Category: Taxpayer goodies

Republican Senator Marco Rubio “honored” to Receive Award from Church World Service

~ Ann Corcoran ~ 2 Comments

Church World Service , as I reminded everyone just last week, is one of nine federally-funded refugee contractors.  Its most recent political agitation stunt was to join with the Council on American Islamic Relations on the steps of the Capitol and see its CEO arrested.

Now we hear they have given awards to their great defenders in the House and Senate—Marco Rubio among them!

Just so you know, CWS has received nearly half a billion of your tax dollars over the last ten years, see here.

And, in addition to placing refugees throughout small-city America they oppose the President by promoting open borders, and supporting the continued entry of illegal aliens into the US!  Does “little Marco” know that?

From Florida Daily:

Marco Rubio, Mario Diaz-Balart Honored by Church World Service for International Aid Efforts

On Wednesday night, two members of the Florida delegation were honored for their work on international humanitarian issues.

Church World Service honored U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., U.S. Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., and eight other members of Congress for “their leadership on humanitarian and poverty-focused international aid and protecting the U.S. refugee resettlement program.”

Diaz-Balart was one of 16 members of the House to tell the President they wanted more than 18,000 refugee admitted this year.

Other honorees included U.S. Sens. Chris Coons, D-Del., Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and James Lankford, R-Okla., and U.S. Reps. Jim Clyburn, D-SC, Kay Granger, R-Tex., Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., Nita Lowey, D-NY, and Chris Smith, R-NJ. Church World Service President and CEO Reverend John McCullough and Board of Directors Chairwoman Reverend Patricia de Jong presented the awards.

[….]

“I am honored to receive this award from Church World Service. I will continue to work to support and uplift communities across the globe, ensuring that all people have the opportunity to fulfill their God-given potential,” said Rubio who sits on the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

More here.

LOL! We should be glad that government contractors give awards like this because it helps us identify who exactly is working against the principle of America First!

For new readers, thank Church World Service for this blog since they were the federal contractor which was quietly placing refugees into my county in 2007.  So frustrated by the local paper which refused to give the citizens in our rural Maryland county any information about CWS or its subcontractor, the Virginia Council of Churches, I decided to investigate myself and publish what I learned.

CWS is a hard Left (taxpayer-funded) political organization (masquerading as a ‘religious charity’) that is changing America by changing the people.

Does Church World Service represent your church, go here and find out! If your church is doing a “crop walk” then you are sending money to CWS.

By the way, surely Senator Rubio sees this award as a political freebie!  If you live in Florida take a minute and tell him that you don’t agree with him on refugee resettlement (by taking this award he signals where he stands!).

How Many Millions of Tax Dollars do the Refugee Contractors Suck Out of Your Wallets Annually?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I’ve been writing here for so long (12 years) that I forget that new readers come along all the time who have never heard that there are nine federally-funded refugee resettlement contractors with a few hundred subcontractors*** working under them.

Here are the nine (we thought we might be down to seven by now, but the Trump Administration funded them all for another year even as the number of arriving refugees is dropping):

 

A reader asked me just the other day to post about how much money each gets to change our US towns and cities.

The best resource for that information is James Simpson’s lengthy 3-part investigation published at the Capital Research Center in September of 2018 entitled:

Resettling Refugees: Social and Economic Costs

I wrote about it here.

Bookmark this post and keep this chart handy!

DFMS is Episcopal Migration Ministries. They have two names. Note the drop in revenue after Obama was gone!

 

RRW builds on itself, so I recommend that if you really want to know what is happening, either visit every day or subscribe, because it is hard (and boring!) for me to continuously repeat old news. Reporting on juicy new news is much more fun!

You might want to check my category ‘Where to find information‘ where I post most stories about, you guessed it, where to find information!  However, there are at the moment 665 post archived there!

See all categories located in a drop-down in right hand side bar on my home page. (If you just read posts in e-mails or on your phone, you are missing important information.)

*** If you have an agency resettling refugees where you live and its name doesn’t match any of the nine major contractors, then know that you have a subcontractor of one of the nine because your taxpayer dollars flow through the nine and down to a local subcontractor.  If you search that local agency’s website you will most likely find out who its mothership is!

The nine contractors work with the US State Department to decide where to place (with which subcontractor) the incoming refugee cases.

Sixteen Republican Representatives Tell President they Want More than 18,000 Refugees

~ Ann Corcoran ~ 10 Comments

The letter to the President was spearheaded by Michigan Rep. Bill Huizenga and was clearly written with the aid of refugee industry lobbyists*** because it contains the language I see everywhere coming out of places like the Refugee Council USA and the federal resettlement contractors who depend on federal dollars for their supposed charitable work.

Republican Rep Bill Huizenga’s letter is boilerplate refugee industry lingo!

Claiming they fear we aren’t protecting enough people experiencing religious persecution they list wholly Muslim countries like Somalia and Afghanistan whose nationals they say we must admit.

But, there is not one word about persecuted Christians, which might have made their appeal to the President understandable at least.

Any day now the President will decide if the number for FY2020 will be 18,000, see here.

Below is Huizenga’s press release and the letter in its entirety.

Is your Republican member of Congress pressing the President for MORE third worlders for your Congressional District?

Huizenga: The Trump Administration Should Reconsider its Position on Refugee Resettlement

On Friday, Congressman Bill Huizenga (MI-02) sent a letter, with 16 of his Republican colleagues, to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo regarding the need for the United States to continue to open its doors to refugees displaced by conflict and facing religious persecution. The letter is in response to the Trump Administration recently announcing its plan to reduce the number of refugees admitted to the United States to a record-low level of 18,000 people.

“America cannot lead from behind on the issue of religious persecution and refugee resettlement,” said Congressman Bill Huizenga. “West Michigan has a long standing tradition of opening its doors to those facing persecution as well as welcoming individuals who have been displaced because of armed conflict. Whether it is our faith-based institutions, non-profit organizations, or individuals within the community, West Michigan continues to set an example Washington could learn from. The Trump Administration should reconsider its position.”

The letter is available below.

Dear Secretary Pompeo:

Since our nation’s founding, the United States has served as a beacon of hope to those suffering from oppression and conflict across the globe. The Statute of Liberty perfectly encapsulates our outstretched hand, accepting the world’s huddled masses who yearn to be free. As the world continues to face an overwhelming refugee crisis, we respectfully urge you to uphold our nation’s commitment to assist individuals who have been displaced by violence and strife.

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, there are approximately 20 million refugees worldwide with more than 50 percent being children. Among those, roughly eight million refugees are from Afghanistan, South Sudan, Myanmar, Somalia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.Additionally, another 37,000 people are forced to flee their homes every day due to conflict and persecution in their home countries.

Continued U.S. leadership is critical in addressing ongoing humanitarian crises caused by civil war and persecution and in assisting displaced persons. One area where America can lead is by creating and protecting de-escalation zones near war-torn countries and providing humanitarian assistance to people in need. We must also continue to accept and care for refugees here in America.

In our communities throughout the country, there is a long history of opening doors to assist refugees. Local leaders, faith groups, and businesses have come together to create an environment where refugees are welcomed and receive the services necessary to learn English, find employment, and become part of the fabric of their new communities.

As such, we urge you to maintain the United States’ longstanding commitment to assist refugees with a special focus on assisting individuals hailing from nations facing the worst conditions possible. Thank you in advance for your time and consideration.

Representatives who signed the letter led by Ken Buck (CO) include: Fred Upton (MI), Susan W. Brooks (IN), John Curtis (UT), Scott Tipton (CO), Doug Lamborn (CO), Cathy McMorris Rodgers (WA), Brian Fitzpatrick (PA), Steve Stivers (OH), Jaime Herrera Beutler (WA), John Katko (NY), Dan Newhouse (WA), Rob Woodall (GA), Chris Stewart (UT), and Mario Diaz-Balart (FL).

In July, Congressman Huizenga spoke out against eliminating the refugee resettlement program when reports circulated that the Trump Administration was considering such a proposal.

If you live in the district of one of those members and disagree with their pressuring the President, you need to let your representative know.

When they sign letters like this they assume it is a freebie for them.  They will get brownie points from Open Borders Inc. and suffer no down side.

It is your job to be sure they know there is a downside.  You could write a letter to your local paper critical of their stance on refugees.  Be sure to attend town halls when they are home campaigning so you can ask them in public to defend their position on refugees.

Maybe ask them why you, the taxpayers, are paying for it all but have no say in where they will be placed, and most importantly ask why we aren’t taking care of our own vulnerable Americans first!

*** A final comment on the subject of lobbyists.  The refugee industry has lobbyists galore.  Not just the Refugee Council USA but every one of the nine contractors has either formal lobbyists (Catholic Bishops and Lutherans for example) and informal lobbyists who help identify soft touches on the refugee program.

Some one, or several, draft a letter like this, and it is the lobbyist working with their principle author, in this case Huzienga staffers, who run around Capitol Hill with the draft letter to get co-signers.  It might require reaching back to the district to get some influential church group, interfaith group, Chamber of Commerce types who then also call the member to encourage their support for the letter.

Those of us who want to see the US Refugee Admissions program slowed, reformed or dumped outright have no lobbyist on the Hill!

 

 

Longtime Federal Bureaucrat who Created Refugee Program Swipes at Trump

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Well, I should say he is claiming credit for creating the present-day US Refugee Admissions Program in 1979.

Editor:  By the way, I’ve been away at a conference to talk about how RRW was “deplatformed” by WordPressdotcom and am now back at my computer with news about why the US Refugee Admissions Program Mr. Purcell says he created must be dumped (and reformed if there is a will for some sort of program). 

I know this might be getting too wonky, but it’s important to know how the program began and how it has gone wrong (or was wrong all along!)—something the speech police have been trying to stop me from telling you!

James N. Purcell, in an opinion piece in the Dallas News, says the refugee program was designed to leave out local and state government approval of refugee placement claiming it was “fairer” to leave them out of what he says is a federal decision.

I set up the U.S. refugee resettlement program that Trump is attacking

At a campaign rally last week in Minneapolis, the president trumpeted a recently issued executive order that would prohibit refugee resettlements unless states and cities expressly consented to them. He went on to say, “no other president would be doing that.”

https://www.sanangelosunriserotary.org/stories/our-guest-speaker-nbsp-mr-james-n-purcell-jr

[….]

There is a better way for state and local officials to make their views known that’s worked in the past.

This issue was a concern when I set up the U.S. refugee resettlement program in 1980 under President Jimmy Carter and when I was later named the official director of the program by President Ronald Reagan. We went out of our way to avoid the Damocles sword that President Donald Trump is now swinging.

Rather than force national decisions on state and local governments (which they were unable to make and has the effect of politicizing these decisions), we came up with a fairer and more humane approach that respected their unique roles. [So whatever happened to the Tenth Amendment?—ed]

The Refugee Act of 1980 recognized the essential contributions expected of state and local governments and made achievement of them possible.

What is he talking about!  Were the “essential contributions expected” of the state and local governments the enormous costs associated with welfare, education, health care, housing and so forth—costs now borne by state and local taxpayers with little financial help from Washington?

And, get this, the role of state coordinator was created to help identify and resolve problems.  How many of you reading this even knew you had state coordinators***?

 

The act required the federal government to coordinate and consult regularly with state refugee coordinators about proposed resettlements. Many potential problems were identified and resolved through monitoring and oversight, and record resettlement was achieved without serious incidents.

Now, without apparently knowing what he has revealed he tells us how the NGOs (the federally-funded refugee contractors, Leftwing phony ‘religious’ groups) really run the show he claims they tried not to “politicize.”

Perhaps that was why I was so perplexed in 1986 to receive a scathing letter from one of Minnesota’s leading politicians demanding that I cease resettlement of Hmong in Minnesota forthwith. This demand was so out of character for Minnesota that I immediately informed NGOs working on Hmong resettlement. By the end of the next week, Minnesotans were so outraged that I received letters reversing earlier criticisms and asking for more Hmong refugees.

Unbelievable!  He was the US State Department’s director of the Refugee Admissions Program and he tipped off his contractors that an elected official in Minnesota was having a problem with the refugee program and they in turn ginned-up letters from their flocks (Catholics and Lutherans mostly) to send him asking for more Hmong refugees.  (This was of course a few years before the major influx of Somalis to Minnesota began.)

So why wasn’t this all handled as he said they designed the program, through the State Refugee Coordinator?  Why? Because the program is run by the contractors who are paid out of the US Treasury to place refugees wherever they choose!  (See my recent post with a list of the present-day contractors, here.)

There will be no real reform of the US Refugee Program as long as the contractors are paid by us while acting as Leftwing political agitation groups.

*** Go here to see who your state refugee coordinator is.  If you know anything about the program in your state you will notice that many of them are affiliated with a federal contractor.

Got a problem in your state, or just want to know more about the program there?  Call your coordinator.  You can start by asking for your state’s most recent Refugee Plan on file with the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement.  Be polite and you will get some information (maybe not much!) but something.

Don’t miss my post on the major drug bust of Hmong in Wisconsin recently.

More Delays in Refugee Admissions as President has Yet to Sign-Off on 2020 Numbers

~ Ann Corcoran ~ 2 Comments

Late in September the word went out that for the new fiscal year (2020) which began on October first, the CEILING on refugee admissions for the year would be 18,000 (not the zero I wanted!), and that arrivals would be delayed for three weeks.

The three weeks end on Monday, the 21st, but now comes word that more refugee flights have been cancelled and the new arrivals are expected to begin trickling in after the 28th of the month.

We also learn that the President has yet to sign-off on the 18,000!

Needless to say the refugee contractors*** are not happy.

Here is CNN where we learn a little bit more about the closed door meeting on the Hill this past Tuesday between Sec. of State Pompeo and members of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

More refugee flights to the US are being canceled

Flights for refugees who have been approved to come to the United States continue to be canceled, in some cases for the second time, CNN has learned.

Last month, CNN reported that travel for refugees who were told they could come to the US was postponed, due to a moratorium on travel that extended through October 21, raising concerns among refugee resettlement agencies.

The moratorium will now run until October 28, with arrivals expected to resume on October 29, according to a State Department spokesperson.

Senator Lindsey Graham appealed to Pompeo to bring in the already approved refugees—what thousands?  Graham has been a long-time proponent of the refugee program.

[….]

The Trump administration has proposed capping the number of refugees allowed into the US at 18,000, a historic low. In a meeting this week, Sen. Lindsey Graham suggested to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that the US admit refugees who are travel ready, in addition to the 18,000, according to a congressional aide who attended the meeting.

Graham appeared concerned about the situation in Syria, the aide said.

[….]

Jen Smyers works for Church World Service that partnered with the Council on American Islamic Relations in that hokey publicity stunt I reported here: https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2019/10/16/18-arrested-on-capitol-hill-protesting-trump-refugee-policy-but-where-was-the-media/

The proposed 18,000 refugee cap, coupled with the situation in Syria and postponed travel has fueled concerns.

“There were cases that were re-booked in September for October 8 and then re-booked for October 22 and now trying to rebook for October 29. You’re basically inserting about a month and a half of when someone was expected to travel and when they are,” said Jen Smyers, director of policy and advocacy for the immigration and refugee program at Church World Service, one of the nine resettlement agencies.

More than 200 refugees were expected to travel to the US next week, according to a source familiar. Their flights have been canceled.

[….]

“We will work with our implementing partners to plan for a resumption of refugee arrivals on or after October 29,” a State Department spokesperson said, adding: “This will include rescheduling travel for those affected by the extension of the refugee arrivals pause. By law, no refugees may be admitted this fiscal year until the President determines the number that may be admitted. When the Presidential Determination is issued, we will begin admitting refugees in accordance with its provisions.”

The President has not yet signed off on the 18,000!

The canceling and re-booking of refugee flights suggests that there may be a delay in the President signing off on the 18,000-person refugee cap.

See my post from Thursday about the Hill meeting with Pompeo, here.

It is not too late! You can still weigh in by contacting the White House.  You can be sure that thousands of open borders activists are pressuring the White House any way they can.

***For new readers these are the nine federal refugee contractors that not only place refugees in towns across the country, but lobby Congress and organize publicity against this President all while sucking down millions of your tax dollars!  Cut them loose from the federal teat!