Category: Reforms needed

Holy cow! Is the Trump Administration extending this fiscal year to December 31 for refugee admissions?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update: CWS didn’t have to wait for long.  Secretary of State Pompeo has announced a ceiling of 30,000 refugees for FY19. But, will the administration be ready to welcome those ‘new Americans’ in two weeks from today?  See the news here.

 

In what I thought was going to be another ho-hum whinny story about Church World Service, a Lancaster, PA refugee agency director dropped this bomb:

lancaster-sheila
Sheila Mastropietro

Mastropietro [Sheila Mastropietro, director of the CWS Lancaster office] said the CWS national office is being kept in the dark.They just found out this week that the fiscal year will be extended to Dec. 31, delaying the decision of who will be funded and leaving CWS “on pins and needles for an additional three months,” she said.

If you have been a regular student of Refugee Resettlement Watch, you know that the fiscal year ends on September 30th, and for decades September is the month when we learn how many refugees will be admitted in the following year and from where they will come.

And, surely you haven’t missed my many posts on the PR campaign the federal contractors*** have been promoting as they demand that Trump admit 75,000 refugees beginning on October 1.

I can only guess that if true, that there will be no announcement this month, it means there is an internal battle of ginormous proportions going on, or it could be a complex funding issue involving the whole federal government.

The story, thanks to Joanne for sending it!, is at LancsterOnline:

With funding at risk, Church World Service ‘on pins and needles’ about future of refugee program

As President Donald Trump took office in January 2017, the 30th year of Church World Service resettling refugees in the county, Lancaster city was deemed “America’s refugee capital” by BBC News for resettling 20 times the number of refugees per capita than the country as a whole.

The distinction led to a visit from Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai, who went on to promote Lancaster’s efforts on a national stage.

Now, in the 20 months since Trump’s travel ban, Church World Service has resettled about half as many refugees here as it did in the previous 20 months, according to data provided by CWS.

Screenshot (1253)
Mastropietro says, if Trump cuts the refugee funding, they will continue their advocacy (like this?) with other private and PUBLIC money!

The reporter continues with many paragraphs featuring personal refugee stories and about what President Trump is doing to the refugee program.  Then this:

Church World Service, headquartered in Elkhart, Indiana, is one of nine national organizations funded by the Department of State for refugee resettlement. Each of them is a large operation with multiple local offices spread throughout the country.

Indiana?

Actually, CWS still has it original headquarters at the famous 475 Riverside Dr. building in New York City, home to dozens of hard Left ‘religious’ groups, like the National Council of Churches, and other similar socialist organizations.  I’m guessing the lower level staffers work in Indiana to keep costs down.

But with fewer refugees making it to America’s doorstep, the Department of State’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration “expects to fund a smaller number of recipient agencies” in the next fiscal year, according to a notice provided by a State Department spokesperson.

How many fewer agencies — and what factors might lead to the decision — is unclear. Mastropietro said the CWS national office is being kept in the dark. They just found out this week that the fiscal year will be extended to Dec. 31, delaying the decision of who will be funded and leaving CWS “on pins and needles for an additional three months,” she said.

While stripping refugee resettlement funding may be a fatal blow for some of the nine agencies, Mastropietro said CWS in Lancaster will carry on even if resettlement — its largest program — goes away.

Carrying-on will be tough!

 

simpson table CWS
Church World Service is in column one at James Simpson’s incredible table of how many taxpayer dollars each resettlement contractor consumes. CWS is 71% government funded and received nearly a half a billion dollars since 2008 from taxpayers!    https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2018/09/16/capital-research-center-publishes-an-overview-of-the-us-refugee-admissions-program/

 

 Lancaster Online continues….

With other public [public of course means taxpayer dollars!–ed] and private funding avenues, CWS would continue operating programs such as legal immigration counseling, employment services and advocacy. And if it does lose the resettlement money, Mastropietro is convinced it will be a temporary, if difficult, setback.

And, she confirms what I have been saying!

“We’re just going to wait it out,” she said. “If anything happens, we’ll wait it out until the next president.”

More here.

Ambitious readers might like to learn more about refugees in Amish country.  See my complete archive on Lancaster by clicking here.

Do not become complacent!

If the Trump Administration only reduces numbers of refugees and funding for a few years nothing will change! 

A few of the smaller contractors may go belly-up, but it only will mean a greater monopoly for the surviving contractors like Church World Service.

Those contractors will be working to elect the next president, they will continue to lobby for more federal dollars and more refugees, and they will resume placing refugees quietly in to your unsuspecting towns and cities!

 

***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!

Capital Research Center publishes an overview of the US Refugee Admissions Program

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Jim Simpson

James Simpson has done an outstanding job of pulling together facts about the history of how the US came to be the top refugee resettlement country in the world. Hint: It all began with the UN!

And, then in this three-part series gives readers the facts about who we are bringing to America and how much it costs us—the US taxpayer.

He begins his serialized report this way:

Resettling Refugees: An International Agenda

 

Summary: A vast network of foundations, non-profits, government entities and political organizations have a vested interest in the continued growth of the resettlement of refugees in America. Because they receive billions of dollars in federal grant money, publicly-financed, tax-exempt organizations have significant incentives to support political candidates and parties that will keep these programs alive. These organizations need to be thoroughly audited and the current network of public/private immigrant advocacy and resettlement organizations needs to be completely overhauled. Resettling refugees should be a voluntary, genuinely charitable activity, removing all the perverse incentives government funding creates.

The refugee resettlement program is popular with many policymakers. It enjoys bipartisan support in Congress and state houses because it supplies low-wage, low skill labor that many big businesses crave, while enabling supporters to embrace “diversity” and thus avoid the Left’s favorite attacks and mischaracterizations: “bigot,” “racist,” “xenophobe,” “Islamophobe,” etc. This faux-moralizing on the Left stifles a necessary conversation our nation sorely needs. Meanwhile, the Left’s true motive is to import ever more people from third-world nations that are likely to become reliable Democrat voters once they achieve citizenship.

Under the Trump presidency, the United States’ refugee resettlement has been temporarily reduced, but by no means curtailed. A change in administration could resuscitate it overnight. There are many objectionable aspects of this program, not the least of which is finding resources to fund this enormous undertaking. The difficulty associated with assessing the true costs of the programs key to resettling refugees presents another obstacle to policymakers at every level of government.

Continue reading here for a history of the program.

Then here is Part II:

It is important for readers to know that although we most often talk about the actual Refugee admissions numbers, there are tens of thousands more considered ‘refugees’ by the US government for the purpose of providing federal dollars for their care as they become ‘New Americans.’

Resettling Refugees: Who’s Coming to America?

According to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS), refugees are:

[P]eople who have been persecuted or fear they will be persecuted on account of race, religion, nationality, and/or membership in a particular social group or political opinion.

This mirrors the U.N. definition established at the 1951 U.N. Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees. It is important to note here, however, that under these definitions, “individuals who have crossed an international border fleeing generalized violence are not considered refugees.” This includes large numbers of people who are regularly resettled anyway, for example some of the Syrians fleeing that country’s conflict, and most—if not all Somalis.

Those who meet the definition include:

~refugees (those seeking protection in the United States who are not already in the country),

~asylum seekers or asylees (those who apply for asylum after coming to the U.S.),

~Cuban/Haitian Entrants,

~Special Immigrant Visas (SIV) and

~trafficking Victims.

The Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) program is also administered by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, although UACs do not meet the definition of “refugee.”

Table I below provides up-to-date estimates for each category.

Get a load of these numbers!

 

Simpson table 1

The table shows that this category of legal entry to the US is a much bigger problem than the one we usually discuss on these pages which is the Refugee column.

Don’t miss the total admitted in the last full year of the Obama presidency—269,491!

But, see that the Trump Administration is presiding over the arrival of a huge number (higher than Obama’s welcome!) of Special Immigrant Visa holders from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Continue here.

And, last but not least! You really need to read the whole thing yourself, but prepare to be sick when you see how many millions of dollars are flowing out of the US Treasury to hundreds of non-profits who are in one way or another in the business of bringing in and then spreading refugees and other migrants around the US while lobbying for ever higher admissions numbers (aka paying clients!).

Part III is here. 

Resettling Refugees: Social and Economic Costs

Simpson begins with the usual nine federal contractors, but that is only the tip of the iceberg!

Federal Refugee Resettlement Grants

cws protest at WH 2
Think about this!  Earlier this year Church World Service and the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society helped organize this protest against the President. Combined, those two refugee contractors consumed $620 million taxpayer dollars in the last ten years.  Why are we paying for this? https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2018/01/28/church-world-service-and-hias-join-cair-to-protest-at-white-house/

The nine VOLAGs, their many affiliates, and unaccompanied alien children contractors all receive funding from the federal government to resettle the various refugee categories. As mentioned earlier, unaccompanied alien children do not meet the definition of “refugee,” however their resettlement is managed through the Office of Refugee Resettlement and they are included when calculating the total cost of the overall program.

Most funding comes in the form of grants. Prime awards are grants directly from the federal government to the state or the contractor. Sub-awards are those given to contractors by other contractors or state governments that received the prime grant. They are left out to avoid double counting. Table III below enumerates prime grants to VOLAGs and unaccompanied alien children contractors for refugee resettlement and related programs. Some of the VOLAGs, for example the Ethiopian Community Development Council, focus almost entirely on refugee resettlement. Others, like the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, International Rescue Committee, and World Relief Corporation of the National Association of Evangelicals, have a broader mission.

Of the latter, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is the largest. As Table III shows, in FY 2018 USCCB received $47.7 million for resettlement purposes. However, USCCB participates in other federal grant programs and that year received a total of $363.9 million from the federal government.

Here is a chart you need to keep handy. Prepare to be sick!

Billions of dollars have flowed to the refugee contractors in the last ten years alone!

 

Simpson table 2

 

The nine major contractors (VOLAGS) that monopolize the US Refugee Admissions Program are these:

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

Thanks to Jim Simpson for letting us know just how much each is being paid from the US Treasury!

Please, please take time to read the rest of Part III, it is stunning the amount of your money being distributed to non-profits who then act as political agitation groups!

And, these dollars do not include the cost of welfare, education, medical care, housing, etc. that you pay for!

Tell the White House to reform the whole program and begin by getting rid of middlemen federal contractors!

This is no way to run a government!

Colorado: Meatpacker agrees to pay Somalis $1.5 million in prayer break dispute

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I have no sympathy for giant globalist meatpackers because they brought this on themselves when they actively sought out (with the help of federal refugee contractors like Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service) Somali refugee workers.

However, what we increasingly see is an accommodation of Islamic religious practices in the workplace with this settlement and others like it.  CAIR is very happy!

Big Meat! Changing America, one meatpacking town at a time!

 

 

Ft. Morgan Somalis Islamic center
Ft. Morgan has a mosque now.    https://www.denverpost.com/2016/03/19/somalis-struggle-to-make-new-home-in-colorado/

 

From the Greeley Tribune:

DENVER — A big U.S. meatpacker has agreed to pay $1.5 million to 138 Somali-American Muslim workers who were fired from their jobs at a Colorado plant after they were refused prayer breaks, a federal anti-discrimination agency said Friday.

Cargill Meat Solutions, a division of Minnesota-based agribusiness company Cargill Corp., also agreed to train managers and hourly workers in accommodating Muslim employees’ prayer breaks at its Fort Morgan beef processing plant, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said.

Wichita, Kansas-based Cargill denies wrongdoing but agreed to settle to avoid further litigation, the federal agency said. The dispute dates back to the firings of the workers in late 2016 after management rescinded policies allowing Muslim employees to take short breaks for prayer.

In 2017, the agency found that the workers had been harassed and discriminated against for protesting the unannounced policy change that denied them opportunities for obligatory prayer. Hundreds of Somali-Americans work at the plant in Fort Morgan, about 50 miles southeast of Greeley.

The Teamsters union also agreed to pay them, an admission that they too were not happy with the Somali workers and their religious demands.

In a related announcement, a Teamsters union local that was supposed to represent the workers will pay them $153,000 to settle discrimination complaints.

The federal agency said it determined that Teamsters Local Union No. 455, based in Denver and in Fort Morgan, failed to advocate for the Muslim workers in their dispute with Cargill and even harassed them because of their race, religion and national origin. The workers were dues-paying union members.

Union officials denied wrongdoing, but the local unit agreed to pay the workers, undergo training in handling grievances, and publicize employee rights to be free of discrimination based on race or national origin.

[….]

Like other U.S. firms that employ Muslim line workers at meatpacking and processing plants, Cargill managers must balance religious accommodations with demands of processing meat in an operation that frequently runs 24 hours.

Managing possible disruptions not only slow production but can create safety issues for line workers.

Here comes CAIR:

The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim advocacy group, and Qusair Mohamedbhai, a Denver attorney who represented the workers praised the settlement.

Much more here.

See my Fort Morgan file here.  I visited that small city on my tour of midwestern and western towns and cities disrupted by an influx of refugee workers. I spoke with residents who told me that at one time Cargill paid very good wages, but then discovered the ‘benefits’ of immigrants and refugees who would work for less.

You might want to search RRW for the word ‘meatpackers’ because I have dozens and dozens of posts going back ten years about how BIG MEAT is changing America.

Here is just one post you should see. It isn’t just meatpackers, but others in the food industry, the hospitality industry and other manufacturing companies that drive the US Refugee Admissions Program.

This post is filed in my category ‘Stealth jihad’ for obvious reasons.

How resettlement contractors get federal bucks (a series)

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

LOL! I hope I can stick with doing a series because juicy fresh news is so much more fun to write about. But here goes….

Money machine

I’m sure many of you wonder how the resettlement contractors, the nine*** I always mention, end up with millions and millions of taxpayer dollars when they are paid by the head to resettle refugees.

You have probably noticed that the per head payment doesn’t seem to match up with the millions each get from the US Treasury.

Well, let me tell you, that per head payment from the US State Department is only half of the story!  The great variety of lucrative grants they are eligible for from the Office of Refugee Resettlement in the Department of Health and Human Services supply the rest!

(I sure hope the Trump Administration is squeezing them financially at HHS!)

It’s been years (in some cases) since I talked about the grants available to contractors for administering such things as special federally matched savings accounts, planting community gardens, educating refugees about how to have healthy marriages, or to promote ethnically appropriate daycare for Somalis and others.

Today I want to talk about the vaguely described grant program called “PREFERRED COMMUNITIES” which I see as just an excuse, with no legal basis, to send the big nine more of your money!

When you visit ORR’s website today you get this very cursory description of what it means to get a Preferred Community Grant:

Since the early 1990s, preferred communities have provided resettlement services to newly arriving refugees. Preferred communities allow ample opportunities for early employment and sustained economic independence. In addition, they support special needs populations.

Two types of preferred communities programs are available:

~Programs that receive a minimum of 100 new refugees annually.

~Programs that receive a proposed number of cases that will need intensive case management. These programs require a history of qualifications and experience in serving special needs cases.

By the way, only the usual gang of nine*** are eligible to apply. 

To receive your millions through a Preferred Communities grant a contractor must say they are using the money to resettle challenging and needy cases in certain cities. We are no longer told which cities are PREFERRED. 

Again, there is nothing in refugee law requiring a grant like this. The grant is simply an excuse to send more of your money to the contractors!

Go here to see how many millions were awarded for the Preferred Communities just as Obama was headed out the door in September 2016. (There are no newer grants posted? Has Trump cut them off or is the ORR not publishing them?).

Does anyone audit these grants?

Which cities?

Screenshot (1432)

But, here is the head-scratcher for me.  Up until Fiscal Year 2013 we could learn a lot more about who was getting the extra millions and why.

Back in 2013, we were also told which cities were PREFERRED! 

What follows are sections from the FY13 ORR Annual Report to Congress. That is the last year they published (in a report to Congress) a list of contractors identifying cities as PREFERRED.

See if your city is a PREFERRED city in which to place challenging cases requiring taxpayers to pony-up even more money for the contractors!

Screenshot (1441)

Screenshot (1442)

Screenshot (1436)

Screenshot (1435)
Just fyi, Domestic and Foreign Mission Society is another name for Episcopal Migration Ministries.  One more way of making it hard to follow the money!

 

Screenshot (1434)

Screenshot (1433)

 

I sure hope the Trump Administration is getting these grants and contracts under control!

 

***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!

 

Huuuge gathering at White House yesterday to tell the President to admit 75,000 third worlders to US in coming year

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Huge—Not!

Religion News Service posted this article yesterday and a tweet from refugee contractor Church World Service (one of nine)*** about the rally at the White House.

The truth is, as much as they want you to believe it, there is no major up-swelling of demand for more refugees to be distributed around the country right now.

The big rally at the White House!  

This is it?

 

Screenshot (1431)_LI
Twenty two hours after tweeting this, CWS has 3 retweets and 7 likes!

 

Here is a bit of the story:

People of faith urge Trump to admit more refugees

 

(RNS) — With a decision looming on how many refugees to admit into the country, and rumors swirling that the number could drop dramatically from this year’s historic low, people of faith are coming together to ask the Trump administration to instead allow tens of thousands more to enter the United States.

Patrick Vaughn
My question for pastor Vaughn is: If the church has abundant resources, why are the taxpayers on the hook for more than a billion dollars a year for a refugee program?

Representatives of some of the largest Protestant denominations in the country — including the General Board of Church and Society of the United Methodist Church, the United Church of Christ, the Presbyterian Church (USA) and the Episcopal Church — were planning to gather outside the White House on Wednesday (Sept. 12) to press President Trump to raise the number of refugees admitted in the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1 to 75,000 people.

If you belong to one of those Protestant denominations, it is time to speak up!  Ask what they are doing in your name!

RNS continues…..

“I just believe the church has abundant resources….said Patrick Vaughn, assistant pastor of Christ Church East Bay in Oakland, Calif.

Next we hear about the BIG letter to the President.  I told you about it here.  Please go to my post and see if your local religious leaders signed on.

And more than 750 faith-based organizations and national and local leaders signed on to another letter, dated Aug. 21, decrying the low number of refugees admitted this year and urging an increase for the next.

“Our collective scriptural mandate and our nation’s history and capabilities as a world leader demand no less,” according to the letter.

Your “scriptural mandate” is not the government’s responsibility. Your mandate was to help the poor with your own money, not by stealing from some (outside of your collective!) and giving it to your favored people!

Read the remainder of the story here if you want to!

 

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

You might be sick of seeing this list almost every day (it’s been 3 whole days since I last posted the list!), 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!