Category: Refugee Resettlement Program in Maryland

Baltimore: Lutheran contractor prays in ritzy neighborhood to demonstrate how Maryland welcomes the illegal children

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Yeah sure…

Linda Hartke, CEO of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, led a prayer vigil for the “chiiildruunn” in their own swanky back yard—-the Inner Harbor of Baltimore—yesterday.   The multi-million dollar federal refugee contractor has its headquarters there.

Gee, why weren’t the “faith leaders” parading and praying through Baltimore’s seedy side?

Gotta keep up their real estate holdings! The Lutheran Center (LIRS headquarters) is a six-story structure constructed in 1999 on property owned by Baltimore’s historic Christ Lutheran Church. The building is located near Baltimore’s Inner Harbor in the historic Federal Hill neighborhood, a charming area rich with history and an eclectic array of eateries and shopping venues.

And, of course, the lazy Associated Press (and other major media) never mention a word that Hartke and crew are being paid from the US Treasury to do their community organizing.

Sorry to our long-time readers who have heard my rant for the umpteenth time.

See Lutherans again with Christian charity claptrap!

We are paying for their public relations campaign! 97% of their funding comes from taxpayers while they pretend that what they do is out of the goodness of their Christian hearts!

Hartke is paid over $200,000 a year to do her prayer vigil march!

Here is their latest phony-baloney public relations ploy.  They only had to walk a short distance from their office building (that you help pay for too!).

This is the AP story that we saw in the San Francisco Chronicle (emphasis is mine):

BALTIMORE (AP) — Scores of Baltimore-area religious leaders held an interfaith prayer vigil for unaccompanied children who arrived in Maryland after fleeing violence in their home countries.

Dozens of religious leaders and supporters marched along Baltimore’s Inner Harbor on Wednesday to draw attention to the influx of immigrant children into the United States, and specifically into Maryland and Baltimore. In the first seven months of 2014, 2,205 unaccompanied immigrant children have settled in Maryland. Most of those children have been reunited with family members or placed in the homes of sponsors.

[….]

Linda Hartke, president and CEO of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service and one of the rally’s organizers, said the march and prayer vigil were designed to send a message that the city is welcoming of refugees and immigrants.

So why weren’t they marching in West Baltimore—that would be a real test of how “welcoming” the city might be! Why aren’t these people worthy of the Lutherans’ prayers? They have dreams and aspirations too!

“Today’s gathering is an important sign of support from the people of Baltimore that says this is a city and a state that’s welcoming of refugee kids, of people who flee violence, of people who have dreams and aspirations for their future, for their well-being, and to be reunited with their family members.”

The Lutherans are praying as well for Marylanders to take the “children” into their homes.

Now this next part is such a joke (if this weren’t so serious an issue). 

Governor wannabe-President Martin O’Malley met with “faith leaders” on Monday to plan for the children.

I would bet a buck that every “faith leader” in the meeting was on salary to be there and had a financial interest, as a federal contractor, in the ‘unaccompanied alien children’ coming to the state.  But, surely no reporter even thought to inquire.

The prayer vigil comes just two days after Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley met with religious leaders in the state’s capital to discuss strategies for sheltering the children in Maryland. Catholic Charities [also a federal contractor—ed] has proposed utilizing one of its Timonium facilities that has been used to house children with severe behavioral problems as a shelter for immigrant children. The facility can house 50 children at a time.

All of our coverage of the ‘unaccompanied minors’ border invasion may be found by clicking here.

Do you have a Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIRS) subcontractor near you?  Go here to find out. Note that business is booming under Obama and LIRS is in the process of hiring a second Washington lobbyist, here.

And, as 2016 approaches, just know that Martin O’Malley has done everything he could as governor of Maryland to help the anti-borders activists “welcome” more immigrants of all stripes (legal and illegal) into Maryland.  I guess Maryland’s own poor minority people aren’t cool enough for O’Malley and the “faith leaders.”

George Soros wants Baltimore to be more “welcoming” towards refugees

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I don’t have time to post at RRW today, but I did write about refugees at my other blog—Potomac Tea Party Report.  The post is about Soros’ Open Society Foundation chastising Marylanders about not being “welcoming” toward refugees.  The post is a basic primer for Tea Party readers who don’t follow the daily ins and outs of the refugee industry, but you might find it informative.

Tomorrow an update on the Somali who murdered 4 in North Dakota and a “diversity is strength” pow-wow about Muslim inclusion hosted by the State Department.   And, there is some news on Rohingya too.

Bhutanese refugees shot in Baltimore, one dead

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

It was only two days ago we told you that a young Bhutanese (Nepalese) woman is missing in Prince George’s County,* MD when news comes that two refugees were shot in Baltimore and one died (so far).  The article is not accurate on how many Bhutanese have been resettled in the US to date (the number resettled so far in the US is closer to 42,000, here.  Last week the UN celebrated the 50,000th Bhutanese to leave camps for the West).

From the Baltimore Sun:

Two Bhutanese refugees were shot, one of them fatally, in an apparent robbery in Northeast Baltimore, one of two double-shootings investigated by Baltimore police Tuesday night.

Big Bahadur Gurung, 20, had immigrated here from Nepal two months ago, after being given sanctuary following years of persecution in his home country, said Holly Leon-Lierman, the outreach manager for the International Rescue Committee, which helps refugees assimilate.  [He was likely not persecuted in Bhutan or in Nepal because someone as young as Gurung most likely grew up in the camps in Nepal since they have been there for two decades.—ed]

“He came here seeking freedom and safety,” Leon-Lierman said. “These are people who were persecuted for a long time, and it really makes this attack all the more tragic.”

The incident is the latest in a series of crimes that have sparked concern for members of Baltimore’s Nepalese and Bhutanese community, which officials say is centered in Northeast Baltimore’s Frankford neighborhood and has been growing in recent years.

Officers were called to the Parkside Gardens apartments in the 5200 block of Bowleys Lane at 10:12 p.m. for a report of a double shooting, and found two men suffering from gunshot injuries. A 17-year-old male, also an immigrant who arrived here last year, was shot multiple times in the torso and taken to an area hospital in critical condition.

Gurung, of the 4900 block of Gunther Ave., was shot in the chest and was pronounced dead.

Bhutan is a tiny kingdom in South Asia located at the eastern end of the Himalayas. For years, thousands of Bhutanese of Nepali descent have been fleeing the country, alleging ethnic and political repression, and were stranded in Nepalese refugee camps.

In 2007, the United States announced it would offer sanctuary to up to 60,000 refugees, with Ellen Sauerbrey, then the director of the State Department’s refugee division and a former Republican state legislator from Maryland, playing a key role. More than 30,000 refugees have settled in the United States since then, one of the largest refugee groups in recent years, according to news reports. More than 700 have settled in Baltimore.

The Bhutanese are mostly Hindu and a twenty year old like the young man murdered in Baltimore possibly lived his entire life in the security of a United Nations Refugee Camp in Nepal sheltered from the crime that plagues cities like Baltimore.   I’m sure they make an easy target for inner-city thugs.

But like other immigrant populations, they have encountered challenges in their new home. The IRC has been working with police and city officials over concerns about robberies and violence, with advocates and community leaders organizing meetings.

Frances Tinsley, the IRC’s director since April, said the crimes are isolated and there is no evidence that Bhutanese refugees have been targeted, and she said the group’s work is largely proactive.

“Baltimore has been an accepting community, but it is also an urban city and we have to do the best we can to make sure these newcomers feel safe,” Tinsley said.

For new readers, it’s the same old story—resettlement agencies imagine a neighborhood is “welcoming” and place naive newcomers into a multicultural mix that is anything but welcoming (or accepting!).   But, bottom line, it’s all about the bucks—apartments are cheaper—so that’s where these agencies, even rich ones like the IRC, place refugees!

I just typed ‘Bhutanese murdered’ into the search function here at RRW and up came this archive of all the problems the Bhutanese are experiencing—others murdered, one killed by an abortion doctor, inner city beatings, suicides, and the list goes on.

* No word that I’ve seen so far on her whereabouts.

Addendum:  Maryland has resettled a total of 32,986 refugees through 2008 (check out the appendix of the 2008 Annual Report to Congress, here).

Head Start and some funny money business makes the news….

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

….but not too much news.   That theme is the gist of this piece at Big Government by Robert Bluey a couple of days ago.   An undercover investigation has unearthed proof of major scams on-going with the program and Bluey argues that this should be as big news as the ACORN scandal has been.

Arguably, the Head Start scandal deserved front-page headlines on newspapers across America last week. Outrage over ACORN centered on the group’s taxpayer funding. The total amount of federal funds that flowed to ACORN was about $53 million dating to 1994.

Head Start, a Great Society program created in 1965 for low-income children, received $9 billion — yes, billion — in appropriations and stimulus funding last year alone. Over the lifetime of the program, it has cost taxpayers more than $150 billion.

There are more than 3,300 Head Start programs operating in America, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. A government-funded impact study criticized the effectiveness of the program earlier this year. Given the cost of the program and the group of people it primarily serves, Head Start deserves some much-needed scrutiny.

Read the whole Big Government article.

Until a few years ago, I never gave Head Start a second thought and in the back of my mind I assumed it was run from government offices at the state level, but apparently not so.   Again, at least in the case I’m familiar with, it is one of those programs that is run with taxpayer money passed along to unaccountable non-profit groups (I loathe this concept of public-private partnerships!).

What got me thinking about this a few years ago is that the Virginia Council of Churches quietly began resettling refugees in the county where I live (that, by the way, also was the genesis of this blog) and in the course of researching who they were, imagine my surprise, when I learned they were almost completely funded with tax dollars.    The biggest portion of their income comes from Head Start.   See this pie chart from their 2007 annual report.  (Incidentally, this is 2010, what is taking them so long to put up more recent annual reports?).

In 2007, almost 58% of their funding came from Head Start.  And, do you see that 17.5% from Church World Service, that is really your tax dollars passed through from the federal government to Church World Service to Virginia Council of Churches for refugees.    The Episcopal Migration Ministries money is also likely passed through from the Feds.  Add up the other pieces of the pie and it looks to me that only 2% of their income comes from other sources and the church. Readers should know that there is virtually no federal financial auditing of this federal money and since Virginia Council of Churches claims to be a church, they don’t file a Form 990 with the IRS that I have ever  been able to find.

And, this is interesting, they do their lobbying through something called the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy.

On matters related to public policy in Virginia, the Council of Churches works in special cooperation with The Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy. Each year, the Council considers the legislative agenda that is developed by the center and upon action of the Coordination Cabinet of the Virginia Council of Churches, endorses and supports the agenda.

I sure hope none of your money (for refugees or Head Start) is passed through to promote “social justice” political causes!

For your serious consideration—-Head Start is grabbing young minds early.  They’ve gotta separate kids from parents, that is the clear agenda of the Far Left!

Iraqis are largest group of refugees coming to Maryland right now

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This is your standard refugee news story, but I’m posting it so I have some statistics for our home state of Maryland.  And, because we rarely hear any refugee news from Maryland!

From Southern Maryland OnLine:

Although Iraqis make up only 2.5 percent of refugees and asylum-seekers in Maryland, in the past decade, Iraqi refugee resettlement in Maryland has gone from almost non-existent to leading other countries in the number of refugees entering the state.

From 2000 to 2007, there was an average of 19 new Iraqi refugees a year resettling in Maryland — .15 percent of all new arrivals in that time period.

In 2007, 1.9 percent of new Maryland refugees and asylees were Iraqi. By 2009, Iraqis made up one in six new refugees, or 16.8 percent, the largest group of new refugees from 45 countries, according to a database maintained by the Maryland Office of Refugees and Asylees.

[….]

From 1990 to 2006, more than 33,000 Iraqis were resettled across the nation, according to the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement. To date, about 1,000 Iraqis have resettled in Maryland.

Maryland’s  number of Iraqis is still a drop in the bucket compared to the top 6 states that resettle Iraqis.  California gets almost 20% with Michigan second with approximately 13-15%.  We have previously written about problems of the system being overwhelmed by Iraqis in both California and Michigan.  The others in the top 6 states resettling Iraqis are Texas, Illinois, Arizona and Virginia.

Maryland’s funding from the feds has more than tripled in recent years according to the Maryland Office of Refugees and Asylees.

In fiscal 2007, Maryland received about $2.5 million in cash and medical assistance funds from the Office of Refugee Resettlement. In fiscal 2008, the funds doubled to $5.3 million.

Most of MORA’s fiscal 2011 $8.1 million budget will be spent on refugee services and cash assistance.

Incidentally we haven’t heard of any Iraqis wanting to go back to the Middle East from Maryland as we did in Virginia last year, here.