Category: The Opposition

Twin Falls, Idaho welcomed nearly 3,000 refugees in ten years

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I was very interested to see the list of top cities in the US that ‘welcome’ refugees when I  published The Tent Foundation/Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service Refugee Hiring Guide the other day.

Where is Twin Falls?

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Today I had a chance to look at the list more carefully and I’ll be darned, I don’t see Twin Falls, Idaho.  (If you all check for me and see if somehow I overlooked it, see page 17, 18, and 19 at the guide, here.)

You would think that since The Tent Foundation is Chobani Yogurt CEO Hamdi Ulukaya’s foundation that Twin Falls would be on the list.

Is it possible, I wondered, that Twin Falls welcomed less than 100 refugees in the ten years being analyzed by the Lutheran contractor for the hiring guide?

Important note to readers: I hear from some of you referring to refugees as illegals.  They are not.  The immigrants we discuss mostly on these pages come to the US through the Refugee Admissions Program signed in to law in 1980.  The numbers I’ll be giving you below are primary refugees placed directly in Twin Falls. The data comes from the State Department’s Refugee Processing Center.  The numbers below do not include: asylum seekers, asylees, Special Immigrant Visa holders, Diversity Lottery winners, etc.  They also do not include secondary refugee migrants.  Those are legal refugees placed in another location who have moved, (possibly in this case to Twin Falls) for work or to be with others of their ethnic group. Again, secondary migrants are not included below.

These are all the primary refugees placed in Twin Falls by the US State Department and its local resettlement contractor during the ten year period, 2007-2016 presented in Tent’s Hiring Guide.  Data is from Wrapsnet (Refugee Processing Center).

A total of 2,723 were placed in Twin Falls, population 48,260, from 2007 to 2016. (Boise by comparison received 6,918 in the same time period placing it at #29 on the Tent list of top resettlement locations.)

The Twin Falls number of 2,723 should have placed it on Tent’s list (where to find refugees) between Richmond, VA and Lincoln, NE

 

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Twin Falls should be here. I am wondering now how accurate the other numbers are!

 

When I analyzed the data at Wrapsnet, I learned that Twin Falls ‘welcomed’ refugees from 17 different nationalities during that time period with the largest numbers coming from the following countries:

Bhutan (650)

Burma (620)

Iraq (382)

Eritrea (242)

Iran (229)

DR Congo (217)

Sudan (179)

Afghanistan (85)

Smaller numbers came from 9 other countries surely making it challenging for the school system, the health system and the criminal justice system there to deal with the language barriers and requirements for translation services (just one more cost being passed on to local and state taxpayers!).

I’ll be red-faced, but please let me know if you find Twin Falls on the Tent list of top cities in which employers can find refugee workers.

This post is filed in my ‘Where to find information’ category and in ‘Refugee statistics.’

 

 

Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society heavily involved in Midterm election politics

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

A week or so ago I told you about how the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) has launched its “Vote for Welcome” campaign.

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Have you seen this poster where you live?

If you are a new reader you may not know that HIAS is one of nine federal refugee contractors*** paid by the head to place refugees in your towns and cities.

They are also politically involved in ‘welcoming’ migrants of all sorts to America (for instance, they played a major role in attempting to influence Senators during the ‘Gang of Eight’ deliberations a few years ago).

Investigative reporter Jim Simpson writing at the Capital Research Center says that HIAS has received $186 MILLION from the US Treasury in the last ten years.  See here.

If President Trump continues to admit fewer numbers of refugees their budgetary bottom-line will suffer.

In my opinion, there is nothing more maddening than an election-year political campaign being run by a non-profit group heavily funded by us—-US taxpayers!

Thanks to reader Brenda for alerting me to their #MissingNeighbors campaign and poster.

From their website:

 

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This is a screenshot so the links are not hot.  If you want to see their toolkit, go here:      https://www.hias.org/sites/default/files/hias_2018_elections_toolkit.pdf

You too should be educating candidates! 

 

***Below are the nine federal refugee resettlement contractors.

Faithful readers are probably sick of seeing this list almost every day, but a friend once told me that people need to see something seven times before it completely sinks in, so it seems to me that 70, or even 700 isn’t too much!

And, besides I have new readers every day.

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Here is HIAS protesting the Trump Administration in New York in February 2017.           https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2017/02/14/breitbart-federally-funded-refugee-resettlement-contractor-hias-organized-ny-rally-against-trump/

The present US Refugee Admissions Program will never be reformed if the system of paying the contractors by the head stays in place and the contractors are permitted to act as Leftwing political agitation groups, community organizers and lobbyists paid on our dime!  

And, to add insult to injury they pretend it is all about ‘humanitarianism.’

The number in parenthesis is the percentage of their income paid by you (the taxpayer) to place the refugees into your towns and cities and get them signed up for their services (aka welfare)!  And, get them registered to vote eventually!

From my most recent accounting, here.  However, please see that Nayla Rush at the Center for Immigration Studies has done an update of their income, as has James Simpson at the Capital Research Center!

Tent Foundation makes refugee hiring guide available to corporations

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

In November of last year, information came to us from a confidential source about Chobani Yogurt CEO Hamdi Ulukaya’s personal foundation, The Tent Foundation, contracting with Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (one of nine federally funded resettlement agencies) to produce a guide for businesses to help them find refugee labor.

Here is just a bit of the background I gave about LIRS contract with Tent in a post almost a year ago:

For new readers, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIRS) is one of nine federal contractors*** hired and funded (on a per refugee-head basis) by the US State Department and the Office of Refugee Resettlement in HHS to place refugees in towns where citizens have no say in the matter and are generally kept in the dark about the process and plans for their communities.

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Linda Hartke’s sudden departure from LIRS has never been explained.

LIRS, approximately 96% funded by taxpayer dollars, is at the moment in a tight spot due to internal turmoil.

We have also recently reported on two other LIRS side ‘deals’ with global corporations— the meatpackers JBS Swift and Tyson Foods.

Now we hear that Ulukaya’s personal foundation, The Tent Foundation, has hired LIRS to write “a 15-page resource toolkit for employers laying out why they should hire refugees.”

According to a signed contract seen by RRW, the finished product was to be delivered to The Tent Foundation by the end of October.

Go to that post and see what an excited Linda Hartke said about their new funding source.

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LIRS hiring guide for the Tent Foundation is here:          https://www.tent.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Tent_Guidebook_FINAL.pdf

Hartke has since been removed as CEO of LIRS, a full explanation about her departure was never forthcoming.

In light of all the internal turmoil going on at LIRS over the last year, I had wondered if The Tent Foundation ever got its guide.

But, sure enough, here it is!

It is a useful guide for not only businesses looking for refugee labor, but serious students of the US Refugee Admissions Program will find it full of information that could come in handy.

Although, Tent works in Europe, the guide is entirely devoted to finding and hiring refugee workers in the US.

I especially found useful the ‘Where to find refugees’ table that begins on page 17.

Below is just a small portion of the table that goes on for two additional full pages.

See which cities are the top ‘welcoming’ cities in America from 2007 to 2016 (mostly Obama years):

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There are a total of 136 locations on the list.  Apparently towns and cities receiving less than 100 are not included.     https://www.tent.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Tent_Guidebook_FINAL.pdf

 

In addition to less tangible benefits like feel-good bragging rights (corporate virtue signalling!) there are some economic reasons (besides wage issues) to bank an economic gain from hiring refugees.

Here is one!  A tax break!

Remember I mentioned that there was a tax break for businesses being touted as a way to encourage companies to hire people on welfare (here yesterday).  I see that on page 14, here at the Tent/LIRS hiring guide, the break is further explained.

Readers may not know that although most legal immigrants to America are not permitted to tap into welfare for several years, refugees are exempt from that prohibition and are able to almost immediately, with the help and guidance of their federally-assigned resettlement contractor (ie LIRS), sign up for myriad social service programs.

Here is what the guide advises….

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Go here to read the whole guide.

 

***Below are the nine federal refugee resettlement contractors.

Faithful readers are probably sick of seeing this list almost every day, but a friend once told me that people need to see something seven times before it completely sinks in, so it seems to me that 70, or even 700 isn’t too much!

And, besides I have new readers every day.

The present US Refugee Admissions Program will never be reformed if the system of paying the contractors by the head stays in place and the contractors are permitted to act as Leftwing political agitation groups, community organizers and lobbyists largely paid on our dime!  

And, to add insult to injury they pretend it is all about ‘humanitarianism.’

The number in parenthesis is the percentage of their income paid by you (the taxpayer) to place the refugees into your towns and cities and get them signed up for their services (aka welfare)!  And, get them registered to vote eventually!

In most cases (LIRS for instance!), the percentage of their income paid by taxpayers is so high one could hardly call them private groups any longer. They are virtually quasi-government agencies.

From my most recent accounting, here.  However, please see that Nayla Rush at the Center for Immigration Studies has done an update of their income, as has James Simpson at the Capital Research Center!

Kansas City Somali family of nine wants Trump to let Dad in to US

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Leave it to the refugee industry’s public relations apparatus to get a story planted in the Kansas City Star just as Donald Trump arrived in the state next door for a rally for Kansas Republican candidates including gubernatorial candidate, a leading immigration control advocate, Kris Kobach.  One story is here.

(This Somali family lives in Kansas City, Missouri)

Here is the headline with the usual story line (family happy to be in America, only wish Dad was with them).

As Trump cuts refugee numbers, outlook dim for father to join KC Muslim family of 9

But, why wasn’t Dad with them and caring for them in Kenya (a safe country btw)?

 

welcoming Somalis in KC
The family arrived from Kenya in 2017 to cheers from local advocates for more refugee admissions.       https://www.nwahomepage.com/news/fox-24/somali-family-of-nine-touches-down-in-kansas-city-mo/653945636

Somali refugee Sahra Hassan Absuge and her eight children today enjoy what they could only dream of two years ago.

A two-story house. A couple of jobs. Schools. Donated appliances. [Food stamps and Medicaid fills the gap says the story.—-ed]

“I am so lucky,” Absuge said. “It’s by the grace of God that we are here.”

All that’s missing is her husband.

Also a refugee from Somalia, he seeks to one day join his Kansas City family after four years of being separated, trapped in another war zone. But chances for a reunion anytime soon appear slim, given ever-deepening cuts in the number of refugees allowed into the U.S.

Absuge and her children barely got in themselves.

Twenty months ago, dozens of cheering supporters at Kansas City International Airport greeted the family after they had squeezed through a tightening slipknot on refugee travel.

Continue here for all the happy talk and mention of their resettlement agency—Della Lamb—a Methodist group, a subcontractor of the Ethiopian Community Development Council (one of nine federal resettlement contractors that work for the US State Department).

Then a lament about a slowdown in family reunification:

At Della Lamb, Hyde and director of refugee resettlement Abdul Bakar could think of resettling only one Muslim on the Missouri side in the past year.

Absuge’s husband, the father of all eight of the children, is Muslim.

“There used to a good pipeline for family reunification,” said Judy Akers, Della Lamb’s executive director. “But there hasn’t been much spoken of that recently.”

Family reunification suspended in 2008 for Somalia….

Longtime readers may remember that the US State Department had to suspend the whole family reunification program for Somalis beginning in 2008 due to massive fraud in the P-3 (family reunification) program, see here.  The suspension lasted several years.

I sure hope Homeland Security is doing some robust vetting of Dad. He left their Nairobi village in 2014? (Someone check the age of the youngest child!).  But other news reports say they were living in a UN camp.

He went to Sudan looking for work in the middle of civil unrest there? And, then instead of returning to his family in a safe Kenya he ‘flees’ to Uganda. WTH!

Dad then ‘finds his family’ on YouTube videos?

He could have found them if he had returned to safe Kenya from his sojourn in Sudan instead of hotfooting it to Uganda!

KC Star continues….

….father left their Nairobi refugee village in 2014 to seek work in Sudan. He instead encountered homelessness, civil war and hunger before fleeing to Uganda. When his family resettled in America, his wife didn’t know if Abdullahi was alive or dead. [Really! Or did this family have a better shot of getting in to the US as women and children only?—ed]

Wow! Dad found after the family got to KC!

The father, through friends in Nairobi, learned of the family’s whereabouts with the help of the internet and those YouTube videos. “Search ‘refugees’…and our family of nine pops up,” Absuge said through the interpreter.

For those who want to read the whole long (anti-Trump propaganda) story, click here.

The ‘headhunters’ at Jewish Family Service tell companies about the tax benefit of hiring refugees

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We’ve been talking a lot lately about the big bucks involved in the refugee industry—first with the federal ‘non-profit’ contractors and also with global corporations hiring refugees and other immigrants

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Jewish Family Service of San Diego offers employment services for corporations.

 

Thanks to reader Kevin for directing me to the website of Jewish Family Service San Diego and a page they post for the business clients.

When I see this kind of information it reminds me that there is no longer such a thing as capitalism without the federal government putting a thumb on the scales for certain businesses, or to benefit certain sharp operators who use their connections to Senators and Members of Congress to aquire financially lucrative deals for government contracts.

But I digress….

Below is a screenshot of a portion of Jewish Family Service San Diego website as they fulfill their role as a ‘headhunter’ helping businesses find employees—in this case immigrant employees.  See the whole list of benefits, here.

 

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Jewish Family Service of San Diego is a subcontractor of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, see here.

Doing well by doing good!

I looked around at their financials and got sidetracked as I often do especially when I see ginormous salaries for non-profit CEOs (at an organization that receives millions annually from taxpayers)….. maybe a story for another day!

The important point I want to make with this post is that the federal refugee contractors help refugees/immigrants (their “clients”) find work (in competition with American workers) to benefit big business while you pay for it.