Category: Obama

Ohio resettlement agency employee talks about his "clients"

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

His “clients” are refugees admitted to the US in recent months.
Yes! for resettlement agencies paid by your tax dollars, the ‘refugees’ they resettle are “clients.”  I think that is a better word than ‘refugee’ since most aren’t legitimate refugees in the first place.

US Together is a subcontracting resettlement agency of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, see here.
Here is a bit of the interview at IdeaStream (All things considered) entitled: Uncertain Future Remains For Northeast Ohio Refugee Resettlement Agencies. 
After you listen, I want to give you some facts about what the US Together employee is talking about and on resettlement to Ohio in general.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer yesterday said President Trump’s travel ban order is fully lawful, and he was confident the order would be upheld by an appeals court. The comments came after a three-judge panel from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in Seattle heard arguments in Hawaii’s challenge to the ban. [As is the case with most reporters, they don’t know the difference between the ‘ban’ and the President’s lawful power under the Refugee Act of 1980 to set refugee admission numbers each fiscal year.—ed]

After the first executive order in January affecting travel from mostly Muslim countries, Northeast Ohio refugee resettlement agencies feared lay-offs and uncertain finances [because they are paid out of the federal treasury!—ed].

Yesterday I spoke with Evan Chwalek with agency Us Together, about how things were going:

CHWALEK: “The way I like to think about it is, there are the things that the judiciary can affect, and the things they can’t affect, and we’ve been able to continue the resettlement process, but because the President has essentially cut the number of refugees admitted to the country in this fiscal year in half, we have fewer refugees to resettle, and unfortunately because of that we had many lay-offs.” [You see how they do this, “cut…in half!” From what, from Obama’s 2017 dream number of 110,000 for a year he would be in the WH for only 3 and a half months!—ed]

GANZER: “How many would you say?”

Hear the whole interview with US Together employee Evan Chwalek here: http://wcpn.ideastream.org/news/uncertain-future-remains-for-northeast-ohio-refugee-resettlement-agencies

CHWALEK: “Somewhere in the neighborhood of 10, I would say, across the Cleveland office, and then we have offices in Toledo and Columbus, as well.” [Chwalek identifies the employees let go as “contractors.”—ed]

GANZER: “And you personally were affected by this. You were laid-off, right?”

CHWALEK: “That’s correct. I was laid-off in February and because of the changes in staff, they actually brought me back on as a full-time employee just three weeks ago.”

GANZER: “Not knowing many of the things that will come through the courts, or what the Administration might do next, what is the mood would you say around Us Together? Is it one of fear, or panic, or optimism?”

CHWALEK: “Fear isn’t the word I’d use. Resiliency comes to mind. Despite the uncertainties of the future, we have to continue offering the day-to-day services to our clients: getting them from medical appointments, applying for Social Security, making sure they understand how to use the bus on the way to work.” [If only poor Americans knew ‘refugee’ “clients” get such “services!”—ed]

[….]

GANZER: “How many families do you think will come to Cleveland this year, projected, would you say?”

CHWALEK: “I don’t really know the answer to that, but I would say somewhere around 175 individuals by the end of this fiscal year, which ends in September.”

GANZER: “In a pre-Trump Administration era, can you compare how many families we can look at?”

CHWALEK: “I look at the arrival sheets, and they are almost completely blank now. We probably had 400 resettled in the last fiscal year, individuals that is.”

[….]

CHWALEK: “We recommend that our clients don’t leave the country.

Chwalek goes on to say they are waiting to see what Trump does for the next fiscal year after admitting that Trump can change the numbers within a fiscal year (either up or down).  We too are waiting to see what the Trump State Department does in September when the Presidential Determination is sent to The Hill for FY18.
First, on this last point I snipped above, if a ‘refugee’ is truly a persecuted person, why would he/she leave the safety of America to risk the danger they supposedly escaped?
I went to Wrapsnet to get a feel for the numbers that Chwalek is talking about.
Look up data for Ohio and you can readily see how deceptive they can be to reporters who don’t have their facts in advance.
I went back to FY12 (in the Obama Administration) and found that the average number of refugees admitted to the whole state of Ohio for FY12, 13, 14 and 15 was 2,709 per year.  Then the numbers jumped in Obama’s last year as he pushed for the huge increase in Syrians.  Ohio “welcomed” 4,194 in FY16 (obviously well above the previous average for 4 years).
So far in FY17 (about 7.5 months) Ohio has received 2,274 refugees.  Again the pre-FY16 average for Ohio is 2,709 for the whole year, so they will likely hit their average this year (excluding the anomaly year FY16).
As for numbers for Cleveland/Cleveland Heights, the average resettlement there was about 75 per month during that anomaly year of FY16 and at this moment Cleveland/Cleveland Heights is getting an average of 60 per month—clearly not so far off the FY16 banner year. Chwalek was rehired because the numbers are not that drastically lower and paying “clients” are still coming in, but they don’t want reporters like this guy Ganzer to know that! The story line they are selling is that Trump is bad and the agencies need money (so please give!).
(There are several resettlement contractors in addition to US Together vying for paying “clients” in Ohio so some of those going to Cleveland are clients of other federal contracting agencies.)
For new readers, in 2013, I alerted Ohioans that the big push was on to diversify Cleveland by seeding it with ‘clients’ of federal contracting agencies like US Together and its parent organization the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society.

Boo Hoo! Charitable organizations which resettle refugees forced to raise private funds

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

You have probably seen them—bushels of stories about how the nine federal resettlement contractors are wailing and moaning as Trump cuts off their refugee/money flow—but I was surprised that the Wall Street Journal didn’t do a little better job of putting it all in perspective.
For new readers like Nancy, here are the nine federal resettlement contractors (aka Volags, short for Voluntary Agencies, Ha! Ha!) that make up the “refugee-resettlement industry:”

 
The WSJ does make it clear that these NON-Profit groups (six are ostensibly religious groups) are paid by the head to place refugees in your towns and get them signed up for their stuff.  For the first few years that I wrote this blog, mainstream media never mentioned that fact!  So, yes, their budgets will vary as they have become almost completely dependent on federal money for their salaries/benefits, office rental, travel, etc.
For them to be whining that they have to raise private money for their ‘religious’ charitable work as refugee numbers vary makes me want to scream. When the Refugee Act of 1980 became law it was supposed to be a public-private partnership, but as the years have passed, federal funding (and state and local funding!) has become a greater and greater share.

Before I give you the latest whine-fest from the WSJ, here is how the contractors got in to this pickle.  Obama set the CEILING for FY17 at 110,000 in his final months in office.  The WSJ tells us it was the highest ceiling since 1995. Thus the contractors were building their budgets on a pipe dream of more paying clients (aka refugees) than they have had for years and years.
That 110,000 was, by far, Obama’s highest ceiling as we have reported ad nuaseum and as you can see in this chart from the Refugee Processing Center and is being used dishonestly as the benchmark for measuring the Trump flow:
 

Note that the US DOS has gotten around to removing the 110,000 ceiling for FY2017. This chart last month still listed it. See last month here: https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2017/05/05/despicable-usa-today-says-refugee-numbers-plummet-under-trump-but-were-silent-when-obama-monthly-numbers-were-low/

 
Last night I wondered just how the first seven months of the fiscal year matched up (FY17 runs from October 1, 2016 to September 30, 2017).  At the end of April we are 7 complete months in to the fiscal year, and those wailing contractors have been paid handsomely for 7 months based on the fact that by April 30,2017 we had admitted more paying clients/refugees than any of the previous ten years.  Do the math using the chart above!
As of the end of April, the US admitted 42,414 refugees, the highest number in the first seven months of any of the years since before FY07.  In fact, Bush had the lowest first seven months in 2007—17,150, but even Saint Obama had only 26,181 in FY12 as of April 30th. He never had a year with this high number (by April 30th) in his time in office.

Now here are a few snips from the Wall Street Journal giving the contractors another opportunity to wail and moan!
Although, I have to laugh to see the phrase “refugee-resettlement industry” in the first line!

Even though President Donald Trump’s travel ban has been put on hold, his administration is already reshaping the refugee-resettlement industry.

The Trump administration has cut the rate of refugee arrivals in half in the first months of the year [this is so dishonest!—ed] and charity organizations that settle refugees are slashing their budgets in response.

Has Hetfield slashed his salary? https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2016/11/13/hebrew-immigrant-aid-society-lectures-trump-never-mentions-its-pecuniary-interest-in-refugees/

More than half of the nine agencies that are approved by the State Department to resettle refugees in the U.S. have already either laid off staff or frozen hiring. Some agencies have let hundreds of people go. Many are staging fundraising campaigns the help make up for lost federal funding, which is tied to new refugee arrivals but also supports programs for refugees already here.

“We’ve been asked by the State Department to cut our budget twice already,” said Mark Hetfield, president of HIAS, a Jewish nonprofit that resettles refugees in the U.S. HIAS has instituted a hiring freeze. “You can’t manage a program like this.”

[….]

In the last fiscal year, the federal government allocated more than $554 million for refugee admissions, and 84,994 refugees were resettled. More than $227 million of that money was distributed to the nine resettlement agencies, most of them religiously affiliated, that help newcomers adjust to the U.S.

[….]

World Relief, one of the resettlement agencies, began adding case workers in the fall, expecting a huge influx of refugees. At the organization’s 25 offices, case workers shepherd refugees through all aspects of life in America. They pick them up at the airport; set up housing, complete with furniture and clothes; advise them on searching for jobs; and help enroll children in school.

Oopsy!  As Mark Krikorian pointed out on twitter last night the reporter left out one important duty of the contractor in that line above—they sign the refugee up for all forms of welfare and move on to the next client!

WSJ continues….

Resettlement agencies had been hoping 2017 would be a banner year. In September, before the Oct. 1 start of the fiscal year, Mr. Obama announced he would raise the number of refugees allowed into the country to 110,000, the highest total since 1995. Many agencies began staffing up. [Sniffle—ed]

[….]

The nine resettlement agencies contract much of the work settling new refugees out to hundreds of local affiliates. These organizations are paid $2,075 for each refugee they resettle, the majority of which goes directly to refugee assistance. [No! About half goes to the contractor for salaries and overhead!—ed]

[….]

Many resettlement organizations have started fundraising campaigns to try to make up for lost revenue.

Pity! They actually have to go out to the public and look for private charitable dollars for their humanitarian good works.

You know what it means if they can’t find private money?  It means the public is generally not behind their efforts to import poverty and diversify American cities and towns with refugees from the Middle East, Africa and Asia.
Read the whole article here and be sure to see that Mark Krikorian is quoted.

Minnesota Dept of Health needs $5 million to fight infectious diseases in immigrant population

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Hey, since many of the refugees and other immigrants now causing expensive infectious diseases to spread in the state are a result of Obama’s migration policy, maybe he could contribute his $3 million speaking fee to Minnesota as a partial payment to handle the crisis!
Here is the latest news generated by the recent Measles epidemic in Minnesota. As of Tuesday there were 50 diagnosed cases, most (45) are in the ‘Somali community.’
And, we are told that refugees don’t cost state and local taxpayers a dime!
From Michael Patrick Leahy at Breitbart:

Minnesota Health Commissioner Dr. Ed Ehlinger sounded an alert on more frequent and costly threats to the public health, referencing measles, tuberculosis, and even the Zika virus and syphilis, according to a statement released by the MDH on Wednesday as reported by Hometownsource.com.

Remember this story! Gov. Mark Dayton: If you don’t like our Somali refugees, get out of Minnesota because they are here to stay! https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2015/10/16/mn-governor-dayton-dont-like-immigrants-get-out-of-minnesota/

“In recent months, state and local public health officials have had to respond to a series of infectious disease outbreaks including multi-drug resistant tuberculosis, hundreds of new cases of syphilis, and now, the largest measles outbreak the state has faced in nearly 30 years. These outbreaks come on the heels of extensive public health efforts in 2016 for the Zika virus response and in 2014-15 for Ebola preparedness,” he added…..

[….]

Minnesota is currently in the middle of the largest outbreak of measles in over twenty years. As of Tuesday, 50 cases of measles have been diagnosed in the state since the first case was reported on April 11, 45 of which have been diagnosed in Somali Minnesotans.

As Breitbart News reported previously, 90 percent of the 168 cases of active tuberculosis diagnosed in Minnesota in 2016 were foreign-born, much higher than the 67 percent of foreign-born cases that accounted for the 9,287 cases of active TB diagnosed in the United States in 2016.

Fourteen of those cases were from newly arrived refugees, eleven of whom were diagnosed with active TB in medical screenings overseas but were nonetheless allowed to resettle in Minnesota by the Obama administration’s Department of Homeland Security.

Continue reading here. The article is chock full of important information and links to follow.
See my ‘Health issues’ category, here, where I have archived 329 previous posts about health issues (including mental health issues) involving the refugee flow to America.
I wondered here if this Measles outbreak started with a newly arrived refugee from Somalia (or from elsewhere in East Africa since a large number of our Somalis come from UN camps in Kenya).
BTW, Slate had a hysterical story the other day claiming this Measles outbreak is Trump’s fault—not because he is admitting infected Somalis, but because he hangs with “Anti-vaxxer pals.”  Huh?

Mr. Cool goes to Milan, is paid millions to announce that "climate refugees" will flood the first world

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Changing the subject?
Just in case Islam-generated conflicts run out of steam in the Middle East and Africa, Barack Obama crossed the Atlantic to collect a speaking fee reportedly in the $3 million range to pronounce that, as a result of global warming there would be a refugee crisis “unprecedented in human history.”

Unbuttoned to mid-chest: We are told that Mr. Cool forgot his tie. If you are a former President of the US staying in what must be the most expensive hotel in the city, isn’t it possible to send out for a wonderful selection of beautiful ties? http://www.nationalreview.com/article/447465/obama-climate-speech-milan-offered-nothing-new

He wants to make sure that world Open Borders activists (and global corporations looking for cheap labor) wouldn’t run out of reasons to tear down borders to the first world (if Islamic conflicts fail to do a good enough job).
Obama talked extensively in the speech about the impact of warming, while several reports lately say the earth is entering a cooling period.  So which is it?
Below is some of what Obama said in what some, here are calling a “contradictory speech.”
From the UK Independent:

Climate change could produce a refugee crisis that is “unprecedented in human history”, Barack Obama has warned as he stressed global warming was the most pressing issue of the age.

Speaking at an international food conference in Milan, the former US President said rising temperatures were already making it more difficult to grow crops and rising food prices were “leading to political instability”.

“Floods on sunny days”—bad, very bad….

He said the United States was currently experiencing “floods on sunny days”, increased wildfires and, in Alaska, increased coastal erosion as the ice melts and no country was “immune” to the problem.

Climate refugees on the march….

If world leaders put aside “parochial interests” and took action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by enough to restrict the rise to one or two degrees Celsius, then humanity would probably be able to cope. [So, might we shut up about this issue if sunspot activity and natural cycles restrict the rise to one or two degrees?—ed]

Failing to do this, Mr Obama warned, increased the risk of “catastrophic” effects in the future, “not only real threats to food security, but also increases in conflict as a consequence of scarcity and greater refugee and migration patterns”.

“If those rain patterns change, then you could see hundreds of millions of people who suddenly find themselves unable to feed themselves, because they’re already at subsistence levels.

“And the amount of migration, the number of refugees that could be resulting from something like that, would be unprecedented in human history.”

Dare I mention the scientific notion of carrying capacity and that a population die-off might be mother earth’s way of staying in balance (okay stone me!).
Continue reading here.
I have a ‘Climate Refugees’ category with 49 previous posts on the topic, here.  I don’t know if they have settled their differences, but early-on the climate refugee agitators were at odds with the ‘humanitarian’ refugee agitators over the use of the word “refugee.”  ‘Humanitarians’ were angered by environmentalists stealing the word that they had over decades built up as one that invokes warm and fuzzy feelings among people who know nothing.

Despicable USA Today says refugee numbers plummet under Trump, but were silent when Obama monthly numbers were low

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

It is so maddening to see how the Leftwing Open borders media spins the news!
Here USA Today trumpets:

Refugee admissions plummet under Trump, USA TODAY analysis finds

Before you even read their analysis, look at this chart we posted two days ago showing monthly admissions for the last ten years.  We pointed out that at this point in the fiscal year (the end of April) we actually admitted more refugees than we did in that period for the last ten years. See also this morning’s numbers report.
Trump is on target (we are unhappy to say) to bring in just slightly less than the average number for the previous ten years, but you would never know that from reading the mainstream media!

Kay Bellor of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services told USA Today: “The statements from this administration about refugees are shocking to me…It’s language I’ve never heard used with refugees…” Photo: http://lirs.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Kay_BellorBiography.pdf

See the chart that comes directly from the US State Dept. data below:
Notice that Obama had a month (FY2014) at 1,810 (did USA Today trumpet a plummet?)
Notice that Obama had two very low months in FY11, 2,034 and 2,190 (did USA Today trumpet a plummet?)
Notice that Obama had many months where the numbers were in the 3,000s. (did USA Today trumpet a plummet?)
And, don’t miss the fact that Obama, in many years did not reach his ‘ceiling’ and in fact never set one anywhere near 110,000 until he was on his way out of office!
Indeed, if Trump keeps his present pace he will exceed Obama’s years of FY11 and FY12.
Notice that George W. Bush’s numbers were in the 2,000s and 3,000s for many months.
 

 
Now here is how USA Today begins its story:

The number of refugees arriving in the United States has dropped sharply this year because of President Trump’s threats to bar their entry, even though his order for a total 120-day ban has been blocked twice by federal courts, a USA TODAY analysis of government figures shows.

The U.S. accepted 2,070 refugees in March, the lowest monthly total since 2013, according to State Department data. April ended with 3,316 refugees admitted, the second-lowest total since 2013.

The lying sacks only went back to 2013 where they could find a number that works for them, but how did they manage to overlook October 2014?
Read to the very end of the story and see what Mark Krikorian had to say.  And, USA Today finally does get to the crux of the matter—-the contractors are worried about their cash flow if Trump does follow-through and cap resettlement at 50,000.
The big test for Trump comes in September when he sets the level for FY18 and we will be watching.
BTW, there used to be “scoping meetings” in May (held by the US State Dept) to ask the public what the numbers and nationalities should look like for the upcoming fiscal year.  We will be watching to see if Tillerson’s DOS goes back to that practice.  The Obama Administration curtailed  those meetings in its final years because they really didn’t want to hear what the general public had to say!