Just when I thought I knew all the ways in which the federal refugee resettlement contractors were milking taxpayers, along comes ‘Switchboard.’
If the millions of dollars we dole out to nine refugee contractors isn’t enough, we, US taxpayers, are funding what is for all intents and purposes a federally funded Leftwing community organizing operation!
Continue reading!
This story’s headline at WickedLocal(wth?) caught my eye.
Chelmsford mosque hosts forum on immigration, refugee issues Billerica leader speaks
Gee, what kind of forum was a Massachusetts mosque holding I wondered.
Here are a few snips from the beginning of the news account:
A forum held Nov. 14 at the Islamic Society of Greater Lowell mosque explored issues of immigration and refugees — including changes, challenges, and uncertainties.
The forum was sponsored by BRIDGES — the acronym for Building Respect in Diverse Groups to Enhance Sensitivity.
BRIDGES represents a collaborative effort of state, federal and local government agencies.
Participants included religious leaders, law enforcement officials, a representative from U.S. Rep. Laurie Trahan of the 3rd Congressional District.
[….]
BRIDGES formed after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, explained Fatema Esmail, of the Anjuman-e-Ezzi Masjid in Billerica — a mosque that serves the area’s Dawood Bohra, a movement within Shi’a Islam.
Esmail said the organization began with a mission — “to start a better dialogue for understanding, between community leaders and government officials.”
Activities have included cultural sensitivity trainings for personnel at Logan Airport, and with police departments across the state, and across New England.
We will have to have a look at BRIDGES in the future, but here is what I was most interested in…
The federal Office of Refugee Resettlement sent a representative?
The federal Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) (this is Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services) is sending spokesmen out to forums like this and suggesting that everything should be fine and dandy (for more refugee arrivals) in New England as governors there would want more refugees.
But, Jason Crislip, “representing the ORR”, doesn’t work for ORR.
He works for David Milibandat the International Rescue Committee that has apparently recently created another avenue, called Switchboard,to siphon off more of your tax dollars!
These Leftist Open Borders groups are masters of deception as they create new groups, which is all fine and dandy as long as we aren’t paying for it!
Jason Crislip, of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, said the Trump administration has proposed reduction of refugee resettlements in the current fiscal year from 30,000 to 18,000. [Crislip is not on the staff of the Office of Refugee Resettlement!—ed]
ORR surrogate Jason Crislip
In addition, Crislip said a presidential executive order, issued Sept. 26, aims to provide state and local consent for the resettlement of refugees.
Not to worry assures Crislip, your New England governors will be on board with MORE refugees.
Governors of New England states have generally indicated support for local consent, said Crislip, who said, “This is a good thing for the refugee program in New England.”
The resettlement program will continue as normally until June 1, which [sic] expected changes take effect, Crislip said. Crislip said the Department of State has begun releasing some information to illuminate the changes.
June 1? What happens then? The Deep staters have their pipelines well established, and those of us whose communities will be changed by what they decide in Washington, DC will be the last to know!
I’m going to be paying close attention to Switchboard which is fully funded by you—the taxpayers through a $ 1.2 million grant from the Office of Refugee Resettlement.
Dear Stephen Miller, if you read RRW, check out this latest federal boodle going to community organizers working against the President!
The IRC received $1,194,063 through competitive funding through the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Grant # 90RB0052. The project will be financed with 100% of Federal funds and 0% by non-governmental sources.The contents of this website are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families.
Just think about that!
WE supply the funding and Open Borders agitators do what they want (in our name!).
Here is a recent story from their blog (a blog that you pay for!).
The Leftwing propaganda machine runs on stories, stories to tug on your emotions. We need to be doing more of that with stories of our own like those I report at ‘Frauds, Crooks and Criminals!’ for free!
When I caught this news at the Minneapolis Star Tribune about a program for lonely senior refugees, not refugees who came decades ago and grew old here, but senior citizens we admit through the US Refugee Admissions Program, it reminded me to tell you how your tax dollars are used.
Twice a month, elders from the area’s East African community gather here for a shared halal meal and a program that can range from citizenship to weaving to winter preparedness. [I’ll bet the emphasis is on citizenship and registering to vote!—ed]
The goal is to help break the social isolation experienced by members of the older immigrant population, many of whom speak little English and stay home to care for grandchildren while younger adults in the family are at work.
[….]
About 20 people were on hand last week, including Abdi Matan, who helped organize the program through the nonprofit Horn of Africa Aid and Rehabilitation Action Network. Matan came to St. Peter six years ago after working in Somalia for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. He also worked for the U.N. in refugee camps in Somalia and Kenya.
“Minnesota is the next home for Somalis,” he said with a big grin. “We have really enjoyed this program for socialization.”
Somali elders, he said, often have a hard time adjusting to their new home.
[….]
Mohamed Omar Ali, 73, was a herdsman in Somalia. He arrived in St. Peter about five years ago. [Arrived in the US at age 68, sure will be a real asset to the US workforce which is the usual excuse for the program in the first place!—ed]
Agencies paying for this program are all taxpayer-funded including of course Lutheran Social Service of MN!
Mahoney [Leah Mahoney, Minnesota Department of Health] said she believes this is the first program of its kind in rural Minnesota and hopes that other communities with East African populations will take notice. Support for the program has come from the state Health Department, as well as the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Lutheran Social Service of Minnesota, the city of St. Peter and the Minnesota River Area Agency on Aging.
First, senior citizens admitted as refugees are eligible for SSI (Supplemental Security Income) from Social Security. Read about it here.
However, in addition to individual benefits, states that welcome “elder” refugees receive help directly from the federal treasury (from you again) to help them cope with needy senior citizen refugees.
It would take a lot of time to go through the entire list of over a hundred countries from which we receive refugees to get to the total. But here are a few numbers from the Refugee Processing Center.
In the last five years we admitted 748 seniors (over 65 years old) from Bhutan, Burma 640 seniors, DR Congo 777, and Somalia 273.
Now get a load of this!
States are given federal money to help take care of refugees aged 60 and older.
Do a little math and see how much the elder refugees are costing taxpayers in just this one portion of the welfare services available to them.
The FY 2020 allocations to states and replacement designees are based on the number of ORR-eligible individuals aged 60 or older who arrived and were served in FY 2018, as reported in the ORR Refugee Arrivals Data System (RADS).
The chart below documents the number of eligible individuals served in each state in FY 2018 and the corresponding funding allocations for the SOR program for FY 2020.
Here is just a bit of the chart in a screenshot. But be sure to open the chart and see the whole list! It gets worse. I wondered if this is sweetener for many states? New Hampshire 4 refugees $75,000 from the feds!
This is the kind of handout you have been supplying through your tax dollars for years and possibly decades!
The New York Timestreats us to an unnecessarily lengthy piece about the internal political machinations inside the US Catholic Church.
Archbishop Gomez the NYT says, “…created wallet-size cards for undocumented immigrants with instructions for what to do if they are approached by immigration officers.” Did they pay for those on the taxpayers’ dime?
It seems there is a major split—do they put the immigration issue above or below their anti-abortion stance? Some do, some don’t.
Do I care about their internal politics as they try to figure out how political they have been and how political they will be going forward?
No!
The only thing that troubles me about their latest political soul-searching and their choice of a Hispanic head honcho for the US Bishops is one thing!
We taxpayers are paying for their religious ‘good works.’
We pay so they can beat their chests and tell the world they care about the poor and the downtrodden (as long as those poor people are immigrants to this cold-hearted Trump-America).
Here is the story, you can read it yourself remembering that you are a primary (involuntary!) funder of their “migration” operation (h/t: Julia):
U.S. Catholic Bishops Elect Hispanic Immigrant as Leader
Not one single word about the $ Millions the Bishops suck out of the US Treasury every year!
Does the NYT even know about it, or is the venerable paper keeping that information from you?
In any case, no mention, so therefore no questions about how that money dictates their position on government policy.
And, no questions about whether we should be paying for their upkeep.
One last thing: The NYT says that fewer Hispanics are now Catholics, hmmm!
As you should all know by now, nine federal refugee contractors including the US Conference of Catholic Bishops receive a large chunk of their income from you, the US taxpayer, based on the number of refugees they place in your towns and cities.
So it is no surprise that their revenue is dropping as the President reduces the number of refugees being ‘welcomed’ to America by the UN and the US State Department.
In a story about the Bishops upcoming budget year at theNational Catholic Register (h/t Joanne) we learn that the biggest drop in funding comes from their so-called Migration and Refugee Services Office budget.
Bishops OK 2020 budget; numbers inconclusive for 2021 assessment hike
BALTIMORE — The U.S. bishops voted to approve the budget for 2020 for their conference headquarters in Washington but did not register sufficient numbers to determine passage of a proposed 3% increase in the diocesan assessment for 2021.
Both votes took place Nov. 11, the first day of their Nov. 11-13 fall general assembly in Baltimore.
The bishops approved a budget nearing $22.69 million for next year.*** Budget approval required a majority of bishops present and voting. The vote was 211-11, with one abstention.
Archbishop Dennis Schnurr of Cincinnati
The proposed 2020 budget projects a “marginal” surplus of $49,261, about 2% of the total, according to Archbishop Dennis Schnurr of Cincinnati, treasurer of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
The figures include increases of 3.6% for policy and advocacy, 3.5% for the administrative offices, 2.7% for the general secretariat, 1.2% for the bishops’ conference staff house in Washington, and 0.4% for pastoral ministries.
The biggest budget decreases come within the Migration and Refugee Services office, which relies on federal grants for much of its revenue.
MRS operations “continue to be impacted by the very dynamic changes in the federal immigration and refugee policies and programs,” Schnurr said in a message sent to bishops prior to the meeting.
MRS administration is being cut $6.6 million “due primarily to the reduction in refugee arrivals which directly impacts pass-through funding to the dioceses for local administration and direct assistance to clients,” Schnurr said. [LOL! pass-through funding after a huge slice is taken out for salaries!—ed]
MRS’ resettlement services office is being scaled back by $2.6 million “largely due to the closure of the Cuban-Haitian program by the end of 2019,” he added. MRS’ executive office is cutting its budget $178,00 for 2020, and its special programs office will be down $53,000 from 2019 levels.
Overall the numbers of refugees admitted to the country who are helped by MRS “continue to track downward,” Schnurr told his fellow bishops.
Rarely do we see reports on the number of refugees any of the nine contractors resettled.
In fiscal year 2016, MRS settled about 4,200 refugees. In 2017, the number swelled to 7,800 refugees, but last year MRS resettled 6,350. And as of Sept 30 of this year, the number of refugees settled was 4,350.
Interesting that in 2016 the Bishops had a smaller share (only 5%) of the incoming refugees than they do now (14%). It can only mean that as the overall number of refugees drop, the Bishops are getting a bigger cut. I wonder why that is?
Or, it could mean the Catholic Bishops received a lot more federal money because they also contracted to take care of the mushrooming numbers of ‘Unaccompanied Alien Children,’ funding for which comes under the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement.
“Staff remains vigilant and where possible, proactive” in pushing for higher federal intake numbers, he said.
You can bet they are proactive and lobbying for more refugee paying clients and ultimately Democrat voters!
***But, here is what I don’t get. The Bishops reported a substantially higher income in 2018. Yes, they had more paying clients, but did they have so many fewer last year and expect even less in the coming year that their budget dropped by half from 2018?
That would be a great headline—-Under TrumpCatholicBishops lose at least $20 million in two years!
Maybe someone with accounting experience can jump in and explain—could they have lost half of their federal money in just two years?
BTW, in 2018 93% of their Migration Program was funded by US taxpayers!
From their consolidated annual reporttheir Migration and Refugee Services Program for calendar year 2018 shows over $48 million from the feds. So what I want to know is if their budget for the coming year will be only $22 million (as reported above) that indicates a enormous drop in federal funding over two years. Again, could that be true?
Only a little over $3 million was raised from private charitable giving by parishioners! page 38
Doing well by doing good!
Check out that 2018 financial report and notice that over $8 million went to SALARIES to compensate for their good works to benefit refugees. So much for ‘religious’ charities!
See myprevious post this morningabout the numbers of refugees admitted over the last ten years. I needed some of that data to figure what percentage of incoming refugee clients the Bishops are getting—I’m guessing they are getting the biggest chunk of the flow into your towns and cities.
Editor’s note: Concerned about growing assumptions that the recent Trump Executive Order will solve the problem of no local or state say about refugee admissions, a long-time observer of the program with legal expertise, David James, has explained for us that the EO does not do what it purports to do.
Although grateful that the President has signaled his concern for a major flaw in the program, we must set the record straight.
For new readers, VOLAGs (short for Voluntary Agencies), is the refugee industry title by which the federal refugee contractors refer to themselves.
(Emphasis below is mine)
Decisions made by federal agencies and the VOLAGs (voluntary agencies) they pay, about where to place arriving refugees, along with secondary migration, have created Minneapolis’ “Little Mogadishu”, Nashville’s “Little Kurdistan” and Ft. Wayne’s “Little Burma” to name just a few of the refugee ethnocentric enclaves.
While the EO suggests that the federal government will not resettle refugees in communities unless both the state and local governments consent, that may not be what happens at the end of the day.
Putting secondary migration aside, Section 2(b) of the EO specifically preserves the authority of the three agencies which administer the refugee resettlement program (State, HHS and DHS), to override any non-consent to refugee placement by either the state and/or local government.
With the exception of the lowered cap of 18,000, the EO is more a restatement of consultation requirements with state and local governments which are already in statute and regulation. Not only is the concept of “consultation” nowhere defined, but the outcomes of any consultation are not binding on federal agency decisions on refugee placement. And the EO doesn’t make any non-consent binding either.
The U.S. Code sections referenced in the EO mean that non-consent for resettlement won’t stop family reunification or the participation by the VOLAG federal contractors in deciding where refugees are placed.
VOLAGs whose operations are almost wholly dependent on the flow of federal dollars, are paid for each refugee they resettle. As noted in a 2012 GAO report, local VOLAG “affiliate funding is based on the number of refugees they serve, so affiliates have an incentive to maintain or increase the number of refugees they resettle each year rather than allowing the number to decrease.”
Last fiscal year when the refugee admission cap was lowered to 30,000, the State Department managed to fund all nine national resettlement contractors. Admittedly, the lowered ceiling of 18,000 for FY20 may prove challenging for some in the resettlement contractor industry to remain viable.
However, as Ann Corcoran reminds us, the refugee cap has not included other categories of entrants such as the Special Immigrant Visa holders from Iraq and Afghanistan who receive the same access to public benefits, such as state Medicaid programs, as refugees. The same goes for any successful asylum petition.
And once on the ground, refugees can and do go anywhere they want, nullifying any state and local non-consent per the EO.
Seeing one more opportunity (the announcement of the EO) to take a whack at the President, PA Gov. Tom Wolf (D) says Pennsylvania welcomes refugees. Was there any consultation? Did concerned citizens of PA get to weigh-in before the Governor shot off a letter? NO! PA borders West Virginia (a state that gets few refugees). Anything to stop refugees from arriving in PA and immediately moving to WV? NO! https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/466091-pennsylvania-governor-tells-trump-his-state-will-keep-welcoming-refugees
Governors in Oregon and Pennsylvania have already issued consent to receive refugees and New Jersey’s governor has announced the state’s intention to get back into the resettlement program.
While some refugee arrivals may stay put at their initial resettlement site, for others, consenting states will be nothing more than ports of entry for movement to non-consenting states and local communities.
The EO does not directly address the status of states which previously withdrew from the resettlement program for purposes of non-consent. It’s possible that this question will be answered by the “process” to be developed by the State Department and HHS as required by the EO.
States like Tennessee which withdrew from the refugee program over 10 years ago, have since had their state refugee program administered by an ORR (U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement) selected NGO which just happens to have its own federally contracted refugee resettlement program.
When the Refugee Act was passed in 1980, Congress authorized reimbursing states 100% for three full years of the state cost of providing Medicaid for each refugee brought to a state by a federal contractor.Sen. Ted Kennedy, the chief sponsor of the Refugee Act was pushing for four years of refugee support as opposed to the House proposed two years of support:
“[i]n my judgment, it is essential that we continue to receive the full support of State governments for our refugee programs; I believe that we would jeopardize that support and cooperation if we were to transfer the resettlement burden to the States after the refugees have been in this country for only 2 short years.”
The House and Senate subsequently agreed to three years of reimbursement to states.
Feds shift cost to the states
Five years into the program, due to cuts in federal spending for refugee assistance, ORR began to reduce the three years of authorized reimbursement to states and by 1991, eliminated it altogether. Three years later in 1994, the federal regulation permitting a state to withdraw from the program and be replaced by an ORR state replacement designee, was added.
Beginning in 1990, various federal reports have admitted to shifting costs associated with the refugee program to state and local governments. State governments continue to incur these costs, even after withdrawing from the federal refugee program because federal contractors are enabled by ORR to continue initial resettlement in these states.
It remains to be seen whether these ORR designated state replacements which operate independently of the state government, will also have authority to consent for the state per the consent process required by the EO.
Tennessee has sued the federal government because of its Constitutionally impermissible taking of state funds for the federal refugee program by virtue of the cost shifting. The admissions to shifting federal program costs to states stand in stark contrast to the claims of the federally funded and financially dependent contractors that the program is “100% paid for by the federal government.”
President Trump’s EO fails to address the multiple layers of dysfunction in the resettlement program and Constitutionally suspect policies. Nor is there any reason to think that Congress will find its way to straightening out the mess they helped to create and continue to foster.
Endnote: It is vitally important that you send this detailed analysis to everyone you know. We can support this President while at the same time pointing out where he might be going wrong on an issue that many of us believe is paramount to putting America First!
Mark Krikorian at the Center for Immigration Studiesaddressed many of our concerns about the EO in his piece at National Review yesterday, see it here.
