Category: Taxpayer goodies

"Battle of Rotterdam" on eve of historic election in the Netherlands

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Invasion of Europe news….

Western Civilization is under assault: “If this continues, our culture will cease to exist.”

(A Dutch citizen of Amsterdam told The Washington Post this week)

 
All eyes will be on the Dutch election scheduled for this Wednesday!
And, if things couldn’t be more tense in the lead-up to election day, last night Turkish Muslim protestors were driven from the streets of Rotterdam by mounted police officers and water cannons.
Trumpeted The Sun:

THE BATTLE OF ROTTERDAM Dutch riot cops use batons, water cannon and horse charges to clear thousands of Turkish protesters in Rotterdam

DUTCH riot police have broken up protests by supporters of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan after Turkish ministers were barred from speaking at a rally in the Netherlands.

Hundreds of demonstrators gathered outside the Turkish consulate in Rotterdam last night after cops prevented Turkey’s family minister from entering the building.

The Washington Post, in a lengthy story written before the Battle of Rotterdam last night, tells us what is at stake on Wednesday:

Anti-immigrant anger threatens to remake the liberal Netherlands

AMSTERDAM — Xandra Lammers lives on an island in Amsterdam, the back door of her modern and spacious four-bedroom house opening onto a graceful canal where ducks, swans and canoes glide by.

The translation business she and her husband run from their home is thriving. The neighborhood is booming, with luxury homes going up as fast as workers can build them, a quietly efficient tramway to speed residents to work in the world-renowned city center, and parks, bike paths, art galleries, beaches and cafes all within a short amble.

By outward appearances, Lammers is living the Dutch dream. But in the 60-year-old’s telling, she has been dropped into the middle of a nightmare, one in which Western civilization is under assault from the Muslim immigrants who have become her neighbors.

“The influx has been too much. The borders should close,” said Lammers, soft-spoken with pale blue eyes and brown hair that frames a deceptively serene-looking face. “If this continues, our culture will cease to exist.”

The stakes have risen sharply as Europeans’ anti-establishment anger has swelled. In interviews across the Netherlands in recent days, far-right voters expressed stridently nationalist, anti-immigrant views that were long considered fringe but that have now entered the Dutch mainstream.

Voters young and old, rich and poor, urban and rural said they would back the Geert Wilders-led Freedom Party — no longer the preserve of the “left-behinds” — which promises to solve the country’s problems by shutting borders, closing mosques and helping to dismantle the European Union.

“They’ve found a very powerful narrative,” said Koen Damhuis, a researcher at the European University Institute who studies the far right. “By creating a master conflict of the national versus the foreign, they’re able to attract support from all elements of society.”

Ronald Meulendijks has a poster of Geert Wilders in his IJburg apartment. “I think Holland will need a civil war,” he said, “between the people who don’t belong here and the real people.” (Michael Robinson Chavez/The Washington Post)

[….]

“The main issue is identity,” said Joost Niemöller, a journalist and author who has written extensively on Wilders and is sympathetic to his cause. “People feel they’re losing their Dutch identity and Dutch society. The neighborhoods are changing. Immigrants are coming in. And they can’t say anything about it because they’ll be called racist. So they feel helpless. Because they feel helpless, they get angry.”

Echoing a theme I’ve heard on my travels everywhere in America:

“A government has to treat its own people correctly before accepting new ones. First, you must take care of your own.”

And if the government fails, Meulendijks has dark visions of what’s to come.

“I think Holland will need a civil war,” he said, “between the people who don’t belong here and the real people.”

Continue reading here.
Did the civil war begin in Rotterdam, last night?
Americans should be enormously thankful that we have a window on our own future as we watch the invasion of the European continent.  And, now that Donald Trump is in office, we, God-willing, will not go down the path Europe has been on for way too long.
Go here for our complete ‘Invasion of Europe’ archive.  And, here for The Netherlands, Geert Wilders, here.
BTW, we heard Wilders speak as a side event at CPAC 8 years ago (2009). It was a side event because the organizers of CPAC refused his presence on the main program. (CPAC organizers have been notoriously Republican establishment dolts who never understood where the people were headed on the issues of Islam and immigration.)

Idaho refugee contractor: Refugees pay taxes!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Who are you trying to kid?
Message to the head of the local resettlement agency in Twin Falls, Idaho: It is not a good idea to start putting out information about a refugee’s tax liability that can be easily checked!

70% of the workers at Idaho dairy factories are immigrants, many illegal, however refugee labor is being employed not just at Chobani Yogurt in Twin Falls, but at the milk production end as well. https://www.pri.org/stories/2013-10-31/lesson-immigration-reform-head-idaho-dairy-farm

Zeze Rwasama spoke earlier this month to the Pocotello Rotary Club and made the claim that refugees are not getting much in the way of taxpayer support:

“Resettlement in the U.S. in not for them to become a burden to our public assistance,” Rwasama said. “Yes, we help them for only eight months. After that, they become taxpayers as well. That means we can help more. … A single refugee brought in 2014 working in a dairy made about $26,000 that year. But when you look at how much the agency spent on that person, it was only about $4,600. When you look at the W-2 form and see how much money that person paid into tax that one year, it’s actually close to that $4,600. So in one year this person has paid into the tax funds the total amount of money that was spent on him. That means we can help more because they are coming here to contribute and coming here to support themselves.”

LOL! I’m betting members of the Rotary Club were doing some mental math as he spoke—$4,600 federal tax liability on $26,000 annual income? No way!
Do you see how Rwasama has parsed his words. His dairy worker “paid into tax” close to that $4,600, but when you check his tax liability it is about $2,255 ($2,345 less than the $4,600 withheld).  He will get a tax refund of that difference—approximately $2,345!  (That tax calculation may vary depending on which year, but you get the idea!).
And, then Zeze Rwasama is only referring to the $4,600 his agency paid to subsidize the dairy farmer’s employee and doesn’t mention the medical care, food stamps and possibly even a housing subsidy that the refugee making $26,000 a year would be eligible for!
And, I just realized that what is never calculated is the cost of the overseas processing of this dairy worker: the vetting, the medical checks, the cost of sending US workers to do the paperwork.
BTW, if the dairy farm employee took a refugee wife on this salary (filing jointly) he might only pay in about $530 in federal income tax.
Rwasama’s agency would presumably have spent $4,600 on her and the couple would then have cost you $9,200 (not including Rwasama’s salary and office expenses, which you paid too!).
If you are interested, just search around for news on Idaho (Oregon, Wisconsin) dairy farms and refugees=controversy!
See our extensive Twin Falls archive by clicking here.
For all of you working in ‘pockets of resistance’ be sure to find out what industries are driving the resettlement where you live.  Look for large corporate farms, meatpackers, hotels, manufacturers requiring few skills, and anyone needing cleaning staff. (This is why you see little interest on the part of Republican leaders in Congress to reform the US Refugee Admissions Program.)
This is not about humanitarianism!
Endnote: If there is some accountant out there who has better numbers than I can find, have at it! Let me know what you find. Wouldn’t it be great if someone followed one of these dairy (or hotel, or meatpacking) workers from a camp in Thailand, Kenya or Nepal all the way through the system to see how many tax dollars support the delivery of one (captive) worker to BIG MEAT or BIG DAIRY.

Michigan: More confirmation that refugee resettlement is an industry

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I don’t have enough time in my day to post all of the stories from around the country where federal refugee resettlement contractors are crying about their loss of clients and thus their loss of taxpayer funding.
But, this one from Michigan has a few extra nuggets of information that further confirms our contention that refugee resettlement is more of an industry than it is a humanitarian endeavor.

Julie Harris, St. Vincent Catholic Charities Refugee Services, photo here from one year ago this same week (what a difference a year/election makes). http://www.secondwavemedia.com/capitalgains/features/fugee1005.aspx

The Trump Administration must pressure Congress to repeal, and, if necessary, replace the Refugee Act of 1980 with its perverse incentives to place refugees (secretively) in towns that can ill afford the additional poverty.
If a town is overloaded with costly-to-support refugees, the system is set up in such a way as to conspire against rational decision-making.
Watch for these key points:

~Contractors are paid by the head, so there is no incentive for contractors to voluntarily slow the flow.

~Landlords with low income and subsidized rentals have become dependent on the arrival of poor people from the third world.

~Businesses want the cheap compliant immigrant labor.

~And, ‘refugees’ have become dependent on the idea of being able to bring over the whole family after one member scouts out your town to see if it suits them before others are brought over (with the help of those same contractors and their per head payment).

From WKAR Lansing, Michigan:

The executive orders on immigration directly impact immigrants and refugees trying to come to the US and those living here already. But the orders are also causing problems for organizations who support refugees.

[….]

There’s a call for a 120 day delay on all refugee resettlement from everywhere. And during that time presumably there will be a revision and a a reestablishment of vetting procedures. And then the other piece of that that will be hurting us is the overall reduction in the number of refugees coming in for the rest of 2017 and 2018 probably.”

And this impacts St. Vincent and other refugee resettlement organizations because they are based on a per-capita funding structure.

“All of that greatly reduces the number of refugees that we’ll be receiving, and that in turn reduces our budget. So we’ve had to do some staff reductions and layoffs and reorganizing while we’re still trying to serve the people who are here, the people who have already arrived” Harris says.

It goes beyond just St. Vincent. Harris says the community and the organizations they partner with when resettling refugees are impacted too.

“We work with a lot of different landlords and different apartment complexes and different landlords around the city and some of them have called us and said ‘what are we going to do? Who are we going to put in our housing?’

Because they rely on us because there’s a lot of folks who move in and out, and a lot of the low income places who have been very kind to the whole community, they need people to be coming in and keeping their units full. And also a lot of our employers, we work with some big companies who look forward to having a steady stream of people who come in. A lot of refugees will start off in an entry level job and they’ll work hard and after they learn English, they learn a few more things, they’ll move up. And so these companies need the steady flow of people coming in and keeping their businesses running.”

Continue reading here to learn about how the family reunification works and will be disrupted by the Trump EO.
If you are working in a ‘pocket of resistance’ investigating the program where you live, be sure to research costs, but look for those people/businesses benefiting from the refugees.  Remind your fellow (taxpaying) citizens that there is money (for some people) in the resettlement industry.
Endnote:  I just did a quick look at USASpending.gov and see that the Diocese of Lansing gets millions of $$$ of federal funding from the usual agencies—HHS and Dept. of State, and that St. Vincent’s also got money from HUD.
They aren’t in the landlord business themselves are they?

Hawaii needs refugees! Sues feds over refugee pause, travel restrictions from certain Muslim countries

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

You can’t make this up.
Surely you have already seen the news that the state of Hawaii is claiming that the Trump Administration’s latest Executive Order limiting travel to the US from certain countries and pausing the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program will hurt Hawaii!

Hawaii Attorney General Doug Chin spoke at Muslim Association of Hawaii, alleges they aren’t getting enough Muslim refugees (he didn’t really say that exactly), but they clearly need some! http://www.civilbeat.org/2017/03/hawaii-becomes-first-state-to-challenge-trumps-new-travel-ban/

I’m going to propose (when the refugee pause and the travel restrictions are lifted) that the state of Hawaii be placed at the top of the refugee-receiving list and get its FAIR SHARE of refugees especially from Somalia, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan etc. to make up for lost time in reaping the rewards of diversity!

Hawaii resettled a grand total of 123 refugees in 14 years, 5 months and ten days (up to today).

I’ll show you below with more numbers how completely ignorant and ill-informed Hawaii’s AG sounds.
Here is Seattlepi:

Hawaii has become the first state to mount a federal court challenge to President Trump’s revised executive order blocking travel from six predominantly Muslim countries and barring Syrian refugees for 120 days.

Attorneys for the Aloha State on Wednesday asked a U.S. District Court judge in Honolulu to block the new Trump order.

“This new executive order is nothing more than Muslim Ban 2.0; under the pretense of national security, it still targets immigrants and refugees,” Hawaii Attorney General Doug Chin said in a statement.

[….]

In its court filing, Hawaii argues that the rights of its citizens, and its tourism economy, will be damaged by the revised Trump order, which takes effect March 16.

The new executive order will damage Hawaii’s “economy, educational institutions and tourism industry,” the state argues in its brief.

Rolling on floor laughing my head off! Hawaii “welcoming persons from all nations around the world into the fabric of its society.”

“It is damaging Hawaii’s institutions, harming its economy and eroding Hawaii’s sovereign interest in maintaining the separation between church and state as well as in welcoming persons from all nations around the world into the fabric of its society.”

Ismail Elshikh, Muslim Association of Hawaii is a co-plaintiff in suit against Trump Administration. http://www.civilbeat.org/2017/03/hawaii-becomes-first-state-to-challenge-trumps-new-travel-ban/

Now, here is the real power behind the suit—Muslim Association of Hawaii!

Seattlepi continues….

The state’s suit has a co-plaintiff, Ismail Elshikh, the imam of the Muslim Association of Hawaii, saying the Trump order “inflicts a grave injury on Muslims in Hawaii, including Dr. Elshikh, his family and members of his mosque.”

Let’s look at Hawaii’s refugee program!

Checking Wrapsnet this morning, here is a summary of the refugees admitted to Hawaii in the last 14 years, 5 months and 10 days:
Of the total 123 refugees they “welcomed” to Hawaii, the largest number (66) were Vietnamese who came in the early years (FY03,04,05).  Another 40 were Burmese (most Burmese are Christians).  Only 5 from any Middle East country came.  In 2004, 1 Iranian was resettled there and in 2013 they got a grand total of 4 Iraqis.  None of the thousands of Syrians admitted to the US in the last 2 years were seeded in Hawaii!
A smattering of Russians and Ukrainians were placed there over the years.
There were no refugees sent to Hawaii at all in FY11 and last year!
Zero Africans were planted in Hawaii in all those years.  That is interesting since when I read some books on Obama’s father arriving in Hawaii in about 1960, see especially this book, I learned that Hawaiians were not partial to Africans and that Barack Sr. attracted much attention because of his race and demeanor.  Hmmmm?
Why wasn’t the state of Hawaii begging for refugees over the last 14 years, 5 months and 10 days?

Seems it might be just the right time to send Hawaii its fair share of Somalis, Ethiopians, Eritreans, and Congolese!

BTW, how is the welfare system in Hawaii, does anyone know?

Here is an idea!  There are no travel restrictions between Minnesota and Hawaii.  Maybe load up a few planes with excess refugees there and send them to Hawaii (I hear that the climate is much better!).

This post is archived in our ‘laugh of the day’ category, here.

USCRI needs money now that President Trump has reduced the number of their paying clients

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Just now I wrote about what happened in Rutland, VT this week where the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) lost their chief advocate for Syrian refugees, Mayor Christopher Louras, in a stunning mayoral election upset.
And, I have been meaning to update readers on USCRI’s financials for some time, so this gives me an excuse.
Also, earlier this week when the Trump Administration announced its upcoming 120-day moratorium on refugee resettlement, USCRI immediately tweeted this plea for funding:
 

When I opened the link here, I was expecting to see a pitch for how to tell the Prez he is wrong, instead it opened directly to a donation form.

 
My first thought was, why didn’t they long ago try to raise more PRIVATE funds rather than become completely addicted to the easy flow of federal dollars to their bank account?

USCRI CEO Lavinia Limon with Chobani Yogurt CEO at Clinton Global Initiative. Limon was Bill Clinton’s Director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement. Go here for our Limon archive: https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/?s=Lavinia+Limon

(See recent posts on four other of the nine major resettlement contractors: HIAS, LIRS, Church World Service and the USCCB financials.)
Because this is a rotten system that pays contractors by the head to resettle refugee ‘clients’ in to your towns, now that the federal spigot is closing (at least temporarily) the budgets of these quasi-government agencies will shrink commensurately.  And, they are running multi-million dollar agencies paying out BIG salaries.
Before I give you the most recent information available from USCRI’s Form 990, check out this post I wrote in 2008 where we reported that in 2006 USCRI was operating on a budget of just over $18 million!

USCRI’s gross income was $18,352,000.   $16,905,312 was from government grants (that’s you the taxpayer) while another $675,868 included government contracts.

Total compensation of officers was $358,587 and other salaries were $2,966,521. 

By 2014 their budget had grown to $51,524,570, government grants were a whopping $46,560452. Total compensation to officers was $820,147 and other salaries were $7,293,845.  That would be a very respectable growth for a small non-profit except that virtually all of its growth depends on more refugees admitted to the US with a very handsome increase in the per refugee resettlement payment.
We calculate that USCRI is 94% funded by taxpayer dollars. It could be higher, but we don’t know about some of their income categories.
Here are a couple of pages from the most recently available Form 990.
Page 9 is where you usually see how much in government grants they receive.
 

At the bottom of the total revenue column is where you will find the number $51,524,570. The IOM collection fee is your money too. We did our calculation of 94% funded by you (taxpayers) on just the federal grants and the IOM collection fee. Some of those other items may be taxpayer money too, but we aren’t sure.

 
Here is the salaries page:
Revolving door! Limon was Bill Clinton’s Director of ORR, then Eskinder Negash, who had earlier been a Veep at USCRI, took a swing at the government job, but has now revolved back to USCRI. If Hillary had won, would Limon revolve back to a government job? I’m guessing not because that would involve a big pay cut.

 
Go here to see if USCRI has a sub-office in your town! USCRI does list a Rutland office, so while it lasts, those 2 Syrian families should get a lot of help and attention!