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

09/17/2018 ~ 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!

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

09/15/2018 ~ 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.

Open Borders Leftists are mean and increasingly unhinged; HIAS demonstrates just how much!

09/13/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The hypocrisy of the Left has been on full display with perhaps the ultimate example of that surrounding the McCain funeralathon we witnessed (or tried to escape from viewing!) recently. They talk a good game about civility, but make no mistake, Leftists are mean people.

Forget vigorous debates about policy directions! It is personal destruction that is the primary weapon for the people who claim they are on the side of all that is right and good.

Stephen Millers uncle

I wasn’t planning to write about how the Hard Leftists in the Open Borders movement have been showcasing Leftwing family members of key players in the Trump sphere, most notably White House adviser Stephen Miller’s uncle (and his childhood rabbi is also out demeaning Miller), but did you see they have now dragged out Laura Ingraham’s estranged Leftwing brother to attack her in social media? It is shameful.

I wasn’t going to write about all this, that is, until I saw this story at Jewish Exponent where we see that federal refugee contractor, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, is showcasing Miller’s uncle at their media events! What a ‘get’, as they likely high-five each other!

I repeat, Leftists are very mean people.

Agencies Address Refugee Program Concerns

A graph set up against the wall in the Nationalities Services Center (NSC) had towers of blue bars, varying in heights.

HIAS Philadelphia — No mention of how many people were in the audience. And, no caption for the photo. That must be Miller’s mean Leftist uncle on the right.

The bars represent U.S. refugee resettlement arrivals from fiscal year 1980 — where the ceiling was set to 200,000 — to today with the fiscal year 2019 projection. The annual ceiling is now set at 45,000. Projections indicate that number could change to just 25,000.

In response, NSC, HIAS Pennsylvania and Bethany Christian Services of Greater Delaware Valley joined together to hold a panel discussion and conference on Sept. 6 about the dangers a drop that low could present for these agencies and the refugees they serve.

The danger that the biased media rarely mentions is that refugee contractors, like HIAS (one of nine contractors that monopolize refugee resettlement in the US), which got nearly $25 million from US taxpayers in a recent year and whose CEO makes a cool $300,000+ annual salary, are in danger of losing their sugar daddy—Uncle Sam!

The Jewish Exponent continues….

The U.S. Refugee Resettlement Program is on “life support,” NSC executive director Margaret O’Sullivan said.

“We are here to call attention to the potential evisceration of a program that has served as a point of pride for this nation for 40 years,” she said. “The current administration has been dismantling the program with stealth and with precision.”

As is usual, HIAS paraded out the most deserving refugees they could find, but clearly their star attraction was Stephen Miller’s uncle.

David S. Glosser, a neuropsychologist who volunteers with HIAS and gained name recognition for penning an essay condemning his nephew, Stephen Miller — senior adviser to Trump — and his anti-refugee remarks, shared the story of ancestors facing anti-Semitism and seeking refuge.

[….]

When he mentioned his family receiving help from Hebrew Immigrant and Aid Society as it was called then, HIAS PA Executive Director Cathryn Miller-Wilson smiled.

Longtime readers know that a few years back the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society dropped the ‘Hebrew’ from its name and became simply HIAS. There was never any coherent explanation about why they dropped the ‘Hebrew.’ Were they ashamed of the word?

I suspected that it had something to do with the fact that they place Muslim refugees and perhaps some of those refugees were squeamish about the word ‘Hebrew.’ Just a guess!

What follows next at the Jewish Exponent is a naive discussion about how today’s refugees (like those from the Middle East and Africa) are just like the Jewish refugees of yesteryear. Of course they aren’t for a couple of reasons.

When Miller’s ancestors came, they were mostly culturally Europeans and there was no massive welfare system to support them. They worked hard and made it on their own with the help of their family. If they didn’t make it, they went back to the old country.

There was no taxpayer-funded NGO to take care of their every need!

Then here is the wrap of course!

….he and Miller-Wilson stressed, reach out to elected officials and vote.

More here.

Message to you also! Reach out to elected officials and VOTE!

I have a huge archive on the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, click here for more.

For previous posts on Stephen Miller, go here.

Idaho boo-hooing: Not enough refugee workers arriving

09/11/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This story would not be worth posting except for the fact that it once again informs us that the refugees are here to supply cheap labor for industries that want to keep wages low. (Cheap for industry, but not for taxpayers who subsidize the refugee families with welfare!)

And, it is worth posting because the refugee agency head in Twin Falls is mistaken when he thinks the citizens of Idaho have been sufficiently ‘educated’ and now will be more welcoming of refugees.

chobani plant twin falls — Twin Falls has long been a city in turmoil about the refugee flow there partly due to the labor needs of the massive Chobani Yogurt plant there and the dairy industry that supplies it.

From the Idaho State Business Journal:

Lack of refugees has Idaho businesses scrambling for workers

(Be sure to click on the link and see the story which features a photo of a Muslim woman giving free Arabic lessons to Americans. Gee, so why is that needed?)

TWIN FALLS — Idaho has welcomed far fewer refugees this year, which means resettlement agencies have more time to work with families, but South Idaho businesses are scrambling to find workers.

The College of Southern Idaho’s Refugee Center*** is on track to resettle 71 people this year, a fraction of the 300 people it typically serves each fiscal year. It’s received 64 refugees so far this year, with another family of seven expected soon. The fiscal year ends at the end of September.

“I think the decline in arrivals takes a toll, especially with our super low unemployment right now,” said Tara Wolfson, director of the Idaho Office for Refugees. “And I think there’s a loss to our ingenuity, to our workforce, to our bringing new ideas and creations to our state, that refugees tend to bring.” [This is such BS—refugees bring new ideas and creations to the state.—ed]

[….]

“It’s really a tough thing because we need workforce,” Roeser said. “We have so many Baby Boomers retiring. We have so many services that need warm bodies to work because of the aging workforce.”

I have said innumerable times that since the US Refugee Admissions Program is primarily to supply cheap labor for big global businesses (like Chobani), let’s have that debate, but shut up about it being a ‘humanitarian’ program.

Refugee resettlement across the state has declined dramatically since 2016 when 916 people resettled in Idaho. That number dropped to 611 the following year, and the Idaho Office for Refugees has resettled 341 people so far in the 2018 fiscal year.

[….]

Zeze Rwasama thinks people are not complaining about refugees now because they have been sufficiently re-educated.

Wolfson said she expects that the low resettlement rate will continue into next year.

But Rwasama [Director of the Refugee Center at CSI] is hopeful that federal policies and practices “could change at any time.” He said these days he less frequently hears certain anti-refugee sentiments that he used to hear often, such as concerns about safety or complaints about refugees “taking jobs” from other workers.

“I think people have actually received correct information and that’s why I don’t hear it anymore,” Rwasama said.

“And I hope those answers are getting to the president as well, and soon he will allow more refugees to come.”

More here.

Things are only quiet because Donald Trump has taken the pressure off for now.

So, dear readers, the flood gates will open again if there is a new President elected in 2020 (there isn’t another Republican who would do what Trump is doing). I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to reform the whole program while we have him in office. So get out and get involved in election year politics where you live!

Go here for my huge archive on Idaho.

***The Refugee Center at the College of Southern Idaho is a subcontractor of the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (one of the big nine federal resettlement contractors).

Portland, OR: Refugee federal funding uncertainty causes Catholic Charities to fire some staff

09/09/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Well, nothing new there you say! Right!

Portland refugees welcome — One Oregon protesting Donald Trump in Portland, OR in January 2017 http://www.oneoregon.org/who-we-are/

However, a couple of things in this otherwise ho-hum news story make it worth posting.

First, because Catholic Charities of Oregon (a refugee agency subcontractor of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops) isn’t getting in massive new waves of fresh refugee clients, they are focusing on better care for the ones they resettled earlier and that is a good thing.

However, when they list their efforts at job training and mental health counseling it got me thinking—who is paying for that!

It is probably the taxpayer again, but because Catholic Charities of Oregon considers itself a church they are not required to file an IRS Form 990 so that we could find out exactly how many taxpayer dollars are flowing to them.

We know that in addition to the per head payment resettlement agencies receive from you there are myriad taxpayer-funded grants at the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement, grants like this one, that keep resettlement contractors afloat. (I think I need to start having a look at those!)

Require all Catholic Charities to file Form 990s (they aren’t churches!)

One more of many reforms that Congress (or the President) should undertake is to require these so-called ‘religious’ charities to file Form 990s. (By the way, some Catholic Charities do file a Form 990, but the one featured at Catholic News Agency does not.)

To see the second reason I’m posting this story, continue reading!

Continue reading “Portland, OR: Refugee federal funding uncertainty causes Catholic Charities to fire some staff” →