Editor: From time to time we post guest commentary. This is from Joanne Bregman. As werefocus our efforts at the state and local level, because we can’t count on Washington, this is an effective argument for you to make on the state level.
This is about States’ rights!
(emphasis below is mine)
Federal Cost Shifting of the Refugee Resettlement Program
Background
In 1980 the federal government formalized the refugee resettlement program by passing the Refugee Act of 1980. There was no mandate to force states to participate in this program. Federal appropriations to provide for medical and cash assistance for newly resettled refugees, was authorized for 36 months. Refugees were and still are, first required to use state Medicaid programs if they are eligible, before federal medical assistance funds are used.
When the federal law was passed, it provided that for each refugee brought to a state by a federal contractor, states would be reimbursed 100% for three full years, the state incurred cost of providing Medicaid and cash welfare. The law also provided, that for refugees who did not meet eligibility criteria for state Medicaid and cash welfare programs, they could instead, receive a federal subsidy – Refugee Medical Assistance (RMA) and Refugee Cash Assistance (RCA) for 36 months.
By 1991, even though the number of refugees being resettled was not decreasing, the federal government eliminated reimbursement to states for the state cost of resettling and supporting refugees with Medicaid and cash welfare.
In addition, the federal government reduced the RCA and RMA subsidy from 36 months to 8 months for refugees who do not qualify for state funded programs. States have no other choice but to assume the greater share of the voluntary federal program’s costs.
The U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement told Congress early on in the program that the reason states were no longer being reimbursed for the state’s costs was because Congress didn’t appropriate enough money.
The 1981 Select Commission on Immigration and Refugee Policy convened by Congress also documented that even the initial 3 years of 100% reimbursement to states, was not sufficient to “minimize the impact of refugees on community services.” The Commission was specifically referring to schools, hospitals and community support services.
In 1990, the U.S. General Accounting Office documented that the reduction in reimbursement to states for the federal refugee resettlement program, “costs for cash and medical assistance have shifted to state and local governments.” The National Governors Association has also questioned the federal cost shifting, stating that “[t]hese reductions represent a major federal policy change that shifts fiscal responsibility for meeting the basic needs of refugees from the federal government to states and localities.”
As the resettlement industry has grown, so has the cost to both federal and state governments but only the federal government controls its costs by appropriating annually “as available” while each state’s cost is driven by how much of the federal cost Congress chooses not to pay.
Be sure to see my post from earlier this past week about what you need to do on a state and local level, here.
This Syrian family and the brothers left behind were in Saudi Arabia (one of the brothers had already emigrated to S.A.). Saudi Arabia is a safe country! Therefore, why are these people now the responsibility of the US taxpayer? They weren’t living in some sqaulid camp.
They were in arguably the richest country in the Middle East!
So tell us again why Saudi Arabia couldn’t house millions of Muslim refugees in their tent cities reserved for the brief Hajj period? Instead we are taking Syrian ‘refugees’ from S.A.!
It is worth reading the whole article because there are lots of useful nuggets and some important comments by critics of the program (besides the story of a Syrian family that came to the US as ‘refugees’ from Saudi Arabia!)
By the way, I’m sure many of you are saying—yes! If we must have them, keep them in California!
Even though overall arrival numbers in fiscal 2017 dropped by more than half from the previous year, San Diego County continued its legacy as the California county that took in the most refugees.
In a year that began with a promise of more refugees than ever before coming to the U.S. and ended with an ongoing court battle over how many and whom the president could block from coming, about 1,500 refugees resettled in San Diego County, according to data from the State Department. That’s down from just over 3,100 the year before, and it’s the only time that number has dipped below 2,000 in the last decade.
“The fact that we remained the largest county, it definitely makes us proud to continue the tradition of San Diego being a safe haven,” said Etleva Bejko, director of refugee and immigration services for Jewish Family Service, a resettlement agency.
Where refugees resettle once the U.S. agrees to take them is a complicated decision-making process that factors in whether they already have family living here, which agencies have the bandwidth to support them and which places have infrastructure in place to help them succeed. That often means that places like San Diego that already have large populations of people from a country will continue to take refugees from that country. [Multiplier effect! Like Ft. Wayne in my previous post—ed]
San Diego County has been known for leading the state in refugee arrivals since large numbers of Iraqis fleeing war began arriving in late summer of 2007.
Confirmation again! Federal resettlement contractors paid by the head!
Bejko said her organization has had to reorganize support efforts because of the overall decreases in arrivals. Resettlement agencies receive funding based on the number of refugees that they help.
[….]
Three members of the Tarakji family, originally from Damascus, Syria, were some of the few who made it to the U.S. after the travel ban. The slowdown in accepting refugees has separated them from two other members of their family.
Catholic Charities resettled mother Alshifaa Hammoush, 52, father Manaf Tarakji, 58, and daughter Maria Tarakji, 21, in April. Two sons, Yasser Tarakji, 29, and Yaman Tarakji, 27, remain in Saudi Arabia.
They had already been trying to immigrate to the U.S.to reunite with their extended family who live in San Diego County when the war in Syria broke out. [They hit the jackpot because the refugee category is the most desirable way to get into the country. They get their hands held by a federal contractor who helps them get all of their welfare (not available to other categories of legal immigrant)!—ed]
After bombing destroyed the pharmacy where Hammoush worked and scared off Manf Tarakji’s clients for his electronics repair business, and a car exploded outside their building, the family fled in 2013 to Saudi Arabia, where the oldest son was already living and working.
Once in Saudi Arabia, they couldn’t continue the process to get family-sponsored green cards.
They stayed there in limbo, unable to fully establish new lives because they were on visitor visas that they had to renew every three months, until they were accepted as refugees to the U.S. Yaman Tarakji was separated into his own refugee case because of his age, and he is still waiting for processing.
The oldest brother, Yasser Tarakji also tried to apply but never heard back from the U.N. agency that registers refugees.
[….]
Still, separation from the two sons is painful for all of them. Whenever Maria Tarakji looks at photos from their last day together in Saudi Arabia, her eyes wet with tears.
“The U.S. was accepting refugees forever. It’s unfair to do this now,” Maria Tarakji said. “It’s really hard to live here, and our brother is not here.”
She said she’s had to take responsibility for tasks that her brothers used to handle, like choosing an internet router.
Both brothers work in computer programming and repair.
I have to admit, I thought Donald Trump would come in to office and take a forceful position on the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program and tell Congress to investigate the program (and the contractors!) with an eye to trashing or reforming the whole system.
Looks like Trump has thrown in the towel on refugee program, it is now up to you where you live!
With his capitulation on the annual determination, with a substantial 45,000 refugees to be admitted in the next 12 months, Republican leaders (with the Chamber of Commerce cheering) gave a sigh of relief.
It is still enough cheap labor and no one is going to force them to investigate how taxpayer dollars are spent and no one will call them heartless racists.
(Although there is still one glimmer of hope. The 45,000 is a CEILING and the Trump Admin can come in substantially lower than that and be within the law. No executive order is needed to stay well below the ceiling!)
So, where does that leave you in the pockets of resistancethat have formed over the last few years? It means back to work (or continuing to work in your communities) exposing the system, exposing the contractors, and electing people to local office who don’t want Washington dictating the future demographic makeup of your towns and cities.
(By the way, I am very aware of many of you who never quit working hard, but won’t name you here now.)
For those of you who are advanced in your work, please forgive the following list of things that need to be done locally. We have new readers asking what they can do, so this is mostly for them.
My list of suggestions below is in no particular order:
~Learn all you can about the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program. You might start with my Frequently Asked Questions, here.
~Call yourstate refugee coordinatorand politely ask for information on who came to your state in the past and who is coming in the future. Ask for your state’s refugee plan.
~Learn how to useWrapsnet(I’m going to have a tutorial shortly) so you know which ethnic groups are coming to your town.
~Find the subcontractor (s) working near you. Go here. Find your state and city (if you live within 100 miles of one of these offices, your town is fair game). Note the abbreviation in the left hand corner. That stands for one of the nine major federal contractors***
Some cities are such large refugee resettlement sites that more than one contractor is working there. Bidding for bodies?
~Call your closest subcontractor office and ask for theR & P Abstract for FY18. They will dodge and weave and may even tell you they don’t know what you are talking about. Be persistent. You may ultimately have to use your state’s public information laws to get the abstract out of your state coordinator. (You will likely never get a FOIA answered by the US State Department, however.)
The Abstract, in addition to other research you do, will lead you to the employers who want the cheap migrant labor because they are usually cited in the Abstract. Expose them.
~The local refugee contractor is required to hold quarterly “stakeholder” meetings. They work very hard to keep the general public out. Call them and your state coordinator and ask to be included. If you get a runaround that is one more thing to publicize. This program can only run with your money, therefore YOU are a stakeholder.
~Become friendly with people in your local health department and other social service agencies. You may find them willing to tell you more about the mode of operation of the contractor/subcontractor working in your community and/or problems related to the refugees themselves (eg. high TB rates).
~Become familiar with the impact the refugee program is having in your local school system which is usually the first place we see problems erupting.
~I would expose every case you find where the subcontractor/contractor had left a refugee family or families in the lurch. Keep your focus on the government agencies and the contractors and possible malfeasance there rather than being aggressively anti-refugee. Keep in the back of your mind, that some refugees have been sold a bill of goods and wish they could go home.
~Get as much as you can into your local newspaper/TV/radio show. If they are all pro-Open Borders you will have to write your own blog or facebook page to get the information you are finding out to a broader audience.
~If you have someone in your group (yes, it would be good to form a little group) who could do youtube, or small documentary films that is another option to reach more people.
~Speak up in your churchesif they are affiliated with the nine major contractors*** Tell your church leaders that it isn’t Christian charity to take millions from the US taxpayers.
~Some grassroots activists have successfully taken to the road with powerpoint presentationsto be shown to local civic groups.
~Arrange for expert speakers to come to your towns to educate a wider audience.
~All of the above, and more that I’m not thinking of, is to educate your community with the goal of electing mayors and council members who are on your same wavelength. The Left has been electing mayors for years and that is how many cities are in the pickle they are now in!
~Consider running for elected office yourself. Even if you think you can’t win because it is another way to publicize your views.
~Educate and put pressure on your governors and your state representatives, because if you can agitate them enough there will be a trickle-up effect on US Representatives and Senators who don’t want to hear a buzzing of bees back in the district.
~As the 2018 election year gets underway, make sure you have people ready to ask tough questions of your US Congressmen/Senators as they visit your town.
~When you earlier identified those industries and global corporations pushing for cheap labor, you should be working to find out which elected officials at all levels of government are getting campaign contributions from them as well. Use that information in 2018.
~If you are a member of one of the big three immigration control groups (CIS, FAIR, and NumbersUSA) and/or the Heritage Foundation you will need to keep pressure on them. Since they are in the swamp they may not have a good understanding of how the USRAP is affecting you and thus trade-off the refugee program for something they want.
And, one final thing for right now, don’t get discouraged if you can only find a few people to work with you, just plug away with a plan a little every day and look to your key helpers for moral support and a little help!
I’m sure there is more I’m not thinking of right now… I’ll update later.
*** These are the nine federal resettlement contractors paid by the head to place refugees in your towns. They are also ‘community organizers’ who call upon their supporters to lobby Congress etc. They are rolling in millions of tax dollars.
I’m thinking that one thing that Trump’s slightly lower cap for FY18 will do to them is to force them to tighten their belts and, as they do, tensions within the fake non-profits could rise—watch for it!
I have to admit, I haven’t read it yet, but, for diehard grassroots investigators, know that the report is a treasure trove of information on the US Refugee Admissions Program and Trump’s 45,000 refugee ceiling *** for the year that began this past Sunday.
Don’t miss the tables at the end, often more useful than all the verbiage about why we need to save this or that ethnic group by hauling them to your town.
Here is the table that shows that the US admits the vast majority of permanent refugees.
Be sure to keep this so that the next time some Open Borders pusher says that Lebanon, Turkey, Germany and Jordan are doing more, remind them that ours are PERMANENT, not temporary residents. (note that this table uses calendar year numbers when we usually use fiscal year)
And, here is a table showing the costs of just the resettlement (this year, FY18, for up to 45,000 refugees).
Come to think of it, when those economic studies are done to ostensibly show how much refugees benefit America, do they ever show that it will cost the US taxpayer over $1 BILLION just to get 45,000 bodies in here?
Read the footnotes!
Please note that the anticipated costs do not include taxpayer funding for: educating the kids, Medicaid, some forms of cash assistance, food stamps, housing subsidies, interpreter costs, criminal justice system costs, etc.
Again, go here for the full report. One of the things I’ve noted over the years is that the report has no date on the cover. I can only guess that is because it is always very late and they don’t want any record of the fact that they skirt the law always on the whole determination/consultation process.
***Did you see that the Federation for American Immigration Reformcalled this a “responsible” number! Have friends like these been in the swamp too long?
Readers should know, that until very recently FAIR has not taken much interest in the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program.
Just this morning I reread Nayla Rush’s indepth definitive reporton the “deal” Obama set up and Trump is continuing that would bring as many as 1,250 illegal aliens held in detention (by Australia) on offshore islands to your town!
Rush reported that one of the architects of Obama’s dumb deal (now Trump’s dumb deal) was his Asst. Sec. of State Richard, formerly a VP at the International Rescue Committee which had been contracted to do the initial screening of these men.
We reported the other day, here, that 50 are on the way to:
Georgia, Oregon, Colorado, Texas, and Arizona.
I want all of you to take a few minutes and read Rush’s report at the Center for Immigration Studies here. You will see how truly screwed-up our refugee program has been and CONTINUES to be when you see the kinds of people we are admitting—-mostly single men, some held in detention for as long as 4 years, 80% of whom have been declared in need of serious mental health treatment, from countries like Iran, Somalia, and Afghanistan.
‘Extreme vetting?’
No way because instead of the 18-24 months the feds are always bragging about, their vetting was less than a year because the deal was announced only in September of 2016. See one of our many posts where I reported that the on-again, off-again screening began in November and of course, in less than a year, here they come.
So, can we really expect these men to settle down to jobs in meatpacking towns, in apartments funded by you, collecting their welfare benefits and accessing your local mental health clinics on the way to becoming upstanding and contributing American citizens?
This Sunday, Breitbart, the publication run by former Trump adminitration chief strategist Steve Bannon, ran a “news report” which slammed President Trump for continuing an Obama-era deal for the U.S. to resettler Middle Eastern refugees held in Australia.
“The president has now broken two long-promised campaign pledges: Throwing out deals that don’t benefit Americans and stopping the flow of foreign refugees won’t benefit Americans and stopping the flow of foreign refugees,” wrote John Binder in Breitbart.
Haaretz continued….
Ann Coulter, who has been critical of Trump’s lack of follow through on his hardline immigration promises, joined in Breitbart’s anger, Facetiously joking on Twitter, “This never would have happened if Trump had been elected!!!”
Breitart and Coulter were incised [they must mean ‘incensed’—ed] by reports a second group of about 30 refugees held in Australian-run detention centres on South Pacific islands will leave soon for resettlement in the United States under a controversial refugee swap deal.
The first group of 22, including men from Bangladesh, Sudan and Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar, left one of the camps on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea on Sunday…
I have a very large archive on the”dumb” Australia deal. If you really want to understand the sheer stupidity of the arrangement, click here.
It is no longer Obama’s “dumb deal,” it is Trump’s!
And, I don’t care what the justification of this deal is. This is an abuse of refugee resettlement law and I maintain that Australia needs us more than we need them!
Contact the White House and your elected officials in Washington and tell them what you think. If you are in one of the five targeted states (listed above) for ‘welcoming’ the Australian rejected asylum seekers, let your governor know what you think as well.
