Category: Where to find information

Some facts from State Department press conference in Switzerland last week

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The Acting Asst. Secretary for the Office of Population, Refugees and Migration answered questions about the US Refugee Resettlement Program in Geneva last week.  There is nothing earth-shattering here but it gives you some further idea of how Refugee Resettlement works (one of the reasons we write this blog in the first place).

Samuel Whitten told reporters at a press conference connected with an Executive Committee meeting of the UNHCR (UN High Commissioner for Refugees) the following:

In the last year ending September 30, the U.S. contributed a total of $1.44 billion to help refugees, conflict victims, stateless persons and vulnerable migrants around the world. We funded both international organizations and non-governmental organizations, working to improve the lives of these populations of concern.

I suspect they are all a little worried about what the worldwide economic downturn will mean for funding in the coming year.  Or, more precisely if the US sugar daddy will continue to put out.

As for the number of refugees resettled in the last fiscal year, Whitten predicts higher numbers in FY09:

With respect to the resettlement of refugees in the United States, we ended the year having resettled over 60,000 refugees in total. This is by far our highest level in recent years. We’re looking forward to an even higher number in the coming year. The largest number of refugees coming into the United States originated in Burma and Iraq. This year we initiated an additional large program for Bhutanese refugees in Nepal.

A lot of the questioning involved the Iraqi displaced people.  Questioners wanted to know why we weren’t resettling more.    Whitten said:

At this point we don’t know what our number will be for 2009, but our estimation, based on the fact that we now have developed processing capacity throughout the region, that it will be at least 17,000 and perhaps substantially more.

He then tells the reporters about the Special Immigrant Visa program (that is the Kennedy bill) signed into law by George Bush which makes provision for up to 5000 Iraqi immigrants who can claim some connection to having worked for the US.

I would mention at this point that although the Special Immigrant Visa Program is not a part of my part of the State Department, it’s a special visa program for Iraqis affiliated with the United States.

With respect to your question about immigrant visas this is, as I say, a separate program and I will give you my best information on it. The U.S. Congress has created a special category for immigrant visas into the United States. The acronym is SIV, or Special Immigrant Visa. Under that program the United States has a limit of 5,000 visas a year plus dependent family members of the principal applicants. These are individuals typically who have had some association, have worked with the United States. We are also processing SIV applications inside of Iraq at our embassy in Baghdad.

Whitten does tell reporters that the US goal is to get Iraqis back home.   He is a little soft when he says the last line of the following (What does “individuals who want to be resettled mean?  Half the world wants to be resettled here!):

The U.S. and other countries do not expect that resettlement in third countries will be the primary way the international community assists Iraqi refugees. For most of the refugees the goal is a return with dignity to a safe Iraq, but we do intend to continue providing for those individuals who want to be resettled.

When a questioner asked where Iraqis would be resettled, he confirms what we already know.  The State Department doesn’t decide, these non-profit contractors (with no accountability to the electorate) decide if your city or town is the next home of the world’s destitute.

Your other question was about where in the United States are they resettled. This is a national program in the United States. We work with ten agencies around the United States including the U.S. Conference on Catholic Bishops, the Hebrew Immigration Aid Society, the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, and others. The way this works is that the Iraqis who come in, just like refugees from Burma or Africa or anywhere, they could be placed initially in any location in the country. We do make efforts to keep people near family if there are relatives, as there are in many cases. If they don’t have family, if they don’t have that kind of connection they are initially placed with an agency that has told us they have an infrastructure capable of helping them with, for example, an apartment, with job training and so forth. We rely very heavily on agencies and organizations around the United States to help with refugee placement. And it’s only because we have this good network of ten organizations around the country that we were able to bring in over 60,000 this year and I believe it will be a larger number if all goes well in 2009.

Does Whitten know how these agencies have been screwing up?  I doubt it, but bring more refugees anyway.

Church World Service resettles nearly 5000 refugees in the last fiscal year…

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Your tax dollars:

….4892 to be exact, and received about $5000 of your tax dollars per refugee! 

I was interested in this press release issued by one of the Top 10 volags that I discovered on a Burmese Chin website because Church World Service (CWS) is the ‘mothership’ to the Virginia Council of Churches (VCC) that did such a lousy job of resettling refugees where we live.   VCC and CWS are the reason Refugee Resettlement Watch was born (just a little history for our thousands of new readers).  From CWS press release:

Global humanitarian agency Church World Service resettled 4,892 refugees to the United States from October 2007 through September 2008 (FY 2008), or just over 8 percent of the total of 60,192 refugees who began new lives in the U.S. during the year.

Church World Service is one of 10 agencies that work with the U.S. Department of State to meet the needs of refugees upon their arrival to the United States and assist them as they work to attain self-sufficiency.

This statement in the press release caught my eye:

The agency’s community-based program helps newcomers make the transition to American life. Many refugee families resettled by CWS are co-sponsored by local congregations, who act as welcoming communities and assist the new arrivals with material needs like renting and furnishing apartments, job searches, school enrollment, and accessing social services.

CWS may say local congregations co-sponsor families but we did not find that adequate in Washington County, Maryland.   Sub-contractor VCC only found 3 churches and the local mosque (which quit in the middle of the resettlement) willing to help with around 200 refugees.  Those churches became overwhelmed by the work involved and complained privately to friends that it was all too much.  

Anger was directed at VCC when citizens shared stories about neglected refugees.  That is the same subject that has riled citizens in Salt Lake City recently (involving other volags also dropping the ball).  Go here to read the comment thread developing at the Salt Lake City Tribune.

One of the primary topics being debated in that comment thread is the adequacy of the supposedly only $425 per refugee government alottment that the volags claim they have to spend on each refugee’s initial resettlement. 

LOOK AT THIS!    Notice in CWS financial statement they received $25,488,124 (33% of their budget) from the US government (taxpayers) and spent $26,990,950 (34.1% of their budget) on refugee resettlement.   First, where is the public private partnership?  They spent only 1.1% of their own money on refugees.

Assuming they resettled 5000 refugees in this time frame that means they received about $5000 per resettled refugee from the US taxpayer!   So much for that crap about only having $425 per refugee to get them settled!

CWS, as a middleman, merely passes a tiny fraction of the federal money through to the refugees as it gobbles up taxpayer money for its staff, offices, etc. or the staff and offices of its large number of subcontractors.

Reform needed:  Get rid of the middlemen!  If we are going to have a refugee program, each state has a refugee office.  Just have that office locate churches and other groups (they could be secular) to sponsor each refugee family.    Only bring the number of families that have sponsors.

Presidential Determination for FY09 calls for 80,000 refugees to be resettled

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Each year the President of the United States submits a Presidential Determination letter in which he sets a ceiling for refugees to be resettled in the US in the coming year.  On September 30th, President Bush released a statement setting the ceiling for FY’09 at 80,000 refugees.

You can read it here.

I don’t know what the final number for FY’08 was but it was somewhere in the 50,000-60,000 range. We resettled 60,192 in FY08.   Over the years the actual number of refugees resettled have ranged from a high of over 150,000  200,000 to a low of around 40,000  27,199 directly after 9/11.

NJ and Nebraska articles led me to this site…

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

It is a US Census Bureau site for something called the American Community Survey.  The reporters who wrote the story about South Jersey refugee and immigrant numbers and likewise the story from Omaha Nebraska about the foreign born population in that state relied on the most recent survey from the Census Bureau.

From the NJ article this little nugget jumped out at me:

According to the survey, just under 20 percent of the nationwide population age 5 and older spoke a language other than English at home in 2007, up nearly 2 percent since the 2000 census. For about 12.3 percent, that language is Spanish.

And, the Nebraska article which came on the heels of the Grand Island/Somali/Swift violence began:

The decline in foreign-born Cornhuskers in 2007 was not huge, about 1,000 people. But the reversal after years of growth suggests that Nebraska may be losing its distinction as a new destination for immigrants.

Iowa, by comparison, also a fast-growing immigration state, continued to see an increase in its number foreign-born residents: from an estimated 112,299 to 117,437.

A combination of factors most likely is behind the shift in Nebraska, national and local analysts say, including fewer employment opportunities and a less welcoming atmosphere.

There is that word again—welcoming. Do you think these advocates for open borders and increased immigration attend ‘spin workshops’ where they learn the proper jargon from community organizers?  I guess one starts to become unwelcoming when one sees jobs being lost to immigrants and multicultural violence breaking out as it has in Grand Island between Somali Muslims and every other nationality in that town.

Refugees, home ownership, and non-profits getting your tax dollars

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Your tax dollars:

I see on the news this morning that negotiators in Congress have a deal—we taxpayers will buyout bad home loans and bailout lending institutions who were given a free rein by Congress in the first place to loan money to people, including immigrants, who should never have gotten loans.   Since it appears we are about to have something shoved down our throats, I am hoping that at least they got the infamous ACORN’s grubby hands out of the pot of gold.

All of this home loan discussion reminded me that refugees get special help in buying homes.   It is an issue that came up a year ago in Hagerstown, MD in conjunction with the public meeting held in our city to try to explain how the refugee resettlement program works.    A long-time resident noted that at least one very recent refugee had purchased a home already.  In that case, it appears the refugee actually came to this country with assets (don’t let them fool you, some refugees had homes to sell and did not live in squalid camps, especially the Russians).

Anyway, that comment led me to look into a federal program that does give refugees a special deal for home ownership, education, and business ownership.  It’s called Individual Development Accounts (IDAs) and administered through the Office of Refugee Resettlement.   The objectives of the program:

The objectives of the IDA Program are to increase the ability of low-income refugees to save; promote their participation in the financial institutions of this country; assist refugees in advancing their education; increase home ownership; and assist refugees in gaining access to capital.

Under this match grant program, the refugee sets up a savings account and the taxpayers match him or her dollar for dollar.   Just think about this!   Where is Grover Norquist and Americans for Tax Reform (oh, silly me, he is busy promoting that we take more refugees and immigrants)?

Individual development accounts are matched savings accounts available for the purchase of specific assets. Under the IDA program, the matching funds, together with the refugee’s own savings from their employment, are available for purchasing one (or more) of four savings goals: home purchase; microenterprise capitalization; post secondary education or training; and in some cases, purchase of an automobile if necessary to maintain or upgrade employment.

IDA grantees provide matched savings accounts to refugees whose annual income is less than 200 percent of the poverty level and whose assets, exclusive of a personal residence and one vehicle, are less than $10,000. Grantees provide matches of up to $1 for every $1 deposited by a refugee in a savings account. The total match amount provided may not exceed $2,000 for individuals or $4,000 for households. Upon enrolling in an IDA program, a refugee signs a savings plan agreement which specifies the savings goal, the match rate, and the amount the refugee will save each month.

Is it any wonder there is animosity toward immigrants and refugees.  When struggling hard-working Americans hear about these sweet deals they get angry.   How many Americans have a house, a car and less than $10,000 in assets and are not eligible for this handout because they were born here!

To add insult to injury, go to the Office of Refugee Resettlement to see who holds the pots of money for the refugees, it’s not some government office accountable to elected officials, it’s a gang of leftist non-profit groups, some of them churches.  Among the duties of these NGO’s is to teach the refugee how to access our “financial systems” and get those loans that are now bringing down our economy.   So where is the ACLU on the separation of church and state?

To learn more, go here.  Note (scroll down) that there is a link for how to get sharia finance for Muslim borrowers into the IDA’s!