And, they suggest that the big reform effort with the program should be around the issue of “assimilation.” Yikes! Didn’t Ms. Enos see what Linda Sarsour said recently—no assimilation for Muslims coming to America! Olivia Enos http://www.heritage.org/staff/olivia-enos
When Richard (Blue Ridge Forum) brought this article to my attention last evening, I found I couldn’t even cope with the title late at night:
“5 Reasons The U.S. Refugee Program Serves American Interests”
Now with my morning coffee I’m ready to blast away at this fluff!
Enos sounds like she is auditioning for a job at the US State Department where she would join like-minded bureaucrats who want nothing to stand in the way of more refugees for America!
Yet, on paper, she would come with the ‘conservative’ stamp of approval—from the vaunted Heritage Foundation! Here is Heritage on why the US Refugee Admissions Program only needs a little tinkering around the edges! I swear this sounds like the verbiage that came out of the mouths of Obama’s refugee pushers! Five flimsy, fluffy reasons that the American taxpayer should shell out billions a year (a large chunk of which goes to the religious LEFT, see here, working against conservatives), to seed welfare consuming third world poverty and diverse cultures many of which don’t plan to assimilate in to unsuspecting towns and cities across 49 states. (But Ms. Enos doesn’t have to face any of that, according to her bio she lives on Capitol Hill.)
Her five reasons….
#1. USRAP enables the U.S. to assert American leadership in foreign crises.
#2. USRAP provides the U.S. with a way to respond positively to intractable crises.
#3. USRAP enables the U.S. to assist allies and partners in crisis.
#4. USRAP strengthens American public diplomacy.
#5. USRAP alleviates human suffering.
I admit I didn’t read Heritage’s entire report, I mentioned one portion of it here. I stopped reading when it became clear that the authors had no firm understanding of how the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program really works.
Ms. Enos is working on a Master’s degree at Georgetown University, could she be studying with Anne Richard? Perish the thought!
Update: I realized tonight that if we cut off federal funding for refugee contractors we would have a significant down payment for The Wall!
I hadn’t checked the most recent data on how much of your money goes to the nine federal refugee resettlement contractors (aka VOLAGs) lately. So here is the latest information I could find. I had to use several sources mostly because some contractors do not file a Form 990(LOL! they claim they are churches and are thus exempt).
Unfortunately I couldn’t find all income information for all nine for the same year, so it is a little hard to make a direct comparison, but you get the idea.
These are the nine major federal resettlement contractors. (Go here to see a data base with the hundreds of subcontractors working for them in a town near you.)
Church World Service as of June 2016 had a total revenue for the previous year of $88,455,527.
71.3% of their millions comes from you—the taxpayer—according to Charity Navigator, here. You are the source of government grants:
Their chief executive, Rev. John McCullough makes an annual salary of $251,224.
Ethiopian Community Development Council (93% funded by taxpayers)
ECDC is not rated at Charity Navigator so I had to use their most recent Form 990, see here.
(If you have trouble opening the Form 990, go here and then download the document.)
Their total revenue for the year ending September 30, 2014 was $17,448,992. You will see on page 9 that they received $16,290,580 in government grants making them 93% funded by you, the taxpayer.
ECDC’s President Tsehaye Teferra has income listed on page 7 in three columns. The first is direct compensation of $171,683 and the two other columns involve other income from this organization and from “related” organizations of $57,857 and $46,843 (don’t ask me what that is!).
Episcopal Migration Ministries (aka Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society of the Episcopal Church) (99.5% funded by taxpayers)
We know they are 99.5% funded by you because they admitted it here. But, because their federal funds flow in to a church ‘kitty’ and because churches don’t file Form 990’s (or most churches don’t), we have no idea how much they are getting or what the program leaders are being paid. Frankly, this is shameful!
If you are of the Episcopal faith, you need to start asking questions!
Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (aka HIAS) (57% funded by taxpayers)
According to Charity Navigator for the year ending 12/2015, HIAS had a total revenue of $40,565,891.
Chief executive Mark Hetfield‘s annual salary in that report is $358,718.
International Rescue Committee (66.5% funded by taxpayers)
Be sure to focus on how much bigger the IRC is with an annual revenue of $688,920,920! From Charity Navigator: 66.5% is in the vicinity of $455 MILLION of your dollars annually!
Head honcho David Miliband hit the jackpot with this annual salary: $591,846!
US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) (98% funded with taxpayer dollars)
USCRI is a little harder to figure out. Charity Navigator does not rate them for this reason:
This organization is not eligible to be rated by Charity Navigator because, as a service for individual givers, we only rate organizations that depend on support from individual contributors and foundations. Organizations such as this, that get most of their revenue from the government or from program services, are therefore not eligible to be rated.
You could say that USCRI is a quasi-government organization masquerading as a non-profit! We have a lot on Lavinia Limon here at RRW. She was Bill Clinton’s director of the ORR! https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/?s=Lavinia+Limon
So we go to the most recent Form 990 available for year ending September 30, 2015. (Or download pdf at ProPublica, here)
On page 9 you can see that they only take in less than $1 million of their $51,524,570 from private gifts and contributions. All of their “program income” is likely through taxpayer dollars as well.
President and CEO Lavinia Limon makes $260,258 in annual compensation plus pulls down another $42,231 from this and related organizations (whatever that is!).
Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIRS) is 96-97% funded by taxpayers
Like USCRI it’s a little hard to figure out, from their recent Form 990 herewhere their total income is $55,983,615, exactly which of the fees in their income column actually are taxpayer dollars too.
We can assume there isn’t much private charity going to LIRS because Charity Navigator says the same thing they did for USCRI which is:
This organization is not eligible to be rated by Charity Navigator because, as a service for individual givers, we only rate organizations that depend on support from individual contributors and foundations. Organizations such as this, that get most of their revenue from the government or from program services, are therefore not eligible to be rated.
Hartke (blue jacket front row) with refugee lobbyists last month. https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2017/06/26/refugee-contractors-brought-refugee-lobbyists-to-washington-again-last-week/
Just a reminder that USCRI and LIRS are really quasi-government agencies yet they are busy lobbying Congress and otherwise community organizing in order to influence the media and Congress to support more refugees (aka paying clients!) coming to America.
LIRS President and CEO Linda Hartke makes an annual salary of $274,632 and an additional $33,401 from this and related organizations (page 8).
US Conference of Catholic Bishops Migration Fund (97% taxpayer funded)
Now it gets even trickier! The Bishops don’t file a Form 990 and their operations are so vast, I could spend the whole day and still not sort it out. Also, maybe you can find one, but I have not found an annual report for their refugee program since I found this one for 2014.
So we will have to rely on it (again). Keep in mind these funds for their refugee resettlement program do not include millions that go directly from the feds to some individual Catholic Charities and Dioceses around the US. (If you are researching your local CC or Dioceses, you can often find good numbers at USASpending.gov)
“Federal grants” is your money, so is the Travel Loan Collection Fees, so that puts the Bishops’ refugee resettlement program at 97% taxpayer funded. (I am not sure if the Unaccompanied Alien Children fall in to yet another fund!).
I would like to get a more up-to-date accounting for the Bishops, but they must be hiding those reports really well! I suspect they are pulling down even more payola in more recent years.
Obviously we don’t know what salaries are being paid for their Washington, DC lobbying shop. Their previous head lobbyist was Kevin Appleby.
World Relief (Corp. National Association of Evangelicals) is 72.8% funded by taxpayer dollars
That is according to Charity Navigator, here. Total revenue is $62,583,313 for the year ending September 30, 2015. But, I did find a more recent Form 990, here, with a huge jump in income in one year to $71,022,032. I thought World Reliefwas broke and closing offices??? (Gives me an idea for another post and that is to report on some of the contractors increases in funding over several years).
That Form 990 shows something I hadn’t seen in other Form 990’s and that is that the Prez/CEO doesn’t make a whole lot, but some financial officer(Barry Howard) is making over $250,000 big ones (see pages 7 & 8).
Here is Charity Navigator’s “contributions” breakdown. Ha! Ha! your tax dollars for government grants are contributions!
Whew! What a job searching for all that financial information! Hope you made it this far!
Can you see now why I say there will be no reform of the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program as long as these nine contractors, masquerading as charities, are sucking on the federal teat and bidding for bodies (aka refugee ‘clients’)?
And, adding insult to injury, they lobby, kiss up to the media, and community organize against you who are paying for the whole refugee racket!
None of these organizations would survive very long if Congress and the President cut them loose (or stated more kindly and so as not to mix metaphors!—weaned them!).
Your daily assignment! Write to the White House, here.
Waahhhh! The Harvard kids want refugees, but there isn’t any low income housing in Cambridge so the US State Department and its contractors send refugees to working class communities elsewhere in Massachusetts! Tony Cambridge, Mass. home to Harvard University won’t see refugees placed there anytime soon! More Boston photos: http://www.stevenedson.net/photographs-of-boston-01/rowers-at-weeks-bridge-cambridge-ma-35_6_767.html
Moral of the story: Wealthy communities don’t get refugees, but working class communities do. And, if you build low income housing, your town becomes a refugee magnet!
From the Boston Globe:
“Help us welcome local refugees to our community!” read a flier advertising the carnival in Cambridge, where attendees would later pose at a photo booth, mingle, and munch on baked goods inside a balloon-festooned gymnasium.
“We wanted to have . . . an opportunity for refugee families to come and have a fun time, relax, play games,” said Caitlin Nichols, a Harvard PhD student who helped organize last month’s event.
But notably absent from the event? Refugees.
[….]
In September 2015, after watching the number of Syrians displaced by violence soar, Cambridge City Councilor Nadeem Mazen decided the council had “a moral and economic imperative” to act. He won passage of legislation calling on city officials to determine Cambridge’s capacity to take in Syrian refugees and then provide those families with the housing and support they would need.
Cambridge “peace and justice” commissioner, Brian Corr. https://twitter.com/bcorr
But when peace commissioner Brian Corr — the local official charged with promoting “peace and social justice within Cambridge and in the wider world”— began reaching out to refugee resettlement agencies and government officials, he was told, politely, no thanks.
“I spoke to a lot of people and got a lot of e-mail information. Long story short . . . Cambridge is not the place where refugees get resettled,” Corr said.
Where refugees end up is largely at the discretion of the State Department and nine resettlement agencies nationwide. From 2014 to 2016, 233 Syrian refugees arrived in Massachusetts. More than half went to Lowell, Springfield, or West Springfield, according to State Department records. None wound up in Cambridge.
Financial support is limited for new arrivals. Representatives of the State Department and Massachusetts resettlement agencies said they consider two factors when placing refugees, in addition to family ties.
“The key factor is a combination of cost of living and employment opportunities that will allow them to become economically self-sufficient quickly because the support that the federal government provides is extremely limited,” said Jeffrey Thielman, president and CEO of the International Institute of New England, the area’s largest resettlement agency.
Here they are admitting it again, the contractor*** pockets half of the per head payment the refugee gets from the feds (no mention that all forms of welfare are available to refugees upon arrival). BTW, the contractors primary job is to get the refugees signed up for their services and then they move on to the next batch of paying “clients.”
Each refugee receives a one-time stipend of $2,075 from the federal government, and nearly half of that goes to the resettlement agency to help finance their work, according to a State Department spokeswoman.
Agencies sometimes provide refugees additional cash assistance, and some refugees can receive $428 per month from the state for up to 18 months.
Such small sums don’t go far in Cambridge, where two-bedroom apartments rent for around $3,000 a month. That’s twice as expensive as housing in Springfield or Lowell.
Throughout Greater Boston, inexpensive housing options are few and shrinking. Thielman said the only places in the area where his agency can find housing for refugees are shared units for single individuals in Lynn or Dorchester — places where they can pay $350 or less in rent per month.
Continue reading here because some refugee advocates have a new angle. See what it is!
This is my ‘laugh of the day!’post but it isn’t so funny!
The International Institute of New England (aka International Institute of Boston) works as a subcontractor for the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI).
Don’t forget to write to the White House!
***Federal contractors/middlemen/lobbyists/community organizers paid by you to place refugees in your towns and cities. Because their income is largely dependent on taxpayer dollars based on the number of refugees admitted to the US, the only way for real reform of how the US admits refugees is to remove the contractors from the process.
It was supposed to have been yesterday that the US State Department expected the President’s FY17 50,000 cap to be reached.
When the number is reached (a ceiling set for decades by the President under refugee law), as we know, the US Supreme Court owns it because they stepped in to rewrite lawand the battle for the bona fidesbegins.
As of today we have admitted 49,793 refugees this fiscal year according to the State Department’s own Refugee Processing Center (aka Wrapsnet).
Here is theLA Times reporting that the deadline is extended because the 50,000 cap was not reached yesterday as expected. Hetfield’s name turns up in most mainstream media stories about the US Refugee Program and Pres. Trump. The media must see him as the go-to guy for quotes! Did you know that he pulls down a salary of over $300,000—doing well by doing good? Learn more about him and HIAS’s finances here: https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2016/11/13/hebrew-immigrant-aid-society-lectures-trump-never-mentions-its-pecuniary-interest-in-refugees/
Refugee resettlement agencies say the State Department has given them updated instructions on President Trump’s travel ban that extends the cutoff date for refugee admissions.
When the ban was put into place last week, the administration said refugees who had booked travel would be admitted through Thursday. After that, immigration officials would block all refugees, except those who could prove they had U.S. connections, such as close relatives.
The July 6 date was a government estimate of when the country would reach a 50,000-person cap on refugee admissions this fiscal year. Federal officials now estimate that the cap will be hit a week later, according to refugee groups.
[….]
A spokeswoman for the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration at the State Department would not confirm the change and said more information would come out Thursday.
“The cap could be hit earlier, so it could be earlier than July 12,” said Mark Hetfield, chief executive of the resettlement group HIAS, formerly known as Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society.
HIAS is among several refugee resettlement groups that have challenged the ban, which blocks travel from six Muslim-majority countries for 90 days and suspends refugee admissions from everywhere for 120 days.
TheLA Timesgoes on to say that the Hawaii Open Borders advocates filed suit (again) looking for clarification about whether the contractors*** are bona fide entities for the purpose of bringing even more than 50,000 refugees in over the remaining roughly 2 months and 3 weeks remaining in this fiscal year.
Justices wrote that people with “bona fide” connections to the U.S. such as jobs, university admission and family could bypass the ban but left it up to the Trump administration to define which family members counted.
The administration has said that people with “close family” in the U.S. — such as a parent, spouse, fiance or fiancee, child or sibling — could go around the ban. But it blocked others, including grandparents, grandchildren, aunts, uncles and cousins.
Immigrant and refugee groups are challenging the definitions in a Honolulu federal district court, saying the administration is violating the Supreme Court’s orders. A federal judge there who previously ruled against the ban in one of the cases being considered by the high court could issue a decision on the matter this week.
Refugee advocates argue that their relationship to refugees should be enough for them to gain admission to the country despite the ban. The government disagrees.
Request denied!
See it here: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3890325-Hawaii-v-Trump-Clarify-Order.html
Just as I am writing this post, I see that the same Hawaii judge has denied their request for clarification. See here! Let the Supremes decide.
By the way, the other plaintiff in the case joining with the State of Hawaii is an Imam who wants more Muslims admitted to the US, here. But, Hawaii is normally at the bottom of the list of states taking any refugees!
Hey, maybe the State Dept. could put all those they bring in above the cap (it could be thousands!) in Hawaii!
Why not tell the President that when you write to him today! Give Hawaii its dearest wish—more third world diversity. Go here.
All of my posts on this topic are filed in my new ‘Supreme Court’ category.
***Federal contractors/middlemen/lobbyists/community organizers paid by you to place refugees in your towns and cities. Because their income is largely dependent on taxpayer dollars based on the number of refugees admitted to the US, the only way for real reform of how the US admits refugees is to remove the contractors from the process.
Charleston, WV citizen activist, Brenda Arthur, pointed us to this interesting and useful pageat the US State Department website—it is a review of the work of the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM) for 2016.
By the way, PRM is still being run by career bureaucrats who have close ties to the resettlement contractors*** and have longtime ideological leanings toward ‘welcoming’ large numbers of third worlders to America.
This graphic (below) is very useful. Remember though that the US State Department (DOS) share of the costs for refugee resettlement is only a portion of the cost of admitting an average number (about 64,000 is the average over the last ten years) of refugees to the US each year.
Greater amounts of your tax dollars go to the Dept. of Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement for refugee welfare and for awarding grants to contractors for myriad activities. There is another chunk that goes to the Dept. of Homeland Security for ‘screening’ refugees around the world. Go here, the artwork is useful! But, 10 Pittsburghs? And, this is Trump’s DOS bragging!
More than ten times the population of Pittsburgh!
*** Resettlement contractors receive the majority of their funding from taxpayers via PRM and ORR. One of the contractors is 99.5% funded by you, others are well up in the range of 95% plus. There can be no real reform of the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program if these ‘non-profits’ continue to call the shots. The minute a new Administration signals a slowdown for a few years, the contractors, which receive funding on a per (refugee) head basis, put their community organizer hats on and run to the Leftwing media screaming bloody murder.
