Category: Obama

Catholic Bishops, Lutherans lament: not enough refugees coming in to pay our bills

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

LOL! No of course they didn’t say it that way, but that is what they mean.  Instead, once again, it is about the poor refugees left in the lurch in some third world hell hole because of that meany Donald J. Trump.
This is a broken record alert, but I plan to continue to pound the issue of payment to contractors being tied to the number of refugees admitted, so there is never a reasonable discussion about any slowdown or reform of the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program.

If they were paying for their Christian ‘charity’ out of the pockets of good and kind-hearted parishioners, I would have nothing to say. But, until the USCCB admits to the media that they receive 97% of their annual migration fund budget (about $83 million in 2014) from taxpayers, I will be a broken record on the issue.

It was only six days ago I did a new accounting report for the nine federal refugee contractors*** quasi-government agencies that monopolize all resettlement in the US.
Both the Bishops and the Lutheran contractor are 96-97% funded by US taxpayers!
You will never know that by reading this news.  Indeed, Charity Navigator, a service that rates charities to help you decide if you want to give, said this about LIRS (they would have said the same about the USCCB except that outfit doesn’t file a Form 990, that we can find).

This organization is not eligible to be rated by Charity Navigator because, as a service for individual givers, we only rate organizations that depend on support from individual contributors and foundations. Organizations such as this, that get most of their revenue from the government or from program services, are therefore not eligible to be rated.

In this story from Crux (a Catholic publication) we learn that Catholics and Lutherans are #1 and #2 in the number of refugees they drop off in American towns and cities.
Here is Crux (lamentations):

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Amid a federal judge ordering the government to broaden the exemptions to the immigration travel ban partially upheld by the Supreme Court, Catholic and Lutheran leaders lamented that the immigration cap had been reached for refugees without such exemptions for the 2017 fiscal year.

The federal government suspended travel July 12 for refugee immigrants without close family connections after confirming that 50,000 refugees – the limit imposed by President Donald Trump in a March 6 executive order – had arrived on U.S. soil.

“We remain deeply troubled by the human consequences of the revised executive order on refugee admissions and the travel ban,” said Bishop Joe S. Vasquez of Austin, Texas, chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Migration, in a July 13 statement.

“Resettling only 50,000 refugees a year, down from 110,000, does not reflect the need, our compassion, and our capacity as a nation,” Vasquez added. “We have the ability to continue to assist the most vulnerable among us without sacrificing our values as Americans or the safety and security of our nation.” [Be sure to see my post on the ceilings going back 30 years, here.  Note that Obama got no where near 110,000 until he was virtually walking out the door, now that has become the standard measure!—ed]

“The pause on resettlement and restrictions on the number of persons who can enter our country as refugees will have an immediate effect on our ability to conduct the lifesaving work of providing safety and protection,” said a July 12 statement by Kay Bellor, vice president for programs of Lutheran Immigrant and Refugee Service, which is second only to the U.S. bishops’ Migration and Refugee Services in the number of refugees it helps resettle in the United States.  [Yes, it will have an immediate effect because your organization raised virtually NO PRIVATE MONEY!—ed]

William Canny is the Bishops’ lobbyist in DC. He gets his salary, whatever it is, largely from the US taxpayer. Photo and bio here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/william-canny-989616b1

[….]

“As Bishop Vasquez said, it’s very sad, deeply troubling,” MRS executive director William Canny told Catholic News Service July 14.

Pushing for 75,000 refugees in FY18!

At least they have tempered the demand for 200,000 they made of Obama for his last year. If Trump admits 75,000 he will be about 10,000 above the average admissions for the last ten years (which included their dear leader’s years).
Crux continues….

“What we’re advocating for is 75,000” refugees to come into the United States during fiscal 2018, Canny told CNS. “We understand that the administration has security concerns. The administration made some initiative to reduce the number of refugees coming into the country. We don’t agree with it, so at a minimum, we think we should be bringing in 75,000.”

Bellor agreed with the 75,000 figure, noting the number is “less than the need.” Citing United Nations World Refugee Day figures, “the numbers are definitely not shrinking,” she said. “The number of people on the move is 66 million.”

LOL! 75,000 must be the point where they can keep their budgets plenty full with your money!
There is more at Crux, go here to read it all.
Come on all of you (not just the Lutherans and the Catholics), admit that your ‘charitable’ work with refugees could not happen without a huge infusion of more than a half a billion $ a year in federal funding.
And, come on mainstream media, it is time you told the truth!
***Federal contractors/middlemen/lobbyists/community organizers paid by you to place refugees in your towns and cities.  Because their income is largely dependent on taxpayer dollars based on the number of refugees admitted to the US, the only way for real reform of how the US admits refugees is to remove the contractors from the process.

 

Australia "dumb deal" looks dead for now

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

How did a Reuters reporter get tipped off that the deal was fizzling?

Some men in Australian detention centers are talking to the press.

By a ‘refugee’ with a pipeline to western media!
Makes you wonder if these ‘refugees’ will be trouble-makers if they ever get to America.
This news should not come as a shock since we did reach the 50,000 CEILING last week (for FY17) and these ‘refugees’ likely have no “bona fide relationships” with anyone in America or with federal contractors (except maybe the IRC could claim a relationship?).
 
The story is from AAP (Australia Associated Press):

US officials interviewing refugees held in an Australian-run offshore detention centre have left the facility abruptly, throwing further doubt over a plan to resettle many of the detainees in America.

US officials halted screening interviews and departed the Pacific island of Nauru on Friday, two weeks short of their scheduled timetable and a day after Washington said the United States had reached its annual refugee intake cap.

“US (officials) were scheduled to be on Nauru until July 26 but they left on Friday,” one refugee told Reuters, requesting anonymity as he did not want to jeopardise his application for US resettlement.

In the United States, a senior member of the union that represents refugee officers at US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), a Department of Homeland Security agency, told Reuters his own trip to Nauru was not going forward as scheduled.

[….]

The Australian Immigration Department declined to comment on the whereabouts of the US officials or the future of a refugee swap agreement between Australia and the United States, which President Donald Trump earlier this year branded a “dumb deal”.

An indefinite postponement of the deal would have significant repercussions for Australia’s pledge to close a second detention centre on Papua New Guinea’s Manus island on October 31.

Only 70 refugees, less than 10 per cent of the total detainees held in the camp, have completed US processing.

Sure Malcolm, you got a deal! The US will take over 1,000 of your rejected asylum seekers (mostly from terror-producing Muslim countries) and you will take some undetermined number of Central Americans, mostly Catholics, who are not refugees and who are safe in Costa Rica—what a deal!

“The US deal looks more and more doubtful,” Ian Rintoul from the Refugee Action Coalition said.

Former US President Obama agreed a deal with Australia late last year to offer refuge to up to 1250 asylum seekers.

[On the backs of US taxpayers!—ed]

The Trump administration said it would only honour the deal to maintain a strong relationship with Australia, and then only on condition that refugees satisfied strict checks.

[On the backs of communities that must absorb these men from terror hot spots—ed]

In exchange, Australia has pledged to take Central American refugees from a centre in Costa Rica, where the United States has taken in a larger number of people in recent years.

[Any fake refugees in Costa Rica are not our problem—ed]

The swap is designed, in part, to help Australia close both Manus and Nauru, which are expensive to run and have been widely criticised by the United Nations and others over treatment of detainees.

[And American taxpayers and communities get the short end of the stick—ed]

[….]

The majority of the detainees interviewed on both Manus and Nauru by US officials in April are from Sudan, Somalia and Afghanistan.

More here at AAP.

This is wrong, wrong, wrong!

As early as 2012 I testified to the US State Department that the US Refugee Admissions Program should not be used to solve extracurricular diplomatic problems around the world.
Only legitimate refugees in need of humanitarian assistance should be considered for the program.  Instead we repeatedly move certain people (including troublemakers! Uzbeks for instance!) around the world for reasons other than humanitarian ones and that is wrong!
This is what I said (beginning in 2012) in Ten Reasons there should be a MORATORIUM!

7)   Congress needs to specifically disallow the use of the refugee program for other purposes of the US Government, especially using certain refugee populations to address unrelated foreign policy objectives—Uzbeks, Kosovars, Meshketians and Bhutanese (Nepalese) people come to mind.

Now it is mostly Muslims held in Australian detention centers we might be bringing to your towns!
Why should helping Australian Prime Minister Turnbull get off a political hook be solved on the backs of US taxpayers?

And why should American communities be saddled with these questionable people as neighbors? 
I ask that of the Trump White House and the Heritage Foundation, here, where their expert on refugees seems to see this (diplomacy) as a legitimate purpose of the USRAP—see five reasons the USRAP is good for America as a tool for diplomacy.
See all of my previous posts on the Australia “dumb deal” by clicking here.
Write to the White House.  Today you can encourage the President to kill this deal altogether!

Trump Administration will cool UAC flood to America by this action!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

While we are busy fixating on the ‘travel ban’ and the refugee moratorium, Trump’s Dept. of Homeland Security has begun to find those illegal alien parents who paid smugglers to get their children to the US border where they then became wards of the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement (in HHS). Many of the ‘children’ were subsequently turned over to their parents.  (The largest percentage of ‘children’ were teenage boys!)

Photos like this of the “beast train” bringing the ‘children’ to our southern border during the Obama Administration helped get Trump elected President, as I predicted here: https://anncorcoran2016.org/2016/01/17/obamas-new-illegal-refugee-program-vain-attempt-to-stop-a-massive-2016-border-invasion/

ICE is finding the parents! 

That should cool the Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) run on the border, and save US taxpayers a bundle!
The cost of managing the UACs within ORR has been the largest part of ORR’s budget for the last few years.
A couple of our usual suspects, refugee contractors, also make a bundle from their involvement with the ‘children.’  The US Conference of Catholic Bishops and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (and possibly others) benefit financially from the illegal alien kids.
From the Charlotte Observer:

WASHINGTON

The Trump administration has begun a new surge of immigration enforcement targeting parents who have paid to have their children illegally brought to the United States.

The recent arrests, which had been largely rumored but not confirmed until now, have set off a new wave of confusion and fear through immigrant communities that have already been subject to greater enforcement.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents have begun sharing information with immigration agents about U.S.-based relatives of unaccompanied children. The information is being used to track down the parents, according to lawyers and government case workers familiar with the practice.

[….]

“The kids are basically being used as bait at this point,” said a field specialist with the Office of Refugee Resettlement, the federal agency that takes custody and shelters unaccompanied immigrant children.

[….]

Jennifer Elzea

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials confirmed Thursday that they have begun a new enforcement initiative to “disrupt and dismantle” human-smuggling facilitators, including arresting the sponsors who have paid criminal organizations to smuggle children into the United States. They did not say what charges were being applied.

“ICE aims to disrupt and dismantle end-to-end the illicit pathways used by transnational criminal organizations and human smuggling facilitators,” said Jennifer Elzea, deputy press secretary for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “As such, we are currently conducting a surge initiative focused on the identification and arrest of individuals involved in illicit human smuggling operations, to include sponsors who have paid criminal organizations to smuggle children into the United States.”

Immigration officials cited Office of Refugee Resettlement statistics on Thursday that show approximately 90 percent of all unaccompanied children encountered at the southwest border are eventually turned over to a family member residing in the United States.

[….]

In February, Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly issued new orders to agency heads that would considerably expand the number of immigrants who could be detained and deported.

One of the memos said 155,000 unaccompanied children have been detained in the past three years.

Continue reading here.
There is a very informative report, here, put out by the Congressional Research Service on the Unaccompanied Alien Children problem.  I thought this graph was useful.  It shows the number of UACs and how many are turned over to the Office of Refugee Resettlement (although they are NOT refugees).
Note the enormous jump in numbers as the Obama Administration signaled that it would turn a blind-eye to the invasion of the ‘children.’

 

State Dept. leaking like sieve to CNN, reveals WH thinking of moving refugee program to DHS

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update July 1: Michael Leahy at Breitbart has more on this story, here yesterday.
I know, I know, it is a CNN story with Jake Tapper on the byline, but there is very likely truth to it.
I’m not weighing in on the merits (or demerits) of such a move, my purpose here is to once again show you that the Obama shadow government, in this case Anne Richard, FORMER Asst. Secretary of State for Population, Refugees and Migration has a pipeline in to the career bureaucrats running the refugee program in the Department of State and she is carrying their news to the likes of CNN.

Anne Richard came to her former post at the Department of State from the federal contractor the INTERNATIONAL RESCUE COMMITTEE. Prior to her job at the IRC, she was at the State Department! The system is incestuous!

The primary reason that the Deep State would not support the move of the program to the Dept. of Homeland Security is that they (in State) have a decades-long cushy relationship with the refugee contractors that I keep yelling about (here and here just this morning).
They are all on the same page—more, more, more refugees for America!
First, get the contractors (yelling and propagandizing) out of the system completely and reform of the program could be accomplished. (This depends on the lazy lunks in Congress!)
And, second!

Trump must get his loyalists placed in positions above the bureaucrats to get this under control.

Career people can’t be fired unless, and until, they are caught in insubordination to a boss. Right now Trump is at fault for not picking their bosses!
Here is CNN quoting Anne Richard extensively so she must be the one carrying the tales….

Washington (CNN)The White House is considering a proposal to move both the State Department bureau of Consular Affairs and its bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration to the Department of Homeland Security, a senior White House official tells CNN.

The move, which the White House official cautioned was far from becoming official policy, would likely be controversial among diplomats and experts in State Department matters.

[….]

“It would be a huge mistake,” said Anne Richard, who led the bureau of Population Refugees, and Migration during President Barack Obama’s second term.

[….]

The proposals were written in a memo submitted to the White House Office of Management and Budget from the White House Domestic Policy Council as part of President Trump’s March executive order pushing for ideas for Government Reorganization.

A State Department spokesperson referred CNN to the White House for comment.

The extremely complicated admissions process now starts with the UNITED NATIONS making the first cut as we have reported ad nauseam.

The White House did not explain the reasoning behind the recommendations, but perhaps the idea is rooted in a desire to streamline the refugee vetting process. As it stands currently, the United Nations High Commission of Refugees refers applicants to the State Department for vetting. This vetting is carried out by nine International Resettlement Support Centers (RSC) with American interests***; all of which are managed by the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration. Approved applicants are then sent to the Department of Homeland Security for final vetting. After final vetting at DHS, the State Department then resumes supervision of the process with its Reception and Placement Program.

[….]

Richard, the former Obama State Department official, pinned the proposal on an “imperfect understanding” of the bureau’s function. It’s not mainly a law enforcement body, Richard said, rather, it works with nongovernmental organizations and the UN to assist refugees around the world. [And that is the problem—the NGOs and the UN—ed]

More here.
*** Are there other interests operating Resettlement Support Centers???  See here.
Nine Department of State-funded Resettlement Support Centers (RSCs) not to be confused with the nine major refugee contractors (except that there is some overlap because some contractors work at these RSCs). Look at these locations. Can you say opportunity for fraud!

  • Amman, Jordan with sub-offices in Baghdad, Iraq and Cairo, Egypt;

• Bangkok, Thailand with a sub-office in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia;

• Damak, Nepal;

• Havana, Cuba;

• Istanbul, Turkey with a sub-office in Beirut, Lebanon;

• Moscow, Russia with a sub-office in Kyiv, Ukraine;

• Nairobi, Kenya with a sub-office in Johannesburg, South Africa;

• Vienna, Austria; and

• Quito, Ecuador with small sub-offices in San Salvador, El Salvador and Tegucigalpa, Honduras.

The nine federal resettlement contractors who are fighting tooth and nail to let nothing rock their cushy relationship with the DOS:

 
 

LA Times headline is deceptive (yes, can you believe it!)

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Here is the headline of an LA Times story yesterday designed to give an impression to lazy readers that President Trump (the meany) has drastically cut refugee admissions.  He hasn’t.

Number of refugees admitted to U.S. drops by almost half

Their story begins:

The number of refugees admitted to the United States was cut by nearly half in the first three months of the Trump administration compared with the final three months of the Obama presidency, reflecting the new president’s skepticism toward immigration.

Further down, at least they try to be honest for readers willing to read more than the headline as they report what we reported ad nauseam and that is that the outgoing Obama State Department was pouring refugees in to the US at a phenomenal rate.

Obama at the UN last September just as he was opening the flood gates (wide!). http://www.lavocedinewyork.com/en/un/2016/09/21/obama-at-the-un-global-refugee-crisis-most-urgent-test-of-our-time/

The data suggest that the Obama administration, as it was about to turn over power to Trump, significantly stepped up the number of refugees admitted. Arrivals in its final three months reflected an 86% year-over-year increase compared to the same period the previous year.

In Trump’s first three months, arrivals were 12% lower than for the same period in the previous year.

But, heck, 12% lower doesn’t make for a headline designed to make President Trump look bad.
Have a look at the data for the last ten years (from Wrapsnet) and see the astronomical numbers that Obama was pushing through the pipeline in the final months of his presidency.
 

 
I’m getting sick of having to show how the mainstream media skews the news on refugees.  I bet you are too!
Then the LA Times story says this:

Trump has sought to limit the number of refugees to 50,000 this year. But adverse rulings in the courts could work against him.

As of today we are at 48,856, and at the present rate of arrivals we will reach 50,000 in a week to ten days.  I have maintained from the outset that Trump can legally slow or outright halt the number being admitted (under the ceiling of 110,000 set by Obama) at any time and will be watching to see how the Supreme Court handles this portion of the case before them.  (Decision is expected at any moment.)