Biden Wants to Prepare for Future Surges of Unaccompanied Minors
Okay, that news is bad enough, but it gave me a chuckle to see how they are spinning the present surge of illegal alien kids with the arrival of Biden in the Oval Office—just happens from time to time, move along, nothing to see!
It is just a normal cycle and we must be better prepared by spending more of your tax dollars for housing for the mostly teenaged boys. That apparently is the talking point coming from this White House.
If you missed my post the other day about planes landing in the night in Tennessee, check it out here:
One good thing about the Tennessee expose’ is that the secrecy angle has brought the Administration’s movement of the ‘children’ to the media’s attention, but it has been going on for years.
We see that WRCB-TV in Chattanooga has an update. I’m happy that they are trying to get more accurate information on the Tennessee situation by using data at the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement, but I have a bone to pick with them about their headline. Here is my complaint:
The Unaccompanied Alien Children are illegal aliens NOT REFUGEES.
They aren’t even legitimate asylum seekers unless, and until, they file an asylum claim.
WRBC-TV:
What happens next in the refugee resettlement process of migrant children?
It’s been more than a week since four planes carrying migrant children landed in Chattanooga.
Similar operations are happening across the country. Some of those children are being cared for in a group home, but hundreds of others left the airport on a bus.
Channel 3 learned what happens next in the refugee resettlement process, and the number of children relying on sponsors in Tennessee.
From October to March, 66 unaccompanied children were released to a sponsor in Hamilton County.
While the federal government looks for a sponsor, children are taken to one of about 200 facilities across twenty-two states. A child therapist says this process can take a toll on the children involved.
There are about 200 facilities across the country where unaccompanied children are being housed.
One of them is in Chattanooga, which can house between 30 and 50 minors.
As of May 13, there are around 20,000 kids in the care of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, nationwide.Their average stay is 31 days.
More on that shortly…
But, back to the Pew articleI mentioned above. Get ready for another federal agency for the ‘children.’
The Biden administration wants to create a permanent federal workforce to provide housing for unaccompanied migrant children during surges like the one that began in January and continues to overwhelm authorities.
Mayorkas is not wrong. Surges have occurred periodically, but Trump did get a handle on the problem toward the end of his presidency.
“We all know that surges arise periodically,” U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said during a congressional hearing earlier this month. “They arose in 2019. They arose in 2016, in 2014 and well before that. Migration is a very dynamic and fluid challenge that we have faced for many, many years.”
Mayorkas said during the hearing that DHS is exploring options, but the agency did not respond to a Stateline request for more detail.
Currently, the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement, which is part of the U.S Department of Health and Human Services, houses the children by relying on state-licensed contractors. But Republican governors in Iowa, Nebraska, South Carolina, South Dakota and Wyoming recently blocked contractors in their states from taking in the children, claiming that the unaccompanied kids would displace those already in state foster care or limit states’ ability to make new placements.
However, there currently are no federally funded long-term foster care providers for unaccompanied minors in any of those five states.
The Pew article goes on to say that Senator Rob Portman said the previous administration had no surges, but I am sad to say he is wrong. They might not have had a surge at the end of Trump’s time in office, but they sure did have a surge earlier as you will see below.
I know it isn’t what we want to see, but Donald Trump presided over the largest surge year so far.
For perspective, in 2003, when ORR became the agency in charge of UACs, there were 8,000 arriving illegally that year.
And, so here is my big question:
Since over 70% of the ‘childrenare ages 15-17, what happens to them when they age-out as they turn 18? Tens of thousands of Trump’s UACs likely already aged out. Where are they? Why does no one ask? Are they simply loose in your towns and counties? I think so!
And, see that the Left-leaning Migration Policy Institute is critical of the Biden team’s handling of the mess. Are they helping set the narrative that an entire new bureaucratic structure is the only answer to the border crisis?
U.S. housing shortage presents new challenge for refugee resettlement
When the White House announced earlier this month that it would increase the number of refugees granted admission into the United States this fiscal year by four times the previous target, to 62,500 people, reversing course from President Biden’s initial plan, immigrant advocates applauded the decision. Yet groups working to help resettle refugees are now facing another new challenge: finding housing for new migrants.
Rajbhandari — hmmm! a little dissension in the ‘humanitarian’ industry?
Sheryl Rajbhandari, the founder of Heartfelt Tidbits, a Cincinnati-based organization that has helped resettle over 50,000 [their website says 40,000 but who is counting!–ed] people in western Ohio since 2008, worries that refugees will be pushed into inappropriate housing.
The government-approved resettlement agencies*** that sponsor refugees and provide services for the first 90 days will often place them in public housing with high crime rates.
Those agencies “want the money for each individual they resettle. So it’s like ‘We don’t really care if we move people,’” she said.
[….]
Once refugees are in the United States, a resettlement agency is responsible for finding and paying for housing for them for an initial period. In a real estate market driven to new highs by the pandemic, finding that housing has become increasingly difficult.
To be clear, the “resettlement agency,” one of the nine federal contractors*** doesn’t use its own money to pay for the initial housing, it uses your money that is passed through federal grants and contracts to their coffers.
Low-income and potentially dangerous housing may expose already vulnerable families to crime, and it can also restrict those families from getting the resources they need, Rajbhandari argued.
“If it’s a high-crime area, folks don’t want to go into that area,” she said. “So folks who might be able to provide assistance don’t feel comfortable driving into places where there are people being shot at and drugs are being dealt.”
Not so subtle pitch for more of your tax dollars to go to refugee resettlement.
The concerns over housing come as organizations working with refugees deal with two challenges: a sudden increase in the cap for people eligible for resettlement and limited government resources in place to help them.
[….]
…there are currently 35,000 refugees who have already passed security checks and have been cleared for entry into the U.S., and there are another 100,000 in the pipeline.
Independent resettlement organizations around the country are optimistic about reaching the 62,500 target, however difficult to achieve. The challenge now will be finding them appropriate housing.
Miry Whitehill, the founder of Miry’s List, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit that assists families with the resettlement process, said this is a problem that goes deeper than just housing.
The cost of resettlement loans and plane tickets means many refugees enter the United States already owing money they must repay.
“Something that I think is really important to mention here is that refugees are starting out in debt,” Whitehill said. “Every refugee, they’re required to sign a financial contract agreeing to reimburse the resettlement agency for the cost of their flights.”
Whitehill isn’t telling the whole story on those airfare loans.
IOM bags at airports are the tip-off! Refugees Arriving!
The resettlement agency does collect the loan money from the refugees (when they can get it!), but it was your money, your tax dollars flowing through the United Nation’s International Organization for Migration that shelled out the money in the first place.
When one of the big nine does collect the airfare loan reimbursements, they get to keep a quarter of it for themselves, some years resulting in over a million in extra petty cash. Judicial Watchattempted to find out exactly how much was collected, but got the runaround.
I digress….the takeaway from this story is that Biden’s promised high number of refugees will be placed in crime ridden slums adding to the tensions already evident in most US cities unless you, the taxpayers of America stop being so greedy and spend more money on nicer housing for New Americans (because the US has run out of our own poor people).
Of course,the other option, but never discussed, is to not ‘welcome’ more refugees at this challenging time.
***In case you are new to RRW, here are all of the nine contractors that have monopolized all refugee distribution in the US for decades.
They worked to ‘elect’ Biden/Harris andlobby for open borders. As taxpayers you pay them millions annually to change America by changing the people.
Two of the contractors, the USCCB and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service are alsopaid to find locations for the Unaccompanied Alien Children.
At this very moment they are all out scouting for new, fresh territory in which to place their refugee clients. See Winchester, VA.
***Update***Breitbart reporter JohnBinder reported just yesterday that Shapiro is helping move illegal aliens into the US interior too.
In 2016, with the big push to resettle tens of thousands of Syrian refugees in America, the Shapiro Foundation patriarch Ed Shapiro got the idea to increase the number of refugees that resettlement contractors were bringing into the US by pushing for an expansion of the government-run refugee resettlement model used in the US to a system similar to Canada’s.
Canada has a government program and in addition allows for private groups to sponsor refugees outside of the government program.
Now I might argue for private sponsorship if that was how our entire system was run, with no taxpayer funding permitted, purely private money for private charity. But this “new era,” as they are calling it, is simply to make more places available for third world refugees.
By the way, family foundations are a way for very wealthy people to shelter their wealth from taxes, but still use it for pet (often political!) projects.
We are Ed & Barbara Shapiro, and along with our two young-adult children, we make up The Shapiro Family. Our philanthropic work through the Foundation is an incredible labor of love and each one of us invests considerable time into the meaningful projects that we get involved with.
We are inspired by Nelson Mandela’s quote: “History will judge us by the difference we make in the everyday lives of children.”And for the first 15 years of our Foundation, we did so largely passively, through our initial significant grantees: Boston Children’s Hospital, Doctors Without Borders (MSF), Horizons for Homeless Children and scholarships to The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and UCLA Anderson School.
I guess helping America’s children just wasn’t satisfying enough, or woke enough, for Ed. so…..
2016 marked a turning point for our Foundation. Ed and Barbara led a successful community-wide effort–including local, regional and national partners—to sponsor Syrian refugee families being resettled in Greater Boston. This program convinced Ed to start his next chapter, retiring from his 27-year investment management career in order to devote himself full-time to tackling the global refugee crisis.
Ed carried the highly focused approach he used during his investment career to the family’s philanthropy and decided to concentrate almost exclusively on refugees and immigration.
NPR is on it!
NPR’s Amos
And, so now here we are with NPR Refugee Reporter-in-Chief, Deborah Amos, telling us all about how Shapiro is not only using his own money for refugees, but is soliciting funds elsewhere in order to move more money into the hands of mostly federal resettlement contractors to find more community sponsors for refugee families because America has run out of poor children and families in need of help.
One of the funders of Shapiro’s new gig is none other than George Soros’ Open Society Foundation.
By the way, these Leftie movers and shakers are masters at public relations and media manipulation. A big part of what they are doing with this is to generate warm and fuzzy stories as churches, synagogues and mosques join hands to “sponsor” poor refugee families.
‘New Era In Resettlement’: U.S. Refugee Advocates Count On More Community-Based Help
When President Biden announced this week that his administration would raise the cap on refugee admissions to 62,500 for this fiscal year, refugee advocates breathed a collective sigh of relief. The number is far above the historically low limit of 15,000 refugees set by the Trump administration. Biden’s announcement was a stark turnaround after weeks of pushback from refugee advocates, outraged by a previous order keeping the 15,000 limit.
Biden is calling on communities to do more, to put foreigners first!
One of those most elated by this week’s announcement is Ed Shapiro, a Boston-based philanthropist and advocate for reimagining the U.S. refugee resettlement system to enable a lot more community-based efforts.
“It is the start of a new era in resettlement,” he says.
Biden’s goal, laid out in a key phrase in a February executive order, introduces “community and private sponsorship” as an innovation that allows local groups of volunteers to become part of the circuitry of resettlement, including the day-to-day tasks of helping newcomers find housing, jobs, health care and a sense of community.
Just so you know, libertarian think tank, the CATO Institute, has been pushing this concept for the last five or so years as they say here.
The goal is to not simply take better care of the refugees the government admits, as Shapiro and Amos imply, but to expand the number admitted.
As I’ve argued before, the United States could accept more refugees using private money and private sponsors without needing Congress’s sign-off.
Amos continues at NPR….
The U.S. usually resettles refugees in a different way: The State Department contracts with nine large resettlement organizations. Volunteers play a role, but the program is centered around professional caseworkers.
Here is my favorite line from Amos. She is saying what we have been saying for over a decade—the program operates in secret!
It’s all done quietly so communities don’t reject the newcomers.
Now, the higher cap on refugee admissions means Shapiro can finally accelerate a project that has consumed him for four years. His aim is to fund pilot programs to kick-start an addition to the traditional resettlement infrastructure. “There is pent-up demand and interest,” he says. “These are people, families, who want to help.”
He partnered with the Open Society Foundation and other funders to tap a pool of donors and raised $800,000 for grants awarded in March to eight U.S. community groups in seven states. Another round of grantees will be announced this month.
The proposals are moving testimonies, says Shapiro. One, from New Orleans, came from a multifaith community group that includes representatives from the oldest Jewish temple in the U.S. and a Roman Catholic congregation.
Who are the lucky winners?
Of course at this point in theNPRstory I wanted to know which eight community groups got those first grants from Soros and Shapiro, but other than the one mentioned in New Orleans, Amos was mum on that.
Here are the eight big winners of $100,000 each. I have to laugh because most are among the nine federal refugee contractors*** already raking in millions of taxpayer dollars for their ‘charitable’ work.
Catholic Charities of Northeast Kansas (Kansas City, KS)
Church World Service North Carolina (Durham and Greensboro, NC)
Ethiopian Community Development Council (Denver, CO and Washington, D.C.)
Home Is Here NOLA (New Orleans, LA)
Interfaith Refugee & Immigrant Services (IRIS) & Home for Refugees USA (Los Angeles, CA)
New Roots Fund (Seattle, WA)
U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) Albany Field Office (Albany, NY)
World Relief Chicagoland (Chicago, IL)
***In case you are new to RRW, here are all of the nine contractors that have monopolized all refugee distribution in the US for decades.
They worked to ‘elect’ Biden/Harris andlobby for open borders. As taxpayers you pay them millions annually to change America by changing the people.
Two of the contractors, the USCCB and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service are alsopaid to find locationsfor the Unaccompanied Alien Children.
They are all happy, happy, happy that the Biden/Harris (Harris/Biden?) Administration hasflip-flopped and flipped itself back to its original goal of moving 62,500 refugees to Anytown, USA by September 30th, the end of the present fiscal year.
On October first they plan to up that number to 125,000 for fiscal year 2022.
And, just to remind you again, these migrants will be chosen by the United Nations and placed in your towns by nine federal contractors*** in addition tothe tens/hundreds of thousands flowing in illegally across our borders.
So who is praising Biden this week besides the nine contractors?
First up is Big Meat!
I have dozens and dozens of posts here at RRW from over a decade of writing about how the meatpacking industry (Big Poultry too) has changed the heartland by its greedy desire for a cheap and plentiful supply of immigrant labor.
I drove around the West and Midwest in 2016 to see for myself how towns like Ft. Morgan, Colorado have been changed forever by the refugee workers, like these Somalis who were demanding additional time in their work day to practice their Islamic faith, who were imported for the meat industry.
If you are interested in writing a book, I have done a lot of research for you!
Meatpackers praise Biden decision to increase refugee allotment
The North American Meat Institute today praised President Biden’s decision Monday to increase the number of refugees admitted to the United States – 62,500, up from the Trump administration’s limit of 15,000.
In an email to The Hagstrom Report, the Meat Institute said, “President Biden’s decision to increase the number of refugees is positive news for the meat and poultry industry. Meat packers and processors have employed those in the refugee community because they are hardworking and dependable. Finding a stable workforce is always a challenge….
[….]
In 2020, the Los Angeles Times noted that the meatpacking industry is dependent on refugees as employees.
You will see in my ‘Meatpacker’ archive that the refugee contractors (below) work closely with Big Meat to help them acquire a steady supply of workers.
Apparently happy to help Big Meat find workers too!
CAIR Welcomes President Biden’s Increase of Refugee Cap from Historic Low, Pledge to Next Year Expand to 125,000
In a statement, CAIR Director of Government Affairs Department Robert S. McCaw said:
“CAIR welcomes President Biden’s decision to raise the nation’s 2021 refugee cap to 62,500 and his pledge to increase the cap to 125,000 in 2022. Raising the nation’s refugee cap from its historic low was the morally correct decision and a first step to undoing the prior administration’s xenophobic policy of punitively targeting those seeking refuge in our nation as part of an effort to maintain systemic anti-Black racism and white supremacy.
“The American Muslim community is determined to ensure the rights of every immigrant are upheld and our nation remains a place of safe haven for refugees and asylum seekers.”
LOL! And then CAIR can happily use the imported workers to demand Islamic accommodation in the workplace!
The Episcopal Church is cheering Biden!
More refugees means more money for them!
Here is the press release from the Episcopal Church. It is one of nine federal contractors that will now be getting a new traunch of federal bucks, your tax dollars, to place refugees throughout the country.
I’m posting their whole gobbledygook press statement here and suggesting they need a new writer in their Government Relations Office:
Rev. Dr. C.K. Robertson, canon to the Presiding Bishop, happy that Biden will be sending them more money so they can help serve “vulnerable” refugees.
Today President Biden followed through on his promise to raise the Fiscal Year 2021 refugee cap from 15,000 to 62,500. The Episcopal Church commends President Biden for recognizing the United States’ obligation to protecting some of the most vulnerable individuals in our world. The Episcopal Church has called on the United States and other wealthy nations to “contribute to resettlement, establish and maintain safe and orderly humanitarian protection for refugees, internally displaced persons, and other migrants seeking long-term solutions and safety.” Given that the Episcopal Church has put these words into practice through its refugee resettlement work with Episcopal Migration Ministries and the welcoming work of its parishes, we appreciate the White House has done the same with its campaign promises to expand refugee resettlement and strengthen the refugee program.
“Today’s decision was a very important moment to mark a return to form for the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program and the United States’ commitment to refugees,” said the Rev. Dr. C.K. Robertson, canon to the Presiding Bishop, “for decades we’ve seen Republican and Democratic administrations make robust refugee resettlement an important part of their immigration and foreign policy and appreciate that the Biden administration will follow in their footsteps to serve these populations. The Episcopal Church also commends the work of its members and staff who have been instrumental in advocating for the refugee program and refugees in recent weeks. “The Episcopal Church has a long history of welcoming the stranger and we’re incredibly proud that our members met with and contacted their members of Congress to encourage the Biden Administration to meet its 62,500 pledge,” said Demetrio Alvero.“We stand ready to work with the administration to implement this new goal and its future efforts to expand refugee resettlement in Fiscal Year 2022.”
Alvero is not identified in that release, but here he is as Director of Operations of their Migration department. That means he is the church’s lobbyist.
The Episcopal Church has obviously determined that we have run out of poor Americans to care for.
Or, is it that there are lucrative government grants and contracts available to them for moving the third world to America and helping supply Big Meat and other global corporations with their worker pawns?
I could go on and on with woke ‘religious’ charities singing the praises of the Biden decision to put Foreigners First, but this is getting too long already.
Unhappy are American taxpayers who must pay for the importation of cheap migrant labor and new Democrat voters all the while watching their towns and cities changed forever.
***In case you are new to RRW, here are all of the nine contractors that have monopolized all refugee distribution in the US for decades.
They worked to ‘elect’ Biden/Harris andlobby for open borders. As taxpayers you pay them millions annually to change America by changing the people.
Two of the contractors, the USCCB and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service are also paid to find locations for the Unaccompanied Alien Children.
“President Biden has broken his promise to restore our humanity.”
(Rep. Pramila Jayapal, chair of the House Progressive Caucus)
Big mistake—they let Biden talk to the media!
You surely know by now that Chairman Joe blabbed to the media over the weekend that the reason he hasn’t moved on flying more of the third world to America via the US Refugee Admissions Program he helped create in 1979 is because the Administration has a crisis at the borderand can’t do two things at once.
The primary agency of the federal government for refugee admission decisions is the US State Department. Here we see that Secretary of State Antony Blinken is trying to clean things up, but he doesn’t seem to understand that he already approved the 62,500 cap increase for this fiscal year in February and it was sent to the Hill by the President via the State Department for consultation as the law requires.
The only thing missing to start the flow for these last two months was Biden’s signature.
As I mentioned on Saturday, Biden and Harris have made such a hash of the refugee program (okay by me!) that it begs the question—what else are they screwing up?
Blinken defends Biden’s refugee cap, Afghanistan withdrawal in exclusive interview
In an exclusive interview with ABC News, Secretary of State Antony Blinken defended the Biden administration amid a barrage of criticism from Democratic lawmakers and refugee advocates for maintaining a Trump-era limit on refugee admissions for now.
While President Joe Biden pledged to admit 125,000 refugees in the new fiscal year next fall, Blinken wouldn’t commit to a number, telling ABC’s “This Week” co-anchor Martha Raddatz, “Look, the president’s been clear about where he wants to go, but we have to be, you know, focused on what we’re able to do when we’re able to do it.”
That wait-and-see language from Blinken and the White House, citing the “decimated” state of the refugee resettlement program, enraged several prominent Democrats, as well as refugee resettlement agencies (aka the contractors***) who said they are ready to accept Biden’s pledge of 62,500 for the rest of this fiscal year.
Jayapal represents Seattle.
“President Biden has broken his promise to restore our humanity. We cannot turn our back on refugees around the world, including hundreds of refugees who have already been cleared for resettlement, have sold their belongings, and are ready to board flights,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal, chair of the House Progressive Caucus, said in a statement.
Big mistake: saying they would keep anything Trump ever did!
As a result, after the White House had announced Friday that Biden would keep former President Donald Trump’s historic low cap of 15,000 refugees, the administration backtracked and said it would raise the cap next month.
“We’re able to start to bring people in who’ve been in the pipeline and who weren’t able to come in. That is starting today, and we’re going to revisit it in the middle of May,” Blinken said.
Some 35,000 refugees have been vetted and approved for resettlement in the U.S., according to the International Rescue Committee, a resettlement agency.
Handy fall back! Blame it all on Trump!
With Biden’s order, those resettlements can begin again, but they will be limited, with the administration saying Friday it would set a “final, increased refugee cap” next month after a few weeks of arrivals and blamed the Trump administration for leaving the program “broken,” in Blinken’s words.
[….]
Refugee resettlement agencies agreed that Trump left the nation’s program in tatters through funding cuts and onerous vetting measures, but they’ve said they could scale up quickly to meet Biden’s original target of 62,500, if the administration helped provide resources.
“Provide resources” is code for send more of your tax dollars to the contractors!
Instead, Biden on Saturday blamed the historic number of migrants arriving at the southern U.S. border for keeping the refugee cap low for now — a reason Blinken didn’t cite.
And, in the meantime, the World Socialist Web Sitesays they are all weaving and dodging because Biden is trying to appease the ultra-right! Huh!
Biden seeks to appease ultra-right with refugee policy
Let me ask you: are any of you right-wingers appeased by the delay in resettlement as the border is being overrun?
Again, this was an amusing unforced error on the part of the disorganized administration since the cap is just that, a cap, a ceiling, that they could have left at 62,500 while knowing they weren’t going to get anywhere near that number before the fiscal year ends on September 30th. I am not complaining, just noting the rookie political blunder.
***In case you are new to RRW, here are all of the unhappy contractors.
They worked to ‘elect’ Biden/Harris and lobby for open borders. As taxpayers you pay them millions annually to change America by changing the people.
Americans Last! is their motto!
Tomorrow I’ll tell you about the contractors’ lobbying push that actually begins today on the Hill.
In a statement, CAIR Director of Government Affairs Department Robert S. McCaw said:
You surely know by now that Chairman Joe blabbed to the media over the weekend that the reason he hasn’t moved on flying more of the third world to America via the US Refugee Admissions Program he helped create in 1979 is because the Administration has a crisis at the border and can’t do two things at once.