Category: Reforms needed

Monday a big day for refugee contractors, expect more stories like these….

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

What is Monday?  It is the beginning of the federal fiscal year. It is the first day of FY19. It is the day when the writing will be on the wall for many refugee resettlement offices around the country.

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Dumb way to run an organization! Did no one in the refugee industry ever question a business model where some non-profits are 97% and up federally funded?

Why? Because in 1980 Jimmy Carter signed the Refugee Act of 1980 in to law and set up a house of cards that needs to fall now. Originally (supposedly!) designed as a public-private partnership, the federal government and ‘humanitarian’ non-profit groups were to share equally in the costs of admitting tens of thousands of refugees to the US each year.

But, over the years, because Congress has been so remiss in overseeing the program (the Rs want cheap labor!), those non-profit groups (aka federal contractors) have gotten fat and confident (like Aesop’s grasshopper) on ever larger amounts of federal funding and too lazy to raise sufficient amounts of private money to see them through if for any reason the number of paying clients/refugees declined.

(An aside: The inability to raise enough private money is also indicative of the fact that there isn’t enough interest by average Americans in financially supporting the program in the first place.)

So here we are with one story after another about what Monday will bring to dozens of resettlement contractors around the country.

From Austin, Texas we learn that a Catholic contractor—Caritas—is closing its refugee program.

The Statesman:

EXCLUSIVE: As refugees dwindle, Caritas will end resettlement program

Since 1974, the organization has helped thousands of people fleeing war or persecution find a new life in Austin. But after 44 years, Caritas is ending its refugee resettlement program and as of Monday, it will no longer serve new refugees.

“It’s really a tragedy that this program has to go away,” said Jo Kathryn Quinn, executive director for Caritas.

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[….]

For the past two years, Caritas has seen a sharp decline in the number of refugees arriving in Austin, and the development has made the program “financially unsustainable,” Quinn said. Between 2010 and 2016, Caritas resettled an average of 576 refugees each year. Since last October, Caritas has resettled 151 refugees, but the nonprofit has not received any new refugees since April.

“Having zero refugees arrive in two months was unheard of for us,” Quinn said. “It was the final alarm bell that told us that we couldn’t continue this way.”

[….]

In June, Caritas’ board of directors voted to close the program at the end of the fiscal year at the recommendation of the nonprofit’s executive leadership.

When fewer refugees arrive, less federal money comes in to support them as well. Refugees receive a one-time amount of $1,125 from federal funds for resettlement needs, including housing and food, said Adelita Winchester, Caritas’ director of integrated services. Caritas would supplement federal funds with about $1 million annually in philanthropic donations,Winchester said.  [The reporter has missed an important piece of information. The refugee gets $1,125 and Caritas gets another $1,125 for themselves per refugee.—ed]

“We didn’t have any excess philanthropic dollars to shift to aid this program,” Quinn said.

More here.

Now to California…..

From KPBS San Diego:

Budget Cuts, Layoffs And Closures Hit Refugee-Serving Organizations

Donna Duvin is executive director at the San Diego office of the national nonprofit International Rescue Committee, or IRC, one of nine federally funded resettlement agencies in the U.S. Duvin said the local office’s VESL funding dropped by 34 percent this year forcing the agency to replace some paid instructors with volunteers and interns.

miliband-in-manhattan
Red meat for readers! I love running this photo of the IRC’s David Miliband outside their Manhattan office. He is the Brit who is compensated at nearly $700,000 annually as he calls the shots about who will be placed in your towns.

“As the numbers began to fall, the support that we had from the county that passed through dollars from the federal government, those declined as well,” Duvin said.

Duvin said in past years more than three-fourths of the agency’s budget relied on government dollars, causing a loss of millions as the office’s arrivals dipped by 85.5 percent since 2016. She said the budget changes during that time forced the agency to eliminate 15 positions.

Apparently the IRC is trying to raise private money to keep some functions going.  LOL! Maybe CEO David Miliband could give up some of his nearly $700,000 in annual salary to keep some low-level staffers in a job!

The IRC is not alone.

A representative for the national resettlement agency Church World Service estimated it lost possibly hundreds of staffers when it closed 10 offices after it was forced to merge operations with other organizations in some U.S. cities. And a spokesman for World Relief said it laid off 140 employees after shutting down five offices across the U.S.

More here.

Expect more stories over the coming days.

What you can do….

If you are looking for something to do, go to this list from last year of the resettlement agencies working in your towns and cities and call them.  See if they are still in operation, or plan to close soon.

Reminder!

The 1980 structure of the US Refugee Admissions Program is still in place and the Trump Administration must push now for a complete reform of the program or in 2021 or 2025, it will be full steam ahead for these contractors.  They will quickly staff-up and a new President could say—We must make up for the lost Trump years and quadruple the numbers of refugees coming in.

CIS: Why are we participating in UN refugee compact?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

By all accounts (from people I politically agree with!) Trump gave a great speech at the UN yesterday. And, although we stepped back from one of two new compacts related to refugees under construction in the world body, we participate in this one.  (See here that Trump removed us from a second UN compact deliberation.)

Trump at UN 2018
President Trump gave America First speech at the UN yesterday.

Writing at the Center for Immigration Studies, Nayla Rush, tells us what is wrong with the deliberations that would actually expand the protection the 1951 Refugee Convention presently offers to supposedly only legitimate refugees.

(See wikipedia for more on the 1951 Convention and don’t miss the definition of who is a ‘refugee.’)

In my view, these negotiations are one more way to expand the definition of what constitutes a ‘refugee’ which then would allow more people from the third world to move to the first without them having to prove that they would be persecuted if returned home.

By the way, this discussion of a new refugee compact was launched at Obama’s UN pow-wow in the fall of 2016 when they all were assuming Hillary was moving to the Oval!

Here is the news and analysis at the Center for Immigration Studies:

U.S. Continues to Back UN Refugee Compact that Contradicts Administration Goals

Despite announcing a lower refugee-resettlement ceiling for the coming fiscal year, the Trump administration continues to support the UN’s Global Compact on Refugees, which is in total contradiction to the administration’s refugee policies.

The final text of the Global Compact on Refugees was released late July. This refugee compact was expected to be adopted by UN member states (including the United States) at the 73rd General Assembly in New York later this week; but the vote is now expected to take place in December. The UN refugee compact seeks for more resettlement places while using expedited processing modalities; facilitating access to family reunification for resettled refugees and encouraging complementary pathways for refugees through private sponsorship programs (such as student scholarships, employment opportunities etc.) that would be additional to regular resettlement and are harder to monitor.

The Trump administration, on the other hand, announced the FY 2019 refugee ceiling of 30,000***, down from 45,000 for 2018 (both ceilings count as the lowest ceiling determinations since the creation of the refugee resettlement program following the Refugee Act of 1980). The reasoning behind such low ceilings is two-fold: Improving the screening and vetting of resettlement candidates (which means slower admissions) and reducing the untenable asylum backlog by reassigning refugee officers to asylum cases.

The Trump administration’s continued commitment to the UN agreement is puzzling.

Beware COMPLEMENTARY PATHWAYS!

Volker Turk
The UN wants to tell member states HOW THEY MUST SHARE THE BURDEN!

UNHCR’s Protection head, Volker Türk, insisted on the need for a new international agreement on refugees other than the 1951 Refugee Convention.

According to him, the 1951 convention, while focusing on rights of refugees and obligations of states, does not deal with international cooperation; it “does not specify how you share the burden and responsibility, and that’s what the global compact does. It responds to one of the major gaps we have faced for decades.” Türk added: “Also, we would aim [through the Global Compact on Refugees] to get more resettlement places and find more ways refugees can move to third countries – such as through family reunification, student scholarships, or humanitarian visas, so that refugees can travel safely (what we call ‘complementary pathways’).”

You can readily see how the UN wants an expansion of the definition of the 1951 definition of refugee protection to family members (who may not be legitimate refugees in their own right), students, and whatever that broad new category called humanitarian visas might allow.

Rush has many more details, click here to read it all.

I’m assuming the Trump Administration stayed involved in this series of meetings so they would continue to be informed.  I guess we will find out in a few months how serious the President is about not letting the rest of the world dictate who the ‘new Americans’ will be.

***I’ve been arguing for a refugee cap of zero for the coming year.  It would be the only way to force Congress to review the program with an eye to serious reform.  I would argue that the United Nations should be completely removed from our decisions on who comes to America and who doesn’t.  

At the present time the UN is dictating that we take the DR Congolese and the Burmese Rohingya. Before that it was the Bhutanese camps they wanted cleared and we said ‘yes master’ and did it! They pushed heavily for us to take the Syrian Muslims from their camps too, but Trump managed to stop that.

If we are going to take any refugees, we should demand that we pick only those we want!

Trump Administration to prioritize Africans in FY19 refugee admissions to US

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

For years we have been flying Africans to America and placing them in hundreds of US towns and cities, and President Trump’s State Department will continue that trend as its number one refugee admissions priority!

 

Congolese-refugees (1)
The UN asked the US to take in 50,000 Congolese over 5 years and we are doing just that!

 

 

Frankly, as I said just yesterday if Africa doesn’t soon slow its population growth and get the Islamic extremists under control, Africa is going to sink first Europe, and then us under the weight of millions of needy (mostly unskilled) people in the not too distant future.

Based on current trends, Africa as a whole is projected to double in [population] size by 2050. Between 2050 and 2100, according to the United Nations, it could almost double again.

(from 1 about 1.3 billion in 2018 to over 4 billion in 2100!)

Yikes!  See the Africa ticking (time bomb) population clock, here.

Trump to prioritize Africa….. 

cover fy19 report

Although the US State Department has announced a greatly lowered refugee cap (30,000) for the coming fiscal year which begins this coming Monday! the administration will place a priority on Africans according to the just released ‘Report to Congress’ that explains why the President is setting the level where he is.

The full report released yesterday is here.

This year it is a slimmed-down version of a report I have handy for FY16 (Obama’s last full year) which is 71 pages.  The Trump report, at a mere 39 pages, does not go in to the great detail that Obama’s did.

I encourage serious students of the US Refugee Admissions Program to read it (LOL! I haven’t read it all yet, but I will!) because it is a very useful educational tool even if it is discouraging.

Here (below) is a screenshot of the Trump priorities. At least we can cheer about the dramatic slowdown in the Near East and Asia (where most of the Muslim countries, besides Africa, are found).

 

 

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And it is an improvement on Obama’s last full year when he set the ceiling for Africa at 27,500 and came in at 31,624! 

By contrast, from October 1, 2017 to September 1, 2018 (11 months of the fiscal year), Trump admitted 9,007 Africans.

But, what on earth makes anyone in the Western World think we can save Africa by serving as their population pressure valve. 

There is no way, even if we wanted to, to take enough refugees to keep up with their exploding population growth.

Let’s look at the DR Congolese 

Anne richard and UNHCR smile
Anne Richard and then UNHCR Antonio Guterres who is now Secretary General of the United Nations.  By the way, Trump is still without an Asst. Secretary of the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration

I reported here in 2013 that then Asst. Secretary of State for Population, Refugees and Migration, Anne Richard, told the United Nations (told UNHCR Guterres) that we would ‘welcome’ to America 50,000 UN Camp-dwelling Congolese over 5 years.

I just checked Wrapsnet and although we were bringing these people prior to FY14, since Richard’s announcement we have admitted 45,667 from that fiscal year up until today.

(In fact, from FY08 to the present day, we have admitted 56,106 from the DR Congo.)

And, by the way, I checked numbers for this month and in a little over 3 weeks we admitted 684 DR Congolese refugees, followed by Burma (290) in second place. In case you are wondering, most Congolese are not Muslims but there are a few in the flow to your towns and cities.

So by my calculation we have 4,333 DR Congolese to go to fulfill a promise we never needed to make!

But, do not hold your breath that it will end at 50,000 because our track record is that we just keep taking them long after the supposed cut off number has been reached—see Burmese, Bhutanese and Somalis for starters!

Endnote: I did a quick check and am not seeing anything about prioritizing persecuted white South Africans.  Let me know if you see any mention.

 

Daily Beast: Trump refugee admission reduction results in collateral damage to government contractors

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

No kidding!

I have to steel myself to write AGAIN about the issue of the President’s legal right to set the annual CAP (aka ceiling) for the number of refugees to be invited to the US to become your new neighbors.  But, I know how important repetition (to the point of wanting to barf) is!

scott bixby
Bixby at twitter:   @scottbix

In fact, as I read the Daily Beast story by Scott Bixby, I was heartened to see that maybe after all these years the facts about the program are beginning to be reported and understood.

Progress is being made!

Reporter Bixby actually did some good reporting when he said that many of the contractors are 97% federally funded on a refugee per capita basis.  (You know that, but believe me the average voting American doesn’t!).

Most reports by the Leftwing lapdog media about these federal contractors, aka VOLAGs, leave readers and viewers with a wrong assumption that they are paying for all of their ‘humanitarian good works’ from their own charitable pockets.  It ain’t so!

Before I get into the latest whinefest by the contractors*** consider one of my primary fundamental concerns:

Taxpayers should not be required to pay large (any!) salaries and supply non-profits with cushy office space only to have those same non-profits act as political community organizers and agitators for not just more refugees, but for more migrants, legal and illegal, trying to get to the US.

The story is entitled:

The New Collateral Damage in Trump’s War on Refugees

The Trump administration has cut the number of refugees they let into the country by a third. That decision could gravely harm organizations that assist those already here.

(Emphasis is mine)

When the Trump administration announced its intention to slash the number of refugees allowed to enter the United States to the lowest level in nearly four decades, the decision sparked worry among thousands of displaced persons who feared that the nation’s doors were now closed to them. But in addition to the record number of global refugees seeking safety from unrest in the Middle East and Southeast Asia, the admissions cap will likely also harm organizations designed to help the thousands of displaced people who do make it safely to the United States.

As the U.S. government slows the number of legal refugees who can enter the country to a trickle, the nine private voluntary agencies with cooperative agreements with the State Department to help settle those refugees must now contend with a potentially devastating budget crunch.

miliband-in-manhattan
Reporter Bixby picked the wrong contractor to quote. The International Rescue Committee headquartered in Manhattan is headed by David Miliband, a British national, sucking down a nearly $700,000 annual salary as the NON-PROFIT organization fires lower level staff. The IRC received $846 million from the US Treasury since 2008.

“It’ll have a tremendous impact on the number of people who are able to access these life-saving services,” Nazanin Ash [working for Miliband—ed]  vice president of policy and advocacy at the International Rescue Committee, told The Daily Beast. “There’ve been over 150 office closures over the last two years, and that shutters a vital resource in many communities across the country.”

[….]

Government grants, provided on a per capita basis tied to the number of refugees assisted, account for as much as 97 percent of the resettlement grants for these organizations. Lower resettlement admissions therefore mean fewer federal dollars—and program funding is now set to plummet as precipitously as the number of admitted refugees.

That loss in grant money threatens a funding shortfall that could endanger community-based resettlement offices nationwide, as well as programs intended to help those who have fled their homes to establish a life in the United States, from housing placement and food support to professional support, English classes and community integration.

[….]

Under the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, the president has the sole authority, following consultation with Congress, to determine the maximum number of refugees who can be resettled in the United States, called the Presidential Determination. Under President Donald Trump, the Presidential Determination was decreased from 110,000 in 2017 to 45,000 refugees in 2018, one-seventh of its peak. Even then, the cap is a limit, not a requirement—so far, only 20,918 refugees have actually been admitted to the United States this year.

Don’t miss my post on the myth of Obama’s 110,000 ceiling, here where I said this:

Never once in his previous 7 years did he propose a ceiling (a cap!) that high and he came no where near that number of refugees admitted.

LOL! Now they are really stretching.

Below Melanie Nezer of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (which received $186 million from the US Treasury since 2008) says, because of that meany Trump, you are being deprived of the joy, of not getting to know refugees who might have been placed in your towns.

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If it was going to be such a positive thing to open more communities for refugee placement, then why did the Obama State Department keep those sites under consideration secret from us?

Do not forget that these nine contractors were working closely with the US State Department in the Obama years to locate as many as 40 new resettlement sites and it was all being kept secret from you—the citizens of the 40 or so new targets.

If you were to benefit so much from being ‘chosen’ then why were they keeping those sites secret?

See Judicial Watch sues State Department for new sites under consideration!

The Daily Beast continues:

Nezer cautioned that the grant reduction won’t just negatively affect the refugees they’re intended to serve, but may foster a sense of isolation and complacency among native-born Americans.

“Fewer resettlement offices means fewer opportunities for people to volunteer and work with refugees,” Nezer explained. “If fewer refugees come, and fewer Americans get to engage directly with refugees, that kind of starts a cycle where there’s less direct connection” with refugee populations.

“As fewer comes and fewer Americans get to have that relationship, then there’s less support for letting refugees in at all.”

There is much more in this story, but its getting way too long.

Read it all here, see that reporter Bixby, trying to make a case for bipartisan support for the program, tells us how angry REPUBLICANS in the House and Senate are at the President for not consulting them as the law stipulates.  See my post here on that.

These R’s are just a bunch of phony-baloneys who cared not one whit about past consultation requirements when numbers were large!

Many only care about one thing—cheap labor for their pals at global corporations and at the Chamber of Commerce!

 

***Here below are the nine federal refugee resettlement contractors.

You might be sick of seeing this list almost every day, but a friend once told me that people need to see something seven times before it completely sinks in, so it seems to me that 70, or even 700 isn’t too much!

And, besides I have new readers every day.

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!

From my most recent accounting, here.  However, please see that Nayla Rush at the Center for Immigration Studies has done an update of their income, as has James Simpson at the Capital Research Center!

With “public charge” rewrite, Administration building a legal wall to help slow migrant flow to America; however, refugees will still get welfare

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

President Donald Trump has many avenues to slow the immigration steam roller that is changing America by changing the people.

Making it harder for wannabe future ‘new Americans’ to stay, is to require that they won’t suck off the federal teat in the process of advancing toward a green card and future citizenship.

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Stephen Miller is at it again says Politico

But before you get excited, know that refugees and asylees (and a whole bunch of other categories of legal immigration) are exempt from a proposed rule change.

When the bill that became the Refugee Act of 1980 was debated in Congress, ol’ Teddy Kennedy promised that we weren’t simply bringing more impoverished people to America to place on welfare.  He lied!

I want to know why the supposed humanitarian NGOs (the contractors) presently being paid by us, the taxpayers, to take care of refugees can’t use their own money to feed and house the refugees they say they love.  After all, they claim that the refugees quickly find work and become self-sufficient!

Here is Politico which obviously is sending a message for Dems and Leftwingers to strongly oppose (protest!) the proposed rules they claim are straight from the evil brain of White House aide Stephen Miller. Never mind that controlling immigration was the primary reason Donald Trump was elected to sit in the Oval Office and Miller is one of the few who remember the promise!

The Leftwing media focus on Miller is a classic Saul Alinsky tactic.  I suspect he finds the attacks amusing.

Politico:

Immigrants may be denied green cards if they’ve received benefits

 

The Trump administration proposed expanding its pre-election crackdown on immigration by denying green cards to legal immigrants if they have received government assistance.

Under the new rule, which the Department of Homeland Security posted online Saturday, immigrants can be denied so-called “lawful permanent residency” if they’ve received certain government benefits — or if the government anticipates that they may do so in the future.

The measure represents the latest move by White House aide Stephen Miller to reduce drastically all immigration to the U.S., both legal and illegal, and reflects his strong conviction that doing so will improve congressional Republicans’ chances in the midterm elections. The benefit programs targeted include the the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (welfare), Medicaid, and Medicare Part D (prescription drug subsidies).

The regulation could force millions of low-income families to choose between government assistance and permanent settlement in the United States.

Advocates fear it could ultimately restrict children’s access to food and health care.
The move will affect mainly legal immigrants and their families, since undocumented immigrants are not eligible for most federal benefits.

[….]

The proposed regulation would provide a more robust enforcement mechanism for longstanding statutory boilerplate that bars immigrants “likely to become a public charge.”

[….]

Hans+von+Spakovsk
Trump’s fatal error in the end could be his failure to put people like Von Spakovsky in his administration so loyal aides like Miller would not be virtually alone in fighting the deep state.

Roughly one million people become lawful permanent residents each year — a generous allotment, according to Hans von Spakovsky, a senior fellow with the conservative Heritage Foundation.

“We can be choosy about who we allow into the country,” he said. “One of the primary factors ought to be ensuring that the legal immigrants who come in are people who can financially support themselves.”

Approximately one-third of the federal budget goes to health insurance subsidies and social safety net programs, according to the non-partisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities — an expenditure the Trump administration and Republicans seek to reduce.

[….]

A range of activists spent months preparing for the rollout of the proposed regulation and plan to wage an opposition campaign. The proposal will now be subject to a public comment period, an opportunity for opponents to mount an assault on the plan.

A coalition led by the National Immigration Law Center and the D.C.-based anti-poverty Center for Law and Social Policy will push for a wide range of businesses, organizations and government officials to submit comments.

Refugees, Asylees, Cuban/Haitians, Special Immigrant Visa holders, those here through the ridiculous ‘temporary protected status’ program, more! are all exempt!

The prospective regulation wouldn’t apply to all immigrants. Refugees and asylees are exempt, as are certain victims of domestic violence and children who qualify for “special immigrant juvenile status,” which is available to minors who were abused, neglected or abandoned by a parent.

Foreigners who apply for “temporary protected status” to remain in the U.S. after a natural disaster or armed conflict in their home countries will also be exempt, so long as they received a blanket waiver to absolve them of any public charge considerations.

See Jim Simpson’s chart on how many refugees and others have been approved as ‘new Americans’ in the last ten years and know that all of these will be exempt!***

simpson-table-1
It isn’t clear if the UAC ‘children’ will continue to receive welfare but I suspect they will.

 

Continue here if you wish.  Politico, through its long report, is helping the Left figure out who opposes the draft measure and offering a blueprint on how best to fight it including stalling it by overwhelming the system with thousands and thousands of comments.

***If you need more proof than what Politico says, here is a screenshot of a portion of the draft regulations exempting refugees and asylees.  This is from page 85 but more exemptions are on page 86,87,88, and 89!

 

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The list of exemptions goes on for four more pages!