Utah, Tennessee seeing cuts in budget and staff as flow of refugees to US slows; it is their own fault!

Sorry to keep repeating myself, but someone once told me people have to hear things seven times before it sinks in.
One side benefit of the Trump refugee slowdown (but 50,000 isn’t that low! as I explained here) is that the public is learning that the federal refugee contractors have failed to keep their end of the bargain and raise enough private money to sustain their ‘charities’ as the US Treasury spigot is turned off.

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Will Miliband take a 20% pay cut as his subcontractor is taking in Utah? See here that IRC CEO Miliband makes over a half a million dollars running this ‘charity’? https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2017/02/12/nyt-allows-wealthy-british-subject-to-lecture-us-about-fundamental-american-values/

The hundreds of contractors and subcontractors are dependent on a per head payment for their job of placing a refugee in your town and getting them signed up for their ‘services’ (ie. welfare).
Thus, once established (as I said here in ‘Ten things’ (#5)), there is no incentive for a contractor to voluntarily slow the flow to your community if it becomes overloaded with needy third worlders.
Here is one of many sob stories, this one from Utah, and from the extremely wealthy International Rescue Committee.
From KUER:

With anticipation of a possible new travel ban from the Trump Administration, refugee resettlement agencies in Utah are bracing for the worst.

The International Rescue Committee is one of Utah’s two refugee resettlement agencies. For every person they help find a new home, they get money from the U.S. State Department. Each year they resettle half the refugees that come to Utah, around 600 people according to their staff. But they’re expecting that number to be nearly cut in half.

“For the IRC this year, we’re estimating about 366 refugees, so that’s a pretty drastic drop,” says Natalie El-Deiry with the International Rescue Committee.

El-Deiry says that drop in numbers would come from the proposed 120-day halt on all refugees to the U.S. and an indefinite block of Syrian refugees, which she says need the most assistance.

El-Deiry says the decrease in clients could translate to about 20 percent less in their budget.

“The economic impact is: when we’re looking at reducing numbers across the board, it’s reducing an organization’s budget and so most organizations that resettle refugees are going to be looking at a budget shortfall,” El-Deiry says.

Continue reading here.

In Tennessee Catholic Charities is cutting staff to make up for its shortfall.

Apparently they too were too lazy to raise private money over the years from all of the humanitarians shouting for more refugees to be admitted to the US. Only Catholic Charities’ leadership is to blame for this evident mismanagement.
From The Tennessean:

Catholic Charities of Tennessee cut 13 jobs this week in its refugee resettlement office due to President Donald Trump’s executive order that drastically reduced the number of refugees coming to the United States this year.

The employees were notified of the layoffs Thursday, said Pam Russo, the executive director of the Nashville-based Catholic Charities of Tennessee. Staff who lost their jobs primarily served incoming refugees, and many of those employees came to the U.S. as refugees themselves, she said. [BTW, this highlights a little known practice of hiring refugees with federal money to help improve stats showing that refugees have employment.—ed]

“These are heartbreaking cuts,” Russo said. “We did not want to make them, but we had no choice because we did not want to put any of the other refugee services at risk.”

The layoffs come on the heels of another Christian-based refugee resettlement agency, World Relief, announcing more than 140 staff layoffs across the country and the closure of five offices, including in Nashville. World Relief also cited the Trump order in its decision.

More here.

Again, these refugee contractors have only themselves to blame for extremely poor leadership/management that had gotten fat on federal dollars and didn’t do enough of the hard work that legitimate charities are expected to do—raise private funds!

Endnote: The prize for Tucker Carlson would be to get IRC CEO, former British Foreign Secretary, David Miliband on his show!
Dear producers, I’ve done your work for you, click here to learn more about David Miliband (Hillary had a crush!). He also gave the IRC’s top prize—Freedom Award—to George Soros!

Tucker to World Relief Prez: How can you claim it is Christian charity when you take millions from taxpayers?

Tucker Carlson once again interviews one of the bigwigs in the refugee industry—the President of World Relief, Scott Arbeiter—that recently announced it would close some offices around the country as their federal funding begins to dry up.
Here is another of many posts we have on World Relief (Corporation of National Association of Evangelicals).
No time to say more, see Carlson here ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lfCv0eQX6c ) and below:
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_P4vxUsoxxo
 
See our Carlson archive here.  And our complete World Relief archive is here.
BTW, Arbeiter claims they are only doing what the government asks them to do.  Then why bitch when the government (under Trump) tells them it is time to stop (or slow) what they have been doing for almost 40 years?
These federal resettlement contractors have to go, I have ideas on how to run a small refugee program without them!

Nonprofit Quarterly: Entire System of Refugee Resettlement Nonprofits Teeters on the Edge

“The question is: Is this just 2017, or is this business as usual going forward”

(Anya Abramzon)

Our title is the headline of a story at a publication for non-profits.  Another headline is: Nonprofits, Your Sole Goal in 2017: Pick a Fight with Trump!

And, this one: Your Nonprofit’s Role in Reframing the Post-Election Discourse!
Remember this is the rarefied club that many tea party groups were unable to join when the Obama IRS blocked many 501(c)3 and 501(c)4 applications for conservative-leaning groups a few years ago.

Maybe the Trump Administration should start to look in to the whole non-profit system in America and ask this question:

Are federal funds being used to fuel Leftwing political action?

I’m sorry to have to continue to repeat some key points, but the article entitled, ‘Entire System of Refugee Resettlement Nonprofits Teeters on the Edge,’ contains some points we need to continue to make.
Non-profit Quarterly:

The United States was slated to receive 110,000 refugees in fiscal year 2017, so this cuts that flow in half. So far, it has taken in in 32,954 since October 1, 2016, which means that just over 17,000 additional refugees will be allowed into the U.S. through the end of September. A four-month hiatus on accepting new refugees is now in place.

As I explained in some detail here, that 110,000 was a hoped-for number from Obama in the final months of his presidency for a year he would not be in the White House. 110,000 is much higher than anything he accomplished during his previous 8 years.
And, as I pointed out here, Trump’s 50,000 is not that low when one examines post-9/11 refugee admissions.

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Anya Abramzon, Director, Jewish Family Services of Washtenaw County, Michigan http://www.annarbor.com/business-review/executive-profile-anya-abramzon-executive-director-jewish-family-services-of-washtenaw-county/

This morning we are at 36,461. Four days ago we had admitted 36,205, so the slowdown has begun.

Ponzi scheme revealed. 

One important thing all of this turmoil in the refugee industry reveals is that the whole program is built on a kind of Ponzi scheme that requires a continuous flow of paying clients (refugees!) to keep the system afloat.
Non-profit Quarterly continues….

This is one part of Trump’s trio of executive orders on immigrants and refugees that was not stayed. It has shut down the pipeline for refugees and the $2,000 that is paid to refugee resettlement groups to help each individual, and that makes sustainability for these critical agencies pretty difficult. [LOL! I like the use of the word ‘pipeline’ by this publication!—ed]

This, of course, should create concern, because once those elements of infrastructure are gone, rebuilding them and their local relationships will create untold additional cost and delays. “It will impact all nine resettlement agencies, so the infrastructure for refugee resettlement in our country—built over decades, at least since the Refugee Act of 1980—could be decimated,” Matthew Soerens of World Relief said.

While some of the networks are launching fundraising campaigns to try to maintain their services, raising enough to replace federal dollars may be a real long shot, even for a system at relative rest. For instance, in 2015, approximately $42 million of World Relief’s $62 million budget was federal grants. [If they can’t raise private money to stay afloat it means that the general public does not support what they are doing!—ed]

In many cases, the agencies may be national, but their offices are local. These local satellites*** do the real work of helping refugees gather necessary documentation and assisting them in finding housing, job training, and public benefits. But all in the system recognize the system as a public-private partnership, and when the federal government shuts down their pipeline, the whole system freezes, creating a very serious situation.

This so-called public-private partnership has become a largely publicly-funded program as the resettlement contractors, like World Relief, have come to depend mostly on their taxpayer-funded payments and were doing little over the years to raise private funding.

As Abramzon asks, “The question is: Is this just 2017, or is this business as usual going forward? I think it’s important for all of us to know that.” Unfortunately, by the time that question is answered, it may be moot for some of the agencies involved.

Continue reading here.
To answer Ms. Abramzon’s question (how far forward is this slowdown going?), it is imperative that Congress get involved and reform this entire system. EOs are only good for a president’s term in office (as Obama has learned the hard way).  It is past time for Congress to stop being lazy (and chicken!) and reform the system!
Jewish Family Services of Washtenaw County is a sub-contractor of HIAS which has filed suit against the Trump Administration for cutting off its federal money supply. See here.
***For new readers: Since some of you are new readers arriving here in great numbers daily, it requires me to continuously repeat that there are nine major federally-funded refugee resettlement contractors.  When you see one like this, Jewish Family Services in Michigan, and wonder who they work for, go to one of the nine VOLAGs website and look for ‘affiliates’ or ‘partners,’ or visit this data base and look for your state.  You will see abbreviations for the BIG NINE in the lefthand corner of the entry.
And, while I’m at it, explaining basics to new readers, you might want to visit my Frequently Asked Questions, here.
BIG NINE VOLAGs crying for (your) money!

 

Refugee contractor Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society one of the groups suing Trump Admin.

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CEO Hetfield could always take a pay cut to tide them over! Or maybe consider doing charitable work that doesn’t involve the vagaries of federal funding.

Today there is a sob story about how some of the refugees expected to be resettled in Delaware by the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) might not be coming. Longtime readers know that Delaware has only received a handful of refugees over the years and I have always suspected that somehow good ol’ might have had a hand in keeping the numbers small (not in my backyard!).
But, near the end of the Delaware news we see that the HIAS is a plaintiff in at least one of the lawsuits against the Trump Administration and I thought it might be a good idea to show you their complaints which seem to center around the idea that they were promised so many refugees (paying clients) this fiscal year and now they might not get them.
See one of our recent reports on HIAS federal funding.
Can you sue the federal government to get grants you were hoping for?
Below are some screenshots from the lawsuit which could be moot by the time I post this!
 
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Amazing isn’t it!  It is all about their money! (and protecting their Muslim clients). The brief continues about individual cases. Continue reading here if you are interested.
As I said in my previous post about Catholic Charities crying foul, shouldn’t there be a federal law disallowing non-profits receiving federal grants from working against the hand that feeds them?
Click here for our HIAS archive.

New York Times says refugee resettlement good for NY state, but doesn't tell the whole story

What else can we expect from the NYT!  Or, most of the mainstream media for that matter.
A report in the NY Times yesterday (hat tip: Joanne) glosses over the problems with the placement of poverty on top of poverty in upstate cities, misleads us about Obama’s 2017 wish list, and skims over the fact that ‘religious’ charities are sucking down taxpayer dollars like there is no tomorrow.
BTW, refugees are generally not placed in New York city because the contractors can’t find enough cheap housing.

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Assuming there is only one Jesse McKinley at the NYT: https://bayarea.blogs.nytimes.com/whos-who-on-the-blog/

So Buffalo fits the bill!
Only two things worth mentioning in this overly long and biased news about how refugees are supposedly revitalizing slums.
First this!

Reporter Jesse McKinley seems to think that churches becoming mosques is somehow a positive thing! Really!

BUFFALO — Newcomers have filled up hundreds of empty homes and apartments, and poured money and energy into destitute neighborhoods. Former churches have been reborn as mosques…

And, then this (below) made me laugh—Catholic Charities can’t have it both ways!
The majority of their funding for placing refugees in New York state cities comes from the federal government.  Yet, now that refugees have a negative view of the federal government, Catholic Charities of Buffalo wants to pretend they are a non-profit group!

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Mr. Walczyk, why not try doing your charitable Christian good works with your own privately-raised money!

Dennis C. Walczyk, chief executive of Catholic Charities of Buffalo, said that the president’s order had spread suspicion among new arrivals.

“They’re questioning us,” Mr. Walczyk said, adding: “Even though we’re all independent, nonprofit, nongovernmental agencies, the connection seems to be being made by some of our clientele, that, ‘Well, you’re an arm of the government.’”

Yes, Mr. Walczyk, you are an arm of the government! How about doing your ‘religious’ charitable work with private money and then you can claim independence!
McKinley continues….

Groups like Mr. Walczyk’s do receive an administrative payment for their work in settling new arrivals — $900 per person — and the potential loss of that money is another point of concern, though refugee placements have restarted. Some resettlement groups across the state have already tightened their belts, and reduced staffs, reflecting President Trump’s immigration order and his administration’s plan to accept 50,000 refugees this federal fiscal year, as opposed to the target of 110,000 set by President Barack Obama.

Reporter wants readers to believe 110,000 is normal!

Darn lazy liberal reporters never tell you that this “target” set by Obama (for a year he would no longer be in the WH) is first only a ceiling not a target!

And besides, if Obama was so set on that huge number (110,000!) why wasn’t he anywhere close to that number for the previous 8 years! (Ceilings were set at 70,000-80,000 but he only occasionally came close to hitting the ceiling).
Numbers resettled in Obama years (from data here):

FY09: 74,654

FY10: 73,311

FY11: 56,424

FY12: 58,238

FY13: 69,926

FY14: 69,987

FY15: 69,993

FY16: 84,894

 
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On a whim, I decided to see just how much of your tax dollars Catholic Charities of Buffalo, NY is burning through.

Yikes! At USASpending.gov we see that since 2008 they received $43,153,870 in grants and subgrants—43 Million!!!

So why aren’t reporters like Mr. McKinley doing this kind of research and questioning what is driving the refugee industry? (We know the answer!)
There should be a law, if you are receiving federal grants you shouldn’t be allowed to whine to reporters and otherwise work against the President.
Readers, look up your local Catholic Charities and prepare to be shocked!
We have posted many many times about New York over the years, but here is one post that will help you get started with your education on the subject!