How resettlement contractors get federal bucks (a series)

09/14/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

LOL! I hope I can stick with doing a series because juicy fresh news is so much more fun to write about. But here goes….

Money machine

I’m sure many of you wonder how the resettlement contractors, the nine*** I always mention, end up with millions and millions of taxpayer dollars when they are paid by the head to resettle refugees.

You have probably noticed that the per head payment doesn’t seem to match up with the millions each get from the US Treasury.

Well, let me tell you, that per head payment from the US State Department is only half of the story! The great variety of lucrative grants they are eligible for from the Office of Refugee Resettlement in the Department of Health and Human Services supply the rest!

(I sure hope the Trump Administration is squeezing them financially at HHS!)

It’s been years (in some cases) since I talked about the grants available to contractors for administering such things as special federally matched savings accounts, planting community gardens, educating refugees about how to have healthy marriages, or to promote ethnically appropriate daycare for Somalis and others.

Today I want to talk about the vaguely described grant program called “PREFERRED COMMUNITIES” which I see as just an excuse, with no legal basis, to send the big nine more of your money!

When you visit ORR’s website today you get this very cursory description of what it means to get a Preferred Community Grant:

Since the early 1990s, preferred communities have provided resettlement services to newly arriving refugees. Preferred communities allow ample opportunities for early employment and sustained economic independence. In addition, they support special needs populations.

Two types of preferred communities programs are available:

~Programs that receive a minimum of 100 new refugees annually.

~Programs that receive a proposed number of cases that will need intensive case management. These programs require a history of qualifications and experience in serving special needs cases.

By the way, only the usual gang of nine*** are eligible to apply.

To receive your millions through a Preferred Communities grant a contractor must say they are using the money to resettle challenging and needy cases in certain cities. We are no longer told which cities are PREFERRED.

Again, there is nothing in refugee law requiring a grant like this. The grant is simply an excuse to send more of your money to the contractors!

Go here to see how many millions were awarded for the Preferred Communities just as Obama was headed out the door in September 2016. (There are no newer grants posted? Has Trump cut them off or is the ORR not publishing them?).

Does anyone audit these grants?

Which cities?

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But, here is the head-scratcher for me. Up until Fiscal Year 2013 we could learn a lot more about who was getting the extra millions and why.

Back in 2013, we were also told which cities were PREFERRED!

What follows are sections from the FY13 ORR Annual Report to Congress. That is the last year they published (in a report to Congress) a list of contractors identifying cities as PREFERRED.

See if your city is a PREFERRED city in which to place challenging cases requiring taxpayers to pony-up even more money for the contractors!

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Screenshot (1435) — Just fyi, Domestic and Foreign Mission Society is another name for Episcopal Migration Ministries. One more way of making it hard to follow the money!

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I sure hope the Trump Administration is getting these grants and contracts under control!

***Here below are the nine federal refugee resettlement contractors.

You might be 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 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!

Huuuge gathering at White House yesterday to tell the President to admit 75,000 third worlders to US in coming year

09/13/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Huge—Not!

Religion News Service posted this article yesterday and a tweet from refugee contractor Church World Service (one of nine)*** about the rally at the White House.

The truth is, as much as they want you to believe it, there is no major up-swelling of demand for more refugees to be distributed around the country right now.

The big rally at the White House!

This is it?

Screenshot (1431)_LI — Twenty two hours after tweeting this, CWS has 3 retweets and 7 likes!

Here is a bit of the story:

People of faith urge Trump to admit more refugees

(RNS) — With a decision looming on how many refugees to admit into the country, and rumors swirling that the number could drop dramatically from this year’s historic low, people of faith are coming together to ask the Trump administration to instead allow tens of thousands more to enter the United States.

Patrick Vaughn — My question for pastor Vaughn is: If the church has abundant resources, why are the taxpayers on the hook for more than a billion dollars a year for a refugee program?

Representatives of some of the largest Protestant denominations in the country — including the General Board of Church and Society of the United Methodist Church, the United Church of Christ, the Presbyterian Church (USA) and the Episcopal Church — were planning to gather outside the White House on Wednesday (Sept. 12) to press President Trump to raise the number of refugees admitted in the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1 to 75,000 people.

If you belong to one of those Protestant denominations, it is time to speak up! Ask what they are doing in your name!

RNS continues…..

“I just believe the church has abundant resources….said Patrick Vaughn, assistant pastor of Christ Church East Bay in Oakland, Calif.

Next we hear about the BIG letter to the President. I told you about it here. Please go to my post and see if your local religious leaders signed on.

And more than 750 faith-based organizations and national and local leaders signed on to another letter, dated Aug. 21, decrying the low number of refugees admitted this year and urging an increase for the next.

“Our collective scriptural mandate and our nation’s history and capabilities as a world leader demand no less,” according to the letter.

Your “scriptural mandate” is not the government’s responsibility. Your mandate was to help the poor with your own money, not by stealing from some (outside of your collective!) and giving it to your favored people!

Read the remainder of the story here if you want to!

***These below are the nine federal refugee resettlement contractors.

You might be sick of seeing this list almost every day (it’s been 3 whole days since I last posted the list!), 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.

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

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!

Open Borders Leftists are mean and increasingly unhinged; HIAS demonstrates just how much!

09/13/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The hypocrisy of the Left has been on full display with perhaps the ultimate example of that surrounding the McCain funeralathon we witnessed (or tried to escape from viewing!) recently. They talk a good game about civility, but make no mistake, Leftists are mean people.

Forget vigorous debates about policy directions! It is personal destruction that is the primary weapon for the people who claim they are on the side of all that is right and good.

Stephen Millers uncle

I wasn’t planning to write about how the Hard Leftists in the Open Borders movement have been showcasing Leftwing family members of key players in the Trump sphere, most notably White House adviser Stephen Miller’s uncle (and his childhood rabbi is also out demeaning Miller), but did you see they have now dragged out Laura Ingraham’s estranged Leftwing brother to attack her in social media? It is shameful.

I wasn’t going to write about all this, that is, until I saw this story at Jewish Exponent where we see that federal refugee contractor, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, is showcasing Miller’s uncle at their media events! What a ‘get’, as they likely high-five each other!

I repeat, Leftists are very mean people.

Agencies Address Refugee Program Concerns

A graph set up against the wall in the Nationalities Services Center (NSC) had towers of blue bars, varying in heights.

HIAS Philadelphia — No mention of how many people were in the audience. And, no caption for the photo. That must be Miller’s mean Leftist uncle on the right.

The bars represent U.S. refugee resettlement arrivals from fiscal year 1980 — where the ceiling was set to 200,000 — to today with the fiscal year 2019 projection. The annual ceiling is now set at 45,000. Projections indicate that number could change to just 25,000.

In response, NSC, HIAS Pennsylvania and Bethany Christian Services of Greater Delaware Valley joined together to hold a panel discussion and conference on Sept. 6 about the dangers a drop that low could present for these agencies and the refugees they serve.

The danger that the biased media rarely mentions is that refugee contractors, like HIAS (one of nine contractors that monopolize refugee resettlement in the US), which got nearly $25 million from US taxpayers in a recent year and whose CEO makes a cool $300,000+ annual salary, are in danger of losing their sugar daddy—Uncle Sam!

The Jewish Exponent continues….

The U.S. Refugee Resettlement Program is on “life support,” NSC executive director Margaret O’Sullivan said.

“We are here to call attention to the potential evisceration of a program that has served as a point of pride for this nation for 40 years,” she said. “The current administration has been dismantling the program with stealth and with precision.”

As is usual, HIAS paraded out the most deserving refugees they could find, but clearly their star attraction was Stephen Miller’s uncle.

David S. Glosser, a neuropsychologist who volunteers with HIAS and gained name recognition for penning an essay condemning his nephew, Stephen Miller — senior adviser to Trump — and his anti-refugee remarks, shared the story of ancestors facing anti-Semitism and seeking refuge.

[….]

When he mentioned his family receiving help from Hebrew Immigrant and Aid Society as it was called then, HIAS PA Executive Director Cathryn Miller-Wilson smiled.

Longtime readers know that a few years back the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society dropped the ‘Hebrew’ from its name and became simply HIAS. There was never any coherent explanation about why they dropped the ‘Hebrew.’ Were they ashamed of the word?

I suspected that it had something to do with the fact that they place Muslim refugees and perhaps some of those refugees were squeamish about the word ‘Hebrew.’ Just a guess!

What follows next at the Jewish Exponent is a naive discussion about how today’s refugees (like those from the Middle East and Africa) are just like the Jewish refugees of yesteryear. Of course they aren’t for a couple of reasons.

When Miller’s ancestors came, they were mostly culturally Europeans and there was no massive welfare system to support them. They worked hard and made it on their own with the help of their family. If they didn’t make it, they went back to the old country.

There was no taxpayer-funded NGO to take care of their every need!

Then here is the wrap of course!

….he and Miller-Wilson stressed, reach out to elected officials and vote.

More here.

Message to you also! Reach out to elected officials and VOTE!

I have a huge archive on the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, click here for more.

For previous posts on Stephen Miller, go here.

Trump Administration brings back concept of immigrants supporting themselves without welfare!

09/12/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

welfare office

Pay attention to this! I don’t know if it would apply to refugees who are eligible for virtually all welfare programs shortly after arrival, but it should. After all, Senator Ted Kennedy and his pals assured Congress in the 1979 debate leading up to the passage of the Refugee Act of 1980, that we were not going to be importing poverty with the newly formed Refugee Admissions Program.

As longtime readers know, big businesses, which hire refugees at low wages, expect the refugees to be accessing welfare to supplement their income. So a requirement that they not be using welfare when they adjust their status (like when they apply for citizenship and voting rights!) would be a pretty chilling move on the part of the Administration.

Here is Matthew Vadum writing at the Epoch Times:

Trump Administration May Require Immigrants to Be Able to Support Themselves Financially

A long-anticipated plan to enforce provisions in the nation’s immigration laws that require prospective immigrants to be able to support themselves financially—so-called public-charge provisions—might be introduced by the Trump administration this month.

The proposed regulations, defining the phrase “public charge” under Section 212(a)(4) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, may be published this fall, and possibly as early as this month, according to a person close to the rulemaking process of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) who requested anonymity.

welfare use chart — Please note that if the number of refugees seems high to you that this chart, found at James Simpson’s Red Green Axis, includes Asylees in addition to Refugees.

Left-wing advocacy organizations have attacked any attempt to formally define “public charge” as being cruel and xenophobic, and aimed at drastically curtailing the flow of immigrants to the United States. But the lengths to which the new regulation will go remain to be seen.

Francis Cissna, director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), an agency within DHS, discussed a possible draft of the regulation during an Aug. 15 event at the National Press Club in Washington, hosted by the Center for Immigration Studies.

“The goal is not to reduce immigration or, in some diabolical fashion, shut the door on people, family-based immigration, or anything like that,” Cissna said. “The goal is simply to enforce a ground of inadmissibility to this country that’s been on the books for about 100–well, more than 100 years.

Cissna said the public-charge section in the law, a provision that has “hardly ever been enforced,” states that “an alien who in the opinion of the consular officer at the time of application for a visa, or in the opinion of the secretary of Homeland Security at the time of application for admission or adjustment of status—getting a green card—is likely at any time to become a public charge is inadmissible.”

The phrase “likely to become a public charge” has “never been, as far as I know” interpreted in any regulation, he said. There was an attempt in the 1990s to define the expression, but it was dropped.

Cissna said the administration wants to “issue proper regulations open to full public comment, to, at long last, interpret what that means.”

More here.

Idaho boo-hooing: Not enough refugee workers arriving

09/11/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This story would not be worth posting except for the fact that it once again informs us that the refugees are here to supply cheap labor for industries that want to keep wages low. (Cheap for industry, but not for taxpayers who subsidize the refugee families with welfare!)

And, it is worth posting because the refugee agency head in Twin Falls is mistaken when he thinks the citizens of Idaho have been sufficiently ‘educated’ and now will be more welcoming of refugees.

chobani plant twin falls — Twin Falls has long been a city in turmoil about the refugee flow there partly due to the labor needs of the massive Chobani Yogurt plant there and the dairy industry that supplies it.

From the Idaho State Business Journal:

Lack of refugees has Idaho businesses scrambling for workers

(Be sure to click on the link and see the story which features a photo of a Muslim woman giving free Arabic lessons to Americans. Gee, so why is that needed?)

TWIN FALLS — Idaho has welcomed far fewer refugees this year, which means resettlement agencies have more time to work with families, but South Idaho businesses are scrambling to find workers.

The College of Southern Idaho’s Refugee Center*** is on track to resettle 71 people this year, a fraction of the 300 people it typically serves each fiscal year. It’s received 64 refugees so far this year, with another family of seven expected soon. The fiscal year ends at the end of September.

“I think the decline in arrivals takes a toll, especially with our super low unemployment right now,” said Tara Wolfson, director of the Idaho Office for Refugees. “And I think there’s a loss to our ingenuity, to our workforce, to our bringing new ideas and creations to our state, that refugees tend to bring.” [This is such BS—refugees bring new ideas and creations to the state.—ed]

[….]

“It’s really a tough thing because we need workforce,” Roeser said. “We have so many Baby Boomers retiring. We have so many services that need warm bodies to work because of the aging workforce.”

I have said innumerable times that since the US Refugee Admissions Program is primarily to supply cheap labor for big global businesses (like Chobani), let’s have that debate, but shut up about it being a ‘humanitarian’ program.

Refugee resettlement across the state has declined dramatically since 2016 when 916 people resettled in Idaho. That number dropped to 611 the following year, and the Idaho Office for Refugees has resettled 341 people so far in the 2018 fiscal year.

[….]

Zeze Rwasama thinks people are not complaining about refugees now because they have been sufficiently re-educated.

Wolfson said she expects that the low resettlement rate will continue into next year.

But Rwasama [Director of the Refugee Center at CSI] is hopeful that federal policies and practices “could change at any time.” He said these days he less frequently hears certain anti-refugee sentiments that he used to hear often, such as concerns about safety or complaints about refugees “taking jobs” from other workers.

“I think people have actually received correct information and that’s why I don’t hear it anymore,” Rwasama said.

“And I hope those answers are getting to the president as well, and soon he will allow more refugees to come.”

More here.

Things are only quiet because Donald Trump has taken the pressure off for now.

So, dear readers, the flood gates will open again if there is a new President elected in 2020 (there isn’t another Republican who would do what Trump is doing). I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to reform the whole program while we have him in office. So get out and get involved in election year politics where you live!

Go here for my huge archive on Idaho.

***The Refugee Center at the College of Southern Idaho is a subcontractor of the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (one of the big nine federal resettlement contractors).