  They are paid millions annually from the US Treasury (see Knowledge is Power II) and oversee a vast network of subcontractors—which they call “affiliates” or sometimes “partners.”

BIG CONTRACTOR basically acts as middle man with the taxpayer-supplied millions and passes some of it through to subcontractors working in over 200 locations they have selected by working in secrecy with like-minded federal officials in the US State Department (Populations, Refugees, and Migration) and the US Dept. of Health and Human Services (Office of Refugee Resettlement).

Of course BIG CONTRACTOR doesn’t pass all of their federal funding to the subcontractor because they keep a substantial cut for themselves to pay for six-digit salaries*** of the bigwigs that run these fake charities.

And, don’t forget BIG CONTRACTOR is not just promoting this legal program, the US Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP), but acts as a key political player in the Leftwing’s efforts to open our borders and promote amnesty for illegal aliens.

At their peak during the Obama Administration there were about 325 subcontractors working for the big nine and we are told that due to the President’s refugee slowdown they lost about 100 offices.

In 2016, just as Obama was leaving office and they were expecting Hillary, the State Department was working with the contractors to identify at least another 40 towns and small cities for the large numbers of poor people they were planning to move to America in a Clinton presidency.

Needless to say, Trump ended that dream.

Finding your contractor and its subs….

First check out this post I wrote in December that includes a map of the US with the location of subcontractor offices marked on the map.  Find your state and your closest office.  Remember they can resettle within 100 miles of the office.  See which contractors have subcontractor offices near you.

Here is a list of the Big Nine I found at the Refugee Processing Center. 

This is a screenshot so links are not hot.

 

To find your subcontractors go to the contractors website and search around—you will most likely find a list of their affiliates/partners.  It gets tricky with the US Conference of Catholic Bishops because it could be a Catholic Charities that is working near you and you won’t find them listed at the Bishop’s website.

***Update*** Wrong!  I found the Bishops’ subcontractors!  Click here.

Can’t find the list on their website? Call any of the contractors and ask for their list of affiliates and while you are at it, ask for their recent IRS Form 990s.  All non-profits are required to make those available upon request.  I suspect you will get a runaround, but that will be a learning experience for you too.

Even if you are steamed, be polite any time you call any of the contractors or subcontractors—you know the old saying about catching more flies with honey!

Another option is to do what I suggested in ‘Knowledge is Power’ I and ask your state refugee coordinator for a list of all subcontractors working in your state.

Next, find their funding!

Once you have identified your subcontractor, see if you can find their IRS Form 990s, either by asking them directly or searching online.  You can use Guidestar, but sometimes you will find it on their website or simply search for the name of the agency with “Form 990” and a recent one might pop up.

The useful information—how much government (taxpayer) money they get—will appear on page 9. You can readily see the percentage of their funding that comes from taxpayers compared to what they have raised privately.

Private funding for refugee resettlement is negligible because the public isn’t eager to open wallets for this kind of work. I have said till I am blue in the face that these contractors could not survive without the huge infusion of federal dollars Ted Kennedy/Joe Biden and Jimmy Carter made possible for them.

Here for example is a screenshot of Catholic Charities of West Virginia pages one and 9 one of our concerned citizens acquired.  Although WV doesn’t get very many refugees, there is still a significant amount of taxpayer funding flowing to a ‘religious charity.’

 

Unfortunately, especially with smaller subcontractors, you might find all of their funding listed as “all other contributions”(making it sound like they got private funding), but I think that is a trick because their “contributor” was most likely one of the BIG CONTRACTORS and the money is from government grants and contracts.

***Although that Catholic Charities Form 990 above doesn’t show the salaries page, just for fun this is the salaries page for one of the big nine—the Manhattan-based International Rescue Committee—to remind us that the refugee industry is big business!

From the IRC’s 2017 Form 990:

 

No wonder they are all fighting so hard against the President who has been cutting their government boodle!  But, apparently not enough as the top dogs are still getting theirs even as they shutter offices and lay off the low level staff!

Now what do you do!  You find a way to publicize what you are learning, and I recommend a statewide blog or website.

And, finally I am going to say this at the end of each of my ‘Knowledge is Power’ lessons—your first priority if you care about immigration and its impact on the future of America is to get involved to re-elect Donald Trump.

I believe it is Trump’s policies on immigration that are behind the hatred they have for the man.

Once they have significantly changed the demographic make-up of America there will no longer be an ‘America First.’

This is the second installment of my new series I’m calling Knowledge is Power in my attempt to get as many of you as possible up to speed on how the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program works in light of the fact that the issue has heated up thanks to the President’s effort to reform how refugees are resettled in America.

See Knowledge is Power I.  Since it’s Monday and the states’ refugee coordinators should be at their desks, please call yours and ask for your State Plan.

I can’t tell you how many times in recent weeks I’ve been asked —how much federal dough do the nine resettlement contractors actually get?

Over the years I’ve done various accounting efforts, but the most up-to-date and thorough accounting is from James Simpson’s book ‘The Red/Green Axis 2.0.‘

You should all just drop a few bucks and get it as a handy reference guide.

Here (below) is a table Simpson compiled using USA Spending that includes the millions of dollars each of the nine contractors devoured in the last eleven years.

Know that the contractors do not just get money from the US State Department for placement of refugees per head, but also get myriad grants and contracts from other federal agencies, mostly the Office of Refugee Resettlement in Health and Human Services, but other agencies as well.

Note this is in MILLIONS!   Not sure on the acronyms? See list below (DFMS is the other name for Episcopal Migration Ministries.)

 

The present controversy we have been writing about for weeks now is because the President has linked the acquisition of a portion of their annual payout from the US Treasury to consent letters from governors and county commissions to place refugees.

Up until this coming June, contractors can put refugees wherever they want (with some consultation with the State Department).

In June Trump’s new rules come into play (unless a lawsuit brought by three of the contractors stops the President).

All of my Knowledge is Power posts will be archived in a category with that title so you should be able to find them easily going forward.

*** For new readers these (below) are the nine federally-funded refugee contractors that operate as a huge conveyor belt monopolizing all refugee placement in America.

And, they do not limit their advocacy toward only legal immigration programs, but are heavily involved in supporting the lawlessness at our borders.

The question isn’t as much about refugees per se, but about who is running federal immigration policy now and into the future?  

(I plan to say this once a day from now on!)

I continue to argue that these nine contractors are the heart of America’s Open Borders movement and thus there can never be long-lasting reform of US immigration policy when these nine un-elected phony non-profits are paid by the taxpayers to work as community organizers pushing an open borders agenda.

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