Just when I thought I knew all the ways in which the federal refugee resettlement contractors were milking taxpayers, along comes ‘Switchboard.’
If the millions of dollars we dole out to nine refugee contractors isn’t enough, we, US taxpayers, are funding what is for all intents and purposes a federally funded Leftwing community organizing operation!
Continue reading!
This story’s headline at WickedLocal(wth?) caught my eye.
Chelmsford mosque hosts forum on immigration, refugee issues Billerica leader speaks
Gee, what kind of forum was a Massachusetts mosque holding I wondered.
Here are a few snips from the beginning of the news account:
A forum held Nov. 14 at the Islamic Society of Greater Lowell mosque explored issues of immigration and refugees — including changes, challenges, and uncertainties.
The forum was sponsored by BRIDGES — the acronym for Building Respect in Diverse Groups to Enhance Sensitivity.
BRIDGES represents a collaborative effort of state, federal and local government agencies.
Participants included religious leaders, law enforcement officials, a representative from U.S. Rep. Laurie Trahan of the 3rd Congressional District.
[….]
BRIDGES formed after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, explained Fatema Esmail, of the Anjuman-e-Ezzi Masjid in Billerica — a mosque that serves the area’s Dawood Bohra, a movement within Shi’a Islam.
Esmail said the organization began with a mission — “to start a better dialogue for understanding, between community leaders and government officials.”
Activities have included cultural sensitivity trainings for personnel at Logan Airport, and with police departments across the state, and across New England.
We will have to have a look at BRIDGES in the future, but here is what I was most interested in…
The federal Office of Refugee Resettlement sent a representative?
The federal Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) (this is Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services) is sending spokesmen out to forums like this and suggesting that everything should be fine and dandy (for more refugee arrivals) in New England as governors there would want more refugees.
But, Jason Crislip, “representing the ORR”, doesn’t work for ORR.
He works for David Milibandat the International Rescue Committee that has apparently recently created another avenue, called Switchboard,to siphon off more of your tax dollars!
These Leftist Open Borders groups are masters of deception as they create new groups, which is all fine and dandy as long as we aren’t paying for it!
Jason Crislip, of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, said the Trump administration has proposed reduction of refugee resettlements in the current fiscal year from 30,000 to 18,000. [Crislip is not on the staff of the Office of Refugee Resettlement!—ed]
ORR surrogate Jason Crislip
In addition, Crislip said a presidential executive order, issued Sept. 26, aims to provide state and local consent for the resettlement of refugees.
Not to worry assures Crislip, your New England governors will be on board with MORE refugees.
Governors of New England states have generally indicated support for local consent, said Crislip, who said, “This is a good thing for the refugee program in New England.”
The resettlement program will continue as normally until June 1, which [sic] expected changes take effect, Crislip said. Crislip said the Department of State has begun releasing some information to illuminate the changes.
June 1? What happens then? The Deep staters have their pipelines well established, and those of us whose communities will be changed by what they decide in Washington, DC will be the last to know!
I’m going to be paying close attention to Switchboard which is fully funded by you—the taxpayers through a $ 1.2 million grant from the Office of Refugee Resettlement.
Dear Stephen Miller, if you read RRW, check out this latest federal boodle going to community organizers working against the President!
The IRC received $1,194,063 through competitive funding through the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Grant # 90RB0052. The project will be financed with 100% of Federal funds and 0% by non-governmental sources.The contents of this website are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families.
Just think about that!
WE supply the funding and Open Borders agitators do what they want (in our name!).
Here is a recent story from their blog (a blog that you pay for!).
The Leftwing propaganda machine runs on stories, stories to tug on your emotions. We need to be doing more of that with stories of our own like those I report at ‘Frauds, Crooks and Criminals!’ for free!
As many are, it was a tough call—is it a refugee story or a crime story? Well, it is both. So check it out at ‘Frauds and Crooks’this morning.
Three of these men were flown to America and set up with a new life on your dime. I think it’s time we cut off the flow of Afghan and Iraqi so-called Special Immigrant Visas.
And, btw, will the feds try to figure out who in the military vouched for three of these creeps?
When I caught this news at the Minneapolis Star Tribune about a program for lonely senior refugees, not refugees who came decades ago and grew old here, but senior citizens we admit through the US Refugee Admissions Program, it reminded me to tell you how your tax dollars are used.
Twice a month, elders from the area’s East African community gather here for a shared halal meal and a program that can range from citizenship to weaving to winter preparedness. [I’ll bet the emphasis is on citizenship and registering to vote!—ed]
The goal is to help break the social isolation experienced by members of the older immigrant population, many of whom speak little English and stay home to care for grandchildren while younger adults in the family are at work.
[….]
About 20 people were on hand last week, including Abdi Matan, who helped organize the program through the nonprofit Horn of Africa Aid and Rehabilitation Action Network. Matan came to St. Peter six years ago after working in Somalia for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. He also worked for the U.N. in refugee camps in Somalia and Kenya.
“Minnesota is the next home for Somalis,” he said with a big grin. “We have really enjoyed this program for socialization.”
Somali elders, he said, often have a hard time adjusting to their new home.
[….]
Mohamed Omar Ali, 73, was a herdsman in Somalia. He arrived in St. Peter about five years ago. [Arrived in the US at age 68, sure will be a real asset to the US workforce which is the usual excuse for the program in the first place!—ed]
Agencies paying for this program are all taxpayer-funded including of course Lutheran Social Service of MN!
Mahoney [Leah Mahoney, Minnesota Department of Health] said she believes this is the first program of its kind in rural Minnesota and hopes that other communities with East African populations will take notice. Support for the program has come from the state Health Department, as well as the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Lutheran Social Service of Minnesota, the city of St. Peter and the Minnesota River Area Agency on Aging.
First, senior citizens admitted as refugees are eligible for SSI (Supplemental Security Income) from Social Security. Read about it here.
However, in addition to individual benefits, states that welcome “elder” refugees receive help directly from the federal treasury (from you again) to help them cope with needy senior citizen refugees.
It would take a lot of time to go through the entire list of over a hundred countries from which we receive refugees to get to the total. But here are a few numbers from the Refugee Processing Center.
In the last five years we admitted 748 seniors (over 65 years old) from Bhutan, Burma 640 seniors, DR Congo 777, and Somalia 273.
Now get a load of this!
States are given federal money to help take care of refugees aged 60 and older.
Do a little math and see how much the elder refugees are costing taxpayers in just this one portion of the welfare services available to them.
The FY 2020 allocations to states and replacement designees are based on the number of ORR-eligible individuals aged 60 or older who arrived and were served in FY 2018, as reported in the ORR Refugee Arrivals Data System (RADS).
The chart below documents the number of eligible individuals served in each state in FY 2018 and the corresponding funding allocations for the SOR program for FY 2020.
Here is just a bit of the chart in a screenshot. But be sure to open the chart and see the whole list! It gets worse. I wondered if this is sweetener for many states? New Hampshire 4 refugees $75,000 from the feds!
This is the kind of handout you have been supplying through your tax dollars for years and possibly decades!
There is an excellent piece at the World Tribune you all should take a minute or two to read. It is about the transformation of Virginia and the soon to be transformed Montana if the Open Borders Democrats continue their great replacement strategy (only slowed at the moment by the President).
For new readers, I have written often about what is happening in Montana, click here, for more background. I visited the state in 2016 while touring the West and Midwest to meet many Americans who have concluded that diversity is not strength and who love their towns and cities just the way they are without the importation of needy third world refugees.
From Joe Schaeffer at the World Tribune (just a bit of it because you should read it all):
Many in Big Sky Country protested ‘invasion’ of Congolese, Eritreans, Iraqis and Syrians
Last week we focused on how the former red bastion of Virginia has been flipped to blue thanks in large part to demographic change spurred by massive Third World immigration. [The do-nothing Virginia Republican Party must share the blame!—]
Having lived in Northern Virginia for some 20-odd years in the 1990s through the Oughts, I watched with my own eyes as respectable middle-class neighborhoods in Falls Church, Fairfax and abutting towns were transformed into decrepit crime-plagued eyesores due to the “enrichment” that comes with Third World immigration.
There really was little left to do but find a way to earn well over $100,000 a year and join the “tolerant” white liberals and privileged career federal employees in their upscale Leesburg and McLean zip codes or leave. I never did make it to McLean.
So it is sad to see the process repeating itself all over again in, of all places, the natural beauty of Big Sky Country.
As CEO of the International Rescue Committee, British citizen and globalist David Miliband is responsible for placing refugees in Montana. He lives and works in Manhattan and pulls down a partially federally funded salary of $900,000 a year! I call that doing well by doing good!
[….]
In short, our ruling globalists are determined that there be no corner of America left untouched by Third World immigration. A powerful global NGO called the International Rescue Committee helped settle Hmong refugees in Missoula in the 1980s. The IRC was able to successfully re-open its refugee resettlement operations in this city of 74,000 inhabitants in 2016 thanks to the emotional distress felt by a group of Missoula female book club members upon seeing the infamous photo of a drowned Syrian boy on a Turkish beach in 2015.
[….]
If you want to know how Virginia was lost, this is how it begins. Beyond all the virtue signaling about diversity and openness there of course lie very genuine concerns about importing foreigners who do not share the traditional American values that buttress our Constitutional freedoms.
This is especially prevalent with Muslims from the Middle East and Africa. Then there are the shocking health fears. The Ebola plague is currently raging in the Congo. Also underreported are the high financial costs to struggling U.S. taxpayers that come with resettling refugees.
[….]
This is the brave new world globalist organizations have in mind for formerly stable American neighborhoods from Manassas, Virginia to Missoula, Montana. If their work continues, Democrat majorities will hardly be the only distinguishing feature of these sullen heterogeneous, multilingual locales.
By the way, the author says the IRC resettles the most refugees annually in the US. I thought the US Conference of Catholic Bishops held that distinction. No matter, I am sure one or other is a close second.
The New York Timestreats us to an unnecessarily lengthy piece about the internal political machinations inside the US Catholic Church.
Archbishop Gomez the NYT says, “…created wallet-size cards for undocumented immigrants with instructions for what to do if they are approached by immigration officers.” Did they pay for those on the taxpayers’ dime?
It seems there is a major split—do they put the immigration issue above or below their anti-abortion stance? Some do, some don’t.
Do I care about their internal politics as they try to figure out how political they have been and how political they will be going forward?
No!
The only thing that troubles me about their latest political soul-searching and their choice of a Hispanic head honcho for the US Bishops is one thing!
We taxpayers are paying for their religious ‘good works.’
We pay so they can beat their chests and tell the world they care about the poor and the downtrodden (as long as those poor people are immigrants to this cold-hearted Trump-America).
Here is the story, you can read it yourself remembering that you are a primary (involuntary!) funder of their “migration” operation (h/t: Julia):
U.S. Catholic Bishops Elect Hispanic Immigrant as Leader
Not one single word about the $ Millions the Bishops suck out of the US Treasury every year!
Does the NYT even know about it, or is the venerable paper keeping that information from you?
In any case, no mention, so therefore no questions about how that money dictates their position on government policy.
And, no questions about whether we should be paying for their upkeep.
One last thing: The NYT says that fewer Hispanics are now Catholics, hmmm!
There is an excellent piece at the World Tribune you all should take a minute or two to read. It is about the transformation of Virginia and the soon to be transformed Montana if the Open Borders Democrats continue their great replacement strategy (only slowed at the moment by the President).
