Refugee lobby in high dudgeon over Trump refugee numbers slump

03/27/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Their paying client numbers are very low right now and could hit an all-time low if this trend continues.
I started this post simply wanting to let readers know what the normal sequence is in a given year as the feds move toward the next fiscal year, but then I noticed the press release from the Refugee Council USA-–the lobbying arm of the refugee industry.
I wanted to get the jump on them as we approach the 6-month mark in the refugee admission year of FY18 by telling you what the time table for their action will be. (Fiscal years begin on October 1 and extend to September 30th, so April first marks the 6 month mark.) So, I’ll do that, then tell you about the press release.

Mary and Eleanor — Ms. Giovagnoli is now the director of the Refugee Council USA the lobbying arm of the refugee industry and on the left is Eleanor Acer of Human Rights First at an earlier event.

And, I said here yesterday, admission numbers are way below where they would normally be at this time of year (that isn’t to say they won’t rebound in the second half of the year because some of that depends on how much cash Congress put in the recent gigantic omnibus).
Abstract prep
At about this time in a normal year, the subcontractors are busy as beavers in hundreds of US towns and cities putting together their ‘Abstracts’ in secrecy. That is the plan for your community with how many refugees your local agency desires.
Scoping meeting sham
In a normal year the US State Department holds a scoping meeting in about May to basically see how many refugees the contractors want in the upcoming year and where they might come from. (The State Dept. did not hold such a meeting last year that we know of, and I’m betting the newbies in there don’t even know about it.)
Ostensibly the scoping meeting is to gauge your views too, but in a number of years where we participated and many of you, my readers, sent in comments, it was pretty clear that the State Department did not want to hear about objections to the program. If anyone is interested in what we said, there are dozens and dozens of posts filed here about what happened in 2012-2016 with those “scoping meetings.” (See category drop-down for State Department Testimony.)
It would be nice (and fair!) if the State Department reinstated scoping meetings and made them available to all Americans. Heck, it would be great if they went on the road and held hearings!
Presidential determination for coming year
The Abstract prep and the scoping meetings were (are) lead-ups to August when the President’s people supposedly meet with Congressional committees in the House and Senate to discuss the coming year. There are supposed to be Congressional hearings (before the submission of the ceiling) at this point, but that never happens.
The President then sends a ‘determination’ letter (and report) to Congress for the new fiscal year which begins October 1. The President decides what the CEILING will be for the coming fiscal year—how many refugees and from where. This is a CEILING, A CAP, and is not a goal although the contractors want it to be a goal or target.
I told you yesterday about the myriad stories in the media about “plummeting” numbers.
And, also yesterday, the lobbying arm of the refugee industry—Refugee Council USA sent out a press release to whack the Trump Administration and beg for this year’s 45,000.
Right now, for new readers, the CEILING is 45,000, but at the present rate of entry we will get no where near that (thus the press blast yesterday from RCUSA).

Washington, D.C. – Midway through Fiscal Year 2018, the Trump administration has admitted only a quarter of the 45,000 refugees it pledged to take in, making it highly unlikely that the United States will meets its anticipated admissions goal. Instead, the administration appears to be on track to admit roughly 22,000 refugees, far below any admissions number since the modern refugee program began in 1980. Today, Refugee Council USA (RCUSA) gathered experts to discuss the immediate and long-term implications of this failure.

More here. Mary, Eleanor and others participated.

Trump and Pompeo — Mike Pompeo at the State Department is still a wildcard!

Get ready for the big FY19 push to start at any time
Although they are still in panic-mode and pushing for the 45,000, this is about the time of year the yammering begins for next year’s numbers. The contractors shoot really high.
Watch them ask for 100,000 or more (to make up for lost time and lost revenue for them).
Last year, because of Trump’s campaign promises they were pushing for a paltry 75,000. What will it be this year? We will be watching!
The Refugee Council USA has an Activist Toolkit that you might benefit from seeing. Click here. It might give you some ideas!

I sure hope that none of this is being paid for with our tax dollars! Congress are you paying attention?

And lastly, I got a chuckle seeing this sample letter (from the toolkit) that refugees are encouraged to send to newspapers:

RCUSA sample letter

Another Uzbek refugee on trial on terror charges

03/26/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I’m getting sick of these Uzbek refugees who should never have been admitted to the US under questionable circumstances in the first place—both George W. Bush and Obama were doing it!
Uzbekistan is a Muslim country, supposedly moderate, so the refugees we got are apparently the trouble makers the moderate government wanted removed. Our Presidents said, sure we’ll take care of it for you.
This isn’t going to be a thorough post of Uzbek terrorists because I want to move on this morning, however I see just last month an Uzbek Islamic terrorist pleaded guilty to killing five in a Sweden truck attack.
Ten days ago we reported on Uzbek convicted terrorist Fazliddin Kurbanov who was found guilty of trying to kill a California prison warden (tried to behead him!).***

Trump and Turnbull — Trump agreed to take Australia’s rejected refugees, why? https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2018/03/05/more-of-australias-rejected-asylum-seekers-leave-for-us/

My Uzbek archive is here.
Someone should write a book! See if you can get the Dept. of State and the CIA to cough up the real story on why we brought so many Uzbek fake ‘refugees’ to the US and distributed them around the country.

BTW, one of my major complaints with the US Refugee Admissions Program is that we aren’t picking the most needy people to be our refugees, we often use the program for extracurricular foreign policy objectives.

Trump is doing it with the “dumb” Australia deal. Bush did it with Uzbeks and Meskhetians. Before him Clinton did it with Albanians. Obama continued the Uzbek flow, and was doing it with Central Americans among others.
jamshid-muhtorov-bakhtiyor-jumaev (1)
Here is some news on Bahktiyor Jumaev and his alleged former Islamic jihadist roommate Jamshid Muhtorov—refugees who should never have been here!
From Breitbart:
(hat tip: Chris)

The trial for a refugee from Uzbekistan charged with providing material support to a terrorist organization by wiring money to the “Islamic Jihad Union” (IJU) began in Denver, Colorado, on Thursday.

Prosecutors claim Bahktiyor Jumaev developed a closeness with fellow Uzbek Jamshid Muhtorov when the pair shared an apartment and that the two men discussed joining the IJU through phone calls and emails by using code words such as “wedding” to describe jihad.

“It’s a crime to send money or property to a terrorist organization,” said prosecutor Gregory Holloway at a courthouse in Denver. “That’s why we’re here.”

[….]

In January, Jumaev’s lawyers asked a judge not to allow the prosecution to show jurors a video showing the beheading of FBI agents found on Muhtorov’s computer.

“There is no evidence that Mr. Jumaev viewed any or most of the Muhtorov electronic evidence, particularly the most violent ones,” the motion read.

Muhtorov was first arrested before boarding a flight in Chicago back in 2012 and is currently being tried separately. He has already served five years in jail without trial, and a decision last year to release him on bail was eventually reversed by a federal judge.

The men are two of a number Uzbek migrants charged with terrorism-related offenses in the past year. Last August, 22-year-old Uzbek-American Abror Habibo pled guilty to charges of agreeing to fund terrorist activity, after buying another man a plane ticket to Syria in order to join the Islamic State.

Uzbek migrant Sayfullo Saipov also faces charges of terrorist after carrying out a truck attack that killed eight people and injured at least a dozen others in the city’s deadliest attack since 9/11.

***Breitbart forgot to mention Fazliddin Kurbanov. The pair in Colorado were sending money supposedly, Kurbanov was actually planning bombings and tried to kill the prison warden.
And, don’t you wonder why Jamshid Muhtorov hasn’t gone to trial yet?

Jewish groups disagree about Muslim migration to US; internal pact revealed

03/25/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

It seems that the fifty or so Jewish groups operating in the US have a secret pact to not speak ill of each other. However, that agreement seems to be coming apart as complaints involving the more conservative Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) have been filed.
One of those complaints appears (no one is revealing complete details) to involve a possible complaint by the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) which is not happy with ZOA pointing out HIAS’s financial incentive to admit and resettle more Muslim ‘refugees’ to America.

Hetfield in DC synagogue — Mark Hetfield, CEO of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society speaking at one of many anti-Trump events he was involved in. See more on the schism among American Jews here: http://jewishexponent.com/2017/11/08/groups-see-surge-activism-since-2016-election/

(HIAS, for new readers, is one of the nine major federal resettlement contractors*** placing refugees as secretively as they can into your towns and cities. HIAS played a major role in filing lawsuits against the Trump Administration’s so-called Muslim ban.)
First here is information from Forward in a story entitled:

Presidents Conference’s Secret Rules Bar Jewish Groups From Attacking Each Other

(President refers to the Presidents of each of the Jewish advocacy groups.)

Top American Jewish organizations agreed last year to adhere to rules that ban them from attacking each other, the Forward has learned.

The rules, which regulate the discourse of American Jewish leaders, have never been publicized, and are unknown to the vast majority of the constituents of the organizations that have agreed to abide by them. First written in 1995, they were quietly revamped in early 2017.

All of the fifty-odd Jewish groups that belong to the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations are subject to the rules, which now ban “insults, ad hominem attacks, and name calling” against the Presidents Conference or its member organizations, and statements that are “false, inaccurate or unfairly exaggerated.”

Alleged violations of the rules are referred to a committee that has the power to recommend that organizations guilty of serial violations be expelled from the Presidents Conference. The membership and procedures of that committee, which also were updated last year, have never been made public.

At least four alleged infractions of the rules are currently pending before the committee, the Forward has learned. Those four all involve the Zionist Organization of America, a hawkish pro-Israel group, which is the subject of two of the complaints and has filed two more.

“I criticize other organizations all the time,” said Mort Klein, the ZOA’s president. “You just can’t lie, and you can’t say don’t support them. You can’t call names.”

[….]

The Presidents Conference did not respond to a request for its current governing documents. It also did not respond to questions about what complaints are currently pending before the tribunal, and whether the tribunal had ever acted against a member organization.

[….]

According to one person active in the Presidents Conference, both the Jewish refugee aid organization HIAS and the Anti-Defamation League currently have complaints that have long been pending against the ZOA. The ZOA’s Klein told the Forward that his group has brought its own complaints against the ADL and Ameinu, a progressive Zionist organization.

None of the organizations would describe the content of their complaints. But that they relate to the ZOA is not surprising, given the organization’s willingness to publicly attack its colleagues. In a letter to the editor published in the Forward in 2017, Klein suggested that there was a “profit motive” behind the HIAS’s opposition to President Trump’s Muslim ban.

“Some refugee resettlement groups, such as HIAS, which have invoked ‘morality’ arguments….have been receiving millions of dollars of government grants to resettle refugees,” Klein wrote.

HIAS would not say whether the January 2017 letter, or some other public statement by the ZOA, was the subject of its complaint to the committee.

“I do not want to prejudice the proceedings in any way by commenting before the process has run its course, which I hope will be soon,” said Mark Hetfield, HIAS’s president and CEO.

More here.
The letter and the allegations against HIAS:

hetfield-at-wh — Here is Hetfield again protesting against the President. Hetfield pulls down an annual salary of over $350,000. Where is Congress? Cut their federal funding! https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2018/03/05/dear-donald-give-bibi-a-gift-today-cut-federal-funding-to-hias/

This is a portion of the 2017 ‘Letter to the Editor’ by Morton Klein (supporting President Trump) that seems to have Hetfield steamed:

…. under Jewish law, someone with a potential “profit motive” to favor a particular position is in no position to judge. Some refugee resettlement groups, such as HIAS, which have invoked “morality” arguments to promote admitting poorly vetted refugees have been receiving millions of dollars of government grants to resettle refugees.

There is also no moral equivalence between Trump’s executive order and Franklin Delano Roosevelt slamming the doors on Jews trying to escape from Nazi Europe. The 1930s Jews posed no terror threat to the U.S., were in imminent danger of annihilation, and had nowhere else to go. By contrast, immigrants from the seven countries of concern are infiltrated by terrorists, are often already in Turkey or Jordan where there is no imminent danger, and have 50 other Muslim nations that can be pressured to accept them. (ZOA also favors safe zones in the Middle East.)

The Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes survey (2009) found that over 90% of Muslims in surveyed majority Muslim nations held strongly unfavorable (anti-Semitic) attitudes towards Jews. Bringing more Jew-haters into the U.S., who will join surging vicious anti-Semitic activities on college campuses and the anti-Israel Congressional lobby, is dangerous and immoral.

More here.
Our complete Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society archive is here. HIAS is very close to the SPLC, by the way.

*** These (below) are the nine federal refugee resettlement contractors and I say all of them have a profit motive (including Catholics, Lutherans, Episcopalians, etc) to resettle more refugees including Muslim refugees.
And, I think one of the greatest insults to taxpayers is that these same groups, which are paid by us to take care of refugees, have become super-sized Leftwing community organizing and agitating groups. HIAS is the leader in attacking Trump!
The number in parenthesis is the percentage of the nine VOLAGs’ income paid by you (the taxpayer) to place the refugees, line them up with jobs, and get them signed up for their services! From most recent accounting, here.

GAO: Huge numbers of Special Immigrant Visa holders not finding work

03/23/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

But a big problem, says the Government Accountability Office , is that neither the US State Department or the Office of Refugee Resettlement in HHS are doing much to track the outcomes of those admitted to the US from Iraq and Afghanistan who supposedly worked for us as interpreters.

I told you here recently that the number admitted to the US from those two violent countries is pushing 70,000 in the last ten years.
As Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) holders they are treated as full-fledged refugees with all the welfare benefits other refugees receive.
We have been told that the resettlement contractors*** are relying on these paying clients to keep federal dollars flowing to their budgets as the refugee flow they hoped for is not materializing.
Some members of Congress must have requested this GAO study because problems are obviously brewing with this portion of our ‘welcome’ to Middle Eastern Muslims. I did not read the whole report, here, but it seems that there are some pretty disillusioned SIVs who thought they would have good jobs and decent housing when they got here.
Here are a few snips from the summary:
Not exactly a bombshell title:

AFGHAN AND IRAQI SPECIAL IMMIGRANTS: More Information on Their Resettlement Outcomes Would Be Beneficial

What GAO Found

Since fiscal year 2011, about [about?—ed] 13,000 Afghan and Iraqi nationals (excluding family members) have resettled in the United States under special immigrant visas (SIV), but limited data on their outcomes are available from the Department of State (State) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). State collects data on SIV holders’ resettlement outcomes once—90 days after they arrive. GAO’s analysis of State’s data from October 2010 through December 2016 showed that the majority of principal SIV holders—those who worked for the U.S. government—were unemployed at 90 days, including those reporting high levels of education and spoken English.

Screenshot (313) — Very high unemployment rate at 90 days. Why is 90 days important? That is when their resettlement contractor is done with them and has moved on to the next batch of paying clients (aka refugees). By 90 days the SIV is expected to be self-sufficient. BTW, don’t you wonder who the 1,760 “interpreters” without “good spoken English” are?

GAO continues…

Stakeholders [must be referring to the resettlement contractors—ed] GAO interviewed reported several resettlement challenges, including capacity issues in handling large numbers of SIV holders, difficulties finding skilled employment, and SIV holders’ high expectations.

Officials from local resettlement agencies in Northern Virginia reported capacity challenges for their agencies and the community due to the large increase of SIV holders. In almost all of GAO’s focus groups with principal SIV holders, participants expressed frustration at the need to take low-skilled jobs because they expected that their education and prior work experience would lead to skilled work. [You can bet they aren’t going to the slaughterhouse jobs where contractors like to place those in their care.—-ed]

State and HHS have taken steps to address some resettlement challenges. For example, in 2017 State placed restrictions on where SIV holders could resettle and HHS announced a new grant to support career development programs for SIV holders, refugees, and others.

In addition, State provides information to prospective SIV holders about resettlement. However, the information is general, and lacks detail on key issues such as housing affordability, employment, and available government assistance. Providing such specifics could lead to more informed decisions by SIV holders on where to resettle and help them more quickly adapt to potential challenges once in the United States. [I don’t think that GAO knows that the SIVs original resettlement location is not chosen by the refugees, but by the State Department in conjunction with contractors*** as they bid for bodies (aka paying clients).—ed]

In light of so many disillusioned and unemployed SIVs, I sure hope that someone is reporting that news to others in the pipeline on their way to America!

Why the discrepancy in the numbers?

I wondered if GAO is downplaying the numbers on purpose…. were they as shocked as we are to find these enormous numbers?
In the summary, GAO talks about 13,000 SIVs since 2011, excluding family members, but in the full report they describe the real numbers we have placed in your towns and cities.
And, rather than saying “over 60,000”, they could have said closer to 70,000! As I reported early this month, using data readily available at the State Department’s Refugee Processing Center (Wrapsnet), we admitted from FY2008-right up to my post on March 8th, the numbers as follows:

Iraq: 18,084

Afghanistan: 49,358

Total to March 8th: 67,442
When I went to the full report they say this (below) on Page 1, but once again use the word “about.” They do clarify one point: “about 20,000” are the people who worked for us or on behalf of us, the remaining, over 40,000! are their family members.

Afghan and Iraqi nationals who were employed by or on behalf of the U.S. government in Afghanistan or Iraq and have experienced ongoing serious threats as a consequence of such employment, or who worked directly with the U.S. Armed Forces or under chief of mission authority as a translator or interpreter, may apply for a special immigrant visa (SIV) to the United States.

Upon securing a visa, the principal SIV holder and his or her eligible dependents may resettle in the United States and are granted lawful permanent resident status upon admission into the United States. Since fiscal year 2008, over 60,000 individuals—about 20,000 principal SIV holders and their families—have been admitted under SIVs and received federal resettlement assistance upon arrival.

SIV holders are authorized to receive resettlement assistance from the Departments of State (State) and Health and Human Services (HHS), as well as federal public benefits, to the same extent and for the same periods of time as refugees.

***These are the nine federal contractors working with the US State Department to place the SIVs and their families. Although GAO seems to have been fixated on how poorly the State Department and ORR are keeping track of the SIVs and their progress toward assimilation, it seems to me that the contractors should come in for more blame if their charges are doing so poorly.
The number in parenthesis is the percentage of the nine VOLAGs’ income paid by you (the taxpayer) to place the refugees, line them up with jobs, and get them signed up for their services! From most recent accounting, here.

South African xenophobia is the reason some Somalis are in Mankato, MN

03/22/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

When I saw this—one more story on Trump’s ‘Muslim ban’ and the slowdown in refugee arrivals to America, it was just one more ‘ho-hum’—so what else is new.
But, like most of the stories a little nugget pops out that gives me a better picture of how the UN and the US State Department are changing America. Only rarely do I see stories that tell us where other African blacks experiencing hatred from black South Africans are moving to. This is one of those where we see the pipeline start to finish!
Of course they can’t call it racism when its black vs. black, so for those Somalis who arrived in South Africa as illegal aliens and were transformed into refugees for your towns and cities by the thousands, they say it is xenophobia that is responsible for their ticket to America.

The story is about Mankato, MN a city that went from a 19% poverty level in 2000 to a 26% in 2015 being resettled with Somalis by the Minnesota Council of Churches (a Subcontractor of Church World Service).
That (left) is the CWS logo in the picture below…..

cws protest at wh — Here we have an anti-Trump protest by federally-funded Church World Service and HIAS with CAIR at the White House in January. https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2018/01/28/church-world-service-and-hias-join-cair-to-protest-at-white-house/

…. and it is Church World Service that is paid gobs of taxpayer dollars to run the resettlement program for the US State Department out of Kenya and out of Johannesburg, South Africa.
Here is the Mankato Free Press falling for the big boo-hoo story on the drop in number of Somalis arriving in that southern Minnesota city.

MANKATO — Refugee resettlement in the Mankato area has slowed over the past year amid President Donald Trump’s attempts to ban travelers from certain Muslim-majority countries.

The local drop is a reflection of what’s happened statewide and nationwide, adding further uncertainty for refugees already in the middle of lengthy resettlement processes.

Somali refugees and their families awaiting reunification in Mankato have been most impacted by the ban.

Ben Walen, director of refugee services with the Minnesota Council of Churches, said his organization knows of 16 individuals who would’ve likely settled in Mankato before September 2018 if the ban never happened. Now he doesn’t expect them to arrive in Minnesota before the end of the year. And an arrival next year is anyone’s guess.

Then this is what I found most informative. Minnesota Council of Churches employee, Habiba Rashid, came to Minnesota as a refugee from xenophobia in South Africa (aka the “Rainbow Nation”). Then she got her family in through chain migration.
So, as I have been saying, the white South Africans who are being persecuted by racist black South Africans should apply to the UN and Church World Service to get to the US as refugees. Head on over to that UN/Church World Service office in Johannesburg and (try to) get on the list!
After all, CWS is paid by the head to bring refugees to the US, it shouldn’t matter to them whether they are black or white, right?
Mankato Free Press continues…

Not knowing when the wait will end has been hard on families in the area, said Habiba Rashid, who settled in Mankato with her husband six years ago.

“Families here are panicking,” she said.

Now a community navigator in the council’s Mankato Area Refugee Services office, she waited six years before her resettlement here and another four afterward for her mom, dad and siblings younger than 18 to join — a timeline she describes as “lucky” compared to others. She said a term like “chain migration” is a misleading term for what should be thought of as family reunification.

Calling it chain migration also assumes refugees can just attach family members to their resettlement applications, which she said doesn’t resemble her experience or the experiences of the families she knows.

[….]

Aid organizations try to comfort them, knowing many waiting for resettlement grew so restless they turned to dangerous crossings into Europe.

Others who wait out the process in countries like South Africa, like Rashid’s family did, face xenophobic attacks.

More here.
If I were organizing a campaign to bring the persecuted white farmers to America, I think I would start writing to key offices at Church World Service, like these below:
Address to Church World Service. Re: Save the South African White Farmers!

Screenshot (310)
See my extensive South Africa archive, here.
Don’t miss my post from yesterday where Minnesotan Bob Enos tells us what a fictional Somali family is costing taxpayers of that state and nation.