Category: The Opposition

Massachusetts and New Hampshire refugee contractors begin cutback too

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

In my previous post I told you about the reality setting in in Arizona, and now we see that New England refugee contractors are facing that reality too and cutting staff, or shortening hours.
I am delighted to see more effort being made on the part of reporters to get their facts.
Here at WBUR News (NPR Boston) reporter Shannon Dooling actually did some work (emphasis is mine)!
Look at this, right up front—refugee agencies paid by the head!

Immigration lawyer Kerry Doyle admits President’s broad authority to determine refugee admissions. Photo and bio: http://www.gravesanddoyle.com/biographies.html

Refugee resettlement agencies receive funding based on the number of people they anticipate resettling, so the uncertainty around President Trump’s travel ban has serious fiscal consequences. [They are paid by how many they actually resettle as they bid for bodies.—ed]

Jeff Thielman is the CEO of the International Institute of New England, a resettlement agency working in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. His agency expects eight refugees to arrive by March 28.

“It means that we have not filled a number of positions that were open in all three of our offices in the resettlement area,” he said. “It also means that we may have to make further reductions. We’re going to make those decisions in the next few weeks.”

Ascentria Care Alliance, a resettlement agency based in Worcester and operating in both Massachusetts and New Hampshire, announced Monday that as a result of Trump’s travel ban it had laid off or reduced hours for 14 employees.

“Although the orders have been stayed, even the most recent one, we are no longer receiving any refugees in the pipeline and we don’t anticipate receiving any more refugees until maybe four to six months out at the earliest,” said Jodie Justofin, Ascentria’s vice president of communications.

For new readers, see that in 2013, Ascentria’s CEO admitted that refugee resettlement IS A BUSINESS!
Dooling continues….

Despite that temporary freeze, the finances of resettlement agencies are still unstable. But a return to pre-Trump quotas could boost their coffers.

Before he left office, President Obama capped the number of refugees admitted into the U.S. during the current fiscal year at 110,000. Resettlement agencies engineered their budgets through September based on those projections.  [If they did that it was really really dumb because that (110,000) was by far the highest ceiling proposed since before 9/11. The average for most of Bush and Obama years was 65,000.—ed]

[….]

President Trump cut that cap on refugees to 50,000. That’s an action within the powers of the executive.

But since Trump’s cap is part of an executive order, the constitutionality of which is under question, Boston immigration attorney Kerry Doyle says the quota may be challenged in the courts.

Ha! Wishful thinking?

“While the president does have broad authority to set the fiscal numbers, because it’s caught up in a lot of the other problems with this executive order being potentially unconstitutional, the question is whether the 50,000 is also stayed,” Doyle said.

Doyle confirms what we said that Trump did not have to reduce the CEILING or slow the flow through an Executive Order.
And Ms. Doyle does know that the judge can’t order the federal government to spend money and send agents abroad to process refugees. It would be insane if Trump’s people believed that! They should just go ahead and keep the numbers low (or at today’s level, see right hand sidebar, 38,111) ignoring the judge’s unconstitutional assertion.
More here at WBUR.
I want to reiterate another point I have been making. The resettlement agencies (aka contractors) are in a pickle because they have been running a kind of Ponzi scheme where they anticipate certain refugee numbers (paying clients) coming in in the future, but they never have enough private money in their budgets to tide them over if the flow slows. Why? I can only guess they have been operating for so long on mostly federal funding that they have gotten too lazy to do private fundraising.
Or, there aren’t enough private citizens willing to pay for refugee resettlement!

Hawaii judge thumbs nose at AG Sessions: yes, my order applies to refugee ceiling/moratorium

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

You probably heard on the news over the weekend that the Department of Justice sought clarification from Obama’s friend, Judge Derrick Watson, in Hawaii and asked if he really meant to include a stop order on the President’s 120-day moratorium on refugee admissions and the FY17 ceiling reduction when he was aiming at the travel freeze.
The travel issue and the refugee admissions issue are two separate things. For the time being, take the so-called ‘travel ban’ from six countries out of your mind. It is not the main subject of this blog or what I want to try to make clear to readers (and the lazy, ignorant press).

A co-plaintiff in the case is Imam Ismail Elshikh. Is he even a US citizen? Photo and story here at a very unusual blog that I had never heard of: http://hlaoo1980.blogspot.com/2017/03/egypt-muslim-imam-suing-trump-for.html

The confusion comes from the fact that the first judge on the original order left the refugee admissions pause and ceiling portion of the EO intact and so did the Maryland judge last week.

It appears that Judge Derrick Watson believes he has the authority to set the ceiling for refugee admissions each year.

He emphatically does not have that authority.  He can’t make the Dept. of State resume overseas processing of refugees. He can’t make the Administration and Congress spend money on refugees.
The President has the explicit power in the Refugee Act of 1980 to set the CEILING (as we said here). In most years the President (Bush and Obama) has been well under the CEILING!
As I have said recently, the big mistake the Trump team made was putting the refugee pause in to an Executive Order.
They have the power to slow the flow and stay under a proposed CEILING without an explicit order.  The only thing I can see that they should have done (maybe they did it) was to notify the House and Senate Judiciary Committees that they were lowering the ceiling.  However, the original act only gave Congress the power to ‘consult’ not stop the President. (In 1980, Ted Kennedy, Joe Biden and Jimmy Carter put a lot of power in the President’s hands when it comes to refugee admissions!)

If the controversy continues, more taxpaying Americans will be educated!

That said, there could be a silver lining.  The Trump State Department can keep the flow low (or at zero) for months to come, and because the refugee ceiling is in Watson’s case (a case that surely will now work its way through the courts), the subject of the US Refugee Admissions Program will continue to be in the national news.  Thus more and more Americans will be learning the facts about what they have been paying for since 1980!
(See my right hand sidebar where I will attempt to keep you updated every few days on refugee admission numbers for FY17.)

Bill Frelick of Human Rights Watch: “…there is no requirement that the U.S. resettle a single refugee….”

As for the contractors***, they would have been better off just shutting up and taking the 120-day (16 week) pause because 7 weeks have already passed since the original EO was announced on January 28th and they would be on their way through the slowdown.
Before you read the latest news about the Judge sticking by his original decision last week, see what refugee advocate and longtime expert Bill Frelick (Human Rights Watch) said in November after Trump was elected and the refugee industry went in to shell-shock:

“In the U.S., there’s not a quota that has to be filled. The U.S. has a budgeted amount of money to do refugee resettlement, but there’s no requirement that the U.S. resettle a single refugee, and there’s no legal obligation to do it.”

Here is one of many stories (this one at Fox News) this morning about Judge Watson telling the DOJ—no way, not changing a thing!

The federal judge in Hawaii who halted President Trump’s new, revised travel ban denied the administration’s request for him to limit the scope of his ruling Sunday so that the United States can immediately stop taking in refugees worldwide.

U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson on Thursday issued a temporary restraining order on Trump’s order that prevents travelers from six mostly-Muslim countries entering the U.S. and suspends the United States’ worldwide refugee program.

Justice Department attorneys argued in a motion Friday that Watson’s temporary restraining order was essentially based on the argument that the ban appears to unconstitutionally target Muslims.

They questioned whether his ruling was limited to the part of Trump’s March 6 executive order that temporarily bans visas to travel from the six countries into the U.S., and not to the temporary refugee ban.

Watson responded Sunday by saying there was nothing unclear about the scope of his order and that the ruling remains unchanged.

More here.

As I said above, keep it up! The more public controversy surrounding the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program the better because then more American taxpayers will be educated!

For a laugh, don’t miss the news that Hawaii has taken only a tiny number of refugees for the last 14 years!
*** Here (below) are the nine major federal refugee contractors who now will see their budgets slashed (because they are largely funded by you, the taxpayer).  They know this judge is on thin ice on the President’s power to determine the number of refugees being admitted to the US.
Are they hoping that Watson can bully his way through and singlehandedly re-write the Refugee Act of 1980 turning a ceiling in to a target/goal—something the refugee industry has wanted for a long time!
By the way, for new readers, you need to know that your local resettlement agency will be a subcontractor of one of the nine fake charities that monopolize the federal refugee contracting system listed here:

 

Hillary's Libyan legacy still responsible for invasion of Europe as Italy panics

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Invasion of Europe news….
I’m not going to let you all forget that it was Hillary and her girls who were responsible for the overthrow of Libyan strongman Muammar Ghaddafi that resulted in the opening of the flood gates from Africa to Europe for tens of thousands of mostly economic migrants from the heart of Africa to countries like Italy geographically on the frontline of the invasion.
Even Obama didn’t have the stomach for the slaughter of Ghaddafi.  I followed the whole sorry tale from its earliest days here at RRW.

Susan Rice, Hillary and Samantha Power. Hillary admitted that in 2011 Obama was reluctant to follow Europe’s lead and get involved in Libya, but that she marshaled the forces (including Susan Rice and Samantha Power) to persuade Obama to help overthrow Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. Ultimately, she said, it was the President’s decision thereby tossing blame back on Obama when the results of her actions have proven so disastrous. https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2015/10/23/hillary-and-the-girls-are-to-blame-for-libyan-hellhole-european-invasion/

 
Of course the Europeans made that fatal mistake in the earliest days of the invasion by not turning back (using safe methods) the first boats that were launched from the Libyan coast. Now they rescue each one sending a signal to people smugglers to keep ’em coming!

Here is the latest news from Middle East Monitor:

Italy panics as North Africa migrants surge

Italy will host a meeting between European and North African countries next week in a bid to strengthen support for an agreement it struck with Libya to fight people smuggling as migrant arrivals surge.

The prime minister of the UN-backed government in Tripoli, Fayez Al-Seraj, will meet with Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni and interior ministers from eight European countries including Germany and France on Monday.

Last month, Italy pledged money, training and equipment to help Libya fight people smugglers, a deal that was endorsed by European Union member states.

But Libya is still far from stable. Two governments are vying for power – in Tobruk to the east and Tripoli to the west – and the country remains mired in factional fighting and lawlessness.

The authorities in eastern Libya have rejected the deal struck between Rome and Tripoli.

“I’m not so naive as to not understand the situation there,” Italian Interior Minister Marco Minniti told reporters. “But we cannot remain immobile and wait for the country to stabilise.”

He said the Libya agreement and next week’s meeting were not just “talk”, but strategic steps toward managing mass migration to Europe.

So far this year more than 16,000 migrants – a 36 per cent increase on the same period last year – have been rescued at sea and brought to Italy after Libya-based people smugglers piled them onto flimsy boats.

Don’t miss Hillary cackling about her success in killing Gaddafi. She looks like an absolute loon here:

 
Another version of Hillary’s  looney laugh, is here. Don’t you think it might be too early for her to come out of the woods!
Our archives on the ‘Invasion of Europe’ are here.

Refugee resettlement contractors "whipsawed" says New York Times

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Of course, the New York Times could be expected to help the US Refugee Resettlement contractors wail about their loss of paying ‘clients’ (aka refugees).
As I have said (more than seven times), the contractors*** have only themselves to blame if they can’t maintain staff and offices during a pause in refugees entering the US.  They have gotten fat (with big salaries!) on the US Treasury teat and long ago stopped doing any serious private charitable fundraising.
Here is the NYT:

Last month, in anticipation of the Trump administration shutting down the flow of refugees entering the United States, Church World Service, one of the groups that handles resettlement, took drastic measures. It laid off all but 40 of the 600 employees at its African center that prepared refugees for travel.

My first question is WTH! did CWS need 600 employees in Africa for? And, since many were probably low-paid jobs for Africans, did the Reverend McCullough take a pay cut to keep some of those poor people employed?

Doing well by doing good! The President and CEO of CWS pulls down a cool $316,714 in annual compensation. Will he and other top execs take a pay cut to maintain some of their staff? BTW, I wouldn’t care what they paid their CEOs if they weren’t largely funded by taxpayer dollars. https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2017/03/04/church-world-service-announced-yesterday-that-it-is-launching-anti-trump-campaign-to-raise/

Then on Wednesday night, a federal judge in Hawaii temporarily stayed the executive order that would have, among other things, halted refugee resettlement for 120 days and cut the total number of refugees admitted in the 2017 fiscal year by more than half, to 50,000.

First, Church World Service and the other organizations that resettle refugees cheered the news. Then they wondered, what now?

“We just simply do not know,” said Erol Kekic, the executive director of the immigration and refugee program for the agency. “There’s no guarantee that this, well, hold, will hold between now and Sept. 30,” he added, referring to the end of the fiscal year. [See our previous post which indicates that they better get used to a lower paying client flow—ed]

But one thing was clear, he said: “You can’t just play games with people. You can’t just lay off 500 people and then hire them back and lay them off again. We’re going to need some answers from the federal government.”

The judge’s decision was just the latest dramatic twist in six weeks of whipsaw changes faced by refugees and the agencies that work with them.

[….]

More than 60,000 refugees were already in various stages of approval before Mr. Trump’s first order went into effect on Jan. 27. The State Department, realizing that the new cap meant that there was only room for about another 17,000 refugees, slowed down the machinery to space out arrivals to 400 per week.

But the slowdown meant the agencies faced budget cuts. The State Department pays each refugee agency $950 per person to cover administrative costs, with another $1,125 going directly to the refugee or to cover expenses like rent.  [But they are paid, much much more! See below—ed]

Readers who are researching the refugee program where you live might see slightly different numbers involving the split of the $2,075 per head payment. Some of the contractors keep a larger chunk of the State Department’s per head payment which represents a perverse incentive to never stop the flow no matter how over-loaded a community becomes.
Also, I repeat!  This is not the only funding the contractors get from you.
They get myriad grants totaling in the millions of dollars for such things as building community gardens for refugees, training refugees to do ‘culturally appropriate’ daycare, handing out micro-enterprise loans to refugees, and teaching them English (something I have maintained could be done at local community colleges). And, in the case of CWS, running programs in Africa.
Continue reading here for more of the wailing at the NYT!
Can’t these lazy biased reporters ever take a few minutes and get all the facts! 
Look at how much CWS is getting from you! This is one page at USA Spending.  In the last 8 years they are approaching a half a billion $$$ from the US Treasury!
 

 
If anyone sees a report about the top execs at the nine contractors taking a voluntary pay cut, let me know and we will give them credit!
*** The nine contractors that monopolize refugee resettlement in America:

 

Hawaii: Muslim Brotherhood-backed imam dictating US refugee policy

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

… instead of banning the Brotherhood, the U.S. is letting a Brotherhood-backed imam dictate U.S. refugee and visa policy.

(John Guandolo)

The Hawaiian judge (a personal friend of Obama) might have issued the order, but the drive to stop Trump’s travel and refugee admissions pause comes from Egyptian imam Ismail Elshikh.

Egyptian imam Ismail Elshikh is a co-plaintiff in case blocking Trump’s refugee pause.

See our previous two posts on Hawaii, here and here.
This is a must-read story from Leo Hohmann at World Net Daily:

The main plaintiff in the Hawaii case blocking President Trump’s revised temporary travel ban is an imam with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.

The irony is hard to miss: Trump has talked about declaring the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization, and now it is a Brotherhood-backed imam who is playing a key role in blocking his executive order on immigration.

Imam Ismail Elshikh, 39, leads the largest mosque in Hawaii and claims he is suffering “irreparable harm” from the president’s executive order, which places a 90-day ban on travel to the U.S. from six countries.

One of those six countries is Syria. Elshikh’s mother in law is Syrian and would not be able to visit her family in Hawaii for 90 days if Trump’s ban were allowed to go into effect.

Hawaii’s Obama-appointed federal judge, Derrick Watson, made sure the ban did not go into effect, striking it down Wednesday while buying Hawaii’s claim that it amounts to a “Muslim ban.” The state’s attorney general, along with co-plaintiff Elshikh, claims the ban would irreparably harm the state’s tourism industry and its Muslim families.

[….]

The vast majority of Hawaii’s roughly 5,000 Muslims attend Elshikh’s mosque, the Muslim Association of Hawaii, which is located in a residential area of Manoa, Honolulu. The mosque, despite its ties to what many believe is an extremist and subversive organization, the Muslim Brotherhood, may now hold the key to whether the Trump travel ban passes muster in the federal court system.

Elshikh was born and raised in Cairo, Egypt, the home base of the Muslim Brotherhood, whose stated goal is to spread Shariah law throughout the world.

The proof that his mosque is affiliated with the Brotherhood is found in the court records for Honolulu County, which lists the deed holder as the North American Islamic Trust.

John Guandolo spoke at MDCAN in Maryland a few years ago. I was there. Guandolo’s website is here: https://www.understandingthethreat.com/

John Guandolo, a former FBI counter-terrorism specialist and now private consultant to law enforcement at Understanding the Threat, said all mosques under the “Muslim Association of” moniker are typically affiliated with the Brotherhood.

But the clincher in this case is that the mosque property is traced to NAIT, “confirming it is a Muslim Brotherhood organization,” Guandolo told WND in an email.

The Trump administration has said it is considering banning the Muslim Brotherhood in the U.S. by including it on the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations.

Hohmann continues…..

… instead of banning the Brotherhood, the U.S. is letting a Brotherhood-backed imam dictate U.S. refugee and visa policy, Guandolo said.

Judge Watson, who was a Harvard law classmate of Barack Obama’s, issued an injunction halting Trump’s executive order from going into effect, agreeing with Hawaii’s claim that the temporary ban, 90 days on visa travelers and 120 days for refugees, would irreparably harm the state’s tourism industry and its Muslim families.

As for refugees, Hawaii takes very few. Of the 49 states participating in the federal refugee resettlement program, only Mississippi has taken in fewer refugees than Hawaii since 2002. Only 127 refugees have been sent to Hawaii since 2002, and nearly zero have been Muslims from the six nations on Trump’s list. The vast majority sent to Hawaii have been from Burma and Vietnam.

For more, and to follow links, continue reading here.

You gotta hand it to Trump, he is flushing them out, but the big question is, what will he do with those he flushes!