More on those Annual Reports to Congress and ORR breaking the law

03/21/2013 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Before I get started on my latest foray into the Office of Refugee Resettlement’s flagrant law breaking regarding the Annual Report to Congress, yesterday I told you what people are searching that brings them to RRW, here.

This morning I just want to mention that searches yesterday were dominated by the phrase “Little Baghdad”—that would be El Cajon, California which we have discussed on many previous occasions. Here is our archive on the refugee-overloaded city of El Cajon. The most-read post yesterday with over 100 hits is this old post from 2009.

Back to the Annual Reports I spend a lot of time harping about!

Federal law says that the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) must file a report to Congress within three months of the close of the fiscal year. A fiscal year ends on September 30th of a given year and so the report is due in Congress by January 31st of the following year. Presently the ORR is THREE YEARS LATE! They owe Congress 2010, 2011 and 2012.

Earlier this week I told you about the Legislative summary I found at the Library of Congress on the Refugee Resettlement Act of 1980, here. This is what I found on the Annual Reporting requirement:

Requires the Secretary, not later than the January 31 following the end of each fiscal year beginning with fiscal year 1980, to submit reports to the Senate and House Judiciary Committees containing: (1) a labor profile for refugees who have entered the U.S. since May 1975; (2) a geographic description of refugee location; (3) a summary of the location and status of unaccompanied refugee children; (4) a description of the activities and expenditures of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, States, voluntary agencies, and sponsors; and (5) an evaluation of services provided under this Act. Requires the Secretary, in consultation with the Coordinator, to report to the Congress within one year of enactment of this Act an analysis of: (1) resettlement systems used by other countries; (2) the desirability of using a system other than the welfare system to provide refugee assistance; and (3) alternative resettlement strategies.

Hah! I wonder if they ever did that last part!

So when did they start breaking the law, thumbing their noses at Congress and not getting these reports done? That is what I wanted to know.

First, the ORR makes it very hard to find all the annual reports. Some are available at their website, here. But the missing ones are housed at the Georgetown Law Library—WHY?

My original plan was to start researching at 1990 and move toward the present time to see when they went off track and began breaking the law. It didn’t take long—1993!

So, I went back to 1980 and sure enough through the entire Reagan Presidency and the George HW Bush Presidency from 1980 to 1992 those Annual Reports were right on time—submitted to Congress on January 31st of the following year.

But, you know what the little cheaters did beginning with the 1993 report (and continued to do for the next 20 years)—they stopped putting publication dates on them. Oh, they had FY 1993 on the cover, but no information about when that actually went to Congress—heck it could have been three years late then!

Lavinia Limon headed the ORR in the Clinton Administration and is now a federal contractor who gets grants from ORR. Fox News Latino

So, who was the Director of the ORR during Bill Clinton’s time in office?

Lavinia Limon who now heads up one of the nine major federal contractors—the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants—was in charge of getting those reports to Congress. And, isn’t it funny that her former VP at USCRI is presently the Director of ORR. There are a lot of revolving doors with this program between those who are handing out federal grants and those receiving them, but that’s a story for another day!

By the way, we have written a bunch of posts on Lavinia Limon over the years. Here her subcontractor in Waterbury, CT was found to be treating refugees poorly and had come under review by the US State Department and Ms. Limon famously said “whoop-de-do”—we don’t get paid enough to do the job any better.

Incidentally, according to the most recent Form 990 (p.9) available for Ms. Limon’s organization they received 94% of their $35 million plus income from you—the taxpayer.

Only because I was keeping track do I know that the FY2008 report was released two years and 3 months late and the FY2009 report was three years and one month late. And, as far as I know there hasn’t been a peep from the do-nothing House and Senate Committees responsible for over-seeing the Refugee program over all these 20 years since Clinton’s ORR flagrantly began breaking the law. I’m guessing the attitude all around is that these are good people doing good work so they don’t have to follow the law!

About the photo and Ms. Limon: Read all about her here at Fox News Latino. Also, when you type ‘Lavinia Limon’ into our search function, you get this archive on the dozens of posts in which we have mentioned her.

The Refugee Resettlement Act of 1980, a refresher on its 33rd aniversary!

03/18/2013 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Every day I get up eager to find more interesting stories about our out-of-control Refugee Resettlement program, and I definitely avoid the nitty-gritty tedious work of digging through documents so that the average American wondering where all these third-worlders are coming from and who is paying for it (mostly you) might be better informed.

Today, I made myself do some digging.

An aside: Readers you’ve probably noticed that government at all levels thrives on secrecy. If you’ve ever questioned a local boondoggle project or any sort of government program you know what I mean. They, government officials at any level, fear that the taxpayer will raise questions and they frankly hide stuff as best they can. In fact, it is easy to do because the government is a leviathan and they don’t even need to purposely hide stuff, we private citizens just don’t have the time to dig for it.

And, by the way, their ability to hide stuff has been made easier since real investigative reporting is rare. The mainstream media now appears to be on the side of government rather on the side of the citizens. So, I’ve learned over the years that the first step in any battle with government is to find their documents—any documents! It’s actually funny, you may never find a smoking gun, but just having their documents makes them nervous and is your first step to bring about change.

Today I found something I’ve been wondering about for years—some of the Legislative history of the Refugee Resettlement Act of 1980 (really 1979). It is here, at the Library of Congress and I can tell this bill summary is filled with all sorts of juicy things you will be hearing more about as time goes on.

Who do we thank for the Refugee Resettlement Act?

Top honors go to Senator Ted Kennedy and President Jimmy Carter!

The reason we have a Refugee Program—Democrat Party voter recruitment!

I’ve written about this before, but along with Chief Sponsor Ted (don’t bring them to Hyannis) Kennedy we have the following co-sponsors (remember these guys—mostly Dems!):

Sen Biden, Joseph R., Jr. [DE] –
Sen Boschwitz, Rudy [MN] –
Sen Hatfield, Mark O. [OR] –
Sen Javits, Jacob K. [NY] –
Sen Levin, Carl [MI] –
Sen McGovern, George [SD] –
Sen Moynihan, Daniel Patrick [NY] –
Sen Pell, Claiborne [RI] –
Sen Randolph, Jennings [WV] –
Sen Ribicoff, Abraham A. [CT] –
Sen Riegle, Donald W., Jr. [MI] –
Sen Sarbanes, Paul S. [MD] –
Sen Tsongas, Paul E. [MA] –
Sen Williams, Harrison A., Jr. [NJ]

And, I always thought it was funny that Jennings Randolph’s and Bobby Byrd’s West Virginia and Joe Biden’s Delaware resettled only a tiny fraction of the 3 million refugees resettled since 1975! The top year for resettlement was 1980! with 207,000! 1980 was also the first year we admitted refugees from Africa.

In 1981 we resettled 159,000 and in 1982 it was 97,000. Reagan must have caught on and we saw a big drop to 62,000 in 1983.

Refugee Council USA (a lobbying group for the contractors):

Since 1975, the U.S. has resettled over 3 million refugees, with annual admissions figures ranging from a high of 207,000 in 1980 to a low of 27,110 in 2002. The average number admitted annually since 1980 is 98,000. [That low year (2002) was because 9/11 happened and they were all scared that a refugee might be a terrorist—that did happen eventually, but not right after 9/11.—ed]

But then get this!

The law specified that the refugee cap for 1980, ’81 and ’82 was set at 50,000 a year unless the President determined there was a great crisis—-did Ronald Reagan actually agree with this? Although fiscal year 1980’s 207,000 would have been Jimmy Carter’s gift to America (along with having signed the bill into law on March 17th, (St. Pat’s Day) 1980!).

Library of Congress summary, here:

Provides for up to 50,000 annual refugee admissions for fiscal years 1980 through 1982. Authorizes the President to exceed such 50,000 admissions level if, at the beginning of a fiscal year and after appropriate consultation, he determines it to be for humanitarian purposes. Provides that these admissions shall be allocated to groups of special concern to the United States.

Funds were only authorized for those three years as well. Wonder if they have been just operating ever since without formally reauthorizing the funding?

Endnote: Ann Coulter reminded the audience at CPAC of Ted Kennedy’s role in changing America with immigration, here, on Saturday. Readers! They are changing the people!

We have a “where to find information” category that is chock full and this post will be archived there.

Another suggestion for the sequestration budget cutting ax: IDAs

03/14/2013 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Your tax dollars!

IDAs—Individual Development Accounts!

What is that? It’s a fancy name for your tax dollars matching a refugee’s savings. For every dollar a refugee saves in this program (administered not by a government agency, but laundered through a non-profit), he or she is matched a dollar from the federal treasury. I am not kidding!

How many times over the years have I heard someone complain—how are these refugees getting cars and such—this is how. The monies can be used toward purchasing a car, a house, a business or education.

Here is a profile of a refugee eligible for this special deal. He/she is usually employed (and may earn up to $3000 a month!) and own a house, have one car, and no more than $10,000 in assets, and can sign up for the program. Nothing like this is available to a low income American citizen that I know of! Ever heard of it?

$4-5 million could be saved annually if we dumped this discriminatory program!

Like St. Patrick’s never-ending pot of gold, the federal treasury is available for certain special groups of people.

In 2009 (from that finally-released three years late 2009 Annual Report to Congress, p.38) we spent $4.6 million on the program, again by passing your money through an unaccountable non-profit agency. If we insist on redistributing taxpayers money this way, couldn’t the program go through the state refugee agencies which are at least nominally open to public scrutiny?

By the way, ORR tells us that 8% of participants quit the program—I wonder do they give your money back?

Here then are the resettlement contractors and ethnic community group grants for 2009. I bet they each get to keep a cut of the pie for their own “administration” of the program.

Continuation grants awarded in FY 2009 to the following programs with cycles that will end on September 29, 2010 are:
•
Lao Family Community Development, Inc., Oakland, CA, $200,000
•
World Relief DuPage, Wheaton, IL, $235,000
•
ISED Ventures, Des Moines, IA, $235,000
•
Jewish Family & Vocational Services, Inc., Louisville, KY, $230,000
•
International Institute of Metropolitan St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, $180,000
•
New York Association for New Americans, New York, NY, $300,000
•
Women’s Opportunities Resource Center, Philadelphia, PA, $235,000
•
Catholic Charities of Tennessee, Nashville, TN, $194,392.

Continuation grants awarded in FY 2009 to the following programs with cycles that will end on September 29, 2012 are:
•
Catholic Charities of Santa Clara County, San Jose, CA, $204,000
•
Western Kentucky Refugee Mutual Assistance Society, Inc., Bowling Green, KY, $150,000
•
Economic and Community Development Institute, Columbus, OH, $230,000
•
Maine Department of Health and Human Services, Augusta, ME, $207,901
•
Catholic Charities, Diocese of Camden, Inc., Camden, NJ, $225,000
•
Diocese of Olympia, Seattle, WA, $205,000
•
ECDC Enterprise Development Group, Arlington, VA, $280,000
•
Mountain States Group, Boise, ID, $201,018
•
United Way, Inc., Los Angeles, CA, $240,000
•
Neighborhood Assets, Spokane, WA, $50,000
•
International Rescue Committee Phoenix, New York, NY, $230,000
•
Alliance for Multicultural Community Service Inc., Houston, TX, $203,500
•
Catholic Charities, Diocese of St. Petersburg, Inc., St. Petersburg, FL, $200,000
•
Cambodian Mutual Assistance Association of Greater Lowell, Inc., Lowell, MA,$192,380

I wonder if the Health and Human Services Inspector General has ever looked into this program? Does anyone audit these outfits?

Editors note: This is the third in my series of suggested budget cuts. Here I suggested we could cut the grants for refugee “healthy marriages,” and here for the little ACORN-like ethnic community based organizations. Including the IDAs, I’ve now saved the US taxpayers over $13 million! I wonder what the sequester is going to require ORR to cut overall?

Illinois: Too many refugees, too little money! (Cue the weeping)

03/12/2013 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

They are wailing and rending garments in the land of too many refugees according to this lengthy and very informative article in Medill Reports:

[LOL! After the standard practice of featuring a successful refugee—ed] The Ethiopian association is one of the refugee resettlement agencies in Illinois, which are struggling under a triple burden as the number of refugees steadily climbs: large cuts in federal funding, a greater range of native languages among refugees and the recession.

Illinois has the largest immigrant population in the Midwest as shown here in data collected at the Univ. of Minnesota. Medill continued:

Tens years of resettlement represented here (23,220). However, according to Silverman’s office in the Illinois Dept. of Human Services, Illinois has resettled 145,000 since 1975.

Illinois has received about 23,220 refugees from 66 countries since 2000, and the flow has steadily increased since 2006, according to data of refugee arrivals in Illinois from the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement.

Feds cut our money,while refugee numbers rise! (They haven’t seen anything yet, wait till the sequester hits Refugee Resettlement!)

Cook, Kane and DuPage counties have unusually large refugee populations, making the state eligible for targeted assistance from the federal resettlement agency, according to Edwin Silverman, chief of the Bureau of Refugee and Immigrant Services at the Illinois Department of Human Services. [Here is our Ed Silverman archive for the curious reader—ed]

However, in recent years the federal allocation to Illinois has been cut by more than 50 percent, according to official funding data.

“In the year 2000, we received $7.3 million in combined refugee social services and targeted assistance, and in 2012, we received $3.5 million,” Silverman said.

Federal funding to the state has fallen while refugee numbers have increased in Illinois, because they have also increased in other states.

More diversity=more difficulty

In the face of these cuts, resettlement agencies are striving to meet the needs of a greater diversity of refugees.

Over the past decade, the refugee population has become increasingly diverse linguistically, with wide-ranging educational and employment histories, according to a recent report issued by the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

This makes it more challenging for resettlement agencies accustomed to receiving refugees from a limited number of countries.

More refugees=more unemployment (by the way, readers, they could say “NO!” to the State Department and ask that the numbers be reduced.)

Achievement of self-sufficiency for refugees has also become more difficult in recent years, according to a 2011 research report for Congress by Andorra Bruno, a specialist in immigration policy.

The recession has played a major part, making it difficult for refugees to find employment and become economically self-sufficient.

Oh NO! The real horror, Silverman says they have to do private fundraising!

“Finding employment is the biggest problem,” said Erku Yimer, the executive director of the Ethiopian association. “Because many of the companies that hire refugees are not hiring anymore.”

The subsidies resettlement agencies provide refugees is the only financial resource for those who can’t find work. The recession means those who are looking for a job rely on these subsidies for a longer period of time than in the past, Silverman said. [Not exactly true, refugees are accessing welfare at accelerating rates, most of the contractors are putting their charges on the public dole as soon as they can!—ed]

“So in addition to providing resettlement service, the resettlement agencies have had to be in a constant process of fundraising from the private sector, in order to assure that refugees can pay their rent and don’t go homeless,” Silverman said.

Readers when this program first became law in 1980 (thanks to Ted Kennedy, Joe Biden and Jimmy Carter among others) the understanding was that refugees would quickly become self-sufficient and not be part of a permanent underclass. Also, the program was to be funded through a PUBLIC-PRIVATE partnership. Over the years the contractors got lazy and became increasingly dependent on the taxpayer to support THEIR charitable desires and the public is now largely on the hook.

If they have to exert themselves and do private fundraising now, too bad! They should have been doing that all along. [sounds of wailing!]

So, how many refugees did each of the contractors resettle in 2009?

03/08/2013 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

As we reported here, the Office of Refugee Resettlement recently released its Annual Report to Congress for 2009 (four years late!). To save you from going through its nearly 200 pages, I’m from time to time going to bring you some nuggets. Already I’ve told you two place we could start cutting the bloated federal budget by cutting grants for “healthy marriages” and for “ethnic community based organizations” which are essentially little ‘Acorns’—community organizing outfits funded by you.

Wait till I tell you about those special savings accounts for refugees. Did you know that you are putting your money into their private savings accounts laundered through non-profits?

I hope to have a couple of things for you today, including the savings accounts, here is the first. If you go to Appendix C of the report, you can learn all about the Big Nine federal contractors who monopolize the program. There were ten in 2009 as the State of Iowa was being phased out.

Here is the contractor and the number of refugees it brought to your towns and cities in 2009 (remember they are being paid by the head!):

Numero uno!

Church World Service: 6,602 (plus helped 10,806 Cubans and Haitians)

Episcopal Migration Ministries: 4,792

Ethiopian Community Development Council: 3,874

Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society: 2,306

International Rescue Committee: 11,547

Iowa Dept. of Human Services: 426

Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service: 10,129

US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants: 7,166

US Conference of Catholic Bishops: 22,417 (11,064 Cubans and Haitians)***

World Relief (National Association of Evangelicals): 7,264

For more on these mostly “religious” non-profits read a report at the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) which I missed in March of last year, here. Looks like in my survey of 2009, the Catholics are number 1 followed by the secular IRC, and with the Lutherans coming in at number 3. (Although that depends on whether you count Church World Service’s Cubans and Haitians).

Says the always diplomatic CIS:

It is to the United States’ credit that our nation has, from her founding, provided a safe haven for the unjustly persecuted. However, even well-meaning efforts require accountability and should be balanced against other important, competing priorities. Without appropriate balance and oversight, helping refugees shifts from being a worthy humanitarian gesture in truly exceptional cases to an avenue for government largesse, enriching private bureaucracies while feeding public cynicism.

Readers, there is no oversight of the refugee resettlement program.

***Endnote: The US Conference of Catholic Bishops is pouring $millions into their political immigration platform, as we learned a few days ago at the Washington Post. Are they using taxpayer money? Remember they are paid by the head for all those refugees they are resettling.