Refugee lobbying group, RCUSA, is a mystery, promotes secrecy

12/31/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Yesterday I told you more about the Refugee Council USA and how they are pumping out information to an uninformed media/public all of it aimed at making the President look as mean-spirited as possible.

RCUSA-300x300 — Any legal eagles out there interested in finding out more about its corporate structure and the finances behind RCUSA? Sure hope none of your taxpayer dollars are ‘finding their way’ to RCUSA!

Knowledge is power!
This may get into the weeds for some readers, but it’s important to understand how the refugee industry works and so I encourage you all to dig deeper (wherever you live) if you ever want to see the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program either abolished or reformed.
***Update*** Check out that RCUSA has a state by state report here.
You’ve seen me write often that the Refugee Council USA (RCUSA) is a consortium including all nine of the federal refugee contractors*** that monopolize all resettlement in the US, but it also includes many groups (see here) that “advocate” for more immigration of all sorts for America.

Advocacy is the polite word for lobbying in Washington.

RCUSA operates as a central clearing house in Washington for member groups and sends out marching orders in addition to planning media strategy and influencing Congress (remember they hired the Podesta Group to lobby certain Senators), but secrecy is its watchword!
RCUSA is located at 1628 16TH STREET NORTHWEST, WASHINGTON, DC.

Legal structure is puzzling…

Yesterday I noticed that RCUSA is not a 501(c)3 organization, the IRS designation for charitable groups. In fact there is no where on its website that describes its legal status (that I could find!). It clearly doesn’t want to be a 501(c)3 that is restricted from lobbying. There is no mention of it being a 501(c)4 either (a designation that allows lobbying, but where donations are not tax deductible).
Church World Service is its bank!
In fact, because they are not a 501(c)3, if you want to donate to their work (and have it be a charitable deduction on your tax return), you must send your money to Church World Service, a member of the big nine. By donating here you will get your charitable donation:

To Donate To Refugee Council USA.

*When you click to donate, you will be taken to the webpage of Church World Service, Inc. (CWS), a non-profit corporation incorporated in the State of New York in 1946. CWS is tax exempt under section 501 (c) (3) of the Internal Revenue Code. CWS serves as the fiscal sponsor for Refugee Council USA (RCUSA). As such, CWS accepts contributions, gifts and grants for RCUSA intended to support our programs.

It’s funny but when I went searching (using google) for more on RCUSA’s structure and activities I found mostly posts by me!

I can’t even find a wikipedia page for them, can you?
In this post by me in 2015 I reported this below from their website (at the time!). That page is now missing!

Here is what they do (important to understand that ‘advocacy’=lobbying):

RCUSA is a member-driven coalition and its funding comes solely from member dues. There are a number of standing committees that serve to structure the on-going work of the coalition. In addition to these committees, members are informed daily through RCUSA communications about meetings, events, and other relevant information pertaining to refugee and displacement issues.

General Council: The executives and/or officers from each member agency meet regularly to discuss the council’s work and reach consensus on key advocacy positions and other relevant issues.

Advocacy Committee: Individuals from each member agency meet bi-weekly in Washington, D.C. to coordinate legislative and administrative advocacy efforts at the national and local level.

The committee works together to advance refugee protection, strengthen the United States Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP), educate policymakers about the value of refugee protection and a strong resettlement program, and promote adequate funding for refugees. Katie Conway, Immigration and Refugee Policy Analyst, Episcopal Migration Ministries, currently chairs this Committee.

Go here for more! [Oopsy! The information is now gone from their site. Why the secrecy?—ed]

Rotating chair isn’t even discussed on their site today:

I had also learned in 2015 that they had a rotating chairman.
Right now HANS VAN DE WEERD is the chairman, and, since I’ve been paying attention, previous chairs included Melanie Nezer of HIAS and Anastasia Brown of the USCCB. (Brown went on to work for Obama’s ORR, not sure if she is now part of the deep state!).
And, adding to the evidence about secrecy promoted by RCUSA, don’t miss the post where I reported that RCUSA was sending out information so that orders were given to not give out any information about refugees coming to your town. See letter at end of this post from World Relief headquarters to its subcontractors.
By the way, do you see how they view you. If you want to know what is happening with the refugee program in your town, you are automatically “Anti-Refugee.”
This is how it begins:

From: Casey Leyva
Sent: Thursday, May 14, 2015 5:07 PM
Subject: Potential Anti-Refugee Contacts

Dear Office Directors,

We’ve heard recently from other members of RCUSA (Refugee Council USA) that local affiliates have been contacted by individuals questioning the U.S. refugee program. This is a result of an interview Ann Corcoran, a blogger who runs Refugee Resettlement Watch, with a local news station in Minnesota. She has told her followers to to ask you for your R&P abstract – please do not send it. And please let us know if you are contacted.

See my RCUSA archive here.
***These are the nine federal refugee contractors that monopolize all resettlement in America. They are all members of RCUSA:

Michigan: Do we see a new trick by the US State Department to keep information from citizens?

11/27/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

For new readers, and for seasoned activists too, we have been telling you for several years to obtain your R & P Abstracts for your city.

The R & P Abstract (Reception and Placement Abstract) is prepared by your local resettlement agencies each year in advance of the new fiscal year which begins October 1 (we are now in FY18) which outlines a kind of wishlist for the number of refugees your city has the ‘capacity’ to absorb, from where they will come, and what amenities your community has to offer.

Those amenities include housing, jobs, medical care, schools, etc.

To see examples of these important planning documents, see here about Reno, Nevada, and here about St. Cloud, MN.

The Abstract is prepared by a local non-profit group refugee office and then goes up the chain to one of nine major federal resettlement contractors*** who present them to the US State Department in order for the DOS to prepare the President’s Annual Determination and for the contractor to get its federal bucks (on a per refugee head basis).

You will find the Abstract very informative, that is, if you can get it!

Keeping the Abstracts from the public is part of the secrecy game going on with the US Refugee Admissions Program!

If you call your local resettlement office (see list here) they will either tell you that you can’t have a recent Abstract (ask for FY18) or will pretend they don’t know what you are talking about.

Now to Michigan….

fbi-raid-dearborn — Everyone should visit Dearborn once in your life!

After running in to the roadblocks set up by the refugee contractors, the leaders at Secure Michigan have in the past gotten their Abstracts by doing a state public information act request (like the Freedom of Information Act at the federal level).

Not this year!

Incredibly the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees a state refugee coordinator, told Secure Michigan that quote:

“We do not have the resettlement agency proposals you are requesting. We no longer receive them.”

Just think about that, the Michigan DHHS is not able to see the plans that some non-profit contractors have with the federal government to place refugees in Michigan cities.

The state is not permitted to know what nationalities are coming, where refugees will likely work, what housing opportunities are available in various cities and so forth?

And, here is the takeaway for me: If the state doesn’t have the Abstracts, they can’t be obtained by you—taxpaying citizens—through public information act requests!

The MDHHS went on to say:

“The US Department of State chart is the only data we have regarding his request”

Here are the raw (anticipated) numbers for Michigan:

Screenshot (1187)_LI — At the present rate of entry, Michigan will be lucky to get 600-800 refugees this year. Resettlement contractors will be hurting for taxpayer dollars.

I just checked Wrapsnet and so far this fiscal year, just short of two months, Michigan has received a grand total of 96 refugees. If this pace continues, Michigan would be looking at 600-800 for the year.

If you would like to try to get your FY18 R & P Abstract, go here and find which offices are operating in your city (remember they can place refugees from 50-100 miles from this office).

Call those local offices and ask for the R & P Abstract for this year, FY18. If they refuse, then call your state refugee coordinator (list here) and ask that person. If the coordinator gives you a runaround then consider doing a freedom of information request using your state’s laws (you should be able to find templates for that request on line).

Don’t forget Congress!

And, to make your elected officials earn their keep. Contact your US Congressman’s office and ask him or her to get you the FY18 R & P Abstract for whichever resettlement offices are working where you live.

To have even more fun, call your local elected officials (mayor, council, etc) and ask them if they have the plans, the R & P Abstract, for your town or city. I’ll bet they don’t and I will bet that they have no clue what you are even talking about—dereliction of duty in my opinion!

By the way, not to hammer the point too hard (but I will!), the Heritage Foundation clearly has no clue about the resettlement process and the secrecy surrounding it as there is no mention of YOUR issue (the problems impacting you where you live) in their “reform” proposal that focuses on America looking good to foreign governments!

This post is filed in my ‘What you can do’ category, here.

***These are the nine federal refugee contractors (paid by you) making plans for your towns and cities. See that Michigan has six of the nine bidding for bodies from the US State Department.

Poughkeepsie LOUDLY said no to refugees!

11/24/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The political Left-wingers, like those at Church World Service, don’t like LOUD when it comes from the people who don’t want their towns and cities changed without their consultation.

I had to laugh when I saw this headline at NPR:

Opposition To Refugee Arrivals Keeps Getting Louder

erolkekic — Erol Kekic dog whistling with this line? He said people asked: “Why are we bringing people who don’t all look like us?” I will bet no one uttered those words that night!

Don’t you know! Loud is bad if it doesn’t come from the Left!

And, it is funny, just last night I was so irritated by Leftwing commentators always referring to Rightwing “dog whistles” when along comes a story with some dog whistles from the Left!

If you don’t know what the heck dog whistles are (in the political sense), it is when a supposedly secretive message is being sent to one’s own political base.

Before I give you some juicy bits on this NPR story, you might want to revisit my reports on Poughkeepsie here.

In the waning months of the Obama Administration (before November) hopes were running high. Obama had set a refugee admissions ceiling for FY17 at 110,000, the highest in years and certainly much higher than any of his previous 7 years, and they all thought that Hillary was headed to the Oval.

So the US State Department with its contractors*** set about finding lots and lots of fresh territory in which to place refugees (older sites were getting overloaded and tensions were building). Poughkeepsie was one such new site.

Then along came Donald J. Trump to mess up their big plans….

Thus this National Public Radio story:

A few days after Donald Trump was elected President, more than a hundred people packed into a church sanctuary in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. to hear a presentation about refugee resettlement in their town.

It didn’t go well.

This was after Trump had campaigned on refusing Syrian refugees, citing security concerns. In the church that night, staffers from the non-profit organization Church World Service laid out their plan to open a refugee resettlement office in Poughkeepsie, and bring in about 80 refugees, mostly from the Congo, Iraq and Syria.

The audience had questions. A lot of them. They wanted to know, would they be safe? And could Poughkeepsie afford to care for these new residents?

“As a resident of this town, of this city, I can look out my window any time and find someone in need,” said Poughkeepsie resident Steven Planck, to vigorous applause.

I have seen this comment dozens of times and ask this question: If Church World Service is a Christian ‘charity,’ why not focus on the poor people in every American city? Why are we importing more poverty?

The head of Church World Service’s refugee program, Erol Kekic, spent more than an hour trying to respond to the questions.

“We had to do a lot of truth-telling, and dispel some myths,” says Kekic. “From ‘the value of my property will go down because refugees will be resettling next to me,’ to ‘are we bringing terrorists?’ to ‘why are we bringing people who don’t all look like us?'”

It’s getting harder for refugees to find a welcoming home in the U.S. The Trump administration has cut the number of refugees allowed into the country. In cities and town across the nation, citizens are protesting refugees being resettled in their neighborhoods.

In Poughkeepsie, the debate got ugly. On social media, people called opponents of the refugee plan racists and Islamophobes. The staff of Church World Service received death threats. [Ho hum! Death threats, so what else is new—ed]

[….]

Until recently, refugee resettlement in the U.S. had wide bipartisan support. The U.S. State Department, along with nine large non-profit groups, decides where to resettle refugees fleeing persecution, war and violence. They look for communities where there are volunteers to help.

The reason the refugee industry had “wide bipartisan support” and still does is that the Republican establishment wants the cheap labor for their big business donors and the Dems want the voters. And it is only in the last few years that this secret program has been exposed to the American taxpayers who shell out the bucks for it!

NPR continued:

“We all wondered, why? Why Poughkeepsie?” says David Cole, 37, a lifelong resident of the town who helped mobilize opposition to Church World Service. Cole insists he has nothing against Muslims or other refugees. But he says Poughkeepsie isn’t a wealthy town; unemployment there is higher than the statewide average.

Why Poughkeepsie? Because Church World Service thought a banner year was coming with a slew of Obama/Clinton paying refugee “clients,” and they figured Poughkeepsie would be a pushover!

“I looked at people that I knew,” Cole says. “And I said, OK, well, why aren’t these people getting help? Why are we trying to help, you know, people from war-torn countries in an area where there’s people looking for jobs? Like, they’re scavenging for jobs around here. I don’t get it.”

[….]

“Yes, there are loud voices in every community,” Kekic says. “But they’re usually not the majority, and they’re usually just a very loud minority.”

So what is the lesson here: Louder wins!

There is much more and it is worth reading here.

To learn more about hard Leftwing Church World Service, click here.

***These are the nine major US taxpayer-funded NGOs responsible for (secretly) placing refugees in hundreds of American towns.

HIAS out of the closet says Daniel Greenfield, Sarsour support confirms

11/22/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Thanks to several readers who sent it, here is yet another reason for the US government to cut off funding for refugee resettlement groups who have become out-of-the-closet political agitation groups.

Longtime readers know that HIAS receives millions of taxpayer dollars to place refugees in unsuspecting towns and cities and they have led the charge in the courts against Donald Trump’s efforts to keep us safe by limiting certain migrants entry in to the US.

HIAS also recently helped organize an anti-Trump rally along with CAIR in Washington, DC, here.

And, they invited Rep. Keith Ellison to speak at an anti-Trump rally here.

(Sure hope HIAS is keeping its pots of federal and private money separate! Is there a funding firewall at HIAS?)

Here is Greenfield on Mark Hetfield’s latest:

Is this the moment when Mark Hetfield and HIAS officially joined the anti-Israel lobby?

hias (with gun)

Mark Hetfield had already hijacked HIAS and transformed it from a Jewish organization to a radical left-wing group concerned entirely with Muslim migration.

Hetfield’s HIAS had already attacked Israel and collaborated with the anti-Israel group, J Street.

But signing a statement in support of Linda Sarsour, an Islamic anti-Semitic activist who celebrated throwing stones at Jews, is Mark Hetfield’s official coming out party.

The immediate trigger for this was having Sarsour head a New School panel accusing Jews of exploiting anti-Semitism. That’s quite a show for a woman who is quite comfortable with Louie Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam.

[….]

Previously, Mark Hetfield had avoided getting his hands dirty. Now he no longer seems to care.

Continue here for more and to follow links.

Go here to see my ever-expanding file on HIAS (aka Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society) one of the US State Department’s nine federal resettlement contractors.

Here are the nine (LOL! I haven’t named them often enough lately). I sure hope all of them have built firewalls between their federal funding and the money they use for political activities.

US Catholic Bishops Thanksgiving message: we thank the US taxpayers for so generously supporting our good works

11/22/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

That headline is a joke of course!

As the Bishops gathered and gave “thanks for the gift and contributions of immigrants and refugees to our great nation,” not a peep was mentioned about the millions of tax payer dollars going to the US Conference of Catholic Bishops “Migration Fund” which allows them to demonstrate their humanity to man (well, to the foreign ones anyway).

Before you read the story, here again is a reminder of just one year of the income the Bishops received thanks to the generosity of US taxpayers.

I wrote this in July, here, summarizing the income that nine federal refugee contractors*** receive for their ‘charitable’ good works.

The Bishops Migration Fund was 97% taxpayer-funded according to a 2014 annual report for their Migration Fund and I doubt the percentage has changed much in recent years.

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)

Screenshot (671)_LI — Both the federal grants and the travel loan collections are your taxpayer dollars!

Now here is the news from Crux:

U.S. bishops release Thanksgiving message advocating for migrants and refugees

NEW YORK – The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has issued a special Thanksgiving message, offering a particular plea for the protection of migrants and refugee families.

Pope Francis Attends A Mass for The Opening Of The Synod — Worried look? As refugee admissions decline, so will their income! Cardinal Daniel DiNardo gets top USCCB job: http://dfw.cbslocal.com/2016/11/15/u-s-catholic-bishops-elect-texas-cardinal-to-top-post/

In a statement released on Monday, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, archbishop of Galveston-Houston and president of the USCCB, expressed solidarity with DACA recipients, beneficiaries of Temporary Protected Status, and other refugees attempting to escape persecution or danger in their home countries. [We pay them millions for their advocacy!—ed]

DiNardo cited last week’s fall assembly of U.S. bishops in Baltimore and said the conference was “attentive in a special way to those who are often excluded from this great abundance-the poor, the sick, the addicted, the unborn, the unemployed, and especially migrants and refugees.

“My brothers expressed a shared and ever-greater sense of alarm-and urgency to act-in the face of policies that seemed unthinkable only a short time ago,” said DiNardo.

[….]

DiNardo also used his Thanksgiving message to advocate for comprehensive immigration reform, a long-time policy goal of the USCCB. [If the Senate Gang of Eight bill had been signed in to law, the refugee contractors would have gotten an expanded role and more taxpayer money to sign the newly amnestied up for their government services, just as they do now for refugees—ed]

“This year, I give thanks for the gift and contributions of immigrants and refugees to our great nation. I also pray that next year, families now under threat will not be broken and dispersed, but instead will be united in joy around their tables, giving thanks for all the blessings our nation has to offer,” he concluded.

(Including the blessings of an over-flowing federal treasury that sends us millions annually!)

More here.

I’m going to continue talking about this until the Bishops tell Americans the truth about their income! Why is that so hard?

***These are the nine federal refugee contractors paid by you to place refugees in your towns and cities.