Category: What you can do

Major refugee resettlement agency in meltdown?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Sure sounds like it! 

We reported here that we had heard rumblings, but Breitbart News yesterday has all the gory details from a reliable source close to the organization—Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service—headquartered in Baltimore, MD.

Read the bombshell story by Michael Patrick Leahy here.

‘Source: Claims of Financial Mismanagement, Fraud, and Harassment at Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service Spark External Investigation’

Hartke and Bishop on Hill in March (2)
LIRS CEO Linda Hartke (left) with ELCA Bishop Eaton lobbying on the Hill for more refugees (aka paying clients) in March of this year.

My questions include:

~Will Trump’s federal government suspend LIRS (96% funded by taxpayer dollars) until the truth is learned?

~Will Congress have the energy and the guts to take a look at this?

~And, could this be the tip of the iceberg—is LIRS a one-off or could others of the nine federal contractors  have gotten loosey-goosey with their finances too?

After all when you are ‘doing good’ who would have the audacity to question how you handle free federal money, right?

~And, here is another: If proven true, what impact do these allegations have on LIRS subcontractors (aka affiliates)?

Just to remind longtime readers and for new readers arriving here today, there are nine organizations (supposedly non-profits)*** almost completely funded with US taxpayer dollars which distribute federal money to hundreds of subcontractors working in towns and cities across America where refugees are being placed.

Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service is the parent organization to the offices listed below. So whatever happens in Baltimore could have a direct impact on these local “affiliates.”

For example, LSS-MN does not act independently of the Baltimore ‘mothership’ when it comes to resettling refugees. It is the Baltimore office that sends them cases and the money that comes along with the refugees.  Federal taxpayer dollars simply flow through LIRS headquarters to these subcontractors.  (At the heart of the allegations about federal grant funds is the issue of how much headquarters keeps of the millions of dollars it passes through.)

LIRS affiliates could see an impact if the allegations of financial wrong doing are significant enough for the federal agency (HHS in this case) to issue a ‘stop work order.’

Arkansas
Canopy of Northwest Arkansas, Fayetteville

Arizona
Refugee Focus, Phoenix, Tuscon

California
Interfaith Refugee and Immigration Service, Los Angeles

Colorado
Lutheran Family Services Rocky Mountains, Denver, Colorado Springs, Greeley

Florida
Lutheran Social Services of Northeast Florida, Jacksonville
Lutheran Services Florida, Miami, Orlando, Tampa

Georgia
Lutheran Services of Georgia, Atlanta, Savannah

Illinois
RefugeeOne, Chicago

Maryland
Lutheran Social Services of the National Capital Area, Hyattsville

Massachusetts
Ascentria Community Services, Westfield, Worcester

Michigan
Samaritas, Ann Arbor, Battle Creek, Grand Rapids, Troy

Minnesota
Lutheran Social Service of Minnesota, Minneapolis, St. Cloud

Nebraska
Lutheran Family Services of Nebraska, Omaha

New Hampshire
Ascentria Community Services, Concord

New Mexico
Lutheran Family Services Rocky Mountains, Albuquerque, Santa Fe

New York
Mohawk Valley Resource Center for Refugees, Utica

North Carolina
Lutheran Services Carolinas, Raleigh

North Dakota
Lutheran Social Services of North Dakota—Center for New Americans, Bismarck, Fargo, Grand Forks

Oregon
Lutheran Community Services Northwest, Portland

Pennsylvania
Bethany Christian Services, Allentown, Lancaster, Philadelphia

South Carolina
Lutheran Services Carolinas, Columbia, Charleston

South Dakota
Lutheran Social Services of South Dakota, Sioux Falls

Texas
Refugee Services of Texas, Dallas, Fort Worth, Amarillo, Houston

Virginia
Lutheran Social Services of the National Capital Area, Falls Church

Washington
Lutheran Community Services Northwest, Tacoma, Vancouver

Wisconsin
Lutheran Social Services of Wisconsin and Upper Michigan, Madison, Milwaukee

When you read Breitbart’s investigative piece you might not have much concern for the internal personnel machinations/squabbles/bullying/firings/ etc, but like me, you might find anything that suggests the misuse of your tax dollars compelling. Pistachio nuts! (you will have to read Leahy’s piece to see what that means!)

Here is one bit of the detailed report from a source to Breitbart (source refers to LIRS as LIaRS):

Over the six year period from 2011 through 2016, LIaRS revenue from the U.S. government grew from $30 million to almost $65 million. During that time, under CEO Hartke’s oversight, the headquarter’s spending exploded from $8.8 million to $13.5 million with a staff of less than 100. Hartke’s salary also jumped from $182,270 to more than $293,000 last year (note this does not include her 9 percemt employer retirement plan contribution, 100% employer paid health care, and paid time off).

Given that USG revenue accounts for almost 95 cents of every LIaRS dollar, the only way Hartke could continue to spend on herself and the headquarters is through charging the USG an indirect cost recovery rate on the entire amount of their grants, even though 90 percent of the funds were simply passed through to subawards to the dozens of independent affiliates that actually do the refugee resettlement work (i.e. Lutheran Family Services Rocky Mountains, RefugeeOne of Chicago, Mohawk Valley Resource Center for Refugees, etc.).

This is direct contradiction to the Code of Federal Regulations which only allows the ICR to be charged on the first $25,000 of each subaward. LIaRS charges it on all the money, thereby giving them millions of dollars per year to fund their headquarters for doing nothing. As an example, in 2016 of the $54 million in government funds received by LIaRS, more than $55 million was sent out in subawards to the independent affiliates to do the actual resettlement work … but LIaRS managed to charge the government the ICR rate of over 10 percent on that $55 million which brings over $5 million to be kept in Baltimore for Hartke and her office.

If I may be so bold as to tell the Inspector General at Health and Human Services what to do….

….it would be prudent for the IG to issue a Stop Work Order.

If the allegations of inflating direct costs are true and the commensurate lack of internal controls are found, LIRS financial practices raise serious questions about their ability to function as a federal resettlement agency (receiving millions of dollars appropriated by Congress!) at least until this mess is cleared up.

So what can you do?

Wilmot Collins
Note that the new refugee mayor of Helena, Montana is on this board. Ask him what he thinks about the allegations!  http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/11/08/liberian_refugee_wilmot_collins_elected_mayor_of_helena_montana.html

Tell Donald Trump to suspend LIRS while the investigation continues.

And….

After reading the Breitbart expose’ you know that LIRS Board of Directors has launched an internal investigation in addition to whatever the federal government is doing.

See the Board members here and below.  If you are of the Lutheran faith you need to have a word with anyone of them you know plus speak up to your local pastors!

From LIRS website:

Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service’s board of directors sets the organization’s mission goals and ensures that we have the resources, leadership and oversight necessary to carry them out. Our president and leadership team guides the day-to-day operations of the organization as we work toward achieving our mission goals with integrity, courage and fiscal responsibility.

Board Members
The board is composed of 15 members who have knowledge of and commitment to refugees and immigrants. LIRS believes strength is found in diversity and that refugees and immigrants need a voice at the table of influence. All branches of the Lutheran Church as well as other denominations are represented on the board. There are also three former refugees or first generation immigrants on the board. The LIRS president is an ex-officio member of the board.

Executive Committee

At-Large Members

Leadership Team Members

President — Linda Hartke
Contact: president@lirs.org or call 410-230-2785

Chief Operating Officer — Gary Gold-Moritz
Vice President for Programs — Kay Bellor
Vice President for Development, Outreach and Communications — Staci Coomer
Chief Information Officer — William Bisbee

To contact a member of the Leadership Team, email lirs@lirs.org or call 410-230-2700.

 

See my complete archive on LIRS here.

***These are the nine federal contractors receiving millions of tax payer dollars annually. Could any of the others not be following federal grant reporting rules?  Come on Congress, time to get serious about reviewing the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program and how the contractors are spending our money!

 

 

US top refugee processing countries shifting with Trump Administration

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I know this is getting in to the weeds, but I want readers to understand that for instance, the Somali refugees arriving in the US are picked up all over the world, and so if there is a ‘travel ban’ for say Somalia it doesn’t mean that no Somalis are coming.

rpcLogoSmall [Converted]

Most Somalis coming to the US come from Kenya because the big UN camps are there and the UN makes the first cut on who comes to America.

From time to time, I show you processing country maps which are posted at Wrapsnet (the State Department’s Refugee Processing Center) for the previous months of the fiscal year (by the 5th of the present month).

For background, visit this post from December 2016 where you can see the top PROCESSING country is Kenya followed by Turkey and Tanzania as numbers two and three.

I’m always annoyed to see Malta as a processing country because as a European country it is responsible for the illegal boat migrants who land on its shores (not America!), but ever since the Bush Administration we have been turning illegal aliens on Malta into refugees destined for Your Town, USA.  See my huge archive on the disgraceful Malta deal, here.

And, tell me, how can they seriously assure us that some boat migrant from Libya who washed ashore on the island nation of Malta has been thoroughly security screened!  Was he carrying his documents and criminal record in a ziploc bag?

Here is Wrapsnet’s processing countries map for the first month of President Trump’s first full fiscal year—October FY18.  FY17 began when Obama was still in office.

Screenshot (1064)
In the first month of fiscal year 2018 the US admitted 1,247 refugees

 

 

Here below is a list of the countries from which we are processing refugees so far this fiscal year.

Malta to America Express!

See that Trump’s State Department has continued the Malta to America express!  By the way there is no way I’ve ever figured out how to identify what nationalities are arriving from Malta.  In the past we did learn that many are Somalis. The numbers are small but significant because we again are taking illegal migrants that are really Europe’s problem!

The Trump Administration could stop the Malta arrangement with a phone call if they wanted to.

And, I sure would like to know why we take any refugees from Israel! They should be taking care of whichever ‘refugees’ seek asylum there.  What is that all about.

 

Screenshot (1067)_LI
Kenya is still in the top three but dropped from first to third place. First place goes to Nepal (for the so-called Bhutanese refugees) with Malaysia as number two. Note that Ethiopia is not far behind the top 3. Malaysia is the likely jumping off location for Rohingya to America. Turkey and Tanzania are now way down the list.

 

 

Since one of the top three sending countries is Kenya I checked Wrapsnet for the number of Somalis who entered the US in the month of October.  The total number was 113.

Then, for fun! I wanted to see how many and where they went in Minnesota. The total was 23 in October.  Minnesota got the highest number in the 113. The other 90 were scattered around America. None to St. Cloud right now.

Screenshot (1066)

 

Here are some of the top ethnic groups resettled in the US in October: Bhutanese (273), DR Congolese (181), Burmese (147), Somalis (113), Ukrainians (77) and Syrians (33).

Because knowledge is power, here is what you can do…

With long cold winter days ahead, you too might want to have fun with numbers at Wrapsnet, the US State Department’s data collection site.  You never know what you might find out about your own state or even your own town!

Endnote: While we are looking at maps, you might want to revisit a map showing the countries that have been warned about the deadly Plague spreading out from Madagascar.

100 members of Congress sign letter to Prez: we want 110,000 refugees!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This was posted a couple of weeks ago, but I hadn’t seen it until today when the IRC (a resettlement contractor) was crowing about it on twitter.

Yasmine taeb
Friends lobbyist Yasmine Taeb came to her job for the Quakers from the Center for American Progress (Podesta!).  No surprise. https://www.fcnl.org/people/yasmine-taeb

The top story at google on the letter is at the Friends Committee.

If you didn’t know, the Friends (aka Quakers) are very pro-more-immigration. They are involved in defending the Palestinians in the Middle East as well (story for another day).

News from the Friends Committee on National Legislation. I’m sure you might have guessed if your member of Congress was on the letter, but we are grateful to the ‘Friends’ for listing them for us.

In response to the Trump administration’s announcement of a historically low refugee admissions goal for 2018, over 100 members of the House of Representatives sent a letter to the White House calling on the administration to increase the refugee admissions goal from 45,000 to 110,000. Additionally, this letter expresses concern over a proposed “assimilation standard” for refugees.
FCNL Legislative Director for Human Rights and Civil Liberties Yasmine Taeb made the following statement….

The letter to the president can be found below. [I did not count the signatures, they said 100.—ed]

Dear President Trump,

We write to express our deep disappointment in your decision to set the Presidential Determination (PD) for Refugee Admissions for Fiscal Year 2018 at 45,000. We strongly urge you to reconsider this decision and increase the refugee admission level to 110,000 for Fiscal Year 2018. Further, we are alarmed by proposed changes to the resettlement process to require refugees to meet an assimilation standard and ask you brief us at least 30 days before any such changes are made.

As you know, the world is in the midst of the largest refugee crisis in history. An unprecedented 65.6 million people across the globe have been forcibly displaced from their homes because of violence, persecution, and war. Approximately 22.5 million of those individuals are refugees, and more than half are children. The U.S. has a moral imperative to welcome refugees, who are the most thoroughly vetted people who enter our country. America taking a leadership role during this crisis bolsters our credibility as a nation of immigrants founded on the promise to welcome those seeking a better life.

As both Republican and Democratic administrations have confirmed, the United States screens refugees more stringently than any other traveler allowed to enter the United States. The U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) has safely and successfully resettled more than three million refugees from around the world to American communities across the country since 1975. Refugee applicants must undergo a robust and thorough screening process that takes roughly two years and involves our nation’s top security and counter-terror experts. The exhaustive vetting process includes checking fingerprints and other biometric data against terrorist and criminal databases and multiple interviews through multiple Federal agencies.

Since the enactment of the 1980 Refugee Act, the average annual goal for refugee admissions has been 95,000. In Fiscal Year 2016, the U.S. resettled approximately 85,000 refugees, and the Presidential Determination for Fiscal Year 2017 was 110,000. During the worst refugee crisis in the world, these resettlement numbers pale in comparison to the support our allies are providing and our moral leadership commands. Since Executive Order 13769 was signed, the number of refugees coming to the United States each month has dropped precipitously. Australia, Norway, Canada, Sweden, and Finland all accept more refugees per capita than the United States, with Canada pledging to accept 300,000 refugees in 2017. Failing to do our part to alleviate this global crisis undermines our leadership, diplomacy, and national security.

In addition to the U.S.’s moral responsibility, supporting our allies and partners, whose resources are being strained by hosting large numbers of refugees, promotes security and stability at home and abroad. Twenty national security leaders, including Henry Kissinger, Michael Chertoff, Madeleine Albright, and Leon Panetta wrote a letter in 2015 noting that “resettlement initiatives help advance U.S. national security interests by supporting the stability of our allies and partners that are struggling to host large numbers of refugees.”[1] By doing more to host and assist refugees, the United States would help safeguard the stability of nations like Lebanon, Jordan, and Turkey, which are hosting the vast majority of Syrian refugees. This can help reduce regional instability and potential for conflict and terrorism. Additionally, severely limiting the number of refugees the U.S. admits perpetuates extremist organizations’ false narrative of a war between Islam and the West.

In order to make clear that the United States rejects this worldview, we must bolster our refugee program by supporting the world’s most vulnerable people, without discriminating based on religion or nationality. As a nation of immigrants, our country has a long history of welcoming newcomers of all different backgrounds. Any efforts to require refugees meet an assimilation standard misunderstands the purpose of our resettlement program which is to assist the most vulnerable. This is especially true if no additional assistance is provided to ensure refugees are successfully integrated into the fabric of our nation.

The 45,000 PD for Fiscal Year 2018 is woefully insufficient when compared to the millions of people who have been forced to flee their home countries. Establishing a PD of 45,000 is the lowest refugee admissions goal in our nation’s history. This would prevent tens of thousands of people from enriching American communities while seeking safety, protection, and an opportunity to provide a better future for themselves and their families in the United States.

The current global humanitarian crisis requires strong American leadership. To reflect that, we request that you reconsider and increase the PD for refugee admissions level to 110,000 for Fiscal Year 2018. Thank you for your attention to this matter. We look forward to working together with you and your Administration on this critical issue.

Sincerely,

Eddie Bernice Johnson

Donald S. Beyer, Jr.

Earl Blumenauer

Lisa Blunt Rochester

Suzanne Bonamici

Robert A. Brady

Anthony Brown

Michael Capuano

Salud Carbajal

Tony Cárdenas

André Carson

Judy Chu

David N. Cicilline

Katherine Clark

Yvette D. Clarke

Steve Cohen

John Conyers, Jr.

J. Luis Correa

Joe Courtney

Joe Crowley

Elijah E. Cummings

Danny K. Davis

Peter DeFazio

Diana DeGette

John K. Delaney (My rep who has announced he is running for Prez in 2020!)

Mark DeSaulnier

Ted Deutch

Debbie Dingell

Lloyd Doggett

Michael Doyle

Keith Ellison

Eliot L. Engel

Anna G. Eshoo

Adriano Espaillat

Elizabeth H. Esty

Dwight Evans

Bill Foster

Lois Frankel

Ruben Gallego

John Garamendi

Jimmy Gomez

Josh Gottheimer

Gene Green

Raúl Grijalva

Luis V. Gutiérrez

Colleen Hanabusa

Alcee L. Hastings

Brian Higgins

James Himes

Eleanor Holmes Norton

Pramila Jayapal

Hakeem Jeffries

Marcy Kaptur

William R. Keating

Robin L. Kelly

Joseph P. Kennedy

Ro Khanna

Daniel T. Kildee

James Langevin

Rick Larsen

John B. Larson

Brenda L. Lawrence

Barbara Lee

Sander Levin

Ted W. Lieu

Zoe Lofgren

Alan Lowenthal

Stephen Lynch

Carolyn B. Maloney

Doris Matsui

Betty McCollum

James P. McGovern

Gwen Moore

Seth Moulton

Jerrold Nadler

Grace Napolitano

Donald Norcross

Beto O’Rourke

Frank Pallone, Jr.

Jimmy Panetta

Bill Pascrell, Jr.

Donald Payne, Jr.

Ed Perlmutter

Scott Peters

Chellie Pingree

Mark Pocan

Jared Polis

David Price

Mike Quigley

Jamie Raskin

Ben Ray Lujan

Lucille Roybal-Allard

Bobby Rush

Tim Ryan

John Sarbanes

Jan Schakowsky

Adam Schiff

Bradley S. Schneider

Robert C. “Bobby” Scott

José E. Serrano

Carol Shea-Porter

Albio Sires

Louise Slaughter

Adam Smith

Darren Soto

Eric Swalwell

Mark Takano

Dina Titus

Paul Tonko

Norma J. Torres

Niki Tsongas

Juan Vargas

Marc Veasey

Filemon Vela

Nydia Velázquez

Peter J. Visclosky

Timothy Walz

Debbie Wasserman Schultz

Bonnie Watson Coleman

Peter Welch

John Yarmuth

Looking for something to do today? If your representative is on the list, tell him or her what you think of the 110,000 refugee wish list.

It doesn’t matter if they don’t listen to you, do it anyway. They need to know that signing a letter like this is not a political freebie!

If you have no rep. on the list, call or write to Delaney! 

Too funny! Black studies professor in St. Cloud at it again!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

He’s baaaaack! Dr. Luke Tripp of St. Cloud State is once again accusing “white conservatives” of stirring up St. Cloud racial tensions as he does it himself!  And, he clearly is fixated on former Rep. Michele Bachmann who we first noticed he targeted in 2010 and reported on these pages.

This man is not a peacemaker!

luke tripp in CO
Tripp went to Colorado in February.  See what they said about him (taxpayers of MN pay his salary!):  “In honor of Black History Month, Adams State University will host “Then and Now: The Revolutionary Workers League in Detroit and Black Lives Matter,” a lecture by Dr. Luke Trip [Tripp-ed]
A longtime activist and educator, Trip is currently professor of African American Studies at St. Cloud State University. He holds degrees from St. Benedict College, Wayne State University, and the University of Michigan. He was among the founders of the League of Revolutionary Workers in Detroit and served as the first Minister of Education of the Detroit Chapter of the Black Panther Party. He was chair of UHURU (Freedom in Swahili), a black student lead organization active in the liberation movement of the 1960s. https://www.adams.edu/news/feb1705.php
But, before I get to Dr. Tripp’s latest tirade…

I’ll remind readers of the chaos going on in St. Cloud as the next City Council meeting is to be held tomorrow evening and that Councilman Jeff Johnson, we hear, is planning to introduce his resolution seeking more transparency and economic analysis of the impact of Somali refugee resettlement on that community.

See my ever-expanding St. Cloud archive here (the city I call the canary in the coal mine!).

I first wrote about Tripp,the former Detroit revolutionary and Black Panther organizer, here in January 2010.

In that article we reported on his efforts to ‘get’ then Rep. Michele Bachmann.  Frankly the African Muslim migrants require the leadership of, shall we say the communist/socialist, Leftwing community organizers like Tripp.

You should have heard about the concept either from James Simpson’s ‘Red-Green Axis’ writing or perhaps you have heard him speak! Tripp is the personification of the concept.

Editor:  Knowledge is power! For all of you trying to understand what is going on in St. Cloud, it is important for you to know who the ‘community agitators’ are. Tripp is one. He may in fact be the leader. But, I haven’t the time or energy to summarize all of my previous writing on Tripp and his Somali legions.  I expect you to do your homework! As the old saying goes—you must know your enemy. And, read! Read! Read!

Before I get to Dr. Tripp’s lastest blast (still focusing on the departed Michele Bachmann), here is another post on Tripp from April 2010.  Go here for other mentions here at RRW. Don’t miss Tripp’s involvement with the Somalis who successfully sued a local meat plant. (Special accommodation for Islamic prayer times = shariah law!).

Now here is Tripp’s salvo from last Thursday at the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder where he is wearing his “women’s studies” hat:

(Sounds pretty racist to me, what do you think?)

I witnessed and experienced how St. Cloud earned the dubious reputation of “White Cloud.”

[….]

Luke trip youtube
Go here and see Tripp talking about his Marxist activities in Detroit. Did they destroy the auto industry? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yyZz8k3k4E

I believe that Jeff Johnson’s resolution calling for a temporary ban on resettlement of refugees in St. Cloud is aimed at Somalis who are under attack in St. Cloud because of their race (they are Black), their religion (they are Muslims), and their immigration/refugee status (they are perceived to be untrustworthy aliens).

The City of St. Cloud, historically a very conservative White town, has only recently become home to a significant population of about 6,000 Somalis who represented about eight percent of St. Cloud’s population of 68,000 people in 2013. There has been a series of hateful attacks against the growing Somali community since they began arriving here in the 1990s.

[….]

The animosity against Somalis reflects the sentiments of a significant segment of conservative White residents in the city of St. Cloud whose views were politically expressed by their right-wing extremist ex-congresswoman, Michele Bachmann, who represented Minnesota’s Sixth Congressional District from 2007 to 2015. Bachmann was a staunch advocate of barriers against immigrants and their culture. Her voting record on anti-immigration legislation is graded A+.

There is more.  But, this is the funny part: I thought I recognized those words! Check out what he said in 2010.  In addition to sounding racist he must be lazy! Throughout the above tirade he simply rehashed his many tired old charges from 2010!  (I’ve highlighted one of those rehashed paragraphs in red—one from last week above and the other from 2010 below–this is hilarious!)

This is the same paragraph in a February 2010 rant (and why the fixation on Bachmann? Alinsky rule***):

The animosity against Somalis reflects the sentiments of a significant segment of conservative White residents in the city of St. Cloud whose views are politically expressed by their right-wing extremist congresswoman, Michele Bachmann, who represents Minnesota’s Sixth Congressional District. Bachmann is a staunch advocate of barriers against immigrants and their culture. Her voting record on anti-immigration legislation is graded A+.

***This is Alinsky Rule 13: “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” He is making Bachmann the face of the problem. He is sending a message to the Mayor and Council of St. Cloud—we (bullies) will do this to you too if you go against us!

Bottomline readers, please listen!

You will continue to lose if your elected officials are more afraid of trained agitators like Luke Tripp and his legions (which includes the Islamic supremacists) than they are of you—American citizens who want answers and demand a right to help decide the future of your communities!

I know it is uncomfortable, but get over it!  You (conservatives of whatever color) need to fight the way they fight! Make your elected officials more uncomfortable than they do!

Start by picking a target and steal yourselves for the anger, the chaos and the controversy that is happening and will happen—saving western civilization isn’t for the faint-hearted!

Nebraska Lutherans moan: it is as bad as it can get….

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

….as refugee arrival numbers drop!

Well, I can envision something worse as we are hearing rumors that the major Lutheran contractor (the one responsible for moving cases to Nebraska and elsewhere) is having some internal strife.

Logo-Lutheran-Family-Services-Lincoln-Nebraska

That would be Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (headquartered in Baltimore) the same one that contracted with major meatpacker, the foreign-owned JBS Swift, to provide refugee labor and training to retain that labor.

In the summer of 2015, I traveled from Greeley, CO (JBS home away from home) through Nebraska—I saw the big meat plants greedy for cheap immigrant labor!

Back to my story from the Omaha World-Herald where of course there is no mention of the connection between refugee labor and BIG MEAT!

Jane Kleeb
It is not just BIG MEAT looking for refugees in Nebraska. The Nebraska Democrat Party is looking for voters. Nevermind new refugees can’t vote for 5 years. See Jane Kleeb here. Are the Dems working for BIG MEAT? http://journalstar.com/news/state-and-regional/govt-and-politics/nebraska-dems-criticized-by-far-right-outlets-for-giving-voter/article_cd25719b-197b-5f3c-9a1d-8706a9b10fd2.html

Refugee resettlements in Nebraska have slowed from a trickle to a drip.

Advocates lamented the resettlement numbers at an Omaha Refugee Task Force meeting Wednesday.

“It’s as bad as it can get,” Jaleel Oladipo, the state’s reception and placement manager for Lutheran Family Services, said at the meeting. The task force meets every other month to review incoming refugee numbers and share ways to better serve refugees. [By the way, this is a meeting that should be open to the public.  Is it?—ed]

[….]

Statewide, LFS resettled 43 refugees in Omaha and Lincoln in September, the last month of the 2017 federal fiscal year, and 31 in both cities in October. Four are expected for November. Oladipo said LFS could resettle as few as 20 to 30 total statewide from now until March.

During the same period last year, LFS resettled 224 in September, 140 in October and 512 between Nov 1. and March 31.

In 2016, Nebraska accepted 1,441 refugees, becoming the nation’s top refugee resettlement state per capita.

Karen Parde, Nebraska’s refugee resettlement coordinator, said at Wednesday’s meeting that refugee resettlement numbers are “very much down.”

[….]

“We need to re-look at how we do our business,” Parde said. “It’s going to be a very small year.”

What she means by that is that they receive their funding on a per head basis.  Each NEW refugee is a paying client who comes with federal money attached.  No new clients means dwindling income and that means staff reductions.  Their whole “business” has been built on a house of cards!

See my Nebraska archive by clicking here.

Concerned citizens in Nebraska are encouraged to pin down Republican Senator Ben Sasse. Is he all for bringing in cheap immigrant labor and more Democrat voters?