Today when I saw one more story about some gathering somewhere meant to tell the public how bad the Trump administration is as it slows the flow of third worlders to unsuspecting middle America towns, my first thought was: blah! blah! blah!
However, for a change I had a good look at the comments to the story at Michigan Live, and I am glad I did!
‘America looks terrible’ with record-low refugee admissions, panelist says
ANN ARBOR, MI – The U.S. accepted a record low number of refugees in 2018, and now Michigan resettlement agencies are questioning their future.
This is Mark Hetfield of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society protesting the Trump presidency at a rally in New York shortly after Trump was inaugurated in early 2017. Last I checked he was pulling down a salary and benefits package of nearly $350,000 a year as HIAS CEO. Good work if you can get it! https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2018/06/27/hebrew-immigrant-aid-society-urges-followers-to-take-to-the-streets-in-wake-of-supreme-court-decision/
Right now America looks terrible because we are no longer out there defending the most vulnerable people in the world,” said Mark Hetfield, CEO of HIAS, the world’s oldest refugee resettlement agency, based in Maryland. “That’s something that we have done consistently across Republican and Democratic administrations, and we have stopped doing that and thrown refugee protection into reverse.”
Hetfield participated in a panel discussion on present and future challenges related to refugee resettlement on Monday, Oct. 22, at the University of Michigan’s Rackham Graduate School.
The panel was part of a two-day “Keeping Our Door Open” symposium in Ann Arbor coordinated by UM’s School of Social Work, C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital and Jewish Family Services of Washtenaw County.
Needless to say the panelists go on to complain about how the refugee program is being diminished by this president. See more here.
If readers simply look at the title and read a bit of the story one would think that the propagandists might actually be reaching people.
That is, until one looks at the comments.
Get a load of these (and this is just a sampling!):
Space Ace
5 minutes ago
Don’t we have our own poor people to be concerned about? Since when is it our moral imperative to alleviate all the suffering of the world? Homelessness is up 50%, FIFTY PERCENT, in many parts of the country from 15 years ago. How about we deal with that first, then maybe consider importing more poor people?
Xchips
8 minutes ago
“Right now America looks terrible because we are no longer out there defending the most vulnerable people in the world,” said Mark Hetfield, CEO of HIAS who’s nearly $350,000 compensation package is nearly wholey paid for by taxpayers.
So here’s a guy getting taxpayer dollars to help other people get taxpayer dollars. Nice racket.
Tom
1 hour ago
Refugee (noun): a person who has been forced to leave their country in order to escape war, persecution, or natural disaster.
How many of these “refugees” are actually falling into one of these categories? How many are coming here because they just don’t like where they live and they heard you can get in by claiming refugee status.
According to the article – “Refugees are entitled to government assistance coordinating travel plans to get to the U.S. and then resettlement services that can include assistance with transportation, housing, English language classes, health care, food, education, employment and citizenship services.”
So if I lived in a very poor country – that sounds like a good deal to me.
So maybe consider those actual refugees are being turned around because they actually aren’t refugees.
E
1 hour ago
I’d say the lovely citizens of Ann Arbor sponsor refugees and house/feed/guarantee non-reliance on government programs to show their support.
Freedom Lover
1 hour ago
Have you noticed that most of the immigrants in the horde coming from Guatemala and Honduras are males in the 20 to 30 age group. They carry their country’s flag but refuse to stay in their country and make it better. I’m sure glad the colonialists were not like them. They stayed and fought to make a better country. Also many who are interviewed say they are coming to the USA for a job. A job is not a reason to seek asylum.
Shawn Letwin
updated 1 hour ago
Yep, you are at risk of losing your jobs and no longer living off the trough of the taxpayers…”Que Sera, Sera”
Rbg1
updated 1 hour ago
Did these opportunist mouthpieces disclose the taxpayer-funded profits (BILLIONS) involved with resettling and wrap-around assistance? This isn’t compassion, it’s greed. Everyone involved is making money off the scam. Except, of course, middle class taxpayers.
This is an encouraging example of how educated citizens are becoming about the US Refugee Admissions Program.
All of you should take the opportunity every chance you get to comment to news stories in your communities.
We reported recently that the nine federally-funded non-profit groups that have monopolized all resettlement in the US for the last decade (some of them for three decades) will see their numbers diminished as the President continues reducing refugee resettlement.
By becoming almost completely dependent on federal dollars, they built a house of cards.
Love it when I see stories about the IRC crying over its loss of federal boodle. I can tell readers again that its CEO, British national David Miliband, pulls in a cool nearly $700,000 annual salary. Here in Manhattan where they are headquartered. Is this socialist sharing his good fortune with employees who are let go?
In this post two days ago we reported that two so-called VOLAGS would likely not receive contracts. I expect the reporter got it wrong when he suggested as many as seven could be booted off the federal gravy train.
Another story designed to tug on your heartstrings, this time from San Diego, wasn’t really worth posting except for a few paragraphs deep within the story.
With fewer refugees coming, resettlement agencies may be forced to close
The International Rescue Committee was able to reunite at least one person — a Rohingya refugee fleeing Myanmar — with family here, according to Duvin [Donna Duvin, executive director of the International Rescue Committee in San Diego.—ed]
The agency also began receiving refugees being held by Australia on Nauru Island. [This was a bit of useful news. We wondered where they might be going—ed]
The process, based on an agreement the U.S. made with Australia before Trump took office, has been slow, Duvin said, but she was happy that some were making it through.
Resettlement agencies like Jewish Family Service and International Rescue Committee have had to restructure their programs because of the lower numbers of arrivals. When staff positions fell vacant, they often went unfilled. Those who remained shifted to providing longer-term services to refugees who had already arrived, and agencies became increasingly reliant on private donations to fund their work. [Well, it is about time. It was supposed to be a 50/50 partnership but as you see below here*** it has become a program almost exclusively funded by US taxpayers!—ed]
Waiting for the ax to fall!
While resettlement agencies prepare for the possibility of even fewer arrivals in fiscal 2019, they still don’t know how much money they will receive to do their work or whether they will be allowed to stay open. Since the Trump administration is still working out details about the 2019 resettlement efforts, it has not yet released its budget for the program for this year.
Leftover money! Leftover money! Your leftover money!
Local resettlement agencies are operating through December with leftover money from the fiscal 2018 budget because the number of resettled refugees didn’t reach the 45,000 cap. They have been told that some of the nine agencies nationwide may be asked to close their doors once the 2019 budget is finalized.
A State Department official confirmed that the administration is expecting to fund a smaller number of resettlement agencies.
***Below are the nine federal refugee resettlement contractors.
The present US Refugee Admissions Program will never be reformed if the system of paying the contractors by the head stays in place and the contractors are permitted to act as Leftwing political agitation groups, community organizers and lobbyists paid on our dime!
And, to add insult to injury they pretend it is all about ‘humanitarianism.’
The number in parenthesis is the percentage of their income paid by you (the taxpayer) to place the refugees into your towns and cities and get them signed up for their services (aka welfare)! And, get them registered to vote eventually!
As the President heads to Texas and the Central American migrant caravan marches on toward our southern border, I can’t help but say ‘told you so.’
Between illegal immigration and legal refugees, the hard Left Open Borders activists and agitators are turning a red state blue.
Big enough for everyone?
They might not succeed this year (then again they could!), but it is happening, and proud patriotic Texans better get in gear to stop it!
A little over two years ago I reportedthat Republican Governor Greg Abbott withdrew the state from the US Refugee Admissions Program, but little good it did as I reported last week that Texas is now solidly, and by a large margin, the top refugee resettlement state in the nation.
No time for more on this today. But, if you want to see how Texas has come to this place in its history, see my Texas archive here.
But, there is something you, Americans, need to know about Malta.
Before giving Malta ‘high-fives’ for humanitarian zeal, consider this:
The European island nation has been sending its excess migrants to the US ever since the George W. Bush administration in what is a possibly illegal maneuver by our US State Department.
Malta is a safe European country and anyone who gets there seeking asylum is their problem, not ours!
The practice of sending a few hundred to Yourtown, USA has been going on for years. Although the numbers are down under President Donald Trump, we are still taking some.
First here is the latest from the European migration crisis.
VALLETTA (AFP) –
Migrants rescued at sea by a merchant vessel are being taken to Malta after two days in limbo following Italy’s refusal to accept them, the Maltese armed forces said Wednesday.
So where will this group of 44 Africans be resettled?
The Just Fitz III plucked 44 migrants from a rickety wooden boat late Monday after they ran into difficulty during the perilous crossing from North Africa.
The Marshall Islands-flagged vessel, which had been headed to Tunisia, was diverted to help the migrants as they floundered some 60 nautical miles south of the Italian island of Lampedusa, in Malta’s search and rescue zone.
Valletta said those rescued at sea should be taken to the nearest safe port, on Lampedusa.
But Italy’s new and hardline interior minister Matteo Salvini, the head of the far-right League, has vowed to stop migrant arrivals.
“Following the refusal of Italy to provide for the nearest place of safety, shelter and logistical support to the ship and in view of deteriorating weather conditions affecting the area,” Malta agreed to take the migrants, the army said.
An offshore patrol vessel picked up the migrants from the Just Fitz III and was expected to disembark them on Malta late Wednesday.
Ambitious readers might want to have a look at my Malta archive, here, which I have been building for over ten years.
See here, that even in Trump’s first full year in office we are still bringing ‘refugees’ from the safe country of Malta. We ‘welcomed’ 128 migrants from Malta in FY18. We are not told where they were placed in the US.
And note that there were 93 cases for the 128 migrants which tells us they were mostly single people (probably single men)!
Migrants and asylum seekers who make their way to Europe are not our problem.
We have enough problems with fake asylum seekers coming to our borders.
Surely Malta isn’t going to step up and say we will take a few of those Hondurans off your hands! Not in a million years!
If he knew this was happening, Trump could stop the Malta to Yourtown express with a phone call.
…..there must be an error in this report, but I am posting it just to see if we can get the truth shaken loose.
When I first started writing this blog in 2007 there were ten federal resettlement contractors that monopolized all refugee placement in the US, but the number dropped to nine and has remained there ever since. The nine are listed below.***
Earlier we learned that Episcopal Migration Ministries (EMM) was as much as 99.5% funded by you (taxpayers!) for their charitable good works for refugees. So it would be no surprise to learn that they would be one of the federal resettlement contractors dropped by the US State Department as the Trump administration slows the flow of paying clients to the US.
By the way, when the present Refugee Admissions Program was set up, it was supposed to be a public-private partnership, but over the years the private funds dwindled as they became more dependent on public money (aka taxpayer dollars).
The headline for the story which is mostly about Episcopal Church business is this:
Executive Council passes budget, grants diocesan waivers, praises work of Episcopal Migration Ministries
The Rev. Charles Robertson predicts EMM will be cut off from refugee contracts. “We are prepared for the worst.”
Members of Executive Council also received briefings from church officers and staff members during the week, including a bleak assessment of the future of the church’s refugee resettlement work from the Rev. Charles Robertson, the presiding bishop’s canon for ministry beyond the Episcopal Church.
Episcopal Migration Ministries, one of nine agencies with federal contracts to resettle refugees in the United States, expects to learn in the coming weeks if its contract will be renewed, at a time when the Trump administration has dramatically reduced the number of refugees being resettled. The odds are not in Episcopal Migration Ministries’ favor, Robertson told Executive Council’s Ministry Beyond the Episcopal Church Committee.
Could seven be given the boot?
“If we were going to bet on it, we’d bet we’re not going to make the cut,” Robertson said. He predicted only two of the nine would receive contracts. Though unlikely, he said it is still possible Episcopal Migration Ministries will be one of the two.
I’m thinking that the reporter got that wrong and meant to say that ‘seven of the nine would receive contracts.’ If it is true that seven would be cut, that would be earth-shaking news.
Later that afternoon, Robertson gave a sobering outlook on Episcopal Migration Ministries’ future to the committee on Ministry Beyond the Episcopal Church.
“We are prepared for the worst,” Robertson said – the worst being the end of Episcopal Migration Ministries’ contract to continue the resettlement work it has done for the federal government since the 1980s.
EMM’s interactive partners map. Go here to see if one of their offices is near you: https://episcopalmigrationministries.org/our-partners/
The U.S. Department of State announced Sept. 17 that it would lower the ceiling to just 30,000 refugees for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1, down from a ceiling of 85,000 just two years ago. And that 30,000 is just the upper limit, Robertson stressed. The actual number of refugees to be welcomed into the United States likely will be much lower.
Episcopal Migration Ministries once oversaw 31 resettlement affiliates in 26 dioceses, but that number has dwindled to 14 affiliates in 12 dioceses. With even fewer refugees to resettle, the federal government isn’t expected to keep all nine of its contracted agencies, Robertson said, and Episcopal Migration Ministries, though well equipped to do that work, is one of the smaller of the nine.
Even in the worst-case scenario, however, Episcopal Migration Ministries will remain an important part of the Episcopal Church’s outreach efforts. If the resettlement work ends, the agency may find other ways to support refugees and, possibly, other immigrants, Robertson said. He estimated it would take about a year to fully realize that new vision for the agency.
I wonder what the loss of millions of federal dollars will do to the church. I once had a reader, knowledgeable about the budget of the Episcopal Church, tell me that some of the refugee dollars went to other programs, however we were never able to confirm that.
By the way, there likely won’t be any tears shed by the remaining contractors since the nine have been competitors as they ‘bid for bodies!’
***Below are the nine federal refugee resettlement contractors.
I realize I haven’t posted this list for twelve whole days!
The present US Refugee Admissions Program will never be reformed if the system of paying the contractors by the head stays in place and the contractors are permitted to act as Leftwing political agitation groups, community organizers and lobbyists paid on our dime!
And, to add insult to injury they pretend it is all about ‘humanitarianism.’
The number in parenthesis is the percentage of their income paid by you (the taxpayer) to place the refugees into your towns and cities and get them signed up for their services (aka welfare)! And, get them registered to vote eventually!
