In the first month of Fiscal Year 2019, Trump’s State Department admitted its initial group of refugees, mostly UN-selected, toward its proposed cap of 30,000 for resettlement this year.
They are being quietly distributed to approximately 170 towns and cities.
If the DOS kept this same pace, 1,830 a month, we would come in just under 22,000 for the year that ends September 30, 2019. In fiscal year 2018, we admitted 22,491 as the final number. (These numbers do not include the thousands granted asylum each month or the Special Immigrant visa entries who mostly come from Iraq and Afghanistan and get the same benefits as the regular DOS refugees.)
The grant program is known as the ‘Ethnic Community Self-help Program’ run out of the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement (HHS).
At one point I followed their activities closely and began a file on it, see here, but too much breaking news pushed the subject to the back burner.
First, as you know, nine federal resettlement contractors*** are hired by the US State Department to place refugees in your towns and cities. Their job is to help the refugees settle in and get them signed up for their ‘services.’
You also know that the nine are paid by the head to place those refugees, but in addition the Office of Refugee Resettlement doles out many millions more each year to non-profit groups including those nine in the form of discretionary grants.
But, what you might not know is that an entire cottage industry of non-profits have sprung up which get federal grants in most cases to benefit their specific ethnic group—Ethnic Community Based Organizations (ECBOs for short).
The grants are ostensibly to help the refugees integrate into a community, but one might wonder then why the funding is specific to groups that are maintaining their own cultural identity.
If such a helping hand is needed in certain cities, why isn’t the money given to local government agencies to help all ethnic groups, all races and all religions, instead of favoring one ethnic non-profit group over another? Seems to me that the present system creates division rather than integration.
Pay attention to the list of what you are paying for—getting refugees their resources, building their community, getting them involved in local “civic participation” (aka voting!), and getting local citizens minds right about the immigrants’ presence in the community!
In other words, you are paying for ethnic non-profit groups to organize in your community. Remember ACORN? Well these are little ACORNs!
(Don’t you just love this deceptive language!)
The Ethnic Community Self-Help program supports ethnic community-based organizations in providing refugee populations with critical services to assist them in becoming integrated members of American society.
Program Description
The Ethnic Community Self-Help program provides assistance to refugee community-based organizations and other groups that:
Address community building
Facilitate cultural adjustment and integration
Deliver mutually supportive functions
Information exchange
Civic participation
Resource enhancement
Orientation and support to new and established refugees
Public education to the larger community
Ethnic Community Self-Help programs connect newly arrived refugees to community resources [aka welfare!—ed]. Ethnic Community Self-Help programs target all ORR populations, and all U.S.-based governmental and certified non-profit organizations are eligible to apply.
What is up with ORR that much (maybe all!) of their grant information is out of date!
Over the years, I’ve visited ORR and found lists of who was receiving grants and for how much, but that information is not available now.
Oh sure, you can get the old ECBO grants list. But those grants have expired. Check it outand see that they passed out nearly $4.5 million to a list of ECBOs around the country. Those grants expired in 2017.
So, maybe the Trump Administration has cut out the program?
The answer is NO!
Just this month the ORR put out a notice of two upcoming grants. One of those is for ECBOs. Although the money is less than in the past—$2 million instead of over $4 million—13 non-profit groups will rake in $100,000-$200,000 each.
Here is the information on the ECBO grant offering:
An aside: For all of you who have ever tried to get a conservative non-profit group/Tea Party up and running you know that this is one heck of a lot of money. Of course, grants like this are not available to you!
When I couldn’t find an up-to-date list of grantees right now, I emailed ORR and was sent the list below. However, it is lacking in information—no grant amounts and no end date—so who knows if these little ACORNS are still enjoying your tax dollars.
Your tax dollars went to grants ($100,000-$200,000 each) so they could get their ethnic group established, and for refugees to get their “resources” in your cities.
Just a reminder: When you see something here at RRW that you are concerned about, let the President know how you feel, here.
***Below are the nine federal refugee resettlement contractors.
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!
Sorry no time to write much today, but I want you to have something to read, so have a look at a report at the Center for Immigration Studiesabout aliens voting.
Surely, you have all pondered the fact that as aliens of all stripes get drivers’ licenses, they can simply check a box and register to vote in the licensing process.
No one asks that they produce their citizenship papers at the DMV!
Remember it isn’t just illegal aliens! Refugees and other classes of legal immigrant can easily do this even if they haven’t yet gone through the citizenship process.
And, don’t you wonder how many of those hundreds of thousands of recipients of Temporary Protected Status are acting like legal citizens and voting?
Ohio is developing in to one of the most migrant ‘welcoming’ states in the nation thanks to its present governor and former candidate for President, John Kasich.
But, this is a bit much even for him!
For all of you who are sick of the ‘welcome the stranger’ club many leaders of the Religious Left beat you up with these days, there are some things in this story you should know.
Ohio Gov. John Kasich told CNN Thursday that “the Lord” doesn’t want Americans to build walls and oppose the migrant caravan heading to the United States from Central America.
“We’ve got to start putting ourselves in the shoes of other people,” Kasich told CNN’s Newsroom.
See Kullberg’s American Association of Evangelicals expose’ on George Soros and his “rented Evangelicals”: https://americanevangelicals.com/
Kasich, the grandson of Catholic immigrants from Eastern Europe who became an Anglican Christian as an adult, said he believes most Americans would welcome the caravan.
But not all Christians agree with the governor’s take on biblical truth.
She said the Bible has a lot to say about nations, but nowhere does it teach nations to open their borders to mass migration.
“While I appreciate Gov. Kasich’s Christian faith and compassion, I would encourage him to reconsider the nature of love and the balanced wisdom of Scripture,” Kullberg told The Ohio Star. “The Bible does not teach open borders, but wise welcome.”
Continue here as Kullberg gives you some ideas on responses to those who are cherry-picking the Bible to support their leftwing views on immigration.
Editor: First, let me be clear. Nothing in this post is meant in any way to suggest that we condone this horrific act of violence against innocent people. This was a vile act by someone whose hatred of Jews was so great that he had obviously abandoned all reason and we condemn it.
UPDATE 1-Who is Robert Bowers, the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting suspect?
Two hours before a gunman burst into the Tree of Life synagogue and opened fire during a Shabbat religious service, Bowers posted on chat site Gab.com about the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), a non-profit that helps Jewish refugees relocate to the United States.
“HIAS likes to bring invaders in that kill our people. I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I’m going in,” wrote Bowers, a heavy-set, white male.
[….]
Bowers, who is a registered voter with “no affiliation” in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, took aim in one post at U.S. President Donald Trump, accusing him of being a “globalist”who did nothing to stop the “infestation” of the United States by Jews.
“For the record, I did not vote for him nor have I owned, worn or even touched a MAGA hat,” he wrote.
Just so you know, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society(rebranded as HIAS a few years ago), resettles very few Jews. As a federal resettlement contractor, it resettles refugees assigned to it by the US State Department from all of the usual hot spots around the world.
Charity Navigator reports that in 2016, HIAS was 58.5% funded by government grants mostly to resettle refugees. https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=3820
Curious to see how many Jewish people have been admitted to the US as refugees over the last ten years, I checked Wrapsnet.
In ten years the US admitted a total of 635,173 refugees representing a vast array of religions from all over the world.
Of that number only 1,893 (.3%) were of the Jewish faith with most of those coming from Iran(658) and Russia(545).
However….
HIAS has put itself out as the most politically active refugee resettlement agency making them not hard to miss on the internet!
Indeed, according to media reports (assuming they are accurate!), what drew the killer to a target was HIAS’s e-mail advertisement for their special services called National Refugee Shabbat held in hundreds of synagogues in the run-up to the November election.
As readers here know, there are nine federal resettlement contractors*** and based on my informal assessment going back several years, HIAS is the most politically active of the resettlement contractors and has been dogging Donald Trump unrelentingly since the 2016 Presidential campaign.
HIAS CEO Mark Hetfield at 2017 pro-refugee/anti-Trump rally in New York.
Not far behind as open borders political organizers and activists, I would put Church World Service and then the US Conference of Catholic Bishops/Catholic Charities.
Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Serviceis also very politically engaged.
Free speech!
They don’t just advocate for refugees!
I think we all agree everyone is entitled to free speech, and HIAS can demonstrate in the streetsagainst the President and for open borders, they cansue the Administration, they can cheer on the migrant caravan and they can campaign against Republicans in the midterms, but what is so patently unfairto the average citizen who is learning about their community organizing activities (from alternative media) is that they receive millions and millions of taxpayer dollars each year while promoting a political agenda that many Americans vehemently disagree with.
If they were truly a private non-profit organization, they could pay big salaries and politically organize to their hearts content, but when they are a government partner, ostensibly to care for refugees, we expect them to be neutral on what is the greatest concern facing the country now—-immigration.
Where is Congress?
The mainstream media rarely tells the public about the source of the resettlement contractors’ funds, and Congress has never, in the ten years I’ve followed the US Refugee Admissions Program, ever done any oversight of the federal contracting system that these nine have monopolized, in some cases for over three decades.
Funding the Open Borders Left!
See just for starters this graph from the Capital Research Centershowing the last ten years of taxpayer dollars subsidizing the nine VOLAGS.
HIAS is in column 4 under VOLAGs. $186 million from the US Treasury in ten years. I think you can see that many of these refugee agencies involved in political activities could not survive without your tax dollars.
Again, there is no excuse for violence, but there is great frustration out there that a serious effort to be more open and transparent with the public might begin to quell.
So, how about the mainstream media does its job and gives the public the facts about groups like HIAS so ‘conspiracy’ theories don’t develop, and then it would be refreshing if Congress took its role seriously, investigated where our tax dollars are going and what they are being used for, and thus give us confidence that our government cares about us—Americans first!
I’ll update this post as we get more information.
*** The nine major contractors (VOLAGS) that monopolize the US Refugee Admissions Program are these:
Church World Service (CWS)
Ethiopian Community Development Council (ECDC) (secular)
Episcopal Migration Ministries (EMM) (DFMS is its other name)
Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS)
International Rescue Committee (IRC) (secular)
Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIRS)
US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) (secular)
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB)
World Relief Corporation (WR)
