What a shock! What an outrage, as President Donald Trump reduces the number of paying clients for the refugee contractors***, this ‘religious’ charity declares it will have to seek private donations from churches.
Last I checked, World Relief (full name: World Relief, National Association of Evangelicals) a private Christian non-profit group was 73% funded by you, the taxpayer, to place refugees in your towns and cities.
So how many will donate their private money for their (religious) humanitarian good works?
When the Refugee Act of 1980became law, it was understood that resettlement was a public-private partnership, but as the years have gone by the contractors have gotten lazier and lazier about raising private money. Poor managers, they must never have envisioned a day when some of their federal money would dry up.
Now (gasp!) World Relief Atlanta says it will have to go to the churches for their ‘religious’ charitable work. Imagine that!
According to the LA Times, as paying refugee clients decline, refugee NGOs are now focusing on helping immigrants of all stripes on a longer term basis, presumably by raising private money! Could this be a reawakening of real Christian charity?
I’m really sick of these stories. I see them all over the country (this is the PR run-up to the President’s decision on how many refugees the US will take in FY19, a decision expected to be made public in September).
However,this storydid have a few bits of information that are useful and make it worth posting.
Arrivals of refugees have hit historic lows. To stay afloat, resettlement agencies re-brand
The door to the nonprofit World Relief, tucked between a dance studio and a tutoring company on the second floor of a Garden Grove strip mall, still says “refugee resettlement services.”
In 2015, we obtained a World Relief internal letter instructing staff to not read Ann Corcoran’s blog! https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2017/10/31/former-refugee-contractor-ceo-america-needs-refugees-to-teach-us-how-to-love-one-another/
But it’s been nearly a year since a new refugee has walked through it.
The number of refugees admitted to the U.S. since President Trump took office has dropped to its lowest level in decades. As a result, the office and dozens of other refugee resettlement operations across the country have been forced to close, shift their resources or re-brand.
One of the advances I’ve seen over the last decade is that the media now reports that the contractors*** are paid by the US taxpayers on a per refugee basis.
Nine nonprofits across the country are federally approved to resettle refugees and receive government funding for each case they handle.Until last year, each of them had an office in Southern California.
But World Relief and four others have shut down in the region, suspended operations, laid off staff or reduced their hours.
[….]
The office closed its refugee operation last July and shifted its resources to helping immigrants, which had long been a sideline of its operation.
[….]
The declines [in refugee admissions] left many agencies depleted of federal funding and struggling to survive.
Even in places where new refugees are still arriving, changes are afoot. The International Rescue Committee office in Glendale, which once resettled more than a thousand refugees each year, has received only about 100 people this year.
“The need just isn’t there in the same way anymore,” said Martin Zogg, the group’s executive director. “So we have to give people other jobs to do.”
I would like to think that the nine resettlement contractors listed below have seen the light and are raising private money and not depending on the money trees growing in Washington, DC for their charitable ‘good works,’ but my cynical side says they are just trying to stay in business until Trump is no longer President and the refugee spigot opens again.
Sorry if you are sick of me saying it, but there will be no long term change to our refugee policy and program as long as there are no changes in the law during the Trump years.
***I post these as often as I can because new readers need to know that these quasi-government groups (funded with taxpayer dollars) are also politically pushing for more immigration of all sorts in Washington—they are not simply refugee advocates.
The number in parenthesis is the percentage of their income paid by you (the taxpayer) to place the refugees and get them signed up for their services (aka welfare)! From most recent accounting, here.
It is a good campaign message, but in reality will get MN no where.
How quickly people forget that in the last few years three other Republican governors made a big show out of withdrawing their states from the federal program (Texas, Kansas, New Jersey) and of course they still get refugees with Texas presently being the top ‘welcoming’ state in the nation.
Somali population in St. Cloud and elsewhere in MN is increasing.
As they did with those states, the US State Department will simply turn the whole resettlement plan for the state over to a non-profit (contractor) group to manage. (The Tennessee case is on appeal and if by a miracle, TN wins, then that strategy could go up in flames for the feds.)
Don’t get me wrong, there are political considerations for Mr. Johnson as he is up against former governor Tim Pawlenty in the primary, it is definitely worth discussing in the campaign. And, as governor there will be many things the state government could do to rein-in the program by reforming the state’s welfare system, etc.
Indeed, Pawlenty was a Republican establishment governor of the state during the expansion of refugee resettlement to St. Cloud and must have known what was happening. I would say look to his campaign donors and see if he was being funded by big business (poultry!) interests looking for a steady supply of cheap labor to the St. Cloud area. I presume Mr. Johnson has some good investigators at work to discover Pawlenty’s ties to the program while he was governor. LOL! Any photos of Pawlenty snuggling with the Lutheran resettlement people?
We would sure like more in Kansas says refugee contractor—the International Rescue Committee (headed by moneybags Miliband).
The IRC is headquartered in Manhattan where Brit David Miliband is pulling down an annual salary of nearly $700,000 as he places third world refugees in the heartland.
Here is the first news I’m seeing of the nine refugee contractors*** beginning their push to pressure the President to increase the ceiling for refugee admissions for Fiscal Year 2019 which begins on October 1, 2018.
Long time readers know that the President sets a CEILING for admission sometime in September and “consults” with Congress, but Congress, although it has the power to dole out money, has in the past just let the President pretty much do what he wants to do.
By demanding a ceiling that they know is unrealistic for this President, they will use the President’s ultimate number (likely low) to bludgeon him in the media yet again.
